We are now more than halfway through the animals of the earth-element in the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit deck. That marks a powerful threshold in itself as it marks the threshold of maturity, sustainability, and rooted strength.
The first seven cards were:
- The Bear with the invitations of awakening in body and moving towards what calls you.
- The Earthworm with the invitation of sharing your vision, speaking up, and creating a symbiotic relationship with your gifts.
- The Mouse with the invitation of taking your vision and creating meaning through creative actions.
- The Rabbit with the invitations of a mindfulness in energy, and building a strong core within self.
- The Raccoon with an invitation to consider identity, and how your actions and offerings align with your true self.
- The Fox with the invitations of creating magickal and sacred connections to all things other that feed your vitality and keep you in harmony.
- The Snake with the invitations of creative potential and your rising magick in the magickal flow of life.
Now that we are past those first seven, the cards now are about deepening us in ourselves, actions, and manifestations.
Grounded, yet heavenly with the Buffalo
I can, and will, say that all the cards in the deck are beautiful, and they are…but there is something about this card for me. There is something about the way that this card shows up and teaches you to face the things that come up in your life with a pure presence and an elevated spirit that gets me every time.
This is clear from the numerology of the Eight. The Eight’s of the tarot (which is how I have been reading the numerology here in this deck), teach and invite cyclical evolution. They teach transformational empowerment, and how mastery is a journey, not a destination.
The Eight’s invite you to root into the self, while also inviting great change to occur. They say that when your actions align with your spirit you can move through the greatest of cycles, more in alignment than before. The Buffalo (or Bison) teaches the same thing.
Side note: I believe the correct term is Bison, but because the two words are interchanged frequently, and Buffalo is what is listed on the card, that is the word that I will be using.
I think of the things that I love the most about the Buffalo card is the phrase that accompanies it in the guidebook:
Grounded, Yet Heavenly
Practical, Yet Spiritual
The guidebook starts the invitations for this card with this sentence: The hooves of the mighty Buffalo are grounded in the Earth, yet its heart and mind rise toward heaven…..
Excuse me, but that is just beautiful. This card is one of the most accessible in my opinion, reminding us all that spiritual embodiment and alignment is not the picturesque image we may immediately conjure because that is the image that has been sold to us. That “likeness” towards spiritual embodiment is what we are all told we lack, but we don’t lack it.
It just doesn’t look like that; it looks like the teachings of the Buffalo. The problem is, the teachings of the Buffalo are not easy. They may be accessible, but that does not make them easy. The Buffalo teaches you that alignment, embodiment, and spiritual evolution are not mystical, woo-woo, or fairy-like things that we have to spend money on, or find outside of ourselves. In fact, the more we look elsewhere, the less we find it. The Buffalo teaches you that showing up to the experiences of life, and letting them move with you (or move you) is where the embodiment and empowerment is found. You are literally accepting and embracing the ability to find something beautiful in the midst of a terrible storm.
Guidance from the guidebook
Some key references from the guidebook
Keywords / phrases: Grounded, yet heavenly. Practical, yet spiritual.
When in balance: trusting, pure presence
When out of balance: restless, lacks gratitude
To bring into balance: prayer, bhakti
Following the guidance from the guidebook, working with the Buffalo first starts with be reminded of the fact that life is a gift. Simple, and yet….so challenging at times. One of the reasons why I feel this card is so accessible, but fully challenges us to step up to the plate is the fact that the Buffalo card asks you to relinquish ego.
Ego is the card that is screaming when life gets hard. Ego is the part of you that (while normal and necessary at times) wants everything controlled as a safety measure. Ego measures everything through the lens of self, and this is how it tries to help us make sense of things. Please note that this is different than egotistical- this term means that you have a grand, high, and inflated view of yourself. Ego (not egotistical) is where we draw lines between ourselves and the rest of the world. Again, this is not always a bad thing, and sometimes needed, but it can shut us away from greater interconnective threads for these reasons.
The Buffalo asks and invites you to lean more into the space of spirit, the part of you that is interconnected to the rest of the world. This is where a great form of trust comes, and needs to come because this is where ego starts kicking and screaming. Ego says it is not fair, it shouldn’t have happened, why did it happen? Ego says: why me?
The Buffalo encourages an open presence to the twists and turns that lie before you, knowing that the evolution, the embodiment, and the empowerment will yield to you so many gifts when you take each part of the journey as it comes. Again, hard I know. But, when the teachings of the Buffalo get hard, remember that they are the largest land mammal in North America. This allows them to instinctively turn into the storm rather than move on the fringe because the quickest way out is through. Tell that to yourself when you need a reminded to stay grounded, and yet trust in a Divine connection. Stay the course, and the course will yield itself to your power.
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Ashlie McDiarmid
Hello there! I hope you liked this blog post. As a tarot and oracle reader, my goal with my blogs is to offer you content, resources, and access to the tools that have transformed my life.
I believe that your own intuition is the deepest form of knowing, but here in my little corner of the internet, I share insights based in intuition and instinct. I share my love for nature, witchcraft, and the wild spirit.
- If your spirit is at home in wild places
- If you feel the need to claim your autonomy as ritual
- If you want to more deeply trust your own intuition
- If you want resources or connections to tarot, oracle, witchcraft, and wild sovereignty, then welcome!
