The thistle = RESISTANCE “Do we really want love? Can we even tolerate togetherness?”

The Thistle both attracts and repels; only the hardiest animals can turn a thistle into food. Some gardeners won’t have a thistle anywhere near their garden; but thistles have a tendency to grow wherever they want, so it is smarter to work with them rather than make them into enemies. A thistle draws you in but it won’t let you go. Thistles symbolize Dangerous Beauty that could be tame-able: with luck, daring and know-how. A Thistle combined with any other card suggests danger, opportunity and hidden depths; that a problem’s solution may be more homespun and nearer to hand than you previously reckoned.

It is inevitable that we will on some level experience Merging as Identity Loss. This may be the source of the power struggle which plagues, and should plague, all relationships: who’s going to drive this bus? (The answer is Each/Both/Neither. Power flows in, out and between, like the tide.) If “who will drive” doesn’t arise then the power problem lies very deep and must be even more urgently addressed. It’s always important to keep in mind that one soul isn’t “absorbed” while the other “inflates”! That’s not how it works at all!

But if you study contemporary meanings of the word ”fuck” you will be alarmed. If you are “fucked” you’ve been “taken.” You’ve been “had.” One person is diminished, the other is a conqueror in this scenario. Soulmating cannot and will not happen under such conditions – both souls will be erased. Considering that sex is the glue that fuses souls, exploitational thinking is profoundly destructive. “Mated” is a much better term, but even that fails to encompass the transfer of self into a central Us that is so much desired, feared, dreaded and resisted.

You desperately need each other’s pollen to ignite true fertility of the soul. Relax. Experiment. Allow the Other to instruct you in their Wildness. Offer up your own exotic difference. Join.

#HAIKU: The Thistle

Pry me out
I fly back hard
Invigorate world
With wilder honey