Lord Hanuman’s Scroll

Last night, I dreamed intensely. I don’t usually remember my dreams, but this one was uncharacteristically lucid and strange.

I dreamed I was looking through my trusty tarot deck, and the Two of Swords caught my eye. I had never seen it before, and I was completely surprised. I examined it intently, so close it was all I could see. The card depicted a knight in the sky, clouds around him. He faced towards a monkey, which flew ahead of him with it’s gaze turned over its shoulder. It had a strange headdress with human hands mounted on either side of it, one side held a scroll and the other seemed to gesture onward. At the top, the numeral was offset, similar to the ten of pentacles, and the scene was repeated in reverse in the corner.

A had a friend with me, a composite dream friend that seemed to mostly be my companion Morgan. I showed her the card and we were both surprised through all our study, we’d never noticed this card. Looking through my deck again, I saw the usual Two of Swords, and I got a strange pit in my stomach. I had forgotten that there had been any other Two of Swords but the new one I’d just found – I felt both afraid and excited. We both started looking through the deck, and new cards I can’t remember quite began to appear. More and more, one I almost remember was an elaborate card, visually similar to an Ace of Cups or Pentacles and the Ten of Pentacles; It was ornate and incredibly different from anything I’d ever seen before, but still everything had the Waite-Smith ‘feel’.

As we looked through, I flipped over one of the new cards, and was breathtaken that a normal tarot card was on it’s reverse. All of the new cards were printed on the back of the old cards. Sharing this with Morgan, I began to explore all the cards and found that they could come apart – peeling the cards apart left them with white unfinished backs, with minor symbols and decoration somewhat similar to the BotA deck – but sparser. With that discovery, the dream faded and my memory ends.

I drew the dream card, trying to emulate a Patricia-Coleman Smith feel. I thought of the term ‘Monkey Mind’ when I saw it, and speculate on why no swords were present. Sketching it this morning, I imagined placing the swords horizontally at the top and bottom of the card, facing opposite directions. I also imagine some birds, and some yellow somewhere – I remember yellow but couldn’t find where it belonged in my sketch. I tried to keep it as close to the dream as possible to try to keep my waking mind from changing the message too much.

My card this morning was the Two of the major arcana. Having pulled that exactly a month ago, I drew a second; the Six of Cups, which makes me think of love, balance, and emotional readiness for teaching and learning. Though it wouldn’ve been amazing if I pulled the Two of Swords this morning, I think I might have hit a critical mass for synchronicity in my life. Even so, it was an amazing image. If I dream more, maybe after a few years I’ll have enough cards to make a strange new deck for everybody!