Here’s the latest card, Divine Chaos…

This card is based on an amazing photo series of an unusual event which happened in Maryland last week. A herd of buffalo mysteriously escaped from their farm and marauded around an upscale neighborhood, fucking up traffic (while everyone was undoubtedly driving to and from Starbucks), until police figured out how to round them up and enclose them in a tennis court until their owner could arrive and cart them back. This image of the buffalo vaulting over the tennis net is my vote for most inspiring of all year so far.

To me, it is symbolic of the real, the authentic and the natural triumphing over the false constraints, imaginary rules and stupid games of society. It’s the clearest theophany (in-breaking of god into our reality) I can remember ever seeing in the news - or at least in recent memory. Also great is how the police officer looks on from behind. As an avatar of order and control, he is rendered both awestruck and powerless to stop this great beast from leaping over our stupid artificial boundaries. Behind him I exposed the bars of the Black Iron Prison, of which he is warden.

The whole thing reminds me of a wonderful passage from Philip K. Dick:

In my writing I got so interested in fakes that I finally came up with the concept of fake fakes. For example, in Disneyland there are fake birds worked by electric motors which emit caws and shrieks as you pass by them. Suppose some night all of us sneaked into the park with real birds and substituted them for the artificial ones. Imagine the horror the Disneyland officials would feel when they discovered the cruel hoax. Real birds! And perhaps someday even real hippos and lions. Consternation. The park being cunningly transmuted from the unreal to the real, by sinister forces. For instance, suppose the Matterhorn turned into a genuine snow-covered mountain? What if the entire place, by a miracle of God’s power and wisdom, was changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, into something incorruptible? They would have to close down.

Dick then goes on to outline a concept of reality in which God’s purpose is to go about the universe and translate the fake into the real, piece by piece. With that in mind, I added the dove hovering over the buffalo. This is the same dove as seen in images of the baptism of Christ in the River Jordan by John the Baptist. It stands for the Holy Spirit, the Logos, descending from on high to dwell within. The bird also symbolizes the element air, and the blast he fires at the buffalo is the tongue of flame which descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost, allowing them to speak and understand all languages. The buffalo stands also for the earth element, and the tidal wave for the mighty fury of the waters.

This card is also supported by the historical character called the Lord of Misrule:

While mostly known as a British holiday custom, the appointment of a Lord of Misrule comes from antiquity. In ancient Rome, from the 17th to the 23rd of December, a Lord of Misrule was appointed for the feast of Saturnalia, in the guise of the good god Saturn. During this time the ordinary rules of life were turned topsy-turvy as masters served their slaves, and the offices of state were held by slaves. The Lord of Misrule presided over all of this, and had the power to command anyone to do anything during the holiday period.

Interestingly, Saturn is also the god of limitations, and in Greece mythology was Chronos: Father-Time. The Lord of Misrule was both a recognition of his power, and a ceremonial escape from it - a blowing off of steam. Another historical reference for this card is the Babylonian dragon of chaos, Tiamat. She is the primeval mother of all things, and from the pieces of her slain body comes our world.

Unfortunately, this ancient myth may parallel these modern trouble-making buffalo even to this end. The owner of the escaped herd has announced that he is so “fed up” with these animals that he plans to send them all off to the slaughterhouse. Certainly an asshole move, but mythologically and psychologically, perhaps a necessary one. Our ordered society as we know it would come crumbling down (for better or worse) if we were to openly embrace the Divine Chaos card (perhaps this card is also then related to the Wildman card). Internally, this card stands for the unexpected, the unusual, and even sometimes the unwelcome. It signals that you’ve become too restricted, too uptight; it screams, “Let go!” It challenges you to re-assess your plans, or perhaps abandon them all together, and ride (or run with) the divine beast of chaos.