My friend, the visionary Dutch artist Thijme Termaat took this amazing and complex self-portrait during a transfer at Hong Kong on his way to New Zealand. Thijme painted the background of the Zap Oracle site. You can find out more about him and his amazing artwork in my extensive interview with him: http://www.zaporacle.com/an-interview-with-visionary-artist-thijme-termaat-3/
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Journeying is an archetypal human experience. I often feel the call to adventure as Winter turns to Spring, the urge to get out of the house and experience home on the road. Staying in one place for too long so easily and inevitably becomes a stagnant routine. Emerson said: "The problem with traveling is you take yourself with you." It's true that you can't rely on a change of setting to take the place of inner dynamism, but I would rephrase Emerson's aphorism to read, "The problem and possibility of traveling…" Traveling can be a change of scenery to distract from inner stagnation, but it can also be a secular pilgrimage, a voyage of discovery and transformative rite of initiation. Travel can bring you into contact with other cultures that can give you perspective on your culture and conditioned assumptions. There are so many forms of travel, inner, outer, international, interdimensional… but pick your traveling companions, if any, with great care! If you haven't observed a person under acute stress you may not know who they are and may be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised.
Wilderness sojourns are a particularly powerful form of travel. It is all too easy to spend most of your incarnation inside a series of rectilinear enclosures forever cocooned by all the conveniences of technological civilization. But there is something in the human spirit that longs for the depths of the forest, desert canyons, mountain tops, oceans and caves. Life is not meant to be lived always indoors, surrounded by plasterboard and wires. Get out into the sunlight and sleep under the stars. Life is a journey; so don't film the whole movie of your life indoors, lit by electric light. Answer the call to adventure!
It is also possible that this card could refer to an intense and metamorphic inner journey. The Wanderer would also apply to new situations (a new job, social situation) even if this doesn't mean geographical change. Finally, we are all on a journey, traveling through human incarnation from birth to death. The core of the Wanderer's stance is relevant, therefore, to any human life.
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