The card is not correctly drawn. John Cooke missed the point that the waterfall and stream-with-the-way-of-stones are one and the same. The rooster and some of the other details are extraneous, and merely clutter things up. Rainbows are symbols of refreshment and renewal, as is dawn. If you want to know why rainbows have that meaning, ask yourself when you have seen rainbows. Mostly it will be after a violent spring or summer storm, when the setting sun appears in the clearing west, putting a rainbow in the still darkened east. If you will recall such moments, they are thoroughly delightful. All past is the sultry heat, the falling barometer and the violence of wind and hail. The air is refreshing, and the birds are out, singing. A rainbow over a waterfall has the same symbolic meaning, with the added meaning of an eternal promise of renewal, a promise and wisdom which is always the same. The stream of life flows unchanging, yet it slowly grinds through rock as the waterfall steadily moves upstream. The noise and roar of the waterfall are produced by hard rock which resists simple erosion. Thus, wherever the error and blockage of flow is greatest, there is where you find the waters of life concentrating and sending up the roar of Cne, amid a refreshing mist which always shine with the same message of renewal. If the hard rock that produces the waterfall is symbolic of our time so too is the head-star out of the darkness. An example of a Way-Shower is Edgar Cayce, whose work appeared in the heart of darkness, when machine civilization was at its confident peak and no doubts about the truth of the Thinker's dogma troubled most people. In this darkness there appeared a voice of the higher self, which often takes the form of the head of an older man in dreams and mandalas, his vision shining on an hitherto unseen wonder in the distance, the 'emerald city' of our dreams. We have to cross the stream and go through water, and be cleansed to reach it. That is why the stepping stone path should be right in the waterfall. This could be a very beautiful card, very evocative of the present moment, the first light of dawn, when the stars still shine in the night overhead. The basic interpretation is given by the name of the card. The Way-Showers are Show-ers of the Way, frequently channels for the communications from the deep in one way or another. The Nameless Cne says it "represents Singleness of Purpose," probably because there is a singleness of purpose in all Way-Showers, from ancient times to the present. |
The scene is night above, gradually becoming light towards the ground, much as it would he at dawn or twilight. lii the darkness above is the star, the same spark-star of creativity we find on the chest of the Mother, having no set number of points. In the center of the star is the head of a man with a white beard. His eyes are two searchlights gazing down on the emerald city. A stream flows from our high left to our lower right of the card, making a waterfall. Above the stream is a rainbow; above that an inverted cup, dispensing colored fluids. Underneath the waterfall (or behind it) are stepping stones leading to a glimmering or dazzling city, like the emerald city in the Wizard of Oz. The waterfall's spray produces the rainbow, and you must pass through the spray to reach the distant city.