Avalon Oracle of the Day!

THE LADY OF SHALOTT - LOVE - IDEALISM - ILLUSION - VICTIM.

"Look deeply into thine own eyes and allow yourself to fall into the beauty you see reflected". Who is the Lady of Shalott? She lives alone - downstream of Camelot - in a tower. She lives under the threat of a curse that she must never look out of her window but look only into her mirror where she sees life outside her tower reflected.

A lyrical ballad by the poet Alfred Tennyson is based on the medieval 'La Damigella di Scalot'. This lay tells the tragic story of Elaine of Astolat. She saw Sir Lancelot passing by the tower in her mirror and she couldn't resist looking out of her window. Then the mirror cracked! She decided to leave her lonely tower in pursuit of this beautiful knight. But she is rejected by him! The story tells us that she found a boat and climbed inside and sang mournfully as she sailed to her death! The curse was that she could never experience romantic love.

The painter, John William Waterhouse depicted her last hours as she sailed down the river to die. It was painted in 1888 and based on Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem of the same name, a tale of isolation, detachment, and the supernatural elements. The text revolves around the mystery of the Lady of Shalott, who is trapped in the tower. She accepts death as her fate and is emotionally and physically detached from the real world!

The card is about the shattering of illusions. We ask ourselves if we have boxed ourselves into a specific role, a way of being that prevents us from following our natural instincts. Many people feel isolated, whether because they are adhering to restrictions or from fears perpetuated through our media platforms. Are we only viewing the world through our own perceptions? Are we not seeing life as it truly is? Have we locked ourselves into our own tower of Babel? The greed, vanity and false superiority over other species, and the subsequent misuse of our planet's resources, are the illusions we see in our mirrors and we shut ourselves away rather than face the consequence! It may be very difficult, but we have to break out of our self-imposed towers and face the reality of what we have created. We must die to our old selves to create something better, something purer.

We may not want to see what we are doing to our world. We might try to shut ourselves away from the discomfort, but the problem wont go away and it won't get better unless we face the reality that what is outside our towers is a reflection of all that we are and all that we have created.

The curse of the Lady of Shalott meant she couldn't view the real world. She had to create woven images from what she saw in her mirror. We have also woven a world that we believe is beautiful and rich. We supply our every need and whim, and we fail to see the true image of what we have done to

our world in order to create that illusion. It is time to shatter the mirror of illusions, and face the world head on, to own and take responsibility for what we have created, and actively work to redress the situation whilst we still have time left to do so. Life as we know it is over. We have just minutes left to start creating a new one.

Avalon Whitefeather )O(