Mothers & Fathers Help Us Mend Our Nets

a collective Sooth reading

“Howl Mother,” from the Sooth oracle deck, painted by Rima Staines & written by Sylvia V. Linsteadt

The moon was a fair waxing crescent in the late summer light last night, the stars so thick I could still feel them this morning as the blue jays and thrushes called and I laid out a cintamani of Sooth cards for you all.

Cintamani is a word Rima taught me. It refers to the symbol of three dots or circles arranged in a triangular formation, and has been a kind of maker’s mark on her work for decades now, an evocation of the ancient tradition of using these three dots to represent the “wish-fulfilling stone” of the alchemists.

This is the shape that instinctively came to us when we were learning how our Sooth oracle cards wanted to be laid out and read, and time and again, as I’ve gotten to know these cards more deeply, the cintamani feels like roof over my head, the dormer of a chapel that takes me in when I need holding, when I need to find center again.

I can’t a recall season I’ve lived through on earth that called for greater centering than this season now. Enormous winds of our own disembodied making are shaking and battering us all from every direction. The consequences of at least 3000 years of violent conquest, deforestation, extractive mining for earth’s precious ores, war and misogyny are now upon us— they fall unequally, but still they are upon us all. And as the skies burn and bombs fall and genocide continues, we simultaneously face not only the horror of all of this, but also the soul-rot and resource-demon that is AI. Right at the moment when the need to reduce emissions has never been greater, come both unending bombs (paid for by the USA) and this virtual behemoth who would drink the groundwater—primordial Nammu, the water beneath the world, the water from which all life began— of the whole planet dry, all while hypnotizing our hungry brains with the simulacra of spiritual ascendance. It’s a pattern we have repeated so many times now, but this time it is the whole earth, the whole precious earth, that is food.

Even writing this to you here, through the keyboard and screen, has an element of hypocrisy in it for me, and every day I’m more and more tempted to go wholly analog, to go back to the days of Stories-by-Mail, myths sent to you in your physical post-boxes, and good old fashioned books.¹ But until that day comes, here I am, ranting to you on my Substack— and pulling Sooth cards out under the blue-jay sung oak trees, for centering.

These cards are one of my tools right now, born of such a long slow process of collaboration with Rima, with the lands of England, and with the stones of my very far back ancestors across Old Europe. They help me remember those root system spiritually, and physically. They help me remember how to touch the living wild beings and patterns all around me on the land where I am. They help me cry, and let go, and find humility, and let go of control, and pray. Truly I feel I can hardly take credit for the words, although technically I did write them :). But of anything I’ve ever written, these cards are the place where the old ones, the benevolent earth-rooted ancestors, have spoken the most directly and clearly. So really, the words are theirs. I’m still humbled and awed by this, and mystified too.

All of this is to say that I thought it might be a useful grounding thing for you too, my dear readers, to receive a collective Sooth reading. The cards below were pulled with all of you who read the Pollen Basket in my heart, with the prayer and request that the cards that came forth would be of the most support and use to each of you in your own particular ways.

I intend to share these collective readings once a month for you all, at the new moon-ish moment, over the next season until the autumn equinox or there-abouts. So you can expect them around July 27th, August 24th, and September 21st.

Without further ado, below are the cards I pulled for you all today.

May they and their words be a blessing and a protection and a balm for each of you, in exactly the places such blessings and balms are needed.

Our Lady of the Bones in the Floor; Fishhook Fathers; Howl Mother- today’s collective cintamani, from Sooth

You will find below an explanation about how the cards are read, an audio-recording of me reading the divinations for each of the cards, and then also a little creative, woven reflection of mine about how the cards speak to each other (in my mind) and what they might be suggesting.

I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio of the reading and take it, and the images, deep into your own heart and creative center— perhaps before you read my reflective story below. Trust your own instinct with them. Maybe you will feel like painting or writing something of your own in response over the next month. Feel free to share your reflections, your own poetic responses or intuitions, in the comments below! Sooth loves a village, and lots of songs around the fire, so I encourage you to use the comment section that way, and we can see what comes through all of us together!

Also, if you would like a deck of your own, they are now stocked in my California shop!

The Layout (excerpt from our Sooth divination book)

Sooth is comprised of two sets of cards— the nineteen Ways (distinguished by their red borders and their names, which are listed at the front of this booklet) and the nine Houses (distinguished by their blue borders and their “Our Lady” epithets, also listed at the front).

The Ways

The nineteen Ways are a kind of seeker’s journey. There is a linearity to their progression when read in order, each card a step along the path of deepening growth, but as with everything about Sooth, each Way is also its own story, and might lead in any number of directions. The Ways all have an element of movement to them. They reflect back to you where you are on your path. They offer information about where you’ve been, where you might be going, what you are carrying, what you could set down, who you might like to become.

The Way readings have two parts— a spell and a thread. The spells are intuitive, rhyming charms that contain the essence of the card, and should be read aloud if possible. Throughout the process of writing them, Sylvia felt like she was hearing Sooth speaking in the cadence of old folk songs at once long-ago-familiar, and utterly strange. The thread which accompanies each spell offers a more direct, complete message of guidance and support.

The Houses

The nine Houses, on the other hand, are stillpoints. Sanctuaries for the seeker after many miles in the forest. In the old fairytale tradition, there is a certain kind of benevolent old grandmother out in the woods, beyond the thrice-nine mountains, whose hut appears just when the journeyer needs its shelter, and her guidance, most. The Houses are like those blessed sanctuaries, where a wise matriarch takes you by each hand and offers you exactly what you need to keep going. As is the case in fairytales, she arrives right on time, but always unexpectedly, offering you reflections and gifts and succour beyond what you understood you needed.

These Houses, each with their resident Our Lady, are places of both comfort and healing. They reflect back to you the bigger picture of the emotional, spiritual or psychological state you are entering the reading with, and offer you their balm.

The Spread

The spread is very simple. Separate the House cards and the Way cards into two piles. First, draw one card from the Houses. This will be the top card in your reading.

As you pull this card, you can ask Sooth one or all of these questions —

What part of me needs healing that I can’t see? What kind of sanctuary do I most long for right now? What facet of life wants to bestow blessing on my heart?

Next, draw one Way card to indicate what you are coming into this reading carrying, feeling, or wondering about, and place it to the lower left of your House card. You can imagine yourself as the seeker in an old tale, coming into the sanctuary in the forest, just as you are. Show me where I am right now, you can ask Sooth as you draw this card. Show me the energy of what’s brought me here.

Now, draw a second Way card, this time to represent how to move forward, through or with whatever it is you’ve come into this reading wondering about. Place this card to the lower left of the House. The Way In, and the Way On, we’ve called these two cards here, to indicate the cyclical, alchemical nature of healing, and of life’s journey. As you pull this card you can ask Sooth— show me how to transform, move through or grow into what I am currently facing.

Now, turn your cards over, and in the same order you drew the cards, dive into your reading.

once more, our cards for today

Our Divinations, Read Aloud - Our Lady of the Bones in the Floor, Fishhook Fathers, and Howl Mother

My Woven Reflections

I see the grandfathers of my lineage. I see them with their generous nets and their longing to feed us still, even after all this time, their longing to feed their descendants. I see myself holding up my own patchwork net. I hold it up to the light. There are so many holes. How did I not see all of them? I’ve been tangled up in one part of the net, one part of my mind. I seem to have been focused on only one of them, trying to stitch it back together again and again, only to find that in my sleep I’ve ripped out the stitches and have to start again. Meanwhile the fish of my wise fatherline are spilling through, and nobody is fed. Meanwhile they have been trying to give me armloads of fish every day, every day a feast of simple true things the earth is giving us, but I have been obsessed with a single hole, thinking I’m starving.

I take my net to the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Bones in the Floor. I tell her about this, and how I can’t seem to figure out how to mend my net, how to lay it all flat so I can see the holes, how to stop myself from unpicking my work while I sleep. Is it about grief? I ask her. Is this why sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever stop crying? Am I grieving the wrong way? Please don’t tell me I just need to cry a little more, to move more grief. I’m afraid you are going to tell me this.

Actually, she replies, I’m telling you to love more, as a response to grief. I’m telling you to feast, even if it’s simply on sunlight and a bird song. Also, she says, it is a pattern older than you, in you, that keeps unpicking the mended holes. It’s Penelope’s pattern, Penelope of Ithaka, wife of Odysseus. It’s a fear that old, and the mothers of your women have carried it that long. The mothers of Penelope’s mothers were wolves, but you’ve forgotten this. A part of you is still weaving and unweaving that shroud with her three thousand years ago in Ithaka, to protect yourself from being seized by men against your will, to protect your home, to protect your people from the ravenous suitors who came to take it all from you, and starved your island. But let me tell you this now, my daughter. That is all done and over with. That grief has come and gone. Its hunger burned the world, yes, and is still burning the world, but continuing in that palace at the loom of Penelope will not mend this, but only widen the pain. Now put your net in my hands, and I will close that hole for you.

In this moment, I see that the grandfathers from even longer ago than Ithaka are here in the sanctuary with us. They have their fishhooks in little deerskin pouches at their waists, and their beautiful nettle-fiber threads and bone needles, and they are sitting around us in a circle. The Lady of the Bones in the Floor passes my net to each them. I can see the place where she touched the hole that would not close is now dusted with pollen. The grandfathers are now touching my net one after the other with skilled and hardy hands. Their bone needles are flashing. Their threads are zipping along. They are laughing and chatting and one of them lights a pipe and another sings an old fish-charming song. Every stitch I feel somewhere in my being, closing a hurt. I want to ask specific questions— what I’ve been doing wrong, what I’ve been doing right, but they hush me. Just watch, they say, just follow the simple business of the needle and thread.

A howl from a wolf suddenly rings through the room. It is done! one of them shouts. Our granddaughter is ready! I can see that the net is shining, and strong now. They hand it to me and send me out the door with kisses on my cheeks and hands. Go down to the riverbank, they say. The Mothers have come.

I seem them gathered on the far side of the riverbank below. The Howl Mothers, the Wolf Women. They are wading out into the river to meet me, and I find that I am wading to meet them too, the net in my hands. They have babies bound to their breasts and backs. They have faces that shine. Their ears look long beneath their wild hair. All of us hold the edges of the net, and suddenly it is leaping with fish, heavy with fish, silver with fish, and we are carrying the fish and the net up the far side of the riverbank, up a steep footpath shaded with small oaks.

We have crossed a river and come to Ithaka, I realize. We have come to mend that hole. As we make our way across the island, hungry folk come at our calling and go away with armloads of fish. At the gate of the palace, which Penelope’s suitors have barricaded, the Mothers around me grow claws. They grow long silvery tails. They lift up their skirts to their bellies so their vulvas are showing, and they begin to howl. The howl becomes a chant, and the chant becomes a very old curse known to their grandmothers in the time before agriculture, the one taught to them by lactating wolves.

At the sound, the barricade falls like it’s made of sand. We go into the halls of Penelope’s House, still chanting, and the 108 suitors leap screaming from the windows to escape the sound. They run straight into the sea where they came from, back onto their boats, and gone. Upstairs, Penelope has become part wolf too. We see that there are threads spun with wolf fur now decorating the borders of her great red weaving. But there is one little hole. I see it, and see also that the grandfathers have left a loose thread from my net to snip. I break it with my teeth, and hand it to her. She smiles, and closes the hole, and the shroud is finished. It is the shroud for her father-in-law, and we bury him all together in peace. When Odysseus returns there is no slaughter in the throne room, no hanging of the twelve maids, but simply another mending, with grandfathers gathered near and wolf mothers out nursing in the twilight so as to feed the ones still famished, so that the pattern ends right then, long ago on Ithaka, and in us here.

I find myself again with my own net in my hands, here in the sun with the blue-jays calling and the stars still a memory in the sky. I find myself back from the chapel of Our Lady of the Bones in the Floor with this reminder— that stitch by stitch, with our needles blessed by hands that have known soil, we can feed each other and the earth; we can every day, in the smallest truest ways. Every day we need to. And I’ll be letting the ones who know earth’s laws better than me show me how, thread by thread, fish by fish.

A Soundtrack- “Land of My Other,” by The Breath

1. one of my current remedies for the rotting-of-the-brain feeling that so much screentime and social-media speak does to me (I don’t use any AI and never willingly will) is to read 19th century novels. My god, the breath of fresh air that such unscreenified language is!