Traditionally called The Fool, the energy of this card is about being open to whatever will come, and willingness to be completely present to the experience, right now, in the moment. Cat dancing with butterfly embodies the dynamic. All senses receptive–to warmth of spring morning and delicate brush of leaf on whisker, to scent of mole on breeze. Soft, permeable, fully engaged in delight. Yet claws can emerge in a flash should it be necessary. No planning for this needed. Dance can turn to pounce, or flight. Everything possible, yet completely in the now. Butterfly ability to nimbly move from flower to flower and to allow radical new beginnings.
Perhaps the simplest and most difficult of the cards to embody for us as humans.

Have you ever, on a golden fall day filled with dazzling color and scent of leaves and tingled by crisp breeze, thought “let this moment go on forever”. But knew it wouldn’t be right somehow if it did. And after the empty cold dark of winter there would be that day when a warm breeze briefly skimmed through with just a hint of scent of earth, foretelling the luminescence of green spring, so that letting go of that fall moment was just part of it all. This is PHOENIX. And it is the moment when the sweet honey warmth spreads through your center as you dissolve and flow over and then coalesce again. The phoenix, in lore, burns to ashes, but lava seems more apt, like the liquid brew from which the butterfly takes form. Accounts of the phoenix also make its transformation seem effortless–bursting into flames. As we embody this archetype, it seems though that it is critical for choice to be involved if there is to be true transformation. Even when outside forces destroy the old, unless we participate in the ending, we may well create the same thing again rather than something new.
Close your eyes a moment and sink in. Is there a golden fall moment you are clinging to? Or something darker around which you are constricted? What needs to disintegrate or dissolve in order for you to be free, in order for the new to emerge?