I call this card my "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore" card.

It states that objects have the ability to transport us to another world, like Dorothy opening the door into the Land of Oz.

How does this work? Objects contain MEANING. Unconscious or conscious, they're symbols within our space, holding endless, infinite meaning. This meaning works magic on the unconscious, moving our awareness into new configurations.

Let me give you an example. Earlier this year I was in the process of refiguring my office (because it was time). I wanted a space that felt powerful & beautiful, so I asked myself 'what have been powerful office spaces in my life?' Memories of the studies of both my grandfathers appeared -- books and wood and, yes, tobacco. Wonderful images to begin to build a design.

But wait, there's more.

Later that year, I went home to my Mum's to help her clear out the office of my father who died 10 years ago. (A story for another time.) With the help of two marvelous hired organizers, we sorted and separated, dusted and released. And among the stuff, we found my paternal grandfather's engineering seal. (There's a picture of it below.)

It took a moment for us to figure out what it was. And truthfully, even as a write this I still shake a bit with the emotion that I feel for that seal. Why?

I HAVE NO IDEA.

I could give it words. I could say it represents 'masculine power that loves me'. I could say it makes me remember my grandfather. I could say all sorts of things, and they are all probably true. But honestly, the meaning contained in that seal exists beyond words.

This is the interesting thing about symbols (object-symbols included). You can try and nail down the meaning in words and in your mind. You can try to be literal, a one to one correlation -- 'This seal means this.' -- and fit all the meaning in.

And perhaps poets can.

But for the rest of us, the meaning contained in an object is endless. There is a world within each of them. These objects unfurl their meaning before us. We chase it, but it's always rolling out in front of us, coloring the landscape as we go.

Moving us into the journey.

Object-symbols contain the non-verbal, the infinite articulation of the space between words. They act on our psyches in ways that are full, whole and mysterious. Transporting us. Feeding us newness and thoughts that slip past the guards of our brains. Between the gateposts, into new realms of our soul that are bubbling up from the ground.

My grandfather's seal does that. I have no idea what it means. It makes me happy to see it. But it also pulses with something that is just beyond my edge. THAT is the adventure.

The card Gateway indicates that right now, in this month, on this planet, we have the capacity to choose the new worlds we want to enter by consciously choosing (or magically receiving) the symbols that are portals to those worlds. Surround yourself with these object-symbols. Find them among your everyday practical tools, or introduce them as talismans to sit on your desk. Become conscious of the endless meaning they hold, even as you have no idea, have no words to convey the bigness of the landscapes that they are. Notice the subtleties of the new world you are stepping into. It is real.

Gateway enters us into a journey of the endless, the uncontainable. So when we create a design in our office and home it is not a museum of memories. It is not a collection of still and silent purposeful intents. Rather it's a poem of objects: complex, elusive, and in movement under our fingers. Always alive and ahead of us. A pulse, a movement, a journey that expands as we move through it and discover its landscape.

So BRING SYMBOLS into your space. Recognize the power of objects to transport and change you, and make the decision about what objects take you where you want to go. Where you want to live.

Whether Oz. Or Kansas. Or Both.