NOTE: Because the Witness Card is one of the Transpersonal Cards, it does not have a “voice” (I Am The One Who…) as do the other cards in your Deck.
If you are interested in this topic, you might find this article by Seena Frost helpful…
Transpersonal Cards- article by Seena
Witness
Artist: Nancy
Location: California
Witness
Artist: Marti
Location: Illinois
Witness
Artist: Kate
Location: Massachusetts
The Witness card does not have a “voice” per se, as it springs from The Source, which is the One that holds the Many. However, we felt it important to include Kate’s story here, with her Witness card.
I can say adamantly that the donkey is NOT a totem animal for me, but truly a Witness. The reason I say this is that the manner in which the donkey came to me was AS a witness. I went to see a counselor at my college when I was struggling with my professional development as an adult educator during my graduate degree program. We used a sand table during a session because the rooms would change in the counseling program and once we happened upon a room with a sand tray.
Well, long story short, I found out that in the sand tray, I was a donkey on a bridge. And, what that meant for me at that time was that I was “en nepantla” or in a liminal space (at a transition, i.e. the bridge) and the donkey (me) was witnessing my whole life and not a “part” of that life. It became apparent to me that the reason I was feeling so disjointed with my professional development with school was because I was separated from my “life” and being who I am as I was so engrossed in school.
While some think of the donkey as a comical or gross character, the donkey is honored in Christian religions as holy–a donkey carried Mary to Bethlehem. Donkeys were also used to climb steep hills while battle was still being waged to collect the wounded soldiers during World War I because they would calmly walk through the fields while under fire. Horses would not do this.
Donkeys are considered stubborn, but it is actually a scientifically proven fact that they are not stubborn, but have such a sense of self-preservation that they cannot be forced to do things they feel are a detriment to their survival.
While the donkey, as symbolism, is all these things I mention above, I reiterate that the donkey is not a totem animal to me, it is a witness–the one that witnesses my life without judgment, hence, my identification of the donkey as “the one witness.”