queen mother nanny

When I turned over this card, I was intrigued by this female depicted on the front of the card: Queen Mother Nanny. And I wondered, at the start, if it was a refernce to being a queen, a mother, and a nanny. However, I looked up and googled who Queen Mother Nanny was and she is an actual African 'goddess'.

Let me tell you about Queen Mother Nanny because she was a fascinating person.

According to Maroon legend, Queen Mother Nanny was born in Ghana within the Ashanti people. And she, like many other Africans, was taken to Jamaica to be enslaved. However, she broke free and she created rebellions which led to the freeing of over 800 enslaved people. Hence the reason why this card says 'liberation', because Queen Mother Nanny is very strongly associated with liberation and this card is about liberating ourselves. Whether that's liberating the way we live, moving away from living as expected of us by other people; the rules and regulations that are put down on us by society. Whether it's liberating our voice, speaking our truth, opening up.

This card is about liberation.

Like I've already mentioned, Queen Mother Nanny is the main feature on this card and she's standing there so serene and yet with such power. Liberation brings a power about you. It breaks you free, it sets you free. And there's a sense of strength and freedom about her on this card. However, there are quite a few other things on the card that caught my eye.

If we look to the background, we can see many, many mountains and they're quite sharp and jagged. However, she's not walking towards those mountains. Those mountains are now well behind her and well in her past. Mountains can often mean insurmountable obstacles; obstacles that stand in our path that look like there's no way you could ever overcome them. To overcome and to climb a mountain you need to practice, you need technical abilities, you need train, you need to put in a lot of effort. It's not easy.

Liberation, freeing yourself, means that the mountains that stood in your way are now well behind you, have now left and are standing behind you. You are now free from them and you can walk forward. It doesn't mean to say they're the only mountains that will ever cross your path. There can be mountains coming forward as you continue to speak from your heart, live the life you feel you should be living. It doesn't mean to say whenever you choose that, that there won't be obstacles in your path again. However, you have overcome some of the hardest obstacles of your life; obstacles that have been a part of your life since childhood whenever you were told things like 'children should be seen and not heard', whenever you were encouraged to follow the same career path as your mother or father, whenever you were encouraged to get a steady job, whenever you were encouraged to learn because 'education will get your further'. Those are all beliefs that society presses on us. They may not be the same beliefs for you.

If you have liberated yourself and chosen to walk a different way, you'll know that you will have had to cross through and over, sometimes, some many high mountains, some many high obstacles. But the hardest ones are now behind you.

We also see a lot of dark blue and green on the card. Whenever we're talking about liberation, whenever we're talking about freeing your soul, freeing your voice, freeing the way you live, it brings great healing because it brings more alignment to who you are at your very essence. You're no longer following the demands and the requirements of society, of your family, of the government of your country, whatever those may be, you're now following your soul. And that is so healing because it brings you into alignment with your soul and it's also, if we refer to the dark blue, related to strength. When you look around you, most people will be falling into line, will be doing what is expected of them, will be living in society as most people live - they will be with the masses. And sometimes, when you break free, it's not easy and it shows that you have great inner strength.

To be able to say, that's not for me, that doesn't feel right to me, I want to be free from that, I want to follow my soul... that takes strength and guts to do because not very many people do that.

It's sometimes easier to follow the crowd and to blend in than to stand out. Because standing out attracts attention. And if you look closely on the card, to the left of Queen Mother Nanny, there's something I find really interesting. There's a person hiding in the bushes. When you liberate yourself, when you speak up and speak your truth, you speak up against what other people are saying, especially if you are standing up and speaking up and living against the normal way of life, there will be people in the bushes waiting to ambush you. It's not easy.

It's not an easy choice to live your life and to be free.

Because there will always be people waiting in the bushes to pull you down, to tell you that you are wrong, to tell you that you shouldn't be saying what you're saying, to tell you that you're being irresponsible in how you're behaving, to tell you that you need to blend in with everybody else.

But that's not what liberation is about. Liberation is about freeing yourself, to be who your soul tuly is.

On the card, we have water and we have flowers which are both connected with emotions. Water is about letting your emotions flow, let them come to the surface. Flowers, for me, are about expressing your emotions. Again, it's all about speaking your truth, being who you are, being true to yourself and being free. And, like I said, it's so not easy.

However, those flowers are blooming because she is standing strong, she's being true to herself, she's following her path regardless of what anybody else thinks. She's speaking her mind, she's being honest and true to her, and she's expressing herself and, as a result, the flowers are blooming. They're not dying because she's suppressed her throat chakra, she's suppressed her throat and her voice. It does take great strength to be somebody like that.

However, whenever you are (look at the background), your sun is starting to rise. Your authentic self is starting to come into fruition. You're starting to be seen. Your light is starting to shine in the world and, like I said, when your light shines, when you speak your truth, when you stand up for who you are, and what you believe in even, and especially, if it goes against the tide, you will have people lying and waiting in ambush. However, you have overcome your hardest obstacles and those people, whenever they try to ambush you, whenever they try to pull you down, whenever they try to limit your potential, let them go back into the bushes. Don't encourage them to be with you or around you. Ignore them and push them aside, with love. Don't let them force you back into living a life that is not you, into a life of salvery where you are not yourself, where you are following rules and regulations that are set before you which go against your grain and don't feel right.

If the rules and regulations are going against your beliefs and you're doing no harm by breaking them, then you break them to follow who you are at soul level so your light can shine brightly.

But it's not an easy path. However, because it's not an easy path, it is therefore incredibly rewarding because so many people choose not to walk their path. It's so much easier to be that person in the bushes waiting to ambush others, waiting to pull them under, waiting to belittle them because they're breaking free because it's a trigger that they are feeling. They're seeing somebody who's standing up for who they are, speaking their truth, and that takes such courage, and it's triggering them. And when people get triggered, the worst comes out in them. They start to attack the vulnerable, they start to belittle you, they put you down and try to pull you back under.

But don't let them.

You've got to be like this beautiful Queen Mother Nanny in the card. You've got to be strong and you've got to be majestic, and you've got to have your tools to support you in this war of freedom, in this fight towards freedom. Because your life is worth it, your soul is crying out for you to be who you truly are, not to be pulled under by anything that goes against what's right for you and true for you. Your soul is crying out for you to step forward, to shine your light, to cross the path and break away from the crowd, to be who you are.

If we think of all the great leaders in history, every great leader. Do you think at the time they were being great that everybody thought they were being great? Every single person that history looks back on and says, what an amazing person, how they changed the lives of so many human beings; when they were going through that, they were not being held up as being a hero, they had loads of people ambushing them and pulling them back. but they kept going because they followed their heart, they followed what was true to them.

And that's what the angels are encouraging you to do. Walk the more challenging road. Don't play it easy. That's not what your life is here to be. You want to fulfill who you are - your soul, your essence. You want to walk that more difficult path.

Think about it. Think about all those people in history who changed the world for the better for us. What they did was not easy and what they did at the time would have been strongly condemned, most likely, by the masses. But they did it. They stuck to their guns. They knew what was right for them.

So it's important for you to follow your path, to be strong, to be majestic, to be noble, to be brave. Walk the path that's true to you to find your own liberation.

Reference: This beautiful card is from African Goddess Rising Oracle Deck by Abiola Abrams, illustrated by Destiny Powell