This morning, as I began my walk in the woods, I was greeted by six geese flying over me in a V formation. I had been thinking about Mother’s Day approaching, and what it meant in terms of my relationship with my mother. There had been, as I recall, a momentary feeling of wistfulness for a past celebration of the day spent with my mother and sister in a quaint country restaurant nestled amid gardens of flowers and herbs (and most likely an abundance of fairies).

There had also been the remembrance of a dream from the night before in which I had found myself at the dinner table with my childhood family. It was not a pleasant dream, and more than the content itself, I retained the feeling of angst and the struggle for voice and self-assertion.

The geese, I later realized as I opened Ted Andrews’ book Animal Speak, where another gift and messenger from spirit. The number six, he tells us, is symbolic of family and the home. As Rachel Pollack points out in her book Tarot Wisdom, the Rider tarot deck consistently depicts the number six as a card of “unequal relationships.” There is a hierarchy, predominantly in the form of male energy, that occurs within the suits, much like the environment in my childhood home.

Back to the goose as an animal messenger. The goose, as Andrews points out, connects us to the childhood imagination, and the magic of fairy tales (hence the story-teller “Mother Goose”). When we go back to the stories we loved as children, Andrews tells us, we rediscover our path in this life.

When I was a child, I read to escape into other worlds. My favorite books were tales of magic and the untempered imagination. Books by authors such as C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, and L. M. Montgomery. Through these wonderful stories, I danced with fairies and traveled through time and space to connect with the invisible magic of the universe. I was more at home inside these pages than I was inside my house.

I also loved stories, such as the Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie series that had as their protagonists girls who not only ran wild and free, but also wrote. You could say, in part, these books that I devoured brought me to my soul’s truth.

Since the geese I saw this morning where flying as a group of six in the standard V-formation, I might also explore the symbology of the V shape. Andrews writes that it is symbolic of an opening, calling us to explore new directions and possibilities in our lives. For me, the V shape also points us to the creative feminine energies. It makes me think of the chalice and of the Queen of Cups in the Rider tarot deck, a card I have always felt closely aligned with, and which has spoken to me many times in spreads.

In the Queen of Cups card, we see a woman, a queen, sitting on a throne that appears to be partially on land and partially in water. She wears the blue of water on her dress and robe, the color of truth and the throat chakra. The robe is lined with hints of red that ties in a ball at her neck, hinting at a mastery of one’s base fears, and need for grounding. The queen holds a large (one might say, overly large) chalice in her hands as she gazes intently at its mystery. The chalice is yellow gold, like the crown on her head, the color of divine energy and personal power (the 3rd chakra). There is the sense, from the card, that once the queen learns and opens the gifts of her chalice, she will be fulfilled, she will find her power, and she will find balance. It is, I feel, a card for the creative self waiting to be discovered. A card for women with its symbol of the chalice held by the queen.

Andrews also writes in his section on the goose, that the bird and its feather can aid the writer’s quest, helping her to open her gifts within, and place them on the page. All this from six geese passing over this morning. If I had been too lost in thought, I might not have noticed them.

Ask yourself what you are not seeing throughout the day, take care to pay attention, to watch and listen to the many forms in which the universe speaks to us. You can only benefit from doing so.