Today's Draw: The Five of Pentacles/Mugwort* from the Herbal Tarot in the What to Leave in the Past Surprise Friends and Family position from the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Is some past trauma or fear coming up again in your life? Do you feel powerless over the stuff going on around you? What can you change internally that could change the way you see what's going on outside of you?
Never heard of the What to Leave in the Past Surprise Friends and Family position in tarot? Well it's all the rage. But before I can get to that, I want to talk about this particular Five of Pentacles. Normally I read the Five of Pentacles as being about fear. And it is...fear of loss or a loss mentality.
But the book for this deck has an interesting take. It talks about how, when our external conditions change, we need to look inside and see what needs changing internally. These problems that come up in our lives come because the universe wants us to evolve. We can greet that with self pity and fear. Or we can greet it as an opportunity. We may be powerless over our external conditions, but we're not powerless over our internal ones.
Remember, opportunity often comes wrapped in some pretty crappy clothes. A bad turn at my job, couple by fear of being fired led me to the best job I've ever had...my current job as a self-employed writer. I have not once in my life met a distasteful moment that didn't come with a beautiful opportunity at its core. Sometimes my fears and my own desire or need to wallow in my situation have held that golden egg at arm's distance for quite some time before I finally saw the glint of something peeking through, but it was always there.
Right now a few of the people in my friends and family group are going through some scary shizz. Myself included. But my problems are petty whinings compared to what they're faced with. If we can manage to detach ourselves from our own issues long enough to look around us, we can usually get up high enough to spot the perspective and the opportunity hiding in the room, you know? What looks to us like a situation that could ruin a life, may in time turn into the very thing that saved the life.
So let's just say my issue involves a sort of "reliving a past trauma...lite". It's not the past trauma. It just feels like it in my paranoia and pain center. Things come up in our lives that set the old tapes playing. But that's just it. They're old tapes. They're like 8-tracks. They're no longer relevant. And the reason why they're no longer relevant is because we're no longer the same person. Our inner landscape has changed as a result of the opportunities brought on by the original issue and a million other issues in between. And our outer landscape is different, too. So while the situation my trigger the old way of responding, that kind of response is also no longer relevant.
The fact that we've changed and the situation we're experiencing now is not the experience from before is part of the surprise the spread card indicates. Another part of the surprise is that what you're going through...whatever it hearkens up from the past...is coming up again as an opportunity for you to heal that part of you and get rid of the tape altogether. And I think there's an element of "reliving a past trauma or fear" in everyone's issues. It may not be the main issue, but it may ride alongside the issue. And facing it from the perspective of "I'm not the same person and this isn't the same situation" could act like a release valve releasing some of the tension. Or in my case, most of it.
We don't have dominion over those things that happen to or in our environment. But we do have dominion over how we internalize those things. Do we use this as an opportunity to trust in our higher power or ourselves? Do we use it to feel more powerless than we actually are? Our past traumas, even if unrelated, have a lot to teach us in that regard. We always have the opportunity to leave the trauma in the past and bring the lesson with us into the future.
Whether what you're going through right now hearkens back to a time when you lost someone you cared about, when you felt unsafe, when you were bullied, when you were paralyzed with fear or when you nearly lost everything, you're not powerless like you thought you were the first time around. You don't have to internalize it like you did the first time around. You're not the person who experienced it the first time around. So leave that in the past. In the present, you're someone who's survived something like this before. You know what you have control over and what you don't. And you will survive this again.
There are two things I can say for sure. 1. No matter how long or hard it rains, the sun always comes out again. This has been true for billions of years, and for every other trauma you've ever faced. It's true now, too. 2. Life's traumas and dramas are like Cracker Jacks. They may leave a stale taste in your mouth, but they do come with a surprise. Don't let this time pass without claiming your prize.
And for the friend I talked to tonight, there may not be a lot of comfort in my words for you today. Some things truly are first-time fears and have to unfold quite a bit before you can exhale. I wish I could take away your worry and pain and feelings of powerlessness. I can't. But I can promise you that you need never feel alone. I love you and am thinking of you.
*Appropriately enough Mugwort is a bitter tonic. It's often taken to relive nervousness and insomnia. It's burned for protection, as well as to give you a clearer view of life and a deeper sense of peace.
Today's Draw: The Hierophant from the Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery in the What to Leave in the Past position from the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Do you follow a certain religion? Have you left a certain religion? Either way, why?
Before I begin what could be a controversial and to some, even blasphemous, entry I have something I have to say. When I first flipped through the Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery the other day, this card stopped me in my tracks. The green robes with the blue headdress...simply breathtaking.
OK. On with the show.
Robert Place defines the Hierophant as representing "exoteric religion and morality." Exoteric means that it's designed and/or communicated in a way that it would be easily understood by the general public. I had never heard that word before, but that's an interesting nuance on how I normally see the Hierophant. I normally see him as the guy in charge of spiritual or religious dogma. Often called The Pope card, he's in charge of presenting religious doctrine as being incontrovertible.
While I think the Hierophant is actually both, I find the idea of "exoteric" to be compelling in regard to religious doctrine. I'll use the Bible as an example, but there are many religious tomes to which what I'm about to say can apply.
As an advertising copywriter, the crux of my job is to compel others to take action, whether that be to visit a website or buy a product. I've been doing it for 25 years, so I'm well versed in how everything from the words you choose to the tone of voice you present them in can put a person in such a state as to incite action. And this doesn't apply just to advertising. It's the basis of any communication, whether promotional or not, fictional or not.
So let's say the action the Bible wanted to compel was "belief". It would be written with such words, tone and story as to make you want to believe. Add "exoteric" to the mix and it's written in such a way that everyone—not just the well educated, the uneducated, the female, male, rich or poor—would believe.
So it would make sense that they chose to write a story, one with love and violence, sex, good and evil. It makes sense that they would develop characters for that story that would support the idea of belief. So characters that didn't believe would meet horrible fates and those who did would be cast in a favorable light. And the hero of the story—he's the guy we want to believe in—so let's make him so formidable that, to not believe, would not only make you a bad person, but it would also put you in danger of a horrible fate.
Finally, as for tone, let's base our storyline on some historic knowledge...knowledge that people already believe. That would make our entire story appear to be fact...facts so undeniable that to doubt them would make you seem foolish. And let's make it so authoritative that the uneducated would believe if they only knew the words and the educated would believe for the subtext beyond the words.
That would certainly be the way anyone with the kind of knowledge I or screenwriters or journalists or novelists have for communicating to the masses and inciting action. Those with oratorial skills—such as preachers and presidents—would follow some of the same techniques, using the parts of fact that support their message and intent, punctuating certain parts and raising up the energy toward the end to inspire and motivate.
OK. So here's the controversial and possibly blasphemous part—that, to me, is what religion is. And you'll notice I'm not talking about any religion in particular, but religion overall. It has a message designed to incite the action of belief that may or may not be based on actual events. It's communicated in such a way that everyone can understand. And the actual information—the spiritual teachings (note my use of spiritual here, versus religious)—are really secondary to the (ok, I'll say it) manipulation used to get you to take action...to get you to believe.
So this card...the card of the priest and exoteric religion...is in the What to Leave in the Past position. Which, to me, is saying it's time to move away from it. Most of the people reading these words are already there. Some are just part of the way.
Here's the way I see it. The belief in God or a higher power is a good thing. The following of many religious teachings is a good thing. "Love thy brother" rocks, for example. The following of many moral teachings that come from religion is good. I LOVE the Golden Rule. But the idea that we have to buy the whole package to believe the parts is what's outdated. Because as far as moral and religious teachings are concerned, "love thy brother, but don't love them in certain ways if they're same sex as you" doesn't work for me. And "do unto others as you would have them do unto you...with the exception of judging them for their beliefs and condemning them to Hell for thinking differently than you" also doesn't work for me.
In my mind, religion teaches a lot of fear and hate, which is why I don't partake. I don't believe God is the mass murderer depicted in the Old Testament, for example. I also don't believe I'll go to hell for saying that or for saying I think Jesus was a man.
The fact that people should believe in a God that would give humans the power of free will, then condemn them for using it is something we need to leave in the past. The thought that we're any less able to hear God's guidance than a priest or Moses or David, is something to leave in the past. And, seeing as how even God himself couldn't foresee having a son when he carved the Ten Commandments and dictated the Old Testament, it's quite plausible there are many other things he couldn't have foreseen that have happened in the past couple of thousands of years.
So what today's draw is saying is that this strict adherence to teachings born in a different age with different social mores is something to leave in the past. You hear the voice of God in your head just as clearly as anyone else who has ever walked this earth. If it tells you to toss it all aside, then that's the path meant for you. If it tells you to go all evangelical on its arse, then that's the path that's meant for you. The higher power made each of us an individual for a reason. The idea that we were created as individuals just so that we would all think the same way is not only contradictory, it's something we—and our religious leaders—need to leave in the past.
