Tarot and the Gates of Light

by Mark Horn

  How do you create or respond to Structure in your life? Do you follow it and find the freedom in that structure? Do you resist? Is it something imposed from outside or something you joyously take on and make truly your own? This is a long preamble before actually getting directly to the cards of the day. Perhaps you have already made some of the connections between the images and these thoughts, but I want to specifically address the images in relation to Gevurah.

  In the Five of Wands, we have a situation that seems chaotic, with someone trying to establish authority in a contentious group. This figure wants to impose Structure and Organization in a situation where they might naturally arise through competition. Of course, they might not. What you see helps you recognize your own projection onto the energy of this Sephira.

  The Five of Cups can be seen as the result of the lack of Discipline and Organization: the figure in the card has lost the contents of three of the cups in the image. This image speaks to my own struggle with Organization. I once threw away a sapphire pendant that held great emotional value after a move. I had packed it in such a way that it would not be discovered if someone decided to go through my things in search of valuables, but I didn’t write down where I packed it—and only after I threw out some of the packing materials did I remember where I had hidden it. The Discipline of keeping things Organized with a packing list (or perhaps being more trusting) would have prevented this loss.

  In the Five of Swords, we see what happens in a society when Structures and Discipline break down. The figure in the foreground feels no compunction in taking what isn’t his to gain advantage. Here, the social Structure is essential to keep negative impulses in check. It protects us from others—and from ourselves.

  The Five of Pentacles feels like a message from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. It’s the Ghost of Christmas Future showing how Judgment without compassion leads to suffering. This can be just as true of society’s Judgment and the way you Judge another—or even yourself.

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 9

  1. (Wands) How do you create Structure in your life? When do you feel the need to impose Structure? When are you comfortable waiting to see if Structure arises naturally?

  2. (Cups) Has an inability to live by a schedule or in an organized way damaged your well-being or relationships? How are you experiencing the Discipline of this daily practice so far?

  3. (Swords) If no one could see or know, would you do something society doesn’t approve of? Have you ever given in to the voice of the little devil on your shoulder? How do you resist Structure in your life? What is your relationship to Discipline?

  4. (Pentacles) When and why does your Judgment or criticism of others (or yourself) cloud your compassion? How do you express Restraint when giving criticism of another?

  Day 10: Tiferet of Gevurah

  Seeing the Beauty in Structure

  Today is the tenth day of the Omer, which is one week and three days of the Omer.

  Yesterday, I wrote about ikebana and Discipline in my discussion of Gevurah in Gevurah. Today is Tiferet in Gevurah, and one way of looking at this Sephirotic relationship is through the Beauty of Form, or how Discipline is expressed through Beauty. So once again, the example of ikebana seems appropriate, as does any art Form, with the accent on Form. After all, a sonnet is as highly formalized as a haiku. So today is a good day to meditate on the demands of a Discipline and how it channels our creativity and enables us to bring beauty into the light.

  Alternatively, this day can also be considered as a time for expressing the Compassion within Discipline. I think of the advice given in the twelve-step world: easy does it. This is a recognition that someone in recovery needs to be easy on himself or herself. After all, there is much internalized shame and Judgment when one is in recovery, and there is no perfection in recovery (or anywhere in life). Simply recognizing that we are all human, that we all fall, is to experience Compassion for ourselves and for all those who fall once or again and again. This is not excuse making or abrogating responsibility; it is the simple recognition that there is no perfect Form, and to quote Taylor Mac, “Perfection is for assholes.” In a twelve-step program, there is Compassion for a fall with the understanding that the Discipline must be undertaken again immediately. When you fall off the horse, you just get right back on it.

  Day 10: Tiferet of Gevurah in Atzilut

  The Six and Five of Wands

  _________within_________

  Yesterday, when looking at the Five of Wands, I suggested there was the possibility that Order could arise out of the chaotic scene. And in fact, what we see in the Six of Wands is the establishment and expression of a kind of Order. We have moved from chaos to conquest. Because Tiferet is associated with the Heart, when I see how the conquering hero’s horse is covered, I wonder if he is defending against his animal instinct. This poor horse is covered up by the trappings of either war or a tournament, making natural movement extremely difficult. Is this a message that in this card, the “hero” has had to cover or in some way tame his Heart in order to take Control?

  As denoted by Waite, one of the themes of all the sixes is unequal relationships. By imposing a Structure that elevates him, does the rider lose contact with the others on the ground? Does he lose the empathy that is part of what gives Tiferet its Beauty? Is the “leader” in the Five of Wands who went on to mount the horse in the Six of Wands able to express Compassion from his position of leadership, or has he lost touch with it?

  Day 10: Tiferet of Gevurah in B’riah

  The Six and Five of Cups

  _________within_________

  The Five of Cups is a picture of loss, but what is it that has been lost? When doing a divinatory reading for someone, the meaning often can be gleaned from the cards around a specific card and the general theme of the reading. Here, rather than reading, we are interpreting the image in this card in relationship to its corresponding Sephira—Gevurah—for the purpose of reflection, contemplation, and meditation. Since the job of a cup, like Gevurah, is to contain, I think of this card as illustrating what happens when an emotional container is broken. This is the breakdown of a psychological Structure in the world of B’riah—an emotional loss that has led to an unmooring and a loss of emotional perspective. The figure in the card is in mourning. This is the very picture of grief. And in today’s pairing of Cups, this emotion is mediated by the feelings we find in the Six of Cups. Often the Six of Cups is interpreted as a feeling of nostalgia. Also, because this is Tiferet, the Sephira of Compassion, the feeling of being comforted in the face of loss is reinforced. Certainly, comforting oneself with nostalgia for the past in a time of loss seems reasonable. However, there is a danger lurking here—something that Jason Shulman, the founder of the Kabbalistic Healing school A Society of Souls, calls the B’riatic Defense. This is when someone escapes from or denies the uncomfortable feelings that arise in the face of a difficult reality by claiming to be on a higher spiritual plane. There’s a kind of hazy fog around these people that mutes their emotions. Rather than clarity, people who exhibit the B’riatic Defense live on a pink cloud of denial. It’s not an uncommon problem in some people who first discover a new spiritual Discipline. The B’riatic Defense shares the hazy quality we see in nostalgia, though it’s more about a situation in the present. This defense paints a gauzy fantasy over inconvenient or uncomfortable feelings to create a false spiritual glow. Psychologically, this is known as spiritual bypassing.

  Either way, one can see the issue of avoiding these difficult feelings by escaping into nostalgia for an imagined fantasy of an ideal past or by escaping into the fantasy of being on a higher spiritual plane where all is love and Compassion and messy, unwelcome feelings don’t penetrate. The B’riatic Defense is a kind of false Compassion: it’s pretend Tiferet. This is entirely antithetical to the nature of Tiferet as an open Heart willing to bear all feelings, pleasure, and pain and to see the Beauty in all of them. There is a Japanese concept that cap
tures this experience of feeling pleasure and pain simultaneously: mono no aware. It’s sometimes translated as “the beautiful sadness of things,” reflecting a wistful awareness of the impermanence of Beauty that heightens one’s experience in the moment. This is the Beauty of Compassion for mortality—the very heart of Tiferet—and it’s what underlies the Japanese appreciation for the Beauty of cherry blossoms.

  The Japanese approach to loss, which is influenced of course by the Buddhist teaching of anicca (impermanence), is also reflected in this pairing. In the Five of Cups, we are faced with impermanence leading to a grief that is constricting the ability to see past it to what remains. With the Six of Cups, we can go in either of two directions with that loss—denial in the haze of nostalgia or acceptance of loss as part of life without denying the grief but by holding it with compassion—by giving the pain space and love.

  When I look at this pairing through my Jewish lens, I see in the Five of Cups the myth of the breaking of the vessels—the Lurianic myth of the first creation when the Sephirot were not arranged in a balanced relationship, so they broke, scattering shards, called klipot, (and the light hidden within) throughout creation. Because the structure that held the Sephirot was too rigid—with too much Gevurah—it cracked. But the Divine Source started the process again, this time with the Sephirot arranged in the structure of the Tree of Life, so the energies balance each other. Today, in Tiferet of Gevurah, we see the raising up of these shards in the lifting of a cup by one figure in the Six of Cups as he is about to present it as a gift to the other figure. It is the recognition that we are all broken in some way and that the path of healing, that is re-storying to wholeness, is one of Compassionate (and thus flexible) Discipline.

  Day 10: Tiferet of Gevurah in Yetzirah

  The Six and Five of Swords

  _________within_________

  What happens when there’s a breakdown of the social Structure? When the function of the authorities to protect us from the unscrupulous isn’t working? When moral limits are seemingly ignored for personal gain? When I look at the story in the Five and Six of Swords, the phrase that comes to mind is “seeking refuge from a breakdown in the social Structure.” It’s as though the boat being guided away in the Six of Swords was waiting at the water’s edge in the Five of Swords to carry people away to safety.

  As a youngster growing up in Brooklyn, I remember seeing adults in the neighborhood who had numbers on their arms—survivors of the Nazi death camps. My great-uncle Alfred was one of the few who managed to escape from Auschwitz. Somehow, he made his way from occupied Poland across Europe to England. But the United States wasn’t taking any refugees, even though his brother (my grandfather) lived here and had become a citizen. When I see the Six of Swords, my family history comes to mind. The people in the boat look like a woman and child huddled together as they seek safety on another shore.

  As I write this, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that an unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of eighteen. Ten million of these people are stateless, which means they are denied a nationality and thus also denied freedom of movement, employment, health care, and other basic human rights. The number of people who have been displaced today surpasses the numbers at the end of World War II.2 So let’s not avert our eyes, but consider the man in the boat who is ferrying the people in the Six of Swords away. What is his story? Who is he? Is he a Good Samaritan helping these people escape? Is he a mercenary who has taken their money to guide them to safety? Because the Six of Swords corresponds to the Sephira of Tiferet, I prefer to think of him as acting out of Compassion.

  Between xenophobia and compassion fatigue, in 2015, the United States accepted a grand total of seventy thousand refugees, with fewer than three thousand of them from Syria and a little more than twelve thousand from Iraq.3 This is a human crisis that is a reflection of humanity’s spiritual crisis. In the Torah, YHVH commands the people to “befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”4 This does not change in the New Testament: “ For I was hungry, and you gave me food: I was thirsty, and ye gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me . . . just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”5

  There is great pain crying out across our planet, and from the place of Tiferet of Gevurah, we are urged to open our Hearts to that pain and take Disciplined action that is also careful to make distinctions. Of course, the United States can’t take in 63 million refugees. As it is, there has always been a very strong nativist current in our political system. Tiferet of Gevurah is both the compassion that is within discipline and the compassion that is within boundaries. The first of these says we must take Compassionate action in a way that is Disciplined and principled and gets results. The second says we need to know our Limits; Compassion fatigue is real, as any caregiver can tell you. It is possible (and essential) to practice healthy, ongoing selfcare while successfully continuing to care for others.*15 Remember, this is a path of restoring Balance. In a world as out of Balance as ours, you should know the depth of your Heart and the measure of your ability to respond. But all three of the Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—demand that we respond, as individuals and as a society.

  Day 10: Tiferet of Gevurah in Assiyah

  The Six and Five of Pentacles

  _________within_________

  Here in the Six of Pentacles, we see someone who is literally measuring his ability to respond. We see a man who is clearly well off dispensing alms to two unfortunate people. He holds a Balance scale to underline this point. Waite considers one of the themes of the sixes to be “unequal relationships,” and certainly, this card illustrates this point.

  Looking at these two cards, you can see they share a certain symmetry. In both cards, there are two people in dire circumstances, and both of these people are below and to either side of the representations of the suit, the Pentacles. In the Five of Pentacles, I noted that there was no door into the church: these people were literally walled out. In the Six of Pentacles, they receive some monetary relief from a man who seems to be giving with an air of superiority that creates distance. I see this playing out in the world around us as Structural inequality—a system that is built specifically to keep some people down. I see this pairing as asking us to consider how Structural inequality Limits our ability to see oppression or privilege as well as how it determines the measure of Compassion we bring to the situation.

  Of course, we can look at the man giving alms in the Six of Pentacles as doing what he can to restore Balance. Is it possible, since this is Tiferet of Gevurah, that he knows the Limit of what these two supplicants can receive? All of these are possible ways of looking at the situation, and all raise questions about how we relate to the energy of this Sephirotic pair.

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 10

  1. (Wands) When you find yourself in a rigidly hierarchical Structure, how do you express empathy to people both below and above you?

  2. (Cups) Think about any relationships where you may have been too rigid: How has that affected your ability to stay open? How has loss affected your ability to be flexible? What roles would Balance and Compassion play in healing these issues? What does Compassion in Discipline mean to you personally? How is it expressed in your life?

  3. (Swords) What would be a Disciplined and Balanced way to express your Compassion for strangers or protect them in times of need? What does the Beauty in Structure mean to you personally? How is it expressed in your life?

  4. (Pentacles) What are the ways that you benefit from Structural inequality in the world? What are you doing to help repair this inequality?

  Day 11: Netzach of Gevurah

  Perseverance Furthers

  Today is the eleventh day of the Omer, which is one week and four days of the Omer.


  For Discipline to truly be successful, it must include the quality of Endurance, and this is Netzach of Gevurah. It’s just the eleventh day in this practice of counting, which is indeed a Discipline, though hardly the most demanding one. It requires Endurance for just forty-nine days. Yet there have been years that I have missed days (and sometimes weeks) here and there.

  Missing a day can be like taking a step off a path. Once the step is taken, it can feel easier to rationalize the next step off, until you’re deep in the woods. This is where Endurance must be considered the ability not only to follow through but also to get back on the path if you’ve fallen off. This is the ongoing Victory of Netzach in Gevurah. Humans are imperfect. We’re not meant to reach perfection; we can’t. But we must try, gently and lovingly, with an Endurance in Discipline to be our best.

  Day 11: Netzach of Gevurah in Atzilut

  The Seven and Five of Wands

  _________within_________

  In the Five of Wands, we can interpret what’s happening in a number of ways: it’s a group of young men in competitive play; it’s a real fight (and there’s someone who is either trying to stop it or take leadership in some way); or, as some have suggested, it’s a barn raising. All of these interpretations can be looked at through the lens of Gevurah. But when the Five of Wands is paired with the Seven of Wands, the reality of struggle comes to the fore.

  The constellation of meanings that orbit Netzach include “Endurance” and “Victory.” Isabel Radow Kliegman pointed out that the man in the Seven of Wands is wearing one shoe and one boot, and she interpreted it as a statement of nonconformity. He is certainly outnumbered, but he is standing his ground and not backing down.