Tarot and the Gates of Light

by Mark Horn

  Jewish culture has always been highly literate, and Talmudic study is extremely intellectual. My family came from Germany, a European culture known for its devotion to the intellect. My family trusted in that intellectual culture; they simply could not believe that their great civilization would descend into madness and irrational hatred. When I see the figures in the Five of Swords wandering off, having dropped their defenses, I see people who have lost their ability to discern and recognize the abuse of power so they no longer guard their posts, securing the Boundary. In the Eight of Swords, Surrender results in a self-imposed blindness to danger. So when I see these cards together, I see a Holocaust in the making. How blind can people be? Consider this quote from a New York Times article dated November 21, 1922:

  Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.9

  When you don’t have an experience of that level of violence in your history, it’s hard to imagine the reality of it. It’s easy to bury your head in the sand or become complicit in your own victimization.

  Surrender and Humility are important qualities. Discipline and Structure are essential. But they both have a shadow side, and when this shadow side of Humility in Discipline is activated (and people can be gaslighted into thinking this way), you must do everything you can to free yourself: this is another Mitzrayim. It is not for nothing that the Passover Haggadah, the ritual retelling of the Passover story, includes the words, “In every generation, they rise against us to annihilate us.” Pay attention.

  Day 12: Hod of Gevurah in Assiyah

  The Eight and Five of Pentacles

  _________within_________

  So far, we’ve been looking at the negative implications of the Five of Pentacles as expressed by religious institutions. But for a moment, let’s simply look at the pentacles shining through the stained-glass window. This is one of the few cards where we see the diagram of the Tree of Life, though in this case only as far as Gevurah, the Sephira of that card. To me, there’s a suggestion here that, while an institution might fall short of its ideals, the light of the Divine always shines through with the energy of all the Sephirot. The Divine countenance shines down on us, if we will only look up to see. But in this card, the woman is looking down, while the leper’s face is turned away from the window. When we are lost in our suffering, it can be easy to turn away from the light. When we Judge ourselves harshly (often through introjection), we blind ourselves to the light that is always available to us. In fact, there is a kind of arrogance in this harsh self-Judgment (or harsh Judgment of others), as though one knows better than the Source. And that’s a shadow side of Humility in Judgment.

  From a twelve-step point of view, this Sephirotic relationship connects to the plight of the addict and the solution to his problem. In the language of the first three steps:

  We admitted we were powerless over our addiction—that our lives had become unmanageable.

  Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

  Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.10

  The people suffering in the Five of Pentacles are certainly a picture of powerlessness, and we’ve considered how this card can indicate spiritual self-exile. Certainly, addiction can be seen in this way as well—as a kind of self-Judgment that one is not worthy of Divine love.

  For anyone struggling with addiction of any kind—or even just for someone who is finding it hard to make a change for the better, step three is a Surrender of one’s own will to the Will of the Source. It’s turning one’s face to the light in the window and finding that light in everything one does, even in the most Humble work, which is what we can see in the Eight of Pentacles.

  Because we are in the world of Assiyah and the suit of Pentacles, part of my experience of this pairing relates to a change in status in my career. I was once a senior executive earning quite a good salary in advertising—an industry that values youth. Now that I am in my sixties, like the people in the Five of Pentacles, I find myself on the fringes of my industry, no longer welcome by corporations that previously valued my abilities. I could, like the people in the Five of Pentacles, feel abandoned and exiled. And it’s true, one could make the case that I’m a victim of age discrimination. But holding on to victim status would not have changed the reality that I needed employment, so I started taking temp jobs; sometimes I found myself working next to people who once worked for me. If I held resentment, I would only be hurting myself: I would suffer, the work would suffer, and the people around me would feel it and suffer. I’d lose that job quickly. So my goal was to Surrender to the Discipline of the work and find joy in work done well with Humility, one of the lessons of the Five and Eight of Pentacles. I looked to the words of Viktor E. Frankl to guide me, and he faced a much more dire situation than mine: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”11

  There are lots of reasons one could face feelings of suffering upon entering a workplace. But Frankl’s words, and today’s pairing, show there is a way to be free from that suffering.

  One last look today at the suffering in the image of the Five of Pentacles. I’ve written about this suffering being the result of spiritual self-exile, but I’d also like to consider how self-criticism feeds the endless desire for self-improvement. It may seem like an odd thing to say in a book about spiritual refinement, but “self-improvement” can be used to bludgeon the spirit. It doesn’t matter how many self-improvement books you read or workshops you go to if you can’t accept who you are and where you are right now. The people in the Five of Pentacles may thus repeat their victimization with harsh self-criticism. But the man in the Eight of Pentacles has given up; he has Surrendered the concept of self-improvement (and for that matter, maybe even the concept of self) and has found peace. To be able to love and accept yourself right now as you are—to give up the tyranny of self-improvement—is to experience freedom from a different kind of Mitzrayim. And once that freedom is experienced, you start to free up the energy necessary for change. An interesting paradox: if you want to change, start by loving where you are right now with no goal of changing.

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 12

  1. (Wands) Think of a time when you were in (or led) a group or team that was at cross-purposes. Then think of a group where everyone really worked together. What made the difference?

  2. (Cups) How have your experiences of loss in your life influenced your spiritual search? What lessons have you come away with from the losses in your life?

  3. (Swords) Have you ever been complicit in your own victimization? If so, how? Do you blame yourself for this, or can you feel compassion for yourself? What is your relationship to your inner intellectual? How reliant are you on your intellect to solve your problems? Have your intellectual insights ever felt so threatening that you blinded yourself to them?

  4. (Pentacles) What would it feel like to give up on yourself as a self-improvement project? What would your life look like?

  Day 13: Yesod of Gevurah

  Intimacy Can Blossom in a Strong Container

  Today is the thirteenth day of the Omer, which is one week and six days of the Omer.

  One week and six days in, today’s energetic field is about reinforcing Connection through Discipline. For many Jews, this can sound like an inner scold saying, “You should call your mother every day.” And indeed, there’s a degree to which that’s true; Connection that lasts requires this kind of Discipline. You’ll always be Connected to your mother, but most Relationships require regular investment
s of time and emotion. More than that, deep Relationships require us to bring a meditative focus to these Connections in our lives where we have made a commitment.

  Day 13: Yesod of Gevurah in Atzilut

  The Nine and Five of Wands

  _________within_________

  What are the Rules of engagement? In the military, they’re defined as the Laws or guidelines given to military forces and/or individuals that define the conditions, degree, and manner in which the use of force may be deployed. And certainly, the images in the Five and Nine of Wands suggest that the use of force is at question here. Then again, the word engage can simply mean to Connect, join together, contract, or employ. When a couple has agreed to wed, they’re said to be engaged. So this simple verb covers a lot of emotional territory.

  Because the Five of Wands is an expression of Gevurah, it carries the meaning of Rules, Structure, and Law. The Nine of Wands, as Yesod, is about Connection. What we see when we put the cards together is a story of someone who has engaged with the world in some way and has been wounded by that engagement. It’s possible that one or more of the people in the Five of Wands were not playing by the Rules, and someone got hurt. But we all have to recognize that even in the best of circumstances, where everyone is following the Rules, there is still the possibility of injury, whether physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological. Anyone who plays a sport can attest to this.

  Counting the Omer is a practice of spiritual refinement, but as I’m sure you know, just because people claim to be “spiritual” doesn’t mean they won’t come to blows with each other. Consider the case of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This complex of tombs and chapels is considered by all the world’s Christian denominations as the site of the Crucifixion, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Six Christian denominations in particular—Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Roman Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Syriac Orthodox—share jurisdiction of this holy site, and they have been notoriously unable to keep the peace among themselves. Just a few years ago, there were brawls between monks from Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic monasteries that were so violent the Israeli police had to be called to break them up. Regardless of who has jurisdiction, these worshippers clearly aren’t following the Rules set down by the Church Fathers or by any of Christ’s teachings of love and nonviolence. But you can look at every religious organization and find a violation of its most basic tenets in its history. I walked away from Judaism at age thirteen because I felt that certain teachings were an expression of spiritual violence. When I returned, in my forties, these teachings were still an issue, but because there were people who had remained actively engaged with the tradition and these issues, things had changed. Today the Conservative movement in Judaism ordains LGBTQ rabbis and marries same-gender couples.

  You probably haven’t found yourself throwing physical blows (or being attacked) in a house of worship. But have you ever been the perpetrator or victim of spiritual violence? How has it affected your Relationship with your spiritual community?

  Before things changed, I found myself teaching at the center of the Conservative movement: the Jewish Theological Seminary. When I started, I felt defensive, but like the image in the Nine of Wands, I kept an opening in my defense. I was not going to wall myself off. I understood that to stay engaged and committed to a Relationship, whether to an individual or a community, it might mean that sometimes I would get hurt or that I might hurt someone else. This is one of the lessons that comes with the Sephirotic energies of this day: while there are Rules to engagement, Relationship is messy by nature, and there is always the chance that someone can get hurt. It comes with the territory. But with a commitment to keep an open heart and to stay Connected, deep Bonding is possible.

  Day 13: Yesod of Gevurah in B’riah

  The Nine and Five of Cups

  _________within_________

  When we’re having a healthy experience of Yesod, it balances the inner-directed and outer-directed energies of Netzach and Hod. It’s sort of like what the psychologists Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks teach as the Loop of Awareness—a practice of learning to shift one’s focus and attention from within to without and back again in ever-quickening oscillations so that you’re able to place your attention on both inner and outer experiences at the same time, while being able to process both. It’s being fully present to yourself and to another simultaneously. For Yesod of Gevurah in B’riah, though, as you can see from the Five of Cups, the attention is focused on a loss and is stuck there. Because we’re in the suit of Cups and the world of B’riah, this could be an emotional loss, so that focus is inward and away from Relationship.

  In the Nine of Cups, the focus is outward: it looks as though we’ve arrived at a banquet and the host is ready to greet us, albeit not with open arms but with his arms crossed over his heart. It’s as though the host of the party wants the social Connection and has put on a good face, but inside he’s hurting from a loss that he doesn’t want people to see. So while he may be sharing his table with a lot of people, he isn’t really being genuine.

  This pairing suggests you look at your own Loop of Awareness to see how your inner experience and outer presentation reflect each other. The energy of Yesod, when balanced and held in a strong container, promotes an inner and outer intimacy. So it’s a good day to consider ways you might be withholding your authentic self in Relationship—what your excuses might be, what defenses might be in place.

  Day 13: Yesod of Gevurah in Yetzirah

  The Nine and Five of Swords

  _________within_________

  In Ronald Decker’s groundbreaking examination of the connection between Joseph Gikatilla’s The Gates of Light and the meanings of the Minor Arcana, one of the observations he makes is that the suits can be divided into two categories, corresponding to the words of Deuteronomy 11:26: “See, this day I set before you blessing and curse.” He sets up these categories as spiritual blessings and curses, represented by the suits of Cups and Swords, respectively, and material blessings and curses, represented by the suits of Pentacles and Wands, respectively.

  I find this division useful at times, and in this particular pairing of the Five and Nine of Swords, the images certainly feel like a curse. In the Nine of Swords, it’s as though the figure is waking up from the nightmare of the Five of Swords. It could be that the figure in the Nine of Swords is tormented by the guilt of actions taken in the Five of Swords. Or the images might reflect on the loss experienced by the figure in the Nine of Swords.

  For this pairing, where the Five of Swords suggests a betrayal, I found myself reflecting on an action I took years ago that betrayed my own values and hurt a dear old friend. I wanted to write an article that shared an event in his life. I would change the names, locations, and other details to guard the privacy of the people in this story, but my friend was concerned for the safety of his community, so he asked me not to write about it. It seemed too good a story to let go of, though, and I decided that no one would ever find out who these people were or even if I were making it all up. So I wrote the article, and it was published. Now, no one was hurt. Nothing was investigated or discovered. (The event described was not illegal, but it would have led to consequences for members of an organization.) But I had betrayed my own values and my old friend, and I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, in guilt and pain, not unlike the figure in the Nine of Swords.

  Gevurah as Limitation is a container—a container for the trust that is the Foundation of Intimacy. I had violated that trust, and my Relationship suffered for it. My friend wouldn’t have even known about this betrayal if I hadn’t told him, and I knew telling him would lead to a break in the friendship, which it did for a number of years, adding grief onto my attack of conscience. But not owning up to my actions would make this a friendship of false Intimacy.

  In the Jewish tradition, the commandment, “You shall not go up and down as a talebearer” is often interpreted as a commandme
nt against gossip, but it’s about more than just gossip.12 The idea is not to say anything about another person, even it is true, even if it is not negative, even if it is not secret, and even if it doesn’t seem as though there is the possibility that it could hurt anyone.

  There is a story told about a man who once spread lies about the rabbi of his community. Eventually, he felt guilty and ashamed of what he’d done, and he went to confess and seek forgiveness from the rabbi. The rabbi gave the man instructions to perform a task of penitence: “Slice open a feather pillow and scatter the feathers to the four winds.” The man was glad to have such a simple task and followed his instructions. When he returned, the rabbi gave him the second part of the task, saying, “Now, find and gather the feathers.” That’s when the man realized that although he was repentant, just as there was no way he could find and gather the scattered feathers, he could not call back the words he had spoken.

  Today it’s easier and more dangerous than ever to be a “bearer of tales.” With just a simple click, you can send a “news” story filled with falsehoods around the world to be seen by millions. You might not be “Intimately Connected” to any of the people in the story, yet your actions create a Connection that can have devastating results in the lives of people you will never see or know. So the interpretation of the Five of Swords, which we looked at as also being an image of the breakdown in the social contract, is also appropriate here. Written more than three thousand years ago, the biblical commandments on the subject of speech couldn’t be more immediate or relevant.

  This pairing of cards, about the Connection that comes out of a strong Container, can help shine a light on all the ways one has fallen short of protecting that Container in Relationships.