Tarot and the Gates of Light

by Mark Horn

  Day 13: Yesod of Gevurah in Assiyah

  The Nine and Five of Pentacles

  _________within_________

  So far, we’ve been looking at the people in the Five of Pentacles as without material resources—poor. There is no arguing with that when you see people walking barefoot in the snow. And we’ve considered them as exiles from a spiritual institution. But one of the many meanings of Gevurah is Strength, and it certainly takes strength to withstand the conditions pictured in that card. So what if we considered this pairing as the Connection/Bonding that is in Strength?

  In the Nine of Pentacles, the Connection we’re looking at is an inner Connection rather than one that is between people. This woman has a strong Foundation of Connection within herself that has enabled her to manifest her aesthetic in the world in the creation of her garden. It is the externalized image of a rich inner Relationship. What if this is the Relationship between the two beggars in the Five of Pentacles? Certainly, we wouldn’t be surprised if the poor woman abandoned the leper, since lepers are often forsaken by all. But there she is, by his side.

  My synagogue runs an overnight shelter for homeless New Yorkers. It’s not a big shelter; there’s room for just ten beds. Our guests come in the early evening, and they receive a dinner prepared by congregants. Before they leave in the morning, they receive a light breakfast. I haven’t volunteered there many times, but when I have, I’ve been struck by the closeness of this downtrodden community. In particular, I remember a couple that had pooled their meager resources and were working together to sell T-shirts on the street during the day. They had met in the shelter system, formed a Bond, and worked together until, eventually, they had saved enough money to be able to leave the system and afford a small apartment together. When I spoke with them one evening over dinner in the shelter, I was struck by the fact that, in taking on the Discipline of working together, their Bond grew deeper and each of them grew stronger individually. So while on the outside they looked impoverished, on the inside, they shared a rich Relationship that gave each of them Strength.

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 13

  1. (Wands) What techniques or practices do you have to help yourself stay open when you feel hurt or attacked in a community you value? How do you stay open to Relationship while being wary at the same time?

  2. (Cups) Remember a time when you had to put on a happy face even though you were feeling very sad. By “faking it till you make it,” did the experience help you Connect with a deeper happiness, or did you find yourself feeling alienated or split away from yourself and those around you? Why?

  3. (Swords) Do you owe amends to anyone whose trust you have violated? Have you ever forwarded or posted something online that you knew wasn’t true? If you have spread information that you thought was true and subsequently learned otherwise, what can you do to try to undo the damage? Commit to a social media and internet practice of scrupulous adherence to verifiable facts.

  4. (Pentacles) What is your experience of finding Strength and support in shared suffering? If you’ve ever felt that you walled yourself off from another’s suffering (or that someone did this to you), how did that affect your Connection?

  Day 14: Malchut of Gevurah

  Healthy Boundaries Make Healthy Relationships

  Today is the fourteenth day of the Omer, which is two weeks of the Omer.

  Sovereignty within Structure. When you have a Strong Structure, you can have a Strong sense of who you are—assuming the Structure is built on your deepest values. Within that Structure, you’re the queen. Or king. This is a day that reminds me of the phrase, “Good fences make good neighbors.” With a healthy social Structure that defines Boundaries, people can relax and feel secure with each other. That’s just as true for physical fences as it is for a psychological sense of inviolable Boundaries. When these Boundaries are healthy, Sovereignty comes with the understanding that there is a Sovereign above and within us all that binds us together. That we are all made “b’tzelem Elohim,” in the image of God.13

  A rabbinic parable points out that when the Roman emperor minted a coin with his face on it, the image was always the same. But the Divine created all humanity “b’tzelem Elohim,” so that no two people are alike, yet each with their own Nobility. Malchut of Gevurah carries with it the Awe and respect for the Divine unity that is present within the diversity of creation. When you live with this awareness, you live with respect for the Nobility and Boundaries of all people.

  Day 14: Malchut of Gevurah in Atzilut

  The Ten and Five of Wands

  _________within_________

  As you have probably realized, you can see the same image differently in different pairings and contexts. In this pairing, I see the group of young men in the Five of Wands participating in a “brainstorming” session. And the man to the far left with his wand raised high, as though to command attention, seems to me to have the winning idea that the others haven’t come around to yet. Then again, he could well have a “bell the cat” idea that, while a brilliant solution, has little chance of being put into effect. Or he’ll be delegated with the burden of carrying it out. One of the things I learned in the world of advertising is that the more good ideas you have, the higher you climb the corporate ladder. And then, rather than generating ideas, you oversee others tasked with that job. You become more of an administrator. You can well end up like the figure in the Ten of Wands, burdened down with Responsibility. You may get to be the boss, but I can tell you from my experience, it’s a mixed blessing.

  Here’s where Malchut comes in. It’s about Sovereignty. Not being Sovereign or king over others but being Self-possessed. Because if, like the man in the Five of Wands, you end up in command, you may find yourself carrying a heavy burden—whether it’s the safety of others under your charge or the success of a project that many depend on. Organizational Structures, or social Structures, are generally set up to avoid putting so much on one person’s shoulders, but sometimes the Structures are abusive and create situations where people are overburdened. Often our own psychology colludes in this.

  On this the fourteenth day, we’re at Sovereignty that is in Discipline or Structure. When unhealthy, this takes us out of relationship because we believe that the Responsibility is all on our shoulders and that the Structure will collapse without us to keep it all in place. This leads to resentment and a sense of grandiosity that tells us that we’re the only ones capable of doing things right. But when the Boundaries of Gevurah are working correctly, one’s Sovereignty is part of a larger Structure in which we are supported as we support others. We take on healthy Responsibility that does not seek to take on more than is our due.

  Moses himself was not free from this problem. During the journey of the Israelites on their way to Mt. Sinai through the wilderness, Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, came for a visit. Upon seeing Moses sit before all the Israelites, serving as a Judge in counsel for all their disputes, Jethro said to him:

  What you’re doing is not good for you. You’ll not only wear yourself out, you’ll also wear out your people. This task is too heavy for you alone; you cannot do it just by yourself.14

  Jethro told Moses to appoint magistrates from among the tribes and Judges over them so that Moses would not have to Judge every case. Was Moses a micromanager? Well, he didn’t have the benefit of a management training course. He was just thrown in the deep end of the pool (or Red Sea, as the case may be) by Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, so he took it all on. Only after instruction by Jethro was he able to let go. Trying to do it all wasn’t good for him, and it wasn’t good for his people. So what do you need to let go of? What responsibility should you be sharing?

  Day 14: Malchut of Gevurah in B’riah

  The Ten and Five of Cups

  _________within_________

  The Baal Shem Tov taught that in the king’s palace there are many gates and that there are many different keys for these gates, but there is one master key that opens all the gates
to take one to the inner chambers of the Divine palace, and that master key is a broken heart.

  You have to have some rain for there to be a rainbow, but if you get stuck looking down at the puddles, you’ll miss it. The promise of this pairing is that your broken heart can serve as a master key to reach the Source.*19

  The trap of the Five of Cups is the Constricting and contracting of the heart in order to armor against the grief while at the same time holding on to it tightly. Only when you open fully to this deep grieving can you then feel the spaciousness that surrounds your broken heart. Only when you fully allow yourself to go to pieces can you discover the wholeness that you’re never separate from. Of course, it’s only human to contract against the pain. The practice of opening to one’s pain is gradual, and there is no calendar or schedule for you to follow. But when you are strong enough to go fully into the depths of your pain, you discover how high you can ascend to the heavens. Continuing to mix metaphors, the heart is a faucet. If you stop up or get stuck in the flow of sadness seen in the Five of Cups, you also stop up the flow of joy seen in the Ten of Cups.

  In every great story or epic, the heroine or hero must descend into a kind of hell before she or he can return with the “healing elixir.” In this pair, I see the injunction to make your own descent: you have to fully face and own the loss and grief of the Five of Cups in your life to heal and feel the joy of the Ten of Cups. In your own story, you must fully own the grief of loss or Limits in order to fully find a joyous connection to the Divine Presence and your Sovereign self that leads to the joy we see in the Ten of Cups.

  Day 14: Malchut of Gevurah in Yetzirah

  The Ten and Five of Swords

  _________within_________

  “If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.” This quote has been attributed to Julius Caesar, whose story can be summed up in these two cards. As a successful general, he seized power, thus betraying and bringing an end to the Roman republic. As a dictator, he was assassinated by members of the Senate. So here is yet another way to look at the Sovereignty within Severity—as a perverse fortification of the ego that’s ultimately a dead end. It results in total isolation and a psychic or physical death.

  Is there a positive way to read this pairing? Perhaps if we consider it the end of a bad cycle. As I noted in the introduction to the Sephira of Gevurah, it gets a bad rap. We need Limits, we need Boundaries, or we end up in lawless societies where the strong seize power and might makes right. This pairing seems to suggest that when you violate your inner sense of ethics or break the social Structure, you will ultimately end up a victim of this destruction, not unlike Caesar.

  Day 14: Malchut of Gevurah in Assiyah

  The Ten and Five of Pentacles

  _________within_________

  In our last pairing for the week of Gevurah, the Sovereignty within Severity reflects spiritual impoverishment amidst material plenty. The severe institutional response in the Five of Pentacles that keeps the poor outside the church is mirrored in the disconnection between all the people in the Ten of Pentacles. So even though the people in the Ten of Pentacles aren’t suffering from material want, they lack a connection to the Divine Presence, the Immanence of the Shekinah that underlies the entire material world. The people in the Ten of Pentacles can’t see the Tree of Life that sparkles in the air before them. But while Malchut in Assiyah (the Ten of Pentacles) is the place where the light of the Source, the Divine Structure of Creation, is most veiled, it’s also the only card where the Tree is fully visible. Why might that be?

  Certainly, this is the place we’re all starting from, since we live in the world of Assiyah, so it serves as a sign to us that the Tree—access to all the Sephirot—is available to us right here, right now, whether we see it or not. As Moses said to the people:

  It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us and bring it to us so that we can hear it and do it.” Nor is it across the sea, so that you should say “Who will cross the sea and bring it back to us that we can hear and do it?” No, I tell you that the word is already with you—it’s in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it.15

  For those who are following the path of ascent, Malchut, while the tenth Sephira, is also the first gate. This is true in Gikatilla’s The Gates of Light, and it is the first step in the path that initiates in the Order of the Golden Dawn followed. Indeed, in the image on the Ten of Pentacles, we see an old man seated at a city gate—not unlike the frontispiece of the Latin translation of The Gates of Light (see below).

  Unlike the old man at the gate in the Ten of Pentacles, though, the man in the frontispiece image (alternately identified as either Gikatilla or Rabbi Isaac the Blind) reaches out to take hold of the Tree: he can see through material reality to the Divine Structure underlying all.*20

  This is one of the hidden teachings behind the commandment that Jews put a mezuzah on their doorposts: in the mezuzah are the words of the Sh’ma—the statement of the radical unity of Creator and Creation, of the simultaneous immanence and transcendence of the Divine. So whenever you pass through a door or gate (just as the people in the Ten of Pentacles are at the city gate), you are reminded that as you move from one space to another, you are never out of the Divine Presence. Even the poor couple making their way through the snow in the Five of Pentacles have immediate access to the Divine love that keeps “faith with them that sleep in the dust.”*21

  The gate is always before you, and it is always open.

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 14

  1. (Wands) Where are you taking on unhealthy Responsibility in your life, or conversely, where are you avoiding your share of healthy Responsibility?

  2. (Cups) What has caused you to Constrict your heart to avoid pain in your life? Take a moment to feel within your heart if there are any ways you are Constricted in this way now. What can you do to feel the spaciousness around that pain? How can you create a sense of safety so that you feel secure enough to try to open your heart to this pain?

  3. (Swords) What beliefs or opinions do you hold with rigidity? How can you create a sense of spaciousness around those beliefs so that you can relax that rigidity?

  4. (Pentacles) Look around you right now—with your eyes, with your heart, and with your soul. Try to feel the sparkle of Sephirotic energy that surrounds you and is within you. What was your experience?

  WEEK 3

  Tiferet

  THE WEEK OF TIFERET COMES AS A BALM after the difficult week of Gevurah. One of the characteristics of Tiferet is Harmony; it’s the balance of Chesed and Gevurah. While Tiferet is often known as “Beauty” or “Truth” in English, I have always felt that even these big concepts are too small a description. Tiferet is at the center of the Tree of Life. In the middle between left and right, top and bottom, located at the Heart, both metaphorically and physically. It is the place of the open Heart that holds the tension between the Love of Chesed and the Severity of Gevurah, and it fully feels that tension without running from it. So while Tiferet is a place of Harmony, it is a Harmony that is born out of a Dynamic Balance. And as such, one goal of this week is to be able to feel the Harmony in Dynamic Balance, to cultivate the ability to feel Chesed and Gevurah from a centered place, to feel it all with Compassion and without breaking.

  Day 15: Chesed of Tiferet

  Finding Joy in Harmony

  Today is the fifteenth day of the Omer, which is two weeks and one day of the Omer.

  Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. Tiferet is first Sephira that is born of the synthesis, the Harmonizing of the two previous Sephirot. And like a child that is born of two parents, this birth is an occasion of joy. With this Harmony, the overwhelming Flow of Chesed is right-sized by the Restraint of Gevurah. And this brings a sense of joy and an appreciation of Beauty to daily life; we have left the realm of the seeming monotone for a more nuanced experience of reality that includes room for a multiplicity of shadings to our every
day encounters. It gives us the ability to recognize the interplay of Divine energies in all that surrounds us and to recognize this interplay as Beautiful. And as we grow in our ability to see this Beauty, our Love and joy grow too. Today is a good day to look for this celestial chemistry as it scintillates around (and through) you.

  Day 15: Chesed of Tiferet in Atzilut

  The Four and Six of Wands

  _________within_________

  We start the week with Chesed of Tiferet, the place where there is complete Love for this place of Dynamic Balance, where unconditional Love for the difficult Balance of being fully human gives rise to joy.

  We can see this Balancing act right away in the Six of Wands. If you want to experience Dynamic Balance in action, ride a horse. You must shift in response to every movement, and every movement of your own will create a response in the horse: it’s not only a physical Balance, it’s also a spiritual Balance between the higher will and animal instinct. The Six of Wands is the only Minor Arcana card (except the knights, of course) with the illustration of a horse and rider.

  Riding a horse sets this man apart from those surrounding him; the fact that he can Balance Chesed and Gevurah, his Love and Severity, is why he is recognized and celebrated as a leader. I noted earlier that this is also the Balance of will and instinct, which connects with Keter above and Yesod below. The ability to hold this Balance, rather than an accident of birth, is what defines true nobility.

  If you’ve ever ridden a horse, you know the experience of exuberance it can unleash (a strange paradox considering that the horse is leashed, but perhaps that’s the Gevurah and Chesed again). And above that, there is a kind of communion of spirit with the horse, a relationship and recognition between beings that can open the Heart and flood it with Love and joy for all creation. It is an intimate intimation of the oneness of all being, where for just a moment—and only for a moment—the boundary between horse and rider falls away. Because while Tiferet Balances Chesed and Gevurah, in Chesed of Tiferet that balance is tipped toward Chesed and the dissolving of boundaries.