Tarot and the Gates of Light

by Mark Horn

  The feeling of powerlessness we all experienced as infants and as children still lives deep within us. Tiferet asks us to open to this deeply hidden pain instead of papering over it with the haze of nostalgia. It asks us to hold this pain with Compassion so that we can feel deeply and fully. It asks us to hold the pain of others and share our Strength and Compassion with them. But first we have to be able to do this for ourselves. And that’s some of the important inner work of this Sephirotic pair.

  Day 16: Gevurah of Tiferet in Yetzirah

  The Five and Six of Swords

  _________within_________

  The Judgment side of Gevurah, like the suit of Swords in the tarot deck, is about discriminating intelligence. The ability to separate things out and decide between them. This takes a sharp mind because the ability to separate things out is connected to an understanding of Law, Structure, and Discipline. So all these ideas are connected. But the Gevurah of Tiferet in Yetzirah is the ability to see differences and separate things out with an open Heart—fully feeling the pain that separation or Judgment can entail. This sounds abstract, but it has important implications for humanity and very personal ones as well.

  Sometimes we have to separate ourselves from others whose values or behaviors can be dangerous to our own spiritual path. We may have a friend who abuses drugs or alcohol and who wants to take us down that path. Or perhaps we have been down the path of addiction and have come out of it. To remain sober, we must separate ourselves from those who would have us return to old ways. These may be deep relationships of long standing. And making the decision to part hurts. This is one aspect of Gevurah of Tiferet in Yetzirah—seeing who or what we must separate ourselves from, without disparaging Judgment but with the ability to feel and honor all the emotions around that.

  In the Five of Swords, we can see a situation where there has been a Boundary violation, that there’s someone who isn’t entirely trustworthy. And in the Six of Swords, we can see that there are people who have made the decision to separate themselves from that person and situation. There’s a sense of mourning in the Six of Swords, that it breaks the Heart to leave, but leave they must.

  This is an important lesson of Gevurah in Tiferet, because when we come from the place of Tiferet, we are showing our wounds openly. We are revealing our imperfections and making ourselves vulnerable. Setting a Boundary around this, or knowing when and where showing vulnerability can be risked and when it is inappropriate, is one of the meditations of this day.

  Internally, this pair can be about ways in which you might have colluded in the violation of your Boundaries. I know I’ve done this and felt the regret and sadness visible in the Six of Swords. This is when it’s wise to remember that Tiferet includes having Compassion for yourself.

  Day 16: Gevurah of Tiferet in Assiyah

  The Five and Six of Pentacles

  _________within_________

  You’ve seen this pair before, on Day 10, but with the cards in opposite positions. Because today we’re looking at Gevurah within Tiferet in Assiyah, in this pairing I see the Discernment in Compassion. Certainly, the man dispensing alms in the Six of Pentacles is being Compassionate. And because he carries a scale, we know he understands Limits and Boundaries. It may well be that he has within him the experience and memory of a time when he needed Compassionate aid from someone else, and he is passing it forward.

  One of the dangers this pairing warns against is operating out of a kind of poverty consciousness, living in fear of material want or seeing the world as a place where there isn’t enough for everyone. This is a shadow side of Gevurah in this pairing. Many people avert their eyes from homeless people, and they shrink from a beggar asking for a few coins. Why is this? An encounter like this can activate poverty consciousness, which can be terrifying, so rather than face our inner fears of material want, we create a psychological Boundary and look away from those in need.

  Gevurah of Tiferet in Assiyah gives us the opportunity to look at this inner fear with Compassion. It asks us to Discern what is true about the blessings of our material reality and to have Compassion, both for our fears and for others who are suffering from material want.

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 16

  1. (Wands) Think about situations where you had to Balance your competitive and collaborative instincts: When have you been successful, when not, and why? How do you find Balance when you’re faced with internal competing or contradictory desires?

  2. (Cups) How has your experience with loss or Limitations affected your ability to express empathy or Compassion for others? Recall a time when you tried to paper over the pain of another so that you didn’t have to reconnect with your own pain: what did that feel like and how did it affect your relationship?

  3. (Swords) Where can you really be more open and vulnerable in your relationships? And where are you being open in a way that isn’t healthy? What is your experience setting healthy Boundaries in a relationship that also calls for Compassion? What is your experience with people who take advantage of your Openheartedness? What is the best response to that? Have you had to cut off relationships because of Boundary violations of any kind, and if so, are there any feelings you have about this that need Compassion? Journal about this.

  4. (Pentacles) What is your experience with your own fears when confronted with the poverty or material want of others? What can you do to keep your Boundaries and still express Compassion appropriately?

  Day 17: Tiferet of Tiferet

  The Heart of the Matter

  Today is the seventeenth day of the Omer, which is two weeks and three days of the Omer.

  In some ways, Tiferet of Tiferet feels connected to a Japanese concept: 物の哀れ; that is, mono no aware, “the beautiful sadness of things.” This Beautiful sadness includes joy, which is an example of the paradox of Nirvana and Samsara simultaneously coexisting. It is the beauty of the open Heart.

  When you meet a person who is living from the place of an open Heart, you can’t avoid seeing that person, regardless of who they are or what they look like, as Beautiful. And when you can see it in that person, it is because the Openheartedness that already lives within you, awake or not, has been activated by their presence. In the presence of a bodhisattva, the experience of nonduality is activated momentarily. This is Tiferet of Tiferet—the momentary gift of experiencing the Love, Beauty, and Harmony of the universe.

  For this very Buddhist meditation on a Jewish mystical practice, I offer this quote from the second Dalai Lama (1475–1542):

  All things in Samsara and Nirvana are but mental labels and projections.

  Knowing this one knows reality; seeing this one knows what is true.

  Day 17: Tiferet of Tiferet in the Four Worlds

  The Six of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles

  _________within_________

  The journey out of our spiritual Egypt is an inner journey, seeking the One in our own Heart. In Radical Judaism, Rabbi Arthur Green says that even within the Torah itself (Deuteronomy 30:11–13), we are told not to take the story of the journey to Sinai literally, but that we are to understand the story as a metaphor for an internal process.2 This is a journey to our Heart of Hearts, and these four cards each give clues to how to make this journey successfully.

  In the Six of Wands, we see the rider on his horse, the man who rose from the group in the Five of Wands to lead the way. And because one of the faces of Tiferet is Truth, one message here is that you should be led by your deepest Truth. But how do you know your deepest Truth? It calls for searching your Heart way below the waves of emotion on the surface level, past the defenses, past the joy, past the momentary infatuations, and descending within to the deep stillness at the center—the Balance point where all these swirling emotions are at rest and where you can hear the call of this inner leader. The first time I found my way to this place, I was stunned by the Beauty I saw all around me. I wish I could tell you I am able to reach this place anytime I want. I can�
�t, but I know it’s possible, and I know that I won’t get there by trying, but by waiting and listening. In the meantime, my Heart works like an alarm bell, with pangs instead of clangs, when I make a choice that isn’t following my deepest Truth.

  In the Six of Cups, we are being told to drop our guard; in this card, you can see a guard with a weapon who is leaving the scene. Between the viewer and the scene, there is a row of cups, creating a boundary that is clear but less defended than having an armed guard. Innocence must be protected, but not necessarily with a halberd. For Tiferet of Tiferet, the Six of Cups shows us that having an open Heart is a risk, that boundaries must be clear but not impermeable.

  In Tiferet of Tiferet in B’riah, we are being asked to remember what it’s like to have the pure Openheartedness of a child. And we are being reminded that in our Heart of Hearts, purity is always there, as expressed in the prayer: Elohai neshamah sh’natatah bee t’ horah hee (The soul which You gave me is pure).3

  There’s a body of water in the Six of Swords, suggestive of a river. Is it the Jordan or is it Lethe? The river you choose will lead you to a different interpretation. But what is clear is that mythologically speaking, crossing a river means passing through a difficult period to reach a new state of being. In the Buddhist parable of the raft, crossing the river means reaching enlightenment. If we’re talking about the Jordan, it’s reaching the “promised land,” though, as I like to point out, the Torah ends before the people cross over, and then the cycle of reading the Torah in the synagogue begins again with Genesis: there is only the journey. For the Greeks, there were five rivers that set a boundary around the Underworld. Lethe made you forget your troubles. In fact, it made you forget everything. In each of these crossings, there is some kind of transformation.

  In the Buddha’s parable, the monk who crossed the river continued to carry his raft with him, thinking he might need it in the future even though it was weighing him down. In the Tanakh, when the people reach the other side of the river, we are out of the more mythic story of the Torah and have moved a little closer to history with the stories of tribal warfare in ancient Canaan. So when working with this card, I have asked myself what myths or practices have been part of my path that are in fact now hindrances to progress. What should I “forget” in order to experience the peace on the other side? Certainly, holding on to any kind of tribalism only serves to keep me separate from others, and even a spiritual practice can be tribal if I insist that this culturally contingent path is universal.

  Looking at the passengers in the boat, there is an air of sorrow about them. And because the suit of Swords is the suit of intellect, the image brings to mind the words ascribed to King Solomon: “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow and whoever increases their knowledge, increases their heartache.”4 Because I’m the kind of person for whom thinking can lead to endless rumination, worry, and anxiety, I also come away with a suggestion that this kind of obsessive thinking only obscures the luminous awareness that is our birthright—our promised land. I can’t let this kind of thinking sink my boat. It means letting go of the mental objects that arise and distract. Getting lost in obsessive thought is losing one’s Balance—one of the themes of Tiferet. I’m not suggesting we lobotomize ourselves and repress our memories, forget our pasts. But simply letting thoughts go as quickly as they come is a way to inner Harmony. And a hidden message of this card for me.

  One of the practices during the Omer count is to recite Psalm 67 every day, because it has 49 words. So for the seventeenth day, we look at the seventeenth word in the psalm: yoducha, meaning “they will thank you.” The image in the Six of Pentacles is a situation that calls for gratitude, but is it the gratitude of the beggars to the merchant or to the One behind the merchant? Is it the gratitude of the merchant to the beggars for providing him with an opportunity to practice the mitzvah of tzedakah or to the One behind the beggars (and himself) for opening his eyes to that One? The answer to all these questions is YES! Here, because we are in the world of Assiyah, we are being shown a way to take action—how to be Compassionate in a way that transcends the duality of Chesed and Gevurah to experience the One heart that animates all hearts. Giving back (or paying it forward) to express gratitude is also a way to reestablish Balance in the flow of the material.

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 17

  1. (Wands) Think about some situations that have thrown you off Balance, situations in which you found yourself reacting rather than considering and weighing all possibilities. How could you have brought the inner harmony of Tiferet in Tiferet to those situations. And what can you do in the future when faced with similar off-putting circumstances.

  2. (Cups) What would letting down your guard and opening your Heart while maintaining a porous boundary look like in your life? Where in your life can you let down your guard a little more?

  3. (Swords) What beliefs (religious or otherwise) do you need to let go of to experience greater inner Harmony? How do you Balance the more restrictive beliefs of your tradition with your desire to go beyond them?

  4. (Pentacles) Think about times when you have been the recipient of generosity: how can you repay the generosity by paying it forward?

  Day 18: Netzach of Tiferet

  Finding the Victory in Truth

  Today is the eighteenth day of the Omer, which is two weeks and four days of the Omer.

  The number 18 has special significance in Jewish tradition. Since the letters of the alphabet are also numbers, every word also has a numerical value. The letters for the number 18, chet and yod, spell out the word chai, which means “life.” Next to the Magen David,*24 this word in Hebrew is the most popular symbol you’ll see on necklaces and amulets worn by Jews. This gives an added level of meaning to the Sephirotic pairing of the day. I think of the story of the first Shabbat service held after the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As the prayers of the recently freed Jews concluded, a British army chaplain shouted out, “Am Yisrael chai”—the people of Israel live. This phrase is a statement of the Endurance and ultimate Victory of the people and the call to Persevere in one’s Compassion, even in the face of monumental cruelty.

  How does can one continually keep one’s Heart open, and at the same time, how can one Endure a completely open Heart? This is nothing less than the job of being fully human, fully alive. This is the work of Netzach of Tiferet, and the cards for this day will give us clues on how to embody this work.

  Day 18: Netzach of Tiferet in Atzilut

  The Seven and Six of Wands

  _________within_________

  Like the man on the horse in the Six of Wands, the man on the top of the hill in the Seven of Wands must keep his Balance. The figures in both cards are solitary and surrounded at the same time. In the Six of Wands, the rider is surrounded by followers or supporters. We could even see the man in the Seven of Wands as the man on the horse in the previous card, but now his followers have turned on him.

  The image in the Seven of Wands reminds me of the game I used to play when I was a child—King of the Hill. Behind my house, there was a small hill that been built up of earth taken from nearby construction. All the kids in the neighborhood played there, and King of the Hill was one of the most popular games. It’s not a very nice game: it’s all about aggression and staying on top. The game teaches that cooperation is situational, since an ally to topple the king may be the one who will try to topple you if you get to the top. And it teaches the one at the top that no one can be trusted. It’s a paranoid’s delight. And what is the “king” defending? An illusory title with no real power.

  In Netzach of Tiferet, the defense should be of Compassion. One of the best ways to embody this Sephirotic pair is by giving ongoing defense or support to someone or some cause in need of Compassion. But the cards also suggest that a trap in this pairing is the defense of ego. The only person we see in the Seven of Wands is the man defending himself. Who, or what, is holding the other wands? Is this a real attac
k, or does the man only think he’s being attacked? While I played King of the Hill when I was a child, I began to see a similar game played around me as I grew older, one called by therapist Robert de Ropp the Cock on Dunghill game, though it’s only a game in the saddest sense. The players are people who are hungry to be famous and talked about, and they measure their happiness and success by how often their names appear in the media.5 Today I think this would extend to how many followers one has on Twitter or Facebook. Just recently, it was revealed that some people pay for social media followers (that aren’t real people but are actually bots) so that they appear to be more famous and influential than they really are.

  This is the unhealthy side of Netzach of Tiferet: Perseverance in the service of the ego. And I am not immune to its pull. I know the ego prison of checking obsessively to see how many “likes” I get for a social media post. The pairing of the Six and Seven of Wands asks us to examine this dynamic in our lives and directs us to live out the positive side of this pairing, Endurance in Compassion, so that we are steadfast in our support for people and causes in need of help.

  Day 18: Netzach of Tiferet in B’riah

  The Seven and Six of Cups

  _________within_________

  It takes Endurance to create a work of Beauty. It takes Focus. And today I find the cards leading me to reflect on my relationship to creative work. For today my take on the scene in the Six of Cups is that we’re looking at a gardening project. Each of the cups is being used as a planter, and the row in the front of the scene creates a kind of permeable boundary around the garden. It reminds me of the planters that ring the deck of a summerhouse I’ve visited. The two figures in the card image may be deciding where to place the cup one of them is holding.