Tarot and the Gates of Light

by Mark Horn

  Maintaining a garden filled with flowering plants is no simple task. It requires daily attention, but the reward is Beautiful. This is Netzach of Tiferet in B’riah, Endurance in the creation of something Beautiful. Looking at the Six and Seven of Cups, it’s clear to see that one of the dangers to watch out for is distraction.

  So let me paint a little Martha Stewart–style scenario here: in the Seven of Cups, the figure is imagining lots of different ways to use these cups to make something Beautiful. Have you ever had an object or a group of objects that you wanted to use in one project and then thought, wait, I could use them here . . . or there? The figure in the Seven of Cups has a lot of great ideas on how to use the cups. The problem is that he can’t decide which idea to pursue or gets distracted and doesn’t Persevere in its execution. I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve started that have ended up unfinished for this reason.

  Creating something Beautiful takes Focus, Endurance, Perseverance. And I am not only talking about sticking to a decision or physical Endurance. We’re in the world of Cups/B’riah. And so this kind of creative work also calls for emotional Endurance. All the more so because in Tiferet, we must have the Endurance to hold the Balance of all our emotions as we keep our Hearts open.

  I know that when I am doing creative writing, all kinds of emotions come up. Sometimes I don’t want to face these emotions; I can point to several works that I abandoned simply because I didn’t have ability to Endure the powerful feelings that arose as I was writing. It was harder to distract myself back in the twentieth century when I worked on a typewriter. But with a computer, which can be a door leading anywhere in the world, it’s extremely easy to distract myself from difficult emotions with a simple click. There was a time when I worked in front of my screen with a stopwatch; the rule I created for myself was that I stay focused on my writing for fifty minutes at a time. After that period, I had ten minutes to stretch, snack, or surf the internet. But when that ten minutes was up, no matter where I’d ended up online, it was time to get back to work. Working this way gave me the ability to Persevere through my distractions and difficult emotions to not only finish the work, but to also put more of my Heart into it. That’s the work of this pairing.

  Day 18: Netzach of Tiferet in Yetzirah

  The Seven and Six of Swords

  _________within_________

  I’ve mentioned before how the Six of Swords reminds me of the Buddhist metaphor for enlightenment as crossing to the other side of a river. The controversial teacher Osho taught that you have to be your own boat, boatman, and passenger and that once you reach the far shore, you should dedicate yourself to helping others make that crossing.*25

  But what happens if the boatman in the Six of Swords gets three-quarters of the way across the river ferrying his passengers and then decides it’s too hard to keep rowing? I know from my experience sitting in meditation that it’s easy for some thought to come into the mind that undermines my Endurance.

  The Six of Swords is my path to Compassion—both my work on myself and my work on behalf of others. The Seven of Swords is the antithesis of Endurance, however. The “occult” name of the card is the Lord of Unstable Effort. It’s about giving up even as Victory (one of the qualities of Netzach) is within sight. Many times I have found that when I don’t yield to the urge to give up, that is exactly when I reach a breakthrough. And many times I have given up—jumping right off the meditation cushion as though I didn’t have another ounce of strength to sit.

  You can hear people giving up in this way when they say, “I’d like to help, but what difference could I really make?” as an excuse not to make a Compassionate choice. They’re defeated even before making the effort. This undermining energy saps them of belief in their own agency. I’ve been there.

  This is the sneaky, trickster energy of the Seven of Swords, disarming us of our Determination. And here, on Day 18, the day of chai, we’re being reminded to choose life. To choose to go forward in the face of any inner voices of resistance. To choose to Persevere and to overcome our false belief that our effort won’t make a difference.

  Day 18: Netzach of Tiferet in Assiyah

  The Seven and Six of Pentacles

  _________within_________

  I was chatting with a friend of mine earlier today about his work: he helps documentary makers get their films out in the world. Hardly any theaters show documentaries these days, and even if they make it to TV, there are so many entertainment choices out there that the important voices of these filmmakers can go unheard. My friend does work that is needed in the world, and it’s the kind of work that should be very satisfying, but he can feel very frustrated by how few people his organization reaches. When I was on the board of a local LGBTQ film festival, I often felt the same way; we worked very hard to help underrepresented voices be heard by the community. And I never felt satisfied. That’s when I try to remember the words of Martha Graham, who once said to Agnes DeMille, “It is your business to . . . keep the channel open . . . No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction.”6

  Why do I bring all this up today? Let’s look at the cards. In the Six of Pentacles, we have what looks like a successful merchant giving alms to the poor. It would be easy to feel as though simply giving a few coins isn’t going to really make a difference in these people’s lives as a justification for not giving. And when we look at the Seven of Pentacles, we see someone who has done hard work—who has in fact Persevered in that work over the seasons to reach this time of harvest. Except he has this expression of dissatisfaction even though he has a crop of seven pentacles—and that’s not nothing. So let’s return to the circumstances of why Graham gave that advice to DeMille.

  Agnes DeMille was a choreographer, and she felt that work she’d poured her heart and soul into had been ignored by the critics and the public. But then she was hired to choreograph the musical Oklahoma! which became wildly successful. Suddenly, her work was being praised, even though she felt that the dances she choreographed for the musical weren’t her best work. For Graham, however, the feelings about the work are less important than the need to “keep the channel open.”

  For Endurance in Compassion in Assiyah, our own dissatisfaction with our work is the trap that can sap our Endurance. When I was dissatisfied that the crowds did not come to a particular movie I felt was important, it sapped my will to keep working on the film festival. Of course, I didn’t know how that film affected the few people who did see it. For all I know, it could have changed someone’s life. But I don’t know, and I can’t let my passion to share be undermined by attachment to what I think should be the results of that effort. Because I don’t really know, and in most cases, I can’t know. My job is simply to persevere in doing the work. That’s true of my work in the world, and it’s true about my inner work on this Omer journey, which isn’t even halfway over. Keep your channel open. That’s a message to Persevere in your work, which is your Compassionate gift to the world, regardless of how it is received.

  Choose a cause. Make it yours. And add your voice to the chorus of Compassion. Lend your hands to do the work with the knowledge that you may feel it’s never enough—or that you may never know the result—and Persevere. Remember the words of Rabbi Tarfon: “It is not your duty to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”7

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 18

  1. (Wands) When have you been Steadfast in your Compassion for others, even when it has been unpopular? What can you do to demonstrate your ongoing Commitment to stand up for the Truth?

  2. (Cups) What do you use to distract yourself as a way of shutting down your Compassion or creativity? When difficult emotions come up to weaken your Resolve in a project, how do you deal with them while remaining Resolute in your Endurance?

  3. (Swords) What undermines your Endurance? What ideas or stories do you tell yourself that sap your Resolve? Are those stories
true? What practices can you use to defeat this undermining energy and strengthen your Resolve?

  4. (Pentacles) Do you nurture your creativity and Persevere in practicing it regularly? Does your judgment of your creativity prevent you from continuing to practice or share it? What can you do to strengthen your practice?

  Day 19: Hod of Tiferet

  Witness and Withness—Humility in Compassion

  Today is the nineteenth day of the Omer, which is two weeks and five days of the Omer.

  The “com” in compassion points to the ability to be with someone’s suffering. Certainly, you can have a desire to alleviate this suffering, but first you have to be with it, understand it with patience and Humility. Sometimes we run to fix something before we truly understand it out of a wish not to feel the depth of another’s pain. There are times when simply the act of recognizing and sitting with another’s pain is one of the best ways to be helpful.

  This means your ego—the one that wants to avoid pain and puff itself up with pride for helping another—has to get out of the way. This may be one of the reasons that when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the high priest was prohibited from wearing shoes when he led services. After all, when barefoot, the high priest could feel every stone and pebble, so while his title was “high,” he was not above feeling pain and suffering, and he was reminded that as high priest, his job was to be a witness to the pain and suffering of the people.

  Being a Compassionate witness means meeting people where they are and seeing them without judgment or pity (which is condescending).

  “With-nessing” is Compassion that brings companionship, so that others don’t feel alone in their suffering.

  These qualities of witness and withness are the characteristics of Hod in Tiferet. They produce a Humility that enables the ego to step aside and allows for true Compassion. When we can do this, we can sense the other characteristics of Hod—Glory and Splendor in those we are with.

  Day 19: Hod of Tiferet in Atzilut

  The Eight and Six of Wands

  _________within_________

  I still get chills when I read Shakespeare’s Henry V. The night before the battle of Agincourt, the English were outnumbered by the French four to one, and they knew it. During the night, the king, in disguise, made his way through the camp, listening to the fears of his soldiers and sharing his courage. As the morning came, he delivered a rousing speech, urging his army to stand together as a “band of brothers.”

  In the plays that chronicle the rise of the seemingly careless and carefree Prince Hal to his ascension to the throne as Henry V, we are witness to a leader who learns how to use Humility to build an emotional bond of comradeship with the men he leads into battle. I think of Henry when I look at this combination of the Eight and Six of Wands.

  In Henry IV, parts I and II, Prince Hal appears in the role of the prodigal son—spending his time with wastrels and drunkards. But we learn that this is just a role and that he’s been using this time to learn a common touch, how to connect Compassionately with the people he will someday lead. So that when he is finally elevated to the crown, he ascends to the throne with somber Humility.

  Because Henry puts his ego aside and is truly with his men, they give him their Hearts and fight with a unified spirit that wins the day against the highly hierarchical French. I see this in the Eight of Wands, the one card in the Minor Arcana where there is no human figure—and thus no ego either. The wands are headed all in the same direction, as inexorably as the arrows of Henry’s longbow men rained down on the opposing army.

  Anyone in a leadership position who has forged a team with one Heart knows how essential their own Humility is to the process. Humility in Compassion not only helps the one in need, but it also inspires others to emulate this quality. And it creates a force of love as direct as an arrow from heaven.

  Returning to the qualities of witness and withness, Humility in Compassion is an essential characteristic of the best therapists. By holding back any egoic desire to rush in and advise a client how to fix things, their attentive presence enables the client to fully feel their feelings in a space that feels safe, loving, and healing. This is primarily what I learned to do when I worked as a peer counselor at Identity House, the oldest volunteer LGBTQ counseling center in the country.

  This is also a skill I bring to my work as a tarot card reader. While I am not a therapist, my job is to hold a space for a client without judgment and without projecting my own ideas or solutions in answer to their question. My job is to (not so) simply interpret the information in the cards and to help a client uncover their own meaning in the cards. Obviously, my own experience, intuition, and knowledge will come into play, but when I am able to get my ego out of the way, the information feels as though it comes through me, like a bolt (or eight wands) from the blue. So you might not be surprised to know that the Sephira of Hod is connected to prophecy and divine inspiration.

  Day 19: Hod of Tiferet in B’riah

  The Eight and Six of Cups

  _________within_________

  What did the religion you grew up with as a child teach you about God? Children often grow up with a Santa Claus–style God, as the famous song written by John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie goes: “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good . . .” And it’s almost always a “he.” And just as we learn there’s no Santa Claus, many of us also rebel against this childish and limited conception of God. Many of us walk away from organized religion entirely.

  Just as we were taught that there’s this hairy thunderer in the sky with a parental or paternal system of reward and punishment, many of us were also brought up to believe that the God we were taught to worship was the only God. That other religions—or even denominations of the same kind of religion—worshipped false gods and were damned to hell. And most of us were taught to believe the Bible as literally true. But to quote the Christian version of that book, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”8

  So what does all of this have to do with the Eight and Six of Cups? In the Six of Cups, I see an atavistic desire to return to this relationship to God as parent. Because it was something we learned at the youngest age, even when we put away this childish belief, something of it still clings to our psyche. So my understanding of “nostalgia” in the Six of Cups in this pairing is the unconscious pull of the child’s emotional relationship to God. In the Eight of Cups, I see someone who is turning away from the idea of a parental God who acts in history with an egoic demand for validation.

  Just as we learn that our own ego is illusory, we also come to understand that there is no deity with an ego. Learning to let go of one’s own ego also entails letting go of our egoic projection that there is a God with a personality. After all, even if we are made in the image of God, that God is not a person.

  One of the effects of this awareness is the freedom from religious chauvinism and the development of spiritual Humility. One result of this shift can be a move away from the structure of the organized religion you grew up with to explore the deeper journeys that your religion provides, since every tradition offers just such a less trodden path. Or it can mean exploring in other faith traditions to find the truth available there and experience its vision of Glory.

  For Hod of Tiferet in B’riah, with the Eight and Six of Cups, the Humility of Compassion doesn’t feel like the right combination of qualities for me—at least this year, since each year of this practice is different. But the permutation of key words also gives us Splendor of Truth or the Glory of the Heart, and both capture the work of this day for me: finding the deep roots of childish belief within me and uprooting them to discover the Glorious Truth of the Divine.

  Day 19: Hod of Tiferet in Yetzirah

  The Eight and Six of Swords

  _________within_________

  I once saw a bumper st
icker that read, “Meditation: It’s not what you think.” It took me a minute to get it, but then I had a very good laugh. As someone who often places too high a regard on the intellect, meditation taught me thinking can be a roadblock to progress on the path. And that is part of the double-edged image of the Eight of Swords. Swords is the suit of the intellect, and here we see a woman who is bound by her overreliance on the intellect. It has rendered her unable to see things as they really are. She is a prisoner of preconception and thinking that could be obsessive. Looking at the negative side of Hod, this could suggest a thought pattern that reflects feelings of powerlessness—a story that I tell myself about my own victimization and persecution and that keeps me trapped and sapped of my own agency.

  At the same time, we could read this image as the opposite: rather than being a prisoner of thought (which surrounds her in the guise of swords), the woman in the image has chosen to ignore these swords/thoughts and go deep within. Which makes this card, like the Four of Swords, an image of meditation.

  I remember the first time I went on a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat. At first, while the schedule was intense, during each sitting, meditators were free to change position, stretch, or leave the hall for a few minutes. But on the fourth day, after spending three days learning the basic technique, we were taught the Vipassana technique, and during that sitting, we were asked to make a “strong determination” not to move for the duration of this instruction period. Not to open our eyes, move our arms, hands, or legs. It lasted almost two hours, and it was one of the most difficult disciplines I’d ever taken on. For the remainder of the retreat, every day there were three separate sittings, an hour each, that were called sittings of addithana, sittings of strong determination. This mirrored the Buddha’s own vow of resolute determination not to move from his position of meditation, stable as a rock, until he reached enlightenment and demonstrated the Submission side of Hod, from a positive point of view.9