Tarot and the Gates of Light

by Mark Horn

  The word Hod has its root in the Hebrew hoda’ah, which means “gratitude.” Developing an attitude of Gratitude increases one’s Humility with the awareness that one is indebted to others. This is a powerful antidote to the dominating ego of Netzach. For just as Chesed and Gevurah are opposite ends of a spectrum that find balance, so too Netzach and Hod find balance together.

  I’ve also mentioned that Hod is connected to prophecy. And certainly, to receive information from beyond one’s limited ego and to communicate it clearly means Surrendering to the Divine. This week, we’ll explore all these qualities and more.

  Day 29: Chesed of Hod

  Overflowing with Gratitude

  Today is the twenty-ninth day of the Omer, which is four weeks and one day of the Omer.

  The psalmist wrote, “My cup runneth over.”3 Chesed is an overflowing of Loving-kindness. And Hod is Gratitude for the Flow of blessings we receive daily, along with an appreciation of the Splendor and Glory of Creation of which we are a small part.

  Expressing one’s Gratitude to another is the practice of Chesed of Hod, since the nature of letting another know how much you appreciate that person communicates your Love and demonstrates your Humility. So today would be a good day to write a Gratitude list, noting all the people, events, and blessings that you are grateful for and expressing that Gratitude personally where you can.

  Even as we experience economic challenges, health issues, legal troubles, exile from communities of origin, and so much else, despite all these things, Divine love fills us in every moment whether we’re aware of it or not. And making that awareness conscious starts with Gratitude. For indeed, our cup is overflowing.

  Day 29: Chesed of Hod in Atzilut

  The Four and Eight of Wands

  _________within_________

  In the Four of Wands, the structure is open, welcoming. It’s a statement of faith in, and a celebration of, Divine Abundance. The two cards paired together have a message for us: as you prepare for the Divine Marriage within, stay open so that Divine Glory and greater blessings will rain down on you.

  What about marriage between two people? Is there a message here for relationship? Yes! Not that you wouldn’t already know that Love, openness, and Humility are essential for a marriage to be successful. With the Eight of Wands, this pairing suggests that marriage can be all the more passionate when these qualities are shared by both spouses.

  Too often, when people think of someone who demonstrates Humility, the image is of someone who is quiet and withdrawn. But these cards show us that in Chesed of Hod, Humility can be an exuberant celebration of blessings. People who can feel Chesed of Hod in Atzilut find joy in the blessings that rain on others, and they’re as Grateful for those blessings as they are for those that come to themselves. They feel Love arising naturally for the Splendor and Diversity of all Creation. Their sympathetic joy also activates the Gratitude and Humility of others.

  Another way of looking at these cards? Because Hod is also associated with systematic thinking and the intellect, this could be seen as the Love in learning or the joy that arises from a “eureka” moment of discovery. (That’s not Eureka O’Hara, the drag queen, though her performances have given me many moments of joy.)

  Is there any possible negative reading of this pair? If you’re someone whose Hod leads you to negate yourself or if you’re someone who can get caught up in the ideas or actions of a strong-willed person, this could be a suggestion that you need to apply some of the boundaries of Gevurah to your expression of Hod. And we’ll deal with that tomorrow.

  For today may our hearts “overFlow” with acceptance and Gratitude for what is in this very moment and in every moment.

  Day 29: Chesed of Hod in B’riah

  The Four and Eight of Cups

  _________within_________

  Just yesterday in Cups, I mentioned a phrase that’s also the title of a Renaissance play: Enough Is as Good as a Feast. It comes to mind again today as I’m looking at both the Four and Eight of Cups.

  In the Four of Cups, we could consider that the seated man has enough with three cups and that the fourth being offered to him is just too much. I’ve seen this with many people I know in the business world; they work to reach a certain level of success, and once they reach it, they’re satisfied. But the world of business doesn’t want you to stay satisfied; you have to keep moving up. And that comes with more responsibility that you might not want. It also comes with more rewards, which you may not find are meaningful anymore.

  In a recent issue of the journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers reported on a survey of more than 1.7 million people. They determined that most people experience optimal well-being and are at their happiest when they earn about $75,000 a year. Of course, that number would change depending on where you live. But the really interesting thing is that they found that it’s possible to make too much money, that after a certain point, emotional well-being and life satisfaction declined. They believe the reason for this decline is that after a certain point, material pursuits become unfulfilling.4 This doesn’t stop people from pursuing wealth way beyond what they can possibly use or even spend. And you don’t have to be wealthy to be a compulsive shopper, which can also be a symptom of an imbalance in the Sephira of Yesod.

  People stay in unfulfilling jobs, earning more than they need to be happy, because they are convinced they must keep on this path. This is the real rat race. And as the comedian Lily Tomlin noted, “Even if you win the rat race—you’re still a rat.”5 We could see the young man in the Four of Cups and the man turning away in the Eight of Cups as the same person at different stages in the realization of this dynamic.

  The younger man in the four card is at the choice point: he has enough, yet something is being held out before him as a mysterious reward at the next level. Will he reach for it and join the rat race, or will he ignore it and remain content with what is before him? The answer, if we say the man in the Eight of Cups is the same man, now older, is that he reached out and took the cup, setting him on a course that led him to having twice as many cups as before, yet left him still unsatisfied, so that he has come to another choice point. This time, he recognizes the mistake he made when he turned his back on a simpler yet deeper happiness. And he knows it is never too late to return, to do t’shuvah. So he turns his back on the material pursuits to find his way back to the One.

  Now, don’t get me wrong: in Judaism, the material is holy. Everything is suffused with the Divine. But Kabbalah and the Tree of Life are all about finding the right balance of all these energies that are flowing freely within you. If the Flow is constricted, as with the man in the Four of Pentacles, whom we’ll come to again in a few pages, things are out of balance. If the Flow is overwhelming, as it may be for the man in the Four of Cups, things are out of balance. This is the imbalance that the man in the Eight of Cups is walking away from.

  One of the imbalances in Hod is an extreme expression of Humility, leading to feelings of worthlessness. If this is the case, being the recipient of an unrelenting Divine Flow is very disturbing. If you feel you don’t deserve these gifts from the universe, at some point you’re going to flee. And that is also a possible dynamic at work in these two cards.

  To get a little more materialistic, absolutely earthy in fact, you can also see the Four of Cups as a young man being tempted into a life of emotional dissolution of some sort and then see him escaping from it sometime later in the other card.

  But any way you look at it, Chesed of Hod in B’riah suggests reevaluating your understanding of whether you deserve to receive the Divine Flow (hint: you do) and how much you really need to be happy.

  Day 29: Chesed of Hod in Yetzirah

  The Four and Eight of Swords

  _________within_________

  The Sephira of Hod is connected to reason and the faculties of the intellect. And the suit of Swords has in its constellation of meanings “discriminating intelligence.” Some tarot interpreters read the Eight o
f Swords as the imbalance that comes from overreliance on reason, turning away from intuition. In this pairing, though, I see it the other way entirely because both the knight on the bier and the woman bound and blindfolded can’t see.

  The knight has closed his eyes. And he has retreated from the world. The woman can’t see the swords or anything around her. Why is she blindfolded? I see both figures not as being overreliant on reason, but as having turned away from the intellect and reason. If the woman were using her reason, she would know that the fabric that’s binding her is loose enough for her to free herself and walk away. But having abandoned deduction, she is held prisoner by an illusion. We don’t know what the bound woman is seeing in her mind’s eye, but she must believe she is surrounded by danger to stand there motionless without trying to escape.

  Similarly, we don’t know what the knight is seeing (assuming he is meditating), but meditation brings up shadows from the dark recesses of consciousness. The whole situation reminds me of an etching by Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

  Goya believed that for society to advance, ignorance must be eradicated. While his understanding of the psyche preceded Sigmund Freud’s by a century, he realized that in a mind without reason fantasies run wild—what was referred to in the great science fiction film Forbidden Planet as “monsters from the id.” While he believed that reason needed to be relaxed to let the imagination loose, he also believed that reason is necessary to tame the imagination and give it the direction to make great art.

  Why this image for Chesed of Hod? Think about someone you know who has sharp analytical faculties. Or perhaps this describes you. What happens when those critical insights are shared with others? They’re often not welcomed, especially if they’re coming from a woman in a situation where the men control things. This can lead to a retreat from engagement and hiding of these skills. It might look like Humility to hold back from sharing these insights, but the reality in a situation where these insights aren’t welcome is that keeping them to yourself can be seen as self-care or self-preservation. One can be aware of one’s insights and simply withhold them, which can leave a person feeling isolated. This is a retreat that leaves one alone. Or one can deny one’s own gifts of intellect to oneself, thus transporting one’s own intellectual faculties into the shadows—where the sleep of reason produces monsters. Both are traps to be avoided.

  The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Francisco Goya

  As always, there are other ways to see this pair. And there’s one other I want to look at. Let’s consider that both these cards illustrate different experiences of meditation metaphorically. And that in meditating, one uses the faculty of discriminating intelligence to see through to the heart of things—to the Glory of all creation. The Baal Shem Tov taught that the Divine Glory is present from the lowest levels to the highest in all worlds.6 This means that in meditation, when you restrain the ego and watch all the mental phenomena that arise with both Humility and sharp analysis, the Divine Glory embraces all worlds and reveals Itself to you in all things. All things, good and evil. But what do you do when the yetzer hara, “the inclination to do evil,” arises during meditation (or at any time)? The Baal Shem Tov taught that when such thoughts come, they are the residue of the Shevirat he-Keilim, the broken shards left over from the shattering of the first emanation of the Sephirot. Within these shards, within these urges, is the original spark of the Divine that must be liberated by our Tikkun. These shards veil the Glory within.*34 One must search within such urges to find their origin in the Divine Glory, the spark of holiness at the root of these urges. This is where the discerning intelligence of Hod is essential. One must see through to the Glory and raise the energy of that thought in the service of the Divine in a kind of conscious sublimation. This isn’t easy, but it’s one of the teachings of Chesed of Hod, and the Four and Eight of Swords illustrate the challenges of this practice.

  Day 29: Chesed of Hod in Assiyah

  The Four and Eight of Pentacles

  _________within_________

  In his classic book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said that learning to control your inner experience enables you to determine the quality of your life.7 When we look at the pairing of the Four and Eight of Pentacles, what is the inner experience being revealed in these images?

  With the Four of Pentacles, Chesed, which is Flow and Love, we have someone who seems to be withholding and stopping up the Flow. If this is the inner experience of the man at work in the Eight of Pentacles, it could be because he is feeling resentment as he works. Rather than letting his creative energies pour into his work, he is holding back for some reason. Rather than feeling Humility in the working of his craft, he feels demeaned by the repetitious manual labor, so that he feels resentful on the job. This is the opposite of Surrender, and the result is far from happy.

  We live in a society where most manual labor and service jobs have low social status. It used to be that working with one’s hands was a respectable way to make a living, and while physically demanding, it could be fulfilling psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. Even the physical demands could be satisfying when approached with the right attitude. However, the discipline that craftsmanship requires seems unnecessary in a world where 3-D printers can spit out in minutes objects that it once took workers hours or days to create. This has only accelerated the trend of disrespect for manual labor. In fact, as technological advances replace many of the jobs done by manual labor, the people who do these jobs feel greater insecurity and lower self-esteem.

  As someone who has worked at jobs that called for repetitious activity, I get it. When I was in college, I took part-time jobs that I knew were just way stations for me. While the other people on these jobs would be there until they left the workforce, I was just passing through on my way to a “white-collar” job. I resented having to work at such jobs, and I looked down on my coworkers. I’m not proud to say that, but I was young and full of myself.

  If I had approached these jobs with Gratitude for the opportunity to work and earn money and if I’d come to the work with a sense of play, my work relationships and experience would have been completely different. But like the man in the Four of Pentacles, I was stuck and was holding on to resentment that I was better than the jobs and the people I worked with. Rather than Humility, I was in the grip of grandiosity. (Note that the man in the Four of Pentacles is wearing a crown.)

  This attitude affected my work, of course, so that it really wasn’t very good. It’s a miracle that I wasn’t fired from any of these jobs. I had yet to learn how to control my inner experience, so I wasn’t happy. And even though I learned this lesson, it’s not as though I completely got it and worked with this understanding for the rest of my career.

  Just a few years ago, I had to take a job that paid less than I had been earning before, and I had to do the kinds of tasks lower down on the business totem pole that people call “grunt work.” I could have fallen back into an old unhealthy pattern, with feelings of low self-esteem and resentment. However, the words of a Jewish prayer for peace came into my mind: “We have come into being to praise, to labor, and to love.”

  Three deceptively simple tasks. Two of them, love and praise, are at the heart of Chesed of Hod. For to praise another is to show Humility about oneself as well as Love and Generosity of spirit, all of which the man in the Four of Pentacles is unable to express. But when you can do this, you open to Divine Flow, so that your labor, your work, becomes an expression of your praise and Love. When I’ve approached my work from this mind-set, with Humility, Generosity, and Love, it has unleashed great energy that transformed both my work and my experience of my workplace.

  True and healthy Humility allows one to be more Loving and open, considerate and Kind. Unhealthy Humility is an expression of low selfesteem and is constraining, leading to resentment. Today is a day to consider how these dynamics play out in your experience of the world of work.
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br />   Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 29

  1. (Wands) What is your experience of Humility? Can you feel the Love that is within it? When have you experienced it as self-negating and constraining? When have you experienced it as a feeling of expansion that takes you beyond yourself? What was the difference between these two situations?

  2. (Cups) Review the blessings in your life. Do you feel deserving of them? Do you express Gratitude for the Flow of Divine blessing in prayer? Today is a good day to do a mental inventory of your possessions: What are the things you don’t need that you’ve been holding on to? Find a local charity, and give those things away.

  3. (Swords) When do you hide your intellect from others? Why? How does that make you feel? When an “evil urge” arises in your meditation (or just in the course of the day), use your discernment to peel away the specific temptation itself to uncover the hidden good at the root. Journal about this experience.

  4. (Pentacles) How have your jobs affected your self-esteem throughout your life? How have they affected your ability to express Love? How has your judgment about different kinds of jobs colored your experience of people who do those jobs? As you go through your day, try to see everyone engaged in any kind of work as being in service to the Divine—including yourself.

  Day 30: Gevurah of Hod

  Living in Awe of the Splendor of Creation

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

  I have been blessed to spend many summer days on Fire Island, a long, thin barrier of land off the southern coast of Long Island. And when I was there, I made it my practice, as best as I was able, to wake up in time to see the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean and, later in the day, to watch the sun set over the Long Island Sound. I’ve managed to arrange vacations so that I could witness the Perseid meteor showers in August. I’ve seen them over Fire Island, where we’re far enough from the lights of Manhattan so that the Milky Way is dimly visible. And I’ve seen them while staying in a clearing near a stand of redwoods in Philo, California.