by Paul Greer
In the story of Queen Maya, the Buddha’s birth from her side suggests that his teachings are a means of removing this veil of maya; of removing our wrong perceptions of the world; perceptions which keep us locked into an endless cycle of suffering and rebirth. Maya’s death, seven days later, again suggests a removal of obscurations. Seven is an auspicious number within Indian thought, and suggests in this context an end to the maya of the Saptha Matrika – the Seven Divine Mothers or celestial manifestations of Devi who were also associated with the seven stars of the Pleiades. These goddesses, like the seven pearls around The Empress’ neck, emanate from the Great Mother, and represent the cyclic forces which, for those living in delusion, generate Samsara – the endless round of suffering and unsatisfactoriness produced by desire and ignorance.
A Buddhist Reflection: From Samsara to Tara
Within Buddhism, the material world as both a system of cyclic processes and the stage of human passions, sensuality and rebirth, is regarded with understandable ambivalence. On the one-hand, the Zen tradition places emphasis upon suchness and wabi-sabi – an intuitive appreciation of the beauty and yet the sadness inherent within each fleeting moment. Within Zen, such moments are caught in the sparse but sensuous words of the Haiku. We are also reminded that it was in his darkest hour, when he was most alone with himself and on the verge of awakening, that the Buddha touched the earth, and asked it to bear witness to his efforts. Here, we are reminded that the earth - abused, neglected, and often seen as a source of opposition to our spiritual endeavors - is still our home. Yet, as discussed earlier, this “mother” embraces more shadowy connotations, and there are elements within early Indian Buddhism and Indian religious thought in general which reflect an element of uncertainty towards our “Great Goddess.”
All life may spring from the world, but she is at the same time both the actuality of creation and destruction, and for many a symbolic representation of enslavement and delusion - the endless round of birth and death known as Samsara. This darker side of The Empress is realized in the Hindu image of Kali Ma, the Dark Mother. In her most benign aspect she is viewed as a preserver and the creator of all life. She is the unfathomable generative matrix from which all life pours forth. Yet, in her darker aspect she represents the frenzied entropic powers of death and destruction. She is the one who consumes her own children. These two sides are brought together in a meditative vision experienced by the Hindu mystic and Kali devotee Ramakrisha, in which he saw Kali emerge from the Ganges, give birth to a child, nurse it, and then consume it. Kali then returned once more to the Ganges, where she disappeared.16
In its earliest monastic forms, According to Lambert Schmithausen, Buddhism was never really interested in the beauty and fecundity of the world, but on its more negative aspects, especially the “ubiquity of decay and impermanence.” Buddhism’s aims were that of spiritual “detachment.”17 This quest for detachment is rooted, not only in general observations of decay and death in the world, but in the view that our cravings for sensory experience tie us to Samsaric rebirth. Indeed, the Buddha named sensory desire (kamacchanda) as the first of five hindrances to enlightenment.
It comes therefore as no surprise that Buddhism has drawn its fair share of ire from the Neopagan community; a community focused on the celebration of passion, sensuality and sexuality, along with its understanding of the divine within nature. Witchcraft, says Starhawk, rejects the First Noble Truth of Buddhism that all life is suffering or is unsatisfactory. The attempt to escape or transcend sickness, old age and death “is not the optimal cure.”18 This however is a misrepresentation of Buddhism. Buddhism does not deny human happiness, nor does it seek to transcend life lived in nature. Instead, it points out that sensory contact with the world generates cravings, which, given the reality of impermanence, eventually turn to feelings of unsatisfactoriness and suffering. In regard to the natural world, Buddhism adopts the middle way of “detachment” – not pantheistic immanence, nor Gnostic negation. It does not seek transcendence of the world, but instead, the removal of wrong perceptions about the world. The middle way of Buddhism is, as Robert Thurman succinctly puts it, the way of “deglamorized awareness.”19
In his book Up from Eden, transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilbur criticizes some elements of the Neopagan movement for failing to move beyond a “chthonic” interpretation of the Goddess, with too much focus upon birth, death, female biology and reproduction. He reminds us that goddesses such as Isis were also envisaged as Wisdom, and viewed as the divine ground of all space and time.20 Yet within Buddhism, one vision of the goddess need not be abandoned for the other. This is seen especially in those Tantric practices related to Tara.
Tara is often conceived as the gentle, compassionate savioress of Tibetan Buddhism; one who was born from a single tear from the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara. Yet Tara actually embraces twenty-one different emanations or aspects, some of which appear extremely wrathful. A good example is that of the Red Tara, Kurukulla (“She who is the cause of knowledge”); goddess of enchantments and sexuality, who wears a garland of fifty severed human heads and dances upon a male corpse within a circle of flame. Despite her fearsome and chthonic appearance, her presence within Tantra pertains to a wisdom that is positive and transformative. As John Reynolds explains: her garland of fifty severed and bloody heads relates to the fact that she is capable of subduing the “fifty negative emotions,” while the human corpse that she dances upon represents the destruction of ego.21
Like most Tantric deities, Kurukulla represents a particular manifestation of enlightened awareness, and by invoking the wisdom and energies she represents, the practitioner, it is said, accelerates spiritual liberation. A central concern within Tantric meditation is that of subduing and transmuting negative energies. In this respect the wrathful deities, as Thubten Chodron says, demonstrate that there are many ways of working with “our afflictions,” whether gently, or more aggressively. Those fearsome and chthonic manifestations represent a more forceful though nevertheless compassionate form of wisdom, enabling us to deal more effectively with our “disturbing emotions.”22 In Tara Kurukulla, we see that a chthonic representation of “the Goddess” need not be abandoned for something that appears more subdued or transcendental. The blood, skulls, rage, and general gore of life lived within the four elements can still be skillfully transmuted in the service of penetrative wisdom.
The Emperor (4)
General Overview
The Emperor personifies the masculine forces of will, reason and order as applied to the realms of nature and social relations. He delineates, categorizes and defines experience in the world, in much the same way that the ancient Babylonian hero Marduk fashioned time and measurement from the body of the Great Goddess Tiamat. We have, as Nichols says, well and truly left behind a mentality based upon communality and natural cycles, and entered the masculine world of The Logos.
In the Emperor, The Empress endures, but only as life directed, managed, and controlled – this is signified by the ankh, which The Emperor now clutches firmly in his hand. The water of life has in fact receded to the background, and lies far in the distance behind the principal subjects of this card – The Emperor and his four-sided throne. The number four is a symbol of both wholeness and ordering – the four directions, seasons, elements, and so on. (Of interest is that some versions of this card actually have the Emperor sitting on a cube; for example, the Waite-Trinick and B.O.T.A. decks.) The square throne itself sits atop a rugged landscape – the perceived “chaotic disorder”1 of nature. Such control over chaos is also suggested by the four rams’ heads on the throne, representing Aries, the zodiacal symbol of leadership. The rams’ heads also recall the views of the 12th-Century monk Joachim of Fiore, who equated the Age of the Father with the God of the Old Testament – the One who demanded a ram’s sacrifice from Abraham. This is an age characterized by obedience to God’s commands revealed in holy writ. In sociological terms, the figure represents social order and
stability maintained by strong leadership and adherence to rules. In psychological terms, he represents the emergence of what Jung described as the male’s “logos-oriented” psyche2 – discriminating consciousness which both fashions and maintains a particular perception of the world and a distinct sense of self.
At one extreme within the spectrum of possibility, the Emperor represents the lopsided elevation of reason, rationality, selfhood and rule over the feminine qualities of intuition, nurture, compassion, and connection. From an Ecofeminist perspective, this signifies the conceptual values of patriarchal culture – systems of power and control characterized by value-hierarchical dualisms that elevate and maintain the “realities” of male domination.3 From this lopsided perspective, The Empress as both spontaneous womb of life and bringer of destruction comes to be viewed with much distrust - as foreign, alien, maya; a threat to the maintenance of the ego and thus that which must be tamed, controlled, or even transcended. As Jung said, “matricide” is complementary to ego-development.4 The Emperor, as male ideal, takes his ultimate projected form as the separated, self-existing God of the Abrahamic faiths. This is William Blake’s demiurgal monstrosity, Urizen: “Lo, a shadow of horror is risen in Eternity! Unknown, unprolific, self-clos'd, all-repelling.”5 This “self-clos’d” ideal is clearly indicated by the Emperor’s armor, which makes its first appearance here in the Trumps. The armor forms an impenetrable barrier of protection, delineating and separating the self from others. While the Emperor retains and enforces this seperative male ideal of self without connection, the other side of “selfhood” is projected upon the Empress and her female representatives – connection and nurture without self.6
This dualistic and lopsided view of both the self/other and masculine/feminine are for many the defining hallmarks of patriarchal culture, and have it is argued contributed in no small way to the unbalanced social and spiritual life which many now experience. The rise of patriarchal culture, as Edward Whitmont suggests, has appeared alongside the development of an egoic, heroic, self-disciplined will, bound to maintain the laws of its divine “liege lord.” Yet negatively, this has seen the fragmentation of reality into a collection of “mutually exclusive opposites,” and the separation and devaluation of “the feminine.”7
In the Story of the Buddha: The Ploys of King Suddhodana
The Emperor card clearly relates to the story of King Suddhodana, and his stratagems aimed at preventing his son from following a course that would foster any form of spiritual development. In some versions of the story, we are told that the omens point towards his infant son becoming either a great king or a great spiritual teacher. Suddhodana, desirous that his son should attain the former, and exercise “sovereign rule and authority over the four great continents,”8 indulges the young prince with delights of every sort. If he is surrounded by pleasure, reasons the king, he will not be troubled by the more spiritual and problematic aspects of life. Suddhodana builds his son three palaces, and smothers him in opulence and sensual delight:
And the Future Buddha, with his gaily dressed dancers, was like a god surrounded by hosts of houris; and attended by musical instruments that sounded of themselves, and in the enjoyment of great magnificence, he lived, as the seasons changed, in each of these three palaces.9
Joseph Campbell compares Suddhodana here to the figure of King Herod within the gospel narratives; both represent hostility towards a more spiritual and balanced understanding of “kingship” - renunciation and service.10 To be fair though, both the Theravadin texts and the Buddhacarita convey very positive images of Suddhodana. The Buddhacarita for examples states that he was the “very best of kings … intent on liberality yet devoid of pride; sovereign, yet with an ever equal eye thrown on all, - of gentle nature and yet with wide-reaching majesty.”11 Moreover, Suddhodana wishes that his son attain nothing less than the position of Chakravartin – a mighty yet benevolent ruler of the world. His apparent disappointment at the prospect of his son becoming a mere “teacher” might well then seem understandable, perhaps even justified.
Yet, despite his beneficence as a ruler, and his good intentions as a father, the texts imply that Suddhodana had his shortcomings, particularly as regards to issues of a spiritual nature. Asvaghosa for example points out that his main concerns were “duty, wealth, and pleasure.”12 These three pursuits are regarded as legitimate ones within the context of Indian religiosity. But there is also a fourth which appears missing from Suddhodana’s leadership – moksha or “spiritual liberation.” Kama or “pleasure” is one of the ways by which Suddhodana attempts to steer his son away from the spiritual life. Yet dharma or “duty” (not to be confused with the Buddhist Dharma) is another key concern within Indian thought. To this day, dharma within Hinduism is tied to the concept of the caste varnas, where one’s “duty” is to remain faithful to the obligations of one’s social group. The prince’s “duty” was to remain faithful to his calling as a member of the warrior or kshatriya varna; a calling which Suddhodana attempts to instill in his son through a proscribed programme of princely education. Thus, Suddhodana’s attempts to shield his son from spiritual matters are not just based on a sense of vocational guidance, but upon the view that his son becoming a mere “teacher” is a challenge to the eternal dharma of caste duty itself.
A Buddhist Reflection: The Chakravartin
While Buddhism places emphasis upon an individual’s responsibility for changing his or her own mindscape, it nevertheless puts some weight on the notion of the inspired and enlightened leader who can help facilitate such transformation. Such a person is expressed in the idealized figure of the Chakravartin – the “wheel-turning” monarch who rules with responsibility, wisdom and compassion. In the Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta, the Buddha, by means of a fictional tale, outlines the duties of those in positions of social leadership. Relying upon, honoring and respecting the Buddhist Dharma, says a Maharaja to his princely son, a king should protect his people and his animals, eradicate “wrongdoing,” and provide help to the destitute. The text goes on to offer a vision of what happens when the monarch’s duties are cast aside; a vision which seems to strike a note of contemporary relevance. When no provision is made for the poor, poverty becomes widespread; and from this stealing and violence are nurtured, eventually leading to an extensive “destruction of life.”13
When Buddhist kings eventually came to power in India and elsewhere, such discourses were taken as fact, and initiated an era of responsible kingship. An excellent example is that of Ashoka of the Mairya dynasty, responsible for a war against the state of Kalinga which resulted in the deaths of many thousands. After his conversion to Buddhism, Ashoka initiated a number of staggering religious and social reforms. These developments, if true, justly challenge even current notions of social welfare. The “Edicts of Ashoka,” as Phelps comments, document one of the rare times in world history where animals were afforded a measure of state-protection commensurate with its human citizens.14
A more contemporary example of such enlightened leadership is to be found in the Kingdom of Bhutan. Since 1971, and under the leadership of its fourth and fifth kings, this tiny Buddhist Kingdom has rejected GNP as an indication of progress, and has championed instead the notion of “Gross National Happiness” – the “spiritual, physical, social and environmental happiness of its citizens and natural environment.”15 This has involved some startling reforms, including placing environmental protection at the center of the kingdom’s constitution. Over the last two decades, the state has doubled the life expectancy of its people, and has made education provision almost universal. Such changes, as a statement from Bhutan’s Gross Happiness Commission confirms, are firmly grounded in skillful cetana in pursuit of wisdom and compassion, which recognizes that “true abiding happiness cannot exist while others suffer.”16
There are few today could claim for themselves the title of Chakravartin. Yet, at a more general level, The Emperor raises important questions for many in the West - especially for
those who occupy a position of authority or guardianship over others. Moreover, it directs our attention to the issue of our own “lordship” over the plentiful resources we now have at our disposal– an issue we will return to in our reflections upon the Justice card.
The Hierophant (5)
General Overview
In traditional interpretations The Hierophant represents religious institutions, doctrines, teachings, or more simply, education. The term “Hierophant” literally means “holy teacher,” and this is reflected in the card’s imagery which shows a Pope or some other figure of ecclesiastical authority sitting on his throne, instructing two novices. His three-tiered crown and rod suggest mastery over Christian doctrines relating to mind, body and spirit, or Heaven, Earth and Hell. In the usual RWS interpretation, the card represents the exoteric teachings of religion – those which provide morals, stability and social cohesion. The Hierophant sits between two dreary grey pillars; and, unlike the pillars of The High Priestess, there is no veil to penetrate - for none is recognized by those who administer “The Truth.” To put it in Waite’s eloquent words: “it may so happen that the pontiff forgets the significance of this his symbolic state and acts as if he contained within his proper measures all that his sign signifies.”1 The “Keys to Heaven” which lie at the base of the card are both golden, indicating a lack of insight and wisdom (a silver key) beyond the merely doctrinal. Overall, The Hierophant, as Waite says, is “the ruling power of external religion” and “not inspiration.”2 This of course does not mean that traditional teachings have no meaning or value. A broad education, as both Pollack and Banzhaf recognize, may go far in preparing our Fool for the “world outside.”3
