Tarot and the Tree of Life

by Isabel Radow Kliegman

  What good can we see in this particular image? How can it be viewed as a fulfillment of the Suit of Swords? This question leads us to the ultimate issue about Swords and, arguably, life: What is pain, and what is it for? What are we supposed to do with it? What is the appropriate response to suffering?

  We are supposed to take pain into our hearts; that’s what we are supposed to do with pain.

  Nobody gets out of this world alive. It seems often that we’re still reeling from the last blow when we’re hit again. We may well remember the figure in the Nine of Cups, distracting himself from the pain swept behind that long blue tablecloth. He’ll just have another drink! That doesn’t change anything, but taking pain into our heart does.

  When pain comes it’s time to grieve. But what’s fascinating and heartening is that when we stop denying and resisting pain, when we allow pain into our hearts, it doesn’t come unaccompanied. Something else comes along with it. In my life, it’s been peace and faith and love and hope: a sense of the divine presence. The worst part of pain, we often find, results from resisting it, pushing against it. “It can’t be true, I won’t let it be true, I don’t accept it, I can’t stand it, I can’t bear it!” If we can somehow release the resistance and say, “This happened. I don’t know how I’m going to live through this, but it really has happened,” something else is released. Panic, perhaps, the fear of not being able to go on. The grieving is clean, if I may put it that way. The feeling is of a clean wound. The blood flows, the tears flow, nothing festers, it all gets flushed through. It hurts and hurts and hurts and it keeps on hurting. And then it heals.

  There’s nothing to do with pain except take it into our hearts. We can’t get though pain by letting time elapse. We can’t lock it in the closet, put it under a blue tablecloth, and figure, “I’ll be back in eleven months when it’s gone.…Oops! There it is, waiting for me!” It’s like the dirty laundry, you know, or the dishes in the sink. Time will not get them clean. Sooner or later we’ve got to do them. Like them, pain is endlessly patient and immovably loyal. It will wait for us. Sooner or later we’ve got to feel it. Finally, when we feel the pain, when we let it into our hearts, something in us changes. That is what pain is for. That is where transformation comes from. That is where growth comes from. Suddenly we are not as we were before. Having taken in the pain, we do not become bitter, cynical, callous, or hard. We become wise. The Three is the fulfillment of the Suit of Swords because it shows the willingness, the courage, the honesty to experience the pain in our lives.

  The Two and Three of Swords reflect the right and left temples respectively, and meet at the place of the third eye in the chakra system. It would be difficult to envision two images more in need of third-eye insight.

  Four of Swords

  We move next to the place of Chesed, the place on the Tree where God’s loving-kindness is manifest—the place of the expansive, generous planet Jupiter. It is the fourth sefirah, and as we can recall from the Four of Pentacles and the Four of Cups, the fours depict a kind of stability. Often, however, the stability lacks dynamism. There is generally a lethargy in the fours. The Four of Swords can certainly be seen in this way, as a card in which not very much is going on. It’s not so much a card of death as a card of withdrawal and rest, a card of meditation and prayer. It is a card of removing ourselves from the world so that we can quiet ourselves and deal with our pain. In the painful Suit of Swords, we would expect to find this respite only in Chesed.

  The contemporary Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa says that most people are “forever caught in a traffic jam of discursive thought.” Our minds click away all the time; we’re figuring things out, analyzing; ideas tumble over and interrupt one another. We lose all sense of ourselves; there is no sense of peace. This is the card of withdrawal from that head space to a place of quiet and serenity.

  The Four of Swords shows the sarcophagus of a knight lying in state, his sculpted counterpart in repose beneath a stained-glass window. Three swords hang on the wall beside him, the fourth runs horizontally beneath him. The card has been referred to as the yoga card and certainly reminds us of sav asana, or “corpse pose,” in which practitioners lie on their back in total stillness, all muscles relaxed, and keep the mind focused and alert in an apparently inert body. If the Four of Swords shows up in a spread in conjunction with other cards of death such as the Ten of Swords, the Tower, or Death, and in a position that suggests the physical realm, actual bodily death can be implied. But more generally by far the card suggests a turning inward.

  This interpretation is favored by the position of the three vertical swords. In pointing at the third eye, the heart (or perhaps the throat), and solar plexus, they stimulate the chakras. The fourth sword parallels the entire spine, the central focus of hatha yoga.

  In final support of this view, since these are swords, they are concepts, ideas. While this might be the kind of meditation we associate with Buddhism, in which we attempt to still the mind and sense nothing, gently pushing thoughts away, it is even more suggestive of the Jewish tradition of meditation, in which we work with God on whatever comes up for us. Perhaps it is most compatible with the Jungian practice of active imagination. In fact, in the Morgan-Greer deck, instead of the stained-glass window, we find an open window with the four swords floating through it. We have the sense of sustaining a dream, allowing unconscious material to stream into awareness in a free flow, with no interference or control. But whether we regard it as Eastern meditation, dialogue with God, or waking dream, the Four of Swords depicts the willingness to quiet the ordinary mind and access the inner life by closing out the external world. That is certainly a merciful way of dealing with Three of Swords experience. The “right hand of God” is clearly evident here.

  The subject of the stained-glass window is Jesus healing the sick. This is not death then, but a healing experience. From a Jungian perspective, each of us has Christ consciousness or the capacity for it within us. From a Kabbalistic point of view, each of us has within us Tiferet, the place of the sacrificial god. Healing can come from that source, the divine light that emanates down the Tree from limitlessness, God’s essence, and is the essence of the soul.

  There is another important aspect of the Four of Swords to which we may now direct our attention, and that is the difference between action and activity. If someone calls you and asks, “What did you do today?” and you say you had a busy day, you probably don’t mean that you spent it meditating. You probably mean “I was running a lot of errands. I visited a sick friend, then I had to pick up the dry cleaning and drop a book off at the library before my doctor’s appointment. Later I had a hairdresser’s appointment, and then I had to bring some soup to my mother. And of course I always do my charity work on Tuesdays.…” That’s an action-packed day. It is also a passive day. Rachel Pollack makes the point that true action always changes us. Activity and action may be seen to be in the same dichotomous relationship as ego and soul: the ego can use activity to distract from the soul’s purpose, but when the soul takes action, it may appear from the perspective of the ego that we’re not doing anything. “Oh, I just had a lazy day. I was reading and meditating.” Yet that is not a lazy day; it is just a quiet day. Although the Four of Swords is an image of inactivity, it is a card of taking action in our lives.

  Five of Swords

  We find ourselves next in Gevurah with the Five of Swords. We have come to expect difficult cards in the number-five position, the place of the great limiter. It is without surprise, then, that we observe the Five of Swords to be the nastiest card in the deck. Under a menacing sky of jagged clouds, before a sea reminiscent of the Two of Swords’ disquiet, we see three male figures of widely varying size. Their backs are to us. We cannot see the faces of the two smaller figures, but the smallest has dropped his head in his hands, his shoulders hunched in the suggestion of grief. The largest figure stands holding two swords in his left hand. Two more lie at his feet while he balances the fifth in his right hand, p
erhaps gathering it up. His hair and mantle blow in a cold wind, and the smirk on his face is spiteful, gloating, vengeful, and truly loathsome! It is the card of taking the last laugh, enjoying power and advantage over others. Who has this terrible energy? You do, everyone of you reading this book (and everyone not reading it). And so, of course, do I. Every one of us has this dark capacity within us.

  Does that mean we all act this way? Absolutely not. Does it mean we all want to act this way? I should hope not. Does it mean that sooner or later we all will act this way? I don’t think so. Does it mean we all could act this way? You bet! If we are all one, if we are clones of one another, if that energy that descended into me also descended into you, it is part of the universal energy. It is out there and it is in each of us. That’s what makes it so challenging to be a human being. That’s what we’re doing in Malchut, the material world—bringing ourselves to the kind of awareness that enables us to make the choices by which we improve and evolve. We are here to take responsibility—the ability to respond—seriously, and we cannot do that when we are in a state of denial. First we have to recognize that yes, we’re all capable of being genuinely vile.

  When we look at the Five of Swords, it is extremely useful to ask, “With which of these three figures do I identify?” The answer will vary with time and circumstance for each of us. For years it never occurred to me that anybody could identify with any but the major figure standing in the foreground. Yet an experienced Tarot teacher amazed me by confessing that it had never occurred to her to identify with any but the smallest figure in the far background! If we feel ourselves at the moment to be the victor, gathering up the swords of the conquered with that particularly vicious expression on his face, we have to be aware that we really have it in for somebody—possibly with good reason. We have been treated badly! Someone has abused or betrayed or taken advantage of us. Now finally we have the upper hand, and it feels good! If we identify with the smallest of the three figures who hangs his head in retreat, it means that we are feeling, at that time, demeaned, humiliated, conquered, diminished, and ashamed.

  For years I saw this card as imaging an odious victor and two pathetic, vanquished opponents, the depiction of a win/lose situation. What we see when we look more carefully is an odious victor exulting over his success, a vanquished adversary who is defeated and depressed, and someone who is simply walking away. Interestingly, few people identify with the middle figure; few even recognize that the middle figure is different from the small one. Most see only victor and vanquished. But the middle figure does not hang his head, and he walks in a different direction from the smaller one.

  This leads us to the real meaning of the Five of Swords. The recognition of the difference between the two smaller figures raises the question, “Do you want to play win/lose? Do you want to be involved in a situation in which someone has to lose in order for you to win?” The middle figure says, “I don’t like that game. I’m leaving. I’ll find a game with different rules, or I’ll create a game that is win/win.” The middle figure simply knows how to walk away from a situation in which he neither wants to be humiliated nor to take the advantage.

  Let me flesh out this concept by volunteering my Five of Swords experience. I was fired from a job in advertising sales because I was earning too many commissions. When my employer fired me, he simply had his office manager call me one night and say, “Don’t come to work tomorrow. Or ever again.” There was no explanation, but it soon emerged that I wasn’t going to be paid my commissions.

  My reactions were interesting. I had fantasies of taking my keys and running them vigorously across the paint job of my former boss’s new Mercedes. I had visions of breaking into his office at night and putting chewing gum in the new computer, smashing windows, burning files. Did I do any of that? No. If I had learned that he had been in an automobile wreck and was quadriplegic, would I have been happy? No. But when I learned that he had lost some of the magazines he had been representing and that his income had been vastly reduced, I was delighted!

  Yes, I have a vengeful, spiteful side. I don’t have to act on it, but I do have to know it’s there. And I learned something interesting from this experience. I learned, on a gnostic level, on a level that was genuinely knowing, something I’d understood intellectually all my life. I understood ghetto kids. I understood them because my anger toward this employer extended beyond just him. It extended to all of the bosses in the whole damned advertising industry! I would go to an Ad Club luncheon, look around, and feel hatred in my heart for all those people who were taking advantage of their sales staffs. So I thought to myself, “Oh, poor me! I was taken advantage of…once.” Ghetto kids have known nothing except disadvantage and mistreatment. Imagine, they’re breaking into the cars and houses of people who have never done anything to hurt them! People they have never even met! What a big surprise! Because of my own experience, suddenly I could understand the anger, the self-righteous rage that spills over past its object into whole classes of people.

  The experience was valuable for me in another way as well. I have never tended to be shy or self-conscious, but now I was faced with a dilemma: I needed a job; the best place to look for one was at an Ad Club meeting, but how could I show up at the next luncheon? Everybody knew I had been fired. How could I hold up my head? I mustered all my courage and strength, arranged my face, and gamely went to the meeting. At the bar during the social hour before lunch, one luminary of the industry came charging up to me, exclaiming at the top of his lungs, “What happened? I heard you were fired!” There were three hundred people in the room and every one of them heard him. As heads turned, and I felt myself the center of quintessentially unwanted attention, I had a new grasp of the smallest of the Five of Swords figures. What we least crave in our moments of abject shame is a large audience.

  It is obvious that the Five of Swords is a separation card. The nature of the separation, in the case of each of the three figures, is relatively clear. The smallest figure, in wretched disgrace, feels alienated, cut off, shunned from all of humankind. The bully in his momentary triumph experiences the pleasure of his victory only because he is cut off from any sense of compassion. Were he to feel empathy, connectedness to those who suffer at his hand, he would be unable to savor his success. And the middle figure, who has cultivated detachment, has consciously separated himself from the cycle of misery.

  What is the positive meaning of the Five of Swords? It’s hard to imagine that there could be one. It was uncovered for me by a student who was a painter. When she looked at the savage face of the large figure, she said, “That looks like me! I can feel my face tightening into that expression sometimes.” She had done a painting on commission, and being creative, she did not simply reproduce something she had done before. She painted something entirely new. In consequence, the person who had commissioned it did not want it as it was and asked her to change it. Scrunching her face into a wicked smirk my student said, “No. I won’t do that! This is my work, and it’s good.” She returned the money and kept the painting—and her right to work as her creativity dictated.

  Let’s stop to think of artists who died in poverty: Van Gogh, Mozart, El Greco, Beethoven, Rembrandt—pick a genius! These are people who have reached a certain degree of recognition, no? These are no longer inconsequential names. Yet they died in disgrace and poverty because they were so far ahead of their time that nobody could keep up with them! People liked their early work, and they wanted to keep liking their early work, but genius continues to evolve. “I’ve done that. Now I’m doing something else.” Beethoven’s later quartets sound like Bartok, and his earlier symphonies sound like Mozart. Figure out how that happened in one lifetime! However, it can’t be done without a certain amount of “I’m going to stick it to you yet.” It can’t be done without the energy of “I’m going to show you! I’ll show you all!”

  I have a friend who was a double Olympic gold medalist. His career as a world-class athlete began when his father mortifie
d him at age ten. He was swimming with his friends when his father called to him, “You’d better come in the house now. Your friends can stay and swim if they like, but you’re always getting sick.” That was the moment when a macho little California kid decided he wasn’t going to be the sickly child who couldn’t keep up with the others. So he became an Olympic champion.

  My favorite example of Five of Swords wicked delight involves the legendary rivalry between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. They were proud and competitive, and each begrudged the approbation of the other. One day Leonardo was offered a slab of marble, beautiful white alabaster, but peculiar in shape. It was long and extremely narrow. Leonardo refused it, saying no one could carve a statue from marble of such proportions. So Michelangelo carved David from it—the long, thin body that has amazed and mesmerized the world for centuries. And I’ll bet an expression of joy at his enemy’s discomfort lit up Michelangelo’s face when Leonardo first saw the carved stone he had rejected as unusable.

  The positive meaning of the Five of Swords is being sure of ourselves and ready to protect and defend ourselves, even if it means attacking others, so that our creativity isn’t destroyed. In a sense the Five of Swords can be seen as the iconoclastic artist who is true to her inner vision even if it requires the vengeful destruction of those who would undermine her work.

  We need everything we’ve got. We need the high, light energies; we need the rich, dark energies. We need our anger. We need our revenge. If we learn how to use these forces, they can all work for us in creative ways.

  Gevurah, as we know, occupies the central position on the Pillar of Severity. It is the most difficult sefirah on the pillar whose vessels are all of a restrictive, “negative” nature. Associated with the warlike planet Mars and the left hand of God, with which He smites us, we are not surprised to come away from Gevurah somewhat bloodied. Yet, once again, it is clear from the Five of Swords why the pillar is called severe and not evil. The experience is chastening but necessary. Finally, it does not destroy us; it frees us. Finding the venomous, gleeful bully within is a prospect only vaguely more appetizing than discovering the subjugated, spineless failure we each harbor as our potential self. Yet only by going through this “dark night of the soul” can we realize the liberated, detached being within, who, marching to the beat of a different drummer, is free. It is this part of each of us that emerges from Gevurah as heroic, strong, and enduring.