Appetite and its Holy Body

I woke this morning slightly hungry. Hunger is a familiar and well-inhabited realm for me which has not been without its persuasions and seductions. My relationship with this instinctive aspect of the self is a mixture of ambivalence and gratitude. Appetite equals life but between the two lies a cosmos of complexity. So, boldly, I thought I'd ask the cards for insight on navigating this elemental poem of the flesh and its various trajectories. What did the cards have say about this holy body? What wisdom did they have to offer me specifically?

Strength ~ The Alchemist's Oracle

I find it intriguing that this card, with its Tarot associations of taming/blending/marrying appetites, showed up again today. My leonine guide is a fitting one as I journey through the jungles of desire, want, satiety and emptiness. Today what is drawing my attention is that he appears without a body (!), his head is what we're being asked to engage with...his lotus mane, his soulful eyes, his generous mouth, his third eye...all these come forward for me today. He looks beseeching, he wants engagement, he glows with a receptive force...

When the restless lioness of hunger lies down with the gentle lamb of contentment does that mean they have refound themselves inside the limbs and sinew of a new partnership? Yes, I think it does. But its key is mutability. It's not a static partnership and like any love relationship it requires the fine-tuning of constant adjustment and compromise...





I dreamt once of Mahler
as morning happened into
the slow music of crows

flaring up a sky, dark thoughts
taking flight, thick and fierce
like the shapes found in any hunger.

I hold this journey of hunger ambivalently in my awareness, replete as it is, with stories and myths embedded into its sacred body. Because, of course, the essence of the mythic is not that it happened long ago but rather that it is continuing to happen as an ongoing and felt awareness. Hunger, that is to say the places in us that are 'wanting', as sacrament, as a visible sign of an inward state of grace. Sacrament implies a 'haloed' relationship between subject and object, between offering, offerer and receiver, or what the Sufis call Love, Lover and Beloved though ultimately I suspect these distinctions thin to nothing. Circumscribed within this temenos I feel ready to draw my two Tarot cards...

Three of Swords ~ Wild Unknown Tarot

Why is appetite holy? Because it points the way to the wild, untamed, unclothed places within us. And it's in the wilderness that the mystics, those wise women and sages turned their faces to the purifying elements and found the exquisite cathedral of transformation.  However this is of little immediate comfort as I come face to face with a mirror of my soul's hunger in this dramatic Three of Swords.

Really??!!

Yes, really, beloved.

My limited self tries to polarize 'want' and 'fulfillment' but experience has shown me that's of little help. I've come to think of them as relational banks of the same river wherein I can wade in thigh-deep and experience them not as opposites but as the engaged body's visceral call and response.

I feel that a bit in this card. Everything is intertwined here, the scarlet pain of restriction, its blade-sharp cause, the dark body and its luminous longings are all interdependent. Trying to isolate them only furthers the larger theme of separation that often underscores the depth of this question.

So here I see a dramatic rendering of imprisoned grief that is both passionate and bloody, stark and complex. There is a sober story here. Three swords, their tips pointing towards the earth, are bound up together by an intricate web of scarlet cords which could just as well be veins. The tips drip blood, each hilt is a different shape calling to mind the idea that the pain here is the cumulative effect of a series of restrictions and misses. The whole is overlaid on a dark, shadowy background which in turn is surrounded by light. There is no pierced heart here but that implication looms large. What I like about this rendering is its depiction of the ambiguity of such a relationship. The passion at the heart of the dark goddess body arising out of and contained by the brilliance of light. Doesn't that just about say it all as to the push-pull of this kind of dark enchantment?

Three of Swords ~ Wild Unknown Tarot

The Three of Swords is traditionally the card of heartbreak, of grief, of getting to the heart of the matter with the suggestion that the mental process around our pain is causing the rifts. In this card particularly those swords would do quite well to cut away those binding cords freeing us to flex our discriminating awareness in more beneficial and healing ways. There is a shadow here of self-sacrifice, martyrdom and themes along those lines which feel somewhat appropriate in my case in relation to my questioning.

Threes are associated with The Empress and thus represent the potential for creativity in our problem solving. But they also announce the potential for the transformation of the ideal into the actual, the two plus one. They are a sacred number but they are also a restless number inviting us to dance with ambiguity. All of this feels relevant as I consider my journey with appetite. And then an outbreathing of equilibrium as I turn the next card over...

Two of Pentacles ~ Wild Unknown Tarot

The Two of Pentacles as alchemical butterfly. Card of balancing differing energies, of holding the tension of opposites and engaging with that tension as a dance rather than a burden. This butterfly is black and white as is the entire card save for the fulcrum around which things turn, the rainbow-hued lemniscate, symbol of infinite and self-regenerating potential. Within each of the lemniscate's circles is a single pentacle in upright position. The tips pointing upwards suggest an aspiration towards higher ideals.

I'm intrigued to see the leminsciate show up here as a nod to the Strength Tarot card echoed by the oracle card. The lemniscate appears above the maiden's head in the Strength card so there is a kind of hushed dialogue going on here for me with this symbol that I can't quite articulate. And Pentacles, being a suit that represents the body, seem an appropriate response showing up here as they do as the dance of balance.

Alchemical Butterfly ~ Wild Unknown Tarot

Twos are associated with the High Priestess, with binary consciousness, with navigating inner and outer. They are also represent the need to make a choice, not necessarily one over the other but through the potential integration of two seemingly opposing energies. That's seen here in the way the butterfly is at the center of the diagonal lines. This feels germane to the dialogue at hand and a welcome sight after the intensity and desolation of the previous card.


So how do I pull this fairly heavy material together in a way that feels, if not light, then at least more accessible to the part of me that craves sunshine and the wide expanse of blue. Together the three cards present a compelling face...

Wild Unknown Tarot ~ Alchemist's Oracle

I don't really have a static answer, not one that I can point to and say with fixity, 'this way to the goddess and her holy appetite'. Practically speaking the suggestion here is to aim for a balance that recognizes both the pain and the numinous strength of 'want', not one or the other but both. To allow the lioness in me to facilitate the crosspollination of the butterfly's equilibrium in the Two with the grief and shadow of the Three. The Lion offers me the solidity of warmth and strength, the Three reminds me of my humanity and the Two suggests a directional approach that is full of movement and dance.

I'm not sure how that might look in actuality but metaphorically it could involve standing waist-deep in the rushing stream of preference, my heart tuned to the beautiful inevitabilities of a waxing and waning moon. Witnessed there by that most sacred of alchemies, water and earth, perhaps I can find the dance that these portals are pointing towards. The moon, the water, the sloping banks of the river and the awareness of my feet planted firmly in the mud and muck of it all...this is a way to begin.