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| World Spirit Tarot by Lauren Onça O'Leary |
It began with this Fool card from the fabulous, World Spirit Tarot. Musing on the card and its various meanings about innocence, about intrepidness and beginnings and the feeling that there was a kind of sacrilege in not beginning because it denied the gods their due involvement. That idea of denying of the gods stayed with me and continued to resonate. So I decided to do a reading on the subject, felt compelled was more the reality.
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| Tarot de Marseille by Camion-Jodorowsky |
And this resulting three-card reading had me enthralled. Perhaps it was the nature of my question. Each time I looked at it some new awareness emerged, tangible and intangible both.
I'm digging this Fool's red shoes. Hey now, click them together and there's no place like home. Which he carries on his back, blithe spirit that he is. Hail to thee, says The Empress while his little dog has other pressing matters to attend to. Holding Le Mat back or urging him forwards, it's unclear.
The animal body as guide. Do I trust its instinctual wisdom? Do I experience it as vehicle or impediment? Is that walking stick our Fool carries a support or goad? These are sober, poignant questions because I sense in their answers grief, suffering. What woman doesn't have to come to intimate terms with this collective somatic awakening?
Each of us does, at some point, engage in a kind of reckoning with the body in relation to the culture. More so as we get older as this culture is not kind to women past a certain age. We each come to our own place with it and the phrase, 'let go or be dragged' takes on visceral resonance. Hold on to the external definitions or create your own.
The Empress though, has come to terms with this narrowness of vision. One gets the sense, not that she's above it, but rather that she has traversed its landscape and come out in and as a far more expansive and forgiving vista.
What does all this have to do with my question? Lots and lots because my question, Why do I deny the gods? speaks intangibly to a denial of the body, its needs, its nature, its nurture. And sitting there receiving darshan from The Empress, suddenly I felt a deep shift, tsunami-like, within. My question, Why do I deny the gods?
Because I think I can
God, what an answer. One that came swimming up from the depths because I was patient enough to sit with it, knowing intuitively this 'simple' three-card spread had something vital to tell me.
'Because I think I can'...the wish-fulfilling gem gone awry. Intellectually, spiritually I know this for the hubris it is, the belief in separation it implies.
But emotionally, somatically there is a deep schism. Oy, how to proceed? Start where you are, comes the answer. Start in the midst of your confusion, your hubris, the inner rift. Give it away, don't hold onto it, give it away as a prayer, an offering. Start right there with gentleness, forgiveness and a learning to yield, to accept that the moment is enough, you are enough. Each of us, inside this moment, is complete, whole, enough. No need to deny the moment its due, which is none other than your presence, your attention, your love.
I feel The Fool here, both in the naiveté of my answer and the intrepidness to begin anew. How to respond to the animal wisdom at my back? How to use the staff as support not goad? How to dance with my will? Which, of course, isn't separate from the Beloved's will, ultimately.
