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| Artwork by Thalia Took |
And here is The Star. And the darkness. And the maiden. And the winged messenger sent down from above.
It's an old, old story, and we tell it once again during the time of the Winter Solstice. Every year, in the heart of the darkest night, we wait for the Child of Light. We open ourselves to the miracle. We gather in faith and truth and love, and we remember.
We have been here before and will be here again. Such is the way of our universe— nothing is lost and everything returns. And while we might have puzzled out a few equations in the scientific clockwork of it all, the unfolding whole remains a mystery.
I feel its turnings, though, its vast ancient circles within circles. This is Spirit to me, this movement, these rhythms. From my tiny finite standing place, the moon wanes, the sun waxes, and the stars move across the sky in their precise predictable courses.
These are illusions, of course, human perspectives that mark me as part of the cycle and not separate from it. For the moon does not grow or shrink, the sun blazes as steady now as it did at the height of Midsummer, and the stars remain still. It is Earth that tilts and whirls, the same earth that feels so steady beneath me. Another illusion, this steadiness, for the Earth and I are plummeting through space at 66,000 miles an hour. The stars are at the tumbling edge of the expanding universe, and as I gaze at the indigo horizon on this longest of nights, I offer thanksgiving, a wordless circle of gratitude that extends in rings around me.
This Solstice, may gratitude be a force for love in your world, and in all worlds. May your days be filled with wonder and your nights with enough light to guide you home.
Blessed be, y'all. See you in 2017!
Ah yes. Our ego comes a-rolling up in the yard yet again, ablaze with glory, brilliant with triumph. It's a four-cornered, starry-curtained, uber-gilded Chariot we see before us, exalted and ostentatious, practically dripping with satisfaction.
But let's not be too hasty in our judgment. There's a lot of substance beneath the fancy surface.
The ego has gotten an unfortunately negative rap in our current thinking. We must not let our egos get in our way, we are told. We must transcend them. After all, who wants to be ego-driven? Egotistical? An ego maniac?
I mean, look at that guy up there. He's practically carrying his own stage with him, demanding that we take a front row seat on his bedazzled victory lap.
But the sphinxes reveal a deeper truth. One does not enter into such company lightly. They are the keepers of mystery, after all. They offer initiation in the form of riddles, and unless you meet their challenge, you shall not pass beyond them. Our Charioteer has. He must have something valuable to offer us.
And this is it — to succeed in any creative endeavor, one must develop a strong and healthy ego. The qualities we associate with an big ego — bragging, boasting, strutting, and preening — are actually signs of a weak ego, one that requires constant exterior fortification.
A strong ego is like a container. It isn't you (which is what those blustery types get wrong — over-identifying with the container, not the contents). Like the chalices in the tarot that contain our emotions, our ego contains our sense of self. Our identity. As such, it must be both strong and fluid. Who we are is always changing. Our ego must be just as dynamic.
The Chariot is here to remind you that while you are on the sacred and
soulful task of bringing a creative project into the world, be clear
about your boundaries. There will always be rejections and acceptances, bad reviews and good. The second you place your work before an audience, you will receive both pans and praise. And yet you must, as Rudyard Kipling reminds us, "treat those two imposters just the same." You must separate you and your work from the swirling chaff of judgment if you want to get anywhere.
Remember who's holding the reins of this particular chariot. Hint: you are. Which means you are not the chariot.
Let's be honest — there's very little appealing about this card. Whenever I see it, I get a pang in my stomach and my chest constricts. It's a touchstone, the Five of Pentacles, and as such, it opens up a world of hurt for me. I remember every sad story I've ever heard, every lost puppy, every broken heart.
There are many interpretations for this card, and there's grief at the heart of every one. There are questions: who are these poor and needy people? Why are they in the cold when the lights of the church are lit and warm and right there? Is this a criticism of the church, rich in stained glass but poor in compassion? Or are we to question the down-trodden, ponder what leads them to prefer the snow over the sanctuary? Do they not recognize it? Have they sought and been rejected?
We do not know. Arthur Waite was clear in his interpretations that this card meant material trouble, although perhaps not as dire as depicted. So what are we to make of it, we who ask the tarot for guidance on creative matters?
I'll take a stab at that. Our creativity is a living thing, and as such, it must be nourished and nurtured, it needs care and tending. Ask yourself: in this season of bright lights and parties and shopping and indulgences, is your creativity being neglected? Are you giving your Muse the attention she deserves? Or have you spent your energy and attention in other areas? Closed the door on your art and left it in the cold?
This week, consider your creative soul. Is it well cared for, warm and safe? Or is it right outside the circle of your everyday, hunched against a rising cold?
Only you know the answer. And only you have the power to open — or close — the door.
As one of the few cards in the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot that doesn't have a human figure in it, the Eight of Wands is...well, look at it. It's wands all the way down. Wands wands wands wands wands wands wands wands.
So it behooves us to remember what Wands are all about. They are the suit of passion and energy, enthusiasm and soul. Like the living wood that they are constructed of, wands are vital and dynamic and running with sap, and like the element of fire they represent, they are swift, total, and direct.
You can practically feel all these various components coming together in the Eight of Wands, practically hear the "whoosh!" as they fly. This is a card of the present tense, action and motion and now-now-now. But to truly understand what this card is trying to tell us, we must ponder the before and after.
Some previous action set these wands flying, and they will soon reach their eventual destination. Cause and effect Exhibit A.
Waite's own words illustrate these ideas of swiftness and delivery: "This card represents motion through the immovable—a flight of wands through an open country—but they draw to the term of their course. That which they signify is at hand; it may be even on the threshold."
This week, ponder the things reaching their natural culmination, especially those things fueled by your blood and sweat and tears. The things you have aligned your will with, put your energy into, and blessed with your attention. Watch for signs that a conclusion is coming. Listen. You can hear it it whistling your way.
*This reading is dedicated to all my NaNoWriMo buddies finishing up their November novels—keep those words coming! You can do it!
Some of us, when confronted with an injustice, like to evoke Karma into a situation. Like if some jerk steals our parking space, we can rest easy knowing that Karma will key his door one night while he's sleeping.
This force of cosmic reckoning is a bit more complicated than that, of course. And also simpler. And also more paradoxical. And it's represented in the tarot by several cards, one of which is the Six of Pentacles (which last visited us over a year ago HERE).
We are governed in the universe by laws of giving and receiving. Even our breaths, except for our first one in and our last one out, occur in a pair. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. What goes up, must come down (that's not really true, astrophysically speaking, but it's a good short form, like a haiku).
On this card, we see what appears an act of charity, a generous man of some station in life doling out coins to two grateful beggars. But consider deeper, as this card asks you to do. Pentacles are the suit of resource management, how we use and protect what we have—our material possessions, our job, our body. Because in the same way that a dollar bill is only a pretty piece of paper with some consensus behind it, our resources are actually our time and energy made manifest. They are symbolic of what we have already put in and what we hope to one day get out.
Karma is simply consequence, actions leading to effects. And the Six of Pentacles is simply the engine of the universe, neatly summed up by computer programmers everywhere as GIGO—Garbage In, Garbage Out.
This week, consider what you are putting into your creative engine. Are you giving it your best time, your high test premium? Or are you giving it the crumbs of your attention, the leftovers after the dishes and laundry are done? If you don't like the output, consider upping the quality of your input. You're certainly worth it, and so is your work.
I lay in bed for a long time Wednesday morning. I lay awake in the darkness, not wanting to push back the covers and face a very dark dawn. It's like the opposite of Christmas morning, I thought, and I listened to the sound of my husband's breathing and the first birds stirring, just as I had the day before, and tried to find consolation in that.
I did get up. Eventually. And I cried. Not in stunned surprise. No shock and awe here. I had hoped that a different universe would be revealed, a better one, but that was not the case. The universe I'd hoped for, the one I'd aligned my will with, was fading into the past, atom by atom receding from possibility. It remained close enough to sense if not inhabit, tantalizingly near, almost reachable. Almost but never. That made the heartsickness worse.
So I went for a run in the park, a gray run by a gray lake under a gray sky. Running is a moment by moment activity, one foot in front of the other, repeat and repeat again. I usually love winter runs, the muted palette, the stark finely-wrought beauty of bare branches and textured clouds. And I eventually came to love this one, because it got me on my way, and because it got me home again.
I didn't ask the tarot for answers yesterday. I already knew those. Instead I asked it for a piece of hope, something to keep me moving forward, and not just for me. For my friends and family who woke up on this morning with tangible fear in their hearts. Yes, I said, I have seen The Tower. And I have seen The Devil. Show me something else, please. Pull back the curtain on what I can do with my own two hands, with my own heart, with my life.
And the tarot answered with the Ace of Cups.
Love. Inspire. Dream. Bless. And above all, keep my heart open for the giving and receiving of love.
There were other cards complementing this one, cautions and caveats. The Ten of Wands, a warning to avoid burnout and exhaustion of the spirit. The Five of Cups, a reminder of the necessity of grieving. But the heart of the reading, its crux and center, was Love. The big good kind. The kind that connects me to you, and you to me, and all of us to each other, and the whole of us to the Divine, however you perceive She/He/Them/It/All.
May it be so.
Eventually, all creative work comes down to the moment where you either do it, or you don't. So it is with zero surprise whatsoever that I see the Eight of Pentacles coming up this week.
This is the first time this card has appeared as a part of the Writerly Tarot in an official sort of way, but it comes up for me regularly, especially when I am in need of a clear and unequivocal reminder that I need to put myself in front of the page and stay there until the words are on it.
The Eight of Pentacles is about putting in work, hard work. It is a card of commitment. It is no-nonsense and spare and detail-oriented. It is the work of final editing, the slog of the home stretch in a difficult race. The figure on the card is absorbed in his task -- there is only the chisel and the hammer and the disc before him. And the task is all there is. He and his work are one.
I am sometimes a lazy writer, preferring the day-dreamy freedom of the Seven of Cups or the exuberant optimism of The Sun to such a clear simple mandate. In those feel-good cards, it is easier to understand how our imagination connects us to the better angels of human nature. We soar in that energy, gliding effortlessly in clear blue skies. It is irresistible.
But there is joy in climbing too, in beating your wings hard, in pushing your muscles to make each downstroke count. The joy of exertion, of striving, of being in the moment so completely that you lose all sense of time. Psychologists call this state "flow," and it is literally brain-altering. And when you give yourself over to the creative process of Making Stuff Happen, when you strive for the painstaking perfection of the Eight of Pentacles, it will often reward you with such a state.
Sometimes. Not always. But when it does...it is magic of the truest kind. And like all true magic, it begins with choice.
This week, let the Eight of Pentacles be your taskmaster. Find beauty in the nuts and bolts. Seek joy in the striving. This is not an easy card, but it is a richly rewarding one.
And now...back to work.
