February offers me the gift of an enticing light.  I want to be a candle lit from its flame.

Today we are on the cusp of Imbloc, the Celtic festival that marks the start of spring and is dedicated to Brigid, who is venerated as both Goddess and Saint. As Goddess, her realm is fire and she is inspirer of poetry, healing, and smithcraft.  As Saint, she and 19 of her nuns tended a sacred flame and she served as abbess of a double monastery of women and men.  As an expression of traditions’ creative and fertile mixing, Brigid speaks to me of a shared well feeding our search for the sacred and the potential this well offers for the healing of rifts between groups.

Inspired by Brigid and the hint of lengthening days, I usually am ready to rush over the threshold of winter and into spring.

But there is something different this year.

I have been spending time with the “dark” cards of the Tarot these past few weeks as part of the Journey into the Tarot.  The Hanged One, Death, and the Devil have been recent companions and their lessons have been about the necessity, the healing, and even the nurture of the dark, the challenging, the shadow.  So before I light my candle I need to make sure that I’ve really soaked in and honored the dark.

My usual way to check in deeply on such matters is to combine Tarot with guidance from nature.  I asked the Tarot some questions for this threshold time (see below) and received the message to go outside and honor winter, the Cailleach or Old Woman in the Celtic Tradition.

So I walked in my neighborhood.  The wind was sharp though the ground was without the usual January snow.  The sun was bright on the dark limbs creating patterns of branches reaching to the sky in beautiful symmetry.  Well, for the most part.  Because there were also sharp breaks and branches left dangling from the pre-winter October snowstorm that damaged so many trees and left much of Massachusetts and Connecticut without power for days and even weeks.    Like our current lack of snow, our all too early storm and its damage are a sign of the chaos caused by climate change that can not be ignored.

When the trees leaf out in spring this damage will be hidden, but I’m called to bring their wounds with me into this time of returning light.  I can only embrace the joy of spring when I remember the shadows shown in winter.  I’ve been coming to know this balance as a message of The Sun.

This melding of joy and shadow is seen so wonderfully in the Gaian Tarot’s Sun.

Our eyes are drawn, of course, to the brilliant sun, the flowered landscape, and the radiant woman.  But this picture also includes her shadow.  Her dark outline is, in fact, the foundation on which she stands.

So I will light my candle.  And I will honor the dark.  I will seek to be a better candle of dark wick and bright light.  I will hold this whole.

Winter into Spring Spread

Card 1:  What winter / dark work do I need to complete before moving into spring / the light?

Card 2:  What is a lesson learned in the dark time that I can take as a gift into the light?

Card 3:  What can help me cross the threshold from winter into spring?

Card 4:  How can I be a better candle?

Card 5:  What are the gifts of the light that may unfold for me in this season?

I’ll post my reading in the comments and you are invited to do so as well.

Continue the Tarot Blog Hop by visiting Inner Whispers at http://innerwhisperscouk.blogspot.com/

Many find the figure of The Devil the scariest card in the deck, even more fearsome than Death. The image of a part human, part beast was constructed in early European Christianity to represent Satan, the fallen angel, and particularly the evils of the flesh and the physical: sloth and sex and greed.  The characteristics of pagan Gods  - for example, the Greek’s half-goat Pan and the Celtic horned God of the hunt Cernunnos -  were appropriated for this figure. In early Tarots, he sprouts wings and breasts; both gender and species are confused, which is presented as an intolerable.  He is the Lord of Confusion, the Tempter of the Flesh, the Base One.

But below this image and its history, there is even more going on.    The Devil casts a dark shadow, seen most clearly in the Western tradition, that comes from parsing things into categories of good and evil and splitting spirit from earth.  This false dichotomy is a wound that for centuries has influenced how we see and organize our world.  The Devil’s shadow represented by the black background of the card is far greater than the Devil figure on the card itself.

The psychologist Carl Jung is known for developing the idea of the Shadow.  Jungian John Elder defines the Shadow:

 “The Shadow describes the part of the psyche that an individual would rather not acknowledge. It contains the denied parts of the self. Since the self contains these aspects, they surface in one way or another. Bringing Shadow material into consciousness drains its dark power, and can even recover valuable resources from it. The greatest power, however, comes from having accepted your shadow parts and integrated them as components of your Self.”  (From http://www.reconnections.net/shadow2.htm)

 As part of my training in spiritual direction, I attended a presentation by Brother Don Bisson on Jungian insights for spiritual development and he said that the only way to keep growing is through integrating the shadow.  He acknowledged that there is evil, but suggested that 90% of what is in the realm of shadow is fuel for growth and healing.

This is not to say that this is easy work.  In the dark lurks that which we most fear.  But we are not without protection.  In recent readings with the Gaian Tarot when its version of the Devil, Bindweed, has appeared, people have seen the birds above the cowering blue figure as being protective.  Prompted by this insight, I look at the tails of the female and male figures in the Rider-Waite-Smith card (above) as offering potential protection:  the woman’s tail shows fruit growing even in a barren place and the male’s tail is a torch with which could light his way out of the dark.  They can’t see their tails, but they are still there.

Nor is this work that is only for the individual.  All the Major Arcana cards represent wisdom and challenges for the collective and The Devil with his own history of misappropriation of deities from other cultures calls for some deep group and ancestral work.  This card becomes a call to heal the rift between spirit and earth as well as between people that takes forms such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and all forms of oppression.

As we answer that call, the positive potential, the deep healing achievement of The Devil takes hold.  The Devil is a healer!

[Note:  The Devil from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot  ® US Games Systems, Used with permission of U.S. Games Systems, Inc.  Bindweed from the Gaian Tarot used with permission.]

The Fool’s Journey has guided me for a long time but now it’s sparked a new metaphor as I’ve worked through the Journey into the Tarot.  I’ve been playing with a vision of the Major Arcana as three circles of healing with three points of transition.  This post spins out that thread of thought and continues the play.

Both the nature and the shape of the journey changed with the shift in metaphor to circles of healing rather than a progressive journey.

The first spark for this new view of the Major Arcana came from working with and re-assessing the relationships between the male and female wisdom figures of the first six cards of the Major Arcana (which I blogged about in more detail here).  I saw the obvious dance between the Emperor and the Empress, but also how the Hierophant needs the High Priestess’ inner / lunar wisdom to refresh the outer / solar traditions he upholds.  They danced between the Magician and the Lovers.

Using the circle of healing metaphor, The Magician represents the circles highest potential and what exists before a split of masculine and feminine.  He exuberantly uses the male elements of fire and air and the female elements of water and earth to make his magic.  The Lovers shows the joyful connection of masculine and feminine and is the main healing work of this circle of integration.  The connection is possible both within a person and through greater cooperation of men and women in the world.

The Charioteer moves forward from this triumph of integration led by a team of dark and light creatures into the next circle of healing.

Using the attributions of the English School, Strength opens the second circle of healing seeming to continue a theme of triumph and most commonly the image of a woman taming a lion.  But the gentleness of the woman is so different from the boldness of the Charioteer.   Some kind of transformation has taken place.

Paradox now makes its appearance as the trickster teacher because the triumph of the first line is following by the seeming contradiction of dissolution and surrender as the achievements of second line of cards.

The work of this line starts with The Hermit who leaves behind the everyday world for the lonely mountaintop.  He goes inward removing himself from the attention and praise of the world.  This allows him to come to know his inner wisdom.  Rather than being isolating, the work here connects to the Hermit to ever changing movement of the Wheel.  From his wide perspective on the mountain top, he comes to a deep understanding of change internally, in the everyday world, and even in the unseen realms and the widest cosmos.  He no longer fights change but aligns himself with its energies.

This alignment with change brings a greater understanding of the patterns of cause and effect embodied in Justice.  Reaching Justice brings us half way round this circle of healing with Strength and Justice across from each other.  The connection is apt as it takes strength to look at our lives and take responsibility for how we’ve triumphed and failed and to pluck the lessons of self knowledge from its roses and thorns.

The deep self knowledge gained from this encounter with Justice may spark a re-assessment that can be quite destabilizing.  And in this second circle of healing the destabilization needs to be embraced.  The Hanged One meets the challenge by turning every thing upside down and being with the uncertainty created by this new perspective.  Action seems impossible.  A new understanding of what is important is in process of being formed.

The old self faces Death and this is the great work of this circle of healing.  The transition into a new way of being requires releasing what is known, both the negative and the positive aspects.  We are called to let them go without knowing what will next emerge.  There is the phase of the Death process where we enter the void.  If we have prepared well enough in the work of the Hanged One, we may even welcome this place of absence.

We are called forth from the void by the rising of the sun.  The new invites us.  We emerge as stronger because of a greater connection to the whole of creation that is in a constant cycle of birth, death, and re-birth.  The boundaries between self and other have worn away.  We have the skills to commune with our lions (who represent both our fears and our power).  While we appear to have control over these beasts, those who have traveled the healing circle of dissolution know that it is through surrender and death that this deeper kind of power flows.

We’ll need that power when we face the Devil, but that’s a subject for another post.

[Notes:  Images from the Gaian Tarot are used with permission.  It's interesting to note that some people see the Gaian Magician as a man while others see the figure as a woman.  The ability to be both speaks to the Magician as an already perfect balance of male and female.]

In the Marseille image a man is suspended by one leg from a cross bar held up by trees with their branches cut.  The other leg hangs bent at the knee.  Hands are hidden but it is easy to imagine that they are tied behind his back.  The facial expression is enigmatic, but not the look of someone who is suffering or in pain.  This Hanged Man almost looks comfortable in this new position.

The detail that sends internal sparks of excitement flying for me is that he is dangling into an opening in the earth.  His head is below the level of the earth’s surface.  I see him as being received by the earth and his hair (or in the Rider-Waite-Smith card a halo) is reaching down to the earth.   This reaching invites me to think of this card as indicating a time for the consciousness of the human to commune with the consciousness of the earth.

This is a new perspective, particularly for us in Western culture where the head has been the location of consciousness and higher thinking, abilities that set us apart from all else on the planet.  The Celts saw the head as the place of the soul.  In the Tree of Life of Jewish mysticism’s Kabbalah, the top or Crown is closest to God and the bottom brings the limitless energy into earth form. The Tree of Life can be traced upon the human body with the crown at the head and feet at the bottom.

We have been oriented to keep the superior part of ourselves pointed toward the sky or heaven and away from earth.  In the process, earth has become less than and many aspects of Western religious belief and tradition has fostered a split between the spiritual and the earthly.

But the Hanged One brings us a prophetic message for these times of global climate chaos and the message is given through his body.

In the center of the picture, we have an absence of hands.  Hands are the most frequently used parts of the body in symbolism according to The Dictionary of Symbols by Hans Biederman.  From Paleolithic cave paintings to modern Freemasonry, the hand appears to represent humanity and the individual, postures of supplication and healing, and our ability to act and create.  They are the powerful doers and shapers of human culture.  And they are absent, perhaps even tied up, for the serene Hanged One.  It is a time to give up doing and striving, to surrender to a different rhythm.

While the hands are missing, the feet are in the exulted position.  There is no entry for feet in The Dictionary of Symbols nor is there any information in my Dictionary of Dreams.  The feet that connect us to earth, that carry us faithfully, that most of us take for granted don’t seem to merit much mention.  But for the Hanged One the feet are freed from their usual work to commune with the heavens.

The crossed legs are reminiscent of the Marseille Emperor, but contrary to the Emperor’s posture the right leg is now crossed behind the left.  The conscious, willed action of the Emperor here gives way to a more intuitive and accepting approach.  In her book on the Haindl Tarot, Rachel Pollack writes, The Hanged Man “sacrifices the Emperor’s desire to dominate the Earth, and he reverses his previous beliefs.”  With the world turned upside down, there is no longer a need to maintain what seemed important under upright rules and structures.

The head, of course, is now surrounded and received by the earth.  And with the Emperor energy of building and domination at rest, the crown can open up to receive the wisdom of earth.  Heaven is no longer the ultimate goal, but rather a deep listening to the earth we walk over every day.

I’ve been having a little Facebook conversation with James Wells on his Tarot for Manifestation page about how the Tarot’s nature is integrative and keeps calling us to pay attention to our whole selves.  The Hanged Man teaches us this integration through inversion and the subsequent re-orienting of perspective and importance.  It is a bit of trickster way of teaching that Tarot so frequently offers us.

Card 1:  What is some aspect of your life you’ve taken for granted that it would be beneficial to honor at this time?

Card 2: How can I do that honoring?

Legs –

Card 3:  In what area of my life have I been applying will and domination to meet challenges but need a different approach for the good of all?

Card 4: What new approach could I take to this challenge?

Hidden Hands:

Card 5:  What do I just need to stop doing to advance on move forward on my journey?

Card 6:  What can help me to stop?

Head in the Earth:

Card 7:  How does the earth receive me?

Card 8:  What message does earth have for me at this time?

Card 9:  How can I continue to commune with the earth?

We journeyed to meet the Hermit on December 14^th on one of the longest nights of the year, the nights still descending into lengthening darkness.  The glow of his lantern was most welcome and reminded us that even as we take time out to be in stillness and the dark, we will be called to return and share with others the light found there.

On Solstice eve, the 21^st, the Wheel was a most appropriate theme for the turning of the sun back to lengthening days.  Although most of the guided visualizations for Journey into the Tarot are inspired by Marcia Macino’s Rider-Waite-Smith focused meditations, the image of the Gaian Wheel opened a way for a visit to the Sacred Grove that Exists in Time Out of Time.  The old was released and new visions invited.

Now we have arrived at the last week of the year to find Justice waiting for us.  Although the central imagery focuses our immediate attention on balance, the law, and cause and effect, there is an invitation below these foreground themes to seek greater self-knowledge and step into greater responsibility for the course of our lives.

At the end of the year, I undertake an annual review, looking back through my Sacred Journey Journal to identify patterns, goals achieved and left undone, and the surprise gifts of the unexpected.  I’ve blogged about my experiences here before and in the past few years I’ve been adding things to my process inspired by Joanna Powell Colbert and Chris Guillebeau.

This year I am recognizing this as the work of Justice in that foundational sense of increasing my self-knowledge and taking responsibility for what I am creating.  This is the underpinning for creating an ever more balanced and integrated life in 2012.

As is quite usual for me, it is Rachel Pollack who is a source for this deeper thinking about the cards.  In Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, she writes:

“The Wheel of Fortune represents a vision of a person’s life: the events, who you are, what you are made of yourself.  Justice indicates an understanding of that vision.  The way to understanding lies in responsibility. …  [W]hen we accept that every event in our lives has helped to form our characters, and that in the future we will continue to create ourselves through our actions, then the sword of wisdom cuts through the mystery. 

Further by accepting responsibility for ourselves we paradoxically free ourselves from the past.  Like Buddha remembering all his lives, we can only get loose from the past by becoming conscious of it.  Otherwise we repeat past behaviors.  This is why Justice belongs at the center of our lives.”

I began my year with visions and goals.  In these days of my annual review, I seek the assistance of the sword of truth to assess my progress, to learn about myself through the successes and challenges of the year; and prepare the way for what will come in the new year.

May Justice provide for you, too, guidance and insight at the end of the year.  What does she invite you to do or reflect on in these last days of 2011?

[Note:  The Hermit and Justice are from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot and the Wheel is from the Gaian Tarot.  Used with permission.]

I love to build reflective activities into these days and a favorite activity these past couple of years has been to gather with a group of people to do a Wheel of the Year spread.  This past Saturday, I was able to do it with a large and lovely group of people at the Massachusetts Tarot Society.   

My spread is inspired by the seasonal awareness that springs from the Celtic and Pagan tradition and includes cards for lessons of season and how to meet them.  This handout, Wheel of the Year 12.17.11 , presents the whole spread and offers suggestions for how to work with it throughout the year.   And as you may already heard (I talk about it alot!), the Gaian Tarot Wheel is my favorite Tarot image for the Wheel and so it had to accompany this post!

Tools for Lifelong Tarot Learning will ground you in Tarot basics as well as give you tools and techniques for your continued exploration of Tarot as a tool for personal development, spiritual exploration, creativity enhancement, and discerning the unfolding patterns of life. Sessions are from 6 – 8pm on the 10th, 17th, and 24th of January; hold the 31st for a snow day! Sessions may be taken individually but sign up for the whole series for just $70. Pre-registration required through Groundings (Call 413-320-4919 or e-mail: information@GroundingsLLC.com).

Creating a Spine of Meaning: This is a foundational session for the whole series and can be taken as a stand-alone class. No Tarot experience required! In this session, participants will:

• practice accessing their intuition as a way into the cards;
• get an introduction to the Tarot’s origins and influences (but a very brief one!);
• see how the Tarot’s structure provides a support for developing your personal spine of meaning for the Tarot;
• find resources and continued activities for deepening your Tarot study;
• leave with an information-packed workbook, worksheets for capturing card meanings, and “homeplay” assignments.

The emphasis will be on understanding and developing meanings for the individual cards.

Date: Tuesday, January 10th, 6-8pm * Cost: $30

Encountering the Tarot: Participants must have taken Creating a Spine of Meaning or have permission from the instructor to participate. In this session, participants will:

• share their developing personal understanding of card meanings;
• be introduced to practices for deepening intuitive and intellectual understanding of the cards on a daily, weekly, seasonal, and/or yearly basis;
• experience a guided visualization journey into a Tarot card.

The emphasis will be on practices for developing a deeper relationship with the Tarot as an intuitive tool and guide into mystery.

Date: Tuesday, January 17th, 6-8pm * Cost: $25

Reading for Self and Others: Participants must have taken Creating a Spine of Meaning or have permission from the instructor to participate. In this session, participants will:

• be introduced to popular spreads used for Tarot readings;
• practice making connections between cards in a spread;
• discuss Tarot reading ethics;
• read for each other.

The emphasis will be on experiential learning as we spend most of the night reading for each other and looking for patterns in the cards.

Date: Tuesday, January 24th, 6-8pm * Cost: $25

Pre-Registration Required! Call 413-320-4919 or e-mail: information@GroundingsLLC.com

Della began the Journey into the Tarot sessions with an impressive self-awareness of how her mind works and talked about its tendency toward busyness, which would seemingly get in the way of her moving through the prompts of the guided meditation.  She’s been carefully observing her mind as we’ve gone through these first 6 sessions.

Arwen joined us for a second journey and was surprised that she didn’t remember anything between the first few minutes of the grounding and balancing of the chakras and the bell ringing to signify that the meditation has ended.  She wondered where she had gone!  But she said that she knew she was not sleeping as she felt alert and energized. She described feeling “complete” and a sense of “wholeness.”

We who remembered the specifics of the visualization laughed because the focus had been on connecting with a guide to heal anything that felt fractured or disconnected within and then meeting one’s inner masculine and feminine selves to see their gifts integrated.  What she was sensing reflected the meditation’s gifts of that healing and integration.

We discussed our meditations experiences further.

Arwen spoke of how meditation is a growth area in her spiritual practice.  Though she believes and has spoken of how everyone has a different experience, she’s carried her own expectations of what should be seen – and, yes, “seeing” as the ideal has been the expectation of her conscious mind.  But this meditation experience moved her to think differently about meditation and what it yields.  (Arwen’s words struck a chord with me because she was mirroring my very own statements and expectations.)  Della talked of how her experience over the six meditations has allowed her to work with her mind in a different way.  She used to beat back the quick thoughts and ideas that came as she listened to the meditations prompts, but now she lets them come, sometimes floating by and sometimes providing just what she needs.

This discussion stirred within me that knowing that comes when experience and the mind align, snapping into place to create a point of strength for holding a totality of thought, intuition, body experience, and gut insight.  Then these seemly separate ways of knowing loose their edges and become part of an integrated and whole moment of deep insight.

From now on, I’ll be working more as a partner with the mind during meditations.  I’ll be saying the same words, “Don’t judge what comes in the meditation,” but I’ll be doing it from that deeper place. I’ll suggest letting go of the expectations of the mind so that participants can open up to flow of what comes, but also to remember that the mind is not the enemy.  Thoughts that are not needed now can be allowed to float by; there is no need to fight them, stamp on them, try to erase them.  After all, they may be needed later to come to greater understanding of the experience and its gifts.

We also can turn to the Tarot for help in this befriending of the mind because: 1.) in its very structure with the 4 minor suits we see a partnership of mind, body, emotions, and passion/action, and 2.) it loves to receive our questions!  Here is a spread for those working on their meditation practice in particular to try:

• What is the gift(s) my conscious mind wants to offer me now?
• In what area of my life can I let my _____  (you may want to insert an adjective to focus on a particular function of the mind such as discerning, evaluating, judging) mind rest?
• How can I better partner with my mind/thinking capacities?

To find out more about Journey into the Tarot see my Teaching page.