Tarot Counseling with Ruth and Charque

The Tarot Star is about direction, guidance, following your path, being true to the highest that you know, constantly adjusting your mind upward. The Star is the reference point for your life, your lodestar. The Rider Waite Star Lady has her right foot on water, not in it, showing faith and trust in Higher Power to sustain her, the symbolism of walking on water and not getting mired by the problems and challenges of the world. The Wildwood Pole Star pictures a person emerging from the forest where the Star is harder to see. But the Traveler has come through and has not lost his way in the dark woods. The Legacy of the Divine Tarot pictures the Star Lady soaring above a shattered city that has experienced the forceful energy of the previous card of the Tower. When the going is rough, you keep your eye on your Star and trust your inner guidance to guide you on your way. The Star is hope, promise guidance, a light that will carry you forward. Reversed in reading, then you are leaning on things that don't support, going in wrong directions, following wrong people or advice and you may well feel that you have lost your way.

In Tarot the Hanged Man (with its various depictions) is about seeing the big picture or the multidimensional, spiritual whole, and not just the physical world. Upright, the Hanged man is meditative visionary and wise; reversed he is anxious, driven, addicted, literally full of hang-ups because he lacks an understanding of the whole. The traditional Hanged Man image of the T-Cross, or any cross for that matter, pictures the meeting place of the Big Multidimensional Universe with physical experience, not an easy experience if you are locked into your beliefs, judgements and prejudices. Any lifetime is part of a Soul Tree (or Tree of Life as Qabalah calls it). Obviously not all life times come in equal, but they are ALL part of a Living Tree. And the Forest of Humanity is made up out of diverse, individual and living Trees, which is where the Mirror comes in. Everything on the Earth is reflection of higher or lower energies that we mirror back and forth to each other. Obviously we need to wake up and become conscious of these truths if we are not to destroy each other.

2 months into our collective Chariot Year and how are we and the World moving forward? Yes, the Chariot is about movement, progress and evolution (we hope), and decisions. The Chariot is an active energy. It is always pulled by 2 Steeds and always Light and Dark, which requires continual adjustment, in order to stay on the road or path. At a deeper level it is a balance between the Conscious Self and the Shadow Self. Otherwise, the Shadow Self rules with either too much inflated ego and riding rough-shod through life, or too much deflated ego and fear and doubt, which makes decisions and movement difficult. Whether you are careening into another's lane or letting another careen into yours, it requires boundaries, for which you are in charge. On the World front, well, Jo Biden went charioting off to Ukraine as a signal to Putin to get out of Ukraine's lane. A train derailed at the OH/PA border, causing toxic contamination. The locals have to stand up for clean air and water in their lane, so confronting the train industry's profit margin which has come careening into their home space. And Congress, with a slim Republican margin in the House and a slim Democratic margin in the Senate, is of course wrangling about how we move forward (whichever side you see as Light and Dark!) Supposedly, when chariot racing, the ancient Romans put knives on their chariots to keep their competitors from colliding into them and pushing them off the track.

The myth of Phaeton driving his father, the Sun God Helios’s chariot across the sky is very telling, both as Tarot imagery and as a premonition of things to come. Phaeton is described as a callow, immature youth who nagged Dad to drive his chariot until Dad gave in. But Phaeton was not up to the job and lost control of the horses, so that they came careening down to Earth, threatening to set Earth on fire. The Tarot Chariot says manage your horses so that they do not run away with you. The Sun card says watch out for the energy of the Sun so that it does not backfire, burn up or burn out. The Sun card also says don’t get so exuberant that you gloss things over and fail to see what is going in the shadows, or behind the wall on the Sun card. The same can be said for “the dark horse” on the Chariot card. You are advised to manage BOTH steeds, the conscious and shadow, or the outer and the inner, in your forward momentum. Both the Sun and the Chariot are high energy, power cards which we have to work with both personally and collectively before we burn up the Earth and make it uninhabitable for us and Nature.

The Ten of Pentacles: the card of the "good inheritance" at all levels; the gifts of life; your own inner gifts and talents that you bring to life; the gifts and knowledge that you draw from your day to day life experiences of family, relationship, work and so on. On the Rider Waite deck (in this case the Universal Waite Deck) the ten pentacles are laid out in the formation of the Qabalistic Tree of life to show you the value of experience in life as spiritual teacher. "As above so below." Your "home" is on higher plains, in the heavens as you might say. But your experiences in life are ultimately taking your home. If the card is reversed, you are either not seeing your inheritance or not using it which can so to speak "bankrupt" your life at all levels, making you feel deprived and negative about the situations surrounding you.

The Tarot Devil enslaves through fear.

On the subject of vision, here are two Tarot cards (the Robin Wood Ace of Swords and the Osho Zen Tarot counterpart "Consciousness) that are all about learning to focus and see more clearly, through the practice of meditation or other mindfulness techniques. We say that the Upright Ace of Swords is about learning to face a challenge, understand it and work with it. It combines the feminine aspect of vision (element of Water) with the masculine aspect of action (element of Fire). By focusing inwardly on an issue, you are more likely to see what is in front of you and how to deal with it, and what, if anything, to do about it, how to cut through an issue and carve out a path ahead. Hence the concept of Victory that is pictured in an Upright Ace of Swords. It is the Victory of the clear Mind (element of Air).

Just to emphasise that the "initiation" process (of the Hanged Man of last posting) can be exciting , if not a little threatening to our collective concept of "reality".

"There is no end to our environment. In your terms there would be no lack of space or time in which to operate. Now this would put tremendous pressure on any consciousness without proper background and development. We do not have one simple, cozy universe in which to hide. We are still alert to other quite alien systems of reality that flash on the very outskirts of consciousness as we know it. There are far more various kinds of consciousness than there are physical forms, each with its own patterns of perception, dwelling within its own camouflage system. Yet all of these have inner knowledge of the reality that exists within all camouflage and that composes any reality, by whatever name it is called." —Seth Speaks, Chapter 2: Session 514 📖

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The Tarot Hanged Man is about perspective, vision, seeing life from a higher perspective. We have always referred to the Hanged Man as "the Ultimate Buddhist" card, where you learn to become "the watcher and the watched" of your own life in particular, and of life in general. It is THE card of initiation which is why I liked the following (exerpts) from "Serpent in the Sky" by John |Anthony West (he is not writing about the Tarot Hanged Man but about Initiation): "The aim of all initiatic religions is the same the world over and always has been: to guide man from his Natural state of consciousness (which is called "illusion" or "sleep") to a Higher state (called "illumination" or "the Kingdom".) This Higher state is,
within the context of the Natural world, "Unnatural".
And further: "It is impossible to PROVE to the sceptic that this has any bearing upon himself or his life" (i.e. that the physical world is not the sum total of our existence, both cause and effect). We wish everyone well with this card. If you are reading this posting, you have surely begun the process of "initiation", or as West describes it "at least put one foot down upon the long road. And the further along the road, the greater and deeper the understanding."
We have been humorously calling it, i.e "the process of initiation", "getting woke!"

The lesson of polarities is a difficult one. I have seen in meditation the Path of the Hierophant as all-encompassing and multicoloured like the Rainbow. As we pass from the Emperor Year of 2020, with all of its lessons about power and victimhood, into the Hierophant Year of 2021, let us not turn into self-righteous moralizers or crazy anarchists, both narrow-minded aspects of the Hierophant. Eden Gray describes the Hierophant as "the freedom to obey or disobey." We sure saw both aspects of this at work on 1/6/2021 with the storming of the US Capitol. What an "Epiphany" for January 6th this year! As Tarot interpreters of energy, you observe and seek to understand the forces at work with an open mind, the very best aspect of the Hierophant. You are always accountable for whichever side of "freedom" you choose. The Hierophant is also about the law, which is karmic. You are answerable to and for your choices. The Hierophant deals with the structures and beliefs that uphold society and the laws or guardrails that contain it. Revolutions are necessary challenges for better or worse. Rome's Capitol was stormed by a mob that effectively ended its Republic. France celebrates the Storming of the Bastille every year on July 14th as effectively ending its absolute monarchy. The Revolt on 1/6/2021 is mostly based on propaganda and conspiracy theories, with actually sheep-like tendencies to follow (in this case Donald Trump), gullability being another aspect of the Hierophant. This brings us to a further attribute of the Hierophant: teaching and learning, and its opposite in misinformation and propaganda. THERE WILL BE MORE OF BOTH! Be well informed and wise, and seek out the best news sources you can find, and not just one. Don't just jump on the first or loudest band-waggon that goes by. Remember, Social Media has us all pegged with algorhythms!! (See Netflix's documentary "The Social Dilemma") "It" or "They" know your band waggons (or band widths) and will focus them for you. This is another fortunate/unfortunate side of the Hierophant!