Clarity of Vision and Purpose

Fountain Tarot

Today's card is The Magician. Rather than discuss the imagery of the card, I am going to explore its occult significance. I will be relying on attributions put forward by Donald Tyson. This topic is new to me so I'd appreciate comments.

Most often, The Magician is associated with the Hebrew letter bet. Bet, which also means house and begins the word for blessing, would seem to belong to The High Priestess, the temple keeper. Tyson links The Magician to the letter gimel.

Tyson's attribution immediately poses a problem. In the Zohar, the letter gimel is paired with the letter dalet. So you would conclude that The Magician (associated with gimel) and The Empress (associated with dalet) must also be a pair.

This connection is unexpected since The Magician, usually described in terms of the conscious mind, is often contrasted with the unconscious represented by The Priestess. The association of The Empress with dalet is more unexpected. Gimel is called a benefactor and dalet is called poverty. This seems counter intuitive because The Empress is the card of abundance and creativity; she is the one who nurtures all life.

When the Holy One desired to create the world, each of the letters came before Him and said, may it please You to create the world with me... The letters Dalet and Gimel entered [together]... He told them also be satisfied with being with each other, because there will always be poor men on Earth, and they should be given a benefactor. The letter Dalet is poor because it is called Dalet, from poverty (Heb. dalut), and the Gimel reciprocates as a benefactor (Heb. gomelet) to Dalet. Therefore do not leave each other, and it should suffice you that you sustain one another.

Universal Waite Tarot

(Gomelet, benefactor, is feminine here. We are used to the phrase gomel chasadim tovim-- who bestows kindly goodness-- being directed to a male divinity in the first blessing of the Amidah.)

So, the Empress has no wealth of her own and requires a benefactor. If The Magician is her benefactor, from where does he acquire the abundance that he shares with her?

Perhaps he receives it from The Priestess, the card immediately preceding him. That card's letter is bet, which means house or temple. The Empress's letter, dalet, means door. The Priestess tends the supernal temple, dwelling place of the Divine, and the Empress is the door of this world. The Magician stands between them, channeling blessings from the heavens to the Earth. The Supernal Mother, not Mother Earth, is the ultimate source "from whom all blessings flow."

The lesson of The Empress may be that we possess nothing, but what is the lesson of The Magician? Does he point to the the ultimate source of all abundance? Is he a reminder that to do our best work in the world, we must allow ourselves to be channels of a higher power?

Robin Wood Tarot

Those possibilities seem to be reflected in stance of figure in the Waite deck, his arms directing energy from the heavens to Earth. In the Fountain Tarot (top of post), the infinity symbol above the suit symbols could also be interpreted in those ways, but I am captivated by the eyes of that magician. They remind me of a recent parasha in which an older Joseph's clarity of vision helped him understand dreams, recognize his brothers, and act with the knowledge that god was guiding events.

It seems that contemplating the Kabbalistic associations to interpret the cards can be fruitful, too. My limited knowledge of Kabbalah, Hebrew, and astrology will prevent me from delving deeply into this side of tarot. So relying on the imagery of the cards to stimulate my intuition will probably remain my preferred method of reading the cards, but it is fun and interesting to pull some Judaism from the depths of my memory while playing with tarot cards. 

Esoteric Tarot

I've begun studying the occult aspects of tarot. In anticipation upcoming posts, I will try to explain the tarot attributions I'll be relying on.

The association of Hebrew letters with Tarot's Major Arcana cards was made explicit by members of the Golden Dawn in the 19th century who relied on a Jewish Kabbalistic text, the Sefer Yetzirah.

In the Sefer Yetzirah the letters alef, mem, and shin are associated with celestial air, celestial water, and celestial fire. Seven of the Hebrew letters (the six begedkefet and one guttural) are associated with seven celestial bodies. The remaining letters are associated with twelve regions of the zodiac.

The Golden Dawn applied the zodiac signs (and thus, the single letters), in their natural order, to the Major Arcana cards in their numeric order. They did not do the same with the celestial bodies (and double letters) because the symbolism of the Majors in their traditional numeric order and the symbolism of the celestial bodies (in order of their apparent speed) do not align.

To place the first astrological planet, the Moon, on the first Double letter would result in the planet the Moon being linked with the Magician. The Moon is a feminine planet, whereas the Magician is a strongly masculine trump. Similarly, the second planet... Mercury, would fall on the trump the High Priestess. This also seems incorrect. Mercury is a masculine planet, and is associated with magic, but the High Priestess is a feminine trump and is associated with mystery.

So they put Mercury first and the Moon second. (He also inverted Strength and Justice to make the numeric order of the cards match the order of the zodiac signs.)

Donald Tyson found that this wasn't ideal and changed the sequence of the Major Arcana so that the celestial bodies assigned to them would be in order from fastest to slowest: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. In his system, The High Priestess is the first card after The Fool, The Magician is the second card, Temperance is the seventh card, and the Chariot is the fourteenth.

To my mind, the warlike Archer is a much more appropriate zodiac sign for a trump of war than the Crab, particularly since chariots were used as mobile platforms for archers during war. On the other hand, feminine and nurturing Cancer seems well suited to Temperance. There is a natural yin-yang balance in the glyph of Cancer itself, which resembles the symbolism on the traditional version of the trump Temperance of two vessels linked by a stream of liquid.

In the Golden Dawn system, the Wheel of Fortune is linked to Jupiter and The Sun to the sun. Tyson disagrees with those associations.

If the natural order of the planets is to be preserved, we must assign the astrological Sun to the trump the Wheel. And what could be a more perfect fit? The Sun is the great wheel of the heavens. It has been depicted in this way in the mythology of countless cultures. It is a good deal more appropriate, symbolically, than Jupiter.

When we come to the trump the Sun, which receives the astrological planet the Sun in the Golden Dawn correspondences, we must use another planet since the Sun has been linked to the Wheel of Fortune. The obvious choice is Jupiter, termed in astrology the Greater Fortune and renowned for its beneficence, and Jupiter falls here naturally in the order of planets.

Some critics may object that the most natural planet for the trump the Sun is surely the planet the Sun. Yet, if this is so, why is it that the planet the Moon is never assigned to the trump the Moon? It seems to me that either both Sun and Moon should be linked to the trumps that bear their names, or neither should be so linked. Since the astrological Moon has never been placed on the trump the Moon, I have no reluctance to associate the trump the Sun with the planet Jupiter.

Lacking any background in esoteric studies, I can only say that Tyson's system feels right.

Tyson's re-sequencing of the Majors slightly alters the "Tarot Tableau." The Tableau is an arrangement of the Majors in three rows of seven, with The Fool above. It is purported to illustrate different levels of consciousness. At one level of consciousness, you may be experiencing Temperance, but at a higher level of consciousness, you learn the lessons of The Chariot, and at a still higher level, the lessons of The World.

My meditations on the traditional Tarot Tableau have seldom yielded significant insights. Arranging the Tableau in Tyson's sequence was immediately illuminating. The Priestess, Strength, and The Devil each address the powers of the unconscious. The Magician, Hermit, and The Tower are about our world view.

The attributions in the table above are the ones I will rely on when studying the Major Arcana. Since the concepts connecting the letters and the cards are primarily astrological, I will have to learn a little about astrology at some point. Initially, however, I will focus on the meanings of the Hebrew letters.

What the Hell is Self-Care and When Can I Get Started on the Important Stuff?

There are so many amazing and prolific bloggers.

I, on the other hand, have several draft posts that continue to stymie me. Yesterday, I surprised myself by beginning and completing a post within an hour of waking up. It included a prayer for help in creating a better life.

Altar at Kohenet website

The immediate fruit of that prayer was that I finally wrote an application to the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute. The program’s application consists of eight simple questions, but each of my earlier four drafts had been an emotional struggle that I lost. Trying to answer them is painful and I don't know why.

I hope my prayer will bear additional fruit. I have several goals for the next eleven months.

I spent half of this past year living in cheap hotels with no idea of when my aliyah visa would arrive; the physical stresses of “homelessness” eventually began to exceed even the mental stresses so I decided to sign a one-year lease for an apartment in Tucson. One goal I have for this time in Tucson is to improve my Hebrew, but there are other less easily verbalized goals. Some of them were expressed in that prayer.

I asked for community. Although I came down with another (rather serious) illness shortly after I arrived, I’ve taken advantage of some of the opportunities available here: attending several Torah study groups, accepting an invitation to a very pleasant Shabbos dinner, going to my first Heathen ritual, and volunteering to prepare and serve a Christmas dinner at a half-way house.

Unfortunately, I haven’t recovered enough to dive fully into the community. In fact, I’m still too worn out to do much of anything. (It's scary. The only time I've know someone to be this exhausted was when my father was only months away from dying.)  One of the things I mentioned in my prayer post yesterday was a new-age term that I usually eschew: self love. I also used the cliché, “You can't love and care for others unless you first love and care for yourself.”

Medieval Cat Tarot

But how much time do I have to spend caring for myself before I can start weaving my new life? The term “self care” is both annoying and overused. A hot bath now and then is all the self care that I usually need. But it’s not enough now, so perhaps learning self care needs to be one of my goals, part of the metaphorical tapestry I asked to weave.

Yesterday, I pulled a tarot card that indicates I must take (more!) time to heal. I’m not an alpha personality by any means, but spending more time in warm pajamas, only sleeping and eating, while just waiting to feel better sounds like torture.

Could it be that waiting in my pajamas is not the healing I need? Walking and hiking are two of my favorite activities and my body is aching for them. However, my energy is so low now that after an easy, twenty minutes walk, I need a couple of hours of sleep. Maybe I need to sacrifice a few hours of wakefulness each day for the sake of a pleasant walk?

The thing that drew me to Lofn’s shrine was the word “permit.” I want to be the one that grants permission for me to act. I want to permit myself to follow my path. I guess I need to permit myself to be a baby, too—and I probably need to view it is as something better than “being a baby.”

So while Lofn is "dressing the loom" for me, I’ll rest and heal. Walk and sleep.

Handmaiden of a Northern Goddess

Loom and Thread by Carl Larsson

How do I reconcile worshiping only HaShem and his Shekhinah with my awareness that other gods are real? I don't. Not "all the gods are one god" and the gods of other tribes are worth talking to.

I've been working with just one exercise in a book by Raven Kaldera and Galina Krasskova. Raven maintains an online shrine dedicated to the gods of his Northern Tradition.

An aspiration this morning took me to Raven's shrine to light a candle to a goddess. Who are Frigg's handmaids, I wondered. The word "permission" drew me and I learned the story of the goddess Lofn. Her story was lost to people until Linda Demissy asked the Handmaidens to share it with her.

It's a good story, not just for star crossed lovers, but for anyone seeking "right love." You should read it here.

This is a prayer Linda wrote for those who seek Lofn's counsel.

I am the child in chains, chafing to be free.

I am the woman wounded, by the wrath of my chosen.

I am the kid expecting a beating, cannot run or fight.

I am the boy of bravery, become a bully to feel strong.

I am the wife beaten to death, wondering why as I die.

I am the heart humiliated, who has no hope of help.

I am the one repeatedly raped, what did I do wrong?

I am the son hiding his bruises, so shame will stay secret.

I am the victim of violence, violated in my trust,

Swollen red, silently screaming “walk away!”

Walk away from anger, walk away from hurt.

Walk away when I would shame my ancestors.

I will not lash out, at my love or myself.

I will cry for my hurt, hug my own scars.

Ghosts of my bullies, to your graves be bound,

I release you now, sink to rise nevermore.

By Hela’s grace, may I be reborn.

By Lofn’s cleansing, I reclaim my heart. 

The forbidden love is love of self. Seeking "right love" means recognizing abusers and not confusing them with friends. At the risk of a cliché, you can't love and care for others unless you first love and care for yourself. 

Before I lit a real candle and the virtual candle at Lofn's shrine, I wrote these words:  

Lofn, permit me and aid me.

Spin the yarn. Dress the loom and place my hands upon it. Teach me to reweave my life with strong threads. Warp and weft. Confidence and competence. Shuttle and shot. Friendship and community. Cross and draft. Priestesshood and service.

Help me discard a veil of shame and silence. Guide me to weave a garment for dancing in vineyards. May it be the colors of gratitude, playfulness, and laughter. May its fringes remind me of my path.

I will offer comfort to the hurt and encourage speech in those who have been silenced. I will name the bullies and sing the praises of those who defeat them.

I will remember you, Lofn, and I will bless the divine presence.

A New Beginning

The stress of the last few months took its toll; shortly after I moved into my (very nice) apartment in Tucson, I had to go to an urgent care clinic. The antibiotics have helped quite a bit, but I'm very worn out and not accomplishing much.

Yesterday, I attended a really good Torah study at one of the Conserative shuls. One of the last things we discussed was Joseph's wife, Asnat, and why the rabbis decided she must have been Dinah's daughter. All of Israel's children needed to be in Egypt for redemption, so the two "half-tribes" of Ephraim and Menashe "must" be the grandsons of Dinah as well as the sons of Joseph. 

(I'd never noticed that the word Yisrael includes the first letter of each matriarch's and partriarch's name.) 

In the afternoon, I ran some important errands and unpacked the fleishig dishes. It could have been a productive evening... instead, after setting up my wifi, I surfed for many unproductive hours. Slept late this morning and somehow accomplished nothing today except the purchase of a table to use as a desk. Just that little bit has worn me out so I will wait until next Tuesday to see what the Talmud study group is like.

There are three more Torah study groups and I plan to attend. They meet on Wednesday and Shabbat.

The rabbi at one other shul invited me to join them for services this erev Shabbat. Yesterday, someone warned me they are "very" Reform and continued on to one of those superiority rants, so I plan to like that community very much.

And this coming Shabbat morning, another Reform shul is having services and a hike in Sabino Canyon.

Haven't seen much of Tucson yet, but I already know I'll like it a lot! People are friendly.

Chanukah has been a self-dedication for me.

I've decided to spend this year pursuing things that may seem impractical: studying Hebrew, learning Torah, community service, writing, hiking, and Kohenet training.  

November 27

Last Friday, preparing for Shabbat, I put my pre- and post-Deuteronomist Judaisms side by side. I wonder how my altar will change over the coming year.

December 13