Egipcios Kier * 43 Delusion

This card frustrated me for several days. Its title seemed to dictate how I should interpret the image, making it difficult to see anything beyond the obvious. Only after sitting with it for a while did I begin to wonder whether delusion and awakening might sometimes stand surprisingly close together.

The central figure is a nearly naked woman dancing--or perhaps running--with her arms raised. At first she appears intoxicated or unbalanced. Yet the sistrum hanging behind her, an instrument associated with the goddess Hathor, suggests that she may instead be participating in a sacred ritual. Is she caught in confusion, or is she reaching toward the divine? The card refuses to answer.

Stuart Kaplan emphasizes the darker possibilities. He associates the card with delusion, addiction, irrationality, and emotional disorder. He even suggests that the creature at the bottom of the card may represent Seth, whose later mythology came to symbolize chaos and disorder.

Nelise Carbonare Vieira, however, connects the card with the traditional Eight of Cups, a card of walking away from what no longer nourishes the soul. That correspondence offers another way of seeing the image. Perhaps the woman's frantic movement is not the problem itself. Perhaps it is the last moment before she leaves an illusion behind.

The line between spiritual ecstasy and self-deception can be surprisingly thin. We can mistake wishful thinking for revelation, fear for intuition, or excitement for wisdom. Yet we can also become so afraid of being deceived that we refuse genuine moments of inspiration.

Perhaps the invitation of this card is neither to embrace every vision nor to reject every mystery. It is to cultivate discernment.

Sometimes the first step out of delusion is simply the willingness to ask, "What if I have misunderstood?"