195. Six de Bâtons

The first few of weeks of 2014 have been hit and miss. Aside from a handful of social outings, I’ve been hermited away for the most part. There’ve been several close calls with jobs and a couple of interviews, but no luck so far. Not the best way to start the year, especially when the previous one was so dismal.

I’ve decided to make a change for this year in blogging. Since the inception of this site, most of my posts have had one-word titles. The idea was to draw from Word-of-the-Day sites, like Dictionary.com’s, and use that word as a guide for processing thoughts and experiences.

Lately, I’ve been engaging more with Tarot. I posted about a little this last time, but the more I work with the deck, the meanings of each of the cards in the Major and Minor arcana, and the different spreads used in Tarot readings, the more I’m interested in their potential application, especially from a Jungian perspective. The basis of Jungian psychology is the view that the human unconscious is largely unreachable except through the symbolic world of dream, myth, and folklore—the world of archetypes, “universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct” (Wikipedia).

For example, the twenty-two cards of the Major (or Greater) Arcana. We see The Fool at the beginning of his journey, full of hope, potential, and ready to learn the lessons on his way through the Major Arcana. This seems to correspond to the archetype of The Child, who (according to many Jungians) is present in all humans throughout their life. The Empress represents fertility, beauty, nature, and abundance—corresponding to the “Anima” archetype, “the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female” (according to Joseph Campbell). The Hermit represents soul-searching, introspection, and inner guidance, which corresponds to the “Wise Old Man” archetype.

As I do my own readings, and let others read for me, I use the cards (as I said in my previous post) as more a Rorschach test than for divination. Each card and its position in the spread has a significance. As querent, I listen for anything that resonates on the psychological level.

• The Star reversed, for example, might suggest that I’m dwelling on negative issues and thoughts, to the point of them derailing any progress or healing that I’m making.
• The reversed Ten of Swords might suggest that I’m still carrying around old wounds from past hurts, and that I still haven’t dealt with them.
• The Page of Pentacles could suggest that, contrary to what I might feel or believe, I have the necessary skills and experience to succeed—but need to have clear goals and a plan laid out to put it all into motion.

These are all true things for me right now. But they’re not true because some mystical powers-that-be orchestrated how I shuffled. They’re true because the meaning could always be true. The question is: is the meaning true right now? Sometimes a card is just a card.

So my plan for the next couple of months is to go through the Tarot deck, card by card, and using a randomly drawn card as the basis for self-examination.

This afternoon, I drew the Six of Wands, from the Lesser, “Minor” arcana.

The Six of Wands depicts a man wearing a victory wreath around his head, riding a white horse through a crowd of cheering people. The white horse represents strength, purity, and the success of an adventure, and the crowd of people demonstrates public recognition for the man’s achievements. The wand held by the rider also has a wreath tied to it, further emphasizing success and achievement. He is not afraid to show off to others what he has accomplished in his life so far, and even better, the people around him cheer him along. (Source: BiddyTarot.com)

Wands are typically associated with creativity, with the Pythagorean element of fire, and the Jungian function of intuition. According to one site, “Wands are the creative application of what we experience in the world to make our lives more enjoyable.”

The number six in Tarot typically represents a journey into harmony. There are two parts to this journey. The first is departure. The second is the journey itself. In the process of getting from one place to another, one must leave something behind. In finding my “true” self, I had to leave behind the heterosexual expectations that my family and community had for me, as well as the belief in God that I’d “inherited,” that connected me to my family and everything that was home.

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?

Much of the significance of each card in the Minor Arcana has to do with what comes before, and that’s where meaning can be found. In the Five of Wands, five men are playing or sparring with their wands (oh, the subtext), each going in a different direction, but with no contact. It typically signifies competition, strife, confusion, or disagreement. In the Six of Wands, that confusion has been overcome through focused work to achieve harmony.

I tend to focus on defeats and obstacles rather than successes and progress. At the present, worries about finances and employment (and getting my fracking landlord to fix the fracking hole in my fracking ceiling) have been sapping my creativity. However, in the past few weeks, I finished revising my one-act opera and orchestrated it. I wrote an article published today about my first Christmas back with my Evangelical family in two years that my editor called “one of the best essays I’ve read in a long time.” And even though my grad school applications were rejected this time, I’m getting back on course to aligning my career with my passions and what I’m truly good at.

The message I see here: Look at what you want, not at where you are, not at what you’ll be.

194. sozzled

I have tried to start this one several times, the first attempt taking place around 11:50 PM on Tuesday. The reason it’s proving so difficult is that there’s a lot to say about 2013, and also not very much.

Good things have happened in the last year. I made a tremendous amount of headway in therapy towards overcoming my past. I made a number of very good friends, two of whom I’m house sitting for this December and the first few weeks of January. For better or worse, I reconnected with my family. We saw enormous gains in marriage equality and LGBT rights in the United States, particularly in my home state of Minnesota. I finally decided to make a change and pursue graduate study in music composition.

A lot pretty bad things have happened too. In March I broke up with my boyfriend of nine months as it had been clear to me for some time that we had vastly divergent goals in life and just weren’t right for each other. I got laid off at the end of June from my temp job where I’d been for fifteen months, and spent the next five months looking for work. Even this last job wrapped up a week and a half early. I applied to three different graduate schools, in the process waking every single demon of self-doubt, self-loathing, and depression that’s plagued me over the years. Then a few weeks ago I got a rejection letter from one of those schools.

Last week, for fun, I decided to do a Tarot reading for myself as an exercise in unconscious self-examination. Mind you, I don’t believe in mysticism. I view Tarot almost as an analytical tool, like an ink blot test, the random layout of cards in certain positions telling the “Seeker” a story that they can draw a message from, like we do with any other media.

Using the “Tree of Life” spread (so called because the position and significance of the cards follows a symbol from the Kabbalah), these are the cards I drew:

1. The High Priestess
2. Five of Swords, reversed
3. Knight of Swords
4. Ten of Cups
5. Seven of Pentacles, reversed
6. Ace of Swords
7. Four of Wands
8. King of Pentacles, reversed
9. The Fool, reversed
10. Strength, reversed

A friend of mine did a quick interpretation and had a few insights. Without going into too much detail, the main thrust of what he had to say was that there’s been quite a bit of misfortune lately, and those dark times aren’t entirely over yet, but that there’s still time to avert disaster. “You’ve suffered enough setbacks that it’s not letting you make the most of your talents,” he said, “a lot of wasted energy and lack of focus.” Basically, I need to change how I’m doing and thinking about a lot of things—in other words, adapt or continue in the same patterns that lead nowhere good.

The past couple of months I have been pretty withdrawn, at times almost hermetical. Aside from a few gatherings or going to work, I’ve taken to shutting myself away from the world and from people. Mostly this is because, as an introvert, other human beings exhaust me, especially in large numbers. But there’s also a darker reason. Part of it was being unemployed for so long; of sending in application after application and either hearing nothing or getting rejection notes. Then there’s the mountain of rejections I’ve had with my music, and feeling a total failure in that department. There’s also my love life, which has been a virtual wasteland.

I tend to internalize all of these things, interpreting the underlying proverbial message of the universe into pithy statements such as: You’re A Failure. You’re A Massive Disappointment. Nobody Wants You.

So I tend to shut myself away, terrified that people are going to see through me to the failure underneath. Whenever I do venture out, I interpret glances or lack of interaction as evidence of judgement, that even my friends think I’m not worth their time, that they’re all thinking what a horrible disappointment I am.

On New Years Eve, I see status updates from friends on Facebook and Twitter, going to parties and celebrating the coming year, often with significant others. There were several parties I could have gone to, but I couldn’t bring myself to go out. I didn’t want to be reminded yet again that I’m single, lonely, seemingly incapable of connecting with others. The roads were shitty, it was about eight degrees below zero, and I’d have to shut the dogs I’m looking after up in their room. So I stayed home, watched Spirited Away, wishing that such stories of being whisked away to some other world to discover one’s secret inner strength were possible. But they’re not.

It is this kind of thinking that needs to change in the coming year. It’s difficult when so many of the signs seem to point to what I fear is true being the case, but negative thinking tends to beget negative outcomes. For good or ill, we often write self-fulfilling prophesies.

I also need to be more social in the coming year. I’m always surprised, and even feel a little dubious, whenever someone says that I’ve been missed. “You can’t really miss me,” I think. “What is there to miss?”

Mostly, I just feel like a poor excuse for an adult, and with that comes a deep sense of shame. I spent so much time developing my musical talents that I neglected to develop other abilities, like self-discipline, learning to relate and talk to others, etc. etc. Maybe these expectations are mere fictions and most people feel a similar lacking within themselves.

2013 was one of the saddest and loneliest years that I can remember, and I certainly don’t want a repeat of it. It’s going to take a major change in thinking to make course corrections, but it’s also probably going to require community and the assistance of friends.