Lughnasa and the Lughnasa Moon
Thursday gratefuls: Shortness of breath. Prostate cancer. Vascular disease. Post-polio syndrome. As long as I have them, I’m alive. Kate, always Kate. Rigel. The slows this morning. Kep, snuggled last night. That steak and Romaine salad I made. Cooking. HVAC appt. next week.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tarot
Tarot card drawn: Queen of Pentacles*
Excited about my call with Social Security today. Shows you what my life is like now, I guess. No, really. I want to get this one finished and those SS checks fatter and getting deposited. They want me to prove my marriage to Kate. Fair enough. Ordered a copy of the marriage license two weeks ago from Ramsey County. No joy yet.
Eye exam yesterday. Every six months for glaucoma. Dr. Repine, who is quick, but solid, said: “Stable. Everything’s stable. Your pressures are good. The retina photograph shows the same status as 2019. Stable.” They always look for those holes Jane West drilled in my eye. “Patent.” Considering the previous fate of cataract and glaucoma sufferers, I’m glad to have good ophthalmological care.
Tarot and Kabbalah class yesterday. 52 cards. 52 weeks in a year. 4 suits of 13 cards each. A quarter of a year, a season. Rabbi Jamie’s correlation of pips and royals with the Tree of Life.
This class. Surprisingly good. Digging deeper into the archetypal, the daily introspection offered. Finding the tarot and the kabbalistic inflection of it provocative, evocative.
Beginning to peel back the layers. The cards, the Tree of Life, the Torah, poetry are all mirrors in which the subconscious and the unconscious can, occasionally, be seen.** Dreams, too, of course. All symbols, numbers, art can serve the same mirroring function, pushing us to access matters we’ve hidden, suppressed or repressed, or matters that exist in the pool of symbols Jung calls the collective unconscious.
Not all serve us equally. Some might find the Bible essential when held lightly, not as a rule book, but as a mythic text about humanity’s inner journey. Others, astrology. Others, Mary Oliver or Rainer Marie Rilke or William Yeats. Jungian analysis.
Right now I’m discovering that the Tarot cards work for me. Don’t know whether I could ever read for others. Maybe. Could be fun to try. I do know that when I pull the cards, consider them, check possible interpretations I find myself enlightened, an unseen portion of my psyche made visible to me. Not unlike the Johari window.
The Queen of Pentacles: Pentacles correlate to Earth, to the Body, to action, and to nefesh, the soul that we are, as a whole person. The Queen represents the anima of those correlations. She is mother Earth. She is the body. Her actions bring us close to mother Earth, reassure and nurture us.
This morning my mirror showed me independent Charlie, living within family and community, but on my own. A calm and balanced life can come from the underworld experience of grief. Grief plows through the subconscious and the unconscious, turning up furrows. Oh, love hurts. Yes, indeed. Love sustains. yes. Kate sustained me, nurtured me, loved me. Now I have to incorporate that Kate into my own psyche so she can still sustain, nurture, and love me.
Death, where is thy sting? In loss. In silence. In absence. Kate’s no longer at the table doing her crossword, writing checks to pay bills, laughing with me, kissing me. God, I miss her. Yes. She was my Queen of Pentacles, a grounding, nurturing force.
Now I have to consider that any subconscious or unconscious doubts I have about my own worth, my love worthiness, my creativity must dissolve under the Queen’s reign in the court of my soul. Why? Because Kate saw me as worthy, creative, lovable. And that challenges any doubts early illness, parental conflicts, relational slights, alcoholism raised.
So for now, I’m a follower of the way of the Tarot. A western I-Ching. Still gotta learn to throw the yarrow sticks. Maybe next year.
*”…the Queen of Pentacles suggests that it is important to you to live independently, with a stable income and with enough time and space to also nurture your loved ones. You may be trying to strike a better balance between your home and work lives, giving it your all in both domains. At the same time, you find time for yourself and prioritise ‘me’ time in between all of your other commitments.
This Queen asks you to maintain a compassionate, nurturing, practical and down-to-earth attitude when dealing with others and your present circumstances. Focus on creating a calm and balanced life for yourself. Be resourceful and practical, dealing with issues as they arise using straightforward solutions that fix the problem with minimal fuss.” biddy tarot
**”If you’re to better understand and accept yourself, as well as the concealed motivations governing maladaptive behaviors, it’s critical that you access the internal forces dictating them. There’s no way that you can reach your full potential until you gain entry into much of what exists below your awareness—that is, make both the unconscious and subconscious conscious—and, at last, come to positive terms with what, unknowingly, has been sabotaging you.” Psychology Today
