Lughnasa and the Chesed Moon
Thursday gratefuls: The lost conversation. Thanks, Benzo. Tarot and Kabbalah, learning at a deep level. Bones. Bone density. Dexa scans. Finding Sally Jobe. Horchatas. Voodoo donuts. Hot dogs, New York Style. Orgovyx. Circulating.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Tarot
Tarot: Hanged Man, #12 of the Major Arcana
It came! It came! Just like my Red Rider BB gun! Orgovyx. A pill to rule them all. All them damned cancer cells. No, not really. A pill to starve them all. Those damned cancer cells. Yes, I’m dropping my testosterone once again, by as much as 93%. Food for prostate cancer infested cells. Fedex. Everything comes by delivery these days.
The medical churn has begun again; this time with me at the epicenter. Go here. Find this place. Get this test. Wait for these results. Then go here. Go there. Rinse. Repeat.
Exhausting. Driving. Waiting. Wondering. Days given over to the medical-pharmaceutical complex. Sometimes it feels like agency on my part, sometimes it feels like the loss of agency. Confusing.
Spoke with my cousin Diane. She’s a good listener and familiar with the medical scene, her mother a charge nurse before her death. I need the connection, the time being seen. Always, of course, but more so now. We all do, yes. I’m just acknowledging that need.
Next week presentations in Tarot and Kabbalah. We learned the Celtic Cross spread in class yesterday. Rabbi Jamie asked me about its link to Celtic thought, “Charlie’s our Celtic expert.” I said I hadn’t thought about it.
Well. Now I am. The Great Wheel. 8 seasons. Midwest. 4 seasons. Winter=Samain-Midwinter, Spring=Imbolc-Ostara, Summer=Beltane-Summer, Fall=Lughnasa-Mabon. Kabbalah: 4 worlds Assiyah=physical, Yetzirah=emotion, Briyah=conception, Atzilut=connection. Four directions and Six (up, down). Four winds. Four elements.
The traditional presentation of the 4 seasons and the four worlds is two dimensional. The 4 seasons happen in linear time, the winter of 2021. The four worlds go up in a ladder on the tree of life from Malkut=Assiyah to Keiter=Atzilut.
Rabbi Jamie has suggested that the tree of life is better envisioned as a circle, perhaps even a sphere. That’s because the relationships between and among the sephirot are dynamic, bursting with energy going from one to the other and back again. Nothing is higher or lower.
As in the Great Wheel. No season comes first. The seasons need each other, feed into each other, create problems and solutions for each other.
More. We could overlay the four worlds on the great wheel. I would do it this way: Assiyah=Spring, Yetzirah=Summer, Briyah=conception, Winter=Atzilut. You might choose different linkages, but in a sense it doesn’t matter since both represent energy moving from one form into another, then back. Sort of like E=MC2.
This last idea has the effect of overlaying the tree of life onto the great wheel. Or, vice versa. But, only if the Tree is circular.
In spite of the risk of way overloading the boat I’m going to throw in a bit of Taoism, too. With wu wei we follow the tao rather than forcing it. We bend with the transformation reality brings to us, adapting, leaning into it. This feels very sephirotic and great wheelish to me.
The seasons come and go; we live in them with coats and shorts and hats and gloves. We adapt ourselves to the growing season, to the fallow season. Our soul’s journey may seem physical here in Malkut, but the soul can break free from Malkut and travel back up, or, better, over to the Crown, the Keiter and past it into the ayn sof. Then, return.
Still have to add tarot in here. I hope this doesn’t become too Rococo, but it does feel true to my understanding. More to come.
