24 October 18: Justice & The Fool

I live by my own rules: none. Sometimes cards will simply jump out of the deck and present themselves, which is what Justice did today, along with the very first card of the entire deck,  numbered Zero, The Fool. This life itself is referred to in the Tarot as ‘The Fool’s Journey’ who starts off with nothing, from Zero, the wide world waiting to be discovered, explored and enjoyed as he happily skips along with his eyes to the sky, accompanied by his loyal little dog who travels along at his side.  His possessions are few: so few that they’re wrapped in a bandana and tied to the end of a stick, hobo-style. There are a few microscopic musings on the Fool back in the WordPress archives if you’re so inclined.

The Fool is spontaneous, takes chances, goes ‘all in’ (in the image, he looks like he’s about to step over a cliff but with his eyes to the sky, doesn’t notice – his dog won’t let that happen to him anyway), lives in the moment and trusts his heart. He lives in a state of innocence and wonder at the world. This human is joyful and uninhibited, an adventurer. In olden tymes the Fool was the Court Jester, who was the only one who could get away with mocking royalty. He’s funny, this Fool. But he’s no fool, this Fool. “It is the secret of the wise man to appear as a Fool” someone said. The King likes him. He’s ruled by the planet of surprise and the unexpected, Uranus, who is busting some astrological move he hasn’t made in years over our heads right now. That’s probably why the Fool is watching the sky. We’re the ones not looking up.

Yesterday we were reminded of the sober lessons of Justice, the card of Doing The Right Thing. Law and Order, rules, responsibilities. Divorce.

Well, looks like a divorce is final and our Fool is left with fuck-all, but doesn’t care one bit because he got the dog and he’s freeeeeeeeeee to go. I just want to start over, he says, and probably somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where. It’s all good, he’ll just go with the flow.

This could be working outside, around or flaunting the law, which sometimes is necessary.

Here is where oral sex is apparently still illegal in the United States of America:

Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

 

I trust you get the point.

9 October 18: The Hanged Man

Hamstrung. This is one of the weirdest cards to me, Number 12 of the Major Arcana, The Hanged Man. A human hangs upside down from a tree by a bit of rope tied to one ankle. There is a lot of mythology in the tree alone, linking heaven to the Underworld, but on the Morgan-Greer image it is not a tree but a scaffolding made from two dead trees with a pole stretched between them from which he hangs gracefully. He may have even built the structure himself. His face is serene, and he holds his hands clasped behind his back, one knee bent forming a triangle shape with his legs. Aerial yoga. He’s simply looking at the world from another point of view. Yogis assume the Sarasana pose – standing on your head – when they want to see the world from a different point of view  and stimulate the brain.

From above, he looks right side up. This is a card of surrender, no doubt, to a higher power which could be God or the Universe or the weather, but it’s as if the rope were a puppet string controlled by an unseen hand from above and we’re not in control right now. This card is unique in that when the card is right side up our human is upside down, meaning that’s exactly where he’s supposed to be at this juncture. To everyone else it looks pretty strange but this ‘suspension’ is necessary right now.

Neptune, the Patron Saint of the Hanged Man, loves all things foggy and weird and wobbly and wavy and misty and mystic, like the gray wall of fog we see behind the hanging man. Neptune also loves art and music, and this dedicated and passionate (the red pants give him away) artist is sacrificing all for his art. When he finally does come back down he will have created (1+2=3, the number of Creation) something divinely inspired, as did the Norse God Odin, who after having hung himself upside down for nine nights in the World Tree, the one that grew up from the center of the flat Earth, was granted the wisdom to create the Runes.

This is basically being ‘hamstrung’ for some reason, sometimes even literally. An accident victim in traction who came out of his coma declaring he’d had a revelation and was never the same, it changed his life. That’s obviously an extreme example, but the epiphany is the same. The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, an invalid for much of her life, affixed a mirror to the canopy of her sickbed and created her beautiful and complicated self-portraits, considered some of the world’s greatest works of art.

This is delay, but a productive one in some way. Worth the wait, worth the ‘hangup.’ Be patient. This isn’t the time to move, that’s all. You may be having to wait on something or someone else before you can do much of anything anyway.

Or, a psychologist is giving you another perspective on your own ‘hangups’.

Which is Major.