Celebrating curiosity and offering musings, sometimes mine, sometimes of others, free of being limited to what is already expected. Browse the menus on the left to discover book reviews, poetry, Tarot meanderings, the occasional essay and maybe, eventually, artwork and more as the spirit moves. Comments and thoughts are welcome.
Sharing News and Views About Good Books: we’re lucky enough to read.
Sharing News and Views About Good Books: we’re lucky enough to read.
The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Mamma’s Table by Rick Bragg, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2018
I have always enjoyed cookbooks that told stories and stories that involved recipes. I’m not quite sure which one this is except it’s one of the best. Rick Bragg is a consummate storyteller and with his tales from his “Momma’s table” he introduces us to some serious lessons in downhome southern cooking. But more than that, even as much as this book deals with food, it is the incredible richness in the telling of Margaret and the mountains of food she cooked, the people she cooked it for, and how she came to learn the secret of “cooking with iron” from childhood up that gifts the reader with the history and heart of a people, a culture, and a philosophy of life grown from necessity and love.
The cooking history starts with a young man going up into the Georgia mountains near the Tennessee line to fetch his daddy home to teach his 16-year-old bride how to cook because he was about to starve to death. Jimmie Jim, the father, our author’s great grandfather, had been hiding out from the law for years. Hearing that nobody missed the stranger who had been passing through years before and there was no ‘paper’ on him, the old mountain man came back to teach Ava, a hard-headed Pentecostal teenager, how to feed her young husband.
And ladies and gentlemen, that’s just the beginning, starting with a pig stolen and butchered in the night so that a proper breakfast of pinto beans, hambone, creamed onions and buttered boiled potatoes could be had along with slaw and cornbread. Each of the cooking lessons and 74 recipes in this book comes with a telling as tasty as the meals they offer to provide.
The recipes are organized to make up complete meals and they come with people who will stay with you as friends, making your life just that much more flavorful than it would have been otherwise. This book is a keeper! Find out more about Rick and the stories he has to share at Rick Bragg
Alone Time, Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude by Stephanie Rosenbloom, Viking, New York 2018
Here is a unique opportunity to travel along with someone who is exploring being alone in four of the world’s most interesting cities, Paris, Istanbul, Florence and New York, as paradoxical as that may sound. There is a discrete intimacy that develops as we, her unknown readers, stow away in her mind as she takes in the scenes around her to a degree not sustainable when company is shared. It is indulgent, full attention to her own interaction with what is both stable and mobile that is delicious in its focus on personal sensation. Sample chapters bring us along on a picnic for one in the Luxembourg Gardens, to the Rainbow Stairs in Istanbul, standing alone with Venus in Florence, and wandering the West Village in New York.
A celebration of the value of solitude and the fantasy of “the flaneur: the solitary stroller, following his curiosity with no particular destination in mind, nowhere to be but in the here and now”, (page 10), we learn about ‘savoring’ as a practice to enhance well-being. As we ensconce ourselves in a quiet corner with this book we can truly experience the relaxation that comes with giving ourselves over to it.
The author includes useful and important tips at the end for traveling in places with unfamiliar customs but before that she has the chapter that could most easily inspire us to new adventures. That is traveling in our own home town as if it were a foreign city and to bring a reporter’s (or tourist’s) eye and habits, and care, to our daily life and to do it alone. Find out more at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534829/alone-time-by-stephanie-rosenbloom/9780399562303/
What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker, Basic Books, New York, 2018
From wandering around the cosmos [see my earlier adventure with Bentov], I somehow ended up trying to understand what quantum physics was talking about. Not quite as much of a disconnect as you might imagine seeing that particle physicists began expanding their interests into cosmology in the 1970s in search of new grand unified theories, something that had long been their holy grail.
First googling the term “quantum”, [Wikipedia: In physics, a quantum is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction.], I was fortunate in putting my hands on the recently published work of Adam Becker. Anyone interested in, or even slightly curious about, the fundamental nature of the physical world we inhabit will likely benefit from and enjoy the storytelling style of Becker, as I did, following the tale of how this world’s most currently eminent scientists have bickered about what is really real for almost a century now. From the debates between Danish physicist Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein to Schrodinger’s cat to Hugh Everett’s suggestion that all is explained by the theory of parallel universes, we are introduced to a science of physics that challenges the imagination.
In the midst of this, while the reader is given a sampling of the studies being engaged in, Becker demonstrates how the socio-political environment within which the work is being attempted has influenced the structure of the research being done. Science, after all, works within the world in which we all live and only occasionally breaks free to expand our thinking. This is a telling that goes beyond equations into a very human history of how we stumble sometimes towards new learning and the forces that may help or hinder us.
I recommend this as an entertaining and educational trip to the least possible speck of what is considered (by some) to be real to find out that it won’t stand still long enough for us to understand it, measure it, or agree about what it is. Somehow, I find it reassuring that the mystery is still there.
The Little French Bistro by Nina George, Crown, New York 2017 translated by Simon Pare
I came away from reading this book with the taste of magical realism in my mouth. I don’t know if it would fall into an academically decided category of this nature but it surely hints at it for me.
A 60-year-old woman on holiday with her husband despairs of her marriage and determines to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge in Paris.
She is rescued by a homeless man who she thinks is Death.
She steals a small painted tile from a nursing station and walks out unnoticed to find the locale of the scene portrayed that includes a small boat with the name Mariann, her name but missing the ’e’.
She is told how to read the land and the sea by a young nun in a graveyard.
She is led to shelter by a cat.
I don’t want to spoil the almost mythical rhythm of the story by describing how she comes to the term ‘sea whisperer’. I will say the engaging descriptive nature of the writing draws the reader into the very personal reality of Marianne. This is a world we are familiar with, but with a different vibratory thread running through it. It is a wonder to share with her the journey from drowning in the tragic to living in the magic “at the end of the world.” Definitely want to read Nina George’s earlier works.
Laura and Emma by Kate Greathead, New York, Simon Schuster, 2018
This is a quietly curious book. It takes place in the New York City of Park Avenue and old money. Money so old it has become the structure of a universe where the answers to the problems and passions of life have all been systematized into well-worn paths that no longer need to be agonized over, just followed. Laura and her brother Nicholas are trust fund babies. Generational family connections provide them, unquestioningly, with top level job choices, schooling, residences, all in secured assurance.
You may think that it would be a little boring, so matter-of-factly do all the characters play their roles but the writing, arranged episodically, prevents that. You are drawn into the lives of Laura and the daughter she conceives, the result of a brief encounter in her family home with an imposter she never sees again. There is a sensibility about her, and hence about Emma, that is comforting, demanding little from the reader, but nonetheless, insisting itself into the consciousness.
Her interaction with the world she inhabits is difficult to categorize, a disconnect as if she has not quite manifested. She lives in a penthouse on the upper westside of Manhattan overlooking a neighborhood her friends consider dangerous, where she buys her groceries and learns the name of the homeless man on the corner. She volunteers at a women’s shelter and amuses her friends by wearing an unvarying uniform of turtleneck, skirt, and boots, rejecting unnecessary consumption out of concern for the planet yet goes regularly to have her eyelashes dyed. She takes a job because she thinks she should work but she doesn’t hesitate to rely on her status to determine her own hours and number of vacation weeks at full pay. You learn these things about her offhandedly, without detail, yet you can feel Laura almost as if you were slipping into her insular existence, her essence silently wrapping around you as you keep reading.
I recommend you experience this for yourself, particularly about what happens next, that we are not told, and I predict that Laura will stay with you, just out of reach, after you close the book, wondering.
A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness by Itzhak Bentov, Destiny Books, Vermont, 2000
Some time or other you may have come across a book that provoked and teased you into looking closer at some habit of thinking you had or to examine things you hadn’t spent much time thinking about at all. Itzhak Bentov’s A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness is just such a one for me. A small paperback book, about 5”by 8”, 112 pages with a scattering of drawings, it purports to introduce the reader to the structure of the cosmos, singular and/or plural, as well as including the evolution of consciousness along the way.
The author, with whom I was not familiar, is presented as a scientist, an inventor of bio-medical instrumentation and an early exponent of consciousness studies among other things. Introductory notes about him in the book are enticing.
“In his search for the cosmic connection, Ben offers us a delightfully ingenious cosmic comedy on the nature and structure of ultimates. Here are traveler’s tales such as you rarely find- metaphysical jaunts from one end of the universe to the other.” page xvii, Jean Houston, Ph.D.
I settled in to be entertained. I didn’t expect to be challenged. Relaxed enough about the idea that the thoughts of all human beings were connected and in turn affected the universe, and about the vibrational nature of manifest creation, after all, Einstein had already told us that everything is energy vibrating at different rates, I got stalled and turned off by phrases like interference patterns, reference beams and coherent light. I had skeptical reactions to the notions of devas and luminous Alephs. But I soldiered on, prodded by agreeing with the notion of an ever-expanding cosmos, liking his “egg” analogy, and being somewhat impressed by the high regard his earlier and longer work, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, seemed to engender among apparently intelligent people of some repute.
So – I googled some phrases I wasn’t familiar with, coming across ideas from physics that were as wild as some of what I had read in Bentov’s work, and went back and read it again. Halfway through I stopped and ordered a copy of his earlier and longer work, and after finishing the second read, got on the computer to look for an online course in cosmology.
If you are willing to look into the apparently absurd and follow the thread of logic shining through it you may have a surprising experience reading A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness and end up studying the latest in cosmology with an MIT professor, free, online as I have just signed up for. There’s nothing like curiosity to keep life interesting.
Journeying the Pips: Poetry and Prose of the Tarot de Marseilles
by Audrey J. Layden
Illustrations by Paul A. Nagy
Foreword JTP 3-9-16
It’s true that it’s only the last few years that I have put a sustained effort into studying the Tarot but I’m no stranger to the concept of reading the cards. My mother was a particularly gifted reader of the ordinary playing deck. She would lay out the whole deck of 52 cards in rows of nine with the 6th row having 7 cards. She’d then focus on a significator chosen by the person for whom she was reading and read out from there.
I copied down a meaning for each of the cards as she told them to me when I was about 14 and I wish I still had a copy of that but its more than 60 years ago so it’s gone. I periodically would decide that I’d study the Tarot but life kept intervening and I never got much past reading by using what was written in books. Memorizing meanings just didn’t seem to do it for me.
At last however, there came a time when I had fewer distractions and I took another stab at it. This was after I had met Paul and although he hasn’t directed my interpretations or the process I developed to help me learn the cards it was (1) his urging that I look at the cards thoroughly and in great detail and (2) his avowing that I was perfectly free to read them anyway I saw fit that moved me past whatever roadblock kept me from a full appreciation of the possibilities and intrigue of the Tarot.
Falling into the depths of the Major Arcana was fascinating and something I am still exploring but it was the Pips that got me writing. The fact is that I started to argue with the images/scenes offered on the various numbered suits in the deck I was using. Then Paul introduced me to the Tarot de Marseilles and I was hooked. This is where I feel that, for me, there is a greater opportunity to relate to the cards as symbols to explore rather than signs to be read. Signs are designed to concretize and simplify the known world. Symbols are images whose meaning transcends their content, pointing towards a yet to be discovered reality – outside the box – not quite yet defined.
I started to think of the cards as tools to access tonal vibrations of energy – like chimes that evoke a response and open the listener to visual sound – unique chords blending random cards – music of the cards – music as universal language – turning music into language – poetry.
Poetry lends itself to expressive images that are larger than the words that try to hold them, hinting at a wider universe. And so, poetry became my way of learning the Tarot from inside, of tuning into and expressing the energy, the music of Tarot. This current writing is to clarify for myself, and to share with any who might be interested, what I came up with to read the Tarot without the “little white book”.
Journeying the Pips
To imagine that we can explain
All that is
Capture it with our earthbound intellect
And declare that we know the truth
That surpasses all other truth
Is to build ourselves boxes to hide in
And furnish them with cushions of words
To protect us from the vast unknowing
That so unsettles our fragile heartbeats
Rather come revel in the mystery
That challenges us to stretch and wonder
Eternally in the process of being
United with more than we can ever contain
In boxes of knowing.
JTP Introduction:
With each breath we take in and let out we are making ‘the now’ along with all the disparate others with whom we share this existence. We are history and future in pinpoint brilliance. We are the particular and the infinite in the crosshairs. We draw the Tarot cards to invite greater understanding of ourselves and how we may embrace our past and be active participants in the creation of our tomorrows. What we bring to the Tarot experience, the Tarot event, influences the depth and breadth of what may open to us, what we may be open to. The illustration above represents this event, the pivotal point of an observed present. The horizontal line carries the particular, the subjective, the individual and the vertical line carries the infinite, the objective, the shared universal.
What is it that offers this opportunity? The Tarot is a series of seventy-eight pictures and designs that are a tool for eliciting openness to the energies that are within us and which surround us. Energy is not ‘seen’ with the naked eye but its effects often are and scientists have been forever measuring it.
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong! What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” Einstein
The Tarot experience offers a directed opportunity to explore these extant energies, within and without, at any given time, by allowing ourselves to key into the symbols that are pointing beyond the surface of our attention. We are ‘reading’ ourselves as the random symbols detach us from the norm that so distracts us to allow us to see, to hear, an expanded reality. Each melding of two or more cards creates a unique chord that resonates for a brief time. We act as observers, sorting out the myriad details that confront us, highlighting the role the we have in making decisions, in recognizing choices and their potential outcome.
“In a Tarot reading, a window of self-study is thereby opened to safely consider such shadow themes, teaching and empowering one to become master and maker of one’s fate, in all its facets, rather than its victim and/or victimizer.” Rosengarten page 102 Tarot and Psychology
The three parts to the Tarot are the Trumps or Major Arcana – archetypal images, shown as the vertical line in the illustration, the Pips or Minor Arcana – suits numbered one (Ace) to ten, shown as the horizontal line and the Court cards – Kings, Queens, Knights and Pages – the cast, shown as available to play a myriad of roles. All are critical in presenting factors to consider in whatever question may be at hand. The Court cards most generally denote other players in the drama while the Trumps symbolize the objective collective, the enactment of communal scenarios or attitudes that may strongly impact the reality of which the seeker is an active part.
This work, however, focuses on the Pips, the Minor Arcana, forty cards divided into four suits, each numbered one (Ace) to ten. It is my belief that these cards connect most strongly with the seeker’s individual worldview, their unique stage of development moving through time as we know it. In reading, helping to interpret the Tarot for the seeker, the aim is to engage the person as fully as possible allowing what the cards symbolize for them to elicit true and honest response – helping to encourage that the best questions are being asked and addressed.
In many ways the Marseilles deck may be especially suited to this open-ended approach to freeing up the seeker’s own psyche, or inner knowledge. Because this style of deck presents the Pips as interactions between numbers and elements rather than the portrayal of scenes, it doesn’t set the stage beforehand but allows the seeker to bring in their own backdrops, props, and cast members.
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” Nikola Tesla
In the world of Tarot and the Pips, the energy is represented by the four suit elements, the frequency and vibration is represented by the numbers one, or Ace, through ten. And it is the vibration of the numbers interacting with the elements that the reader may tune in to.
Elements
The four states of matter in physics – solid, liquid, gas, plasma – correspond closely to the classical elements – earth, water, air, fire, or Coins, Cups, Swords and Wands. While the domains of these elements are interdependent – fire could not exist without air, earth could not realize its potential without water and so forth – understanding the special characteristics of each is essential.
Earth, Coins, is the solid, the stable, the literal. It is that which can be realized through the five senses, touched, seen, heard, tasted, and smelled. In a word it is the stuff of life.
Water, Cups, is the liquid, the mobile, the connecting, desiring union. Realized through the senses and something more it is more readily mutable in its form. It inevitably seeks its center, its heart, the sea. In a word it is emotion. Linking earth to air?
Air, Swords, is the gas, the unseen touch, the ever-present, the carrier of intangible information like odor and sound. It moves within and without our bodies unceasingly as we breathe. In a word it is mind. Linking water to fire?
Fire, Wands, is the plasma, the volatile, the independent, initiatory movement. It is the conductor of energy from the potential into the manifest. In a word it is action. Manifestation? Circling around back to earth?
Numbers
Numbers are symbols. As such they represent something unseen, a belief, the imagined, unknown. Numbers are not material ‘things’. They are ideas, concepts.
They may serve as indicators of the natural process of human psychological growth and expansion in varied situations. There is a logical order from the Ace, the One, to the Ten. But in this context, we must understand that as agents of free will, subject yet to larger influences, this expansion is most likely irregular and characterized by falling back as well as moving forward. It is helpful nevertheless to illustrate how uninterrupted progression of initiation to completion works its way out.
As an example:
At birth we come forth from the womb, the zero, the indrawn breath of expectant potentiality, to the great wailing exhalation of life, the One, aware only of hunger. The duality is the inhaled breath of recognition that the “other” is required to satisfy that need, the Two. The joining of the One and the Two reaches for synthesis, the creative exhalation of the Three. The continued satisfaction establishes the resting inhalation of the Four, the family of support that allows the growth of that which has come forth. This growth strains the bonds of stability and leads to the challenging exhalation of the Five as a larger world is touched upon. The process of naturalizing to broader experience introduces the inhaling of the larger community, the Six of shared cooperation. Continued curiosity can provoke to look beyond the circumstance of survival to transcend the commonplace and to blow away, with exhalation, the cobwebs of known practice, the Seven. The reconciliation of the old, the Six, with the new, the Seven, adding up to thirteen and reducing to four, brings the double Four of the Eight, the withdrawal to construct, consolidate the larger vision. From there we spread out our history to meet its pains and pleasures, harvesting and discarding to exhale our stories, the Nine. The finale is the Ten, the One and the Zero that comes back to the beginning of all possibility on the spiral of existence.
A word about zero. There is before the Aces the potential of the void that is, rather than empty, filled with all that is possible beyond our current imagining.
“Therefore it may well be said that this Circle Potential, this ⨀, is the first number in the cosmos’ and is symbolic of the Unknown, the Illimitable. It contains all numbers, i.e. all possibilities, within itself, just as the light of the sun contains all colours in its “whiteness”.” Leonard Bosman, The Meaning and Philosophy of Numbers p.66
There is, after the Pips, between Pips and Trumps, again the zero, the Fool, again all unknown possibility.
“Like the Kabbalistic conception of God the point is nothing, yet the entire circle radiates from it. And the Fool’s number, 0, has been represented as a point as well as a circle.” p22. Rachel Pollack, Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom
The forty quintains that follow are an attempt to capture in words the unique blending of energy, frequency, and vibration that the Tarot symbols suggest. The poetic art form, that requires the readers participation in the creative process, is ideally suited to addressing these symbols.
Comments and questions on any and all aspects of this writing will be most gratefully received!
The illustrations are free hand ink drawings by Paul Nagy. They characterize the energetic ‘becoming’ of the cards inviting the viewer to be freely involved with the “living hand that reinvents the image seen”.
The Pips identify the Fool who acts and is acted upon by the Trumps and the zeros spiral and the circles become cycles.
Aces:Big Bang
Ace of Coins:
All about surrenders manna
bringing forth earth’s varied blessing
teasing with the stuff of making
shaping matters bud of being
offers up the working hand
Ace of Cups:
Surging currents of the sea womb
swirl the ancient silent canyons
stirring seeds that carry passion
waking, conscious, wanting, dreaming
undeciphered pulsing rhythm
Ace of Swords: Gathers first the gasp of breathing
hears the ceaseless thought of being
stretched and straining for a wisdom
shackled by the vast unknowing
struggles still to own its meaning
Ace of Wands:
Lightning sent with heaven’s arcing
scorches loins and sounds the thunder
shaking loose the long inaction
putting heat to tool and sinew
pouring life upon the sand
Twos:Recognition
Two of Coins:
Spins and twists the fertile matter
Testing what the spirit calls to
Searching choices, changes, chances
Knows the blooming deep within
Holds the power of the making.
Two of Cups:
Knows a wrenching separation
Feels the empty space of longing
Reaches out to make reunion
Finds itself within the other
Reaching for the same communion
Two of Swords:
Holds within itself the challenge
Thought that contradicts the maker
Arguing its own creation
Standing motionless in battle
Blind to all that goes without.
Two of Wands:
Splits itself in two directions
Meets itself in whirling vortex
Seeking purpose in the moving
Casts the eyes upon horizons
Filled with possible intending
Threes: Expression
Three of Coins:
Putting matter into motion
Molds the stuff to patterns planning
Feels the substance in the forming
Tosses up a new creation
Being how the world is made
Three of Cups:
Celebrates the gift of harvest
Fruit of womb life’s fragrant blossom
Finds in joining increased measure
Gathering up creative working
Shares the joy of happy union.
Three of Swords:
Breaking down the this or thatness
Forging something new from pieces
Leaves behind the warring factions
Aims to find a new hereafter
Built on shattered lessons learning.
Three of Wands Takes direction, ceases turning
Casting bread upon the waters
Moves ahead with eager promise
Acting on decisions making
Taking steps to feed the wanting.
Fours: Foundation
Four of Coins:
So the thing itself before us
Warms us as we take possession
Satisfaction in the making
Storing resource for the future
Equal to the need demanded.
Four of Cups:
Solid as the day is long now
Friends and lovers tied together
Settle into daily rhythm
Comfort in the trusted sameness
Lightly carry bonds of knowing.
Four of Swords:
Comes upon a settled landscape
Mind in synchronized attention
Neatly fitting thoughts in crannies
Each to suited space provided
Resting in the quiet wholeness
Four of Wands:
Seeing the results of doing
Motion caught in stilled reflection
Watching as the ripples widen
Ready for the next outgoing
Joyful time within the moment.
Fives: Challenge
Five of Coins:
From the center comes the breaking
Nothing holds to former station
Losses separate resources
Tear apart the old foundation
Solo run the shattered pieces
Five of Cups:
Growing from within come fractures
Distance from the fading closeness
Outside forces widen spaces
Shifting sands revise the landscape
Playing on the unpredicted.
Five of Swords:
Struggle to retain the theorem
Argument surrounds the thinking
What was once in place is threatened
New ideas invade the mindframe
Shaking girders, loosing rafters.
Five of Wands:
Ways for moving on find blocking
Crowding on the path needs clearing
Obstacles engage the action
Building strength on challenge offered
Meets and counters all oncoming.
Sixes: Community
Six of Coins:
Others come to aid the working
Vistas broaden, boundaries lengthen
New ways feed the aging footings
Adding richness to the mixture
Raising custom to brave levels
Six of Cups:
Reaching out to find communion
Embraces more than held before
Warmth of others finds a welcome
Comes to know a wide belonging
Opens to a new receiving
Six of Swords:
Seeks release from inner stressing
Sorting through the memories garden
Taking time for paths that wander
Curious in the exploration
Planting seeds for further growing.
Six of Wands:
Sees the open path before it
Takes the steps with easy pleasure
Finds the others moving with him
Common action builds momentum
For achieving treasured goals
Sevens: Transcendence
Seven of Coins:
Breaking out of old traditions
Seeks a different way of doing
Searches for an unknown substance
Flowering from exotic birthing
Leads the way to newer climes
Seven of Cups:
Lets the fancy wander widely
Revels in imagination
Many dreams to stir the heartbeat
Choosing one for center stage
Falters in the contemplation
Seven of Swords:
Steps beyond the self-made boundaries
Slicing through to other thinking
Seeks another way of knowing
Questions all that comes before it
Grows new images to savor
Seven of Wands:
Seeks to know another action
Taking ways unknown, untested
Moves beyond familiar comfort
Tastes the wine of daring’s pleasure
Harking to the distant drummer
Eights: Masterpiece
Eight of Coins:
Comes the time for formulation
Coding out a way of conduct
Making a way for matters use
Sturdy, framed and undivided
Builds a whole from scattered parts
Eight of Cups:
From the central heart of passion Blended with the spirit’s moving
Grows a framework that encircles,
Guides and colors while describing
Being in the world with others
Eight of Swords:
Choosing from the wealth of notion
Forms a catacomb of being
Orders shapeless notes of thinking
Into ways of rhythmic custom
Round the inner blooming lotus
Eight of Wands:
Structured energy rewards
New ways build through repetition
Center forms a sturdy core
To temper burning passion
Molding fire into fuel
Nines: Inventory
Nine of Coins:
All that’s wanted is at hand now
Flowering lush around the center
Holding place in confirmation
Plenty is the state of being
Yet to see what fruit is born
Nine of Cups:
Love grows forth from many sources
Wishes granted come together
Much is given, little asked for
All is present, no tomorrow
Threatened surfeit quiets wanting
Nine of Swords:
All pieces of the puzzle present
Lacking only final form
Seeks conclusion, waits the answer
Teased by hints that tempt the thinking
Struggles for the mental framing
Nine of Wands:
Focused aim comes from growing
Earned by nature’s yearning struggle
Girded with the strength of trials
Treasures the steady pulse of power
Moving towards the final goal
Tens: Pause
Ten of Coins:
Completion brings its own successes
Gladness grows in efforts crowning
All is done, the work is finished
Fullness brings an overflowing
From center seed comes new beginning
Ten of Cups:
Heart’s deep longing finds fulfillment
All the hungers satisfied
From the mighty chalice fashioned
By the balm of given grace
Blooms the rose of future seeding
Ten of Swords:
Kissing cross points come together
Sealed within completed reason
Tell the story through to ending
While without new concepts blossom
Pointing off to other searching
Ten of Wands:
Forward motion sealed in union
Story done, the task complete
Fully formed, energies settle
Quiescent till a transformation
Whips the winds of change again
Demonstration Reading:
Five of Swords:
Struggle to retain the theorem
Argument surrounds the thinking
What was once in place is threatened
New ideas invade the mind frame
Shaking girders, loosing rafters.
Three/Wands:
Takes direction, ceases turning
Casting bread upon the waters
Moves ahead with eager promise
Acting on decisions making
Taking steps to feed the wanting.
Seven of Swords:
Steps beyond the self-made boundaries
Slicing through to other thinking
Seeks another way of knowing
Questions all that comes before it
Grows new images to savor
These three cards were chosen at random for the purpose of showing how the poems might tell a story. If I had chosen them deliberately I don’t think they could have described any better the process through which this piece of writing evolved. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.
Copyright Manly P Hall Secret Teaching of All Ages
Afterword
We have, in a way, started with a zero and ended with a zero, The Fool, ready to engage in a journey within the larger cosmos of the Trumps, the Major Arcana. Along with The Fool are the other players in the scenario, the Court Cards, called by some the Royalty Arcana, personalities configured by their own intricacies of suit and position. All are on possible call for the Tarot Event, intertwining with the existing symbologies of human situations to awaken us to their message.
The Pips serve as the foundation of the Tarot. Just as the archetypal images both confront and inspire the actors so do the actors, by their individual choices along the way, help to conjure up the circumstances within which they find themselves. Archetypes are made by human commonality -the cycling of the Pips. As above so below – as below so above.
Like breathing in and breathing out, we create and are created by all that is around us.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Einstein
“Science comes to a stop at the frontiers of logic, but nature does not – she thrives on ground as yet untrodden by theory.” C.G. Jung
Inhale – take in, absorb, withdraw
Pause – choice, decision, the 0 potential of nothingness
Exhale- let out, release, create
References:
Bosman, Leonard, The Meaning and Philosophy of Numbers, Maine: Nicolas-Hays, Inc. 2005
Hall, Manly Palmer, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, H.S.Crocker, 1928, San Francisco
Pollack, Rachel, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, CA: Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC 2007
Rosengarten, Arthur, Tarot and Psychology, MN: Paragon House 2000
Internet sources of quotes:
Einstein, cococubed.asu.edu
Jung, carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog
Tesla, Goodreads
Heretics The Wondrous and Dangerous Beginnings of Modern Philosophy by Steven Nadler and Ben Nadler, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford 2017
If anything might entice you to explore the philosophical development of the 17th century this book would do the job. People whose names might be only vaguely familiar, like Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Newton, and others, and about whose specific views we may not be quite clear, suddenly come alive. This is a graphically illustrated telling of why and how they challenged the accepted wisdom of their time. The story that is told is also about how dangerous thinking ‘outside the box’ has been at times in our human history.
In many ways Nadler and Nadler have given us a teaser. While describing the arguments, disagreements, and risks that these thinkers involved themselves with we are drawn into taking sides and arguing back. We react to the various theses and find our own reasoning process activated. This is the slippery slope that lands us in the philosophical soup of exploring our own views on religion, government, spirituality, ethics, the nature of reality and everything else we think we believe. Actually, not a bad place to be – an environment that invites and encourages questions and the very value of questioning itself. In the words of Socrates “An unexamined life is not worth living.” If you like the idea of thinking for yourself let this book tickle you into doing it.
An Imaginist 