April 27, 2006 - World Servers' Spread; a 3-Card Reading for the Now

A 3-Card Reading for the Now
By Christine Payne-Towler
For an introduction to the World Servers' Spread, see Arkletter 5 

Using Nigel Jackson's Medieval Fantasy Tarot, this month we are going to use this spread to take care of ourselves, so that we can be in better shape to take care of others.  In times of stress and challenge, we need to be especially careful that we don't get compassion fatigue or lose track of the core reasons we are doing whatever we are doing.

For myself, because I tend to take on big projects, it's easy to get worn out by the striving before enough progress is made to feel the worthiness of the goal. Therefore this spread is going to answer the question:

How can each of us carry and feed our Dream, the vision that is motivating all our striving, in such a way that we don't lose sight of it when we are in the pits, so that it remains in view to spur us on no matter what stage of the process we might be at?

The World:  Queen of Cups Reversed

The first thing that registered when this card went down on the table is that this lady is the "sensitive" of the deck. I call people like her the litmus-people.  They are the first ones to turn blue if there's a change in the chemistry anywhere in their environment. Nobody else can feel or see what they are reacting to yet, so they are often branded "imaginative" or "dramatic," more silly than prophetic. Feeling they get no credibility for their truth, some people of this type will retreat into silent suffering or self-medication, neither of which provides a solution.   

Queen of Cups people are either at a great disadvantage or a great advantage, depending upon whether they are capable of harnessing their experience and making it work for them, or whether they find themselves being run ragged by their sponge-like vulnerability. The challenge is to feel and respond to what's coming in without taking any of it personally. We have to take it in just like we do the sunlight and the rain -- it's just more of what's happening, what's going on everywhere.

Observing what's true doesn't mean one has to imagine that one is the bull's eye of it all.  Yes, somebody's heart is breaking. Yes, there is cruelty and habitual nastiness. Yes, people are abusing each other and the environment, things are scary and strange and everybody's acting as if they don't notice. But... but.... that's normal! That's actually "how it is" in this world. This is the current state of the matrix we are embedded in. 

And it's also normal for us to feel these things ahead of others, because that's what sensitives do.  There's no use in feeling victimized by what one is or what one feels, because in fact these feelings are the registry and reflections of one's unique wiring and experience.  If you didn't feel in these ways, how would you recognize yourself from the rest of the herd?

Ultimately, if we are going to be able to survive our own sensitivities, we have to normalize them and the whole spectrum of experience they offer. There is no other solution to the dilemma/opportunity faced by this Queen.

Taken to the macrocosmic level, the suggestion is that the actual state of evolution/devolution that Deity is currently expressing is making the Creation feel poignant and vulnerable, overstimulated and overwhelmed.

In most theologies, it is not kosher to envision Deity as anything but 1,000% maximally wonderful, but I'm not really sure that's a correct approach. Looking out into the vastness of Creation with the eyes of modern astronomy, we can witness inconceivably large stretches of reality quiver and heave, collide and rip apart, explode with creativity or fall in on themselves in exhaustion.  Almost nowhere is there peace, stillness, and homogeneity. Every state we witness or become aware of is a transitional state, in the act of change and transformation. There is very little stasis for anyone to take refuge in.

Hence the reversal of this Queen.  She is being told to Look Within and realize that her exquisitely refined and hypersensitive sensorium, the lens through which she perceives the world, is sacred to God/Sophia, just as it is. The Queen is doing The World a service just by registering "what is" without judgment.  It does not matter whether the Queen of Cups' personality is made happy or sad by her mode of being. It does not matter whether this Queen approves or disapproves with the information flowing through her. What matters is that she register and fully feel what is currently happening, with neutrality and without personalizing it, so that God gets absolutely untarnished information about the state of the local creation through The Queen's lens.

And because this is the card of the Macrocosm, referencing the scale of trans-Saturnian reality (including the "invisible" outer planets and the universe of universes that were yet to be discovered when the Tarot first appeared), I want to point back to the NewMoon Chart, where we see Uranus in Pisces extending trines to both Jupiter in Scorpio and Mars in Cancer. It's likely that the invisible influence of Uranus is "ringing the bell" of the visible Jupiter and Mars.  This would be one of those times when we should not assume that present manifestations are fully revealing their hidden causes.  For best results, those parts of us that might feel bruised or mishandled relative to our outer life, should be withdrawn and studied in private.  My guess is that on further reflection the outer circumstances will prove themselves to be simply reflections, as in a mirror, whereas the real and original causes stem from a different order of reality.

The Fool:  Three of Cups reversed

One of the standard phrases associated with this card is "Just say yes".   Upright or reversed, this card supports us in finding out what there is about any given situation one can agree with and embrace without reservation.  To be clear, this is not about showing superficial, convention-based or habitual acceptance of whatever is currently happening. Instead it points to making intentional, considered and informed moves that encourage those features of the situation that one can unconditionally approve. 

Think of it in terms of our NewMoon in Taurus, the sign where the body's basic animal knowledge and power of endurance is symbolized.  Our bodies are conscious and sensitive in thousands of ways that our minds and egos remain stubbornly ignorant of.  Most of our ancestors, aborigines of one type or another, were capable of being just as shrewd and intuitive as any other animal raised in the wild. To this day we still walk around in the bodies those ancestors granted to us. How come we are not as sharply attuned to our environments, to the nature around us, as they were?

Our kind is not stupid, and many of my readers have been riding this planet around the solar system for years and years already.  Therefore we ought to have some faith and confidence that our bodies can sense, feel, recognize and differentiate between situations that are likely to lead towards greater happiness and well-being, versus situations that will likely lead towards energy loss and dysfunction.  It's true that acculturation works hard to modify our instinctive responses, and this allows us to associate in larger groups and benefit from things like civilization and commerce. However, there is no benefit to be had from allowing our acculturation to suppress important parts of our information-gathering capacities, and quite a bit of benefit is to be had by attending to our hunches and feelings before we factor in our rationalizations.

This works both ways, obviously. Just as seriously as you attend to your rightful suspicions, hesitations, and concerns when they present themselves, so should you also attend to your attractions, desires, and cravings when they come up. One cannot always ~have~ what one wants, but if one at least ~knows~ what one wants, one is that many steps closer to arriving at the actions or situations that will grant the longed-for satisfaction. Plus, plenty of studies have shown that happiness, pleasure, and joy are in and of themselves therapeutic, meaning that the body's own self-regulating mechanisms will want to incline our experience in those directions as long as we are not interfered with. So why would we allow ourselves to be interfered with as often and in as many ways as we do? And why are we so reluctant to just reach out and give ourselves what we want if it's right in front of us? 

The key to the dilemma lies in knowing *what* to want, what is good for us to want, so that we can relax and say yes to our best and most evolutionary impulses, according to the highest estimation of all the faculties we can bring to bear on the question. This means not leaving it up to the impulse of the moment to determine what is yes-able, but thinking seriously about our whole world of choices and sorting out what directions will serve us and which ones are non-starters at the outset.

This card is in the position of the exchange, the encounter, and the process of mediation between Macrocosm (The World position, the Great All) and Microcosm (the Magus position, the Self). If the Three of Cups is the highest reflection of what's currently possible in this conversation, then good results require that we be unhesitating to encourage the good wherever we encounter it.  All kinds of things might be going on, not all of which deserve support and furtherance. Nevertheless there will be something positive, or at least not totally negative, at every choice-point we might find ourselves in. There are times when the mind gets befuddled, but the watery parts of ourselves, our feelings, intuitions, "vibes" and hunches, are always trying to give us more information if we would only allow it in.

The combination of this card in this position suggests that we could each use some more deprogramming, to be freer with our native wits and natural smarts. Then we can be more spontaneous to open up and affirm what's good and true and beautiful to us when it does come around.  If we can become more trusting of our power to recognize what's healthy for us, we will have our consciousness less overspent on having to fend off or survive experiences that are not going to move us towards our goals. This is one arena when the limitations of time and space can be made to work in our favor -- if you fill your time and attention with what you love, over time that practice will squeeze all those things you don't love out of your day.

The Magus: The Hermit reversed.

Reluctant as I am to read a reversed card in the negative, I think this Hermit is admonishing us to stay in circulation, not to withdraw into ourselves in response to the chaos in the world. Traditionally the Hermit is an elder of the tribe, who has left behind all the roles of the younger souls (education, parenting, commerce, leadership etc.) and has retired to a less-disturbed corner of the woods so he can meditate and digest his long life's experience. Among those associations there is a hint of negativity in the card to begin with, at least in the motive to turn one's back on the general hubbub and ego-centered concerns of the mass culture. One could then say that seeing The Hermit reversed has the action of a double negative, returning the message to an overall positive spin. It says "Do not head for the hills at this time, no matter how much you want to drop out!  The people need you to be available to them."

This card is in the Magus position and is therefore the card we might most wish to take personally. If we are managing to synthesize wisdom out of our experience, even finding some serenity in the chaos and uncertainties of the modern situation, then we really owe it to the world to share ourselves, and what we have learned. This is not a time to hoard one's insights!  And further, if these times are indeed going to be so darned "interesting", then we who are actually elders in the moral and cultural sense of the term are obligated by our venerable status to hand something meaningful down to those who come after us. 

The thinking is that each one of us is on the path to becoming a Living National Treasure. The Japanese government created this concept as a way of formally honoring their elders, but there's no reason why we can't all adopt that kind of expectation for ourselves, each in our own area of endeavor.  Individually, we may or may not ever be singled out for national recognition. Nevertheless, each of us can proceed as if our choices matter.  We can store memories and build wisdom in case it will sometime be needed. We can keep skills alive, or languages, or ecosystems, until the people who know how to value these things can grow into their power and take over the job.  We can teach, we can write, we can have gardens.

It is also prudent to remember that the Hermit is very consciously maturing. He's leaving the rat race because he doesn't want to have to spend his limited energies bothering to keep up with it anymore. He wants to simplify his life and get rid of stuff, get rid of addictions, get rid of distractions and energy-leaks of all kinds, and get down to the few things that he thinks are really important.

Let's examine the issue of aging in the light of the longer life spans that are happening nowadays. If we conservatively estimate that by 35 one is already no longer technically "young", this means that we are all going to spend nearly double the time in the identity of being an "older" person than we ever did in the identity of being young. The average ~location~ of the modern sense of Self now rests with the fourtysomethings, an age that very few people managed to exceed during most other eras of human history. 

Therefore it behooves us each to meditate on our impending longevity and allow the resulting insights to impact our lives right now. Those of us who want the privilege of a long life in which to become truly wise and valuable, know that we have to also want to stay healthy so we can enjoy the ride.  Staying healthy and living simply are two major strategies that The Hermit uses to keep his life manageable as he "ripens".  He stops wasting energy, he stops chasing the chimera of fashion and culture, and he learns to rest in the Eternal Verities. 

To summarize our self-care instructions for this month, consider these ideas.  There's probably no chance that we will be relieved of our psychic sensitivities during this era of increased stress, environmental degradation and social confusion. But we can each get our priorities clearer in our minds and strengthen our boundaries against psychic invasion and distraction. For one thing, we are admonished to accept the fact that we are feelers in a thinking world, and find a way to come to peace with that.   It's not a defeat or a defect that we experience things that other people might not, it's called individuation, and it's a good thing.

Further, we must learn to focus on what is good about the moment, rather than what is bad about it. We need to become quicker to recognize what to affirm and support, in the face of all the random input coming at us every minute around the clock.  This change begins within ourselves, because it is our internalized scripts and inherited taboos that are reacting when we make those reflexive attraction/repulsion moves.  Challenge yourself to make a conscious, deliberate, present- and future-based evaluation of yourself, so your tastes and appetites can come into line with what will be best for who you are becoming. Also, please, remember that you are innately constituted to desire and care about certain things. Once you have examined and fathomed your desires, then reframed them into their highest expressions, you will be free to grant yourself your satisfactions without fear of them backfiring on you. With a little consideration, we can learn to want what is good for us. At that point, what is good for us will be what we want, and we won't be tied up in knots of frustration anymore.

Finally, let's feel all the way into ourselves and admit that we love this life, and we would like to stay here as long as we are healthy and useful. Once we own that as a fact in our lives, we can commit to finding a simple and sustainable ecology for our private lives, our personal economies, and our positions relative to our communities. Once we are no longer losing energy to ambivalence, we can focus and go forward in a self-unified manner, and no matter what happens in the outer world we will be secure in our own stance and purpose.  Most of us will probably suffer some buffeting from fate and nature as the events of these upcoming years roll over them. But if we have gotten ourselves sorted out as best we can, we are not in resistance to anything but instead know what we are saying yes to and working towards, then we will be all right.

blessings,

Christine

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*Christine Payne-Towler*
Research: Esoteric Tarot, Literature and Practice; Tarot.com
Publisher, The Tarot Arkletters
Bishop, Gnostic Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Founder: Tarot University;
Author: The Underground Stream;

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The Tarot ArkLetters are a publication of Christine Payne-Towler, founder of Tarot University Online. Christine offers classes, readings, and private sessions.

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Comments

[Terri Corral]

Thanks Christine!
What perfect timing. I once wrote and asked why there were never any reversed cards in the spreads on Tarot.com. Your answer then made sense, particularly for the business mind; yet here is a perfect example of the positive imterpretation, implication and application of reversed cards. It definitely works for me!
Your thoughful blend of astrological references and tarot symbolism is much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Terri Corral

[Judy Martin]

I love the ARK LETTERS and look forward to the 3-Card Reading. Thanks for the insight.

As a Pisces (sun sign) I am the consumate sponge and tend to feel everything. Even when things are going well in my personal life, I feel the despair of others and have a hard time separating what is my "stuff" from the "stuff" that belongs to others. Right now the world is in such turmoil and I've been fighting depression since the beginning of the year.

Maybe I should stop fighting and just let it all flow through me?

Thanks Christine. You helped put things in perspective.

Judy Martin