By Christine Payne-Towler
December 20, 2006
For an introduction to the World Servers' Spread see ArkLetter 5,
At the cusp of the return of the Light (Winter Solstice), and contemplating the onrushing new year 2007, what can self-aware, self-made and self-actualizing individuals do to take full advantage of the astrological and energetic climate of the times? Where are the energies of consciousness best spent during this turn of the wheel?
I'm using one of my old favorite decks, the Cartomanzia Itialiana, which was put together by the students of Etteilla to illustrate how his eccentric pack of cards relates back to the familiar Marseilles deck structure. After his death at the beginning of the 19th century, Etteilla's Italian students made the choice to retain salient details of his titles and imagery, but collate the Trumps into the old order again. My guess is that they were trying to create a "bridge" that would help users of both styles of cards understand each other's packs. However, it seems that this pack was largely forgotten about until it was reissued at the end of the 20th century.
My pack is one of a numbered series reprinted by Solleone in 1983. I have been so grateful to Stewart Kaplan ever after, that he took a chance with importing some of this special printing for his American audience. It is made old-style, on thick cardstock and utterly bare of any varnish or coating. Twenty-five years later, they have such a velvety, soft feel in the hand that I love to handle them. Plus, their clean, simple imagery on the pale ivory paper never fails to soothe me.
World Position: Justice
This first position represents the Macrocosmos, the vast entity within which our solar system is embedded. In the times when Tarot was young, this macro-reality was envisioned symbolically as a wheels-within-wheels or spheres-within-spheres model, referencing everything that was, is, or shall be, all contained within the great Body of God(dess). This position in our World Server's Spread represents the most inclusive circle we can imagine, taking in the widest conceivable cross-section of reality, even that which exceeds our ability to comprehend.
The very moment I saw that Justice card emerge, the concept of division was present with it. Justice is the process by which all the aspects and considerations of a given situation are dispassionately examined and weighted against each other to produce a full and fair assessment of the prospects in that situation. Causes are analyzed, results are tallied, and all the side-effects and casualties of the process are duly noted. As the stream of consequences unfolds, the relative worth of all the stages of the process are judged against their contribution to the final outcome. Justice brings the keen-eyed insight to prune away all exaggeration and dramatizing, the excuses and glamorizing, the subterfuges and willful ignorance that everybody uses to conceal their inconvenient truths from themselves and each other.
Once the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth has been laid bare, free of all encumbering rationalizations and lacunae, then the Justice angel adjudicates the situation and makes a new dispensation. Justice determines which pan on the scales of balance will be reduced or added to, and how the available resources will be distributed to greatest effect for all concerned. In the Justice card from my Mytico Vasco (Mythical Basque) Tarot, the challenge of making that final determination is imaged as a mother with multiple children, dividing up a loaf for the daily meal. It's not a matter of who ~deserves~ to eat more or less, but instead a matter of relative need in the light of varying growth stages and work contributions. Only a full understanding of each one's situation will lead to the most fair distribution of the bread, and there may be no two portions the same size across the whole spectrum of mouths to feed. This presentation eloquently brings home the point that there's more to the issue of Justice than strict equality.
Therefore I am moved to emphasize the issue of Analysis when interpreting this card. Conduct a strict and complete assessment of all the impinging states and circumstances surrounding the moment. Bring a Solomonic detachment to your current reality and question the givens. Try to see beyond the surface actions and reactions to understand the motivations and thoughts which produced them. Also, look down the stream of probable consequences so you are not making your determinations ignorant of the long-term trajectory that will ensue. That way, as the subsets of the presenting issue are dissected, named, and weighed out, you will be able to understand them not just in their presenting forms, but in their origins and ultimate destinies as well.
Fool position: Four Coins reversed
This position represents the shamanic interface between the "world above" and the "world below", the shape-shifty astral plane where divine energies (position one above) concentrate themselves sufficiently to invisibly motivate and effect the forms that appear in the material plane (position three, below). Using this spread, I'm always most interested in what is happening in this card, because it gives a microscopic view into the formative processes that are constantly congealing energy into matter. Additionally, knowing some things about how one's mind-field shapes one's circumstances through the act of interpretation, we Tarot-lovers can see this card as the archetype of the tipping point, the wasp-waist of the lemniscate where inverse collapses into obverse.
The Four of Coins traditionally indicates a situation where a person is advanced into a prominent position before they are entirely ready for the responsibility. This is the kind of good luck that can provoke very bad luck unless the lucky one has a great safety net around them, stocked with people who know what needs to be done, who are well- used to performing the important functions already. In the medieval model, we have a nearly-grown but yet-untested youth who is catapulted into the middle of court politics by the death of his father or uncle. He has a lot to lose, and therefore is in great need of protection until he learns the ropes. The combination of vulnerability and courage that is the norm in this situation represents a prickly time of accelerated learning, creeping fear, and emotional exhaustion.
Carried over into a modern context, and remembering that the card fell reversed, what we have here is a period where the rate of change exceeds one's speed of comprehension. The feeling is of overwhelm, where the need is to assimilate information coming in from all sides simultaneously. Uncomfortably, the key to understanding what it all means has not yet appeared, and probably will not do so for awhile yet. We have to bear up under a period of uncertainty, which no amount of reassurance can sooth away. No matter what age we might have attained chronologically, this circumstance makes us feel unsure, inadequate, and off-center. What was happening is gone, and what will be happening has not made its appearance yet. We have to somehow contain our unknowns without falling into paranoid insecurity or overcompensating into actions based on false courage, actions which we'll likely come to regret later.
Best advice for this card: wait and watch. Try to locate role models
of sensible, conservative action around you and take your cues from
them. Sometimes it is better to do nothing and just allow the momentum
of the moment to reveal itself, rather than to march boldly off in the
wrong direction. Also remember that there are people whose lives will
be affected by the choices you take right now, while you are still
woefully uninformed. Proceed with a due sense of caution for the
consequences of your actions on others. An endowment of any kind is a
responsibility as well as a gift.
Magus position: The Lovers (Matrimony)
This position stabilizes the previous two cards into material, time/space form, clothing the divine energetic cause and the astral construct in embodied substance. The Magus position is the realm in which the sensory life is lived, registering the particularities of our moment-to-moment sentience, the wordless simultaneous conversation every soul holds with all of creation. I refer here to the exquisitely personal life of the psyche, through which the inner dialogue plays in ever-repeating, everchanging loops of imaginings, feelings and thoughts.
Having the Lovers card showing up in this position suggests an alchemical union, the making of an amalgam from the polarized opposites of Mars and Venus. This is a card that Etteilla transformed and then named after himself. From an older woman performing a ceremony of union outdoors at a crossroads, under the symbol of Cupid (god of Eros), Etteilla changed the elements to show a priest performing the ceremony inside the nave of a church. The costumes and setting are tinged with Etteilla's signature "egyptian-style", an aesthetic that he derives from Hermetic/Alexandrian sources, perhaps inspired by the Lazzarelli and Mantegna emblems of an earlier era. He wants us to imagine this matrimony taking place in a golden age, a purer time wherein high ideals and noble sentiments are not considered irrational, where the masculine and the feminine can meet and join as equals at the footstool of the Divine.
In the modern psychological style that is transforming Tarot readings from divinatory pronouncements into therapy sessions, the pair being married would be analogs of Anima and Animus, or in another model, the left and right brains governing opposite sides of the body. In either example you have the idea of equals and opposites being yoked together by a common cause or governing intention that coordinates their difference-value into mutuality and complimentarity. For most modern couples inured to not seeing each other for most of every work day, such a constraining commitment might sound too claustrophobic to sustain. But for a true working partnership (like the left and right hands, for example, or a team of inventors working on the same project) anything less is too disconnected, too clunky and cumbersome. The focus of the current challenge demands fine coordination to produce multidimensional perception and instant responsiveness. For there to be balance and integrated thinking to guide the system as a whole, there has to be constant feedback going between the two eyes, the two sides of the brain or the two sides of the couple.
Hence the advice of this card is to focus carefully on the choreography between reciprocals in the fulfillment of your goals. It is necessary to wholeheartedly embrace the two-sidedness of everything. In this card, the and/and model prevails; there is no single, separate truth. There is also no adversary within the working relationship, at least to the extent that the two participants can remember their highest visions together. At the altar of the heart they commit to working as a team, with their shared vision held higher in each one's thinking than the momentary preferences of the individual.
The Lovers card when viewed in this way is a yoga and a spiritual path. It has all the elements of a monastic vocation, ordination to the priesthood, or the conferring of a specialized degree. One is joining a self-selected, exclusive group who choose to live by a code of honor that is utterly voluntary, but tremendously binding. By truly accepting the presence of the significant other, partner or ally as a manifested incarnation of the Divine Beloved, we can then live out our ideals in a daily test of will and heart. We are challenged to keep available for our human partner the very energies we receive from the inner Beloved. This is a very special and exquisite application of the Golden Rule, and a very high aspiration to set for oneself. It is the very best matrix that human society has to offer for the unfolding of human potential, but it's also extremely demanding and sacrificial.
So then, how do these three cards come together in the larger circuit of meaning that this spread is indicating? To chain possible keywords together in top-down order -- Discriminate what's real, witness your limits, then surrender to your allies. Or alternately -- Scrutinize your situation, gain humility, and become grateful you are not alone with this situation. Take a steely-eyed dissecting look at the conditions you find yourself in, then realize that even as it stands right now it's too much for you. You will then be relieved to take in an awareness of partners, team members, friends, or other kinds of allies who are committed to the same cause as yourself, even if for different reasons. If you are dealing with adults here, there's no need to add on the undue burden of "till death do us part"; that can only be proved in the fullness of time in any case. Sufficient unto the day are the problems of the day -- let's just get better at learning how to be appreciative of our companions on the Path as we travel it together, conceiving and completing our assignments in good faith and with the greater good in mind.
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The TAROT ARKLETTERS and NEW MOON NOTES are published by:
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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