Tarot University ArkLetters: World Server's Spread, April 2007

A 3-Card Reading for the Now
By Christine Payne-Towler
ArkLetter 25, April, 2007
For an introduction to the World Servers' Spread see ArkLetter 5

A little over one week ago, on Easter Sunday, devout western Christians of all denominations affirmed with great faith that "He is risen!" Easter points to the central mystery of Christianity, the overcoming of death and disintegration by the forces of eternal life and reintegration. This central mystery is not exclusive to Christians, but Christianity demonstrates for its era that the soul can take hope from the path walked by Christ as He harrowed hell, broke through the bounds of strictly human limitations and emerged from the tomb transformed. In Tarot, the entirety of that awesome journey is consummated in the image on Trump 20, Judgment. We will use Trump 20 as the theme of our spread this ArkLetter, and let those who are engaged in such labors enjoy the benefits.

Experienced Tarot readers will recognize this approach as one of the oldest techniques in divinatory Tarot. One begins a spread by very carefully choosing a card to represent the domain of the question, as opposed to allowing a card to come up randomly. This is called the significator card. That becomes the first premise of the spread, and can double as the Self-card representing the questioner, as in the 11-card version of the Celtic spread.

Make no mistake; I am not attempting to make some kind of Christian exegesis of the Tarot here! Although we know that Tarot was created in a Catholic context, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that its creators and early users were aware of many different mystical revelations, from the Greek and Roman philosophers to the Chaldaean Oracles of Zoroaster, the Torah, the Runes and more. It was, after all, the translation of the Hermeticum in the mid-1400's that kicked off the Italian Renaissance. This rising magical movement sought to follow the Christian commandment to "go forth and do as I have done", meaning heal the sick, raise the spiritually dead, demonstrate the Light and awaken the people to a higher way of life. Too bad this mystical impulse became a casualty of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, but the trail of clues left by its practitioners remains for us to follow if we are so moved.

The Significator Card

Because I love the Judgment card in my Masonic Tarot so much, I am going to pick this pack for the spread. What we are contemplating here is the choice and opportunity to allow Spirit (the warm female figure) to arise from the heaviness of matter (the kneeling, sickly-colored figure) and take a journey up the rainbow into Light. Note the reversal of the frequency-scale here -- the lowest rung of the ladder is the highest-frequency color, whereas the highest rung of the ladder is the lowest-frequency color. This symbolizes the shamanic figure/ground switch going on between the world of time/space and that of transcendence.

Rising from the dark world below and behind the ladder is the Tree of Life, supporting and sustaining our upward climb. The branches of the Tree weave themselves into a circle that reveals the Oroborous, the Snake of Time that forever eats its tail and never ends. At the top of the Tree, historical and consecutive time gives way to angelic time, or Eternity. From out of that ring of flames emerge the Archangel Gabriel and his world-leveling horn, emitting the sonic/vibrational OM that shakes spirit loose from its bindings in matter. Somehow, the Holy Word is loosed, the sacred Name is spoken, and from that great AHA! comes a new world and a new order. It is the search for clues to this renewal that becomes our topic today.

With the Judgment card providing us with a point of focus, (but not using it as one of the cards in this reading, as our World Server spread is already so terse), I will ask on behalf of myself, my loved ones, my students, and in fact the whole world: What instructions do we need right now to become numbered among the "risen", those who are in touch with their immortality, those who are healed and healing 'in the light of' eternal life? What shall we meditate upon, come into relationship with, and demonstrate in the world through our actions? What are the qualities and characteristics that will carry us from our current state of need to that promised state of wholeness exemplified in the Judgment/Resurrection image?

The World position: 5 Swords

The World Server's Spread first position references the Oversoul, Higher Power, or Guardian Angel just as much as it does Gaea, Sophia and Anima Mundi. This card points to the largest overview that one can attain at the moment. In this context, the 5 of Swords is trying to express the challenge of individuation at the level of mind. By this I mean the number 5 breaks the individual out of 4-elements herd thinking, forcing the self to access and mobilize the creative power within. Some people identify 5 with Quintessence, the magical outcome of all four natural elements brought into perfect balance, analogous to the Philosopher's Stone. However, perfection is seldom realized in fact. Sometimes the effort to impose balance on the forces of life goes awry in the course of the experiment, leaving the landscape littered with the energetic equivalent of shattered glass. This is the kind of experience signified by the 5 of swords.

What is being registered here is a sort of shock in the face of paradigm-shattering developments. In some Tarot traditions, a defeated soldier will be seen trying to gather up his broken weapons from the field of his humiliation. He was only recently so sure of himself, so convinced that his foolproof plan could not fail him! Now he's been soundly spanked by circumstances. He has to reconfigure his worldview to include this sobering reality -- he is vulnerable to being caught by surprise, overpowered and trounced. There is no immunity from the sudden shift in fortune that can easily make a victor into a victim. In a situation like this, overconfidence can work against us, to disastrous consequences.

This card is not about absolutes, glad to say, it is just pointing out developments along the road to resolution. 5 is only halfway through the sequence of its suit, a sobering wake-up call for those who were rolling along heedless of the potential for setback. This 5 provides us with the education we need to see around the unexplored corners of our own minds, even if it knocks us ass-over-teakettle in the process. When the 5 of coins comes up in a reading, I always remind my client "This is not fatal, nor does it guarantee failure in your effort. Sometimes one has to lose a battle before one learns to respect one's adversary. Study his methods, learn from his successes, and you might still be able to win the war."

The original formula for this spread included the question "what shall we meditate upon?" The 5 of swords answers this question by saying, "meditate on your vulnerabilities, not so that you will fail to strive, but so that you can strive strategically and not lose too much energy in the process." Nobody is invulnerable to setbacks, but we can become more resilient even in hostile circumstances if we wrench ourselves out of denial and create fallback positions as part of our plans. This is about being compassionate towards your future self by not leaving your bases uncovered. It might be suggesting you are keeping too narrow a view on the potential developments unfolding. And if in fact the setback has already hit, then don't waste time in self-recrimination, but instead recalibrate your style to include more checking of your blind spots. It is not impossible to catch up from this position, but only if strict realism is embraced from here on out.

The Fool position: 6 Coins reversed

Representing the dreamtime or astral plane wherein the energies of the Unconscious provide symbolic shapes for our projections, this position comments on the biopsychic and emotional/motivational drives at work behind appearances. In the "crown" position (the World spot, above) one might reason and envision, but here at the heart of the matter (the Fool position), one feels and responds instinctively. This Fool position is not modulated by intellectual activity, but is instead poured out authentically from moment to moment, without forethought or calculation.

With this in mind, the 6 of Coins reversed is also registering the shock initiated in the World position (5 swords). The response in the heart is to feel let down and abandoned in one's expectations -- deflated, devalued and demoralized. Setting aside the question of whether one's expectations (always based on past experience) were originally in proportion to reality, the result of absorbing this blow "from above" (from the intellectual or mental life) is to cause the heart to doubt its survival potential in the face of the grief and outrage released. It's as if one's unspoken "deal with God" had been broken, and there's a primordial rift in one's enthusiasm towards existence as a result. The temptation is to allow our childhood anxiety closet to open at this point and spill out our historical backlog of betrayal, violated trust and victim scripting.

We all have areas of our lives where our hearts have been bruised, our trust abused and our faith taken advantage of. It is hard to know what is worse, losing faith in our fellow humans or in our own ability to bear up under our experience. Certainly, the fear of being cut off from the security of historical safety-structures rises when we are reminded how very little of our own survival-needs any of us can meet on our own.

The 6 of coins represents the niche we make for ourselves within our local economy, culture, and resource-base. Hence, having this card show up reversed can put us in fear of finding support for ourselves at the time when we need it the most. If the historical bond of mutual trust and service (between employee and employer, between spouses, or between the service professional and the markets for her wares) is strained, this affects whole classes of people in a great ripple of tension and deprivation.

With this card reversed, its power lies in its internal impact. Perhaps it is asking us to ponder exactly what we feel entitled to in this world, and on what basis. It might be time to question, for example, why we assume that we as a nation should remain open-endedly protected from the chaos and waste that we visit upon the ecology and each other's nations every day. We might ask what kind of safety net we have in place for ourselves, just in case our bosses and leaders are not proceeding with our best interests at heart. We should certainly be trying to balance our productivity and our consumption, so that we are not piling up an unwitting avalanche of obligations that could rush downhill and bury us at the first hint of unstable events.

The 6 of coins in this position suggests that it is necessary for us to think clearly about what we can do to help ourselves at this juncture, rather than looking outward to agencies or sources that, in the past, could be trusted to rescue us. Allow any expenditures that are not self-sustaining (those that do not provide their own funding, or their full worth in quality of life improvement) to drop away, so that life is simplified and resource is retained. Risk the breaking of past dependency patterns, in order to make space for a new energy-economy to grow up in their place.

This card puts the responsibility for self-sufficiency squarely back on our own shoulders, telling us to stop expecting that the momentum of surrounding events will just carry us along indefinitely as it might have been doing in the past. There needs to be a new tally of resources and requirements made, a new exchange with life negotiated, and a new set of motivators found. If we are ever to grow up into full spiritual adults, then we need to not only be doing the right things, but also doing them for the right reasons, from the inside out. Only a child expects rewards to be endless without an effort made to earn or live up to them!

The Magus position: Page of Coins reversed

This position places the human ego and vital forces front and center, marking them as the evolutionary catalyst that will either make or break our persona and collective future. The card in the World position acts like a cosmic antennae, bringing in the macrocosmic perspective. The card in the Fool position moves that inspiration through the interworld of dream, symbol, and numinous images, forcing us to feel our innermost intuitions and sensitive resonances. Finally we arrive at the 'hard facts' of the material plane, within which we are dully and fixedly embedded by virtue of our attachment to our bodies, our histories, our names and our identifications. It is here, in the thick and intractable world of time and space, where we finally register our actions and reap our karma. This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

The Page of Coins could be alternately named the Servant of Value. He is in the student position, just trying to learn how things are done in the world of the empowered. His position in the household does not offer him a lot of scope at this time, but he is witnessing the cogitations and subsequent behaviors taken by people of means. He's getting the chance to see how value is created out of raw materials, energy, time, concentration and risk. He is keeping his eyes open and his mouth closed, making himself as serviceable as possible without getting in the way with misunderstood priorities or inaccurate calculations. If he proves to be trustworthy, discreet and observant then he will be retained in the inner sanctum of the household, where eventually he might grow into a role carrying considerable responsibility. But right now his position is that of apprentice, and he's taking instruction without presuming that he knows any better.

Because this card is reversed or inverted I am pushing the interpretation into the internal sphere, with the suggestion that each one of us complete the conversion we came to make in this lifetime -- from the state of being a "have not" to the state of being a "have". To do this we have to internalize the lessons that we have seen acted out around us since the day we became conscious. There is an attitude of mind that is inherently conservative. When a person anywhere in their environment undergoes a challenging or corrective experience, the conservative person will note and remember the lesson, whether the individual to whom it happened does or not. In this way, the attentive student of life gathers up good sense and wisdom beyond just their own experience.

Over time, with observation and reflection, this "fly on the wall" perspective makes it easier to see the grain or pattern, the thread of meaning and connectedness that ties our experiences together through time. A person who has a firm grasp on the thread of their destiny does not get lost or fall into despair, even during downturns and tough times. A person who has a role in supporting their tribe does not forget their responsibilities when the going gets rough. Thus, as the Page of Coins studies the ways and means of his surrounding culture, he studies himself at the same time. He is looking around to see where he might have something to offer, something that will be recognized as valuable by others, that will help him become serviceable to the long-term well-being of the tribe.

Summary

Perhaps it's because we are in this flush of a new Spring right now, but the image I am seeing that ties these three cards together with their significator is that of a mulching mower trimming the new grasses and padding their roots with the clippings. The action of mowing can be seen as discouraging by the individual grass plants, who are trying to get as tall as possible, as fast as possible with the new warmth and longer days. Hence, there's a feeling of shock to the system as the blade passes over and reduces all that new growth to a flat and featureless plane. No doubt the plants recoil and lament their lost efforts as all that new growth falls to the ground and starts dying away.

For the long run, though, this process of being trimmed in height but mulched at the foot feeds and thickens the turf, making it more heat-resistant in summer and less thirsty for watering. The turf as a whole becomes more self-sufficient, as the soil below the mulch stays moist and fluffy, allowing new roots to spread into the bald spots and fill them in with fresh growth. What is denied in vertical growth is encouraged at the horizontal level, where the mat deepens over time into a soft and commodious carpet for bare feet to frolic upon.

All of this is going on in the context of that initial Judgment card. While we might feel cast down in one way right now, held back or laid low by powers beyond our control, in another way we are being strengthened through being thrown back onto our own resources. Disabused of our illusions and stripped of false privilege extended by our unsustainable civilization, we are forced get more firmly set on our own foundations now. This will give us motivation to bring our inherent, interior gifts closer to the surface and make them available without grandiosity or hubris, relieved of the inflation of our times. It has been said that God chastises those whom he loves, so if we wish to take the lesson of this spread to heart, then we must willingly consider how we can go about converting our vertical efforts into horizontal ones, whether or not the "mower of God" appears on the horizon to speed the process.

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