World Servers' Spread, March 2008

By Christine Payne-Towler
ArkLetter 36, March 7,  2008 
World Server's Spread

For an introduction to the World Servers' Spread see ArkLetter 5 

After all this immersion in the Papus book, I had no choice to pick up his deck and give it a shuffle. As I was working with the cards, I was thinking about the "astral conditions" of this period between the Eclipse of two weeks ago and this NewMoon. A chant started to form in my mind with the rhythm of the shuffle, helping me to locate this reading in astrological time --  After that beautiful eclipse... <riff>...  after Mercury ceases his retrograde... <riff>...   during the Mars/Pluto opposition...<riff>... during the Saturn/Pluto trine... <riff>...

Out of this meditation came these three cards:

The World Position: The Devil

This card in this position was an immediate turn-on for me. For one thing, I love the Devil card, thinking of it as the "scapegoated Goddess" who is rising out of the mountain of historical sexism She has lived under these last 2,000 years or so. But more immediately, the Devil in the World position suggests that Gaia, the Great Mother, is feeling restless and stormy and unpredictable, in perfect timing with the calls about global climate change alongside global economic whiplash. It seems as if, from macrocosm to microcosm, we are all coming up against our limits, discovering who are real masters are, and being forced to face the natural consequences of our lack of self-accountability.  This is by no means a bad thing, it's really about time, but the incipiency of it all is causing universal dread and anguish with this looming, hulking, fearsome presence right at the edge of consciousness.

So, you might well ask, why does this turn you on, Christine? Because this is the card of arousal itself, whether that's arousal in a sexual sense, in a fight-or-flight sense, in a prove-yourself sense, or however the circumstance strikes. The Devil says "Heck yeah I want something out of this, so let's get down to it!"  There's no ambivalence, there's no hesitancy or wimpyess, at least not on the part of the Devil itself. Yes, the male and female humans who are chained at the Devil's feet feel oppressed because their illusions about civilization, social niceties, "being good", and maintaining the illusion of control have melted under the heat of the Desirous One. But why is this bad? How many lemmings does it take to equal one human being who can stand up on his own hind legs, exercise her backbone and seize his own destiny no matter what her programming dictates?

The way to break it down to a manageable size is to start with yourself. What is the dark cloud squatting directly over your head? What is the fear that shadows you, the realization you cringe away from, and the looming dread you dare not name?  The challenge here is to turn square around and face it, give it a name, and stare it down. Memorize its grainy skin, it's spiky hairs, it's sulphurous smell. Don't cringe away, but be very curious and examine everything closely. What the heck has this critter got that it can toss you into your anxiety closet at the mere whisper of it's breathing?  You want to get a close-up sense of what you are reacting to so slavishly.  What is the power this beast has that saps you of your natural drive, your dream, and your potency to seize the day?

In my experience, we have all been taught to fear our desire. Desire makes us vulnerable (goes the refrain), if you admit what you want, it will be taken away from you.  Desire makes you do things that are undignified -- no desire means keeping your dignity. Desire is embarrassing; it brings shame upon the one who feels it. Desire is damaging; if let out of confinement, it will pull the house down. We have all internalized messages like this, or at least something similar.

But guess what? The only way for humans to live without desire is to be born into a species that never eats or sleeps or reproduces asexually. Or else to be chemically neutered by hormone imbalances. Or else to outlive your reproductive cycle. Everybody else has to deal with desire in at least one area, and usually more than one. So it is not really an effective strategy for most people to shave themselves down to a "no desire" state, unless one is applying to live in a monastery.   Our most winning strategy in a world that is filled with desire-provoking stimuli is to choose what we are desiring, choose what we will be aroused about, and then go for it with the full power of our natural attraction. Once we have questioned ourselves, made our choices, and aligned our sights with our own innate desires, then we will be unstoppable. Our chains and dark clouds will fall away, and we will realize that living without the fear of "what if" is worth the shock of shrugging off our programming and standing up for ourselves.

Heck yeah!  Go for it!

The Etteilla text for this card is:
Upright: From the point of view of spiritual healing this card means force majeure, great movement, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force or strength, extraordinary power, powers. Virtue, property or power, impetus or impulse. Flights of genius. Devastation or  havoc, violence, physical work.

The P. Christian spiritual prescription for this card is:

Whoever you may be, child of Earth, contemplate the ancient oaks that defied the lightning, but the lightning then struck them after having left them alone for more than a century. Cease to believe in your wisdom and your strength unless God has granted you permission to grasp the key to the mysteries of Fate. 

The Fool Position:  Death

Kind of a shocker, eh?  Death right next to the Devil, kind of like the song "between the Devil and the deep blue sea..."

But in fact, this is a very natural and understandable progression. What is our greatest fear, the one that the Devil holds over us even if we are good girls and boys everywhere else in our lives?  It's Death of course, the ultimate leveler.  Annihilation. Ceasing to exist. Blackout. Mostly likely many people would be willing to throw their lot with the Devil over this "deep blue sea..."

But in the Fool position of our World Server's Spread, this Death is the death of the ego that goes along with accepting Fool status. The Fool is the figurehead of this middle term of our spread, representing the unformed chaos that roils at the margin between every thing and everything else -- the ocean and the beach, the Conscious and the Unconscious, the Macro- and the Micro-, the Self and the other.  The Fool has no qualities of his own, no particular outcome he's trying to achieve.  And frankly, neither does the Death card. 

The protagonist of the Death card is not the reaping skeleton, but the scythe, the tool in the skeleton's grip. Like similar implacable instruments of the husbandman's duties -- the handsaw and the pruning hook -- the scythe draws a line and ends a cycle, freeing the perennial part of the plant from its annual growth.  Just so, the ego of the "known self" has regular need of being separated from it's past productions, so that the future "unknown self" will have room to unfold and show it's capacities.

The Etteilla text for this card says:
Upright: From the point of view of spiritual healing this card means death, mortality, annihilation or ruin, destruction. End, deterioration, debasement or adulteration, rot, corruption, putrefaction.

The Paul Christian spiritual prescription for this card says:

Remember, child of Earth, that earthly things last only for a brief time, and the  loftiest of powers are cut down like the grass in the fields. Your visible organs will decay sooner than you expect. But do not fear this, for death is merely birth into another life. The universe ceaselessly reabsorbs all that leaves its breast and has not been spiritualized. But the freeing of material instincts through the soul’s free and voluntary adherence to the laws of universal movement constitutes in us the creation of a second man, the celestial man, and this marks the beginning of our immortality.

The Magus Position: 9 Coins

I always love to see the 9 of coins, and it certainly seems auspicious to have it appear in the Magus position of our World Servers' spread. One simple reason is that coins can be seen as seeds, implying an abundant harvest after the bold departure and radical pruning indicated by the previous cards. Another reason is that the square of nine, 3x3, has been used as a magical talisman in many different cultures through the centuries as a symbol for symmetry and proportionality. The grid itself suggests "a place for everything and everything in its place". These coins mount up and fill the field, implying generosity, abundance, and satisfaction.

In one of the many clever developments of this deck, the 9 of coins carries a shield or sigil of the number 69, which is this card's number in the sequence of 78. Note that the numbers are both of the same shape, but flipped in relation to each other, and also in colors that move oppositely, radiant gold and dropout black.  To my eye, Papus is very blatantly suggesting the Taoist yin/yang sign, a symbol of polarities in attraction that complete themselves in each other. Some might see a sexual message here, some a therapeutic suggestion, but for myself I think of the two hemispheres of the brain juggling consciousness between them, constantly shifting between modes of perception and expression.  I would say that when a person's life is in balance, once the outward and inward tendencies have been harmonized, and then there can be stability, bringing prosperity and security and peace. 

The Etteilla text for this card is:
Upright: From the point of view of spiritual healing, in its natural position, this card means: effect, realization, positive, accomplishment, success.

In Synthesis

Nobody can miss that I have been beating the drum for radical realignment of our outer lives with our deepest values for months, even years now.  It seems as if this month a cusp has been reached and the velvet glove is coming off the iron fist of destiny.  Where in the past we have felt that we had a range of choices, in the future we will be touched by the pressure of necessity.  Where we once entertained fantasies of endless options available for our perusal, now we are just looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. However, all is not lost. There seem to be some rewards available to those who will submit to the pruner's knife.  We be forced to default back to simpler pleasures, but certainly pleasures still remain.

I'm thinking that those who have a personal goal that they are passionate about, those who are not afraid to go through changes to achieve what they want, will be well-positioned to get ahead as the general fear of the Devil and Death take hold of the mass mind. We are certainly facing challenging conditions, the likes of which have not been seen in America in a very long time. But nevertheless, we are each individuals, with individual destinies and very unique powers through which to affect the outcomes that we wish for.   

Try to look around your life and imagine what simple, inexpensive steps you can take to improve your enjoyment of your space when you are there.  Bring home some fresh fruits and let the smells of their ripeness fill your kitchen. Buy the cat a plant of catnip that you take down from the window once a day to watch him or her regress into kittenish joy. Wear a garment that has a luscious texture and/or color that you can take delight in through the day. Take note of what your body is telling you through your attractions and resistance to various experiences. Try to find the most friendly, smooth, and mutually satisfying avenue to resolving interpersonal issues. Take the attitude that we can all get what we need if we just share and care about each other along the way. This seems to me to be the best remedy for the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", the likes of which I don't think any of us are able to duck right now.

ArkLetter 36
March 7, 2008
copyright christine payne-towler 2005-2008, all rights reserved

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