Tarot Reading: Current Events

Finally, a tarot reading. This one's a world events reading. In the reading I'll start with the position of the card, tell what that position signifies, then I'll give the name of the tarot card that came up in that position as well as the general meaning of that particular card. After each card I'll give my reading of how they seem to connect with the energy of the present state of current events. These readings tend to focus on what is most central in terms of the Karmic energy of what's going on in the world, and I'm simply recounting what I'm reading off the energy. It may seem as if I'm personally editorializing but I'm actually, in a sense, just taking dictation from the energy.

Here's the reading:

Card 1: The central issue at the moment: Ace of Disks: The arrival of a new way of working. Something rising on the horizon that allows new work to emerge.

Since cards 1 and 2 are connected, I hold off on making any world event connection yet.

Card 2: What will help or align itself with this energy: Justice: Helping others. Righting wrongs, bringing those who are doing evil to justice.

These two cards go together, tell what we're dealing with. And I get the feeling that all this has something to do with Afghanistan: a new approach to that situation is necessary, one that needs to focus strongly (of course) on bringing criminals and their allies to justice.

Card 3: How this energy is manifesting itself: 10 of Swords (upside down): Right side up the card means defeat, loss of all hope and a loss of all physical and mental resources that might help you solve the problems that you are immersed in; utter despair. Upside down it can mean overturning this sense of hopelessness or defeat.

I get the feeling that this is not simply or not only how the energy itself is manifesting itself in terms of actual physical events and circumstances but it is the desire that it intensifies within the people involved in this situation. In this case it seems to be talking about the heightened desire for a strategy and for action in those who want Afghanistan to become stable and no longer an Al Qaeda stronghold. We've seen this all over the news. It also has to do with Pakistan. As we have seen, tempers are running high in Pakistan over the spill-over of the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan.

The 10 of Swords is one of the worst cards in the pack, and here it's pointing to one of the worst areas of the globe right now,karmically speaking: both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Something must be done to stabilize this area, to strengthen both the confidence of the people living there and of the rest of the world in the stability of that area. Pakistan is the most dangerous of the two: there's this huge pocket of instability there, something with great potential to crumble and cause a disaster or a series of disasters, the effects of which reach far beyond its borders. Whatever darkness that was taking hold in Afghanistan seems to have shifted and taken root more deeply in Pakistan. Right now, then, Pakistan is the central home of all that the 10 of swords symbolizes in this situation.

Card 4: What the Karmic purpose of this experience is: The Moon: Facing evil. Looking evil in the face and calling it what it is. Accepting its reality and becoming open to what can be done about it in the present.

This is the simple truth: face the reality of this situation: Pakistan is central now. Afghanistan is important and shouldn't be ignored, but as far as the need to root out the real dangerous evil that the US and its allies went over there to find and defeat, it's Pakistan that's central. The Karmic need right now is to face this reality and to focus on this reality and to figure out what can be done about this reality. There's a great big pocket of very nasty Karmic energy hovering around this situation that, when it manifests itself, is going to make it easy to make this danger and darkness clear to the US and its allies and that manifestation of chaos or violence will allow them to face and act on this truth. This may mean that there is some nasty violence and chaos coming.

Card 5: What from the past brought this situation to you: 3 of Swords: Finding the allies that you need to help you negotiate and to solve a problem.

This is fairly obvious. Aligning with Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda helped make this situation possible. The alignment was a necessary choice, but it was one with dark inevitabilities that went along with the help. This card also points to the forces in Pakistan who have made themselves allies with Al Qaeda sympathizers, some of whom may be within the government of Pakistan.

Card 6: the future: 8 of Cups (upside down): Right side up this card indicates exhaustion, feeling fed up and finished with a relationship, needing to move on. Upside down it can mean an intensified experience of being fed up with a relationship.

So things may be heating up in Pakistan. The anger, the violence, etc. may be heating up, all of which we ought to look at as the consequences of ignoring the truth of what has happened in Pakistan, the consequences of being distracted by Iraq and other things, all of which allowed the shifting of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Eventually all of that will begin to come to a head, manifesting itself in a violent chaos that can't be ignored. The violence is a call to focus on the realities of the present, to stop worrying about legacies and about old plans, etc. and focus on what is real and present and dangerous right now.

So there it is. I have no idea what the real situation is in Pakistan, just the snippets of what I see on the news, which isn't much, so I guess we'll have to see in the months ahead how accurate any of this is.

Psychic Reading: Beyond The Darkness

This reading began yesterday with a painting, which served as a kind of warm-up (click image to enlarge):Next, today, I did one of my guided scripture searches and cobbled together a group of quotes from Isaiah in the New American Bible:

"They set forth, hugging the earth like reptiles,
Breath moaning like a lyre.
Ah! the roaring of many people
That roar like the roar of the seas!" (Isaiah 16: 1, 11; 17: 12)

{Side note, that first line, from 16:1, only appears in the New American Bible, most others translate it differently; my Hebrew Bible notes that the meaning of the Hebrew in that verse is uncertain. The discrepancy doesn't affect my reading, but it's an interesting thing that came up as I was searching.}

Next, the reading itself is channeled. It's not quite automatic writing, but something similar. I'm transcribing, in a way, the energy that's "speaking". It's like reading the pages of the book of the world's Karma. Sometimes a lot of it is explanation of wisdom attached to the Karma and sometimes it's predictions about world events, sometimes it's both. Occasionally if a complicated concept comes up in a reading I may do a follow-up reading that amplifies or explains that concept a little more.

Here's the reading:

Happiness, joy, lies at the heart of all things. Deep in the heart of all things, even the most bleak and horrifying, there is the seed of happiness. Joy is the core. Joy is the original intention, smothered and buried as it may be by the fearful or ambitious or by the blinded choices of the ego. At the core of all things there is a joy that wishes to be born, even if it only ever manifests itself as a wish.

At the core of darkness is light. Light is the rule of the Universe. Darkness, in the sense of fear and pain and collapse and cruelty, is not the rule, despite what you may see around you and around the world each day.

When the Light is talking, sometimes people, in their state of fear or comfort or excitement, mistake it for the darkness. A wolf in sheep's clothing. When the Light shows up in something unfamiliar or in a form that is a strange variation of what one is used to, it is easy to have a first reaction that says You are not Light, you are darkness trying to fool us.

When the Buddha was on the Earth, this was a reaction that many people had to him. It lead to his murder. As it did with Jesus and many others who spoke with a voice of the New, of expansion.

No one likes for their solidly held beliefs and ideas to be tampered with. It feels to them as if life itself is in danger, when if fact, many times, it is life itself which is about to be expanded and enriched and extended by the New.

This is what happened in the early Christian era. New ideas, ideas that expanded the theology and understanding of the theology of Christianity, began to emerge, questions began to be asked, connection began to be made, connections that bridged the gap between the theology and cosmology of the new West and the ancient East. Those new ideas were not allowed to be nourished and refined in a way that allowed them to fit snugly into the culture. Instead, they were shunned, buried, made criminal, scoffed at. And so a huge part of the fabric of Karma was not allowed to build itself and create the beauty it was meant to create.

And so, because all institutional religions are Karmically interconnected, all institutional religion and their ideas (most especially in the West) became more and more a strong source of chaos, of evil, oppression. Institutional religion became something that could not keep up with the needs of the present world it was living in, and this unsteadiness allowed fear to thrive, making it far more easy for leaders to choose to follow their fear rather than to choose the Path that would efficiently repair the gaps in the fabric of Karma.

And so, over the top of the Light darkness weaved its fabric of Karma, and more and more the Light emanating from institutional religions became dimmer and dimmer, and more and more it seemed as though these institutions belonged to another era, and it seemed as though all of their energy was focused on remaining in that other era where all those early choices of fear were first chosen.

What are the consequences? Generally, you have institutions (and the cultures that spring from them) that radiate with fear, that re-dramatise the original choices to scoff at or dismiss or oppress that which might make those religions/ideas begin to thrive: that which is New from the Soul of Karma.

Specifically you have a circle of religious leadership, the current Pope, for example, whose whole being radiates with this fear, whose whole agenda is to maintain this fear and all of its desires. This will be a problem for this Pope, who has a Karmic shroud around him, a shroud that attracts scandal and humiliation. His fear has becomes his ruling guide, and it will knock the feet out from under him in almost all that he tries to do.

What is the solution? To go back to those ancient "heresies" and affix them onto the current theology? No. They are in forms that do not apply (not as they are, at least) to the current needs of theology and cosmology. The solution is to trust that at the core of those teachings are the seeds, the kernels of wisdom and insights that will help transform the current theology and the current ideas about the Divine (in all faiths, not just Christianity) so that that gap in consciousness and in the fabric of Karma can be repaired. The wisdom is there, it simply must be nurtured and transformed from its unrefined state. The leaders are there, but they must be trusted, though they shouldn't be followed blindly, for the Soul of you the individual knows more about what you should believe in and in what you should follow than any great guru or spiritual leader.

At the core of darkness surrounding the culture of religion (which also includes its inability to connect with science, which it ought to be able to do---- but that's another reading) is great potential for joy, for the repairing of the damage that fear has done, the potential to stop fear in its Karmic tracks and let Joy, the true Divine, create great beauty and wisdom in the world.

As you tumble through this storm of fear, remember this and be open to the wisdom of the New (which at its heart is not really new) and, most importantly, be open to what your Soul tells you is true, even if the great leaders of the world might tell you it's sinful or false.

End of reading.

Psychic Reading: Cleaning Up Karma

Finally, a new psychic reading. As usual, I start by cobbling together a passage from scripture that serves as a trigger. This time around the scripture is adapted from Ezekiel:

"Our bones are dried up
Our hope is lost;
Come, O Spirit,
And breathe into us
That we may come to life." (Ezekiel 37: 9,11)

{I just noticed: this scriptural call for help is from 9,11}

These readings are channeled. Not quite automatic writing, but something similar. I'm transcribing, in a way, the energy that's "speaking". It's like reading the pages of the book of the world's Karma. Sometimes a lot of it is explanation of wisdom attached to the karma and sometimes it's predictions about world events, sometimes it's both. Occasionally if a complicated concept comes up in a reading I may do a follow-up reading that amplifies or explains that concept a little more.

Here's the reading:

There is sickness all around, Karmically speaking. A kind of prison of pain and fear polluting the "Air" of Karma, and this creates all sorts of problems, problems that rise up as a consequences of choices fueled by fear and by the ego's doubt in the Soul's choices.

This is a global "prison" of fear and pain, which is why there is so much turmoil in the world, much of it triggered or emerging from religious fanaticism. At the root of much of this are the choices made centuries ago when religion ruled the culture, when leaders of empires and religions thought God was their God alone and they His greatest instrument. When they began to fear that God did not exist or that God did not want what they wanted for their lives and their kingdoms, they took matters into their own hands and made choices out of fear and ego desires rather than out of the Voice of the Soul.

Sometimes Karma needs you to feel vulnerable, to feel failure, collapse, despair. These experiences open you up to greater things when there is a too strong attachment to what you have or know or love. These experiences allow you to let go of the things or ideas you need to leave behind you. Karma is wise. It is not always pretty, but nevertheless it is still wise.

When world leaders make choices out of ego, those choices reverberate through the culture and into the future. These ego choices can change the fabric of Karma, pollute it, deny it the wisdom and experience that create brighter and more peaceful futures. The root of those choices is fear. The consequences of these choices: manifestations of the fear at the root of them; that is to say, more fear, fear that gets written into the fabric of the Universe, manifesting itself in disease and disaster and anything else that will stir up more fear.

The world has not yet fully come to terms with how to balance the reality of what and how the ego can control and create in the physical world, how the ego can retain its dignity while allowing itself to take its proper role in relation to the Divine as neither servant nor slave but, rather, humble co-creator and channel.

The rise of theological and theocratic chaos and terror and the spiritual neurosis and psychosis that it has manifested over recent years are the consequences of the "blank spaces" in the culture, missing connections and experiences and wisdom, which resulted from those old choices.

It is always the same struggle: the ego versus the Divine, though this can be eradicated in the modern world: the material that will allow the resolution of that struggle (through synthesis and transformation of religious wisdom and experience) which will eventually allow the Karmic "prison" and "poison" to be gotten rid of, is readily available to everyone in the modern world. It is a matter of listening to your Soul's Voice to guide you to your piece of that wisdom and experience, trusting through the darkness and the strangeness that the Soul knows what is best and that you will emerge into light and peace. Silent meditation is always the first step.

On the larger cultural scale, the solution is not to reject institutional religion and its rituals and traditions, but to allow the Soul's wisdom to transform them. Not by returning religion to ancient ways or by looking for and attaching forcefully other existing forms that differ from your own, but to allow the wisdom of the Soul to lead you back into the past and into other forms of religion and then back again to the emptiness of the present where the wisdom of the past and of the "other" allows you to see your own faith in new and expanded ways, creating changes organically from within your chosen religion or spirituality. The goal is not to destroy multiplicity and tradition but to transform it, open it, revitalize it.

The prison of pain that the Karma of the world is in right now is very real. It needs to manifest its pain and poison so that it will destroy itself and so that the poison and the pain can be seen for what it is: fear rooted in the ego's desire to be God. Give up that need and you will begin to feel God at last manifesting as God, as peace, as the Universe, as your own clear inner voice beyond the ego.

How will this Karma of pain be manifesting itself in the future? In the Middle East there will be of course more unrest and you will see once again Israel become a place full of fire and bloodshed; always keep an eye on Syria: Syrian authorities and their allies are the root of much that plagues the Middle East these days. This will come to light as a consequence of terrible bloodshed in the area. A leader will be assassinated in that area, causing great turmoil, and that turmoil will be the beginning of the Path that will allow the world to see the darkness that has been allowed to thrive in Syria and its allied partners.

The heart of the darkness is confusion and emptiness in the foundational religions in all the world's cultures, manifesting itself in hostility and fear, in war and oppression and absurdity. The karma of the world is thick with that fear, and the only way to dispel it is to face it and meet it head-on with peaceful soulful strength. Know what the Soul is telling you, listen to it, not to the fear and the ideas it has taught the world---you will not become less powerful by denying the ego its lies about its own power and wisdom; on the contrary you will become more powerful because you have allowed the ego to take its rightful place and become a limitless channel rather than a limited limiting barrier to divinity.

The darkest days are for the most part, in this phase, behind, now is the time to face up and clean up the darkness that has been building and perpetuating itself. Out of the darkness comes a new dawn, a new consciousness, the new face(s) of the Divine.

World Events Reading: Iran

So I've been watching this whole uprising that's been happening in Iran over the past week, and I keep thinking about the psychic reading that I did last September that re-iterated a prediction of a coming revolution in Iran (go here for the reading). I scoffed at it when I wrote it since I had been getting the same or a variation on the same reading about that so-called revolution in Iran for about two years now and nothing that I ever saw on the news indicated that a revolution or even an uprising there was coming or even possible. Well, I guess I shouldn't scoff. I'm still not sure if this is what those past readings were talking about but it sure looks like it is.

Nevertheless, this may not be a revolution, the one event that will topple the present regime in Iran, but it may be the start of a process of weakening it so it will eventually crumble. Maybe that's what the last reading meant when it used as a preamble the cobbled-together quote from Deuteronomy (7:20,22):

"Hornets will be sent among them
Until they are destroyed little by little
You cannot defeat them all at once
Lest the wild beasts become overwhelming for you"

So maybe this is the beginning of a process---or maybe not, maybe something will cause a collapse or change in leadership, tho the experts I've read doubt that that's what will happen. Or maybe I was reading the "regime change" wrong and the "revolution" was just about uproar about the election of a new president. Hard to tell.

I'm still partly skeptical about the reading(s), but it is an interesting "coincidence."

I may do a Tarot reading about Iran soon, or another "scripture based" reading about it, so stay tuned.

Tarot Reading: Current Events

In honor of President Obama's 100 days in office, I thought I'd do a short tarot reading about his present circumstances.

The first card is about the general situation at present, and the card that comes up is The Sun, which is about releasing yourself from the darkness or disappointments of the past and coming out into the light in health and hope, filled with promise. This refers to the present Karmic need for the country. We'll see what this means specifically as we move on through the reading.

The next card is about what will help that agenda, and the card that comes up is The Lovers, which is about tapping into your intuition, letting your instincts and inner voice guide you through whatever path you are on. The Lovers card is linked to Gemini, which always signifies some kind of communication of truth, tapping into truth. It's important that Obama retains his agenda of transparency and openness, his ability to speak the truth must not be hindered by political agendas, his or anyone else's . This is important and central to the present moment. It is also why the torture memo kerfuffle was and still is important, and why Obama's initial lack of clarity about his feelings about prosecutions was important. Clarity must be maintained, that includes a clarity about the need to have justice served about these past matters. Giving in to political fears and the bullying of the past administration and their minions is not going to be Karmically helpful. It will come back to haunt Obama and the country if he gives in to them.

The central issue is Obama's need to maintain peace and goodwill (he wants everyone to stand in the light of The Sun, see him and his supporters as standing in the warmth of The Sun) but he needs to remember that truth telling will always draw hate and bad feelings to you even as it clears the air and draws in the peace. The darkness that encroaches as a result of the truth is temporary, simply a part of the truth asserting itself; it will pass once the liars are acknowledged as the liars that they are. Let the peace come from the truth, the haters will destroy themselves with their lies and hate.

The next card is about the Karmic significance of the present moment (the central situation seems to be the torture memos and the questions they bring up), and the card that comes up is the Nine of Wands, which comes up upside down. This card signifies recovery from sickness, but upside down it can mean that the recovery has not completed itself, some part of the disease lingers and weakens you. And here the disease seems to be metaphorical, the damage of the Bush Administration's lies and alleged crimes against the constitution, the damage to the reputation and life of the US. The poison is still there; the questions that poison the air about what went on in the Bush Administration still linger, and the whole situation has to be looked at in the light of truth, and consequences must be felt by those who are guilty of corruption and abuse. This is important, and Obama needs to be unflinching in his insistence about getting to the truth and allowing real justice to take its course.

There is real poison in the energy of the country, left over from the corruption of the past administration, and allowing the truth to come out and allowing justice (either in the Karmic sense or in the legal sense, or both) is very important to the life of the country. The truth will not endanger the country, as the Right wants to contend; on the contrary, truth and justice will make us less vulnerable to greater darkness.

The torture memos and the questions they bring up now seem to have been swept off the headlines because of the recent swine flu fears, but it's very important that they not be forgotten, according to the cards, at least. These memos represent a deeper more serious disease, a deeper and longer lasting Karmic threat to the life of the country, and they have to be dealt with, both in Washington and in the media.

Tarot Reading: Current Events

Time for another Tarot card world events reading.

The first two cards are about the general situation. The first card is about the situation itself, and the card that comes up is the Ten of Wands, which is about heavy burdens, carrying a lot of weight on your own shoulders or being overcome by lots of projects and responsibility. I get the feeling that this is related to President Obama, carrying a lot of weight on his shoulders trying to do a lot of things at once.

The second card is about what will help in this situation, and the card that comes up is the Four of Discs, which is usually about about holding on to money or holding on to work that you're doing. It can also mean to take time and center yourself, catch your breath and see where your energy and your money needs to be spent. You've completed the initial phase of some money matter or work matter and now you need to step back and see where the real needs are and see what needs to be done about it.

This may have something to do with rushing ahead with more projects (spending bills?) that have to do with the economy. It may be a good idea for Obama to not succumb to the sense of urgency and the sense that things need to be acted on quickly or in ways that he's expected to act. It might be a good idea to stop and take a breath and see if there aren't new ways to do things, new people to talk to and new avenues of action that might help ease the current burden. It feels like the beginning of a new phase in this, and he needs to be sure he's not just riding the tide of habit and fear, needs to re-assess things, brainstorm, find new people (this feels very important, the new people thing).

The next card deals with the Karmic intent of the situation, what he (or the country/government) is meant to learn or simply why Obama is in the situation he's in. The card that comes up is the Seven of Cups, which comes up upside down. This card is usually about some kind of excessive ego involvement in relationships: it can also mean that you've got too many people around you telling you what to do, and that seems to be the one that fits here. The card is upside down so it seems that Obama needs to start weeding the bad eggs from some of his crew of advisers. It's not only that some of them are just noise and unnecessary (though they are) but some of them do not really have the country's best interest at heart; they're more interested in their own agendas, so he needs to get rid of them.

So, to summarize so far: What Obama seems to be dealing with or is about to be dealing with is a need to take a break to see if there aren't some new people he can look to for advice about the economy or whatever (it seems as though it's about the economy but who knows). He needs to not just barrel ahead and work with old ideas and approaches that have come down through habit and from the same circle of advisers. Taking a small break is very important, despite the pressures he's feeling.

The next card deals with the future, and the card that comes up is the Page of Wands, which comes up upside down, which can mean bad news, and I get the feeling of violence here. I get the feeling about New York, the UN. Dictators. Don't know what this is. All this could be symbolic, so don't jump to any conclusions.

The next card, which deals with the people involved in this future situation, is Temperance, which comes up upside down. Temperance is about having patience in the creative process, allowing the universe to do what it does at its own pace, and since the card comes up upside down, the people involved in this situation are people who have little patience with the slowness of process, which may account for the violence. They are people who want what they want now. I get the image in my head of protesters at the UN, which, again, may be symbolic. I don't know why they're protesting, but maybe it's because of the violence (or they may be the cause of the violence) or because someone is not, to their mind, moving fast enough on some issue. Don't know. Again, this could all be symbolic.

The gist of this future event is sort of vague but it seems to have something to do with the UN or the New York offices of the UN, some sort of violence happening around this, and it feels like it stems from people who are impatient or angry about something that they feel is being neglected or ignored. I get a strong African feeling around this too. Maybe it's about violence in Africa, not in the UN or New York, people protesting it at the UN or about the UN's seeming lack of action, etc. Don't know.

The last card is a summary card, tying the whole reading together, the central issues. The card that comes up is The Moon, which is sometimes about facing down external demons, dealing with and banishing corrupt or evil people. In terms of Obama, it seems to be about taking a look at some of the people who have been giving him advice and seeing what their motives are, how much of what they have to say to him is about self-interest, and he needs to get rid of those who seem to be corrupt and too rigid or have agendas other than the healing the country.

In terms of the future event, I think it has something to do with corruption in Africa, dictators or military regimes in Africa that have been allowed to stay strong with little effort or with ineffective efforts from the UN. It feels like there's violence around this, either from the regime or, more likely, from the people who want something done about it. As I said, I'm not really sure what this is, if it's anything at all. We'll just have to wait and see.

Tarot Reading: Current Events

It's been a while since I've done a Tarot reading about world events so I thought I'd try one today. This is a slightly shortened version of a long reading: usually there are 10 cards but I decided to shorten it down to 6 so this wouldn't go on and on. Because it's where I'm living, the focus is going to be on current conditions that are affecting and will affect the USA, though it may also be about larger world events. We'll just have to wait and see what comes up. Here goes:

The first two cards give a general idea about the situation that the reading is dealing with. The first card is the situation itself, and the card that comes up is The Tower, which is pretty ominous, usually it denotes chaos and collapse, though considering the state of the economy right now, I guess that's pretty appropriate. The second card is about the thing or the circumstances that will help the situation, and the card that comes up is the Three of Cups, which is all about relationships, people coming together in a cooperative and supportive way to do something creative.

So if you look at these two cards together what we have is a situation in which there's a major collapse going on, which I'm assuming is the economy and the squabbling and drama around it in Washington; and the thing that's going to help us out of this situation is a true spirit of cooperation. No big surprise there.

The third card will amplify the reading of the situation, give us a clue about what the situation is about Karmically, why we're in it and what we may be meant to learn from it. The card that comes up is Strength, which is primarily about keeping your emotions and ego in check when times are rough or when you feel threatened or scared or defeated. The card comes up upside down here, so it's about an inability to check emotional reactions, acting on fear and habits of emotion and old expectations.

The key here seems to be that the leadership and the culture in the US has for too long been acting on lots of old assumptions about power and about money and about how government ought to assert itself and comport itself. It's been about elections and power grabbing, media circuses and "messages" that amount to lies and half truths and empty words. It has rarely been about service. Now the focus has to be about service. The lion in the Strength card here (see image) represents the appetite for power (both political and personal); it has to be tamed or it will devour everything that's truly important and good about this country.

The Karmic need, then, in this chaos and collapse, is to look at what brought us here. What misuse of power, what political game-playing and empty gestures and media circuses took the place of good sense and service in all levels and branches of government. Washington and local governments need to begin to ask themselves if there isn't a better way, a way that allows the parties to keep their philosophical integrity without all the egotism and destructive defensiveness and rigidity.

The fourth card is all about the future, and the card that comes up is the Two of Swords, which comes up upside down, which may indicate a situation in which a conflict can't be resolved, an ongoing struggle is revived or intensified. I get the feeling that this has something to do with Israel or the Middle East. Something explosive. Soon, I think. I suddenly get this very strong feeling of violence breaking out there. An attack of some kind, I think. It really feels like Israel/Palestine.

The fifth card is about the people involved in this future situation, and the card that comes up is the Seven of Swords, which is usually about excessive ego involvement in some kind of conflict, but I'm getting the feeling that it's also about theft: I get this very strong image of Arabs being irate about their land being stolen, which is I guess my intuition's way of telling me that this is probably about Palestine and/or Hamas (though I get the feeling there may be a Lebanon involvement as well).

The last card tells a little more about the future, what it means and how it fits into what's going on, and the card that comes up is the Ace of Swords, which is usually about the seeds of conflict, seeds that may contain the solution or they may simply contain more conflict, and I have the feeling that the latter is primarily the case here: more conflict. The card is I think an indication that there's a new phase of conflict brewing in Israel or the Middle East, that chaos is going to break out again there in a stronger way.

Like the chaos that happening in Washington, the Karmic choice and lesson is I think the same: what is your intention for your government? Do you want to be a source of service and rationality or do you want it to be an extension of your own egotism, appetites and fear? These are the questions that need to be asked by the leadership in Israel and Palestine (and elsewhere) just as they also need to be asked by the leaders in the US. This chaos is begging us to ask these questions and trying its mighty best to get those leaders to see what in the past has been the root cause of all this turmoil and what in the present is there to help bring it to peace.

Tarot Meditation: The Magician

Randomly selected, the card that comes up for today is The Magician, the conduit to the mystical realm. The Magician is grounded in the fertile physical world, but he's also reaching out into the ether for the wisdom and power of the Divine. "He" is neither masculine nor feminine: he is a mix of the two, open and supple with the feminine power of yin but charged and heated with the active energy of masculine yang, ready for anything, and supremely skilled to get the job done with grace and efficiency and success.

The lesson of this card for today is balancing power. Seek the power of yin, the silence and suppleness of being peacefully and humbly in your body, knowing that you also carry within you the power of the universe, the power to make thing happen beyond your wildest dreams, knowing also that that power works best when the ego is the follower not the leader. Let the ego relax, give up its need to be the king, let it be the handmaiden instead, the one who listens to the Larger Inner Voice and says yes only to that deeper voice rather than to its own fears and expectations and ambitions. The handmaiden will always eventually become the Queen, who is also King, who is also the Magician.

Lilith & Samael & The Ecstasy Of Enlightenment

I continued to do some exploration on Lilith. Namely, the legend of her marriage to the angel Samael. Samael seems to be the male version of Lilith, her other half. At one point in legend they're referred to as dragons of the sea, demonic and tortured and dangerous and hungry to mate (with each other and with unsuspecting humans) and populate the world with their terrible offspring. Both are, in one story or another, assigned the role of Satan in the Garden of Eden, both have a darkly erotic reputation which seems to always be linked to some kind of experience of obliteration, death or the loss of self of some kind, which is understandable if you think of the climax of their power as orgasm and ejaculation.

Samael, like Lilith, is linked to dark eroticism (his mates after Lilith were all the angels of prostitution) as well as death itself. Moses was told in a vision that Samael is the angel that takes your Soul away. Despite all the darkness that surrounds him and his links to Satan, Samael's legend still hasn't made up its mind about Samael, sometimes he's one of God's agents, one of God's Powers, and sometimes he's evil incarnate, the demiurge responsible for all that's wrong with the world, which makes sense considering his links to eroticism and considering conventional religion's suspicion and ambivalence about all things erotic.

I did a little gematria work on the Hebrew words for "Lilith" (LYLYTh) and "Samael" (SMAL) and found that if you add the digits of the sum of the numerical values of LYLYTh (480) and then reduce that sum to a single digit (480: 4+8+0=12: 1+2) you get 3, which is associated with the High Priestess tarot trump; and if you do the same for SMAL (131: 1+3+1) you get 5, which is associated with the tarot trump The Emperor, thus creating new faces for this married couple.

The dark dragons of the sea, the two faces of evil, become the coupling of the High Priestess, who is the cool moonlit face of expanding consciousness (powered by Mercury), the queenly keeper of secrets, and the fiery lusty Emperor, the apotheosis of masculine power and the assertion of ego identity.

And so we're back to naked lust again, coupled with the mystical secrets of the universe. Lilith, the dark entity who seduces and delights you (and drains you) in your dreams is now the gateway to the mysteries of the cosmos, the supreme Teacher of the reality of the Self and the Soul who wipes away all pretence and lies and reveals the naked awesome truth of you and your world; Samael, the terrible angel of death, who obliterates your Soul, is the blinding whirl of lust, the energy of sex and pleasure, the body's fire and it's deepest need, the need to create and connect and delight in the flesh.

They seem to be the perfect couple, adrift (and targeted for death and sterilization by God [signifying the Church/Temple leadership?] according to one legend) in the ocean of consciousness. And the link too between Prophecy and Lilith, as we saw in the last post, seems even more apt, coupled now with the terrible bliss of Samael, bliss that blazes but also obliterates your whole identity as you rise and delight in the unspeakable Mysteries that only ecstasy can reveal.

Gematria: Liver, Prophecy, Sex and Lilith

I was doing some gematria this afternoon as a warm-up for a long writing project, and I came across this interesting connection. I was looking at a passage from Ezekiel (21:21 or, in my New American Bible it's 21:26) and was drawn to the word "liver" in the passage there (which described three methods of divination used by the king of Babylon, one of which was to look at animal livers). I worked up a little gematria for the Hebrew word for liver (KBD) and came up with the initial sum of 26, which sounded familiar. I went to Aleister Crowley's listing of Hebrew words by their numerical values in his 777 and saw that I was right, the sum of the letter values in the Hebrew word YHVH ("Yahweh" sometimes referred to as Tetragrammaton, one of the most sacred Hebrew names of God) also has a total of 26.
Listed along with YHVH was the Hebrew word for "seeing" (ChUZH, which I looked up and found that it also can mean "seer" or "prophet", also "pact or contract"). KBD is also listed, but as the name of the husband of "the impure Lilith."

The word KBD itself can mean "heavy" as in something important or something burdensome, but it also can refer to the liver, the physical interior of the body, or the Soul.

I broke the word's numerical value, 26, down into symbols (each number has a symbol attached to it) which gave me the hieroglyph "MOON (20)/TAURUS(6)" which I then translated into a phrase, which is based on the meaning of the symbols: "Guidance (MOON) in times of need (TAURUS)" which makes a lot of sense, both in terms of "YHVH" and "Prophet/ Seer", and even "liver" if you think of a liver as a tool for divination.

I had no idea what to make of Lilith's husband Kebad at first, since I haven't found anything out about him, only Crowley's reference to him, but the more I thought about it the more fascinating it became to think that Lilith, the evil seductress, symbol of secret dark eroticism, the succubus who seduces men as they sleep, is linked in marriage to a name that refers to the Soul, to someone whose name is linked closely to Prophecy and is linked gematrically to the most sacred Hebrew name of God.

The link between dark erotic experience and prophecy has always been fascinating to me. The erotically charged spiritual ecstasy of some of the Catholic saints (St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross [look at his diagram of spiritual ascension: it's an erect penis with notes about spiritual experience written all over it], and St Francis of Assisi, to name a few) must have also had a physical component for them as well as a spiritual one (I really don't think you can separate the two, though the saints always seem to try to when they wrote about them), and must have felt to them like something demonic, given their socialization about sex and spiritual life.

Before I even looked up the passage from Ezekiel that brought me to the word "liver" which brought me to the marriage of Kebad and Lilith, I had the vague idea that the piece of writing that I was starting to outline had something to do with prophets or saints and sexuality. How appropriate that the impulse to do some gematria on the word KBD would bring me to the fascinating image of Lilith and her husband KBD, the union of dark eroticism and prophecy.

This is why I love working with gematria. It can trigger all sorts of things you never expected. All of this I'm sure will have a strong influence on the longer project I was working on when I ran into this connection, so stay tuned: there's bound to be more on this in one form or another as I dig deeper.

Why Do You Hate Zechariah, Mr. God?

“Where is your child?” Herod’s soldiers demanded, brandishing their swords. They were in the Temple, in the court of the priests, where Zechariah, father of John the Baptizer, had been praying.

“What are you doing here? This is a sacred place,” Zechariah said.

“Where are you hiding your son?”

“I am a servant of the Lord.” Zechariah said. “I will tell you nothing.”

Hours later, when he did not come to bless them as usual, the other priests found Zechariah’s dead body lying in a pool of his own blood in the court of the priests.

Shortly before this, Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife, had been warned (by an angel?) that Herod’s soldiers were coming after her (and Zechariah's) son. She fled to the mountains with the child John (though without her husband) and an angel led her and the child to a place where they could hide from danger.

Quite a while before this, Joseph, husband to Mary, the mother of Jesus (and cousin to Elizabeth and Zechariah) was warned in a dream of Herod’s intent to slaughter children, and Joseph was able to pack up his family and head off to Egypt before the blood began to fly.

And yet Zechariah lies in the court of priests, soaking in his own blood.

The story of the death of Zechariah and the rescue of Elizabeth and John comes from “The Protevangelian.” “The Protevangelian” is an apocryphal book, one of those “lost books” left out of the canon for one reason or another, so you may be suspicious of it, brush it off as legend and not a true (in either the spiritual or the historical sense) articulation of God’s actions. Fair enough.

In the Gospel of Luke, Zechariah was praying in the temple, and an angel, Gabriel, appeared to him and told him that at last his wife, long thought to be barren, would bear a son by him, and Zechariah, shocked and overjoyed, asked the angel, “How can this be?” and at Zechariah's disbelief the angel got royally pissed---How dare you? Do you know who I am? I came all this way with a message from God, etc. etc.---and made Zechariah a mute until the day the child, John, was born.

However, when the same angel appeared before Mary, the mother of Jesus, and told her that she, though still a virgin, was pregnant with the Son of God, and Mary asked “How can this be?” there was no disgruntled stomping of angelic feet, no curse on her inquisitive power of speech, just a reassuring explanation and more happy baby news.

And yet Zechariah stumbles around in silence, awash in shame.

Not to mention all those slaughtered innocents.

In The Cards

I got an email a few minutes ago from the Communications Director at US Games (who sell tarot cards) pointing out to me the similarity between the Hierophant figure on the "Vanessa Tarot" deck and a certain Republican Vice-Presidential candidate. See:
It is a little uncanny. The cards were designed about 3 years ago so it's not a conscious reference. The possible meanings of this right off the top of my head are intriguing. First the card itself (without the Palin reference) is a little odd, the sexed up Hierophant: the Hierophant is (according to A.E. Waite) the "ruling power of external religion", the institutional spiritual leader, generally symbolized on most decks as the Pope. It's connected with wisdom, but it's a more physical connection, with the books and rituals of ceremony and tradition, rather than the deeper wisdom that comes from the esoteric Path.

Here, though, she is the slutty Sunday school teacher, the (Born Again?) Protestant school marm who radiates sex but is most probably sexed up in the real sense only in secret (and within the constraints of conventionality). She woos you but will slap you down if you try to answer her siren call. That's the impression here. The natural sensuality of spiritual practice has been sterilized here, turned into something coy and child-like.

Secondly, the fact that the Hierophant card is marked by the sign of Taurus, a sign rich in sensuality, is also significant; it's generically a masculine image, so here we also have what is, symbolically at least, the hierophant in drag, the thoughts of which can make your head spin considering the layers and layers this Christianized/Protestantized image has in the realm of sexual ambiguity.

In terms of Sarah Palin, I think it's eerily appropriate that the sign for institutionalized (Christian) spiritual leadership/wisdom has echoes of this patently phony, fundamentalist seductress of the Joe Six Packs of America, considering the wave of fundamentalism in the country now; she is, in many ways, the epitome of the consequence of all that.