The 2024 election has stirred up a lot in people. Turning towards the Tarot offers a powerful guide for those who are open to it.
In my own practice, the cards point to the archetypal structures already at play and raise up the energetic ingredients we need to add going forward if we don’t want to repeat the same painful patterns, individually and collectively.
They encourage a direct reckoning with the challenges we face with honesty, sensitivity and clarity.
Consider the Six of Pentacles… the problematic image of a wealthy man, holding a symbol of justice, offering coins to two impoverished folks kneeling before him. While this card holds many faces, I always wonder, What’s wrong with this picture?
As I move inside it, I know myself to be that man. An intelligent, caring person who holds the right views and does many good things. Educated, liberal-minded, progressive thinking, upholding democratic ways and the ideals of equality and justice for all.
From a distance.
His distance affords him the “choice” (aka the avoidance or denial) to, at any time, ignore the suffering and abuse around him. He doesn’t quite realize he’s looking down on the others and is secretly relieved it’s not happening in his backyard.
At a collective level, he is the great ideal that becomes an institution—an institution that must be guarded and upheld for its own sake—even when its corruption is apparent. Isolation and judgment are his standing.
When I then imagine myself as the people on their knees, I’m reminded of moments of disempowerment, of overwhelm, of injustice and harm… of being filled with an impotent rage that is a true response to the situation but that teeters on the edge of hatred.
What turns anger—the clarity of NO—into hate?
Consider The Ego—one of many archetypes but perhaps the most powerful player. When the Ego is/feels threatened, anger can be misdirected into helplessness, scapegoating, othering and a desire to defeat or eliminate a false enemy. Unwittingly, this shift disempowers the person even more.
Locked in a painful divide, can we find our way into the mystery of transformation?
In the Buddhist Faith Mind Sutra, Master Seng-Ts’an writes, “When love and hate are both absent, the Way is clear and undisguised.”
I reflect on this a lot! For me, it starts with awareness. And humility. And a bullish determination to free myself of both the desire for righteousness and the hatefulness of retaliation that bind.
I invite you to step inside these images for yourself and allow them to reveal their meaning for you.
Until next time…