by Mark Horn
Another aspect of the day’s energy is Compassion in Victory. One reason I grew up feeling proud of being an American was the Marshall Plan—how after World War II, rather than pillage and impoverish our defeated enemies, we helped rebuild their societies. I only wish I could feel that pride today. That is a society-wide example, though. How does this play out personally? We all compete in many ways. In the business world, in the highly competitive business of advertising, I have been very competitive. And part of my practice is holding my competitors in my heart. Not always easy. This is close to the Buddhist practice of metta meditation. Or for that matter, the message of a rabbi from two thousand years ago who seems to have been taken up as the teacher for a whole other family of religions.
And because you have been doing this work of Counting the Omer, which has meant opening to some of your darker impulses, today is a good day for an Openhearted experience of your Endurance in keeping up this practice. Here is where your love and Compassion for your deepest, Truest self has enabled you to Persevere day by day. (And don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day here and there, because you’re at this day right now.) That’s something to celebrate.
Day 24: Tiferet of Netzach in Atzilut
The Six and Seven of Wands
_________within_________
Here we come across the same cards as on the eighteenth day, though as we progress through the Sephirotic relationships, their order is reversed. How does Tiferet support the man defending himself in the Seven of Wands? Fighting for one’s Truth, one of the names for Tiferet, can fuel his Endurance. Of course, we all know that having Truth on your side is no guarantee of Victory, but intrapsychically, knowing the Truth is a Victory.
One of the reasons the man in the Seven of Wands has the Fortitude to stand up for himself is that already, deep within his Heart, he knows he will be the Victor in this situation. He knows his own Truth, and he knows how to Balance his Chesed and Gevurah in Harmony so that he has the tools to achieve his goals and Persevere.
Just as the leader in the Six of Wands keeps his Balance atop his horse, Tiferet gives you just the Balance you need to keep on keeping on and to stand up for yourself in all kinds of situations. If there are any negatives to watch out for here, they are in the possibility of a lack of balance. If the rider in the Six of Wands thinks too highly of himself, so that he considers himself above the others, he’s eventually in for a fall, which is what we may be seeing in the Seven of Wands.
Compassion and Balance are what keep the rider on his horse. His Compassion for those he leads and for himself. His Balancing of Chesed and Gevurah in his leadership. However, if he loses this Balance, it can lead to overreach. If you recognize times when your Ambition has gotten the better of you, eclipsing your Compassion for others (and even yourself), this pairing should help you execute a course correction.
I know this situation quite well. When I was first promoted to be a creative director, leading teams of people, I was a well-liked supervisor. I inspired the teams to greater creativity and worked hard to ensure that we all enjoyed a work/life Balance—no mean feat in the ad biz. Over time, though, I lost my Balance, and because of that I lost the confidence of my teams. I’m not proud of that. But I learned from it.
Day 24: Tiferet of Netzach in B’riah
The Six and Seven of Cups
_________within_________
What gives you the strength to Persevere? Consider the image in the Six of Cups, where the cups form a permeable boundary—each of them filled with a blooming flower. The Balance of Tiferet has created a safe space in the Heart that enables love and Compassion to bloom. The Heart has become a sanctuary of Beauty. And this sanctuary can give you strength to Endure and Persevere in the face of trials.
This kind of sanctuary in the Heart is often the result of an upbringing where the parents understood the balance of Chesed and Gevurah needed by the child. It builds a sense of boundaries that provides love with the security it needs to flourish. And when Netzach draws on this kind of Tiferet, it has the Focus to move mountains and the Drive to see any project through to completion.
And with such a base of Tiferet, the figure in the Seven of Cups knows exactly which of the cups floating in the air before her is the right choice. There is a feeling of security in that choice and a Determination to do what needs to be done to fully realize the goal of what is, in the card, something only in the imaginal stage.
I did not have an upbringing where my parents understood how to apply a Balance of love and discipline. And this directly affected my ability to Focus my energy and apply it with Determination. To be blunt, I was a lazy kid. Smart, but lazy. So when I had a school project that called for sustained work, I often let it go. And I knew I could; my mother, rather than setting a strong boundary and making certain I met my deadlines, would often finish the work for me, with me sitting beside her as she talked me through what she was doing. My father set chores for me to complete before I would receive an allowance, chores that were age appropriate. Did I do them? Most of the time, no. Did I still get an allowance? Yes. Too much Chesed, not enough Gevurah, destabilizing my Netzach until I dealt with the consequences of this as a young adult.
Like many people, I learned self-parenting skills later to make up for the times in my childhood when my parents didn’t have the Balancing skills of Tiferet. I had to: I went to work in an industry where deadlines are not very flexible and you have to deliver.
Day 24: Tiferet of Netzach in Yetzirah
The Six and Seven of Swords
_________within_________
I like to think of the effect of this Sephirotic pairing in the suit of Swords as the “Robin Hood impulse.” In the classic 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, there’s a scene in Sherwood Forest just after Robin’s men have stolen treasure guarded by Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Robin led Marian to see the peasants that had been downtrodden by the predations of the Norman nobles and to show her how he gave them food, medical attention, and sanctuary. While Marian was moved, she was still suspicious, so she asked what he planned to do with the gold that had been stolen. Robin jumped onto a table and called out to all his men, asking, “Shall we keep all this treasure for ourselves?” And they responded to a man, “It’s for Richard, to save the king!”
The spirit of Compassion we see at work in the Six of Swords, with a ferryman giving aid to what appears to be a downtrodden mother and child, is the motivation for the trickster in the Seven of Swords when we’re considering Tiferet of Netzach in Yetzirah. While the ferryman keeps the boat in Balance, the trickster has the Ambition to restore Balance by stealing from the powerful.
The movie and the legend of Robin Hood are inspiring. But whenever I read a story of a so-called modern-day Robin Hood, the reality never quite lives up to the legend. Like the image of the man in the Seven of Swords, there’s always something a little off-putting about these stories.
While the Hollywood version looks good, with a real sense of Compassion as the source of the action, in real life, it often seems that the motivation is more revenge than a sustained desire to restore Balance. I must admit, I am no stranger to these kinds of revenge fantasies. But two injustices don’t restore a just society. I’ve always believed that Compassion is the motivation at the Heart of progressive tax rates. They’re not about punishing the wealthy so much as they are about sharing the responsibility of paying for social services, with those who are most able to bear that burden contributing more.
A more benign way of thinking about the dynamic of these cards is breaking the law to bring attention to an injustice and to right it. Like sitting at a segregated lunch counter and courting arrest to protest racial discrimination. Or climbing the Statue of Liberty to protest immigration policies. Of course, while that’s breaking the law, it’s nonviolent. But in a less positive example from the 1960s, we have the Weather Underground, whose members went from being just another antiwar protest group to become a domesti
c terrorist organization. They robbed banks and killed police officers. They rationalized this violence as justified in response to state violence, though ultimately they were just bank robbers and bombers without Compassion. They thought they weren’t any different from Robin Hood, and since I didn’t live in thirteenth-century England I can’t know that they weren’t; maybe they were right—except without the Hollywood veneer of romance.
This impulse to respond to injustice by breaking the law goes back a lot further than the thirteenth century: Moses killed an Egyptian overseer who was beating Hebrew slaves. He then fled Egyptian justice and his life of comfort as an adopted member of Pharaoh’s family and escaped to Midian.4 Justice through retaliation when there is no justice by law is also one of the themes of The Oresteia, the trilogy by Greek playwright Aeschylus about the revenge-murder of Clytemnestra by her son Orestes. Societies and individuals have wrestled with this since the dawn of human civilization. And as we can see, there are degrees of retaliation ranging from nonviolent protest all the way to murder.
How do these impulses live within you?
Day 24: Tiferet of Netzach in Assiyah
The Six and Seven of Pentacles
_________within_________
Sometimes when I look at the cards, I think about the Peshat meaning before looking at other levels of meaning. Peshat is one of the four levels of traditional Jewish interpretation of a sacred text; it’s the literal, surface meaning without metaphor or digging for secret teachings. And interestingly enough, when you line up the four levels of interpretation with the four worlds in Kabbalah, Peshat corresponds with Assiyah. So starting with a Peshat interpretation of the Six and Seven of Pentacles makes sense.
In the Six of Pentacles, we have someone often described as a merchant, giving alms to two beggars. He holds scales in one hand—taking the Balance of Tiferet and literally showing it. The relationship between him and the beggars appears to be unequal. We do not know what is in the merchant’s Heart, but we know he feels enough Compassion to give them alms. Perhaps the merchant sees and feels their shared humanity, and his taking action that recognizes this restores some Balance to the relationship.
In the Seven of Pentacles, there is a young man who is working the land, and the fact that his crop is producing fruits (okay, Pentacles are not literally fruits!) tells us that he has been very carefully tending this crop. Farmers often work up to sixteen hours a day in their fields in all kinds of weather since food crops require constant care and attention. His Perseverance in this work results in a bounty that can be shared. The farmer has no guarantees, since a hailstorm, early frost, drought, or a flash flood could ruin the harvest. But he Endures.
So what is the relationship between these two figures—the city-living merchant and the rural farmer? The very day I was thinking about this, I received an email from my synagogue reminding me that it’s time to sign up for our community-supported agriculture program.
When you sign up for your share in this program, you pay in advance for a whole season of fruits and vegetables. This means you are sharing the risk with local organic farmers. If the weather is bad, the pickings are slim. If the weather is good, you have an abundant box of super-fresh produce.
Most of us today don’t have a connection to the lived experience of farmers; we get our produce from supermarkets that get their produce from industrial providers and factory farms. It’s just a transaction. Participation in a community-supported agriculture program isn’t charity; it creates community of shared risk and reward and guarantees a living for people whose livelihood depends on the vagaries of the weather. And it creates real relationships—not the unequal relationship of the merchant and the beggars, but a community of equals among the members and between the members and the farmers.
Members feel real anguish for the farmers when the weather destroys all their hard work. Farmers work with real love in their hearts, not only for the land they’re working but also for the people they’re helping to feed because they know them.
Farmers aren’t the only people who are motivated by Compassion and Balance to work in fields that call for great physical and emotional Endurance. Think of the doctors and nurses who work in ICUs to save people’s lives and the firefighters who rush into burning buildings to rescue people. Their work is not always successful. Without Balance they would burn out quickly.
Perhaps there is a way in which you are motivated by Tiferet so that you have the Netzach to continue working at some task. Or perhaps you recognize how you benefit from someone who does such work and how this binds you in a relationship. Today is a good day to consider and celebrate these relationships.
Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 24
1. (Wands) Ambition, Determination, and Persistence are all qualities of Netzach, and in and of themselves, they are not an issue. See if you can recall any times in your life when these qualities may have blocked your ability to feel Compassion for others, whether friends, colleagues, family members, or competitors. See if you can recall any times when someone else’s expression of Netzach felt insensitive to you. What are your feelings about these experiences? Looking back, can you see any ways you could have brought Balance to the situation?
2. (Cups) How has your upbringing or your childhood experience of learning to internalize the Balance of Tiferet affected your ability to Persevere in a task?
3. (Swords) What is your experience of the “Robin Hood impulse” in your life? Have you ever felt the desire to right injustice by breaking the rules or the law—retaliating in some way—to restore Balance as you understand it? Does your response to others who break rules or laws to restore Balance change depending on who they are and what they see as injustice? Can you feel Compassion for both the perceived victim and perpetrator in these situations? Why?
4. (Pentacles) In my example of membership in a community-supported agriculture program, I describe what I think of as the “web of mutual Compassion” that fuels Endurance. What are examples of this dynamic at work in your life, and what can you do to honor them?
Day 25: Netzach of Netzach
Passive Endurance vs. Active Endurance
Today is the twenty-fifth day of the Omer, which is three weeks and four days of the Omer.
When we look at the key words for Netzach, it becomes clear that there are at least two kinds of Endurance. There is the Endurance that is passive, which is often about the capacity to live with suffering without complaint. And there is the Endurance that is active, the Determination to achieve something. Some of us are better at one of these than the other. Often someone who is better at active Endurance, for example, studying for the bar exam or working eighty to one hundred hours a week as a medical resident, will find it much harder to passively Endure pain that is unconnected to a goal. Conversely, some people who have learned to live with difficulties through passive Endurance become worn down and find it hard to marshal the energy and Endurance to work toward a goal. That said, Enduring pain and suffering with grace is an inner Victory.
There are also those who, having learned to Endure in a situation where they seem to have no agency, are able to take the energy of Endurance and harness it to meaningful, sustained action. Such people are an inspiration to all of us. And there is a movement in the United States that exemplifies this attitude, with an anthem of hope in Endurance (based on the lyrics of “I’ll Overcome Someday,” by Rev. Charles A. Tindley):
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday.
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.
Day 25: Netzach of Netzach in Four Worlds
The Seven of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
_________within_________
So far, my reading of the Seven of Cups has been about the shadow side of Netzach—the lack of Focus that saps Endurance. But there is another way to look at the image on this card. The advertising e
xecutive Leo Burnett once said, “When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.” Sure, the figure in this card most likely isn’t going to win all the prizes floating in the air. She may not reach any of them. But it’s a good bet she’s going to come away with something.
In the introduction to this day of Endurance squared, I wrote about the great anthem of the civil rights movement, “We Shall Overcome.” The image on this card calls to mind another civil rights song: “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.”
I know that I never thought I would see marriage equality become the law of the land in my lifetime. It seemed like a fantasy, like one of the castles in the air in the Seven of Cups. While I believed it would happen someday, I had no faith that I would live to see it. But both “We Shall Overcome” and “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” are not just about Endurance, they’re also about the Endurance of faith.
The man in the Seven of Wands, who is standing up against the majority of people who oppose him, shows not only Endurance in his ability to withstand all this opposition but also the Endurance of his faith in his ultimate Victory.
The person in the Seven of Cups has an Enduring faith that the better world they imagine is possible and that if they reach for it, they may not win it all, but they won’t come away with a handful of mud.
I believe this commitment to faith is also at work in the Seven of Pentacles. The image in this card brings to mind the words of Jesus: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”5
For those of us who’ve never worked the land, this sounds rather mystifying and harsh. But when Jesus lived, most people lived close to the land and agriculture. They understood that to successfully move forward, one’s attention needs to be focused on what is ahead without being distracted by what has been left behind. You can’t plow a straight line ahead if you’re not looking ahead.