Tarot and the Gates of Light

by Mark Horn

  Day 38: Tiferet of Yesod

  Truth Is the Foundation of Intimacy

  Today is the thirty-eighth day of the Omer, which is five weeks and three days of the Omer.

  When I was ten years old, I was a compulsive liar. Looking back, I can’t believe how easily I made the most outrageous claims about what I could do, even as these claims were easily proven untrue. It’s probably one of the reasons my school recommended that my parents (who could not afford this at all) send me to a child psychologist for a couple of years. Dutifully, they did so, though it had absolutely no effect on my behavior at all. In fact, because seeing a child psychologist was considered shameful in 1960s Brooklyn, I lied to my friends about where I went every Tuesday after school, and my parents, who felt the same shame, colluded in this lie.

  As I got older, much of this behavior receded, but it didn’t go away entirely. My lying was not necessarily about anything important, and sometimes it felt automatic. I had a habit of saying that I had read books I’d never read, for example. It was in the service of building up my know-it-all status. Of course, lying meant I was always in danger of being found out to be a fraud and a liar. It wasn’t until after my first Vipassana meditation retreat in my early thirties that I physically felt the effect of lying on my soul (despite the fact that Buddhists don’t believe in a soul). But even with that, there’s a degree to which this behavior still affected my closest relationships.

  What ultimately led to a change was working with Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks in the workshops based on material in their book Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment. They taught that there were three fundamental requirements for a conscious Relationship: feeling your feelings, telling the truth, and keeping your commitments. Pretty basic, huh? Well, I grew up in a family where my father was a serial adulterer, so that truth seemed kind of fungible to me.

  This work taught me why I felt lonely even in my Intimate relationships. When you lie to your lover, you immediately create a distance, a wall that blocks off the truth of who you are. And then of course you feel as though the real you isn’t being loved because in fact you’re not showing the real you. This insincerity ultimately creates feelings of insecurity about the relationship.

  This is one of the things that makes Intimate Relationship a spiritual practice; it demands a radical commitment to the Truth, which means there’s no posturing or trying to manage one’s image.*41 An Intimate Relationship is where all of you—both shadow and light—will be on view to your partner. And monogamy in such a relationship is the alembic that forces you to face that shadow with clarity and love. Monogamy is the container for Intimacy.†42

  I come from a family where cheating was a multigenerational behavior: both my father and his father were adulterers. Then, coming out into the gay world of the early seventies, where monogamy was, like marriage, considered a regressive tool of oppression, I was socialized into a rather promiscuous way of life. It took me a long time to settle down, because in Truth, the commitment to Truth and Intimacy can make for some very unsettling experiences. Such a commitment requires creating a strong container that can hold the dynamically changing nature of personalities in relationship.

  Ultimately, though, this Foundation for Intimacy is the one place, apart from your relationship with the Divine, where your brokenness can be held with Compassion.

  Tiferet of Yesod, as Truth in Intimacy, brings up all these issues. Then again, as we turn the kaleidoscope of Sephirotic meanings, we also come up against Compassion in Intimacy, Dynamic Equilibrium in Foundation, and Heart in Creativity, to name a few. The pair to explore is the one that is the hottest for you. Let’s see what the cards reveal about these pairings.

  Day 38: Tiferet of Yesod in Atzilut

  The Six and Nine of Wands

  _________within_________

  Looking at these two cards, they seem to pose a question: Can a love between two people of unequal status be truly Intimate, or is it doomed to end with resentment over unequal reciprocity? This is not an academic question: I have a friend who is married to a highly successful executive who pulls down millions of dollars a year in salary and bonuses. My friend’s income sometimes doesn’t go above five figures. This is further complicated by roles assigned by gender in our society. My friend is male and married to a woman. They have struggled with their perception of who the “breadwinner” is supposed to be and how to divide up child-rearing responsibilities. Their relationship did not start out with them in these positions; that’s just how it developed over time. And that’s one of the lessons of Tiferet: roles are not set in stone but are dynamic, and for Intimacy to survive these shifting roles, there must be a radical commitment to Truth and transparency.

  I know this from my own experience because at the turn of the century I began an intimate relationship with a man who was twentyfive years younger than I was. And it wasn’t an easy relationship, but what made it work was our commitment to transparency and Truth. This meant sharing our insecurities and fears about the Relationship. It meant being sensitive and awake to how we were judged by others when we were out in public. He knew that some people saw him as a gold digger. I knew some people saw me as a lecherous old man. We tried not to let these stereotypical projections become introjections, but when we did, we had to talk about it. I’d never met anyone his age who had the psychological depth and commitment to self-reflection he demonstrated. This enabled us to be emotionally naked with each other in a way that made us equals, because unlike the figures in the Six and Nine of Wands, we were constantly shifting positions and changing roles. Maybe not to the eyes of the outside world, since our age difference wasn’t going to change. But so much else did. And within the container of that relationship, the constantly shifting (im)balance gave our connection its juice. And surfing that change is the Dynamic Equilibrium of Intimacy. That relationship ended after several years only because he was no longer able to live the commitment to sharing the Truth.

  Of course, I say the figures in the cards don’t change roles because like the figures on Keats’s famous Grecian urn, they are static images. That’s the warning to those of us who are in relationships that are unequal in one way or another. When people harden in a role or believe that roles won’t shift and change, they’re setting themselves up for falling off the horse or feeling the defensive resentment we see in the Nine of Wands. Or worse, the partners collude in staying exactly where they are with no change or growth because that might seem threatening in some way.

  And here’s the kicker: while the two relationships I’ve used here as examples are obvious in their inequality, every relationship has its imbalances. Giving and receiving are constantly shifting sands. If you’re in a relationship and you don’t think it’s unequal in some way, you’re probably sitting on a white horse and your partner is eyeing you warily. This pairing is an invitation to explore these imbalances with Compassionate Commitment to emotional Truth. Because there is no perfect reciprocity in love, but there can be honesty between lovers about how they are giving and receiving. And that is the Foundation for all love.

  Day 38: Tiferet of Yesod in B’riah

  The Six and Nine of Cups

  _________within_________

  Joshua ben Perachya said: Get yourself a teacher. Find a companion to study with and challenge you. Don’t prejudge anyone, but weigh all in the scales of justice leading with their virtues.

  PIRKEI AVOT 1:6

  For almost two thousand years, traditionally, the most intimate spiritual relationship a Jewish man had was with another man—his study partner. This custom goes back to the earliest days of rabbinic Judaism, and this is the chaver, the “companion,” referred to in the quote from the Pirkei Avot above. Hevruta-style learning pairs two students to analyze sacred texts, most often from the Talmud or the Torah. This pairing teaches each member to think logically and make a reasoned argument to his partner. He also must listen carefully to his partner’s argument. Each member will challenge the other’s qu
estions, as Joshua ben Perachya suggested, thus sharpening the thinking of the other. Together, they often reach new insights. As the custom has been practiced in traditional yeshivas, partners are often carefully paired and remain together throughout their schooling, so that these pairs can develop into deep, spiritually Intimate friendships.

  So why am I writing about this custom? Because the relationship in the Six of Cups is sometimes interpreted as a joining of opposites in loving Harmony, and one meaning of the Nine of Cups is deep satisfaction. While I didn’t grow up with a traditional Jewish education, I have participated in hevruta-style study, and I’ve found that it requires an awareness of the Sephirotic virtues represented by Tiferet, Yesod, and their respective precursor pairs on the tree: kindness, discernment, Truth, Balance, perseverance, humility, Creativity, Intimacy, and Bonding.

  You don’t have to be working from sacred texts to study in this way. When I would meet with my twelve-step sponsor weekly, we would read the Big Book together, and we worked with the text in exactly this way—going sentence by sentence, relating it to our own experience, and interpreting each sentence in ways that were most meaningful to each of us. And we challenged our interpretations to make certain we didn’t fall into any kind of excuses for old behavior.

  I have been in tarot workshops where I have been paired with another student, and I’ve used this style of study to find deeper meanings in the cards and deeper Connections to our lives.

  It is a rich and rewarding way to study, with each student offering the gift of their full Presence to the other and each receiving great satisfaction in being deeply seen and heard. As each challenges the other with Compassion, the Bond of spiritual Intimacy grows.

  Are there negatives to this pairing and this style of study? Well, as I’ve said before, I’m kind of a know-it-all. So I can be smug and superior, as the man in the Nine of Cups is sometimes interpreted to be. And I can see my partner as having only a child’s understanding, so that I can dominate the debate and miss the gift I’m being offered by my partner. Like the man in the Nine of Cups, I can pretend to welcome my partner’s opinion, creating a false Harmony.

  The interesting thing about this custom, though, is that even if you have someone who starts out only pretending to participate authentically, the nature of the work is such that each partner will surprise the other with moments of emotional and intellectual Intimacy that disarm the defensive judgment and withholding that can be brought to the work. I know because I’ve been disarmed in just this way. And as the Pirkei Avot teaches, when “two sit together and interchange words of Torah, the Divine Presence abides between them.”8

  So may the Divine Presence rest between you and your sacred text study partner.

  Day 38: Tiferet of Yesod in Yetzirah

  The Six and Nine of Swords

  _________within_________

  What happens when you withhold Truth in an Intimate relationship? What happens when you keep secrets or remain silent in the hopes that such silence will protect Harmony in the relationship? My experience is that it creates an inner alienation, a distancing. And that’s just what we can see in the Six of Swords, which has in its set of interpretations keeping secrets or remaining silent instead of telling the Truth. The psychological distance created by this withholding is reified in the image of the people in the boat literally distancing themselves from a Relationship that we know nothing about. Except that the Nine of Swords can give us a clue. Because withholding never goes undetected. Oh, maybe the conscious mind doesn’t know, but the unconscious does. I would even venture to say the conscious mind knows and pushes that information away because it’s too threatening. And I can say this because I’ve watched my own mind do this.

  I’ve been in Relationships where I have felt my partner withholding some information, and rather than press the issue, I kept silent myself so that both of us were promoting a false Harmony, putting on a façade of Intimacy. The more you do this, the more you end up feeling isolated and alone and filled with despair, believing that True Intimacy isn’t possible. This kind of suffering is tragic and unnecessary. All it takes to avoid all that is two people committed to the Truth. Of course, there’s a reason there’s a story about Diogenes wandering around Athens in broad daylight with a lantern looking for an honest man.

  It takes courage to press the issue and ask what’s being withheld—or to be open and not withhold—because the Truth can be painful. Then again, the more distance one has from the Truth, the greater the pain of inner isolation. What looks like a move to protect Harmony in fact destroys it.

  This brings me to the Japanese concept of harmony, known as wa (和), which is all about preserving the unity of the group through conformity. My experience of this custom is that it suppresses the truth of people’s feelings so much that to express one’s personal desires can be shameful. In what might seem like a harmless example, I remember after I first arrived in Tokyo, my colleagues and I would have lunch together regularly. I was always asked what I wanted for lunch first, and at first I just assumed this was because I was new and a guest in a way. But I soon realized that I was setting the table for everyone else. Because if I ordered chicken katsu, everyone would order chicken katsu.

  A little more comical (and tragic) is that if I came home to find that my boyfriend had made a dinner for me, regardless of whether or not it was food I liked, I was supposed to eat it happily because he had made it for me. And I was supposed to say I loved it. Which meant he believed I loved it, and then he would make it for me more often. This example of dinner is something I experienced and is, by itself, not the most serious issue in the world. But this dynamic can occur within much more serious situations and can create a dance of distancing so that people never express their true feelings or desires. There’s a reason that when the Japanese get angry, it’s an explosion that seems way out of proportion to the situation: they’re sitting on a veritable volcano of repressed emotion. And it’s why, as much as I loved Japan, I knew I would have to return to the United States. The distance between the harmony of wa and the Harmony of Tiferet is that Tiferet doesn’t hide the Truth of the tension in Dynamic Equilibrium and has Compassion for it—which is Beautiful. Wa submerges the truth in grey conformity. This might work for some people: clearly, it works for most of Japanese society. But it doesn’t work for me.

  Day 38: Tiferet of Yesod in Assiyah

  The Six and Nine of Pentacles

  _________within_________

  Is the man in the Six of Pentacles giving with an open Heart or is he controlling the situation? Let’s consider that what he is giving isn’t really money, but that he is sharing love. We all long to be loved fully and unconditionally. And we long to love another in just this way. However, our experience of being hurt and disappointed in love has left us habitually holding back, giving out only the small change of our selves. Having been hurt, we feel fear and anxiety when we give of ourselves—that we’ll be left feeling empty and used. So even though we long to give of ourselves, to pour our love into another just as the Divine pours forth Its love into Creation at every moment, we measure out our love, sometimes keeping an inner secret accounting of tit-for-tat reciprocity, making love transactional.

  This is one of the dangers associated with the Six of Pentacles. Yes, Tiferet is about Balance, but not the Balance of measuring back-andforth reciprocity; it’s the understanding that as we give, so we receive. That when we take care of someone else, we are also taking care of ourselves. And that because no role is permanent, while we may be giving now, we will be receiving later.

  One way of thinking about the measured response of the man in the Six of Pentacles is that he doesn’t want to overwhelm the receiver. What happens when you get more than you know what to do with? A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study showed that lottery winners are more likely to declare bankruptcy within three to five years than the average American.9 And as for love, rather than money, well, giving people more love than they’re comfort
able with can activate defenses and old traumas. Showing restraint in giving that matches what the receiver can healthily take in is the True, Compassionate Balance of the Six of Pentacles.

  Meanwhile, in the Nine of Pentacles, we have a different kind of restraint; this is the reining in of animal impulses in an exercise of self-control represented by the hooded hawk. Because we’re in the Sephira of Yesod, this could well be sexual self-restraint.

  Together, I see these cards as a teaching about Balancing the needs of the soul and the appetite of the body. They’re about learning the difference between Yearning and Desire, which are two aspects of Yesod.

  Yearning is fundamental to our experience as humans. It isn’t focused on an object; rather, it is the soul feeling its separation from the Divine and longing to “re-Connect.” When we allow ourselves to fully feel the depth of our yearning, we face our vulnerability. Desire is almost a defensive response to yearning. Because it is focused on an object that it wants to possess in some way, it provides the mind with the illusion of control: there is an object that can be possessed that will satisfy this feeling. Until, of course, desire rears its head again, since desire can never be fully satisfied. Desire is the shadow side of yearning.

  You might look at the lovely garden in the Nine of Pentacles and desire to own it. But that garden was built not because the woman pictured in the card desired it; the garden is the result of cultivating self-restraint, so that the energy of desire went into creating a place where yearning can be experienced as something Beautiful.

  Once again, though, I want to emphasize that Judaism sees sexual expression as offering the possibility of self-knowledge and transformation. But this is only possible when we peel back the skin of desire to reveal the yearning underneath. So that when lovers are fully present, joining together in the reciprocity of pleasure, the Divine Presence graces this union, giving the physical act a spiritual meaning. With right intention, physical Intimacy reveals spiritual Truth.