Tarot and the Gates of Light

by Mark Horn

  The woman in the Nine of Pentacles is also alone, though she does not appear to be lonely. She is connected to both her spirituality and her sexuality, since birds can represent both, and it’s clear that she is in control of when to open to these energies by the fact that the falcon is hooded on her arm. Her ability to Bond with another creature tells us that she has a kind of empathy that extends beyond the ability to Connect with other people because she is in touch with her own animal instincts.

  This woman is comfortable being on her own and has the resources—material and spiritual—to face whatever challenges life throws her way. For while she knows her animal side, she also is dressed in a way that suggests a level of appreciation for the refined, the good things in life. She has spent her life building her Foundation, a strong Base on which to live and enjoy the good life.

  It’s also clear she is not a pushover; falconry is not for the fainthearted. This means that she knows the aggression living within her own heart and that she knows when and how to direct that energy should she need to. She may be someone who has been through abuse and has worked through the issues so that now she knows how to stand firmly in her power.

  In some ways, she may be like the women I wrote about in the Nine of Swords: her success and her power may be off-putting to men who can’t match her abilities, and that leaves her alone. The difference here is that she won’t settle for someone who isn’t her match or who doesn’t understand the struggle she has been through. And she has her own creative pursuits that seem to satisfy her.

  But this may be the issue. Relationships are rarely between equals. And she may have created a sanctuary from the world of Relationship. There’s nothing wrong with this, unless it is a defensive approach. If she believes she will never meet her match, she may have created a life, and a living space, where there is no room for another. She may have other kinds of Relationships that are fulfilling. But the card gives us no evidence of this.

  Relationship counselors often say that rather than constantly being on the lookout for a partner, one should tend one’s own garden, becoming the partner you want to have, and that this will attract a partner, often when you’re not looking and least expect it. I believe this, as long as one isn’t staying in the garden full-time. As the John Kander and Fred Ebb song goes, “You gotta ring them bells.”

  Yes, build your Foundation. Yes, create a sanctuary. But make sure there’s room for someone else to join you.

  Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 41

  1. (Wands) How would you describe the way you’ve integrated your sexuality with your spirituality? In what ways do you defend yourself from complete sexual and spiritual Intimacy? How might you free yourself from any defenses that no longer serve your higher self? How can you create your own sense of safety in a spiritually Intimate community?

  2. (Cups) What is your experience with compensatory behavior as a way of avoiding feelings and Intimacy? What is your experience with substance abuse as a way of avoiding feelings and Intimacy? How have these issues affected your life and Relationships? What have you done to recover from these issues? What can you do to accept the past and open to others in the present?

  3. (Swords) When do you feel most alone, and what do you do to break through feelings of isolation? When you are in the grip of grief, loneliness, or loss, what can you do to help see through any projections or stories you use to keep yourself enslaved to these feelings? If there is a particular story you tell yourself repeatedly when you are overwhelmed with these feelings, examine that story when you aren’t in the grip of these emotions to determine whether there is any truth to it. How do you grieve in community? How does or how can your community support you in fully feeling all of your feelings?

  4. (Pentacles) What creative pursuits do you engage in to participate in Divine Generativity? How have you made your home a Base that supports you in your Relationships? How does your home reflect and support your inner Intimacy and your most Intimate relationship with another? In what ways do you use your space as a defense against Intimacy with others or yourself?

  Day 42: Malchut of Yesod

  Being Fully Present for Relationship

  Today is the forty-second day of the Omer, which is six weeks of the Omer.

  During the festivals of the pilgrimage the priest used to raise the curtain from the Holy of Holies to show the pilgrims how much their God loved them as they could see in the embrace of the two cherubim.

  LOUIS GINZBERG, THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS

  It is said that God was present in the space between these intertwined bodies and in particular in the space between their eyes, as their faces were turned toward one another while they were engaged in the act of love.

  I have never liked kissing with my eyes closed. I like to look into the eyes of the person I am kissing. And I don’t like having sex with my eyes closed; it’s not that, as Chauncey Gardiner said in Being There, “I like to watch,” it’s that I want to see and be seen in all my vulnerability and pleasure. I want my partner to feel fully seen. I have always thought that keeping one’s eyes closed during a sexual encounter was about shame and made an object out of one’s partner.

  In the Temple in Jerusalem, the keruvim (or cherubim, as it is most often transliterated) were on top of the Ark of the Covenant, and the high priest would hear God’s voice issue from between them. I take this teaching to mean that when we are fully Present for each other in Relationship, in emotional Intimacy, sexual Intimacy, and spiritual Intimacy, that the Divine is not only Present as well but also involved in a threesome that is all about what the act of love creates for a moment—a taste of Divine unity expressed through physical union. When we are fully Present to each other and are able to hold all the energies in a firm Foundation, our true Nobility is revealed. May we all be fully Present for each other in all the ways we love each other, so that the Divine is always Present among and between us.

  Day 42: Malchut of Yesod in Atzilut

  The Ten and Nine of Wands

  _________within_________

  Wherever you go, there you are. In the Ten of Wands, we see that the man in the Nine of Wands decided to step outside his comfort zone and step through the stockade of staves that served as his defense against Intimacy and Connection. However, the geography cure doesn’t work; as you can see, he may have walked through the line of staves, but then he picked them up and bundled them together to bring wherever he’s headed next. He may have stepped through the stockade to face his fears, but he hasn’t banished them yet. They still take a burdensome toll, and his body language tells us that while he still yearns for relationship, he won’t be able to see any possibilities in front of him. And of course, he’ll set up the stockade again when he gets to his destination.

  If the figure in the Ten of Wands is someone dealing with the emotional burden of abuse, it’s something that he has been carrying around for a long time. We can be hopeful that he’s headed to the town to seek help. Many abuse victims keep their abuse secret, feeling shame or that they may be to blame, or feeling like damaged goods afterward. So a positive way to consider this pairing is that the figure has come to the end of the abuse cycle and is ready to put this emotional burden down by finally unburdening himself of the secret. Because once victims disclose abuse, they can begin to cope with and heal from their trauma. Of course, healing will not happen overnight—it’s a process—but we can see the figure in the Ten of Wands as taking the first steps toward freedom and letting go of this weight.

  The author Isabel Radow Kliegman suggests one interpretation of the Ten of Wands as the holding back of sexual libido. And when I think about this in connection to abuse, I recall a time in the nineties when I had a partner who was recovering his memories and finally dealing with the trauma of abuse that had occurred in his childhood. Up to that time, we had had an active and passionate love life. But when he started to deal with this issue in his therapy, any physical Intimacy felt threatening to him. And because I was only
just learning about these issues at the time, his withdrawal from physical Intimacy felt like rejection to me, so that I was thrown into my own abandonment issues. Luckily, we both had therapists who understood the situation, so that I learned how to give him the space and time to heal, and he learned how to trust again. When he was ready, we learned how to be fully Present to each other in physical Intimacy anew, so that we were able to experience deeper Connection.

  So while, classically, the Ten of Wands is usually read in a negative light, I see the figure in the cards as leaving isolation behind and returning to the possibility of Relationship as represented by the town. And I see that he has come to the point where he recognizes how the abuse has had long-lasting effects that he is now ready to face and deal with. In this way, I see this pairing as a hope for a new beginning.

  Day 42: Malchut of Yesod in B’riah

  The Ten and Nine of Cups

  _________within_________

  Ah, the seated man in the Nine of Cups with his arms crossed over his heart; in this pairing, I don’t read this body language as defending himself against Intimacy because he is holding the family in the Ten of Cups in his heart. What he is protecting is his love—whether it is for his wife and children or for another family entirely (perhaps memories of his family of origin)—and he is protecting his Bond to this family. And knowing that he has in their love an unshakable Foundation of Connection gives him the ability to share his blessings with others. He holds their Presence in his heart, and he is able to bring his Presence to the guests at his table.

  Today we are one week from completing the count, and in this pairing I want to offer another surprising view of the Nine of Cups. Yes, the seated man is awaiting nine guests, which would make him the tenth person. In Jewish practice, you need ten people to hold a public prayer service, and you need a minimum of ten people to read the Torah publicly. Kabbalistically, you need ten people because each of these ten people must embody one of the Sephirot, so that together they create a sacred Bond that embodies the Divine Creator and invokes Its full Presence. So here, the man in the Nine of Cups holds the ten Sephirot in his heart and thus sees all the others as b’tzelem Elohim; that is, he sees all the others as unique expressions of the image of the Divine and sees that their coming together unifies Creation and the Creator.

  When we come together in a group of ten to pray, we have an opportunity to raise our consciousness. The prayer service is structured in such a way as to take us through each level of our soul, from the lowest, nefesh in the world of Assiyah, upward to the levels of ruach, neshamah, and chaya, with the possibility of reaching for yechida, transcendence of the ego into union with Divine Consciousness. And then we come back down for a landing. Unlike in monastic traditions, for Judaism, this happens in community and requires the communal effort of at least ten people to hold the energy. In fact, the Zohar is the story of just such a community of ten sages led by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai. The Zohar follows these men on their journeys as they discuss the secret meanings of the Torah and how to see through the text to the ultimate reality of Ein Sof. And for these ten sages, mystical experiences and revelations occur in a group, not for one person alone, just as all the people received the revelation of the Torah together at Sinai.20 So yet another way to look at the man in the Nine of Cups is as the leader of a minyan of ten people who is waiting for the other nine to arrive—each of them a strong container, represented by a cup, for the Sephirotic energies he, she, or they are working with.

  You could even imagine the seated man as Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai, the hero of the Zohar and the leader of the circle of ten companions in this epic story, or you could imagine him as the writer of the Zohar, Rabbi Moses de León. Because the Zohar’s story of these ten sages from the first century is simultaneously a coded story of ten Kabbalists in medieval Spain, including the writer of the Zohar, Rabbi Moses de León, in their secret mystical search for Divine union. The names of all of the others in this circle of ten men is not fully known, but scholars say there is evidence it included Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla (author of The Gates of Light) and Rabbi Yosef ben Shalom Ashkenazi.21

  While I attend a traditional minyan for morning services at my synagogue, I also think of myself as being part of an untraditional minyan that comes together at different times and places. It’s a group of spiritual seekers who have known each other and been part of each other’s journey for more than twenty-five years. Some of my companions aren’t Jewish; I met them in Buddhist circles, or in tarot circles, or at twelve-step meetings. But over the years, we have come together in our spiritual work and supported each other in moments of anguish and in moments of joy.

  As we approach the final week, while we have never met, you, dear Reader, have become part of this minyan. You have done much of the work to purify your inner Sephirotic energies and have made yourself a stronger vessel to hold this energy, like the vessels we see on the table in the Nine of Cups.

  Day 42: Malchut of Yesod in Yetzirah

  The Ten and Nine of Swords

  _________within_________

  This is the day and the combination I have dreaded writing about. Just looking at the cards, you know that this is just about the darkest place one can go. And I can’t look away or skip this pair: this energy has touched my life and affected many people I love. In particular, I must write about a crisis that brought people together in grief and then fractured many Relationships.

  On October 20, 2012, my friend Louis Rispoli was murdered on the street in Queens. It was a violent attack that left him in a coma for five days before he died. He had married his husband, Danyal, as soon as same-gender marriage became legal in New York State; they had been together for more than thirty years. But then one night, he went out for a walk and never returned. The next morning, Danyal frantically called the police to report him missing, only to learn that Lou had been found on the street without an ID and taken to a local hospital, where he was on life support. He had been hit so hard, perhaps with a bat, that half his brain was gone.

  For the next five days, there was a line outside his hospital room as people came to support Danyal and be with Lou. Hospital staff asked who he was that so many people were showing up. Lou wasn’t famous. But he had touched the lives of thousands of people so that all of them felt they’d had a deep Relationship with him, and they wanted to be present to give their support.

  Because they were married and Lou had made all his plans carefully, Danyal had the medical proxy forms that showed Lou would want to be taken off life support. This was a traumatic decision to make, but the right one. Still, the hospital fought Danyal’s right to make this decision. I was present at Danyal’s side in every meeting with the hospital administrators as they stonewalled and delayed the process of taking Lou off life support, making an emotionally wrenching situation even more difficult. It was only because we knew the local city council member, who called the head of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, that finally the medical bureaucrats relented.

  Almost a thousand people from all over the world showed up for his memorial service. You have never heard of Lou, but his great heart and full Presence made an indelible mark on everyone he met. I can’t possibly sum up his life, and really, that’s not why I am writing about this now. But here, as I work through Counting the Omer, I can reflect on how this tragedy brought together a community of people in the shared Intimacy of grief and trauma. And then how over time that trauma fractured many of these Relationships. Today, Lou’s husband, Danyal, and his family and closest friends are still working through the ongoing trauma years later. This group includes me.

  The police investigation did not help. In fact, it helped traumatize people further. Lou was a mentor to his partner’s young nephew Alex, who had been struggling to find direction in his life. The police saw Alex as a possible suspect and asked him whether he’d been having sex with Lou. Alex was now not only in pain, he also was deeply outraged that anyone would even think such a thing. Alex also blamed himsel
f for Lou’s death, since they had planned to get together that evening and often Alex would join Lou on these late-night walks to talk about his life and goals. He believed that if he hadn’t canceled at the last minute, Lou would not have been alone and the attack would never have happened. He didn’t tell anyone that he blamed himself, and he tortured himself, replaying the events over and over again in his mind—very much a Nine of Swords experience. In the years following Lou’s death, Alex’s life spiraled out of control, leaving him disconnected from the support he needed. He threw himself into reckless behavior to avoid his misplaced guilt and anguish, and he became HIV positive.

  When I look at the Nine of Swords, I am reminded of all the nights I would speak to Danyal on the phone before we went to sleep or when he’d wake up in the middle of the night shaking with nightmares and overcome with emotional suffering and pain. He too raged against the incompetence of the police investigators. After more than a year of repeatedly answering the same questions that would only retraumatize him, he stopped returning their calls.

  With my own emotions on a hair trigger, I found myself raging at people at my workplace and sometimes crying in the middle of the day. My employers had no idea how to handle this, and while therapy helped, I was not a good person to be around. Two months after Lou died, I was fired from my job. I threw myself into an inappropriate Relationship to avoid my feelings. While it provided some comfort and offered positive things for both of us, it ultimately could not serve my partner’s or my own higher self as we were both using the Relationship to avoid our own issues.