The Wheel of Fortune

Lets see what we have here. 3 animals and an angel reading books. The Sphinx, holding a sword.  A snake slithering down the left side of the wheel, and Anubis riding the wheel back up on the right.  We have storm clouds brewing, but not yet bursting. We have change.   If you read counter-clockwise, the letters read (from 12 o'clock) TORA.  There is a YOD at one o'clock.  What's a YOD, you ask? It's a little tear-drop, symbolizing grace, or compassion .  There is a symbol for change at three o'clock on the inner circle.  Dunno what the other stuff means. 

The Sphinx holding a sword.  The sphinx is a riddle: the unknowable, the paradox. The sword is everything you thought you knew being cut loose.  Sayanora, baby!

The critters reading books: "It is written...."  In the Akashic Records?  A fat lot of good that does you or me!  They are sitting on that information.  WHY: did the economy tank; did that guy who professed intense attraction to me stop emailing; did they turn my rent-controlled apartment into an overpriced condo? I couldn't tell you.  'Tis a mystery.  But, comeon, you hated that job; you had a feeling the dude was internet-wooing other women anyhow; and you were sick of being run into by texting NYU students, so you took a job in Syracuse where you can afford to buy a house.

The stormclouds:  electricity is in the air - you can smell those negative ions. The deluge is coming any minute!

The snake: transformation.  What bit The Little Prince, and his soul went somewhere else.  What sweet talked Eve out of her sweet little garden.  What encircles the staff in the symbol for healing. What tempted Christ in the desert. The daily challenges that seem so important are really transient. The snake leaves little replicas of himself on the wet morning grass. Change happens. Everybody must get stoned, and sometimes it's for one's own good!

Anubis was the son of Isis and Osiris.  He was the demigod who weighed your heart when you died (this is in Egypt) to see if it did not weigh more than a feather.  THEN you could get into heaven.  Otherwise....not so pretty. In any case, what we have here is some serious transmogrification.  Anubis is the pagan patron saint of embalmers everywhere. Their job is to bring the dead back to life - for the funeral anyhow. 

Basically - as my Irish grandmother used to say - "Never a sunny day came, when a rainy day wasn't just behind." She also said  "Come Merry, come Sorry!" Don't get so high on your horse, lest you be cast down. But on the plus side: "It's always darkest before the dawn" and "Every cloud has a silver lining."  (Just don't count on Irish proverbs for the good news.)

In summary.... change is the nature of all things. Just ask Buddha.  His name means 'awaken' or 'bud'.  Essentially, if you subscribe to past, present, and future - to drama -  vs. Here and Now, well, you are going to lose.  Of course humankind must buy into practical matters - otherwise we would never get out of bed.  Is it really just an illusion that I dread Monday mornings?  I can't always convince myself!  But... I feel better when I can treat this life like the game that it is - a merry-go-round. When I can place myself at the still point in the center of that rolling wheel.  Round and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.  It's a rush!

Check out this Roseanne Cash video: The Wheel!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVy8kSUl520

The Hermit

One of the first things to note about The Hermit card is the limited color palette.  Grey, grey-blue, yellow.  A little flesh-tone, but this card isn't about flesh. Or flash.

He is up high - above the highest frozen peak.  How can he stand it, being all alone in the cold and dark? Stuck with just himself. No one even to play chess with, and he sure isn't holding a laptop, or electricity - so no virtual games either! Facebook? He never heard of it - nor is he missing it. He is here on this mountain bluff by choice.  Just watching the wheels go round and round, as a Beatle once said. Everything seems to slow down when you stand and watch: time....vital signs....thinking.....

Think about the star being locked up.  About inspiration being caged and disciplined.  The late Allen Ginsberg might have frowned upon that.  What advice did he give poets?  "First thought, BEST thought."  Just write, no censoring! To suffer for art - or betterment in general - is nonsense.  Right?  Well perhaps, but who said this guy's suffering - or asking us to?  The difference between him and the Hierophant.  He is in a monastic order of One.  You have to climb the mountain in order to talk to him.  And he can take or leave you.

IX (or 9) is the number of completion. It's the last single digit odd number. (And this guy may not be so odd as we think.) Astrology informs us that the ninth house is about higher things: education, philosophy, going global (traveling), philosophy and religion. Poetry. It's about thought matrixes that are not self-serving, but intended to lend their light to humankind. Bold initiative - the courage to stand alone (#1) plus seeing infinite connections - 'string theory' of All That Is (#8) equals holding up the lamp to reveal those cosmic connections to all who will see. That's the hermit's job.

Think about the interned light as a sort of eco-generator: he's getting the maximum fuel with minimum effort.  He's learned how to harness pure bliss.  Of course he's got a grey beard - it takes centuries to learn how to be happy just standing still.  Yet there's a dash of Mage in him.  See how his staff glows gold!

Strength

The eighth house of the zodiac is about sex and death and all manner of merging. This eighth card of the Major Arcana is about what continues.  See how our goddess is crowned with the eternity symbol?  She ain't scared of the lion snapping her head off.  For she is the alpha and the omega.  Or...she is the alpha and the lion is the omega?  They are opposites that complete each other.  She would be really super boring, all shiney white and gliding through the Serengeti, without making us wonder how she got Mr. lion to go all gushy just because she knows where to scratch.  And the lion growling ferociously is so... Metro Goldwyn Meyer.  But a lion rendered of his fierceness, forgetting his primary purpose of pouncing and shredding and generally inspiring dread - now that's scarey! 

How does she stay so clean? Her only adornment - what?- garlands of roses, and some springy ferns growing from her head. Tender and untrammeled.  If you look at that garland hanging from her waist...it seems to circle her womanly parts - kinda like a chastity belt.  (Stay with me here!)  And the white...she's the quintessential virgin.  Yet that fecundity, all bottled up, imbues her with an assurance as to just how sexy she is.  She will make a man into a beast, the beast into a puppy dog!  (All kinds of politically incorrect...!)

The beast and the woman are two parts of a whole.  The beast is quite capable of killing her with one swipe.  But who would twirl his curly little mane?  She is all service and compassion in her nurse's whites. Which is why she needs the surge of adrenaline that the knowledge she is toying with death affords. Why nurses need E.R's.  Birth, death, general chaos, 12 hour shifts, a little sleep, lots of coffee, come back and do it again.


I can't resist:

TIGER, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

                                                                William Blake

 We know which hand and which eye!

The Chariot

This guy is a hunk, right? What other Major Arcana character is so got-up in armor, so flaunting of his fine physique? And he's even got his own portable telephone booth in order to change from Joe Schmoe into Super Courier. Oh, wait, that's a chariot....

Our boy has sun, star, and moonlight to guide him through the moors and mountains, 24/7, in hail or sleet. He's got all of the planets, too, not just Mercury. He's a hero, a warrior. His mission: to deliver dee letter. (Remember letters?) He's kinda like the Terminator, as far as being on a mission goes. An android: he's programmed to succeed! (And notice the Feng Shui mirror over his heart - he's a machine, ladies. Fuhgetaboutit!) The only thing is, he forgets where it is he's going, or gets lost. He's in such a fat hurry that he misses the signs. (County Road 67). He whizzes right past Ferdinand the Bull, sniffing flowers in the meadow. What the heck, since I'm mixing my metaphors - he's also not noticing Bugs Bunny playing the uke under a palm tree. He needs an internal Garmen. Or an awareness of the speed inherent in standing still.

Notice that he seems to separate the city in two, as though he is at the head of the outgoing road. Part of his mission is to level out communication, to keep us all on the grid. There is further symmetry in the two wings, the perfectly balanced top that serve as insignias (and as talismans) on his craft. The two sphinxes of inverted black and white are emblematic of the Taoist Yin and Yang sign. What is full will be made empty. Maybe I'm wrong about him. Maybe he's not just a bimbo on wheels. Maybe it's by moving at a magically fast speed - by doing what he's best at - that he causes the world around him to slow down.

7 is the number of the spirit, and of solitude. This fellow is a loner, a seeker. Look at the wings again. The spirit is weightless, and this dude knows how to fly!

This is c-c-cool! Props to Mary K. Greer for finding...