pentacles – Just the Tarot

The Four of Pentacles, Elon Musk, and the Buddha in High Top Sneakers

An exploration of materialism as a source of joy.

I recently bought a pair of Keds High Top Sneakers and I got a major spiritual insight out of them. That may sound a little weird but Robert Pirsig in, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” said that the Buddha could reside as easily on a computer chip as on a lotus. So I see no reason that the Buddha couldn’t wear Keds High Tops.

I actually have a long history with Keds High Top Sneakers. More accurately, I have a long NON history with them. When I was a kid I desperately wanted a pair of them. I thought that, without a doubt, they were the coolest sneakers in the entire world, and I was especially enamored of the circular white rubber sticker on the ankle that said, “KEDS.” I knew that if I could get my feet into those sneakers all of my problems would be solved and I would live happily ever after, forevermore.

So, of course, my parents wouldn’t buy them for me, because that’s what parents do when you’re a little kid. They stomp all over your sneaker dreams and leave you as a damaged human being who will grow up to be maladjusted and unable to cope with the modern world or ever form a meaningful relationship. And all because they wouldn’t buy you a lousy pair of Keds High Tops. Tragic, really.

I don’t know why I had to get this old before it finally occurred to me that I could buy my OWN Keds HIgh Top Sneakers. Talk about self-love! Talk about nurturing my Inner Child! What a brilliant idea: I could buy my own Keds!

And so I did.

The moment of Spiritual Keds Insight came when I opened the package at home and found myself feeling pure, unadulterated . . . fun. It was just a LOT of fun pulling the little paper wads out of the toes, lacing them up, pulling them on and walking around the house admiring my feet. My new KEDS HIGHTOP feet!

And that’s when I solved a basic conundrum I’ve been dealing with about affirmations, visualization, and all of the various courses and videos out there that teach us, “how to have the life and abundance that we’ve always dreamed of having.”

I realized that I’d been feeling guilty about having material possessions that make me happy. I’m in good company in experiencing that guilt because a lot of us – particularly those of us who were raised in Christian families – have been taught that material possessions are really, really bad. Jesus rapped on that subject several times and said that it was easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. He didn’t choose to expand the thought and tell us whether it’s easier for a camel to get into heaven than for a rich man to get through the eye of a needle, but I would certainly think so, all things being equal. Nonetheless, it was clear that he had a mighty poor opinion of rich people and all of their toys.

One result of that early programming about material possessions (they are bad and you won’t get into heaven) is that I have trouble really embracing the New Thought teachings about abundance. I definitely believe in visualization and in affirmations because I’ve seen them work in my own life. Still, when the speakers get to the inevitable part where they talk about abundance, I veer off course. Their talks usually go something like:

“Just a few short years ago I was so poor that I couldn’t even afford to have a penis. I was so far down I had to look up to see a snake’s belly. I was so poverty stricken that all I could afford to eat was dirt. Why, I remember going into coffee shops and asking for a cup of hot water because it was free and then, when they weren’t looking, I’d mix some dirt into the water and pour ketchup on it so I could have some dirt soup. But then one day when I was sitting in the local park – because that’s the only place I had to sleep – I was chewing on some dirt and licking dew off of the leaves of a tree to wash it down and I suddenly understood . . . EVERYTHING! And that’s when I developed my Amazing New Method of visualizing. Now I have a private jet, 12 sports cars, 6 mansions, 8 girlfriends and, yes, friends, I’ve even grown a penis. A big one. And if you buy my new book you can have all of that, too!”

I’m good with that, right up until the point where they mention the jet, sports cars and mansions and then I think, “Bad . . . you won’t get into heaven.” Because, you know, materialism is shallow and not really spiritual or evolved and people become obsessed with making money and turn into Donald Trump and Elon Musk, even though we kind of have to halfway forgive Elon because what chance did he have with a name like that?

There’s even a Tarot card for it: The Four of Pentacles.

It shows a man sitting on his little stool, clutching a coin to his chest, with another coin sitting on his head. It’s not so much that he owns his money as that it owns him. It’s sitting on him as much as he’s sitting on it. You can take one look at him and tell he’s not getting through the eye of a needle, much less into heaven.

Now, one of the most misquoted passages from the Bible is, “Money is the root of all evil.” The actual passage says that THE LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil. And that’s what my new sneakers taught me: it’s not about the material possessions, it’s about the ATTACHMENT to them.

Buddhists talk a lot about attachment. When we attach to material possessions (or even lovers) we automatically start to think of them as, “ours.” As extensions of ourselves, as part of our egos. We feel more important because we have, “stuff,” and the more stuff we get, the more important we feel. Then we start looking around at other people and comparing our stuff to their stuff. If we’ve got more stuff than them, or more expensive stuff, then we must be better than them. If they’ve got more or better stuff, then we become jealous of them and maybe even grow to hate them or dream about them losing all of their stuff so that we’ll be more important.

That’s the point where we’ve stopped seeing ourselves or others as humans and substituted material possessions for a measurement of worth. Yes, that’s bad and, no, we won’t get through the eye of a camel anymore, not even a rich camel.

But there’s a sort of a, “pre-attachment,” point with material possessions where they’re just a lot of fun, and fun is good in the same way that happy is good. That’s what my Keds sneakers taught me.

If we give a new toy to a normal, very young child, the kid is going to be just as happy as a little clam in diapers. She’ll play with it and stick it in her mouth and drool on it and carry it around for days. And laugh a lot. It’s a wonderful, fun thing to watch and there’s no downside.

Within a very short period of development, though, we begin to see a change in the way that some children receive new toys. Especially in homes where there are too many children and not enough love, we see kids start to attach to their toys. This is MY toy, it’s not yours. They don’t want to share it with the other children and may begin to hide and even hoard their toys. They may go into absolute screaming fits if one of the other kids tries to play with their . . . stuff. Basically, even at that very young age, they’ve learned to substitute material possession for self worth and love.

The trick, then, is to re-learn the joy of a new toy without attaching to it. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with enjoying material possessions. Hell, it’s probably hard wired into our nervous systems.

I can thoroughly enjoy my Keds High Tops without at all thinking that my High Tops are better than your loafers. I don’t have to run out and buy 20 more pairs of High Tops so that I’ll have a lot more of them than you. I don’t need to put my High Tops in a safety deposit box. I don’t have to get all tragically existential because, yes, someday my High Tops will wear out, so what’s the point of life anyway???

I can just enjoy them and I can do that with any other material possession that I want. There’s nothing innately evil, wrong, or unspiritual about Keds High Tops. They’re fun and fun is good, in the same way that happy is good, and happy is very good indeed.

At the end of the day, we’re here in the Earth School and the Earth School is chock full of fun toys, so we can just take pleasure in them, share them, and even love them for exactly what they are: toys. Life is good and no one named us Elon Musk, so there is much to be grateful for.

Eating Pancakes with Jesus, Having Lunch with Lucifer and Looking Inward with the Three of Pentacles

A contrast in Christian and Buddhist views of human nature and spirituality.

Are we on the outside looking in or on the inside looking out?

Do we think that heaven or redemption or satori or enlightenment or whatever we want to call it, is, “out there somewhere,” or do we think it’s inside of us, waiting to be uncovered?

Which direction are we gazing? Inside or out? It’s a fundamental, crucial question in terms of how we approach life and our personal spirituality.

In Western Christianity, there’s no question that the focus is very much outward. Heaven, redemption, blessings are seen as things that exist but they’re not an innate part of us. Christian theology goes something like this:

“God made you in his self-image but something kind of went wrong. God is perfect, but you aren’t. In fact, you’re really, really flawed. In fact, let’s be honest here, you’re a real piece of shit. You like to fornicate and steal and lie to people and, um, eat bacon and shrimp. You’re pretty much hopeless, unless you change your ways. If you change your ways, you can eat pancakes with Jesus in heaven, and they use REAL maple syrup, not that Mrs. Butterworth’s crap. On the other hand, if you DON’T change your ways, well, God is going to have to toss you into a flaming pit where you’ll burn in agony forever. Because he loves you.”

Now, the salient point in all of that is that THERE IS NO GOOD INSIDE OF US. Whatever blessings or grace may exist, they exist, “out there,” in God, and it’s only by overcoming our basic, sinful nature that we can have any hope of finding happiness and salvation.

It’s only by becoming, “not us,” that we can get God’s approval and get into that pancake breakfast with Jesus. That sets us up for a lot of spiritual and psychological tension because, basically, everything we really like to do as human beings is a sin and sends us toward having snacks with Satan, instead of breakfast with Jesus. Everything from sex, enjoying our possessions, loving a good meal, having a nice lazy day, eating shell fish or pork, even masturbating are ALL deadly sins.

What causes us to commit all of our sins? Why, our bodies, of course! It isn’t really ME that wants to get into bed with Mary Jo and fuck like bunnies, it’s my body. It isn’t really me that wants a BLT, it’s my body. More specifically, it’s my DAMNED body. If it weren’t for my body, I could be, like, I dunno . . . Mother Teresa . . . or maybe Mahatma Gandhi, except he wasn’t a Christian so he went straight to hell, of course.

The end result of that is that we end up hating even our own bodies because the body is the source of all of those terrible impulses that cause us to sin. That’s why Medieval christians developed wonderful traditions like whipping themselves and self-crucifixion. The terrible, sinful body had to be literally beaten into submission so that it wouldn’t make them sin, or they’d end up having lunch with Lucifer or brunch with Beelzebub (also known as, “Beelzebubba,” if you live in Texas.)

It’s interesting and even a little startling to our Western minds, to compare that Christian model of spirituality with the Buddhist model. Tibetan Buddhists speak of basic human nature in terms of a precious jewel or crystal that is covered with plain rock. Our job, our spiritual quest, is to uncover that beautiful jewel by chipping away at the rock, one little piece at a time. By meditating, practicing mindfulness, and building loving/kindness into our lives, we gradually reveal more and more of the jewel, our true nature. As Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche’ put it:

“Enlightenment is not anything new or something we create or bring into existence. It is simply discovering within us what is already there. It is the full realization of our intrinsic nature.

In sharp contrast to Christian theology, we aren’t terribly flawed,”sinful,” beings. Instead, we are beings that are incredibly beautiful, holy, and wonder-filled. We just haven’t uncovered that part of our nature, that precious jewel, yet.

Our redemption isn’t, “out there,” it’s not something we’re going to find in heaven or a book. It’s very much, “in here.” It’s something that we find by looking inward, toward our true nature, by meditating, consciousness, and increasing the love in our hearts.

This isn’t to say that Buddhists don’t have their Greatest Hits list of, “sins.” They condemn anger, judging others, envy, greed, etc. But, they don’t condemn them in terms of their being a part of our basic nature. Rather, they’re considered sort of side trips that lead us away from our basic goal of enlightenment. They’re distractions, rather than definitions of who we really are.

There’s actually a major Buddhist doctrine called, “Precious Human Birth,” which not only says that we’re NOT terrible, sinful creatures, it says that if we were born human, we hit the fucking jackpot. Only human beings are able to consciously contemplate life, make ethical decisions, and improve our spiritual state of being. When we consider all of the trillions of other beings on our planet who were incarnated as insects and animals, being humans puts us in a very, very, VERY small minority. We lucked out.

It’s a major shift in thinking for most of us who were raised in the West. Our bodies aren’t sources of primal, evil urges; they are precious vessels that contain an ineffable beauty just waiting to be brought to the light. They are a gift beyond comprehension. Heaven and salvation aren’t up in the sky or hiding in a holy book – they’re in our hearts.

And if heaven is in our hearts, we are sacred. Umm . . . really? Hmmm . . . Are you sure?

The Three of Pentacles is a pretty good illustration of the two choices we can make. The stone mason stands on a stool, mallet in hand, ready to carve. Beside him there is a monk and a fool holding a plan. The monk represents a religious creed, a looking outward to others for answers to our spiritual quest. The fool represents our basic human nature, that surge of playful, happy spiritual energy that occurs when we gaze within and joyfully embrace what already exists in our hearts and souls.

We just have to understand that everything that we want to be, we already are.

Happiness, Meaningfulness, and the Four of Pentacles

The importance and differences between happiness and meaningfulness in our live.

In her wonderful book,The Power of Misfits: How to Find Your Place in a World You Don’t Fit In, Anna LeMind references a study by Roy F. Baumeister on the differences between happiness and meaningfulness. In some cases, the two experiences may overlap, but they aren’t always synonymous.

It turns out that human beings crave both happiness and meaningfulness. The Buddha tells us that all sentient creatures want to feel happiness and avoid pain, and we share that drive with the birds and the bees, the turtles and the spiders. Bring on the happiness, baby, and take away that pain. That’s an old blues song, I think.

Where we differ from most of the animal world (we believe) is that we also need to have a sense of meaning in our lives. Having a lot of orgasms may make us extremely happy, but it doesn’t necessarily bring any meaningfulness into our existence. If we’re lying on our death beds reviewing our lives, we’re not likely to say, “Man, I had 20,000 orgasms. Now that’s a life well lived. My life really meant something.”

According to this study, it’s actually pretty easy to define what makes us happy. Being happy involves three major components:

– having our needs satisfied. That’s a pretty simple one. If we’re hungry, it makes us happy to eat. If we’re cold, it makes us happy to get warmed up. If we’re horny, it makes us happy to have sex.
– having the sense that we can obtain what we need and want. In other words, not just eating when we’re hungry but knowing that we have the powers and abilities to get out there and get that food all on our own.
– feeling good most of the time. That’s kind of a no-brainer, but it’s true. People who mostly feel good are mostly happy and people who feel lousy are mostly unhappy.

None of those three factors necessarily make us feel that our lives are meaningful, though. Feeling good, for instance, is very strongly associated with being happy, but not necessarily with feeling meaningful. People who are very healthy tend to be happier than people who are sick, but both healthy and sick people have an equal shot at leading a meaningful life.

Having the powers and abilities to get what we need and want is another one that may make us happy, but it doesn’t necessarily bring meaningfulness along with it. In our society, having the power to get what we need and want usually means having money. If you really, really, really need and want that new computer, you have to have the dough-ray-me to pay for it, right?

But even money has a very strange relationship with meaningfulness. In the Tarot, the suit of pentacles represents material possessions and money. In the Four of Pentacles, we see a guy who’s really having a love affair with money. He’s got his feet resting on money, he’s got his arms wrapped around money, and he’s got money sitting on his head. What a happy guy!

Probably.

Maybe.

Could be.

The study found that people who have plenty of money tend to be happier people, BUT they don’t necessarily report living a life that’s more meaningful. On the other hand, NOT having enough money makes people less happy and their lives feel less meaningful. So it’s not really the money that counts, it’s the lack of it.

Here’s another interesting little snippet of information that’s about life being easy versus life being hard. We’ve all known people who appeared to be unbelievably lucky. It’s like anything they want just seems to fall into their laps with little or no effort on their parts.

And we’ve also known people who seem to be unbelievably unlucky. No matter how hard they work, no matter how much they struggle and strive, life consistently turns into a shit sandwich for them and their desires and goals slip away like vapors in the wind.

Unsurprisingly, having an easy life makes people very happy. And having a hard life makes people unhappy. But neither one of those is linked in ANY way to a sense of meaningfulness. You can have the easiest life in the world and still feel like it doesn’t mean anything.

There’s another fascinating element with meaningfulness and happiness, which is TIME.

We know how the mindfulness meditation people are constantly hammering at us about, “Stay in the present moment! There’s no unhappiness in the present moment.”

It turns out they’re right! Happiness is very highly correlated with living in the NOW, in the present moment, rather than ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.

But, unfortunately, it’s also inversely correlated with having a sense of meaning. The more you live in the present moment, the happier you’ll be, but you also sacrifice a sense of your life having any overall meaning.

Why? Because meaningfulness is a function of time. The greater the span of time in your life that you’re contemplating, the greater a sense of meaningfulness you’ll have. If you think about what yesterday and today meant, the odds are that they didn’t mean very much, unless something extraordinary happened. On the other hand, if you think about what the last ten or twenty years of your life meant, you’re much more likely to see patterns and meaning.

And the same thing applies to the future. The future gives the present moment meaning because it involves us in taking purposeful actions meant to create that future. What we’re doing today is meaningful because it has a purpose – making the future.

So we have this odd conundrum. The more we stay in the present moment, the happier we’ll be, but the less meaning we’ll derive from our lives. The more we dwell on the future and the past, the less happy we’ll be, but the more our lives will feel meaningful.

The study also found an oddity in our perceptions of happiness and meaningfulness. People tend to view happiness as being relatively fleeting, something we feel momentarily and then it gets away from us. And they feel that meaningfulness is more permanent, something that will last long after happiness has disappeared. Which is just not true. Both meaningfulness and happiness tend to be fairly stable and long lasting. We probably just feel that happiness passes quickly because it’s so intimately related to the present moment, which is always appearing and disappearing, appearing and disappearing, shazam!

Which brings us to the probable reason for why meaningfulness is so important to human beings. The author concluded that MEANINGFULNESS IS AN ATTEMPT TO IMPOSE ORDER ON FLUX. Life is chaotic, man. Life is constantly changing, constantly transforming, constantly shazamming from one thing into another and then another and then another.

And it drives us nuts. We need a sense of stability, of orderly progression, of the past moving logically into the present which will then move logically into the future. We need to be able to connect the past, present and future of our lives in a MEANINGFUL way. Otherwise it feels like life is something that just happened to us, rather than something we lived.

If all of this sounds very complex, it’s because IT IS. We are very complex. To seek happiness is to be alive. Every single animal on the earth seeks happiness. But to seek meaning is distinctively human. It’s who we are. It’s what we do. Meaningfulness is not necessarily the same thing as happiness, but it’s just as important.

Happiness, Capitalists, Yellow Rocks, and Radical Meditators

Most people who are on a Spiritual Path eventually come to hold beliefs which conservatives consider, “politically radical.” It’s ironic, because most people who are on a Spiritual Path have very little interest in politics, except to casually observe it as another form of human insanity.

When I use the term, “radical,” I mean it in its original use from the latin word, “radix,” or root, as in, “the root of a plant.” To get radical is to get at the very root of something, to get to the place that it all grows out of, so to speak.

Let’s take the example of the Six of Pentacles. It shows a richly dressed man, scattering coins to beggars, and holding a scale so that he can measure exactly what he’s giving away.

You couldn’t ask for a better representation of the, “scarcity,” view of life that’s at the root of our society. There simply isn’t enough wealth to go around and some people have it and some people don’t. Those who DO have it, should share it with those who don’t have it, but they need to be very, very careful about not giving too much away, because there’s never really enough.

In real time, we see that happening with the gazillionaires who live in penthouses, fly around in private jets, take vacations on yachts, and are DESPERATELY WORRIED that poor people might be getting too many food stamps. Having enough to eat without working for it at minimum wage jobs is bad for their character, doncha know? Makes them lazy and dependent. Pass the champagne, darling . . .

As we move into a deeper level of spirituality, though, we begin to understand that there’s another model for looking at life, which is the, “abundance,” view. The Universe and Mother Earth seem to be richly, almost insanely, abundant. There are enough seeds in one tomato to plant an entire farm. There are enough sperm cells in one tablespoon of semen to repopulate the world. Women’s bodies produce far more eggs than they could ever bear as babies. And, yes, we could produce enough food to feed every hungry person in the world.

And we begin to realize that the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough, the problem is that some people are spiritually sick and want far more than their share of the abundance. Even worse, they want to be sure that other people have less than THEIR share, because they believe in their hearts that wealth is scarce and if they have more wealth, they’re better than other people.

Eckhart Tolle talks about this quite a bit in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61) In a nutshell, the Ego always wants more STUFF, because the Ego believes that the more STUFF it has, the more important it is. And, as a part of that contrast, if you’ve got less stuff than I have, then I’m just that much more important! If I drive a BMW and you drive a Honda, I’m better than you. If you have a two hundred dollar computer and mine cost five thousand, then I’m better than you. If I live in a McMansion and you live in a trailer, then I’m better than you.

And so we get hypnotized into this weird dance of thinking that our STUFF makes us, “better people.” But, as Tolle points out, it’s just a sugar rush, not real nutrition. Yes, the new computer (or car or house or jewelry) makes us happy for a while, but then it doesn’t anymore. So we have to buy more and more and more stuff to keep getting that rush, but somehow happiness keeps slipping away from us every time.

If we keep walking down the Spiritual Path we realize that the STUFF doesn’t really make us happy, not for long. As we continue to evolve, we start to get a glimpse of happiness WITHOUT the stuff. Maybe that revelation comes to us in our meditations or our dreams or journals, but we begin to get just a glimmer that the material stuff really has very little to do with happiness. We can actually BE HAPPY anytime that we want to and we don’t need a new computer to get there.

And that, my friends, is a RADICAL idea! That goes right to the root of our whole economic system and way of life. It short circuits the entire capitalist system which is based on consumers being convinced that they need to keep consuming STUFF in order to be happy. If we quit buying all of that crap that doesn’t really make us happy, then the gazillionaires who are selling us all of that crap that doesn’t really make us happy are going to lose a lot of money.

Dangerous, dangerous thinking! LOL – it really is. It’s why they killed Jesus. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.” WHAT???? Kill that guy! Quickly!

The point is that as we explore and grow spiritually, our values change and we become less and less in synch with society as whole. We realize that, ultimately, what all of us want is love and happiness. And we realize that love and happiness flow out of our hearts, not our possessions. Possessions and materialism itself start to feel like a form of insanity, which it can easily become.

Consider the example of the genocide committed against Native Tribes in the United States. We killed hundreds of thousands of Tribal Peoples in the Dakotas and Northern California because they were sitting on land that contained gold.

From their point of view, we were totally out of our minds because NO ONE HAD TOLD THEM THAT GOLD ISN’T JUST A ROCK. Why kill someone over a rock? Which, by the way, it IS just a rock. You can’t eat it. You can’t fertilize your fields with it. You can’t make clothing out of it. Other than being pretty, gold is totally useless.

Except that somewhere, thousands of years ago, some asshole said, “I have this pretty yellow rock and you don’t, so I’m better than you.” Since that original asshole, wars have been fought, untold numbers of people have been tortured and killed, and whole civilizations have been decimated, all because some people wanted to have ALL of the pretty, yellow rocks.

It really is monumentally nuts, when you think about it.

It’s my fervent hope that, as we move out of the ego-based scarcity model and into the new spiritual paradigm, we’ll see materialism begin to wither on the vine. Contrary to their paranoia, that doesn’t mean we need to have a revolution and take all of the rich people’s stuff away from them. There’s plenty to go around and if their yellow rocks make them feel better, so be it.

That’s abundance.

That’s radical.

Disclaimer: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”

Loneliness, the Five of Pentacles, and Robin Williams

Some mornings I wake up feeling six kinds of crazy and twenty kinds of lonely.

There’s an old song that Don Mclean wrote about Vincent Van Gogh that has the verse:

“Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me,

How you suffered for your sanity . . .”

And the truth is that there are a lot of us out here who, “suffer for our sanity.” We live through dark times, alone times, times when we’re so depressed, so far down emotionally and spiritually and energetically, that the pistol to the head, the bottle of pills, the fifth of whiskey calls out to us like the sweet voices of the Sirens. “Come here, baby; let me wrap my gentle arms around you and we’ll just be so peaceful and sweet and the pain will stop.”

For the most part, most of us survive. We don’t take that path that Vincent walked down, we cling to our lives and our dreams, and we keep trying, even though we feel six kinds of crazy and twenty kinds of lonely. We don’t embrace the Siren’s gentle arms and drift off into forever.

Many of us become highly adept at hiding our pain in plain sight. We’re the funny ones, the comedians, the people who are always laughing, many times at ourselves and the sense that our lives are ridiculous. Remember when Robin Williams killed himself and so many people were shocked? “What? Robin Williams? How can that be? He was always kidding, always joking. Why would he kill himself?”

Six kinds of lonely and twenty kinds of crazy. That’s why he killed himself. To those of us who live out here on the fringe, it was no surprise at all because we recognized him as one of us. In his senior album at Redwood High School he was voted both, “the funniest,” graduate and the graduate, “who is most likely NOT to succeed.”

That speaks volumes to those who can hear. Yes, we like him, but, man, he is NOT one of us.

The Five of Pentacles has always struck that same chord for me. The two beggars are, above all else, outsiders. They struggle along in the snow storm, crippled, wrapped in rags, while behind them a joyous light shines through a church window. One imagines the parishioners inside: fat, happy, warm, singing songs of praise to Jesus, not even aware of the people outside their window who are, “suffering for their sanity.”

They are NOT one of us. They don’t belong. They are Out Siders. Literally.

If you’re six kinds of lonely and twenty kinds of crazy, that’s probably a big part of your reality. You don’t belong. You’re not part of the group. You don’t fit, “in.” That’s certainly been my experience. I’m in my late sixties and I still feel as profoundly isolated as I did when I was a kid.

So how do we deal with that? If we are really and truly the odd ducks, the square pegs that don’t fit in the round holes, the crazy outsiders who don’t have a place in the herd, how do we NOT stumble into the same endings as Robin and Vincent?

I think that a good beginning is to just HONOR our weirdness. And I really mean, “honor,” it. Robin Williams and VIncent Van Gogh were worth a million – no, two million – bank executives and lawyers and accountants and other very, very successful people.

Why? Precisely because they WERE outsiders. They saw the world differently and they held up a mirror or a canvas and they said, “Look! Can you see it? Can you see the way it looks to me? Can you see the starry night? Can you see how funny and amazing all of this is?”

Being alone is HARD, man. Many people have been touched by that, perhaps for the first time in their lives, during this pandemic. Being physically alone, not being touched, not being hugged, and loved and cherished – it’s all hard. But being alone for all of your life, feeling like you’re always on the outside of that church window looking in . . . that’s the hardest. That’s twenty kinds of lonely, if you let it be. That’s six kinds of crazy, if you let it be.

The Hermit is very much alone. He stands aside from the rest of society but he also holds up a shining lamp in the darkness. He honors who he is, and he realizes that his wisdom is a gift to the world. Make no mistake about it, though: he’s been lonely and he’s been crazy and he’s suffered for his sanity, but he won through in the end. It’s just a path that some of us have to walk.

Shine on!

Donald Trump, Pharaohs, and the Peculiar Royalty Cards of the Tarot

\If you’ve ever studied the Tarot you know that the definitions for the royalty cards in the Minor Arcana pretty much suck. For every suit of cards – wands, cups, swords, and pentacles – there are corresponding royal figures: the Page, Knight, Queen, and King. The definitions for these come about as close as any of the cards to the stereotypes of Gypsy fortune tellers muttering that you’re about to meet a tall, dark stranger.

Unlike the definitions for all of the rest of the cards, these tend to be very gender and age specific. As in, “An older, dark haired man with a hatchet face will play an important role in your life.” Or, “A troubled young person with red hair may cause mischief.” Or, “A very strong, dark haired, materialistic woman will be difficult to defeat in legal problems.”

Perhaps the definitions are so awful because the very concept of royalty is so NOT the Tarot. The Tarot is not about, “exceptionalism,” or people who are removed from the normal human experience by virtue of their wealth or power.

The Minor Arcana cards describe common human experiences and states of being that we all go through. Poverty, disappointment, broken hearts, celebrations, love, hate, passion. The Major Arcana describe archetypes that blow through all of our lives. Illumination, spiritual quests, death, lovers, evil, power, sudden turns of fortune.

In a word, the Tarot is, “egalitarian.” Egalitarianism is, in its original meaning, the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. We see that built into the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Of course, we know that the people who signed that document were, for the most part, rich white dudes who owned slaves and would have been horrified at the possibility of women voting. Nonetheless, let’s look at the truth that underlies the statements that they didn’t live up to.

We are ALL of us much more alike than we are different. If you take it right down to the core, right down to the bedrock of existence, we are ALL Souls on the earth plane trying to do our best and figure out why in the hell we’re here and what we’re supposed to do next. Just forget for a moment all of the strange earth plane illusions of skin color, gender, countries, languages, creeds and religions, wealth, poverty, genius and stupidity. Underneath the whole, bizarre, flashy, Mardi Gras parade of colorful costumes and masks, we’re Souls on a common journey. On the Soul level, we are all equals.

Which is why the Tarot works for everyone. It’s about that bedrock of human experiences that every person on the planet shares in common. It’s about what we – ALL OF US – encounter in our lives.

Being a King or a Queen, a Knight or a Page . . . except metaphorically and momentarily, those are NOT experiences which most of us will share. And so those cards seem like rather odd appendages to the Tarot as a whole.

Karl Popper, who was one of the most prominent philosophers of the 20th century, once wrote an essay called, “Is There Meaning in History?” And the first sentence in his essay was, “No.”

His point was that history is mainly about the egomaniacs, killers, misfits, and psychotics who seized power, created thrones, and caused endless misery for their fellow Souls, and NOT about the majority of people who were living during their periods of time. The French, for instance, are fond of remembering the, “military genius,” of Napolean while ignoring the millions of deaths that the little over-compensated dictator caused.

Americans love to talk about their cowboys but not so much about the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans to make room for the cowboys.

The real story of the pyramids should be about the slaves and artisans who built them. Instead, we remember them by the tricked out, inbred Pharaohs whose bodies they contained.

On the current scene, Donald Trump is an extremely wealthy man who has taken over control of the world’s most powerful office. He, not us, will be remembered in the history books. But on a Soul level, he’s a rather pathetic old man who’s stuck in his first and second chakras, whose own mother didn’t like to touch him, who’s had a series of mail order wives he’s cheated on, who never had a pet and who, as near as we can tell, has never been loved by another human being. Pretty sad.

In all probability, decent definitions for the royalty cards in the Tarot won’t emerge until we give up our fascination with and admiration for royalty and the ultra-wealthy.

At that point the definition for the King of Pentacles may be, “A totally materialistic, shallow soul who is obsessed with money to a point of crushing anyone in his path.”

And the Queen of Cups might be, “A pathologically jealous bitch who will destroy anyone she views as a potential rival.”

And the Knight of Wands might be, “An intellectual zealot who will ride right over anyone who disagrees with his elitist, fanatical point of view.”

It’s just a matter of looking at the real Kings, Queens, Knights, and Pages in, “history,” and seeing how they really behaved. What human qualities do the royalty cards really represent? What kind of a person was Henry the Eighth? Was the Sun King all that sunny? How horrible were most of these people?

We may have to create a special card to represent Trump, though. Maybe the King of Putz? I’m open to suggestions . . .

The Eight of Pentacles and the Death of Creativity

The Eight of Pentacles looks like a pretty happy card. A craftsman sits at his bench carving away at one pentacle after another and seems to have several of them displayed, as if they were for sale. My original definition of the card in my book, “Just the Tarot,” pretty much agrees with that:

Profiting from your skills. Learning new skills that will advance your career. Possible promotions or awards at work.

And, yet, as an artist and a writer, I have to say, “Ugh.”

And, “Yuck.”

In some ways the Eight of Pentacles is sort of the anti-creativity card. Real creativity involves an interesting balance between competence and incompetence.

If you’ve ever gone through the pains of starting a new job or you’ve supervised someone who was new at their job, you know that there’s a definite learning curve. For about the first six months you can count on a pretty high level of screwing up. The new employee has to learn new skills or – in some cases – unlearn what he thought he knew. At about six months to a year, she’ll start to develop the abilities to perform the job and, after a year, it should be easy peasy.

We see a lot the same thing with artists. Having a creative vision isn’t enough. The painter has to learn how to blend the colors and which brushes to use. The wood carver has to know which chisels do what and what types of wood have smooth, tight grains that will take the details of the carving.

You study it, you practice it, and you learn it. I used to refer to that as, “getting the knowledge out of my head and into my hands.”

But, the thing is, the second you’ve REALLY learned it, the second you can do it perfectly over and over and over again . . . you’ve stopped creating. You’re just repeating.

That’s what I see when I look at the Eight of Pentacles: a line of perfectly carved pentacles that are all exactly the same. It would have been really cool if some of them were orange and some of them were purple, if there were a few folk art pentacles mixed in with some abstract pentacles.

But there aren’t.

Henry Ford invented the assembly line in 1913. It was a novel concept at the time: a product moving down a line, being assembled by a team of workers. Each worker was highly trained in doing one separate part of the assembly, over and over and over. Doing exactly the same thing day after day after day until they retired or dropped dead from boredom.

It was a brilliant idea for a capitalist and an absolute soul killer for the workers. Real creativity involves trying something new that you don’t actually know how to do perfectly. It’s a meshing of your skill set with unknown territory that results in something unique and different AND increases your skills.

Unfortunately, we don’t see a lot of that in our work places. We see people stuck in jobs where they do one or two things over and over again and are never challenged and never grow. We actually give them awards for that and congratulate them on knowing how to do those one or two things better than anyone else, on accepting the concept that they should be, “good”, but not creative or different.

The Eight of Pentacle is a safe card, a card that shows that nothing bad is happening to that person. But nothing particularly wonderful is happening to that person, either. The real story is in the definition of the Eight of Pentacles Reversed:

Employment problems that may involve a need for retraining or learning new job skills. Possibly the questioners position being eliminated or some sort of a reshuffle of employees that will place him or her in a job requiring different skills.

In other words, THAT person is going to have to GROW. It’s all really a question of choosing emotional safety or choosing growth. Sit in the nest or jump out and learn how to fly.

Life is way too short to choose safety.

The Three of Pentacles and the Creative Process

We know that humans essentially have two different brains in one skull. The left hemisphere of the brain is involved in logical and linear processes such as math, writing, driving a car, and analyzing problems. The right hemisphere is the, “creative brain,” and deals with dreams, symbols, intuition, inspiration, poetry and art.

While the right brain is more involved in the genesis of art, both sides of the brain are necessary to make it materialize. Here’s an example: Janis is an artist and has a dream about a beautiful, glowing landscape. Upon awakening, she’s determined to paint the image she dreamed and share it with the world. That’s right brain working.

She goes to her studio and has to select which paints will work best with the image, what size canvas she wants to paint it on, and which brushes she want to use. That’s left brain working.

As she begins to paint she falls into a sort of a trance and hours go by without her being aware of anything but the painting. Right brain is in charge again.

When she’s finished for the day she sits back and critiques what she’s done. Did she get the lines right? Is the shading perfect? Did she capture the source of light? That’s left brain engaging in the process.

So there’s this interesting back and forth between the two sides of the brain, each side contributing its’ own powers and skills to creating. And that’s what we see in the Three of Pentacles.

The Three of Pentacles is unusual for a Minor Arcana card because it incorporates two figures from the Major Arcana. A stonemason stands on a bench, mallet in hand, pausing between strokes to listen to two people who are conferring over a plan. The two people are obviously The Fool and The Hierophant.

They are represented here, it seems, not so much as the formal individuals they are in the Major Arcana, but as the energies or vibrations associated with those two cards.

The Fool is wild, intuitive, intoxicated with divine energy but with no need to interpret or define what he’s doing. The Hierophant is stodgy, stolid, conventional, not unkind but a stickler for the rules. The Fool is all about Right Brain energy and The Hierophant is all about Left Brain energy.

So we have this almost perfect representation of the creative process: Left Brain and Right Brain working together while the craftsman waits to create their synthesis in the material world.

And one of the fun things about this card is that it’s not about art at all, according to its’ common definitions. It’s about buying real estate and making improvements to your home, being enthusiastic about it but paying careful attention to details. Which is a wonderful reminder that everything – everything – we do in life is a creative process.

Life is a canvas – use bright colors.

Abuse Cards in the Tarot

One of the most frequent reasons for people to consult a Tarot reader is relationships, specifically romantic relationships. This includes the full gamut of topics from, “Does Bobby like me?” to, “Is my marriage worth saving?”

You may find that a prominent subcategory of that topic is physically and/or emotionally abusive relationships. People who are in abusive relationships are frequently desperate for advice and guidance.

You may also find – as any cop, social worker, or emergency department nurse can tell you – that the questioner may not even be willing to admit that he or she is in an abusive relationship. They may be deeply ashamed of it. They may have been victims for so long that they’re afraid to reveal the truth, afraid that talking about it will only bring more abuse down on their heads.

It can be very puzzling to a reader. You’re looking at a reading that indicates that something is very, very wrong in the questioners life and, yet, they assure you that everything’s fine. There are, however, a few cards that can tip you to what’s actually happening.

NINE OF WANDS

The picture kind of says it all, doesn’t it? This card may well indicate an abusive relationship though at this point – given that this is a Wands card and, thus, ideas card – the abuse is probably more verbal than physical. A couple living in a constant state of verbal warfare with nasty, wounding arguments.

EIGHT OF CUPS

A card of stealing away in the night, this may indicate someone who is literally fleeing from a really bad relationship. This can be a relationship that is SO bad that the questioner is leaving town to get away from his or her partner.

FIVE OF SWORDS

This is a card of really ugly power games and can indicate a person who is a serious sadist. Deep wounds are being inflicted here and they may be actual physical wounds as well as emotional wounds.

SIX OF SWORDS

This appears to be a fairly placid card on its’ surface but there are undertones that can indicate abuse. As I said in the original definition from my book, “Just the Tarot,” this is a card of leaving troubles behind and moving toward better times. A journey from rough waters to waters that are placid and calm. There is a definite element of escape, of fleeing in this card.

There is also an element of hiding and of turning your power over to someone else and asking them to guide you to safety. The woman and child are cloaked and bent over, as if to conceal their identities.

I have seen this card frequently in the context of an abused wife or girl-friend fleeing to a women’s shelter or finally, finally calling the cops to stop the abuse.

SEVEN OF SWORDS

This card doesn’t so much indicate physical abuse but may point toward a form of emotional abuse. The questioner may be involved with someone who is stealing his or her power in a relationship, belittling them, and grinding down their sense of self-worth on a daily basis.

EIGHT OF SWORDS

Again, the picture pretty much speaks for itself. A person who is literally being held prisoner in a terrible relationship. The blindfold can indicate a high level of denial on his or her part, refusing to even acknowledge, much less deal with, the fact that they’re in deep shit.

TEN OF SWORDS

This may well be the scariest of the abuse cards. It’s the end of the power cycle and the subject lies dead on the battlefield stuck full of the swords that he or she tried to wield. A reminder that abusive relationships can have horrible endings.

NINE OF PENTACLES

I’m including this card in the post, not because it shows overt physical or emotional abuse, but because it may show a certain form of emotional or financial bondage in a relationship. The woman in the card is to all appearances happy, content, and surrounded by wealth. One of the key elements of the card, though, is the blindfolded hawk. This card may indicate a person who has – perhaps willingly – surrendered his or her freedom for financial security. There can be a great deal of inequity and inequality of power in a relationship like that and that can certainly lead to abuse.

THE DEVIL – UPRIGHT OR REVERSED

The Devil can, of course, indicate a whole slew of other things besides relationship abuse but it’s almost always there when abuse is present. You have to be a wee bit cautious in automatically assuming that, though, because human sexuality covers a whole spectrum of behaviors. I have never personally understood it but there ARE people who enjoy giving and receiving pain as a part of their sexual experience. If it’s mutually agreed on, it’s none of our business.

Despite that, The Devil can be a clear indicator of a relationship that has gone very, very wrong. The man and woman are chained but the chains are obviously loose enough to be slipped off if they chose to do so. There is an element of voluntarily sinking into a terrible, poisonous relationship and elevating the very worst of human nature into a so-called, “relationship.” The abuse here can be emotional, physical and spiritual.

THE TOWER

The Tower can show abuse but it’s probably just happened. The Tower is sudden calamity, a bolt from the blue, a shocking development. Chronic abuse can go on for years. It may be shocking to others to discover it’s been going on but it’s certainly not shocking to the victims or perpetrators. Depending upon the surrounding cards this may indicate the very start of the abuse cycle.

THE MOON

As I said in my original definition: The Moon shows that the questioner may be involved with someone on a very primitive, unconscious level and that there may be deception on the part of the partner or, more likely, denial on the part of the questioner. There is a lot of emotion present but it may not be of a healthy, evolved nature.

This card can show the depths of rationalization and deception involved in an abusive relationship. Everything is murky, shadowy, and there’s no clear path out for the victim.

So those are the primary cards that may indicate an abusive relationship. They don’t always indicate that but you’ll be able to tell a great deal by the surrounding cards. I would also emphasize that these are by no means the only cards that can indicate abuse. Abusive relationships can be incredibly complex and so can the readings for the person being abused.

King of Pentacles

A man wearing a crown sits on a heavily carved throne adorned with carvings of bulls heads. He wears a flowing robe embroidered with grape vines and holds a globed scepter in his right hand. His left hand holds a pentacle which rests upon his leg.

A very successful and probably fairly wealthy man with an abundance of good business sense. This isn’t someone who’s striving for success – he’s already there. And, in keeping with the old cliche about how the rich get richer, he just keeps on making more money.

The bulls on the throne show that he has a strong sensual nature but probably also feels a need to dominate those around them. The grapes indicate that, like his queen, he enjoys the finer things in life and expects nothing but the best.On a mundane level, look for a dark complected, heavy set or muscular man who is conservative and close to his family. Solid but fairly boring.

REVERSED: A businessman who is capable of being vicious and very hard hearted who may be after the questioner in some sense. Alternatively, a businessman who looks rock solid but may be totally undependable or secretly down on his luck.

EXAMPLES: The CEO of a major company with a heavy stock portfolio.

The patriarch of a very successful family business.