The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, November 11, 2012

By Sarah Taylor

The spiritual journey is the realization — not just the information but the real interior conviction — that there is a higher power or God. Or, to make it as easy as possible for everybody: there is an Other; second step: to try to become the Other; and finally the realization that there is no Other. You and the Other are One, always have been, always will be. — Father Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk

At a time when the astrology is asking you to venture in to that Scorpionic territory of deep relating — where boundaries dissolve and you face the contradiction of merging with the Other while resting in the knowledge of who you are — this week’s tarot reading reflects more of the same.

And you have been preparing for this. The Hermit confirms that you have had your forty days and nights in the wilderness, finding, stoking and tending to the inner fire, coaxing a small flame into a light bright enough to remind you what the daylight looks like, and to lead you through the darkness towards it.

The Röhrig-Tarot version of The Hermit is an interesting one. The principal figure is no old, cloaked man holding a lantern in front of him (although this traditional version is in the card, sketched at centre left). No, in the Röhrig-Tarot, we seem to have James Dean, his faced superimposed with the image of a maze, a question mark resting in the place that marks the position of the third eye — our connection to intuition.

On the surface, it seems that this reading’s Hermit is anything but hermit-like. He is young, he is beautiful. It is usually when youth and beauty have started to fade (whether in us or in the situation we face or the life we are chasing) that we encounter The Hermit. In fact, I was getting hung up on the James Dean significance — until, that is, I came across a quote of his that threw things into new relief:

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor’s duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication. Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have. Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.

Now substitute “Hermit” for “actor” and read it again.

Appearances can be deceptive. The Hermit can beckon to you no matter what your age, what you are doing, or where you believe you are. The drive to do this is the acknowledgement that life is fleeting and you work with limited time. In this way, The Hermit is fully aware of his mortality in the search for what is immortal. He symbolises the moment when you enter the dark night of the soul to find your true light. Not the light in something or someone else; that is just reflected light. The Hermit learns that the only real light shines from within. You travel through the maze to find yourself at the centre.

Once you have found yourself, you are ready to find and unite with the Other. The Two of Cups is also known as Love in the Röhrig-Tarot, and its form is a particular kind of relating. It is sensual, erotic union, yes. But to understand it in those terms only is to fail to grasp the full meaning of the Two of Cups.

At its most productive, the Two of Cups is that moment of merging where you experience the loss of yourself in the Other, and the Other in you. In that moment, your sense of yourselves as separate identities disappears and you come into contact with what it is that transcends both of you.

That moment of union can feel like annihilation to the ego (your conscious mind), but what is really dying is your idea of yourself as something limited to human form, isolated, and important in and of itself.

Through union you touch the immortal.

The quote by Father Thomas Keating, who is a Trappist Monk and contemplative, describes this encounter in the context of a religious experience. But there are two paths to this union: the ascetic, and the tantric, the first eschewing the physical in favour of the spiritual, the second experiencing the spiritual through the physical. The presence of the Knight of Disks suggests the latter.

The Knight of Disks — otherwise known as the King of Pentacles — is the custodian of the physical world. He is wise; he understands that living in the realm of the senses is a perpetual balancing of opposites; he is unapologetically earthy. He is about as far from The Hermit as one can get, and yet he is who he is in no small part because he has been The Hermit himself. The ability to hold the contradictions of self and Other, of a universe of polarities, comes from one who is individuated: he has merged in order to know his true self, and now manifests that in the world around him.

The Knight of Disks knows that the time for a purely inward focus is fast coming to an end, and the time draws close for mutual orgasm on an emotional as well as physical level.

When you are presented with an opportunity to move deeply into another, go with your heart open. It is in the loss of yourself through unconditional love and acceptance by both participants that you will find something that eclipses your world and enriches it. Neither of you will be the same again.

Astrology correspondences: The Hermit (Virgo), Two of Cups (Venus in Cancer), Knight of Disks (“the fiery aspect of earth” — Gerd Ziegler, Tarot: Mirror of the Soul)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.