By Sarah Taylor
No man is an island, they say. Yet you sit there
Alone.
Voluntary exile,
Blind to those there by your side — quiet, unquestioning,
Waiting
Until you see otherwise.
Two things happened when I was laying out the cards for today’s reading. First, there was a clear directive to position the first card that I drew — the Seven of Jades (Pentacles) — as the middle card.
This puts the protagonist in the Seven firmly in the centre of the reading, with the other two cards as events surrounding him. Had I placed the Seven at left — which is what I would typically do — then The Released Man (The Tower in the Rider-Waite Smith deck) would be the focal point. Here, it is not.
The Released Man will have an impact on the Seven of Jades, yes, but the message is a clear one: keep going, in spite of what may feel like the odds being stacked against you in an environment that is quicker to quash than to nurture. You have been conferred the responsibility for tending to what is bearing fruit in a part of your life.
The second thing that happened was that the two cards that accompany the 78-card Xultun Tarot (making it an 80-card deck) decided to do their own enactment of The Released Man, and fell off the table onto a chair and the floor. I wouldn’t have given it much thought if I didn’t know that the cards were created to represent the polarities of masculine and feminine energy — yang and yin — and are therefore symbolic of the fall of the man and woman from the Mayan Pyramid in The Released Man.
So we have two points of emphasis — first, the Seven of Jades, then The Released Man — followed by the comparatively low-key entrance of the third and final card, The Priest. The next thing is to listen to the narrative that all three are weaving for us.
What I find interesting is that the tree which the figure in the Seven of Jades is nurturing into bloom is divided into halves which, for the most part, mirror each other: the left-hand side is blue and holds three of the jades; the right-hand side is brown and holds another three; the seventh jade is held by both sides.
The tree’s roots are wrapped around a skull, which faces The Released Man: out of endings new beginnings are made; from one state of polarity another one must spring. That is what life is: an incarnation of two complementary wholes that are forever in a state of seeking balance. When something falls out of balance to the point that it has done in The Released Man, the only thing that can correct it is its destruction. That might sound brutal, as if there is judgement attached to what is happening. But what if there is no judgement? What if it is a simple statement of fact? Instead of looking at what is falling, what if we were to look at the ground it gives us to build something new? Something with greater structural integrity, something that serves both the whole and its interdependent parts.
And yet it serves us to remember that this is the planet of free will: we can choose to learn a lesson from the past, or we can choose to repeat it. We know what happens when we choose the latter; the former releases us into the unknown.
The figure is reaching for a jade in the lower branches of the brown side of the tree, which is nearer to him. It seems ripe for the picking. What feels true is that he has been caretaker of this tree alone, unaided. Perhaps he is a little surprised that he’s made it this far. But the roots dig down, as do his own legs; he is waist-deep in the soil, rooted and grounded. This has been an exercise of finding root.
If he turns around, he will see a figure standing behind him — a figure who shares the same-coloured background as the branch from which he is making his first harvest. This is the figure of The Priest, clothed in the shamanic robes of jaguar — the jaguar’s belly full of him, his head ‘birthing’ through jaguar’s mouth. How much is man, how much is jaguar? I cannot be sure. They merge in a card that is about communion, marriage, the coming together of two different paths — the sacred and the profane. The Priest (also known as The Hierophant) is Spirit’s commandment enacted in the land of the living. Like last week’s reading, it speaks to me of Tantra.
From a coupling of masculine and feminine that can no longer be held in structural integrity (The Released Man), we move to a merging of spirit and matter in service to the divine (The Priest). All the while, the figure in the Seven of Jades keeps his vigilance, carefully watching the jades on his tree as they grow, small buds of leaves appearing on each branch.
Nothing is accomplished if we do not act, and continue to act, from a point of inner authority. When we lose our connection to that authority — to the Self — we build our lives forgetting the foundations that anchor us into meaning. In doing that, we create a pathway for a lightning bolt to come and correct our course. It isn’t retribution: we created the conditions for it to happen.
And so this reading finds us on the other side of The Released Man, growing something that reaches down as much as it reaches up, a balance between nature and the material world. At the point of the first harvest, we might look back with some trepidation. We know all too well what it feels like to lose our footing, to be thrown to the ground, feeling separated from others and from our connection to Spirit, to meaning.
But we are here, now, tending to something living, vital and balanced — albeit in infancy. Sometimes it may seem like a lonely job, yet we are far from alone. Something — perhaps someone — has our back, and it asks us to consider what it would be like to identify with a form of relating to the world and others that recognises the spirit that resides in everything.
By paying due care and respect to what we have learned about the past — about balance between body and soul and between the extremes of experience that life brings us, understanding that one is neither more superior nor necessary than the other — we can focus our love and attention on yielding a harvest that is new and altogether more sustainable.
Astrology correspondences: The Released Man (Mars), Seven of Jades (Uranus/Pluto combination, Pisces), The Priest (Taurus)
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.
Stephanie,
Hi. Yes. Typo. Sometimes it is a “F. slip” but on computers, it’s often just a typo. (Ye old sometimes a cold is just a cold and sometimes it is a …) Fun/interesting to look at though. But this site doesn’t let me go back in and correct typos. (I find I typo a lot so it’s convenient to be able to correct.)
Mostly, the connections -for me anyway- between my dream and the complete *thang-hit* of the cards this week, were really cool, really moving with something inner/outer going on with me. I wanted to share that. It could just be what’s going on with me. But, sometimes, (not always, but sometimes when the weather is a certain way), we can dream/and/or/process collectively together too, which can also be very cool.
I really like this deck. Somehow I feel less judged.
First thing I thought about the spread: so glad, that this released man is on the left side…
then I read, that you drew it as second card, Sarah.
Well. Keeps me thinking…
eco11, did you realize you wrote “… even thought I do not want the change…”
wandering_yeti – I feel your interpretation. Thank you.
The cards reflect something I’ve been seeing for awhile now, that just came back into clear view through seeing a movie last night called “Occupied Cascadia” that talks about identifying with our land base, in particular the land base where I live also known as The Pacific Northwest. I see the Released Man as the crumbling empire of capital that sacrifices life for money, the drive for constant expansion within a finite biosphere that could very well drive us extinct if we don’t change our ways. The card in the middle shows the source of our food and oxygen. He’s alone; those of us trying to get back to kinder ways of walking the Earth are currently a minority. The priest could be seen as sacred/profane, but to me it looks more like a human devoid of the arrogance leading us to believe we’re more important than the jaguars, bees, birds, fish and all other non-human creatures with whom we share this planet. This priest recognizes that what we do to the jaguar, we do to ourselves.
You’re so welcome, DivaCarla!
Leopard (what I see as the African counterpart to Jaguar) has accompanied me through my life, and has recently been making appearances in my dreams — in one, impatiently waiting to usher me into exploring my ‘house’, the psyche. Which is what I have been doing: walking into dark rooms and confronting what has been waiting there for me.
Oh, yes, it is the year of the Jaguar. I’ve been working with Black Panther for a year, reclaiming my true power, learning what that means. Eco11, amazing dream, I wish you many blessing in the living of it.
Sarah, I just finished writing about some changes I am going through right now: I used words like this:
“keep going, in spite of what may feel like the odds being stacked against you in an environment that is quicker to quash than to nurture.”
I know this following is true:
“You have been conferred the responsibility for tending to what is bearing fruit in a part of your life.”
And then you write this, which expresses what I have been trying to say about my life right now, so well:
“Nothing is accomplished if we do not act, and continue to act, from a point of inner authority. ”
I am grateful for your reading which confirms this very moment for me so well.
Many interesting findings/exploring Jaguar:
Inna Woolcott says:
“The Jaguar’s medicine includes seeing the roads within chaos and understanding the patterns of chaos, moving without fear in the darkness, moving in unknown places, shape shifting, psychic vision, facilitating soul work, empowering oneself, reclaiming power.”
eco11 – That is one powerful dream. Wow indeed! Jaguar medicine is potent, transformational medicine, and associated with the underworld: our shadow, or unconscious. I would also refer to the myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal – more specifically Ereshkigal – in terms of the dream symbolism you’re describing. There is a message in there for you somewhere.
Sarah!
Wow!
For the first time in the last few weeks since you’ve moved to this deck, it speaks to me in my psyche. I am quiet if I do not feel/hear something in a reading. Sometimes I must be patient. It is not my message perhaps at times or one that speaks to me. But I listen. I watch.
As always, in this exercise, I enlarge the cards and listen to my own reading, if any I have, first. It honors my intuition. I come to it unprepped with outside understanding or knowledge. It feels like the more honest first approach. (Then, after that, I read and learn from you and others. Often, I learn more. But I am often astounded at what comes to me in my initial response and it feels important to me to do it this way and it honors my own intuition and develops it.)
My take upon first examination:
A sense of importance and excitement. A sense of strength and grounding power. These cards are speaking and I am hearing much.
1.) first card: male and female coming down -upside down: Lightning strikes from Heaven!
The Temple Opens His Eyes.
2.) second card: The man picks the fruit from the center. It is time to eat it.
3.) third card: The Glorious Chief stakes his staff in power.
The Overall: Determination.
Action.
The Time is Now.
~~
And then I read your words and it deepens and deepens. When I realize the jaguar connection, still another message from this week shimmers through me profoundly:
I had a dream a few nights ago. I named the dream: “Jaguar.” It is dream of great turmoil and conflict. It takes place in a carnival or circus. Much happens in it, but among those things, in the middle of my turmoil, an island mulatto witch comes up to me. She says she can and will – it is time- turn me into a jaguar, my animal self. I don’t agree to it, don’t even think I believe in her magic. She doesn’t wait for my permission. She sticks a pricker in my left inner wrist. The potion is in it. “It has begun,” she says. “I don’t feel anything,” I say. I still don’t believe. “All in time,” she says. “All in time.” I go on about trying to deal with/endure untangle the conflict in the dream. I am not successful. It seems even more convoluted. The island witch (not a bad entity, by the way, but powerful and exotic, perhaps a teacher, guide, or helper/healer with her own knowledge: but definitely wise and definitely powerful). I tell her I do not believe in her potion. She says I will and she adds power to it by taking out a sharp silver knife about two feet long and quickly slices open my lower inner left leg. It is a sliver thin slice. She disappears. I am still myself with my tangled problems going on and my anguish. But I start to change, to metamorphosize. I try to find the witch to stop it. I find her rooms but she has locked herself in her inner chambers with someone, a lover or other close to her. I knock, I beg, I plead. She will not come out. Against my will or my wishes, helpless to the magic, I begin to change into a Jaguar. I HAVE to metamophosize into my power animal to escape my abusive reality in the dream. I don’t want to metamorphosize. But I must. The witch is wise. She inflicts on me the tools, the potion that will change me even thought I do not want the change and am stuck in a dysfunctional cycle.
WOW.