{"id":35100,"date":"2011-03-02T14:00:34","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T19:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=35100"},"modified":"2011-03-02T13:01:30","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T18:01:30","slug":"debauch-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/debauch-anyone\/","title":{"rendered":"Debauch, anyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free\u00a0tarot spread generator<\/a> using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article<\/a> tells you how to use the spread. You can\u00a0visit Sarah’s website here<\/a>. –efc<\/em><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Sarah Taylor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This week, I was somewhat waylaid as I tried to set an intention to write an article about the Sevens in tarot. Rather willingly, I admit. I think it’s sometimes useful to set a cat among the pigeons when a routine becomes — well, a routine. It allows for spontaneity and a certain unexpectedness to creep into the proceedings.<\/p>\n

\"Debauch<\/a>
Debauch from the Thoth Tarot deck by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris. The Rider-Waite Smith equivalent is the 7 of Cups. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was about to sit down and draw out the four Sevens from the Rider-Waite Smith deck (which I will be covering in the next few weeks), when I felt a strong sense of — how to put it? — “Nooooooooooooo!”<\/em> at the prospect of writing an article about them. My intention was there, albeit at less than full throttle. But my will was not. Where did my will want to take me? To Debauch, apparently — occultist Aleister Crowley and artist Lady Frieda Harris’s interpretation of the Seven of Cups.<\/p>\n

I’ve found that some cards, more than others, have the ability to provoke a reaction in people. I am drawn to Debauch, but I’m going to suggest that I am probably far from the only one. Debauch, I am certain, catches the eyes, minds and emotions of many people who come face-to-face with it. And I’m not saying you have to love<\/em> it to be drawn to it. No, indeed. Repulsion<\/em> is also a sure-fire indicator that something in the card is worthy of exploration.<\/p>\n

And that name. Debauch<\/em>. Not “debauchery.” The absence of the lighter tone of that final “ery” prevents us from dismissing it quite as easily as we might want to; there is no escaping its sound, which is flat, dissonant.<\/p>\n

This is the entry for “debauch” on dictionarygeek.com:<\/p>\n

– verb-transitive<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

1. To corrupt morally.<\/p>\n

2. To lead away from excellence or virtue.<\/p>\n

3. To reduce the value, quality, or excellence of; debase.<\/p>\n

4. Archaic: To cause to forsake allegiance.<\/p>\n

– verb-intransitive<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

5. To indulge in dissipation.<\/p>\n

– noun<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

6. The act or a period of debauchery.<\/p>\n

7. An orgy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Keeping our attention focused on the word itself — especially as it pertains to points 6 and 7 above — there are certain meanings and images we might attach to it that perhaps appeal on a more prurient level. We might indulge our fantasies about what forms “debauch” would take for us. It allows us to enter a dialogue, whether easily or with resistance, with those aspects of human behaviour that are, more often than not, deemed unacceptable, and which are relegated to sessions sequestered from public scrutiny. Here, we are given permission to crack the door and take a peek. (For example, it gives me permission to concoct a suggestive article title.)<\/p>\n

But then it is time to move our focus away from just the word, and to take a good look at the card. A good, long look. Really: try it now. Perhaps it is at this point that the meaning shifts for you. If so, perhaps it shifts subtly; or perhaps you see a new side of “debauch” altogether. Speaking personally, when I stopped thinking “Ooooh, debauchery!” and started examining the card, it didn’t look titillating or tempting at all. In fact, I remember telling a teacher of mine that it looked like “a tea party gone wrong.”<\/p>\n

And this is the point, I believe: Debauch is not only about our shadow material. Debauch also reflects our reaction<\/em> to our shadow material. It is, after all, in the shadows not because it should objectively be there, but because our judgements about it have put it there. Shame, fear, unworthiness, disgust: these are some of the emotions that cause us to consign something to the closet of our consciousness in the first place.<\/p>\n

And that is where, I feel, that the true meaning of Debauch comes in, and which is described in point four of the definition above:<\/p>\n

“To cause to forsake allegiance.”<\/p>\n

In other words: it is to disown parts of ourselves so that we are no longer allied with them. We do not support them, we do not admit they are of<\/em> us. Debauch invites us to examine those behaviours, beliefs, thoughts, emotions that we have consigned to the closet by examining the feelings that put them there.<\/p>\n

Many references to Debauch emphasise rottenness and decay, and ‘too much of a good thing’. Even Crowley himself referred to it as “one of the worst ideas that one can have; its mode is poison, its goal madness.” This is the card of substance addictions, although addictions can just as easily be psychological and emotional. It is these that I am most interested in, because they tend to be hidden from ourselves as much as they are from others. They really are in the shadows, even to us. They are the things that we keep doing, that we keep believing and that we keep saying — to ourselves as much as to others — that keep us at odds with the truth of ourselves, and which hold us back from expansion into a life that is calling to us.<\/p>\n

These two broad interpretations come from different directions, but the result is the same: in some form or another, we turn our back on ourselves; we sell ourselves down the river. Harsh language, I know, but Debauch, like much of the Thoth Tarot deck, doesn’t pull any punches.<\/p>\n

However, both interpretations offer a solution: integration. There is the invitation to reunite the disparate elements within, by examining what it is that we feel or that we don’t feel, that we do or that we don’t do, that maintains an illusion about ourselves at the expense of our evolution.<\/p>\n

So this is my invitation to you, if you feel inclined to do it. (This is not a throwing down of the gauntlet, and you will not be judged either way. Above all, be gentle with yourself.) Look at the card, and name the feelings that come up when you do. Stick with feelings. Once you’ve done that, choose one feeling and describe the nature of its link to the part of the card that prompted it. How are they related to each other?<\/p>\n

If you feel like posting what you’ve written, then feel free to do so here. Or you can email it to me if you feel the need to share privately. Or keep it to yourself. I’ll post my own observations that I made when I did a similar exercise last year as part of a Thoth Tarot course run by Thoth expert Emma Sunerton-Burl. Most importantly, if you feel like talking to someone about something that emerges, pay care and attention to yourself enough to do that. This is not meant to be a gruelling exercise at all, but, as with the will vs. intention experience I had this morning, the unexpected sometimes comes up.<\/p>\n

In the words of Gerd Ziegler in Tarot: Mirror of the Soul<\/em>:<\/p>\n

It’s time to open your eyes and take a look at (perhaps a painful) reality. Only by perceiving, by recognizing your own inner reality, will you be freed!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is when we are prepared to accept ourselves — warts, dripping slime, and all — that we begin to see the patterns that we are caught in and the games that we play, and we start allowing the currents of our lives to flow again.<\/p>\n

(With thanks and gratitude to Emma Sunerton-Burl<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free\u00a0tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article tells you how to use the spread. You can\u00a0visit Sarah’s website here. –efc By\u00a0Sarah Taylor This week, I was somewhat … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}