Contemplations about Tarot: Part 2

Originally published on my blogspot 21.2.2014. I offer this series here as it was written and published then, with some minor grammatical corrections and edits in formatting and change in accompanying images. Enjoy.

Meditate, then what?

Okay, assuming meditation is out of the way. 

Once you are able to keep your concentration, one-pointedness of the mind or gnosis for more than a few minutes (preferably 5-15 and the more the better), we can safely assume, you can keep your concentration under any circumstances for at least a moment (by moment I mean "up to a minute") - be it during a meeting at work, or sitting on the toilet, or just bored out of your mind at home. Once you can keep it "up to a minute" under any circumstance, it means that you can resume your concentration immediately after it had been broken. Even if it is for just another minute.

To illustrate: Blank. Blank again. A second more. Blank still. Another three seconds pass. Blank. Gotta pay a bill. Nice thought. Let's go blank again. Nothing. Blank.

It is OK, if the occasional thought passes by. We are not trying to reach nirvana and enlightenment here. Just take a note of it, let it pass and keep the stillness. By any means don't get caught in thought trains, thought novels, sagas, or horrors. Acknowledge the thought and pass it on.

When reading cards, it is necessary to be able to distinguish the difference between a wandering thought and an actual message. The first step, again, is having a clear mind. When your mind is absent thoughts and you have a vision (exaggerating now) of your sibling standing on their head while petting a little kitty, you can safely assume it is a message, not your thought. The credibility of that message is debatable. (Is your working space clean? What energies/entities are around you?). But who else knows what thoughts go around your head other than yourself? If you are asked about the future of a relationship you know nothing about and you see two people fighting violently, do you have a reason to think that? Seriously, do you have a history of abusive relationships or is that something you have never experienced?

Know thyself

In order to be able to give relevant readings, whether you interpret the cards traditionally or in a different way, the key is to know yourself and to be able to distinguish what you would like to see / hate to see happen to your querent (again, another reason I don't read for myself) from what the cards / your intuition / your guide is actually saying.

Knowing oneself is the key to magical practice in general. Only by being able to anticipate ones own feelings, behavior, thoughts etc. is it possible for one to differentiate themselves from others (be it other humans, others' thoughts, wishes, gods or entities). Am I doing this ritual because I want it? Am I not cleansing this area because it is my will? Am I saying this relationship is going to work only because I wish it would?

Meditation and being able dissolve your thoughts on a whim is a way to help make that distinction. If you repeatedly banish a thought and it comes back again and again - it probably has relevance.

When I was trying to find out the identity of my first patron, I was told by a medium, that he was wearing horns, there was an association with snakes, hunt and fertility and whatnot and that was it (if they don't tell her their names, she has no way to get it out of them - turns out, that is my gift, again, more on that later in this series). So I sat down one day, spent thirty minutes just clearing all the clutter in my head, cards in hand and asked.

"Who are you?" No answer.

"What is your name?" Nothing.

"If you really mean me no harm, tell me your name."

At that point, I was frantically shuffling my cards, thinking these three questions again and again and again. I was desperate. And a little scared after that deafening silence, but that gave those questions all the more strength. Gnosis they call it, I hear. Huh.

After another fifteen minutes of complete determination of not letting the cards go until I had an answer, I saw a circle of fourteen cards with two cards crossed in the middle. I dealt the cards. Looking each one over and then unfocusing my eyes looking into the middle of the circle I thought: "Heliopolos".

Bullshit, I answered myself and threw that thought away.

"Heliopolos."

Stop it! That not someones name! Don't think. Close your eyes. Black behind the eyelids. Sweet bliss. Nothing. Blank.

"Heliopolos. Helipolos. Heliopolos." Oh, come on, are you seriously going to rain on your own parade? No! Heliopolis, go away!

"Heliopolos.  Helipolos. Heliopolos.  Helipolos. Heliopolos.  Helipolos. Heliopolos!"

Fine, that is weird. Yes, I am in the back of my mind somewhere aware that there exists a place in the world of a similar name. So what? I know many other, different names to various places. I have somewhat of an education. But why would that particular name pop into my head when I was asking my patron his name?

Study, eclectically

Google solves it all. Again. A quick search reveals an Egyptian creation myth that, by chance, originates in the vicinity of a city called Helipolis, that, accidentally, is the only one that mentions a certain Geb. That name I have never been aware of, not even subconsciously.

So, if a thought is seemingly not relevant to your way of thinking (I am not from Egypt, never even visited, my knowledge is limited - had I been Egyptian or so, I would have seen this situation way differently), and despite being dismissed numerous times, it still keeps reoccurring - it is worth taking a note of. It probably isn't yours.

Second moral of this story is - your subconscious has to be educated. If you don't have a clue about history, geography, psychology, mythology or just the basic way things work in the world - it is going to be hard for you do divine anything. Let alone the future.