A Tiny Compass: A Tarot Reading of The Hanged Man, The Five of Cups and The High Priestess
Mahmoud Darwish, Viktor Frankl and an angel called Ambriel's gift of the Will to Self-Expression.
Dear Known and Unknown Friends,
In Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Queen admonishes Alice for arguing it is not worthwhile to imagine impossible things. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!,” the Queen tells her. This line popped into my head as I checked my DMs and emails first thing, suddenly finding myself pulled into a whirlwind of banal thoughts and negativity before the sleep had scarcely left my eyes. It’s also possible, I thought, to do a dozen things which are bad for you before breakfast. It’s almost as if the varieties of ways in which we are invited to be our least self start like a bang upon the first light of consciousness.
Consciousness. That’s something I’ve been thinking a great deal about lately, especially as we are in the midst of the Gemini season. Last week I hosted a meditation and talk on Ambriel, the angel who rules over this astrological sign. Those reflections are going to be woven throughout this letter. If you attended you may recognize some of this discussion. The way I see it, angels are all holding the gifts and principles of heaven in their celestial hands. Angelology is a tricky subject and practice. Sometimes, it can seem a bit like we’re out here rattling the Tree of Life like thieves in an orchard. If we earnestly contemplate angels, though, often the nature of the things we ask them for assistance with changes. Frankly, we stop being so superficial and chasing after illusory success and status.
Ambriel, who rules over the air sign Gemini--noted for its association with communication, language, technology, intellect and curiosity –has everything to do with consciousness. They assist us in being conscious enough to discern what is precious and what is just fool’s gold being peddled to us.
Remaining conscious in the midst of all the many things which distract us is no easy task. Technology is often the enemy of consciousness. It can seem like we are poorly equipped to handle the access of knowledge it affords us. A panoramic view of the world and its heartbreaking troubles seethe over and wrack us with pain if we are privileged enough to be merely spectators. Yet a part of me believes that even without a device we would still sense when something beyond our vision was terribly amiss or beautifully aligned. This brings us to our three card tarot spread: The Hanged Man, The Five of Cups and The High Priestess.
The Hanged Man is a card of intuition. Some inborn technology within us exists to connect us to the lives of others in the past, present and future. A gust of bliss blown into the life of someone who has every reason to constantly grieve, or the inexplicable melancholy of a person with a charmed life, are all this technology of interconnection at work. It’s our intuition speaking. The Hanged Man experiences the truth and revelation of reality. He wears a glowing halo to signify that he possesses this intuition while strung up by his ankles. On the brink of death, he understands.
This understanding is the radical consciousness that occurs for someone who has experienced great loss. Right now, the people of Congo, Sudan and Palestine comprehend things we do not from the cozy armchairs of our homes in the U.S.. The full weight of the love they held for even mundane acquaintances, like the corner store clerk and the neighbor they nodded to as they passed in the street, all become clear in their heavy absence.
Life for us is composed of the meals we eat, the books we pick up from the shelf as we settle in for a quiet evening, the cat or dog we absentmindedly pet. For those who have been stripped of these comforts, life is gone. The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote of sitting in an abandoned theater. A place where all the sets and players have gone, where the curtain has been drawn on life. Yet in the barren, craggy wasteland that is existence versus life, the spark of consciousness remains. This is the very light which illuminates The Hanged Man’s halo.
I draw on another survivor’s testimony to describe the meaning of the Five of Cups. This card shows a cloaked figure who hangs their head in sorrow. Three spilled cups, representing loss, are before them. Behind them two remain upright. Yet whatever was spilled created such grief that he must mourn. The images on the tarot aren’t static, though. The bereaved man pictured on this card will not remain in this posture forever.
In Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, he wrote of being worked to the bone. He and his peers in the concentration camp would struggle to complete endless drudgery while starved, tortured, sleep deprived and without decent shoes or clothing in blistering heat or freezing weather. Yet they would stop in their tracks to savor the beauty of the setting sun beyond the barbed wire fence guarded by the gestapo. Although they didn’t have any real life or freedom, there was no barring awe.
Splendor can slip past any guard, through any keyhole and through seemingly impenetrable despair. All that’s needed for splendor to do its thing, to induce awe at the most unlikely of times in the most hostile places, is consciousness. When the dawn comes, the figure on the Five of Cups will raise his head to see the fiery sunburst of morning reflected on the glassy surface of the river. Just as it was for Frankl, it may be the tiny and great thing which drives him to push on until the next day.
There are those who are not surviving any terrible, large scale, system-created cruelties. Yet just as they are, we are simply pushing ahead to the next day. Putting Darwish and Frankl in conversation feels perilous, like some trite attempt by an ignorant American to render a condescending image of common ground between two opposites. That is not my intention. My intention is to show that consciousness will find its way to us. The question of what we do with this peculiar, extraordinary phenomenon remains.
This brings us to our final card, The High Priestess. She divulges what we are meant to do with the great mystery of life. She encourages us to take our experiences of pain, perfect contentment, euphoric bliss and the dullness of endless logistics and make something of them.
She asks us to write our story (in whatever medium we possess or however we may inhabit this place). She holds a document to show the importance of not only bearing witness but writing our stories. Nietzche argued that the force which drives us is the will to power. Frankl followed suit by arguing that the will to find meaning, even in a world which could go mad with barbarism, is what pushes us. It's my feeling that the will to self-expression is what propels us.
Yet if we are to fulfill this will to self-expression, to write our story as the High Priestess asks, we have to be able to imagine the impossible. If you should find yourself in very dark circumstances, whether they be external or internal, and cannot see beyond the dreary reality of it all, Ambriel will smuggle in hope. Angels can go anywhere and awe may strike like a match at any time. I’ll leave you these words by Darwish to carry as a key to be conjured when you feel too trapped to write any story at all.
The Prison Cell,
It is possible…
It is possible at least sometimes…
It is possible especially now
To ride a horse
Inside a prison cell
And run away…
It is possible for prison walls
To disappear,
For the cell to become a distant land
Without frontiers:
What did you do with the walls?
I gave them back to the rocks.
And what did you do with the ceiling?
I turned it into a saddle.
And your chain?
I turned it into a pencil.
The prison guard got angry.
He put an end to my dialogue.
He said he didn't care for poetry,
And bolted the door of my cell.
He came back to see me
In the morning,
He shouted at me:
Where did all this water come from?
I brought it from the Nile.
And the trees?
From the orchards of Damascus.
And the music?
From my heartbeat.
The prison guard got mad;
He put an end to my dialogue.
He said he didn't like my poetry,
And bolted the door of my cell.
But he returned in the evening:
Where did this moon come from?
From the nights of Baghdad.
And the wine?
From the vineyards of Algiers.
And this freedom?
From the chain you tied me with last night.
The prison guard grew so sad…
He begged me to give him back
His freedom.
Thank you for reading A Tiny Compass. Your attention and energy is deeply felt and appreciated. If you would like to support my work, you can always find me for a private divination appointment at www.gemineyetarot.com. Sharing my newsletter, following on social media @Gemineyetatot, or even just thinking kindly of the humble offerings I write are all actions which go a very long way. Please credit me when it is appropriate. Intellectual property theft is not a very fun thing to deal with. Ambriel descends on us all with unique insights and inspiration. So while I may imagine ten very bad habits before breakfast, and Darwish a Baghdad moon inside a cell, untold potential lies within every one of us.