The Power in You
Today’s draw:
Five of wands
Sacrifice (The Hanged Man)
Solitude (The Hermit)
Heart Chakra
Deck:
The Psychic Tarot Oracle Deck, by John Holland
Walking the line between self-realization and empowerment and being a douche can be tricky. Today’s reading points towards the difficulty. In many cultures, healers, saints, and holy people come to their state only after overcoming a series of devastating challenges and obstacles that teach them humility, compassion, and resilience. It is considered a dangerous journey, for it’s just as likely that the trials they face will leave a lasting poison in their souls, ranging from bitterness, resentment, disgust at others’ weaknesses, or a survivor’s guilt that mutates into haughty pride and imperiousness. To make the journey safely requires both sacrifice and a retreat from society into hermeticism. If one survives the travail by transmuting the hardship’s poisons into beneficial medicine, one develops a lasting compassion and humility that allow them to serve others and heal them of their ailments.
I’m a big fan of this deck, although I haven’t used it in some time. But it does have a specific shortcoming worth noting, because it’s a common one in the New Age landscape. I’ve found the need tread cautiously with decks that don’t include reversed readings in their interpretive guides. While they fall on a spectrum, of course, I have noticed a pattern where these decks tend to espouse varying degrees of prosperity gospel that contradictorily says “if you only wish hard enough and refuse to see anything negative in the world, good things will flow to you. It’s easy!” And while prosperity gospels are not bad, exactly (too many of us sell ourselves short in terms of what we could accomplish if we really put our minds to it!) they are also a very short step away from blaming the victim when bad things happen.
If life feels especially challenging at the moment, and I suspect it does for many of us, be cautious. You can get through it. But ask yourself what kind of person you’d like to be on the other side. Do you want to be the sort who says, “I paid my dues and now everyone else should, too?” Do you want to be the sort who says, “I paid my dues, and I don’t wish that on anyone?” Or will you sit in an uneasy truce with hardship, saying, “I paid my dues. And while I may not be able to prevent anyone else from having to do the same, I should like to shepherd them safely through it when they do?” To whom, and to what, in other words, do you wish to give your heart over?
