TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?
For this series of writings, I asked people online to send me a question for the tarot and then choose a number from 0 to 21.
QUESTION
Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes (i.e. visual impairment, one eye, no vision, etc.)?
CARD CHOSEN
14: Temperance
RESPONSE
Every experience and relationship we have affects how we perceive and experience life. You chose card 14, which is Temperance. You’re asking why your recent relationships with people who have visual impairment have led you to perceive more wonder. I’m going to imagine that the woman in Temperance is answering your question.
Card 14: Temperance, from the Marseilles Tarot.
“I’ve given you these relationships and interactions because your subconscious, your deeper self, or your inner teacher (or whatever other name you want to give to your internal guidance system), requested them. You’re having experiences with people who see life differently (due to visual impairment) who are then leading you to perceive life differently, with more wonder and fascination.
As to why these specific people have influenced you this way, I don’t know. What I do know, is that you wouldn’t be finding more wonder and fascination in life if you weren’t ready for it. Wonder is always present but us humans have a tendency to accumulate tension, pains, and disturbances that occlude our awareness of life’s intrinsic wonder. Since you are re-discovering or uncovering the “oooooo” and “ahhh” in life, you must have cleared away some of your perceptual blinders.
Sort of like if your car’s windshield is covered in dirt, you’re only going to see mess and obscurity everywhere you go. You’ll have a hard time getting around. But if you clean the window, holy cow! There are shapes! People! Colors are brighter! There’s sunshine and shadows! In other words, your mind and your perception are shedding unneeded limitations and expanding.
You are experiencing more wonder because you are more open to life and to yourself. Because you are more open, life flows more harmoniously, just like the water flowing so gracefully between the jars in my hands.”
To see what the golden eyes of the woman in Temperance are gazing at, I drew another card and placed it to her left. This second card was 7: The Chariot. In The Chariot, there’s a young man caught in a state of pause, possibly a state of inner conflict. He’s caught between the opposing emotions displayed on the faces on his shoulders. His chariot is stuck as its horses pull in two different directions. It seems there is some indecision or tension here.
What does the angel of Temperance say about this?
“So you’ve been swimming in the lovely waters of wonder lately. This is great! But what about when life isn’t all honky-dory and there’s an existential fan that is spraying shit all over your sentient windshield of awareness? What about the tough and ugly moments of life? What about pain?
Card 7: The Chariot, from the Marseilles Tarot.
If I want to support and even increase the harmony in my life, it means I’ve got to be open to life and its flow. Being open to life includes all of life. It’s easy to be open to flowers, love, orgasms, delicious dinners, and wonder. It’s much harder to be open to pain and hardship. If I resist or avoid pain when it arises, I’m actually going to perpetuate and exacerbate it. Maybe I don’t like the way that life is flowing in a given moment. It might be hard to observe it and ride it out, but if I fight it I’m going to create even more friction for myself. In those moments, I can swim upstream and amplify the difficulty. Or I can choose to surrender to the turbulent waters, and notice what they bring up within me. This will make it much easier to ride the waves and possibly steer away from jagged rocks and additional obstacles.
Surrendering to disturbing energy might seem counterintuitive, but surrendering to it allows us to see it. The more we see and observe pain when it arises inside of us, the more we can learn from it. That pain is energy that has been buried, repressed, or fought with within us. It needs to come up! It needs to move! It needs to breathe! Surrender allows the stagnant, festering energy to move. When the energy moves, it shifts. It begins to change. Surrendering to disharmony eventually creates more harmony.
If you listen to pain long enough, it begins to teach you. It gradually shows what is causing the disharmony to begin with. And if you’re aware of the cause, you can begin to curb it, maybe even let go of it. Doing this brings more harmony and less disturbance into your life. The more in harmony we are with life, the more wonder, fascination, laughter, and love we will find.
On some level, you probably already know this. You’ve already been practicing this, which is why you’ve been experiencing more awe.
All of these words are an extended way of saying, ‘Go with the flow, be open to the flow, and consciously notice the qualities of the flow as you go.’”
On my blog, you can find more writings on art and alchemical thinking, interviews about creativity, psychologically-oriented reflections on tarot, and more. You can check out past posts in the categorized list below.
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Art
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
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Interviews
- Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
- Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
- Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
- Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
- Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
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Magical Thinking
- Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
- May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
- Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
- Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
- Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
- Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
- Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
- Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
- Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
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Tarot
- Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?
- Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
- Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
- Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
- Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
- Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
- Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
- Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
- Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
- Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
- Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction