Choose how you react

Anna K Tarot, Llewellyn 2013

This week I will feature the delightful mass market version of one of my all-time favourite tarot decks, the Anna K Tarot, by Anna Klaffinger. I have the 1st edition self-published deck, which I've used until the edges are worn as soft as cotton wool and the dark borders are faded. I love it. I had the 2nd edition, but found the cardstock too thick for my liking, so sold it. This new mass-market version is the best version I've seen so far. The cards are bigger, the stock is supple and flexible, the colors are more saturated and benefit from better contrast (some of the other versions of the Anna K were quite dark). I really, really love this deck.

Today's card is Five of Cups. When I was shuffling, this card snapped out, fluttered half way across the room, floated to the floor like the feather in Forrest Gump, and landed face up. How can you ignore something like that?

About as easily as the guy in the image on this card is ignoring the blue sky, golden sun, blossoming trees and three full cups behind him, while he sits huddled in the rain of the storm cloud over head and mourns for the two broken cups at his feet. Well, this card isn't about me ignoring the bright side. This card is about me seeing the light. Things that seemed so awful for the longest have started to seem not so terrible lately. I can turn my back on the dismal way of seeing things, I can turn my face toward the light. The funny thing about it is, I'm viewing the same thing, but just seeing it differently. I'm seeing it as if it doesn't really matter, and when something doesn't really matter, suddenly it's okay to be happy even though the thing is happening. It's only when it does 'matter' that you have to mourn and grieve and tear out your hair and beat your breast and all that other Old Testament type stuff.

When I say it doesn't really matter, I mean it in the best possible sense of 'not mattering'. Not a nihilistic sense, but an accepting sense. I can't think of a better way of putting it than Krishnamurti did when he asked his pupils if they wanted to know his secret. Of course they couldn't believe their luck and were all ears:

'This is my secret,' Krishnamurti told them: 'I don't mind what happens.'

So two cups are broken. So what? Mourning doesn't make them whole again. Regret or shame doesn't undo what's been done. Turn your back on it. There's light there to warm yourself in. Stop wasting your time, go sunbathe and sip something nice and cold from those three shiny cups!