The Prestige

Today's draw from Kat Black's Touchstone Tarot (Kunati, 2009) is The Magician. This Magician appears to be an occult scholar, most likely an alchemist. His turban is quite elaborately decorated and suggests both riches and an otherworldliness, even a sort of holiness. His inner robe appears to be golden silk, intricately embroidered. His outer robe is decorated with large stars and moons, as one would expect of a wizard. Multiple rings on his fingers, he is grasping in two fingers a chain that ends in a golden orb. (The forefinger touching the thumb is a mudra symbolizing knowledge. What sort of knowledge might that golden orb represent?) On the table before him, the suits of the tarot deck, also representing the four elements: cup, wand, knife, coin. Clearly he is seated in a library, just next the stairs that lead up to more books above. An owl perches nearby. On his face, a very enigmatic expression, as if he knows all sorts of things he's not quite willing to share. Or wants you to think that.
The Magician represents the ability to turn thoughts into reality.  He takes the knowledge he has gathered over the years of study or contemplation, and through concentration and will, makes them happen in the real world. The ultimate expression of this ability was alchemy, 'a process by which paradoxical results are achieved or incompatible elements combined with no obvious rational explanation'. The primary objective of the alchemist was to turn base metals into gold, or finding the 'universal elixir'.

What could this have to do with daily life in a reading?  The Magician reminds us that we can make things happen. We can use all available tools, combine them in unusual, even unique, ways in order to make our dreams reality. There's a shadow side to the Magician, though, and his earlier manifestation in tarot was as The Juggler, ie, a sideshow trickster. So we are also warned to watch out for too-good-to-be-true schemes, sleight of hand or out and out illusions. Thus that enigmatic smile!

May I use all resources at my disposal wisely today, and keep my wits about me so as not to be misled.

How the heck do you say 'Huitzilopochtli'?!

And why would you put him on the Ace of Coins?

Click here to hear it said

That was easy enough, but figuring out why Sol Invictus Tarot creators Kim Huggens and Nic Phillips chose 'Wheat-see-la-poached-lee' as the Ace of Coins is a bit more of a mystery. I must admit to being completely ignorant of Aztec mythology, so the name meant nothing to me when I drew this card this morning. I tried to read the 3 pages of densely packed text in the companion book explaining all about Huitzilopochtli, but I get very frustrated if I can't see an immediate connection between the back story of a card and its traditional meaning. This is why I usually dislike decks that are too heavily themed. I dislike when deck creators seem to have to labour hard to create a tenuous link to the traditional meaning, or worse, give elaborate back stories to the card illustration, then provide the traditional divinatory meaning which seems to have no connection to the illustration whatsoever. That's not to say this is what happens in the Ace of Coins of Sol Invictus, but it's the first truly frustrating card I've encountered so far in the deck. (Admittedly it's early days with it!)

To make a very long story mercifully short, 'Wheat-see-la-poached-lee' seems to have been the primary Aztec god, and was a god of war and the sun. Like many gods of various traditions, he sprang from his mother fighting his siblings, and slew 400 of them to defend her...each night he journeys to the underworld to do battle with darkness and emerges victorious the next morning to provide the day's light. Okay, that's familiar. But what has the sun god got to do with the Ace of Coins? Battle for earthly power, material wealth...possibly...I can sort of see that. But for this card to work for me, I'm going to have to make it work through imagery alone.

So, at the top of the card, the blazing sun, Huitzilpochtli, is actually a giant shining coin, hovering over a temple. In the foreground is a marketplace. There are small figures of people in the background walking, carrying things, greeting each other, trading presumably. On the market stalls we see food, drink, jewelry, weapons--all the things that would have been very important to this war-like Aztec culture, I would think. When you look at the card as a whole, it certainly reminds me of this image:

Eye of Providence

It's the 'Eye of Providence', seen on US currency. To my mind, this card instantly makes me think of money, wealth, commerce, material gain, etc, because it is so similar to an image from the currency I grew up with. So in that way, I can instantly associate it with the Ace of Coins, particularly as I also associate this image with the one dollar bill, the piece of US currency that is most in transaction and that is the basis of accumulated wealth. I mean, you can't have a million dollars before you've got one dollar, right? So...Ace of Coins. Beginning of the material realm.

The market stalls also help me understand the meaning of the card, because Ace of Coins is all about physical health (the food), abundance, competition for material success, pretty much anything to do with inhabiting a body and surviving on the earth.

So, I don't get why 'Wheaties' was chosen for the card, but the picture works for me, anyway. AND it's appropriate for my daily draw, as today is the first weigh-in for a weight loss group I joined online, and I've embarked on a personal challenge to complete 260 workouts over the next 365 days. All earthly concerns!

Shantideva--'Divine peace'

I didn't realise that Shantideva wrote 'Way of the Bodhisattva' until I drew this card and read about it in the Sol Invictus companion book.

The card shows Shantideva resting under a tree. Sanskrit words lead from his head to a floating, shining cup, reminiscent of the Holy Grail. Nearby, three of Shantideva's fellow monks have their tea from the three remaining cups of this Four of Cups card. In the background is the temple/monastery where they live. The traditional Four of Cups card generally shows a solitary person under a tree, surrounded by three cups while being offered a fourth cup by a hand from above. The figure is usually ignoring this cup, and the card is taken to mean boredom, being uninterested or unwilling to partake of what life has to offer, not seeing what is on offer before you... In this card, it is not Shantideva who is ignoring the shining cup in the sky. He is directly connected to it. It's the three bikkhus who seem to be ignorant of what's on offer. Two of the monks are staring at Shantideva, as if in judgement or as if laughing at him, while the third, pointing his finger skyward, seems to have launched himself into some long speech, or perhaps he is merely distracted by the beauty of the day and has lost himself in a revery. I've just noticed that Shantideva seems to be resting beside a pool on which is floating a lotus blossom. Water is a symbol of hidden depths and the subconscious, as well as the emotions, while of course lotus flowers represent enlightenment. Shantideva is hooked in to enlightenment in this card. It's the men in the background of the card who are oblivious to the fourth cup and all it represents. Why? Because they are distracted by their cup of tea, their conversation, their silent (or perhaps not silent!) judgement of Shantideva for sleeping when he should be awake, even perhaps by the beauty of the day. But instead of sermonising to the others or sitting and thinking about things, Shantideva has surrendered himself fully to the experience of the day and the moment, to the extent that he can meet his physical need of sleep in good conscience.

I didn't know that Shantideva was the source of the important Mahayana work, 'Way of the Bodhicitta,' until I read about it in the Sol Invictus companion book. There are several nice retellings of the story of Shantideva online. I enjoyed this one very much:

Shantideva, from the blog 'Bodicharya: Awakening the Heart by Opening the Mind'

To summarize, Shantideva was not thought highly of by his fellow pupils/monks because he never did anything. He was always seen to be lazing about doing nothing, and of course this caused terrible resentment. They wanted to get rid of him, but he had broken no rules, so they decided to try to humiliate him to get him to leave, and pushed him into agreeing to teach a large group of people. They built a throne for him to sit on, to further humiliate him. But on the day, Shantideva surprised them all by delivering extemporaneously the text of 'Way of the Bodhisittva'. And he was then lifted up and disappeared from view.

This is a very rich back story to draw from in order to interpret this card in a reading. You could identify with Shantideva, or the three people in the background. Perhaps the card could be telling you to pay attention to what is obvious before you, take advantage of what is on offer. Perhaps it's saying that the reward that is before you is not something to be worked for but to be surrendered to. Perhaps it's saying to let go of the judgement you are hanging onto and look at things from the point of view of the person you are judging. There may be a great teacher in your midst. In all instances, the original spirit of the Four of Cups is retained--the sense of refusing to see what is before your eyes. That shining cup is pretty darn promiment!