Today is nineteen days, which are two weeks and five days of the Omer. Hod of Tiferet: Withness and Witness.

Yesterday I did something I’ve never done in these Omer posts—I stepped out of the way and gave space for another voice. Today I’m also going to do something I haven’t done in these Omer posts: I am going to excerpt the introductory section to Hod of Tiferet from my book, Tarot and the Gates of Light: A Kabbalistic Path to Liberation. I do this not out of laziness, but because I need to remind myself of its truth. And then I’ll go to the cards.The “com” in compassion points to the ability to be with someone’s suffering. Certainly, you can have a desire to alleviate this suffering, but first you must be with it, understand it with patience and Humility. Sometimes we run to fix something before we truly understand it out of a wish not to feel the depth of another’s pain. There are times when simply the act of recognizing and sitting with another’s pain is one of the best ways to be helpful.

This means your ego—the one that wants to avoid pain and puff itself up with pride for helping another—must get out of the way. This may be one of the reasons that when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the High Priest was prohibited from wearing shoes when he led services. After all, when barefoot, the High Priest could feel every stone and pebble—so while his title was “high” he was not above feeling pain and suffering—and he was reminded that as High Priest, his job was to be a witness to the pain and suffering of the people.

Being a Compassionate Witness means meeting people where they are and seeing them without judgment or pity (which is condescending). And by reflecting this witnessing back to them, we embody “withness.”

“Withness” is Compassion that brings companionship, so that others don’t feel alone in their suffering.

These qualities of Witness and Withness are the characteristic of Hod in Tiferet. It’s a Humility that enables the ego to step aside and allows for true Compassion. When we can do this, we can sense the other characteristics of Hod, Glory and Splendor in those we are with.

That’s the intro to the day in the book. Today, in the midst of the Corona virus crisis, there’s not a one of us who isn’t being called on to bear witness and provide the comfort of withness.

How does the pair of cards for today speak to me about all this and what questions does it lead me to ask of myself?

One of the faces of Hod is Surrender. And earlier today someone in the class on Hasidic Masters I’ve been taking shared these words by Elizabeth Gilbert that seemed to capture some of what I see in the Eight of Wands and the Six of Wands.

“You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control. but you never had control; all you had was anxiety”

The wisdom of the figure on the horse in the Six of Wands is that s/he knows this. It’s almost as though he is aware of what is behind him—the Eight of Wands hurtling through the sky towards his back.

What makes him a leader is his ability to be with the people who follow him. His leadership is not about being in control. It’s about his ability to take in all the energy of his followers. To be with their dreams and their fears, without imposing his own story on to them.

I know that I can rush to fix or take over things in a situation that calls for the compassion of Witness and Withness. Because being in a place of Compassion means I have to feel all the pain of the person I’m with. And it means I have to admit that I’m not in control.

But when my ego can get out of the way, when I can surrender to what is, letting go of my illusion of control, my heart of Tiferet is fully present. My struggle is being able to watch my desire to rush in, to control, without giving in to it in order to get to the root of my fear and let go of it.

When I have been able to bear witness and provide withness I experience a pain in my heart that is sadness. But it is a beautiful pain, because it is shared sadness. My history is such though that my first instinct is to do anything not to feel this pain. And right now, this instinct is being shredded daily because of all the people I know who are being affected by this crisis.  

There are many other ways to look at this pair of cards, but for today, this is where I am and what I am facing. Where are you and what questions or issues do today’s Sephirot and images bring up?