Minor Arcana Midrash: The Blinding of Isaac and the Eight of Swords.

No, it’s not a typo. The story of Abraham almost sacrificing his son Isaac is called the Akedah, which in Hebrew means “binding,” thus the binding of Isaac. And we’ll start with the binding, because this is where the blinding of Isaac begins.

The great medieval commentator on the Bible, Rashi, wrote that:

When Isaac was bound on the altar, and his father was about to slaughter him, the heavens opened, and the ministering angels saw and wept, and their tears fell upon Isaac’s eyes. As a result, his eyes became dim.

After the Akedah, Isaac does not return with his father to Beersheba. Commentators make much of the fact that Isaac disappears from the story as soon as the sacrifice is halted. He isn’t present for his mother’s death and burial. The first time Isaac reappears in the story is when Abraham’s servant returns from his task of finding Isaac a wife. In Genesis 24:63-64 we are told that when Isaac was walking in a field:

“he raised his eyes and saw, look, camels were coming. And Rebekah raised her eyes and saw Isaac….”

The rabbinic commentators make a lot of Isaac’s failing to see Rebekah. But the last time we saw Isaac, he was bound on an altar and looking up at his father’s knife ready to take his life. So if there were ever a reason for traumatic blindness, this would be it.

The next time his vision is mentioned, is during the famous scene where Jacob impersonates his brother Esau to steal his father’s blessing. The episode begins by noting that Isaac has grown old and his eyesight has dimmed, thus making the impersonation possible. It’s clear from the text that Isaac was suspicious, but that he gave the blessing to Jacob anyway.

This not age related vision loss—it is a blindness born of family trauma, so that Isaac isn’t able to clearly see people, or completely trust them.

So let’s turn to the Eight of Swords, and another binding and blinding. In the image in the Waite-Smith deck we see a woman bound with a cloth of some kind that not only restricts her movement, but also covers her eyes. If she were to take a step, on ground that looks muddy, she’d be certain to fall and cut herself on the swords arrayed around her.

The suit of swords can represent the world of the mind, thoughts, ideas. So one way we could look at the meaning of this card is as someone who is blinded and bound by their preconceptions, so that they can’t really see what’s in front of them. This is hinted at by the rather loose binding of the cloth. It’s as though with just a little wriggle, the fabric would fall to her feet, she could lift the blindfold from her eyes (not unlike the couple enslaved by the Devil, who could remove the loose chains that only appear to hold them) and walk away free.

The Eight of Swords is the Sefira of Hod, Humility, in Yetzirah. It’s a coded teaching that our personal and family history, our culture and traditions can bind and blind us from seeing truth. And that rather than identify with these ideas, if we are to be free, we must see these ideas for the limitations they are and let go of them.

In Genesis, Isaac blindly repeats the mistakes of his father, from trying to pass off Rebekah as his sister to save his life and by fomenting discord in his family by actively preferring one son over the other. We all repeat the mistakes of our parents in one way or another. And we all inherit their ideas, preconceptions and prejudices. But if we are ever to experience liberating insight, it must begin with liberating ourselves from the short-sightedness of familial and cultural prejudice and by clearly seeing and healing family trauma.

Lessons we can learn both from the story of Isaac’s blindness and the Eight of Swords.

Survey of Kabbalistic Tarot Decks, Part 3: The Parallax & Syzygy Oracles

When I began to specialize in Kabbalistic tarot 15 years ago, I also started collecting tarot decks that are explicitly structured on Kabbalistic principles—whether the underlying structure is Hermetic Qabalah or Judaic Kabbalah. I wrote about two of these decks previously: Edward Hoffman’s Kabbalah Deck, and Ron Feldman’s Kabbalah Cards. And both of these decks are pure Judaic Kabbalah. Today I’d like to look at Heather Mendel’s Parallax Oracle, which serves as a Minor Arcana companion to her earlier Syzygy Oracle, a deck of Majors.

Since the Syzygy Oracle came first, I’ll begin with this deck. One of the issues many people have with the Judeo-Christian tradition is that it is very patriarchal. And while that has changed within Judaism over the last two decades, with the ordination of women as rabbis, and a reading in to the women in the Torah, there’s no getting around the fact that from Adam to Moses, it’s the men who get the attention. So I was happy to see that the Syzygy Oracle, while working from an underlying Kabbalistic structure, did not rely on male Biblical figures to represent the archetypal energies of the Major Arcana.

The Majors of the Syzygy Oracle work to capture the energies of the Divine Feminine in the full range of its expression—and to do this Mendel chose to go outside the tradition. So unlike the decks by Feldman and Hoffman, which only use the Hebrew letter designations to represent each Major, Mendel has chosen representations of the Divine Feminine from multiple traditions: from Artemis to Kwan Yin. Each of these goddesses capture the essence of each card’s transformational energy. And Mendel draws the connections between meanings of the Hebrew letter designations for each card, and the female figures she has chosen (except for the Emperor, who is unquestionable male).

I was interested in working with this deck because my birth cards are The High Priestess and Justice—both female figures in the traditional decks. I’ve always felt my connection to Justice, but I have also felt that I need a better relationship to the High Priestess. Working with the Syzygy Oracle gave me a clear path to work with the anima and this card.

I found working with each card and working with the practices she recommends in the accompanying book, deepened my understanding of the High Priestess and helped my come into a better relationship with the card and its energy.

The Syzygy Oracle deck also included another ten cards over and above the majors, to represent the ten Sephirot. But this was the place where I wanted more. And I’m glad to say that Mendel has created the companion Parallax Oracle, which covers the Minors.

In this deck, we move from the anthropomorphic (“anthro” means male though, so what’s the female equivalent for this word?) to the more abstract. Not unlike the Hoffman and Feldman decks, Mendel has chosen to use the diagram of the Tree of Life for each card—though unlike those other decks, where, say a card might have the designation of Chesed in Atzilut, in the Parallax Oracle, while the image is of the Tree of Life Diagram, the number of the Sephira is noted, not the name. Each suit is color coded and has its symbol discreetly positioned at the bottom of the card, so that you’d know immediately if you pulled the Chesed in Atzilut card that you have the Four of Wands in your hand.

This makes learning the Kabbalistic understructure of tarot immediately apparent, and easily accessible. What’s more, in her accompanying text, as she did in the Syzygy Oracle, Mendel puts each card along a continuum in the journey to wholeness on several different levels. She makes a direct connection with the cards and stages on the path of the mythic hero’s journey. Kabbalah and the teachings of Jung have often been noted by scholars. And Jung himself wrote about tarot. Mendel brings it all together seamlessly in a way that is relevant to the lives we live today, and the life we aspire to.

Working with these two decks together will give you a strong foundation in understanding the Kabbalistic structure of tarot. You’ll learn many of the traditional Judaic meanings around these energies, and you’ll see how working with these cards will give greater depth to the meanings of cards in any Golden Dawn derivative deck.

Mendel’s knowledge is wide-ranging, yet her focus is entirely on tarot as a tool for greater self-awareness and evolutionary consciousness. And she succeeds admirably. For those who work with the Golden Dawn derivative decks (Waite-Smith, Thoth, B.O.T.A. and their children) both the Syzygy and Parallax Oracle decks provide an accessible understanding their Kabbalistic structure and a wealth of new insights on the journey.  

Today is twelve days, which are one week and five days of the Omer. Hod of Gevurah: The Eight and Five of Wands.

Surrender in Discipline.

The Eight and Five of Wands make an interesting pair. The Five of Wands is one of the most crowded cards in the deck, with five people contending with each other. And the Eight of Wands is one of the few cards with no people in it at all.

In the Five of Wands, the Gevurah card, we see a group of people who all want their own way. Sometimes I see this card as a projected image of my own mind—filled with contradictory impulses all wanting to take control of my next action at any given moment. Anyone who has watched their mind in meditation will recognize this dynamic. But there’s another dynamic in meditation as well—because underneath these arguing impulses is a greater silence.

When you fight with the mind to try to train it, you only multiply and give strength to these impulses. When you surrender control and only observe, in time—sometimes quickly, sometimes after long practice—these impulses give way, these conflicting thoughts quiet down. And you experience a one-pointed concentration.

The Eight of Wands, the card that corresponds to Hod, which includes Surrender in its constellation of meanings, shows this one-pointed concentration.

When you first sit down to meditate this very action kicks up all the protests of the characters you see in the Five of Wands. But as you merely watch without engaging, the energy that was going into inner conflict now unites—just as you see the eight staves all headed in the same direction in the other card.

This 49-day ritual is another discipline. And it will kick up all kinds of inner stuff that your mind will use to distract you or get you to stop examining your mind and its reactions. All of a sudden, despite the fact that you may be home all day in COVID isolation, you’ll hear yourself saying “I’m just too busy to count the Omer today.” That’s just a thought though. It’s not reality. Let go of the thoughts and surrender to this practice. Watch what happens within. Because Hod is also about Humility and Surrendering the Ego, don’t identify with any of the thoughts. Just let them come and go like clouds across the expanse of the clear mind.

Another note with regard to Humility on this day, since Gevurah is also Judgment. I’m a judgmental kind of guy. And part of what I have to look at on this day is how I can bring an attitude of humility to my judging mind, so that I am not seeing myself as better than someone else. Like “oh, look at me, I’m a great meditator!” Hah.

Of course, some days are easier and some days are harder. Easy or hard though is a judgment. And that’s also something to let go of in this week of Gevurah and Judgment.

How is your surrender to this discipline going?

Today is seven days, which are one week of the Omer. Malchut of Chesed: the Ten and Four of Wands.

We have completed one week—six more to go. Are you feeling like you took on too much? You may be feeling unsure after 7 days whether you can last for the next 42—that this practice is weighing you down.

The images in the 10 and 4 of Wands can be considered in several ways.

This combination can be about taking on Responsibility (one of the characteristics of Malchut) in the service of Love. The question is, have I taken on too much Responsibility? As a single man living alone this is not an issue for me during the pandemic. I say this despite the fact that I am working a 9-5 job (that I am profoundly grateful for in this difficult time), that I’m working this path and writing daily, I’m taking classes and attending services via Zoom, and volunteering to call elderly people who live alone and are feeling more disconnected in this time of physical distancing. This means I am very busy—but I am not feeling overwhelmed or burdened by my responsibilities. I am sometimes overwhelmed by all the precautions I have to take—just doing laundry in my building’s basement was exhausting.

However, feeling overwhelmed by responsibility may be an issue for you if you’ve got a job you’re doing from home and have children at home. And I have also noted when the 10 of Wands shows up in a reading for someone in a helping profession—the medical profession, clergy, social workers—this can be a card that suggests someone who is taking too much responsibility and may be approaching burnout.

This combination can also suggest that one has so many creative projects that rather than experiencing them as joyful self-expression, they have become a burden.

In either case, this can lead to feelings of resentment or guilt at not being able to handle all these responsibilities/ideas.

That’s the time to stop and remember all these things we take on are in the service of love. To consider what it might be possible to put down. And to remember, that just as in the 10 of Wands, where the man’s destination is visible in the distance, this situation is not permanent. While we may not see the end yet, we know it will come.

Questions I find myself considering for today include: Do I experience love as a burden? Do I take on more than I can handle? Have I complained about the blessings in my life as a way of downplaying my good fortune when I speak to someone else out guilt?

What questions come up for you?

Today is three days of the Omer. Tiferet of Chesed: The Six and Four of Wands

Tiferet is the Sephira at the center of the Tree of Life, and it holds and balances the tension between the endless flow of love from Chesed and the boundary setting restraint of Gevurah. To open ourselves to Tiferet means being willing to open to the negative expression of Gevurah that lives within us—the harsh judgment and criticism, the desire for a strict adherence to law. Because Tiferet balances Chesed and Gevurah, this judgment and strictness is balanced by the love and mercy of Chesed. And since today is Tiferet of Chesed, the that balance is weighted towards love and mercy.

Still, for this love and mercy to be authentic—to be true, since one of the qualities and names for Tiferet is Truth, I want to emphasize that we have to be willing to be open to the painful negative Gevurah that lives within our hearts.

This mix of emotions is one reason that Tiferet corresponds on the human body to the heart. So that doing this work is like doing “open-hearted” surgery on ourselves.

Because this evening is the eve of the holiest day on the Christian calendar, Easter, I want to point out another correspondence of Tiferet. In Christian Cabala, Tiferet is the sacred heart of Jesus—because for Tiferet to hold the boundless love of Chesed for all creation, it also has to hold the pain of sacrifice, the severity of Gevurah.

So what does any of this have to do with the Six and Four of Wands? Let’s start with the hidden Christian symbolism in the Six of Wands. But first, what, you may ask, am I doing writing about Christianity and Easter in a very traditionally Jewish Kabbalistic practice. For one thing, I’m sure you realize, using tarot to count the Omer is hardly traditional. But I believe there is beauty and truth (by the way, besides truth, another key word for Tiferet is beauty) in every wisdom tradition. And when it connects to the heart of this practice, I’m more than willing to bring it in.

So, in the Six of Wands, the rider on the horse is wearing a wreath. But so is the top of the staff he carries. Then notice that the staff the rider is carrying is the only staff that crosses another staff, so the wreath on top of his staff is a crown on top of a cross—a reference to the Crucifixion. The willingness to bear the pain of the world to feel the love of the world. As the old song goes, “you can’t have one without the other.”

The other day when I wrote about the ritual of breaking the matzoh during the Passover, I noted that Rabbi Eliyahu deVidash, a 16th century kabbalist has to say on the of brokenness in his work Gates of Holiness:

“The Zohar teaches that the human heart is the Ark. And it is known that in the Ark were stored both the Tablets and the Broken Tablets. Similarly, a person’s heart must be full of Torah, and similarly, a person’s heart must be a broken heart, a beaten heart, so that it can serve as a home for the Shekhina [one of the guises of the Divine Feminine in Judaism]. For the Shekhina only dwells in broken vessels….”

It is only when we can hold our broken heart and offer it up, it is only when we can accept our own pain and emotional vulnerability that we can feel the deeper well of love that underlies it all, that boundless love that flows from Chesed.

Today I am certainly feeling my broken, hurting heart. So many people I know are critically ill with COVID-19. Their family can’t call them or see them. People are dying alone and are being sent for burial without even the ritual goodbye of a funeral.

I spoke with a friend of mine who works on the front lines in a hospital. He comes home every night and cries for all the pain he has witnessed. But the next morning he gets up and goes back to work trying to save people as best he can, even at the risk contracting the virus and of sacrificing his own life. This is the image of the hero on top of the horse to me. This is the tension of love and pain held in Tiferet.

And it leads me to consider the ways in which I am willing or unwilling to sacrifice myself for a greater cause. I have to examine if there is any way that I use my empathy in a defensive way—appearing to be compassionate while holding myself above those in need of help. And am I willing—or even able—to hold my own suffering with compassion?

These are some of the questions that come up for me in today’s Omer count. What are the questions and issues that arise for you?

Today is one day of the Omer: Chesed within Chesed — the Four of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles.

Chesed within Chesed: The Four of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles

לִמְנֹ֣ות יָ֭מֵינוּ כֵּ֣ן הֹודַ֑ע וְ֝נָבִ֗א לְבַ֣ב חָכְמָֽה׃

 “Teach us to count our days that that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
—Psalm 90:12

 Tonight I begin my annual Counting of the Omer, and the first time I’m counting online since the publication of Tarot and the Gates of Light. When I first started counting online using the tarot in 2006, there weren’t as many people following me on my blog, Another Queer Jewish Buddhist. So I have to admit, doing this on a public platform a little scary. This practice calls for rigorous self-examination—and I’m going to do some of that examination in public. But not all of it, since of course, some things are between me and the Divine.

This year, the pandemic gives a new kind of urgency to the count. Because we don’t know how long we have—after all, our days are numbered, whether we get COVID-19 or not—we have to learn to make every day count. And that’s part of the benefit of this practice. Of course, counting days is not new to anyone in a 12-step program, and as someone in recovery, I know that this practice has been an aid to my recovery.

The first card, on this the first day, is the Four of Wands, since it is a Chesed card, and today si Chesed of Chesed. The image looks forward to the final day on Pentecost, when mythically speaking, the Divine “marries” the people Israel, with the Torah as the wedding contract. The image on the card most resembles a chuppah, the wedding canopy for traditional Jewish marriage ceremonies. And it is also reminiscent of Abraham’s tent, which midrash tells us was open on all sides, the better to be able to greet guests. Abraham is the figure most associated with Chesed, which is love, flow, benevolence without limit.

At this time, when all of us are hunkered down at home, our doors closed to the outside world, one question I will reflect on is how has the pandemic affected my ability to stay open? Since this is the first day of freedom from Egypt, metaphorically speaking, in what ways am I still carrying my enslavement within?

I am aware when I am on the street of not feeling particularly open as I walk my dog, masked and gloved, and I’m passed by joggers huffing and puffing who aren’t wearing masks. My heart is certainly not open to them, and I find myself still enslaved to fear and anger. May I learn to respond with equanimity even as I keep my distance. I know I didn’t feel very open last week at a grocery store when other shoppers crowded close by. While it’s essential that I take care of myself, I have to remember that these other people are suffering through this as best they know how.

I mention in my book that the Four of Swords is a card of meditation, and just as the Four of Wands looks forward to the Divine marriage (of our inner Divine Feminine and Masculine) on Pentecost, the Four of Swords looks forward to the Night Vigil that takes place on the eve of Pentecost (known as Shavuot in the original Hebrew). The night before Pentecost, traditionally we stay away all night in study, just as the squire in the card image must remain awake all night in the chapel as part of his ritual initiation into knighthood.

At the start of this year when I gave myself my annual Tree of Life reading, the Four of Swords appeared in the Yesod position. Yesod is the Sephira of intimate connection and that includes sexual connection, among other things. The Four of Swords is a card of the spiritual retreat. I took this Sephirotic combination as a suggestion to pull back from searching for sexual connection on apps like Grindr as part of creating a deeper intimacy with myself and with the Divine. This decision may have saved my life, though there is no question that I long for touch, for the soul connection that can come with physical connection. I am sure many people who are single and living alone at this moment in history have similar longings.

However, staying inside during the pandemic is an opportunity to go inside, to search deep within to face my fears of loneliness and isolation.

Last I want to touch on the Four of Pentacles for a moment. Like all the cards, the image as a symbol can be read positively or negatively. So that one can see the man in the card as an expression of the flow of Chesed in the world, holding up the pentacles as a signal to others to stay connected to the Divine (his Crown at the Keter position—he is the only figure in the Minor Arcana that isn’t a court card to wear a crown) to stay connected to the heart (with a pentacle over the Tiferet position) and pentacles below his feet (connecting him to Netzach and Hot) so that he his spirituality will stay grounded in the world. But one can also see him as holding on to these objects tightly, as someone who is stopping the flow of Chesed because he is closed down. So some of the questions that come up for me this year are: Who do I look to for inspiration in Chesed? Who is an example of Nega-Chesed—someone who stops the flow for their own benefit, so they can hold on to the gold? And internally, how can I set a better example of Chesed for others? And where am I still holding on tightly, unable to let go into the flow of life, and of Chesed?

You may have notices I didn’t mention the suit of Cups. Well, I’m holding on a little tightly here! While each year is different and the content in my book is longer than what I am writing here, and goes deeper, I do hope to have an income from book sales. So I don’t want to “give it all away” even as Chesed is all about unconditional love. I do write about each of the Sephirot in great detail in the book so that you’ll be able to experience the full constellation of meanings suggested by each card. But here, while I am sharing this publicly, I am concentrating on the questions that come up for me personally this year.

So what are the questions that Chesed within Chesed bring up for you?

Pharaoh and the plagues: Considering the Emperor card in the Raziel deck as Passover approaches during our modern plague.

When Rachel Pollack and Robert Place created the Raziel deck based on Judaic myth and folklore, the choice was made to illustrate the Emperor as Pharaoh of Egypt, with Moses standing before him.  

Moses told Pharaoh that he had to let the Israelites go or there would be plagues. But Pharaoh wasn’t about to free his unpaid workforce. He was warned again and again, but 5 times he hardened his heart and refused. And each time, the Egyptians suffered the consequences of his selfish desire to have unpaid workers build cities for his glory.

When I was in college, I remember studying the medieval mystery plays—in particular, the York and Wakefield cycle. They were called “cycles” for a number of reasons but among those reasons was the cyclical view of history they presented, often with the character who played Pharaoh (who ordered the slaughter of Israelite children) also playing Herod (who also ordered the slaughter of Hebrew children as the myth goes).

And indeed, I see this cycle playing out in front of our eyes right now. With a modern Moses who has been warning today’s Pharaoh for 3 months about our current plague. And this Pharaoh dismissing these warnings in favor of the stock market—his god. Of course, as he dismissed this plague, we all are suffering.

In Hebrew, Egypt is called Mitzrayim—the narrow or constricted place. And this is speaking mythically, this is both a physical and psychological narrowness.

As an enslaved people, the Israelites had lost their sense of themselves as a nation and could only see themselves as slaves. Their world had narrowed and they were unable to see beyond it, so when Moses first spoke to them of freedom they couldn’t hear him.

And of course, Pharaoh was of a narrow mind and was unable to see the evidence of the plagues before him. His people may have suffered but in his palace he wasn’t suffering. It wasn’t until he lost his son that he was affected.

The narrow mind of today’s Pharaoh needn’t be enumerated. A man who brags about the ratings of his press conferences as people are dying because of his malfeasance doesn’t even deserve to be named. However, just as the Divine could not be denied in the story in the Torah, as much as he may wish to spread “alternative facts” reality is catching up with him.

However, his actions have left us all in a different kind of narrow place. Those of us who care about our fellow citizens and the health of our society have voluntarily narrowed the space in which we are living right now. Some of us are in isolation/quarantine. Others of us are staying inside and limiting contact with others as much as possible.

For me, this leaves me with questions that can only be answered by the way I choose to respond to these circumstances. Especially as we approach the Passover holiday, which celebrates freedom from enslavement. Certainly, this year, my practice of Counting the Omer using tarot will find much to work with in the challenges I face living alone in this pandemic. And I will find many blessings to be grateful for, since I have a place to live, food to eat, and I am apparently healthy (since I know that symptoms can take two weeks to manifest).

But I find myself asking, how am I thinking narrowly about my situation? Is it possible to find freedom in a situation of constriction—and what would that look like? How can I connect with others safely so that any feelings of isolation are broken? How can I free myself from fear of getting sick (this is less an issue since I lived through the early years of the HIV crisis and learned how to work with my fear of contagion, but still)? How can I offer support to others while staying safe? What warnings does my inner Pharaoh refuse to pay attention to? What narrowness do I carry with me even after years of working to free myself?

Some of these questions may resonate for you. You will also have other questions for yourself that these musings bring up. If you’re willing to share them here, I would be grateful, since we are all each other’s teachers.

I’ll close with a quote from Viktor Frankl’s classic, Man’s Search for Meaning, that I often read to remind myself of the inner freedom that can never be taken away:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

 May you be healthy. May you be happy. And as the Passover approaches, may you find new ways to be free in the year ahead.

Card image from the Raziel Tarot, conceived by Rachel Pollack and Robert M. Place, image © 2016 Robert M. Place

The Four of Swords: Staying Inside and Going Inside to Face Your Fears in the Days of COVID-19

I wanted to share some of the wisdom that the Four of Swords may have for you in these difficult days. In January I did a Tree of Life reading for the year ahead. And the Four of Swords showed up in the Yesod position.   

First, a little bit about the way I read the Tree of Life spread. I lay out the cards following the classic positions of the ten Sephirot on the diagram of the tree.

A diagram is flat—2 dimensional. But the thing to keep in mind about the Tree of Life is that it’s multi-dimensional and fractal. There are the four Kabbalistic worlds. And within each Sephira, this is a complete Tree of Life enfolded in a kind of implicate ordering of reality. In fact, in each Sephira in that implicate Tree there is another whole tree. This means each position has multiple layers of meaning. The first of these layers is revealed in the relationship of the Kabbalistic meaning of the card to the meaning of the Sephirotic position it lands on.

The Four of Swords, like the fours in all the suits, are cards the express one of the many meanings of Chesed, either positive or negative. So when a Chesed card shows up in a Yesod position, we’re considering how Chesed is expressed and mediated by Yesod. The Four of Swords in this position is an opportunity to explore the relationship of Chesed and Yesod.

Now Chesed is the unending flow of love from the Divine that sustains the world. It is a love so powerful it obliterates the personal ego. It is unconditional love that doesn’t discriminate—a veritable tsunami of Divine love that washes over and through everything in its path. This level of Chesed is not something that’s part of our everyday experience, though we do have everyday experiences of this Sephirotic energy. So looking at the Four of Swords, what does this kind of Chesed have to do with the image of a knight on a sepulcher?

Some people see the knight as a carving on a coffin, not as a living person. But this is not a card of death; it’s a card of initiation into starting the inward journey. This knight is very much alive, and at the start of a ritual. And if there’s anything the people of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn knew it was ritual—and in England this ritual was known as the Night Vigil.

It was the initiation into knighthood. The evening before the title of knight is bestowed on a squire, he prepared himself with a ritual bath of purification. He wore a white robe and entered the chapel with his sword and shield. In some places, the sword and shield are placed on a coffin. In some versions of the ritual, the knight-to-be would lay down in the open coffin, or rest atop it. He was not to fall asleep, but to spend the night in prayer and meditation.

The suit of Swords (and, in Hermetic Qabalah, the world of Yetzirah) corresponds to the intellectual and mental faculties—the ability to distinguish reality from illusion. The knight-to-be in the Four of Swords is not dead or sleeping. He is ever vigilant—Swords being the suit of the mind that makes distinctions. He is ready to face the awe and terror that an experience of Chesed can bring to the unstable ego. This is the test of the knight-to-be: not unlike the temptation of Christ in the desert or the temptation of Guatama Buddha by Mara, he must face his fears in order to undergo a spiritual transformation. Of course, when we look at this card, the first thought is that the fear is of death. And this is true, since the job of a knight, a warrior for Christ, is to face death: it’s just not the whole truth.

Remember that Chesed is both Boundless and “Boundary-less” and that to face this is to face the obliteration of the ego, a kind of death, which is a pretty terrifying prospect. The task of the knight-to-be is to face this fear and come away with an experience that is beyond duality—that he is both a separate being and an egoless expression of Divine Love.

The best expression of this idea that I know of comes from outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is in the words of Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. In this story, Arjuna hesitates before battle; he does not want to kill anyone (least of all his cousins with whom he is at war). But Krishna tells him that the Spirit that pervades the universe cannot kill or be killed:

“He who takes the Self to be the slayer, he who takes It to be the slain, neither of these knows. It does not slay, nor is It slain.
This is never born, nor does It die. It is not that not having been It again comes into being. This is unborn, eternal, changeless, ever-Itself. It is not killed when the body is killed.
He that knows This to be indestructible, changeless, without birth, and immutable, how is he, O son of Prithâ, to slay or cause another to slay?”

In both the Hindu tradition and the Zen tradition in Japan, this was the philosophy of the warrior’s path. Only once you have purified your mind with this understanding are you fit to enter battle. And as you can guess, the misappropriation of the warrior’s path has been used to justify a lot of bloodshed by every religion. Remember, the image on the card is of a medieval knight—a warrior for Christ. Many such knights were Crusaders, which means some of my Jewish ancestors likely died at their hands.

Just because the historical reality of knighthood isn’t very pretty doesn’t mean the ideal of knighthood is any less spiritual. The ideal knight was a protector of the poor and weak. He was a protector of the faith by embodying its values. For when one is attuned to the Flow of Chesed within, it naturally flows out in ways that lead one to help everyone. When Chesed is experienced within, when you can face your fears of such a force and let go of them, you become a vessel for this force in the world. It flows through you and gives you strength.

In this time when we are being asked to stay inside, despite all the fear, for those of us fortunate enough to have the security of a home, this is an opportunity to not only stay inside, but to go inside. We are being the terrible gift of the enforced retreat. And rather than struggle against it, we have an opportunity to watch our mind react with all its fear, we can watch the ego with all its rage to be in control. And we can let these emotions pass through us and let them go. We may have these feelings, but they will not have us.

When this card showed up in the Yesod position in my reading, it presented an interesting challenge. You see, Yesod is not about going on retreat like a monk. It’s all about connection, bonding, generativity, and this includes sexual connection with spiritual intention.

In its healthiest expression it is about a spiritual bond, between a teacher and student or between lovers, that takes both of them to a higher plane.

There is an urgency to connecting in Yesod—all the power of the Sephirot above flow through it to Malchut below. On the body, Yesod maps to the genitals—the phallus or the birth canal.

When Yesod is expressed negatively, it is the Sephira of addiction—someone who can’t hold all this energy, and who doesn’t have a practice or a container in which to express it in a healthy way may find themselves expressing it, to use the Buddhist description, unskillfully. Those unskillful expressions can include substance abuse, sex addiction and other compulsive behaviors like gambling for example.  

When the Four of Swords showed up in the Yesod position for me in January I found myself reflecting on the year that had just passed. My six-year relationship had ended, and I found myself avoiding feelings of hurt and anger by seeking out sexual connection. I was trying to avoid looking at my own responsibility for the problems in the relationship by satisfying physical urges that had gone unmet in that last year.

So when I saw the Four of Swords in Yesod, I realized it was time to stop this avoidance. It was time to stop seeking the empty comfort of the physical in order to go on an inner retreat. It was time to face my responsibilities and how I used the relationship as a way of avoiding deeper inner reflection. So in January I made the decision to stop dating and to step away from hook-up culture for at least a 3-month period. And I made the decision to be a little less social—to take more time for my inner connection.

And now, here I am in enforced isolation due to the pandemic. Looking at the message of this Sephirotic combination I see a call for me to make greater connection with others based in Chesed. And today, an expression of Chesed is a phone call to my elders. Checking on neighbors. Giving to charities that provide for those who are suffering the economic consequences of this plague. And I see the opportunity to step up my inner practice with daily meditation and contemplation so that my fears of a healthy, deep connection of Chesed in Yesod within and with another will be revealed for the illusions that they are.

While I did this reading for myself, it feels that this Sephirotic combiation has meaning for everyone in some way right now. We’re all being called to stay inside and go inside. We’re being called to recognize bonds and connections in deeper ways. I hope you can see in the Four of Swords the inspiration to go through the dark nights ahead with Chesed and courage.

In just two weeks the practice of Counting the Omer will begin. My book is about using tarot cards for this Kabbalistic practice that lasts for 49 days. I’ve done this practice for years. If you’re looking for a daily practice that can help stay strong through the trials ahead, a practice that can take you deep within to face your fears and experience a stronger connection with the Divine, consider Counting the Omer.

While you can do it anytime—and many of my readers have already started—traditionally the practice will start this year on the evening of April 9th. Get a copy of my book, Tarot and the Gates of Light and read the introduction the week before and join me and millions of others around the globe on this inner journey.

My wish is that it brings you deep peace, a heart of compassion, spiritual strength, and the blessing of experiencing the Divine light that always surrounds and supports us. So that no matter how many days we have ahead of us, we know how to make every day count.

Minor Arcana Midrash: Parashat Beshalach, the Five of Wands and Gevurah

In this week’s Torah reading the Israelites find themselves facing the sea, with Pharaoh and his army at their backs. Despite witnessing the ten plagues/miracles that got them this far, the Israelites think they’re doomed. And they begin fighting among themselves, complaining, competing—kvetching. Discipline has yet to take hold. Discipline and Structure, qualities of Gevurah, are shown in their negative, shadow representations in the Five of Wands, which is one of the cards that corresponds to this Sephira.

I’m a child of the 60s, so when I first started studying Kabbalah, I had some issues with Gevurah. The constellation of concepts for Gevurah include Organization, Discipline, Structure, Judgement, Severity, Harshness, Constriction, Limitation, Awe and Fear. But the truth is, we need many of these qualities, and in this reading the Israelites need Structure and Discipline. And all people need Boundaries and Limits. We all need Discernment in Judgement. In fact, the parting of the sea in this parashat is an expression of Gevurah—creating a channel that enables the Israelites to pass. But let’s look at the card and see other ways it relates.

In the Five of Wands everyone has a wand—everyone wants to be the leader, so everyone is at cross-purposes, rebelling against the Discipline needed to reach the (metaphorical) Promised Land. When everyone wants to establish his own Structure, when everyone wants to lead, the result is chaos. Focus on the man on the left: he is not holding that wand in a gesture of attack. He looks as though he’s trying to get the attention of all the other people—he is standing in a position of leadership, yet those around him are too busy arguing among themselves to really see him or follow his direction. Their wands are all pointed in different directions. The image of the man on the left reminds me of so many paintings and filmic images of Moses standing at the edge of the sea, raising his rod to part the waters. And what was happening just before he parted those waters? The Hebrews were arguing and complaining, and not happy about his leadership:

“And they said to Moses, ‘Was it for want of graves in Egypt, that you have brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt?

Is not this the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians, than to die in the wilderness?’”

Exodus 14:11-12

They’re barely out of Egypt and the people have forgotten the pain of their slavery. They’re fearful of the way forward and at cross-purposes, no longer united in moving towards a goal. I know these people, because whenever I make a decision to change in some way I hear the voices of my inner “stiff-necked” Israelites complaining and trying to change my direction.

Of course, I have an inner Moses (and in inner Pharaoh) too. And perhaps you recognize these voices from your own inner dialogue.  Because we all have our inner Israelites, complaining and looking to backslide almost every step of the way.

Pixar brought this metaphor to life in their film Inside Out, where five emotions are vying for control of a young girl’s personality.

Of course, this lack of Structure in the parashat is not internal. It’s a picture of a social group that’s not very Organized. Recently I experienced this lack of Organization and Structure recently in a contentious community meeting where the facilitator was unable to “herd the cats.” He couldn’t bring Organization to the meeting or create a Structure where everyone could feel safe. There were no clear Rules. And almost everyone ignored the time Boundaries. The result was a meeting with no resolution, with people stating their own position and not hearing anyone else. The image of the Five of Wands captures this situation.

The negative expression of Gevurah can be expressed either in lack of Organization or in Organization that is Constricting.

The image in the Five of Wands can also be seen as a positive expression of Gevurah—rather than chaos, we could be looking at choreography. The figures could very well be Morris Dancers. Or participating in a barn raising. It could be the vigorous discussion that is needed before coming to a consensus. But in relation to this week’s Torah reading, I see the Israelites (both inner and outer) suffering from a lack of discipline and acting out of fear.

May we all learn to integrate the positive aspects of Gevurah into our lives, so that we can be a strong channel for Chesed in the world.

Minor Arcana Midrash: The Eight of Cups and Genesis 12:1, Lech Lecha

This week’s Torah reading starts at Genesis 12:1, and is known as Lech Lecha, from the Hebrew phrase:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛

Vayomer YHVH el Avram lech lecha

It’s most often translated as “And the LORD said to Avram, “Go from your country…” Avram (who will be renamed Abraham later on) hears the call, and answers, leaving Harran where he had been living.

Now the Eight of Cups is often interpreted as someone who is leaving something behind symbolized by the eight cups, in search of something else. Usually it’s interpreted as going off on a spiritual search, to seek the truth within, after becoming dissatisfied with the success represented by the cups. And as an “eight” card, it carries with it the meanings connected with the Sephirot of Hod: Surrender and Humility to start.

How does this card connect with this moment in Genesis? At first glance, while Avram is leaving what he knows behind, YHVH tells him it is in search of a land he will be shown, where he will become “a great nation” that is blessed. So Humility doesn’t seem to be in the picture. And becoming a “great nation” hardly seems to include Surrender. But the Chassidic masters don’t translate the words, lech lecha, as “go forth.” Because the words literally mean “go to you.” So they see this as a command to begin an inner journey where Avram must leave behind all he knows in order to find his life’s mission and his soul’s essence.

This means leaving “your country, your people and your father’s household.” So we start to see more of a connection with what’s happening in the Eight of Cups. And those cups could very well symbolize country, people and household. Except of course, that’s the surface meaning of the word in Genesis, and the Chassidic masters never stop on the surface.

The Lubavitch tradition interprets these words as:

Go to yourself: return to your inner core, by going—
From your land: that is, by transcending your earthly desires,
From your birthplace: by overcoming your natural habits and inclinations, and
From your father's house: by transcending the intellectual limitations of your animating soul (since the intellect "fathers" ideas and, eventually, emotions as well).1

Rabbi Lev Yitschak of Berditchev, gives this command to simultaneously go forth and go within a further Kabbalistic interpretation, saying that YHVH sent Avram to find his true spiritual roots and fulfill his destiny of restoring the fallen sparks he finds along the way. (See Kedushat Levi, Genesis Lech Lecha 4)

In this way we can look again at the eight cups in the card. As they are arrayed, it looks as though one cup is missing. This suggests that the journey the figure is undertaking will be to find what is missing and restore it to its proper place. And this figure begins this journey by the light of the moon, descending into the unconscious even as the figure begins an ascent up a mountain. Going within and going forth. Surrendering attachment to the ego and one’s desires. Approaching the journey with humility.

Next time you have the Eight of Cups appear in a reading, consider the resonances of this Biblical story, and consider how it might shed light on the meaning of this card where it shows up in your spread. And please share your thoughts.

Note : Search the Chabad.org site for Chassidic Insights on Lech Lecha