Pico della Mirandola and the origins of Kabbalistic tarot

Thesis: the origin of Kabbalistic tarot can be traced to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (hereafter referred to as Pico) and his studies in Kabbalah.

There are many theories of how tarot and Kabbalah came together. Some are completely fanciful with no documentation or academic rigor to prove their case. Some simply state as obvious that tarot and Kabbalah are connected, without any documentation or for when and why they were brought together.

Since the late 20th century, there have been many serious academic investigations into the origin of tarot as a game and as an esoteric tradition. There have also been some other explanations/investigations. I’ll refer to both approaches below. And at the end of this essay I include bibliographic sources, though I won’t footnote—that will come later, since this my study is still a work in progress. Some of you may recall that I posted an earlier version of my thoughts about Pico. This goes deeper and has more evidence to present.

 My ideas have their basis in prior academic investigations, though I admit right up front that my conclusion is based on informed speculation—it is a theory that will require more documentation to prove, but as I present my case, I believe the circumstantial evidence is very strong to support this thesis.  

 My theory examines the case for Pico bringing tarot and Kabbalah together by asking and proposing answers to the following questions.

1. Did he have the opportunity?

2. Did he have a motive and if so, what was it?

3. What was the method he used?

4. How did this become established in the Western Occult tradition?

Giovanni Pico della mirandola

Who was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola?

Pico (1463-1494) was a young Italian nobleman and scholar who became a favorite in the court of Lorenzo de Medici in Florence when he met Lorenzo and philosopher Marsilio Ficino in 1484. This put Pico at the very center of Italian Renaissance Humanism. Pico was a member of the group of illustrious artists and intellectuals that Lorenzo gathered around him. Pico may have been a member of a group known as the Academy, in homage to Plato’s Academy, that met regularly at Ficino’s estate—although evidence for the existence of this Academy, and who attended is disputed.

Marsilio ficino

 Pico’s best-known work today is his Oration on the Dignity of Man, considered the central document of Renaissance Humanist thought.

 Both Ficino and Pico were engaged in scholarly investigation intent on proving their belief in what they called the Prisca Theologica.

What is the Prisca Theologica?

 Ficino and Pico believed that all ancient religions had the seed of a single, true theology that had been given to humanity by God in the far distant past. Since they lived in 15th century Italy, they also believed (at least publicly—what they truly believed will always be a mystery) that these ancient religions, when understood correctly, by which they meant how they interpreted them, prefigured the truth of Christian revelation and that theology had reached its apotheosis with Christianity, which embodies the complete truth.

 Ficino had devoted himself to translating all of Plato’s works, along with other Hellenistic works including the Corpus Hermeticum, from Greek to Latin. These works were newly available in western Europe after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453.

 Pico had devoted himself to learning and translating the major works of the traditional Jewish Kabbalah, and his library of Kabbalistic works was considered the greatest among Christian Renaissance scholars.

 Of course, the works that Ficino and Pico were translating were considered dangerous and heretical by Christian dogmatists. So they believed that positioning ideas found in these works as divinely inspired and prefiguring Christianity would validate and legitimize their studies. It would remove the threat of being charged as heretics. This was not an idle threat, as tarot historian Christophe Poncet notes in an interview: “in 1416, a theologian named Jerome of Prague is burnt at the stake because he had been professing a theory of universals very close to Plato’s theory of Ideas...and Ficino was aware of it.”

 In the case of the Hellenistic works which Ficino worked on, since the civilization that gave rise to these works no longer existed, I would say that bringing this thought into alignment with the thinking of the day was cultural integration.

 However, in the case of Jewish Kabbalistic works which Pico worked on, Kabbalah was a living, closed tradition, and using these works to polemically prove the tenets of Christianity to convert the Jews was cultural appropriation. But that’s a side discussion I will come back to later.

 Returning to how tarot and Kabbalah came together, let’s look at whether Pico had the opportunity to put them together.

 We know that Pico had the greatest collection of Kabbalistic texts among Christian Renaissance scholars. One of those texts, The Great Parchment, was an approximately 6-foot-long diagram of the Tree of Life.

 This diagram represented the Sephirot as circles in a specific arrangement. There were more than 100,000 words on this document. And in the circles of the Sephirot, the text that explained the meanings of the Sephirot along with their correspondences to divine names. This text was taken from the 13th century Kabbalistic codex entitled Sha’are Orah, or The Gates of Light. We know that Pico read this document because his library is held today by the Vatican Library, and notes in his handwriting can be read in the margins.

This becomes important because in The Esoteric Tarot: Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermeticism and Cabala, author Ronald Decker demonstrates that direct quotes from Gates of Light turn up in the first book of interpretations of the pip card meanings by Etteilla, influencing more than 80 card interpretations (this number, more than the number of cards in a deck, includes both upright and reversed meanings). These interpretations went on to influence Levi and Waite.

 So it’s already an established fact that at some point Kabbalah and tarot were joined together. The questions remaining are how and why? My study of Pico and his circle provide a possible answer.

We know that Pico was deep into kabbalistic study, but was he familiar with and did he have access to tarot?

 The earliest references to tarot all date to the 1440s and 1450s and fall within the quadrilateral area defined by the northern Italian cities of Venice, Milan, Florence, and Urbino.

In 1440 Giusto Giusti, a notary of the Medici family wrote in his diary: “On Friday 16 September I donated to the magnificent Lord Messer Gismondo a pair of Naibi triumphs, custom designed in Florence with his superb coat of arms.” Further investigation has revealed that there were over 100 purchases of Trionfi tarot decks in Florence between 1449-1460.

So while there is no evidence that Pico ever held a deck of tarot cards, he was an important member of the circle of Lorenzo de Medici, and documents from the period show that both wealthy citizens of Florence and members of the Medici court had tarot decks. To say that Pico knew of tarot and the game of tarocchi is a reasonable supposition.

Certainly Pico’s nephew, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola was familiar with tarot since he was opposed to their use for divination. He gave us perhaps the first historical mention of the use of cards for fortune telling in his treatise De rerum praenotione (1509), where he wrote: "There are many kinds of lots, as in casting bones, in throwing dice, in the figures depicted in a pack of cards....”

Christophe Poncet believes that Marsilio Ficino is source for the look and esoteric meanings trionfi cards of the tarot of Marseilles, though not the pip cards. I will return to his theory later, since both of Poncet and I situate the birth of esoteric tarot to this time and place, though for Poncet, it is Ficino who was the at the center of the joining of the esoteric to what had been up to that point simply a card game.

Did Pico have a motive for making a connection between tarot and Kabbalah?

In his study of Kabbalah, Pico engaged both rabbis and Jewish converts to Christianity to teach him Hebrew and help translate his vast library of Kabbalistic works. As I mentioned above, the important work in his library germane to this discussion is The Great Parchment, a diagram of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with text explaining each of the Sephirot using sections from Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s classic book, Sha’are Orah, The Gates of Light.  

 In 1486, at the young age of 23, as part of his work to prove the Prisca Theologica, Pico published the 900 Theses, a list of 900 philosophical statements that included doctrines from Zoroastrianism, Platonism, Hermeticism, but foremost among them were 72 based on his studies in Jewish Kabbalah. The very number of statements he wrote were probably a reference to the Kabbalistic 72 names of G!d.

One of these Kabbalistic theses stated that: “There is no science that more greatly certifies the divinity of Christ than [Jewish] magic and Kabbalah.”

In other words, he weaponized the study of this Jewish tradition against the Jews to promote conversion. This is indeed cultural appropriation. And his work is the origin of both Christian Cabala and Hermetic Qabala, which from my point of view is rooted in antisemitism.

After all, in Renaissance Europe, if you wanted to enjoy the benefits of society, you had to be Christian. Otherwise the doors were closed to you. Or perhaps you simply wanted to avoid being burned at the stake. It was never easy being Jewish in Europe. But this is still a side issue to the main question, so back to what happened to Pico after he published his work.

Pico sent of copy of his 900 Theses to the Pope, and wanted to defend these theses in a public debate in Rome that he believed would lead to the conversion of the Jews. However, despite Pico’s brilliance, he was extraordinarily naïve—his work also undermined the authority of the church. Pope Innocent VIII saw this immediately and declared the book to be heretical—in fact it was the first book to be universally banned by the Catholic Church.

Understanding the danger he was in, Pico retracted the most offending theses publicly, even though privately he still maintained he was right.

Then the Pope charged Pico with heresy. This was a serious charge in medieval and Renaissance Europe—the punishment was burning at the stake. Pico fled to France in fear of his life.

Heretics were sentenced to death by burning at the stake: Here is the Execution of Jan Hus in 1415

There he was arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes, and it was only due to the intercession of Lorenzo de Medici that he was allowed to return to Florence under Lorenzo’s protection. For the next 7 years he lived under papal censure and the threat of the Inquisition.

This provides the motive for Pico bringing tarot and Kabbalah together: If he was to continue his study (and teaching of) Kabbalah, he was going to have to do it secretly.

Ronald Decker in the book where he reveals the connection between tarot card meanings and Gikatilla’s Gates of Light surmised that somewhere, sometime before Etteilla learned the meanings from “a traveling Italian” someone saw a structural connection between the pip cards in their four suits and the structure of the Tree of Life—and that this person decided to use the cards as “flash cards” to learn and teach the meaning of the Sephirot secretly. Of course, I believe this person was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. He had the opportunity, and he had the motive.

Meanwhile, as part of his struggle to clear himself of the charge of heresy, Pico convinced Lorenzo to invite Savonarola to Florence. Unfortunately Savonarola’s reactionary opposition to Renaissance Humanism deepened the religious, social and political turmoil in Florence, and brought great conflict with the Medici family.

At the death of Pope Innocent VIII, the new pope, Alexander VI cleared Pico of the heresy charges in 1493. But at this point, his protector, Lorenzo de Medici had been dead for a year, and it is believed that Pico was poisoned by Lorenzo’s son Piero in 1494 for the trouble he caused by inviting Savonarola to the city. He was just 31 years old.

A nasty piece of work, savonarola preached against all the values of renaissance humanism and oversaw the burning of great artworks, books, and of course, tarot and playing cards. Eventually he was burned too.

To sum up so far, since I go on lots of tangents that are interesting to me (but perhaps not to you!): Pico had the opportunity because he was in the right place at the right time to have experience with tarot and he had an unrivaled knowledge of Kabbalah, and in particular of the Sephirot, through The Great Parchment, which utilizes the text of Gikatilla’s Gates of Light.

This brings us to the question: what was his method?

Clearly, somewhere, sometime before Etteilla learned the pip card meanings from “a traveling Italian” Decker surmised that someone saw a structural connection between the pip cards in their four suits and the structure of the Tree of Life—and that this person decided to use the cards as “flash cards” to learn and teach the meaning of the Sephirot secretly. Of course, I believe this person was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

Of course, playing cards were a relatively new phenomenon—so do we know if anyone was using playing cards or any kind of cards as flash cards for study?

In 1515, just 21 years after Pico’s untimely death, we have the first evidence of scholars using cards for teaching and as an aide-memoire. Franciscan monk Thomas Murner created a deck of cards he used to teach law students to memorize the text of the Institutes of Justinian, a book of Roman law. When you look at his cards you can see that many of them resemble the pip cards in a tarot deck, with objects and suits.

 I believe that either independently or in concert with Ficino’s work on the trionfi, Pico used tarot pip cards as a coded aide-memoire (flash cards) to teach the dangerously heretical ideas of Kabbalah.

Poncet posits that Ficino came up with the idea of using cards in this way before Murner and used trionfi cards to teach his ideas about Plato’s philosophy without getting into trouble with the church. He theorizes that this all happened at his Platonic Academy in Florence.

Poncet further believes that Ficino also coordinated with Sandro Botticelli to redesign to trionfi to better illustrate these heretical ideas while keeping them coded so as to not put anyone in danger. Further, he tries to prove that you can see Botticelli’s influence in the Tarot of Marseilles.

Now the very existence of this academy is disputed among academics, since there is no contemporary evidence that a group with that name existed as a formal body—there are no records of meetings and no membership lists. Ficino himself is said to have denied that some of the people who have subsequently be listed as part of this group ever came to his villa to listen to his lectures—among those Ficino denies as having been there is Pico. Nevertheless, another Italian historian places over 100 of Italy’s intellectuals and artists at meetings of this group, and he includes Pico in the list.

Of course, such a group would have been a hotbed of heresy, so I’m not surprised that Ficino denied its existence and that there are no records (at least that have been found yet). In some ways, this seems like a precursor to the secret societies of Europe that were established in following years, the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. And in fact, it is these secret societies that seem to be where these tarot connections went underground for the next several hundred years, only to be revealed in France in the 18th century by people who were Freemasons—Etteilla, Comte de Mellet and Antoine de Ghebelin. This “underground river” of connection is the next area for investigation.

If it sounds unlikely that these interpretations could be passed down secretly via oral tradition, please consider the case of the Mishnah. If you’re not Jewish you probably don’t know this book—it was the first written compilation of the oral tradition in Judaism, written down by Judah ha-Nasi in the early years of the 3rd century CE, and covers legal arguments and decisions handed down from the period between 516 BCE and 70CE. It covers more than a thousand pages. If you were going to be a rabbi during this period, it was required that you memorize these decisions.

Today, with the use of technology, people who grew up knowing the phone numbers of dozens of people can barely remember their own number. But in ancient times, people had all kinds of strategies to remember vast amounts of information. Buddhist monks chanted the sutras together in groups to learn them by heart for hundreds of years before they were finally written down.

Was Pico part of this “academy” and did he add his Kabbalistic thinking into the mix? Did he come up with this idea of using the cards to teach dangerously heretical ideas separately on his own? These are just some of the questions I don’t have answers for, but you can be sure I’m still looking into anything I’m able to find.

One thing to note. I don’t believe that there is any organic connection between the trionfi and Kabbalah. While the pip cards can be easily fit into the Sephirotic system, the correspondences with the trionfi and Kabbalistic concepts are a bit forced. I still believe that one can learn much about both systems from looking at how they can connect. But I think that the way the later occultists tried to put them together, because those occultists lacked a grounding in traditional Kabbalah, the correspondences don’t work so well. I think Poncet’s ideas about the Platonic ideas encoded in the trionfi make more sense.

It is only when we get to Eliphas Levi and his Doctrine of Transcendental Magic that we find a real connection made between the trionfi and a Zoharic text that makes sense—though later occultists never picked up on this. And it is Levi who was the first, and perhaps the only person so far who recognized the connection between the court cards and the Kabbalistic concept of the Partzufim, which he notes with four obscure sentences that are clear to anyone who is already familiar with the Partzufim.  

These connections between the trionfi and the court cards to traditional Kabbalistic concepts is part of my work as both an independent scholar and as a student and teacher of tarot. So there will be writing on these subjects to come. If you’ve gotten this far, I salute you!

Some Side Notes:

About Cultural Appropriation vs. Cultural Integration of Kabbalistic Ideas

Over the last 500 years there have been great thinkers whose contributions to the evolution of Hermetic Qabala have influenced Judaic Kabbalah. And there is much of beauty and value in the Hermetic system. As I often say to my students, both systems are simply maps, and the map is not the territory. The maps will help you get to a certain place in the work, but beyond that place, you’re on your own (or more accurately, working with beings/teachers on other planes).

As a Kabbalistic Tarot reader, most of my work is based in the Jewish tradition. However, the esoteric tarot is a product of the Western Hermetic tradition, so that I find myself working with both systems. As a Queer Kabbalistic Tarot practitioner, I find the depth of the traditional Kabbalistic teachings on gender and sexuality to be mind-blowing and affirming on many levels. These teachings were part of a closed tradition because in Renaissance Europe they would have been seen as dangerously heretical. In many places they would still be considered as such. Today however, Kabbalah is not the closed tradition it once was. Some Jews would disagree, but as I point out when I teach, there is no Pope (or Hierophant) in Judaism, and there hasn’t been a High Priest since the destruction of the Temple (may it never be rebuilt!) Of course it can still feel rather closed to you if you can’t read Hebrew or Aramaic or if you aren’t familiar with the Torah and the Zohar.

I am not claiming a facility with these languages. But I study. Relentlessly. Because my work is to make this information accessible to others. Much as I don’t like Pico’s goals, I don’t deny his relentless scholarship and omnivorous mind. I admire it.

 That said, I am offended by those writers today who deny that Christian Cabala and Hermetic Qabbalah have their origin in cultural appropriation. At this point, the horse has been out of the barn for more than 500 years. These branches have become their own traditions. But that doesn’t change their origin or the way they have been used by many people over the centuries as a weapon against Jews.

Trionfi

That’s what the cards we refer to as the Major Arcana were called in Italy. It translates as triumph, from which we get the word that’s also the name of New York crime family, which I never use if at all possible.

Some of my Sources Include:

 The Esoteric Tarot: Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermeticism and Cabala, by Ronald Decker, Quest Books, 2013.

Secrets of the Marseilles Tarot, a video by Cristophe Poncet found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nRlQDcyrc4

This video offers deeper information and evidence for Poncet’s theory than the recently published Two Esoteric Tarots: A Conversation Between Peter Mark Adams & Christophe Poncet, Scarlet Imprint 2023.

 The Arrival of Florence into Tarot History, a presentation by Ross Caldwell, found at:  https://www.academia.edu/101925057/The_Arrival_of_Florence_into_Tarot_History

 The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, found at: https://www.pico-kabbalah.eu/first_page.html

 The Myth of the Platonic Academy of Florence, by James Hankins, available at: https://www.academia.edu/23681716/The_Myth_of_the_Platonic_Academy_of_Florence

 The Card Game of Logic, independently published Adam McClean, who recreated Thomas Murner’s deck teaching the Institutes of Justinian.

 Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonorola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City, by Paul Strathern.

 Spheres, Sefirot, and the Imaginal Astronomical Discourse of Classical Kabbalah, by J.H. Chajes. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/77454843/Spheres_Sefirot_and_the_Imaginal_Astronomical_Discourse_of_Classical_Kabbalah

 Dame Fortune’s Wheel Tarot by Paul Huson.

 The Renaissance Speaks Hebrew, ed. Giulio Busi and Silvana Greco, 2019.

 The Kabbalistic Tree, J.H. Chajes, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022.

 A Brief History of Cartomancy, Ross Caldwell, available at: https://www.academia.edu/6477311/Brief_history_of_cartomancy

When we fall we know how to land...

Last night, while doing text study at the beit midrash of my synagogue, we read these words by Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchek and I immediately thought of The Fool. Is the Fool unaware or unafraid? The Fool has made the choice to step into the world, with faith that they will be held up. And this leads me to the saying of Rabbi Nachman: “The entire world is a narrow bridge; the essential thing is not to fear at all.” Of course, I also find wisdom in the lyrics of BTS: "We don't have to worry, because when we fall we know how to land."
When you choose life, falling is inevitable. Fall without fear. And learn how to land.

Major Arcana Midrash: The Devil and Jacob wrestling...

The card above is The Devil, from the Jewish Tarot by Betzalel Arieli, and it shows Jacob wrestling with...? Who do you think it is? In Genesis it reads: 

(25) Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. (26) When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him. (27) Then he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking,” But he answered, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” (28) Said the other, “What is your name?” He replied, Jacob.” (29) Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” (30) Jacob asked, “Pray tell me your name.” But he said, “You must not ask my name!” And he took leave of him there. 

This is the week we read the verses above in synagogues around the world. Much ink has been spread on the subject of just who it is that Jacob was wrestling. Rabbis have debated, is it an angel or a specific angel, the guardian angel of Esau, Jacob’s brother who he is going to meet years after stealing his brother’s birthright? They also identify Esau’s guardian angel with Samael, whose name means Venom of God. In Jewish teaching, this angel is the Satan — not “a” or “the” Devil, but an angel, God’s servant whose role is to challenge and test people as the Divine wills. This angel is also considered to be the angel of Rome. 

Today, many people look at the story from an intrapsychic point of view, with a more Jungian approach that sees this man or angel as Jacob’s shadow. After stealing his brother’s birthright, and spending years on the run, he returns to face his brother. And before he can do that, he must face himself and what he has done. 

This story is a narrative example of the famous Jung quote “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

When you see your shadow as a force outside of yourself, rather than a part of yourself that you have demonized, it will enslave you. This is what we see in the Smith-Waite Major Arcana card of The Devil. The human figures are unconsciously enslaved as we can see from the chains they wear—chains so loose that if they were truly conscious the people could simply lift them off and walk away. 

Of course, lifting off these chains is not as simple as that. It is truly more of a wrestling match, and in this way, the Devil card as depicted in Arieli’s deck feels more hopeful to me—Jacob may have been enslaved by his shadow, but he is struggling to make it conscious and free himself from it directing his life.

The translation of the name Israel — one who wrestles with the Divine — is a description of anyone who struggles to come to full conscious awareness. May we all be worthy of this name and achieve this goal. 

The Page of Cups, Magic and Divination Part I

I finished teaching my course on How to Read the Tree of Life Spread this weekend, and part of the last class was an examination of the Pages in the RWS deck. In the discussion, I shared two stories from the Kabbalistic tradition about cups and magic.

You may know biblical story of Joseph and the cup he used for divination. How did he do this? The practice of scyphomancy, or divination using a cup or goblet, is ancient. In the Kabbalistic tradition, it involves bringing a soft gaze to a goblet or a bowl of water (preferably a crystal goblet or bowl because of the way it refracts the light). In the Middle Ages, there was a custom of having a child gaze into a cup or bowl to induce a trance and connect with an angelic teacher, who would share esoteric information.

One meaning ascribed to the Page of Cups is psychic ability, which has its origin in this practice. I shared a story about this practice from the Sephardic tradition called The Scholar Who Fell Into the Water. Here’s a short version:

Once there was a young scholar of Kabbalistic magic who wanted to study with the masters. He decided to travel to Egypt, since it he knew the greatest Kabbalists practiced in Alexandria as well as in Safed in the Holy Land.

On the journey he spent a night at an inn. The next morning, the innkeeper asked where he was going. The young scholar told him, and the innkeeper said, “I can reveal to you that I am such a master magician, and you can learn these practices from me.” The young scholar didn’t believe him and treated it as a joke, saying, “Since when have innkeepers been great Kabbalists?”

 The innkeeper knew better than to tell him of his lineage. He simply brought the young man a bowl of water, saying, “Since you’re headed into the desert, please freshen up with some water first.”

When the young man leaned over the bowl to bring some water to his face, he lost his balance, and tumbled into the water. He looked around and all he could see was water in every direction. Then the sky darkened with a great storm, and he fought the waves trying to keep above the water.

 Just when he thought he was going to drown, a ship appeared, and the mariners threw him a rope. After they lifted him on deck the mariners learned he was a wise scholar. They told him if he went with them to their country, they would make him the governor. So he agreed and completely forgot the journey he was on.

 He ruled the land with wisdom for many years until one day the country was invaded by an enemy army. He was taken captive and sold into slavery. He spent years in bitter servitude until one day he saw a change to escape and fled into the desert. There he found a cave to rest during the heat of the day. He fell into a deep sleep but was awakened by the piping of a bird’s song just outside the mouth of the cave. As he stepped outside the cave, he saw that he was looking down into a bowl of water.

He could see his face reflected in the water along with the face of the innkeeper behind him. “Young man, you’ve been washing your face in this bowl for a very long time,” said the innkeeper. The scholar immediately understood that he was indeed in the presence of a great magician. He apologized for his rude reply and asked to stay and apprentice himself to the innkeeper. In time he became a great magician himself.

The next story will have a fish in a cup, just like the Page of Cups! Tune in tomorrow!

Jewish tarot decks: two cards and some thoughts.

Two cards today, one from the Lilien deck from Jewitches, and one from the Jewish Tarot by Arieli. Both cards are the same suit, and both these decks replace wands with candles. I like that a lot given the ritual importance of candles in Kabbalistic practice. 

So, a side note before discussing the cards. Because they both brought to mind a folktale found in many collections edited by Howard Schwartz, I want to share this deeply mystical story. I will do my best to briefly outline it. 

The Cottage of Candles

There was a young man who felt that he was called, destined in fact, to find justice in the world. He studied and became a lawyer. But he found no justice there. He became a judge. But he found no justice there. He left to enter the world of business. Still, he found no justice there. Despairing, he joined a gang of thieves. And they abandoned him in the forest with only the clothes on his back. There was no justice there either.

In a clearing in the distance, he saw lights, so he walked towards the source of these lights until he was at the door of a cottage. The door was open, so he called out if anyone was there. No one answered. He entered and saw hallways extending far beyond the size of the cottage, with shelves from floor to ceiling, all with oil candles burning on them. 

When he turned there was an old man standing behind him. He asked the man, “what is this place?” The old man replied “this is the treasury of souls. Each candle here is the life of one person. When it goes out, that person’s life comes to an end.” 

The young man asked, “will you show me my candle?” 

The elder raised his arm and pointed to a low shelf where there was a battered tin cup, it’s oil almost gone and the flame from the wick was sputtering. Next to it was a candle with its wick burning bright in a tall cup filled with oil. The young man was afraid. When he turned the old man was gone. 

He looked at his candle and saw that he only had seconds before the oil ran out and his life would end. He looked for the old man but didn’t see him in any direction. He reached out to take the candle next to his to pour some oil from it into his own candle when a hand shot out and grabbed his arm with a strength beyond that of any ordinary old man so that he closed his eyes, wincing in pain. He heard the voice of the old man ask, “Is this the justice you were seeking?” 

Then the hand released his arm. The young man opened his eyes and saw that he was alone in a clearing in the forest. The cottage was gone. And he heard the wind through the trees whispering his fate. 

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You can see why this story came to mind. Because the 2 of Wands is a Chokhmah card, and connected to the Sephira of Wisdom, the image of the old man studying feels right. In the 7 of Wands card from Arieli’s Jewish Tarot, we have a man in a library, which feels connected as well, since every year during the Days of Awe we pray to be inscribed in the Book of Life. The metaphor of each soul as a candle for me also works as each soul is a book. And because the 7 of Wands is a Netzach card, for Perseverance, the image of the person searching for knowledge also feels appropriate.

In fact, in both cards, books are central. And this makes sense for the “people of the book.”. 

 One of the reasons I love this story, and have told it at many gatherings, is because the end doesn’t tell you what the man’s fate is. Sometimes people ask me, but my response is always to ask them what they think. The discussions that happen between audience members is always rich and deep. What do you think the young man’s fate is? 

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Pesach Chag Sameach: Happy Passover. Tonight we start Counting the Omer.

Tonight all around the world people will begin the 49-day practice of Counting the Omer. To help get you ready, and to open your heart with love to this practice (since after all day 1 is Chesed of Chesed, love within love) here's a link to the prayer one says before the count, in a melody by Rabbi Shir Yaakov Feit, Zach Fredman, & Yosef Goldman and performed by Hadar.

Reading The Tree of Life tarot spread: Keter and the root of the soul—the שרוש הנשמה

All trees have roots, but when you look at the diagram of the Tree of Life, one thing to remember is that the roots are not at the bottom. The roots of the Tree of Life are in heaven (if you’ve read my book you know that for me this is metaphor). This means, that the card at the top of the spread, in the Keter, or Crown, position, represents the root. But the root of what?

Of course, it depends on the question being asked. But I particularly like using this spread for questions of one’s mission in life. So I read the card in this position as the Shoresh HaNeshamah, the root of the soul.

One of the ways to read a card in the Keter position is as showing the gifts from the Divine that one’s soul incarnates with. You can think of it as one’s mission, or as one’s innate gifts that are important for one’s mission in life.

Because each numeric card of the Minor Arcana is matched with its corresponding Sephira, each Aces corresponds to Keter. Note that in the Waite-Smith deck the Aces all show the Divine bestowing a gift—a hand reaching out from beyond. An Ace in this position represents the gifts (and challenges) of the suit in one’s life and life’s mission.

How do you read a Minor Arcana card in this position that on the surface seems negative—the Five of Swords for example. First you start with remembering a sentence from the morning liturgy:

אלהי נשמה שנתת בּ טהורה היא

The soul You place in me is pure. 

Then you sit with the question, what positive message does this card reveal about my mission? This is not to ignore the challenges such a card may reveal.

 Many people are surprised to learn that one of the beliefs in Kabbalah is in the soul’s reincarnation. Not unlike the teaching in Buddhism, the soul is here to complete its journey. Looking at the Five of Swords, it could suggest that in a previous incarnation, self-interest was a defining factor in that life, and so that here, in this life, a mission might well be about service to others, with an awareness of an inner pull towards a more narrow, self-serving goal.

This is one of the reasons why this spread is particularly good for life’s big questions.

Because Keter means “crown” it also is a clue when any card with a crown appears in this position. And remember, these aren’t always Kings and Queens. There are a number of Major Arcana cards with crowns, and even one Minor Arcana numeric card with a crown (yes, it’s the Four of Pentacles—and there is an important Kabbalistic meaning to this). It’s also a hint to look at anything on or above the head of a figure in a card in this position.

Each position in the Tree of Life spread is rich with meaning. Because the Tree is fractal it’s important to remember and consider the interaction between the Sephirotic position of the card, and the card’s position on the Tree, whether it corresponds to a Sephira, a Hebrew Letter on one of the paths between the Sephirot, or one of the Patrzufim. What’s a Partzuf you may ask?

If you’re interested in learning how to read this spread, I will be teaching a class on this in the Fall of this year, dates to be announced. If you’re interested in getting a Tree of Life reading, get in touch via the “contact” form.

Minor Arcana Midrash: The Seven of Wands—Jacob faces an adversary

This week’s Torah reading is the story of Jacob wrestling with an “איש” which is the Hebrew word for man. So first off, if you remember this story as Jacob wrestling with an angel, go back and read the text. Indeed, this man is mysterious since he is never identified; when Jacob asks for his name, the stranger refuses to tell him. But the stranger does give him a blessing that changes Jacob’s name, telling him, “Not Jacob shall your name be hence he said, but Israel, for you have striven with Divine beings and men, and have won out.” (Gen 32:28-30)

So let’s turn to the image on 7 of Wands for a moment. Here we see a man ready to contend with…who? We don’t know. While the man is in a fighting stance, we cannot see who is holding the six staves that are arrayed before him. This leads to the question, is there anyone there at all? Could these adversaries simply be a mental projection by the man we can see?

In the last century, many commentators have psychologized the story of Jacob wrestling, noting that this is Jacob wrestling with himself—facing his shadow, his inner demons.

In Jewish folklore there is a tradition that there are spirits and demons who can only go out at night, or who lose their power in the light of day. This is not restricted to Jewish folklore obviously, since such figures exist in many traditions. Jacob’s wrestling match takes place at night, with no winner, until the mysterious adversary said to him, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” The stranger hasn’t won, and Jacob hasn’t lost. It’s a draw in which Jacob is both wounded and renamed. So to emphasize, this isn’t an angel—and it isn’t God either.  By the adversary’s own account, he could be a divine being, because it he the word אלהים (Elohim) which is a plural noun that is translated several ways in the Torah, depending on the context. Sometimes it refers to God (singular) and sometimes the gods (plural) of other nations, and at other times, as I’m looking at here, and as it is written in many English translations of the Torah, as divine beings (which can include angels, though the adversary is not identified as such).

There is a tradition that identifies the mysterious adversary as Esau’s guardian angel, and in the context of the story this is certainly one way you can read the text, though, like much midrash, it takes what’s missing from the text and supplies what isn’t there.

It’s true that Jacob has spent much of his life in contention with others. Even from his time in the womb, he is wrestling with his brother Esau. He lies to his father when asked who he is, stealing his brother’s name and thus his blessing. And he contends with Laban, his kinsman.

Now, however, at this part of the story, he’s returning to the scene of his original crime of stealing the blessing, where he denied his true name and took his brother’s name. And this is when he’s asked by the adversary, “What is your name?” Now, it’s not because the adversary doesn’t know who he’s wrestling with. This is just as much a test as the wrestling itself—is Jacob willing to say who he really is? By owning his name, Jacob (which the translator Robert Alter notes can be read as “he who acts crookedly” and Jacob certainly has), and holding on to his opponent without letting go, Jacob is, in effect, holding on to all of himself, admitting his crookedness to his shadow side, and thus making himself whole. In so doing, he both wounds himself, with his hip socket being wrenched in the wrestling, leaving him with a limp, and also heals himself, by being renamed.

Israel, one who strives with divine beings and human beings, is a name that could describe anyone reading these words right now. Earlier this year I studied with a renowned teacher of Kabbalah who said something I already believed but hadn’t heard anyone, much less an Israeli say before—that Kabbalah is for anyone willing to engage in this inner psycho-spiritual struggle, and that’s what defines the people Israel.

Looking back at the 7 of Wands I want to note that this card corresponds to the Sephira of Netzach, which is connected to Perseverance. Netzach is often translated as Victory, which I’m sure would give heart to the man in the image on the card. Psycho-spiritually, Netzach is the Ego, the smaller definition of the self. Jacob, in facing himself, begins the process of integrating the shadow, thus stepping into his Self (in the Jungian sense of the word). In standing up for himself, by admitting his name is Jacob, he starts the process of straightening out his crooked nature and opening to his Self.

This is very much part of the Jewish wisdom tradition. In the Pirke Avot, Ben Zoma says: “Who is brave? The one who subdues his negative inclination.” And I would rephrase that as, who is brave? The one who can face his shadow.

From a Jungian POV though, it’s still an adversarial relationship—Jacob hasn’t befriended his shadow. But he has come to an uneasy peace. And this is reflected in the peace he makes with his brother Esau when they finally meet and reconcile a few verses later. It’s an emotional scene. But when they separate, Jacob promised to meet up with his brother again in Seir, and immediately breaks that promise, but heading in another direction.

He wanted to change. He has started to change. But he hasn’t changed yet. Still, he received a blessing from the adversary, because in fact the shadow holds many gifts for each of us.

This is a good time of year for shadow work. We’re headed towards the darkest time of the year. So perhaps, in working with the story of Jacob and looking at the 7 of Swords, it’s time to ask for ourselves, who do we see holding those six staves arrayed against us? What shadow adversary are we projecting out into the world, and how can we befriend it?

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 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?

Today is seventeen days, which are 2 weeks and 3 days of the Omer. Tiferet of Tiferet: the Sixes in Wands, Cups, Sword and Pentacles.

Compassion in a world out of Balance. Before I start this essay in full, I want to note that not only is today the 17th day of the Omer, but in my counting it is also the 50th day since I have gone into physical isolation in the pandemic. It’s 7 months and 10 days since my last slip, and 14 years, 4 months and 23 days in 12-step.

This is our third “doubling” day, when the Sephira of the day and of the week are the same. So, on these days, because I’m looking at things fractally, I include all the suits. And one thing you will notice in the images of all the cards is, well, a question of Balance.

Balance is one of the characteristics of Tiferet, as it balances and synthesizes the energies of Chesed and Gevurah. And you’ll notice that in some way, balance is an issue in every one of these cards. Waite said one of the themes of the sixes in the tarot deck is unequal relationships, and that’s also something we can see.

I detail all these imbalances in my book, Tarot and the Gates of Light: A Kabbalistic Path to Liberation. So, I am not going to repeat all that information here. Today my goal is simply to consider how these images connect for me and my path today, since each year where I am psycho-spiritually during the count changes. Of course.  

For me the questions that come up are: can I keep my Balance—that is, can I stay on the horse and go fearlessly ahead on this practice of opening my Heart as I do this count publicly? In the 12-step world, I think of a slip as falling off the horse. And what defines sobriety for me is not so much that I slipped, but that I get right back up on the horse. I know that my sobriety is at risk when I can’t balance my love and my boundaries. And right now, I am living with some very hard boundaries. These boundaries are providing health security but they don’t promote heart connection. So like the man on the horse in the Six of Wands, who must be acutely aware of every movement of the animal he rides in order to stay balanced and in the saddle, I must be acutely aware of my animal urges and instincts, so that I can focus them in a spiritual direction and stay in the saddle.  

With the Six of Cups, I ask how to balance the boundaries I put up to stay safe with the courage to leave my heart vulnerable. In the Six of Cups, you may not notice the guard in the left-hand side of the image, leaving the scene. The figures in the garden are behind a barrier, a boundary, but it’s not a wall. It is a permeable fence of cups serving as planters. Can I lower my guard and still feel safe enough for intimate relationship?

In the distance, on the far side of the shore in the Six of Swords, the island and the trees are gray. At least in the deck I use—I know in the Radiant Waite deck the island is green and verdant, but most decks have it as kind of colorless, and I find meaning in that. Because when you start out on this journey, the destination is indistinct. Whether it’s freedom from Egypt or from my spiritual Egypt or from addiction, freedom is a state I am not familiar with. I can’t see it clearly yet. And it doesn’t necessarily look inviting.

That’s because as one who has been enslaved, my thinking still isn’t balanced. I’d like to believe that as I get closer to the far shore, I will have slowly thrown all the swords in the boat overboard. But I know that we always bring the past with us. It’s just a question of our relationship to it.

Last, the Six of Pentacles, with a balance scale in view, a metaphor for the imbalance of the relationships we see between wealth and poverty. And while the wealthy man is sharing with the less fortunate, he seems to be weighing out his gifts—is it with discernment for what they can receive or is it with a kind of miserly attitude of giving the least he can?

Today the inequalities of wealth in our world are on view like never before. Those people who are deemed essential workers are those who are paid the least. More than 20 million people have filed for unemployment. While I am blessed to have a job that keeps me employed, and I can work from home, there are many in my neighborhood who are suffering. Can I find a channel for compassionate giving that won’t feel overwhelming to me? Can I find a way to help balance things in the small way I can and still stay safe? What can I do to support the people and businesses whose services I use that have been interrupted?

This isn’t theoretical. Oddly enough, (or not so oddly when I consider how the universe has a way of doing this) as I was writing this the man who walks my dog sent me a text. It has been 7 weeks since he has walked any of the dogs in this building and I know he is hurting financially. What to do? This is a practical question—because after all, this is, well, a practice. I continue to pay my housekeeper. I may find myself continuing to pay my dog walker. How do I balance my budget and keep my relationships in balance?

How do I find balance in a world out of balance? How do I find compassion for even those who are rebelling against all the restrictions, understanding that they are not used to being alone with their thoughts and that can be very painful?

Anne Frank stayed hiding in an attic for two years to save her life. People have been asked to stay home for the last two months to save their own lives and that of their neighbors. She was able to face her fear and her thoughts and write them into a work that is a treasure for the world. She did not have the distraction of video games, television, internet.

So how do I have compassion for those who are rebelling and directing their pain outward into hatred for the other. I’m still in shock looking at the video of people screaming at nurses who are standing in the street to block the way of people protesting the lockdown. How do I have compassion for those leaders who are exploiting this pain and directing it into hatred?

How can I keep my balance and still express compassion? And when I lose my balance how can I express my compassion for myself that isn’t an excuse to stay off balance? These are some of the questions that I am G!d-wrestling with today. How about you?

Today is sixteen days, which are two weeks and two days of the Omer. Gevurah in Tiferet: The Five and Six of Wands.

For Compassion to be effective it must be Discerning and Organized. A negative example at the macro level is when a charity sent powdered milk to a country that had devastating floods. Because all the water was contaminated the powdered milk was useless. The charitable (dis)organization clearly wasn’t paying attention to the needs of the people they believed they were helping.

Up to this point I’ve looked at the Five of Wands as a negative expression of Gevurah—an expression of disorganization. But there have been interpretations of the image in the card as people at the start of a barn-raising—a cooperative activity that is highly organized. And in my book, Tarot and the Gates of Light, I mention that we could also see these men as Morris dancers.

If you’re not British, you’ve probably never heard of a Morris dance. (I’m not British but I am a compendium of odd information) It’s a folk dance that can look rather chaotic but is in fact highly choreographed. And in some towns the custom is that part of the dance includes men with staves striking them against each other in a mock battle. And this is not a far-fetched idea when you consider that Pamela Colman Smith spent a lot of time in the English countryside and was a lover of folk traditions. Even more interesting, the dance was performed on Pentecost!

So this pairing could in fact be seen as a highly organized and discerning group coming together to express compassion in a focused way. It’s as though what looks like chaos in the Five of Wands self-organizes into collaboration in the Six of Wands.

These images could also be a description of democracy at its best and most ideal—where the competing ideas clash in an election and then people come together around the expressed will of the majority.

When I was younger, I budgeted a certain amount of money every year for charitable groups. And I had a long list, so that no one of them really got very much. As time went on, I realized I this was not necessarily as effective in any of these charities. So I spent some time sharpening my goals for helping others and narrowed down the list, enabling me to give enough to do more than just fund the next direct mail effort for contributions.

Today the world is calling out for Compassion that is Organized and Discerning more than ever before. And while this year I am only using the suit of Wands to count publicly, Counting the Omer calls for us to act in all four worlds, so that our soul, intellect, emotions are all united in taking action.

Sections of the prayer we say when Counting the Omer include:

For the sake of the Unification of the Transcendent One with the Immanence of the Shekinah, with presence and awareness, in awe and love to unify the name—yod-heh-vav-heh— in complete unity, in the name of all of those who wrestle with the Divine,—Hineni— Here I am—prepared and ready to perform the mitzvah of Counting the Omer. May the blemish I have caused in the Sephirot of Gevurah in Tiferet, so that I may be purified, and may it rectify and unify our nefesh, ruach, neshamah and yechidah in Divine holiness.

By unifying our heart and soul, body and mind, we do the work of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. By bringing together the scattered parts of ourselves, we bring unity to the inner Divine feminine and masculine, healing the split in the Divine and in our culture. Acting from this place of unified consciousness, our compassion will be discerning and effective.

What can you do today to bring together your scattered selves into focused compassionate action? What action will you take? Make a vow to complete this action within the week.

Today is fifteen days, which are two weeks and one day of the Omer. Chesed of Tiferet: The Four and Six of Wands.

Today is our first day in the week of Tiferet, the Sephira that balances the energies of Chesed and Gevurah. As a student of literature, I have always loved that two of the names for Tiferet are Beauty and Truth. John Keats would approve. But this year it occurred to me when I was looking at this pair of cards, the Four and Six of Wands, there is another Keatsian concept that feels particularly appropriate for this day—the idea of negative capability.

If you’ve never heard of negative capability before, Keats coined the phrase to describe Shakespeare’s ability to live in uncertainty without grasping after answers so that he was able to be open to all experience and identify with everyone and everything. Today I think we call this “living in the question,” and reflects the work of British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion who characterized negative capability as the ability to tolerate the pain and confusion of not knowing, rather than imposing ready-made or omnipotent certainties upon an ambiguous situation or emotional challenge.

The thing is, most people are terrified of uncertainty. That’s why political leaders who offer simple bumper-sticker solutions to complex problems continue to be elected. And this leads me back to today’s two card pair.

In the Four of Wands we have that open space in mind and heart that can observe the Flow of reality without trying to rush in and fix anything. It is, to steal a phrase from Byron Katie, Loving What Is. This open space in mind and heart can be reached through many different meditation techniques. And today, this openness in the Four of Wands is what enables the man in the Six of Wands to stay balanced on the horse. And why he has been recognized and raised to a position of leadership.

This is a leader for whom listening is more important than speaking. A leader who can hold and balance the pain and joy of the people he leads. (Balance is another characteristic of Tiferet, since it balances the expanding and contracting energies of Chesed and Gevurah.

This balance of expanding and contracting brings us to another quality of Tiferet—it corresponds in the body to the heart. And because the man on the horse can tolerate his own pain as he is with the pain of others, Tiferet is also the Sephira of Compassion.

Someone who lives from the place of Chesed in Tiferet is a compassionate and empathetic person—and in the best of circumstances this is recognized with a position of leadership.

At the moment however we seem to be living in a time with a leader who embodies all the negative characteristics of these Sephirot. The Flow of Love is stopped up, and there is no openness to others, no ability to tolerate any uncertainty so that this leadership grasps for authoritarian solutions to problems that defy the simplicity of authoritarian thinking. The catchphrase for such a person might be: Don’t confuse me with reality, the facts are what I say they are.

Of course, such a person wants things to be static. And Tiferet is all about Dynamic Tension, and with Chesed in Tiferet we have a constantly shifting Flow — and this is the reality of all creation at every moment. We have no choice but to go with this flow—and the ability to do this aligns us with the will of the Divine.

However, this critique of the Con Artist in Chief is pointing fingers outside, and the Omer practice asks us to turn that finger around and look within to see how these defects live within us.

What was going on in my life when I’ve shut down to the flow, when I have closed my heart to the complexity of life in search of a simple answer? What were the results of my actions at that time? When have I been open to the flow and able to tolerate and even celebrate the complexity and uncertainty? What led to that opening and what was the result of my actions at that time? How can I live in Harmony (another name for Tiferet) with what is—and still be committed to build a better world?

What does today’s combination bring up for you?

Today is fourteen days, which are two weeks of the Omer. Malchut of Gevurah: The Ten and Five of Wands.

Today I’d like to look at this pair as a negative expression of Sovereignty in Discipline.

Have you ever worked at a job where a colleague wasn’t meeting their obligations so that you stepped in to make sure the work got done? Have you ever been in a situation where there was such disorganization that you decided you had to take things into your own hands in order to stave(!) off chaos? That’s one of the situations on view in the Ten and Five of Wands.

A teacher of mine once said that people who take too much responsibility are often found in corporate corner offices. And that people who take no responsibility are often found in jail cells. (I can only hope that Cult 45, who recently said that he takes no responsibility for the health crisis we are in will find himself in a jail cell soon).

An example of this can be found right in the Torah. After the Israelites passed through the sea and began their trek to Sinai, they stopped in Midian, the home of Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro. And Jethro could see that Moses was in overwhelm. He was micro-managing all the affairs of the people, so that every day people came to him to adjudicate every little problem.

As someone who had grown up in the court of the Pharaoh, you’d think he’d have understood how these things are done. But perhaps he didn’t believe that there were any people among the former slaves who had enough distance from the mind of slavery to be able to stand in and judge these cases. Jethro set him straight:

“What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear away, you as well as this people that is with you; for this thing is too heavy for you—you are not able to perform it yourself alone.”

—Exodus 18:18

Jethro told him to find good men from among the tribes and appoint them as judges so that Moses would not have to judge every case. Yes, Moses was a micromanager, but in all fairness, he didn’t have the benefit of a management training course even if he did grow up in Pharaoh’s court. He was just thrown in the deep end of the pool (or Red Sea as the case may be) by Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, so he took it all on. Only after instruction by Jethro was he able to let go. Trying to do it all wasn’t good for him, and it wasn’t good for his people.

Sovereignty here doesn’t mean being a ruler over others. It’s about being a ruler over oneself. When we believe the responsibility is all on our shoulders like the figure in the Ten of Wands, we also believe that the structure will collapse without us to keep it all in place. This leads to both resentment at the others who aren’t strong enough to share the responsibility (or so we believe that they aren’t strong enough) and engenders a sense of grandiosity that tells us that we’re the only ones capable of doing things right.

In spiritual communities I have seen this happen, so that a spiritual leader who may have started out with great wisdom and compassion suffers from burnout and becomes bitter. And I have seen this in corporate settings as well.

It is also something that happens between parents and children. Have you ever seen a parent grow impatient with a child trying to learn to do something and take over? This violates the boundaries of the child and disrespects their sovereignty. It leads to children who grow up thinking either that they can’t do anything right, or that they don’t have to finish something because someone will finish it for them.

But when we respect both our Sovereignty and that of others, thus respecting the boundaries of Gevurah, our individual sovereignty is part of a larger structure where we are supported as we support others. We take healthy responsibility that does not seek to take on more than is our due.

So what do you need to let go? What responsibility should you be sharing?

Today is thirteen days, which are one week and six days of the Omer. Yesod of Gevurah: Intimacy needs a container.

Intimacy needs a Container to keep it safe, a boundary within which it can flourish. And Yesod is all about intimacy—spiritual, emotional and physical. When we look at the images on the cards we can see what happens when the Container that is Gevurah is broken. In the Five of Wands, no one trusts the social structure to protect them, and no one is following the rules. Clearly someone is going to get hurt.

That someone is the figure in the Nine of Wands. He has been wounded and is wary of Bonding with another. But he leaves space in the line of staves standing in the ground for someone to step through—though they might be met with a blow from the staff in the man’s hands. Or he might find his ability to trust again, put down is defense and step through to the other side himself.

On the spiritual level this could be about being wounded by one’s faith community or tradition. Emotionally this could reflect an intimacy where the boundaries were not respected—perhaps something confidential was shared in the belief that trust would be respected, only what was intended as private was shared with others. We all know someone who likes to do this. On the physical level, these images can refer to either betrayal of sexual intimacy in cheating, or a violation of sexual boundaries—sexual assault.

I would be shocked if there were someone reading this who hasn’t experienced at least one of these three kinds of violations. I’ve experienced all three. And I must admit I’ve also been a perpetrator in a couple of these cases.

Intimacy also needs discipline—and by that I mean a regular practice—when it is first starting out. There’s a reason couples that are starting to share intimacies call or text each other daily. Relationship needs tending. That’s why married couples with children need date nights. Intimacy needs boundaries. That’s what establishes trust.

In some of my relationships I have been successful in all these ways. In other relationships I have been an abject failure.

Today, when I physically can’t be with the people I am intimate with spiritually or emotionally it is more important than ever to keep up regular contact. Since the physical isolation began my phone has never left my side. There are people I call every day. People I call every few days. Especially people I know who like me, live alone. It’s part of my commitment to the discipline of relationship—and I hope it demonstrates my commitment to intimacy in these relationships.

What are you doing under these difficult circumstances to provide a strong container for intimacy to flourish?

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 eleven days, which are one week and four days of the Omer. Netzach of Gevurah: The Seven and Five of Wands.

Yesterday I gave an example of how you can try out all the different permutations of meanings that can come from the different qualities of each Sephira in combination. This can be done every day. But today the first meaning off the top of my head feels appropriate for where I am today—and in fact it was the subject of a conversation I had with a dear friend as well.

Today’s combination of qualities for me connects to Endurance in Discipline. Personally, I have tried to take this social isolation as a spiritual discipline.

My first Vipassana retreat was a spiritual discipline that called for all my endurance. After the first few days of working up to it, on the third day we had a special sitting where we were required to sit without changing position for the duration of that sit. And that lasted almost two hours. And if you’re wondering if it was painful the answer is yes. And if you’re wondering if it was worth it, the answer is also yes. But this is a discipline I took on voluntarily.

Today I’m living with a discipline that is imposed from without. Oh sure, I don’t have to follow the guidelines. But I have a fondness for being alive, so I’m following the restrictions. As much as I want to go out and do things, as much as I want to meet with friends, go out on a date, go to a restaurant, I’m sitting with all that desire and not acting on it. I am enduring my loneliness and enduring my frustration, and all the feelings that arise when I am in a situation that is beyond my control. Not easy for a control freak.

The friend I was speaking with has a much tougher discipline that she must endure. She is a nurse practitioner in a hospital that is one of the hot spots in the city. She sees people die every day. People who are suffering and dying in agony. There are people she can help and people she tries to help but who are ultimately beyond recovery.  when I was required to sit without moving for one hour. She is physically and emotionally exhausted. Earlier today in a Zoom meeting with some friend I said we are living through a collective trauma. But my friend who is working in the hospital is being traumatized day after day.

Still, she does not run away from the job. Despite her fear of getting sick herself she shows up and works in close quarters with people who are deathly ill. Despite her feelings of helplessness, she continues to help dozens of people every day.

This is Endurance in Discipline. It is tenacity in the face of fear. It is perseverance even in the most difficult of circumstances. It is a steadfast commitment to the discipline of her profession.

And she is not alone in this. There are thousands of medical professionals in this city doing this work right now.

In the Seven of Wands we see someone who has the courage and tenacity to stand and fight against all odds in a situation represented by the Five of Wands—someone who is willing to live their commitment in the face of danger. In the face of the chaotic situation we can see in the Five of Wands.

When I think about my friends and her colleagues, my own struggle with endurance in this situation is nothing in comparison and I take courage from her strength, even as she feels she is at the breaking point.

One of the meanings of Netzach is Mission. And clearly my friend, and all these medical professionals have a mission. I was reading an article in the New York Times today about a young man, the father of a three-year-old and the husband of a doctor, who left his home in Texas to come volunteer to work in the hospitals in New York City during the crisis. It felt like I was reading about someone who had signed up to fight in a war. Except that in wars we kill other people—and here the mission is to save other people. The thing that struck me reading about him was that even though he is afraid he might not survive this job, he might not live to see his wife and child again, he feels like he is giving his life for a great mission. He feels like his life has a purpose it has never had before.

So while Netzach is also the Sephira of the ego, here it is clearly the ego in service to a discipline that takes it to a place bigger than itself.

And it all makes my complaining look somewhat immature. So rather than point a finger at all those who are flouting the discipline of this lockdown, I have to look at my own commitment to the discipline. My ability to endure in this situation.

What questions arise for you today? And how are you enduring in the strict discipline we find ourselves in?

Today is ten days, which are one week and three days of the Omer. Tiferet of Gevurah: The Six and Five of Wands.

Tiferet holds the Dynamic Tension between Chesed and Gevurah, creating a Balance that is an expression of Beauty. It is the Sephira of the Open Heart, able to feel all the love and all the pain that is the expansion and contraction of Chesed and Gevurah—and to feel all this with Compassion for the tension of this duality.

In fact, this expansion and contraction is what a heart does every second, it is the rhythm of life itself. This rhythm also characterizes each breath we take, expanding as we breathe in, and contracting as we breathe out.

How does Tiferet express itself through Gevurah, and how do I see this expression in today’s pair of images?

In the Six of Wands there is a man who has been lifted above the rest, who has been recognized as a leader by those who surround him. Perhaps he has been chosen for this position because he is the one who is able to hold the Dynamic Tension of the Balance between Chesed and Gevurah, which would make him the natural selection for leadership. He brings order to the disorganization we see in the Five of Wands. But it’s important to remember that leadership is a position of service, not a position of superiority. If the man on the horse begins to feel above the others, then he has lost touch with himself and his community.

I noted last week that one of the customs of the Omer period is to read a chapter from the Pirke Avot, The Wisdom of Our Ancestors, each week on Shabbat. And today there is a teaching of Rabban Gamliel from Chapter 2 that feels appropriate for this reading of the Six of Wands:

“And those who labor in public affairs should work for the community and for the sake of Heaven rather than for their own power.”

Pirke Avot, 2:2

 Here, leadership is understood as working for the community. Of course, taking on such a position of leadership calls for personal Sacrifice, and sacrifice is also one of the qualities of Tiferet.

This gives us a way to discern whether those who are leaders are working for the sake of the people or for themselves. Looking at how Senator from Georgia, Kelly Loeffler, or the Senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, sold stocks at a profit after being briefed about the danger to the country of COVID-19. They took millions in profits all the while downplaying the danger of the pandemic to our lives and economy. This tells us right away that these are leaders who are in it for their own wealth and power, and are not working for the community.

But that’s pointing at others. And the point of counting the Omer is refinement of one’s own character defects. So one question I need to ask myself is when I take a position of leadership in a group, do I use it as an opportunity to serve or for self-aggrandizement?

Now one of the things I do in my book is I give key words for each of the Sephirot, so that readers can create their own permutations for each day, finding the one that works best for where they are and they feel applies in some way to the images on the cards. A few of today’s permutations include:

Compassion within Judgement

Beauty within Structure

Balance within Power

Truth within Discernment

Compassion within Discipline

Open-heartedness within Boundaries

Dynamic Equilibrium within Organization

You can create more permutations from these combinations, as well as from the other key words for these Sephirot listed in my book, Tarot and the Gates of Light.

As I try to live within the discipline of social distancing, can I have compassion for myself? As I try to live within the discipline of keeping up my daily practices, can I have compassion for myself when I slip instead of falling into the self-judgment and criticism that is a negative expression of Gevurah? As I walk down the street or enter a store can I keep my boundaries secure and still stay open-hearted to everyone else?

These are some of the questions that come up for me today. What questions arise for you?

Today is nine days, which is one week and two days of the Omer. Gevurah of Gevurah: the Five of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles.

One day each week there is a day that the day’s Sephira and the week’s Sephira is the same—and today is one of those days with the Gevurah that is within Gevurah. Looking at the corresponding cards in the four suits, it would not be a surprise if you had the impression that they all show the negative face of this Sephira.

Among the qualities of this Sephira is the ability to set boundaries. The question is, are these boundaries an expression of severity and harshness (two other characteristics of Gevurah) or are these boundaries an expression of inner strength and discernment (another two characteristics of this energy)?

Right now we’re all be asked to maintain a very specific boundary of at least 6 feel from other people in public. The whole world in fact is straining under this rule. For some it feels like punishment. Others, who only think of themselves rather than see themselves as interdependent, see this as an infringement of their rights. And there are those of us who are doing the best we can to live within this strict regimen of social distancing. There’s no question that it feels harsh and severe even if the underlying reason for it is one of love.

And it must be enforced, since there are those who will not follow this difficult path. Imagine a parent whose child is about to put a hand in an open flame. The parent will scoop up the child, or swat away the hand to protect it. The child will not understand this as protective, but as an imposition and will start crying and wailing. Today there are a lot of adult children who are crying and wailing. In some states they’re protesting outside the state capital, complaining that they’ve lost their right to worship together in a church, or to shop when and where they please. They lack another quality of Gevurah—the ability to restrain themselves. And there is no parent who will swoop in to protect them from themselves, and by extension, protects us from them.

I’d like to concentrate today on the image in the Five of Swords, since for me this is an image that captures the breakdown of social structures. In the distance we see two figures who are unarmed. We can assume they were in fact holding swords but for some reason they’ve dropped them and appear distracted and focused elsewhere. Meanwhile a figure in the foreground is busily picking up the swords—this figure seems to have a smirk. The others have left themselves undefended. They’ve let their guard, their boundaries, down. And this puts them in danger that they don’t see. This could easily be a society that has abandoned the rule of law, so that those who would take advantage of others face no consequences.

I feel like this is the situation we’re living through. Those whose responsibility it is to maintain the social structure by defending boundaries at a national level have abandoned that responsibility. Which is why the United States has more cases than any other country in the world. Well, USA USA number 1 as they say.

But what have I learned about myself in this situation on this, the 9th day? I have the inner Strength to live with these Boundaries. I also chafe at these Boundaries, even when I know they’re for my benefit.

I am filled with Harsh Judgment and Criticism of those I see as not acting with concern for others. And while I believe these people deserve Judgment, it is the Harshness within me that is unbalanced and that needs looking at.

How can I connect with the Strength of Gevurah, and have the Discernment to not fall into Harsh Judgment of others? How can I give Structure to my days and not fall prey to my resistance to Discipline and staying Organized?

What questions arise for you today?