Five of Cups January 22, 2010

I love the synchronicity of thinking when one has the time to notice.
I asked for a card to meditate with today and got the five of cups, a card of loss and disappointment on a deep, emotional level. I chose from the Thoth deck which shows a wasteland of dried mud, of empty cups with no sustenance in sight. In my meditation I walked into this sterile, seemingly lifeless landscape and thought about how this would feel if it were my life right now. I suppose it has felt this way in the past but now what I felt was possibility. The cups are empty; there is nothing left but a vacuum and what can fill that? Joy, love, possibility to the extreme. It’s like when your house burns down, a lightness.

That saying that I love, “ Barn’s burnt down-- now I can see the moon.” It’s all gone, so now I can move on. I was surprised at how positive it seemed. Comes from reading When Fear Falls Away by Jan Frazier. Luminous book.

Anyway, awhile later I go to the website of one of my favorite writers on the tarot, Robert Place, and on his homepage is an article about the alchemical egg, How the alchemists would seal the substance that they wanted to transform into an airtight vessel, known as the Hermetic Egg. “The substance would go through a symbolic death and rebirth... and when the egg was cracked a new mystical substance emerged.. a catalyst capable of improving any substance it came in contact with. “ This is a simplistic explanation of a much more complex idea that Mr. Place discusses, but I immediately connected this idea to the five of cups. If we could allow our grief to transform us, allow all that had been to die for lack of breath, thought, or focus and then seal ourselves away for awhile, to stew as in a large alchemical crockpot, until we blended our experience of sorrow into a thick, rich, nurturing stew . I think that’s what I am doing. I am stewing. I am not ready for eating just yet, but when I emerge I will be a very savory mix of my complex life experience, bone marrow, pungent species mixed with the sweet honey of my spirit to create something quite extraordinary.
Check out Robert Place’s website Just Google him with tarot.