COMING TO TERMS WITH THINGS THAT SCARE US

With Halloween just a few days away, I’ve been enjoying driving around and viewing other people’s Halloween yard decorations.  The current trend seems to be going for scarier displays.  Here in Michigan, a number of people have erected figures of gigantic skeletons and ghouls in their yards.  Then, because these objects are apparently difficult to take down and store, they leave them up year round, and decorate them for other holidays, like putting tinsel on them at Christmas.  Psychologically, this is a way of taming the things that scare us, (and that is a big part of what Halloween is about).

One of my new books on tarot that I’m working on offers folk magic remedies and other comments on how to mitigate fears when we pull a tarot card that throws a scare into us, so I’ll provide some snippets here, related to the Nine of Swords, The Tower, the Five of Swords, and The Devil, respectively, illustrated with The Halloween Tarot by Karin Lee and Kipling West, where the Swords suit is the suit of Bats:

Nightmares: The anxieties associated with Nine of Swords situations may well induce nightmares.  For children, put one of their dad’s used socks in the bed, as the testosterone scent is magically protective.  The use of dreamcatchers, (net-like, web-like hooped constructions, often enhanced with beads and feathers) originated among woodland Indians who hung them from cradle boards to ensnare the bad dream spirits; these have now become popular decorative items.  Some other traditional practices include putting an open scissors under one’s bed, or putting the key in the keyhole (of old fashioned doors that still have keyholes) to prevent the “mares” from slipping through.  An old Italian remedy was to put three sunflowers on the outside windowsill, as these are what the nightmare spirit “loves best.” 

                There are also folk remedies to dispel negative energies upon waking.  If you should wake up in the middle of the night and are afraid of going back to sleep, get up to turn on the light, comb your hair, wash your face, and brush your teeth; because these activities separate the Day World from the Night World, you can afterward return to bed to get more sleep.  In Japanese lore, a monster called the Baku, which is a strange creature that looks like a cross between an elephant and an anteater, will come and devour your nightmares if you call it three times by saying, “Bakusan, come eat my dream.”  (This can also be done prior to sleep.)  In Talmudic practice, a bad dream can be transmuted by saying, “I have beheld a good dream,” and getting at least three of your family or friends to respond in kind by saying, “Verily, it is good, and may it be good, and may God make it good,” and repeat that seven or nine times.  This way, the dream is reframed as positive.

Omens: Because of the sort of major life changes that The Tower can predict [when you pull this card], your Unconscious may already be sending you warnings through dreams and omens.  Omens occur when your Unconscious tries to get your attention by putting symbolically meaningful events and objects in high focus.  Some of these are personal, and some are cultural.  For example, there is nothing inherently unlucky about black cats, but because there is a common cultural superstition that black cats are unlucky, you may now see a black cat crossing your path and suddenly feel unsettled, even if you’ve seen plenty of black cats before and had no reaction.  If you do have some ominous occurrences, you can say, “I acknowledge this omen, and give thanks for the information.” Then, be extra mindful as mentioned previously.

And by the way, never take it out on the messenger when you get bad news or omens.  In the case of innocent black kitties, there's another superstition that you can reverse any bad luck by blowing the cat a kiss.  (Plus, you get extra good karma by being kind to animals, and that will help offset some bad karma.)  It can also help to ease your mind if you know that different cultures have different views of what is lucky and unlucky.  So, in parts of England, (and also in Jamaica), black cats are considered to be lucky, and it's especially lucky if a black cat crosses in front of a bride on her wedding day.  (Some brides even carry plush black cats along with their bridal bouquets.)

Transforming Perceptions: Although change itself is neutral, [the Five of Swords being a card about change], we tend to perceive it as stressful.  Part of the magical mindset is being able to change the way you perceive a situation, and in this respect, it is helpful to know a bit about how people in other cultures perceive things.  For example, I knew a lady who was disturbed because some bats had gotten into her house, and asked me, “aren’t they the Devil’s creatures?”  I was able to lighten her mind by explaining how in other countries, bats are good luck.  In China, for example, an image of five bats, called “Wu Fu” is a popular design motif, because the word for bat puns on the word for luck.  The five bats stand for the five Confucian blessings: health, wealth, longevity, love of virtue, and a natural death.  Bats are, of course, creatures of the Air, and a whimsical “Halloween” Tarot deck even uses bats to represent the Swords cards.  Therefore, if you find the appearance of the Five of Swords unsettling, counter it by wearing or displaying an image of the Wu Fu.

Blessing [in relation to pulling The Devil card]: Some old stories describe how negative entities were mollified by extending blessings.  A Polish legend tells of a bridge over the river Solokija in Belz, where anyone attempting to cross the bridge at midnight was pelted with stones by some invisible entity.  One night, after a traveler crossing the bridge was struck by a stone, he paused and pronounced a traditional Slavic blessing, “May you be in God’s care.”  A shade emerged and said, “Thank you for your good word.  So far everybody has been cursing at me, and it is you who put me under God’s care,” and so the haunting ended.  In Buddhist lore, a group of monks staying in a haunted grove were attacked by spirits who tried to frighten them off with gruesome apparitions.  However, the spirits were placated when the Buddha advised the monks to extend loving-kindness meditations toward them.  If you sense some negativity coming your way, you can use a simplified version of this by reciting, “May all beings be happy.   May all beings be free from troubles.  May all beings be protected.”

2025 – YEAR OF THE HERMIT

In magical numerology, 2025 is the year of The Hermit, because 2 + 0 + 2 + 5 = 9, which is the number of The Hermit card in tarot.

So, the question is, how might this affect us as individuals, as well as our larger society? 

This is just speculation on my part, but we in the U.S. have just gone through a very contentious election, so whether you are happy with the results or unhappy with the results, a lot of people are sick and tired of the social strife, and may decide to just turn inward, focus on their own interests, and avoid friends and family members who still want to argue politics. 

Alternatively, it is possible that some situation could arise that would result in enforced isolation, so I hope we won’t be experiencing another pandemic, (though I am optimistic that we’ve gotten better at managing epidemic situations). 

 Also, in earlier days before the card was labeled “The Hermit,” it just portrayed an old man carrying an hourglass, (the archetype of the “Senex”), so the focus was on aging and the wisdom of elders. For our society, issues around aging and elder care could come into prominence. [I also note that we’ve just replaced one very elderly president with questionable mental acuity with another very elderly one, so that might have some implications for government and for society.]

Regardless of what else is going on in the world, taking some time for quiet reflection is good for introverts and extraverts alike. If you are in a living situation where you feel constantly put upon, and The Hermit card comes up in a tarot reading for advice, you can see the appearance of The Hermit as giving you permission to carve out some time and space alone for yourself.

Here is a snippet about The Hermit from a book I am currently working on:

Seeking Solitude:  In an extraverted society, introverts often find themselves apologizing for their desire for solitude.  If you feel guilty about wanting time to yourself, let the appearance of The Hermit card signal a time to indulge in what Nietzsche called, “the good solitude, the free, high-spirited, light-hearted solitude that, in some sense, gives you the right to stay good yourself.”  If your life circumstances have necessitated your living alone, you can also find some philosophical solace in Nietzsche, who noted, “To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle.  Leaving out the third case: one must be both—a philosopher.”  If your circumstances are so unfortunate that you can’t find decent people to associate with, then take to heart the words of the Buddha, who said, “Better it is to live alone; there is no fellowship with a fool.  Live alone and do no evil; be carefree like an elephant in the elephant forest.”

ACTS OF WILL

My apologies for being so long away!  It looks like I really need more Will Power to keep at blogging.  So, on the subject of Will Power, I’ve been thinking about how it relates to different tarot cards, including the Emperor, Strength, the Chariot, and various of the 5s and 7s in the Minor suits.

Consider, for example, the 7 of Wands, and how its energy and determination apply to the Acts of Will needed to bring about change.  To bring about change, you need to disrupt some conditions of “homeostasis,” which refers to the tendency of things—including the Body-Mind as well as other types of systems—to seek a state of balance where everything stays in place.  Unfortunately, sometimes systems will settle into a state of balance that can be unhealthy or unsatisfactory, and all of the elements within that system seem to conspire to maintain it at that low-functioning level. 

Due to the Body-Mind’s tenacity at preserving its homeostasis—even when the conditions are bad—people who try to make changes for the better, in any area of life, often find that a thousand little things will arise to try to frustrate their efforts.  We can see a hint of this in the Rider-Waite-Smith illustration of the 7 of Wands, which shows a man trying to beat down a number of other wands that are being thrust toward him.  Because of the Body-Mind’s powers of resistance, you have to bear down on yourself in order to stick with any sort of self-improvement program.

The Buddha addressed this problem in the Vitakkasanthana Sutta: after explaining different techniques to get rid of distractions, he said that if they’re still not working for you, you just have to clench your teeth and “crush mind with mind.”  In the graphic illustration included my last blogpost, (November 24, 2012), on “Tarot Card Images for Meditation,” we can see the challenge of distracting thoughts in the background of the Zen Osho deck’s 4 of Cups.

The good news is that sometimes making even a very small change somewhere in your life or in some other sort of system can disrupt the homeostasis enough to reset the elements in that system to function together in a way that is more beneficial.