The Six of Wands and Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody

I’ve taken my bows, my curtain calls. You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it. I thank you all. — We Are the Champions, Queen

I’m going to be a tad harsh on a fabulous card in a favorite suit. The wands embody creativity, after all, and I call myself a poet. Some days call for tough love, baby.

The Rider-Waite-Smith Six of Wands highlights belief in others, a celebration of victory that could happen prematurely, as Waite would have it. That the creators of the Mythical Goddess Tarot, Katherine Skaggs and Sage Holloway made their equivalent card the card of Forgiveness says plenty on a similar credulous note: Yes. I believe in others, so much that I forgive, forgive, forgive.

Those wands in the crowd might smack that man off his high horse momentarily. I can’t say Pia Mellody, author of Facing Codependence would condone such action, but she might agree on a theory that placed him there. The central figure of the card could be someone who had known what she terms “falsely empowering” abuse as a child.

“falsely empowering” abuse

“these children receive a false sense of superiority over others in terms of value or worth, which sabotages relationships just as much as the message of being less than others does.” (Mellody, 8)

Mellody also argues that codependents have what she calls other-esteem, based on externals, such as who they know, how they look, what kind of car they drive, the degrees they have earned, and so on.

other-esteem

a sense of self-worth that is based upon what one has done or upon the behavior and opinions of others. “The problem is that the source of other-esteem is outside the self and thus vulnerable to changes beyond one’s control. One can lose this exterior source of esteem at any time, so other-esteem is fragile and undependable.” (Mellody, 9)

All the same, we need optimism. We want others to cheer us on. That’s why I might do something a little different next week — instead of drawing my two words from a print text, I might take them from two blogs written by two other people, to champion them a little.

Your suggestions are welcome. Thanks for the read.

The Devil and The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle

Chains! My baby’s got me locked up in chains, and they ain’t the kind that you can see. — Chains, The Beatles

I’ve been reading The God of Animals this week. It’s not just another book borrowed from my aunt and her book club, it’s also a novel my ex’s father recently enjoyed, I found out when taking his mother to her birthday lunch the other day. In Desert Valley, Colorado, the twelve-year-old protagonist’s father decides to board horses.

In doing so, he invites the company of women who a friend of his daughter’s calls “catfish” –

catfish

“women like that ask questions like they care about you, but really, they just want to swallow you up. They want everything that’s yours.” (Kyle, 96)

Catfish exemplify the Devil‘s signature illusion, oppression, and pursuit of personal desire. “Since such narrowness often leads to unhappiness the Devil has come to symbolize misery.” (Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, 102)

Misery and oppression clearly emerge with the use of an instrument made from two pieces of metal hinged together at one end like a nutcracker. “Only instead of cracking a nut between the metal pieces, it was supposed to be placed over the softest, most delicate skin of a horse’s nose, then squeezed.” (Kyle, 79)

twitch

“The surest way to keep a horse still, and the nastiest.” (Kyle, 79)

May your days be catfish and twitch free — at least according to the definitions in this entry. Thanks for the read.

The Nine of Wands and Paper Towns by John Green

I’m telling you, my friend, that I’ll get you, I’ll get you in the end. — The Beatles

In his lively, funny novel, which my friend Nessa bought for me, John Green‘s character Margo Roth Speigelman describes to the protagonist, Quentin, how she feels about their hometown: “It’s a paper town … all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.” (John Green, Paper Towns)

paper town:

1) a bland, boring, ordinary town

2) subdivisions that never got built

3) a place invented for copyright protection, ie, Agloe, New York, a spot that mapmakers Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers invented as copyright traps — a location that exists on maps only

pseudovision:

a subdivision abandoned before it could be completed

I struggled to relate these words to a Tarot card, deciding finally on the Nine of Wands because of the wall of defense depicted on the card. The wands behind the figure could represent looming problems — or resources. Like all readings, really, responsibility lies within interpretation and surroundings.

The Nine of Wands feels like a fit, also, because Quentin is much like the card’s figure. He’s quite single-minded, holding firmly to that one wand, securely gripping “that one idea or attitude” (Pictures from the Heart, Sandra A. Thomson).

The Hierophant and Mickey Flodin’s Signing Illustrated

They’re doing that hand jive all over town. – Johnny Otis

The Rider-Waite-Smith Hierophant

My friend Adam Goldstein’s article, Signing for Shakespeare, reminded me of my interest in sign language. I went to my library to check out a few books, the most helpful being Signing Illustrated: The Complete Learning Guide by Mickey Flodin.

Direct from the book’s glossary:

“Dactylology — Using the fingers and hands to fingerspell and communicate.

“Iconicity — The characteristic of a sign resembling what it represents. Example: The sign for elephant moves the hand, from the mouth, in the shape of a elephant’s trunk.”

The Hierophant's right hand

The Hierophant holds his right hand in the traditional sign of benediction, two fingers extended to indicate “that moral problems involving the opposites of good and evil are under his domain.” (Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols, 121) He may hold the key to the holy mystery of the Trinity in his palm, beneath his other fingers.

Should you stand in the shadow of this blessing, however, one might be excommunicated, as the shadow suggests the shape of the devil.

The Hierophant is a teacher, providing the opportunity to look for blessings rather than curses, truths rather than superstitions — thanks for the read.

The High Priestess and Michael White’s Soul Catcher

The ink is black, the page is white. Together we learn to read and write. — Three Dog Night

My aunt graciously lent me several of her book club novels, recommending I read Michael White‘s Soul Catcher first. It’s a both sad and fun Civil War era story about a man who catches runaways, who is himself a sort of runaway.

In wanting to continue my blog, I realize it will be a challenge to do so with novels. Psychological, spiritual, and ASL books are likely to emerge and should make for a nice fit, but thankfully, the High Priestess seems to work with the words I want to share from Soul Catcher.

Pecosa

This Spanish adjective means freckled. A love interest of the main character was named Pecosa.

chiaroscuro

A noun with plural meanings:

1.the distribution of light and shade in a picture.
2.Painting . the use of deep variations in and subtle gradations of light and shade, esp. to enhance the delineation of character and for general dramatic effect: Rembrandt is a master of chiaroscuro.
3.a woodcut print in which the colors are produced by the use of different blocks with different colors.
4.a sketch in light and shade.

These words relate to the High Priestess because she looks a fair bit like Pecosa and she sits betweenblack and white columns.

Believed to be based on the legend of Pope Joan, the High Priestess is an intriguing, complicated, mysterious and secretive figure. Hers is the first card (the second numbered one in the Major Arcana) to introduce the concepts of duality and two pillars, themes that run throughout Tarot (Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: The Major Arcana, p. 37)

The dark column represents passivity, a trait that ought to be praised for its gift of reflection, as well as mystery, while the white column symbolizes consciousness and activity.

Hope you balance between dark and light. Thanks for the read.

Have some faith in the sound

“I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me.” — George Michael, Freedom! ’90

My world’s a new one since I last wrote. I’m in an entirely different home and no longer in a city I love, Denver. I am happily employed (and wasn’t when I started this blog, which is probably why it was so ambitious). And I’m single again, separate from a man I loved for five years. Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da? You know, It don’t come easy.

Today’s words come from a very helpful read in these curious, formative, exciting, hopeful times: Is It Love or Is It Addiction? by Brenda Schaeffer. I’ve selected them because I think they also help to illustrate The Fool in Tarot.

limerence: noun
the intrusive, intoxicating, involuntary cognitive and emotional rush of feelings experienced by an intense romantic desire for another person.

source: Dorothy Tennov, Ph.D.

*

self-actualization: noun
(breaking away from a brief definition, I’m lifting straight off page 39 of Schaeffer’s book)
“Listed here are the characteristics of people who are near self-actualization.

1. They accept reality.
2. They accept themselves, other people, and the world for what they are.
3. They are spontaneous.
4. They are problem-centered rather than self-centered.
5. They have an air of detachment and a need for privacy.
6. They are autonomous and independent.
7. Their appreciation of people and things is fresh rather than stereotyped.
8. Most have had profound mystical or spiritual experiences, although those experiences are not necessarily religious in character.
9. They identify with humankind.
10. Their intimate relationships with a few specially loved people tend to be profound and deeply emotional rather than superficial.
11. Their values and attitudes are democratic.
12. They do not confuse means with ends.
13. Their sense of humor is philosophical rather than hostile.
14. They resist conformity to the culture.
15. They transcend the environment rather than just cope with it.”

Thanks for the read. I hope to post weekly and would love to hear from you.

– On Haitus –

Until Further Notice.

Namaste.

The Fool on the Hill: Day Two

“And all the little ants are marching/ Red and black antenna waving/ They all do it the same/ They all do it the same way” — Dave Matthews Band

The ants worked and moved, manifested quick, red drones when they closed in together, played temporary constellations as they spread, as they explored. One ant marched away from the others. As he marched further from the anthill, he stretched, he saw. His march changed gait. Until finally he danced and skipped his way up to a new hill in the west and onto a rock above a river valley.

And crossing his legs, he turned inward and he saw outward. And turned to watch the ants below, the ants’ salvation owed to him. And he knew he indebted himself to them, for without the other ants, his thoughts and observations had no home beyond himself.

32 pages into Start Your Own Business. Lettuce word it up, using the punctuation found in the source text:

“oh so mysterious”: expression

Yes. This is three words, not one. But first rule of Poet Club is you don’t talk about Poet Club. I mean … all creatives know the rules of their craft(s), and most importantly, how, when, and why to break them.

This expression calls to mind a cornucopia of connotations for each individual. Every word did, does, will. Language itself is in many respects oh so mysterious. If anything, that sums up the purpose of this blog.

My work here is done. Bye bye. See you la–

Lame, overconfident comedy aside, love, oh so mysterious brings to my mind the television series Unsolved Mysteries. It’s allegedly on air again. Great news for UM, not-so-great for your blog author. This blog’s become another Hermes, ushering in the dead souls of the poems that have been waiting for me to write … don’t need more distractions now. I’m a measly 32 pages into the first book of this project. Must. Read. More.

Date: Mysterious

Etymology: The word mysterious dates to 1599, according to Merriam-Webster.

Nonsense!: noun

Uno: “words or language having no meaning or conveying no intelligible ideas ф language, conduct, or an idea that is absurd or contrary to good sense ф an instance of absurd action”

Dos: “things of no importance or value : trifles ф affected or impudent conduct <took no nonsense from subordinates>”

Tres: “genetic information consisting of one or more codons that do not code for any amino acid and usually cause termination of the molecular chain in protein synthesis”

Date: 1614

Etymology: Permit me to get back to you? (above quotes pilfered from Merriam-Webster)

Err, codons? Condoms? … I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay in a world without nonsense. Not a world without Monty Python. The Muppets. Films such as One Crazy Summer. SNL and the films and television it has spawned. Douglas Adams, DNA. Saavy satire-news shows, The Colbert Report and its forefather, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. The vast Beatles empire. These masterfully crafted distractions, baby, can have my  bloody time any time — there be Hermes, lovingly disguised.

Disguised or no, may you find the oh so mysterious, and the light at the center of nonsense.

Thanks for the read.

Start: The Fool

“Let’s get it started in here.” — The Black Eyed Peas

Print texts lie in wait, accumulating over the last four years in this one-bedroom apartment.  Inspired by the movie “Julie & Julia”,  I will  read a combination of seventy-eight novels, books on writing, graphic novels, poetry books, chapbooks, and literary publications in one year.

From these resources, I’ll share two words, five days a week. Seventy-eight  is near half of the texts I want to read, and there are seventy-eight Tarot cards to a standard Tarot deck, and Tarot cards and Tea Leaf readings are a major creative, psychological, and scholarly force in my life.

The first book in my enterprise is Entrepreneur Magazine‘s Start Your Own Business, by Rieva Lesonsky, published in 2007. It relates to The Fool, a card unlike any other in Tarot. The Fool takes risks, trusts himself  … he’s an entrepreneur, though he’s not known for his preparation, rather for his trust in himself,  a pivotal quality for embarking on new ventures.

Let’s word this up, kids:

entrepreneurship: noun

There’s no definition for this specific form of the word entrepreneur from my ol’ friend Merriam-Webster, but Wikipedia’s entry speaks plenty. “Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which is a French word meaning ‘one who undertakes an endeavor’. Entrepreneurs assemble resources including innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods.”

This word means more. Economics aren’t the sole by-product of every entrepreneur, but I think in metaphor and metaphysics– a happy hazard of being a poet and Tarot lover.

Etymology: Old French, from entreprendre to undertake — more at enterprise

Date: 1852 (Etmylogy and Date info from Merriam-Webster)

groundwork: noun

a foundation, basis ф essential basic labor or study ф the background to an embroidered or other pattern etc.

The New Lexicon Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, published 1990

Etylomolgy: More legwork needed to find, if known.

Date: 15th Century

Thanks for the read.