What we’ve got here is a picture of a hibiscus from my backyard. Take a look at it. What do you see? Well, of course you see the intense, pink color and the pistil ‘calling all bees’, but what else do you see? There’s some foliage supporting the flower and the hint of another bud growing. The setting is green, the sky is blue, the sun is shining. There is some white around the inner edge of the hibiscus appearing to plunge deep inside. See? There’s more to this picture than you realize at first.
This photograph could easily become a tarot card. Why? because the left side of the brain sees a flower. The right side of the brain sees the details, and from those — draws symbols. Those symbols come from the deepest part of our minds: the part that tries to find meaning in our lives.
Let’s back up a little bit. Mozart wrote Don Giovanni in 1787. Back in his time, going to the opera was a bit more laid back than it is now. People ate and talked all through the performance. They did this because they usually did not need a translation like most of us do. But the main reason they were so blase` about it all, was that Mozart was writing operas that were telling time-worn tales that the audience could relate to. This was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when wunderkind, Peter Sellars (not the actor, but the conductor) directed Don Giovanni in the early 1990s as a gang war set in Spanish Harlem. Two centuries later, the archetypal story was still the same, all that Sellars changed was the setting, proving that the opera isn’t some lofty, inscrutable enigma, but just a simple story that all mankind can understand.
So, here’s the point: We can’t escape the archetypes. Our brains are wired to see them and to live them. People were the same 400 years ago (or at any time in the past) as they are, now. Only the form has changed. Now, we have cell phones and web cams and things that primitive man would never be able to wrap his mind around — but we still have the same old dramas — they just wear different clothes.
When someone reads your cards, they look past the form and down into the content of your life. Each card offers up many, many symbols (such as in the photograph above) that the reader will regard until something sticks in her mind. It gets a little complicated, here…but stay with me.
Maybe the bud in the background of the ‘hibiscus card’ is what catches my attention. From my point of view, the reason that is the symbol that catches my attention, is because that card appears with the Tower card. The Tower depicts destruction, and my mind begins to see the story: The querant is beginning a new project, and has misjudged it’s readiness to be put into play — The Tower is warning that it could all fall apart. The project has not reached a mature enough stage to ‘blossom’ on it’s own, and if the querant continues to force the project, all the hard work will be lost.
Ok, there are no guarantees that the story I have drawn in my own mind is exactly what is going on in the querant’s life, but look below the form (the word ‘project’) and insert another form: the word ‘relationship’. You see, this is a pattern that is recognizable by all humankind. It just comes in different forms. Sometimes we want to push something that just isn’t ready. If you take the souffle` out of the oven too soon it will fall.
The best art evokes in us a feeling of belonging. What we belong to is not really that mysterious. Once the Emperor’s removes his clothes, he’s just like you and me!
