Tarot: The Fool's Journey on the Road To Recovery
Recently, I've been making my way through a tarot certification course. I'm a big fan of divination and I love using the tarot as my tool of choice. The first lesson we made our way through was the Major Arcana, for obvious reasons, and a big part of the session homework was to form a personal bond between the majors of the Rider Waite to my own life.
Everyone has taken The Fool's Journey at one time or another. It's a rich metaphor for the process of doing something new and manifesting an outcome. Considering the story of The Fool, I found myself drawing obvious parallels to my own life. In particular, my personal ordeal of addiction and suicide which dovetailed perfectly into the tarot's story of adventure, death, and rebirth. It's been some time since I've taken some time reflect on what I did and how my life has changed since that time and reliving that time as I write it has been seriously unpleasant. But at the same time, the perspective I've gained from it has helped me out enormously. So without further ado: The Major Arcana as a story of recovery.
The Fool
Me. Stripped of all pretense. My belongings in a paper bag behind the nurseās station of the York Hospital emergency room and at this moment, the only things that Iām certain are mine. Visitors keep telling me that I have a long road ahead of me but that I can make the journey. My mom says that Iām on the heroās journey. I know nothing about my future nor do I feel like a hero. Am I still married? Do my kids know what happened to me? Do I still have a job? The difference between The Fool and I right now is that I know what I want. I want my life back. The similarity is that I have no idea how to get there or if I can get there. The only way to know is to step off the cliff.
The Magician
Iāve been in the psychiatric hospital for two days and Iāve had a meeting with the psychologist who hears my story and makes a BUNCH of notes. Iām in a communal unit with a dozen heroin and meth addicts. They give me a lot of advice. The doctor prescribed medication. We have a meeting the following day and I get my diagnosis and her recommendation for treatment. Iām ordered to attend NA and AA meetings among other things. All of this culminates in enlightenment. I am a mentally ill drug addict BUT! I have the tools and the understanding to focus my will and make the changes in me that will ultimately strengthen my spirit. When Iām discharged, I resolve to dedicate myself to studying the occult.
The High Priestess
My wife and I went through a rapid series of deeply emotional states. I hate you/I love you. Boaz, the pillar of severity, shifting to Jachin, the pillar of mercy. Standing between them was the key to the temple and the wisdom that would lead to my ultimate salvation. My wife, with her holy law. If this was going to work, I was going to have to take everything seriously and never slip. Solomonās Temple was home to the Ark of the Covenant, The Hebrew Peopleās sacred pact. My wife was holding court over the house of our own sacred pact. There was a lot of deep, emotional work for us to do together, a lot of unspoken words that were important but still needed to be found. All the feelings lurking beneath the surface had to be dragged up.
The Empress
Hereās the thing. It wasnāt all gloom and doom and firm ultimatums. I had come back from the brink. It was not a cry for help. It was four pounds of pressure on a five pound trigger and everyone in the know knew this. I was lost. So to come back from this brought out a bounty of love and support from everyone around me. My kids had no idea but they noticed a positive change. They werenāt afraid of me anymore and were coming around, new love was growing and I was sparing no opportunity to take it in. A new love had blossomed. There were big time trust issues, for sure, but this rebirth had pulled our relationship up out of the dirt where we could both drink deep of it.
The Emperor
As soon as I was out of the hospital, I was able to see the lay of the land and my life was in disarray. Being an erratic, paranoid junkie had resulted in me losing my job. Who'd have thunk it? My marriage was in a weird place. Ups and downs. Waves of loving with wild abandon, countered by the insecurities that come with broken trust. It was tough going and I needed to restore order to my life. If I was going to come out of this intact, I needed to take the bull by the horns, assume responsibility and enforce a healthy order of living. I needed a fiery spirit and strong resolve and so I started demonstrating my intention to come back to life by taking my medication, living healthy, and going to meetings.
The Hierophant
While in the hospital, I had contacted a therapist. She was a woman very much after my own heart. A free spirit, an advocate for justice, and a compassionate human being that would teach me how to come to terms with what Iād done, how to get back to where I wanted to be, and what things lurked in my past that influenced the road to ruin. I was initiated in the ways of recovery and we made a plan together that still needs to fully blossom. I'm capable of learning on my own but I do best when I have a teacher.
The Lovers
Things are happening quickly. Iām facing new challenges. I find that something had broken permanently in me at some point and revisiting certain places significant to my breakdown, the place where I sat and drank while loading the gun, a place that I pass many times in my regular travels, triggers an extremely unpleasant anxiety attack. An obsession with my guilt and the overwhelming feelings of self hate follow me everywhere. But Iām not alone in this struggle. My wife helps me. She calms me. We combine forces and face the beast together. Together we learn where we went wrong and together we face the challenge as a united front. At some point there was a break in our marriage and we weren't working together as we should be, but we had hit rock bottom and had chosen to come together and fix what was broken.
The Chariot
It was time to put plans into action. Wild forces pulled me in different directions but I had firm control of them now. I knew their names. I knew where I was going and what needed to be done to get there. I had learned to narrow my focus. I needed not only to get back on my feet, psychologically, but I also needed a new job. Sitting around the house waiting for lightning to strike was getting me nowhere, even though it was nice to have some real time off the first time I don't know how long. I had sigils. I was forming relationships with gods and goddesses that could help me. Now it was time to point the wand and actually get to work.
Strength
I had discovered a monster in my past. It was a boogeyman that stalked me since I was a child. The hate I felt for this monster was more potent than anything Iād ever felt before and I wanted to smash it to pieces. I wanted to go out of my way to ruin every shred of it in the real world and salt every inch of ground that it ever walked on. But in the end, what I needed was to make peace with it. Killing it was not in the cards. It just wasn't possible to do anything more to it that time hadn't done already. Thereās still a lot of work to be done there but the violence has subsided. This monster no longer has the teeth and claws that it once had by simply facing the fear and coming to terms with the reality of the situation.
The Hermit
I was surrounded by support and resources but at the heart of this matter was something so personal that it had to be faced alone. At this point in my journey, I'm many months out from my hospital discharge. I've been doing the work and taking the steps but I was repeatedly faced with situations which required me to rely on my own experience and put theory into practice. I wasn't in the safe, protective space of the psych hospital anymore. I couldn't hide at home or at work. I had fully embraced Chaos Magic, which eventually gave way to formal study in Hermetics and the balancing act of this new philosophy, which I studied solo, gave me a new light to shine on my life and reveal a sane and healthy path which was broader than I had imagined.
The Wheel of Fortune
Getting back on my feet professionally and financially was key. I had been begrudgingly provided with a small severance package from my last job but time on that was running out and I needed to get back to work. I would eventually set up a small shrine to the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. I'd perform adorations before it, leaving offerings of shiny coins and sweet incense. I learned a mudra associated with Lakshmi and almost immediately I was beset with new opportunities for work. For the first time in my life, I had to choose between job offers and I ended up choosing one that was actually fulfilling and wonderful.
Justice
The time has come to work all the way back to the point that put me on this past. Now, a 42 year old man. Then, a 3 year old boy. I had been working with my therapist to draw a complete through-line from point a to point b and see how point a influenced every decision I had ever made on the way to point b. I had to consider the effect of my own life as well as the lives of those closest to me. My scales were out of balance and and facing the beast on the Strength card head on, using the sword to cut through the bullshit allowed me to lose the monster that weighed the scales to one side and restore balance. I was also learning to make amends by way of the Narcotics Anonymous 9th step, making amends and accepting responsibility for the damage I'd done.
The Hanged Man
My world had been turned upside down and I'd been learning the lessons about how to right the ship. Facing the beast in Strength and Justice had done much to even me out but there was a problem at the core that still needed (and still needs) addressing. Where many people cling to the devices that they feel give them control in their lives, to a fault, I am the opposite. Content to drift aimlessly in the waters of Briah. Assuming control and responsibility for my own actions is something that I've often refused to do, like a child. But the lesson is directly in front of me. Get down off the cross, be an adult, even with the smallest gesture, and the character of my own life will shift dramatically. But now that I know, now that I've sacrificed so much to find this kernel of wisdom, will I reach out and take it?
Death
I do reach out and take it and as a result, the old me has died. I'd be lying if I said that I had fully transformed because does anyone ever truly manifest in the final card of the Majors? Not me, at least. I'm still doing the work to reach that final level but one thing is for certain: That old phase of my life where I snuck around, a junkie getting high in the garage, sinking my money into bitcoin schemes to fund my habit, and selfishly walking away from my family. That shit is over. That man is dead. Completely. It was a painful, brutal process and letting him die hurt like you wouldn't believe but I'm glad that he's dead. He was not who I am. There's also something to be said here in the symbolic action of putting a gun to my own head and pressing the trigger. I sat in my idling car on a lonely road York, Maine, a Glock 19 pressed against my temple having resolved to unceremoniously end my life. I'm still trying to work out what happened to me that night because I pressed the trigger. And yet here I am. A new man, reborn. If ever there was a living representation of the Death card, I am it.
Temperance
So after that bout of darkness, here I am. I've bounced wildly back and forth between the pillars of severity and mercy, experiencing wild shifts in mood and position. I've made a plan and put it into action. Now it's time to ride the middle pillar, the pillar of mildness. The unpredictability of sanity, health and romance have finally leveled and together, my wife and I focus on strengthening our bond rather than questioning motives and sincerity. If you think about the word Temperance, Carrie Nation and The Temperance Movement come to mind, with groups of women smashing up saloons with axes. I'm certainly following that road, not using or drinking but to temper something is to add elements to it that make it stronger. Solve et Coagula. You separate the elements, explore them, experiment with them, understand how they work, and then recombine them in a way that turns lead into gold. Temperance is all about alchemy and I am alchemically studying my life in a granular way in order to put it back together in a way that is stronger than before.
The Devil
I've often felt that The Devil is unjustly maligned and that there's nothing wrong with reveling in the earthly and letting loose in order to experience what it really means to be human. We're cosmic fire living in a shell of skin and bone but that shell can still take pleasure from the world around it without having to constantly regard its spirit. Unfortunately, for me, I let that reveling turn into addiction and slavery. But as it turns out, it was actually pretty easy to walk away from the chains. The chains still aren't fully off. I don't feel the obsession to use like I used to. It doesn't haunt me in dreams like it did but I've replaced that vice with others, unhealthy eating, for starters. I still have work to do in this respect.
The Tower
If Death was the turning point for me, the moment that I'd been found out and my entire scheme, the one that I knew would one day come crumbling down, was my Tower moment. Backed into a corner. Confronted with questions about what I'd been up to for the last year. Evidence that made it impossible for me to lie like I'd been doing. The Tower was a fragile building of lies and deceit and the truth that tore it all down was the lightning bolt that struck it. I fell hard. But this had to happen and everything that I'd built up around me to speed up my death wish had come down and the hard lesson learned once the smoke had cleared put me back on the right path.
The Star
We're sort of moving backwards in time here but no one on the recovery path ever does it one go. You go out. You come back. You go out again. You tread the ground again and ageain. Death sparks the beginning of a new cycle but I'm still carrying the karmic weight of the previous life and have to make the moves that shake that weight off so that I can truly start anew. The Tower made this happen and now, without the pretense of my previous life, stripped bare and fully exposed, I can be at peace and see my path clearly. I've done the work to see myself not as a paranoid monster that only brings destruction and deceit into the lives of others now I'm in the position to see myself as Aleister Crowley saw all people: Every man and woman is a star, and I actually have a light of my own that can shine to light my path and bring light to the lives of others. This was the moment that I'd resolved to be a healer.
The Moon
To truly rise to the occasion, I was going to have to pass through The Sphinx. Someone had placed a stone in me so black and heavy that it sunk to the lowest depths of my personality and it would remain there unseen for as long as I hadn't had my Death/Tower/Star moments. I needed the light of The Star to guide me to those depths, depths I'm still exploring to see what sort of actions could put a man on a path that deliberately led to his actual physical death. Each decision worked back to another and another. I could see the decision tree and how it led to that one singularity point in my childhood where everything broke. I allowed myself to be hypnotized and brought back to that point so that I could see it with my own eyes and drag it out, kicking and screaming, into the light. The night was certainly dark but I had the light of the moon to show me the path inside.
The Sun
The beast, not exactly slain, but defanged was left to roam in the forest of my unconscious without the weapons it had been using the hurt me all these years. The dark night of the soul was indeed dark, but the sun also rises and without that black stone in me to pull me down, I was renewed and energized. There was light in my life. Energy. I was ready to plant new seeds and foster new parts of my life and personality without fear or apprehension. The old wounds were now just fading scars. They'll always be there and I'll see them from time to time but I won't be as beholden to them as I once was because I'm no longer looking back. I'm looking ahead.
Judgement
For a long time I lived under the heavy weight of guilt and shame. For obvious reasons, I haven't gone into detail about how my life ended up the way that it did and you can probably pick out a few of those obscured details here and there but the truth is, there's way more to it than I've let on and the sort of damage that it did would have ruined lives and marriages in any other circumstance. But the people around me and the person that I am turned out to be reborn as rock-solid people of divine strength. I was called to atone for my sins and I'm still doing the work and paying the bill. But my family and I were given the opportunity to rise up from the ashes and face the new day as new people. We'd forgiven each other and forgiven ourselves. I still have some forgiveness to do but let me table that for a second and go back to Death.
I said that I pulled the trigger, and I'm still not 100% certain that I didn't. Something inside of me has been calling to me, periodically reaching out, since I was a teenager and I've become fairly certain whatever that thing is, it pulled me back from the edge and put me on this path. As if it had had enough of my shit and took control at a critical moment. That's the angel on that card. The Golden Dawn's Holy Guardian Angel. The higher self calling to the lower. I've been called and I hope that I'm doing all this right.
The World
The World is a card that I have a hard time with. Lingering guilt and low self-esteem dogs me even after having taken this trip. Do I deserve this redemption? Am I worthy of the love and forgiveness that I've received? Will anyone ever truly trust me ever again? I mean truly trust me. Have I actually reached this point in the journey or am I still stuck back on Judgement? Whats more, philosophically speaking, is anyone truly ever whole in the full scope of this meaning? In the Golden Dawn tradition of magic, there's a series of initiatory grades that are off-limits to the living. On the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the top-most three Sephiroth exist across an abyss which the living soul can never enter.
The World is round, though. It turns through space on a 24-hour cycle. The sun sets, the sun rises. So are we ever actually finished with our jouney or journeys or do we make the trip several times over, learning new things every time, drawing nearer to Kether with each trip? A man in my Narcotics Anonymous home group has several years of clean time behind him and has worked the full twelve steps and yet he recently found himself a sponsor and is working the steps for a second time.
Just having had written this I've learned even more about myself and my journey and like my friend from NA, my journey may never be over in the way that I want it to but every time I go back over it and start from Fool to World, I learn new things about myself and the man that I've become and am becoming.
This journey through the trumps again has been painful and has reminded me of the worst thing I've ever done in my life to the best people on earth but at the same time, the introspection, as applied to The Tarot, has turned lead into gold.