Unforeseen obstacles, details or seemingly insignificant side notes have positioned themselves in the path and scattered thoughts, plans and energy, as a mislaid brick will trip an overburdened person, sending carefully balanced items flying from out flung arms. There is no one to blame, and the scattered pieces can be gathered and repaired, but energy and focus are lost in the process. The challenge is to bring focus back to the task, by assessing the situation quickly, so as not to lose momentum. Solutions rather than blame should be sought. The plan is viable, but needs calm, thoughtful action and clear vision to proceed.
There is a need for a change of perspective in order to perceive the real barriers to progress and separate them from the illusory obstacles created by fears and repetitious behaviors that keep you from moving forward. You can’t see the path unless you can truly open your eyes and realize what is blinding you.
You are uncertain how to proceed in a project due to trying to account for all the possible problems far down the road. Better to begin knowing the immediate problems and move closer to what awaits you, so have a better point of view for problem solving.
The clear pane of your mind has been shattered and scattered by distraction. Your work lacks focus or you have started too many projects, and your mental resources are diluted. You may need to organize, prioritize, delegate and consolidate your work in order to manage things with more clarity and intentional purpose.
You are besieged by imaginary fears and a feeling of powerlessness brought on by inability to filter information and need to simplify your noisy life in order to escape from a self-imposed prison of indecision and open your eyes to real problems hidden in the chaos.
You believe you are tucked away in a comfortable place, well protected and safe, but, as it is in most situations, security is an illusion that keeps you from exploring and experiencing your life. It is time to come out of your chrysalis and spread your wings.
Peace and stability gained through personal strife. You have known you were right all along, and you have been vindicated. The dust of the melee has cleared, and your adversaries lie in heap at your feet.
Counting Coup
To demonstrate acts of courage against an enemy to gain a moral victory, inspiring others to take up the challenge against even overwhelming odds.
Wrestling with demons, you have overcome them, and fangs removed and declawed they have no power over you now.
You have or will have triumphed over addictions or weakness of some kind to become the master of your fate.
This card is also a reminder that in our victories, as in our burgeoning ever progressing technological advances, there is the need to avoid hubris. With great energy and success come responsibilities. There is a price to every victory.
The terrible, cold, cruel part [of New York] is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills this street believes that the world will always be the same, and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever…
Harmony of all elements meeting in one being at one time. All things are possible if this moment is seized and fully utilized.
Sometimes you must focus on gain in order to provide enough material goods to survive during times in which you are engaged in more fulfilling work. When gain becomes your only measure of worth then you have stolen from yourself and all those you come into contact with for you are taking without returning sustenance to the system that nurtures you. You are gaining only material and all the hoarding of such treasures makes an empty prison of a full house.
Playing the game only for material reasons, all proceeds as planned for you. You get what you wanted. On its own the card represents winning whatever game you are playing or acquisition of abundance through focus and good fortune or denotes the process of acquisition that will successfully lead to personal abundance or the material goals.
Wheel of Changes Interpretation
Look below the surface at the structure of your life at the layers and background that support that structure. There may be ways in which you can influence these supporting pieces to create a more harmonious and cohesive system.
This is a time to feel the pain of being human. In order to be fully alive, you must have contact with grief and loss otherwise you only skim the surface with no commitment to the depth of experience that binds us to others and brings us to a compassionate understanding of what it is to be engaged and truly alive. It is so easy to allow yourself to be numb to pain and push it away, but when you are numb, you have lost the capacity for joy and connection with the world. You live a shallow existence cut off from deep experience.
Joy And Sorrow Chapter Viii
Then a woman said, “Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.”
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
To become aware of the power of belonging to a collaborative and cooperative community that radiates ripples of inspiration and creativity energizing people to grow and expand in ways that feed each other. Adding your singular light to a gathering wave of enlightenment. Leading by a compassionate example.
That which you are was never born and will never die; that is the insight rendered in terms of the solar mystery, the solar light.
–Joseph Campbell, “Thou Art That”
An astronomical question. What would happen if God leaned down and gave you a full wet kiss? Hafiz doesn’t mind answering astronomical questions like that. You would surely start reciting all day, inebriated, rogue-poems like this.
-Hafiz
This is a time to examine and celebrate what is uniquely you and turn your life toward projects that reflect that as well as the uniquely individual nature of each person in your life and on earth as well as the commonality of the life’s journey through days and nights as seasons change around us.
by Subhash Vyam from “Water”
The Sun provides, with the help of the earth’s minerals and life forms, all our needs leading to to the symbol of collaboration and inspiration to create life and art and community. Nothing is done unsupported by a host of contributors. The independent being is a myth and the cause of so much destructive force in the world.
Love and Mystery Tarot by Yoshitaka Amano
Star Hole
I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star, watching light
pour itself toward
me.
Vincent Van Gogh
by Subhash Vyam from “Water”
Love and Mystery Tarot by Yoshitaka Amano
Myriad Ways 