Archives: Cards

This is a propitious time to create your own designs. This is also a time also to be wary of submitting to the designs of others. "I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's." -- William Blake A conscious human being is designed to be a magician, an entity that designs, creates and transforms. According to Aleister Crowley's definition,"Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." One of my principles of Magick is that the most powerful ritual is not one inherited from tradition, but the one created spontaneously with full conscious engagement in the moment. The ritual you create today will be more individual and unique and consciously intended, more relevant and applicable to your current conditions.

"Our ideas about death define how we live our lives." -- Dag Hammarskjold The fear of death (in you or others) is a sometimes hidden, potent force affecting personality and behavior in strange and varied ways. To compensate for this fear, some will seek to control others, objects, money, the appearance of youth, etc., in vain, hollow attempts to stave off the fragility of corporeal incarnation. The fear of death can warp the perception of time, body, money, property, ambition, relationship, power and probably any other human attributes that can be named. Western culture is in denial of death and encourages us to think we can cheat it through dieting, plastic surgery, cosmetics, exercise, romantic adventures, exciting purchases, and so forth. The fear of death seems to be located in the ego, whereas the Self, aware that it did not begin at birth, perceives death as change, not annihilation. The ego may view death as an emergency, but for the Self it may be an emergence. Death is a guaranteed portal, an event horizon, an opportunity to step across the threshold. We cheat ourselves by viewing it negatively or denying its inexorable approach. Tolkien called the desire to avoid aging, "premature immortality," and in his mythology humans were considered more blessed than the elves because their corporeal incarnation had a definite time limit. I can't cheat death, nor would I want to. When I was very young, my fear of death was quite intense, but numerous out-of-body experiences caused the fear to vanish. I experienced that not only could my awareness exist outside of my body, it could also be incredibly enhanced by the separation. The view of death as possible annihilation was replaced by a deep intuition of death as an orgasmic portal. Many people brought up in a culture of fundamentalist materialism (also called "scientism") have a bleak view of death. One friend described it as, "It's just lights out and that's it." That friend seemed to pursue physical fitness as a hedge against the inevitable and inexorable approach of death. A careful study of near-death experience findings should be enough to convince an open-minded skeptic that death is an event horizon, not a pit of oblivion. The position of neurological materialism, the belief that consciousness is an epiphenomenon or secondary effect of biochemical process in the brain, is resoundingly and definitively contradicted by NDE findings. Consciousness does not reside in the brain, and electrical activity in the brain is not a prerequisite for consciousness.* (see example of NDE evidence below) The fear of death is often a function of a life not fully lived, of aliveness rejected or neglected in the present. The fear of death may be a fear of the comprehensive life review that so many near-death experiencers report, a fear of being accountable for a life not fully lived, of a life misused and of harm done to others. Some visionaries say that the soul may travel on from death, but this survival is not guaranteed. Those who have led dissolute, fragmented lives may not have enough of a center to hold together and may disintegrate at death. To paraphrase FDR, "There is nothing to fear but the fear of death itself." Depending on the position of the card, the death element may mean that you are in a phase where an aspect of your old identity may need to die and be reborn. Death means transformation. You may be experiencing some form of necessary ego death. What the ego views as emergency, for the soul may be an emergence. Then, death, so call'd, is but old matter dress'd In some new figure, and a vary'd vest: Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies; And here, and there the' unbody'd spirit flies. -- Roman poet Ovid in Metamorphoses "What you have perishes; what you are survives beyond time and space." -- Death Notice "When the clock strikes me, the powers of being will prevail over the powers that be." -- Saul Williams "On__________Jonathan Zap won his long struggle with mortality by dying." (My future epitaph)

"Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them." -- Tolstoy Subclinical depression is almost the norm in our society. Many people go through their days burdened, their gaze lowered, suffering under a generalized feeling of oppression. Although it is easy to attribute much of this to fractured, alienated lives, environmental toxins and poor diet, research indicates that the primary causes are negative thought forms, often occurring just beneath conscious awareness, which frame perception negatively so that one lives in a darkened reality tunnel. For example, "Life sucks, and then you die...I never get my fair share...I can't do anything right..." etc. The negative thought forms trigger negative emotions that in turn trigger physiological changes, and the process feeds on itself as a vicious circle. This card indicates that this is a propitious time for you or someone close to you to awaken from depression. There are many ways to go about the awakening, but the will has to be there for recovery to occur. Depression is a yin condition, associated with lowered energy and a murky wateriness. Take deep breaths, stand up straight with good posture and get going, get active, raise fire, the yang principle, by doing useful stuff! Don't feel like it? Excellent, that is the sure sign of how well getting active will work. Start simple and pick tasks that give definite results -- cleaning up your home, for example. Shift to a high vitality diet with more live and raw food. Do a fearless moral inventory and ask yourself what you will remember well on your deathbed and prioritize doing that. Depression is often suffering that is neglected and not confronted. For this reason I prefer anguish and the dark night of the soul because these are more dynamic states capable of transformation. Confront what haunts you. For specific, effective techniques for dealing with negative thoughts and feelings, see; "Dealing with Afflictive Thoughts and Feelings" in A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler

Cats and people are among the social mammals, but being part of the social matrix means submitting to social conditioning and often letting others pull your strings. But we are not merely the victims of the social matrix, we are also the perpetrators of it as well. Others may attach strings to us, and we may attach strings to others. When we do things for others in the expectation of what they will do in return for us, we may be attaching strings. When we expect people to act in particular ways that serve our purposes we may be confusing them with puppets. Consider this is a propitious time to recognize the strings that are attached to you and/or or by you in particular relationships and the social matrix in general. We need to accept that we are social mammals without being ruled by that aspect of our nature.

Excess caution can lead to stagnation. Beware an excessively cautionary ego in yourself or others that would keep you from taking risks that your deepest intuition perceives as necessary. Life needs to be risky, and physical security is always an illusion. Just as a lack of caution can be anti-life, so too can excess caution. Consider this a propitious time to take the risks you need to fully engage with life.

As we come to believe that we need the baubles of the external world to be whole and submit to social conditioning, we become stereotyped and mechanical. Seeing the mechanical nature of our conditioned personalities can be a dark night of the soul, but is the only way for the Tin Man to find his heart. Free will needs to be earned and requires the ability to break from our mechanical, habituated subpersonalities. The path of evolution is in returning to our essence after being conditioned into mechanicalness. According to the Taoist I Ching, evolution occurs on the path of "reverse alchemy," the path of "returning to the Tao." Evolution does not necessarily occur by perpetual attunement to the Tao. Daisies, spiders and viruses live perfectly attuned to the Tao, never deviate from it, but don't have the potential for individual evolution that human beings possess. We are born in touch with our essence, but relentless programs of conditioning work to separate us from our original essence. However, if we are able to travel the difficult path of reverse alchemy, undo the many layers of conditioning and restore our original essence, then we will be evolved. Consider this a propitious time to follow the path of reverse alchemy and help the Tin Man get back his heart. For more on the mechanical nature of humanity, and how to overcome it, read The Fourth Way and/or In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky.

"Our ideas about death define how we live our lives." -- Dag Hammarskjold The fear of death (in you or others) is a sometimes hidden, potent force affecting personality and behavior in strange and varied ways. To compensate for this fear, some will seek to control others, objects, money, the appearance of youth, etc., in vain, hollow attempts to stave off the fragility of corporeal incarnation. The fear of death can warp the perception of time, body, money, property, ambition, relationship, power and probably any other human attributes that can be named. Western culture is in denial of death and encourages us to think we can cheat it through dieting, plastic surgery, cosmetics, exercise, romantic adventures, exciting purchases, and so forth. The fear of death seems to be located in the ego, whereas the Self, aware that it did not begin at birth, perceives death as change, not annihilation. The ego may view death as an emergency, but for the Self it may be an emergence. Death is a guaranteed portal, an event horizon, an opportunity to step across the threshold. We cheat ourselves by viewing it negatively or denying its inexorable approach. Tolkien called the desire to avoid aging, "premature immortality," and in his mythology humans were considered more blessed than the elves because their corporeal incarnation had a definite time limit. I can't cheat death, nor would I want to. When I was very young, my fear of death was quite intense, but numerous out-of-body experiences caused the fear to vanish. I experienced that not only could my awareness exist outside of my body, it could also be incredibly enhanced by the separation. The view of death as possible annihilation was replaced by a deep intuition of death as an orgasmic portal. Many people brought up in a culture of fundamentalist materialism (also called "scientism") have a bleak view of death. One friend described it as, "It's just lights out and that's it." That friend seemed to pursue physical fitness as a hedge against the inevitable and inexorable approach of death. A careful study of near-death experience findings should be enough to convince an open-minded skeptic that death is an event horizon, not a pit of oblivion. The position of neurological materialism, the belief that consciousness is an epiphenomenon or secondary effect of biochemical process in the brain, is resoundingly and definitively contradicted by NDE findings. Consciousness does not reside in the brain, and electrical activity in the brain is not a prerequisite for consciousness.* (see example of NDE evidence below) The fear of death is often a function of a life not fully lived, of aliveness rejected or neglected in the present. The fear of death may be a fear of the comprehensive life review that so many near-death experiencers report, a fear of being accountable for a life not fully lived, of a life misused and of harm done to others. Some visionaries say that the soul may travel on from death, but this survival is not guaranteed. Those who have led dissolute, fragmented lives may not have enough of a center to hold together and may disintegrate at death. To paraphrase FDR, "There is nothing to fear but the fear of death itself." Depending on the position of the card, the death element may mean that you are in a phase where an aspect of your old identity may need to die and be reborn. Death means transformation. You may be experiencing some form of necessary ego death. What the ego views as emergency, for the soul may be an emergence. Then, death, so call'd, is but old matter dress'd In some new figure, and a vary'd vest: Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies; And here, and there the' unbody'd spirit flies. -- Roman poet Ovid in Metamorphoses "What you have perishes; what you are survives beyond time and space." -- Death Notice "When the clock strikes me, the powers of being will prevail over the powers that be." -- Saul Williams "On__________Jonathan Zap won his long struggle with mortality by dying." (My future epitaph)

It is easy to fall into power games and struggles for dominance. Many species are hierarchical with alpha and omega positions and competition for status. Where love is present the power principle recedes. Where love is absent the power principle ascends. This is a propitious time to recognize and work on the ever-shifting ratio of these two competing principles. Elements of power and dominance games color almost all relationships. But this does not mean that love and compassion are not also present. Relationships are complex; all sorts of forces compete for ascendancy, and the power principle wins out more than most people realize. It is beyond the scope of an oracle card to even glance at the myriad variety of human power struggles. When people used to talk about psychoanalysis, they would mention three giant figures -- Freud, Jung and the one you hear the least about these days -- Alfred Adler. Adler's theory of personality and his whole school of psychology were based on the human will to power. Human beings are not equal in their attributes and control over resources. There can be huge disparities amongst people in key aspects such as size, strength, beauty, intelligence, talent, wealth, status, access to sexual partners, etc. People are frequently comparing their ranking in many of these aspects to others, usually people of their own gender. If we compare ourselves to others, feelings of inferiority are inevitable because there are always going to people who outrank us in particular attributes. Feelings of inferiority, as Adler observed, can paradoxically turn into a "superiority complex" where an insecure person attempts to display superiority and dominance over others to compensate for feelings of inferiority. If we take a penetrating look at our relationships, we will probably discover many ways that we compare ourselves to others, and attempt to elevate our status by subtly and unsubtly competing with those who arouse our power complexes. If we are able to develop ourselves enough that we do not compare and compete very much, that will arouse the uneasy envy of those who still do, setting up yet another type of power struggle. Even people who seem very superficial will often unconsciously pick up on the core level of development of another. If you are more developed, it may be perceived as a challenge to their level of personality, and they will seek to test you, to throw you off your high horse, etc. If they can cause you to lose your center, then they can feel satisfied that you are not really more developed, and that relieves them of the anxiety that they need to develop more. From the I Ching point of view, when someone is coming toward you with power games, you lovingly withdraw your energy from them. You come forward again when they are more modest and sincere. There are some cases, however, where you may need to stand up to a bully and withdrawal might not be effective. Power dynamics are complex, and no formula can tell you how to handle all of them. Consider this a propitious time to see how you are influenced by power games, the ones that others bring to you, and the ones that you may sometimes bring to others.

According to mainstream biology parasites out number all other types of species four or five to one. All organisms contain parasites, and most of those parasites have parasites of their own. What is feeding on your energy? On what energies do you feed? Parasites may be microbial, governmental, interpersonal, intrapsychic. We cannot assume that we are not parasites since we are part of a mega-parasite species that feeds off of much of the life on this planet. This is a propitious time to recognize parasitism in your life.

Many people interpret their lives as meaningless and random. If we look closer we may find meaningful patterns where superficial observation saw only randomness. This card draws your attention to the possibility of the outer world paralleling the inner world of psyche in ways that cannot be explained in terms of cause and effect. Jung called such acausal connections "synchronicities." In the past these parallelisms were often called "portents" or "omens," and in many cases people projected too much into them. Modern fundamentalist materialists assume they are "coincidences" if they notice them at all. The Taoists saw the paralleling of inner and outer as inevitable and worthy of alert observation. The parallelism of inner and outer is also reflected in the alchemical motto, "As above, so below." If this oracle is working, your reading should be an example of an object in the physical world (your monitor) paralleling the inner world of your psyche.

We all have our blind spots, the areas of perception to which we do not pay attention. This is a propitious time to listen to that which we have not been listening, to see what we would not see, to feel and accept what we were in denial of. When other people are not receptive, however, we should not try to change them and intervene. Instead, we should lovingly withdraw our energy, clinging in our hearts to the image of their highest potential. As Aleister Crowley pointed out, "If I tell a man something he is not ready to hear, it is the same as if I told him a lie." Expand what you can perceive, but don't cast your pearls before the willfully unperceptive.

"I Stood Upon a High Place" I stood upon a high place, And saw, below, many devils Running, leaping, and carousing in sin. One looked up, grinning, And said, "Comrade! Brother!" -- Stephen Crane (1871-1900) There is no such thing in nature as an H-Bomb, that is all man's doing. We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger. -- C.G. Jung Be aware of the darker side of your self and of life and know what it is saying to you. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Everything has a shadow side. If you don't see the shadow of a person, you don't see the person and are blinded by idealization. If you don't see your own shadow, you are in denial, and will project your shadow onto others. We all have a side of ourselves we consider dark. Our shadow may include appetites, lust for power, manipulative agendas, chaotic emotions and sub-personalities, addictions, and so forth. The more we deny the shadow, the more it weighs us down. But if we embrace its reality, learn how it works, and then integrate it into our awareness so that it cannot rule us, we become enlightened. We become wiser and more empathic for having a shadow and discover that there are hidden treasures in the dark continents of the unconscious. If we are at war with our shadow, then it dominates us. We project it onto individuals and groups, and act out our inferior side. If we are unable to accept our shadow, we become hungry ghosts, forever seeking outside recognitions to compensate for the doubts that gnaw at us. When we recognize and accept our imperfections they strengthen us, and we become more nourishing and attractive to others. All people have a shadow, but only the strongest are able to integrate their shadows with acceptance and love. Summoning the intense moral courage to accept your shadow is an ongoing process that creates healing for yourself, those close to you, and the entire world.

Be true to your essence — that which created your DNA and incarnation circumstances - and allow others to be true to theirs. According to the Taoist I Ching, evolution occurs on the path of "reverse alchemy," the path of "returning to the Tao." Evolution does not necessarily occur by perpetual attunement to the Tao. Daisies, spiders and viruses live perfectly attuned to the Tao, never deviate from it, but don't have the potential for individual evolution that human beings possess. We are born in touch with our essence, but relentless programs of conditioning work to separate us from our original essence. However, if we are able to travel the difficult path of reverse alchemy, undo the many layers of conditioning and restore our original essence,then we will be evolved. We've been conditioned to think human beings are a product of two factors: genetics and environment. But there is a third gigantic factor, essence, which cannot be reduced to either genetics or environment. Essence is an innate unconditioned aspect of an individual, a set of qualities that accompanies the individual into incarnation. This set of qualities may often be suppressed or distorted by acquired conditioning, but essence will find moments when it can shine through, and if it is strong enough it can emerge even in unfavorable circumstances like a flower blossoming from a crack in the sidewalk. Essence finds ways to reveal itself. Parents often unconsciously suppress essence because they superimpose on a child their own expectations and desires of what the child should be. Prospective parents need to realize that they are spinning the wheel of fate and no one can say who will step through the portal they help to open. Loving parents are open to the discovery of a child's essence, which might be fantastically different than anything they may have hoped for or expected. Depending on the position and context in which this card is drawn, you may need to be more open and alert to the essence of others and/or to your own essence. One way that essence may reveal itself is through enthusiasm and aptitude toward particular aspects of creativity, physical movement, human relations, self-awareness, etc.

Is there something you see as more powerful than yourself which you worship? The Sanskrit definition of God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You are at the center of the circle, and so is everything else. If you worship an external savior and therefore place yourself as outside the circle of the divine looking in, then you betray your soul and descend into fundamentalist madness. In the recently discovered gnostic Gospel of Thomas Jesus says: "He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him." The Gnostics understood the need to discover divinity from within, rather than from without. If you worship an outer text, savior, object of romantic infatuation, nation state, church, or matrix, then you empower Anti-Christ energy. Power may be given away to an idea, an ideology, a fundamentalism (religious or secular), a movement, an addiction, an exciting, dangerous activity and so forth. There are myriad things that people give their power away to. You automatically disempower yourself when you inflate another person into a God and this can happen with romantic infatuation, guru worship, fundamentalist mythologizing and other relationships that have an unhealthy asymmetry of power. What is the motive that causes so many people to give their power away to a force that wants to dominate them? I speculate about that in my essay on the financial meltdown Foxes and Reptiles -- Psychopathy and the Financial Meltdown of 2008-9, "I have a theory of the often astonishing appeal of psychopaths, cult leaders, super salesmen and demagogues of various sorts that uses magnetism as analog. Most people are highly fragmented and oppressed by what psychologists call "psychic entropy" -- the anxious tape loops and other distracted thoughts and fantasies that crowd their attentional space. When a person of single-minded focus and confidence appears it is analogous to placing a powerful magnet below a sheet of paper on which there is a scattering of iron filings. The magnet immediately organizes the scattered filings into a coherent pattern that reflects its magnetic field. The scattered personality feels an immense relief to be structured in this way from the outside and craves further contact and submission to the magnetic personality that can produce this effect which relieves them of their default state of psychic entropy." People may be similarly motivated when they give their power away to a fundamentalist religion, a new diet or financial scheme, a motivational speaker and many other forces and persons. They want something that will structure them from the outside in. To whom or to what do you give away your power? Consider this is a propitious time to reclaim it.

Change is our only constant. Something in you and/or the outer situation has to change. Go with the flow of transformation, don't resist it by clinging to the obsolescent structures of the past. Life is change, you must keep moving, changing, adapting, transforming. Woody Allen, in his classic film, Annie Hall, said: "A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." Your relationship with life, the Tao, must be like a live shark, constant forward movement or else stagnation and death. Embrace the need for continual transformation. Many forces within and without resist change. For those willing to read more, in "Dealing with Shock," the last section of A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler, discusses a philosophy of shock: ...all organisms are conservative. They dial in an equilibrium, what biologists call homeostasis, and they seek to maintain it. This is a crucial life function, because organisms are generally complex, fragile processes, that require relatively narrow parameters of environmental conditions — such as oxygen levels, temperatures, food sources — and, inevitably, the environments in which they occur have destabilizing, chaotic elements that frequently threaten them with death or even extinction. Organisms work indefatigably to try to dial in their niche, to maintain the homeostasis that keeps them going. You don't want your liver enzymes, heart rate or blood sugar to fluctuate wildly -- that would threaten your survival. You want them dialed in, rolling along on an even keel. The human psyche is an organism, the most complex we know of, and complexity often means fragility. What both Freud and Jung recognized, what anybody looking around himself  should recognize, is that the human psyche is also highly conservative. Contra Naturum Development Conservatism can be good for homeostasis, but can also, if it is excessive, put a ceiling on development and evolution. To evolve means to change, and we don't always want to change. Two fairly conscious and compassionate I met recently told me at different times, and without mincing words, "I don't like change." I told them that I could sympathize because change is usually precipitated by shock, often unpleasant shock. But to dislike change is to create inevitable suffering because change is the only constant we have. "It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction." -- Abraham Lincoln, in an address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in 1859 But when we inwardly resist the passing, the change,  we are more likely to interpret it as an outward shock acting as fate. The conservative tendency is so strong that many will resist change even if they are in a bad situation that is attempting to get better. You may remember the Morgan Freeman character in Shawshank Redemption who is unable to adjust to life as a free man and wants to get locked in at night. I'm also reminded of a newspaper photo I once saw of a young girl who had been horribly abused by her mother who had broken many of her bones. The photo was of a court hearing and shows the little girl being led away by some kindly looking matron while she is screaming to be reconnected with her mother. Better the devil we know, than a devil, or even an angel, that we don't. The average person tends to tread water, seeks to maintain status quo, homeostasis, and will change inwardly only in response to drastic outside shock. When shocks occur the average person take no responsibility for them (especially if they are negative shocks), believing instead that he is the victim   of "bad luck" or forces beyond control. This may be especially  true, of course, when the shock is a macro-geophysical or nation-state effect like a flood, earthquake or war. Shocks, it should be pointed out, can be "good" or "bad." Winning the lottery or suddenly falling in love is a shock just as much as a car accident or economic crash. Shock just means the equilibrium has experienced a perturbation or disturbance — a sudden disequilibrium. Don Juan said (I'm paraphrasing), that for the average man everything is either a blessing or a curse, but for the warrior everything is a challenge and a learning experience. The psychic inertia that resists change is so strong that Jung described the path of individuation, or unique individual development, as "contra naturum" — contrary to or against nature. Gurdjieff, who so eloquently described man's mechanical nature, called the change to unmechanicalness "against God." Their point was that to generate your own internal change meant pushing against such vast inner and outer inertial force that it was as if you had a whole universe resisting you. Often it is us, our own neurotic homeostasis and passivity, our false ego, that provides the resistance. And as Jung said, "Man's greatest passion isn't sex, love, money or power — it's laziness." So shock can be like a divine gift, a catalyst for evolutionary change. After all, if it wasn't for shock in the form of a giant asteroid hitting the earth sixty-five million years ago and flattening everything larger than a chicken there might be a velociraptor strolling through tropical foliage instead of you sitting there reading this over the internet. Our incarnation began with birth shock and  ends with a shock too. Shock is our often unwelcome and constant, if unpredictable, companion. If shock seems relevant to your change process, go to A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler and read the complete section "Dealing with Shock." Consider this a propitious time to flow with the cycle of life and accept change with agility and good grace.