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| Ithuriel's Spears, Lupine, Poppies |
Rain out of nowhere smacked the windshield. After I switched from low beams to brights, the drops seemed to shoot out from an invisible shower nozzel floating about five feet above my improperly angled left headlight. No matter how fast I sped down the rural highway--sixty, seventy, eighty--the nozzel remained suspended in front of my car. All the while I could also see myriad drops exploding on the asphalt, the black orchards sliding into shadows of vineyards or voids of pastureland.
Suddenly I glimpsed in the headlights a bullfrog that resembled a malformed infant crawling across the wet pavement, its right foreleg stretching out to drag the rest of its bulky form directly into the path of my car. I swerved a little to the right; I will never know whether or not my car crushed it, whether or not other tires would soon be smashing it into a ratty, quickly graying mush.
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| Path 11 |
Desiring control of the cosmic energies within myself, I recently, for three days in a row, had implored Thoth, Isis, and Osiris to look favorably upon my longing to live in my higher self, and finally in the middle of the night, I had awakened. After an hour of painfully mulling over in my mind all of my points of vulnerability, I suddenly realized that I had to peer beyond appearances to the divine spark, the part of myself that recognizes the divinity within all things. The next day, the idea of "the divine spark" resonated in whatever I was doing. Even when I was washing dishes or taking out the trash, I sensed a divine intelligence permeating everything. During my next ritual, I envisioned an invisible sun that I immediately associated with Osiris and the crown chakra, Osiris torn into pieces and restored by Isis and Thoth, Osiris slain and risen into the higher life, a spiritual sun. I was surprised by joy and peace as if Osiris had somehow reached into the physical plane and touched my soul.
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| Path 12 |
Rays of water kept shooting out from the invisible shower nozzel above my car, and as I swerved again to avoid smashing another lump on the road, I realized that just as the hearts of many people do not resonate with the beauty of nature, or with the concepts of truth and justice or with music or poetry or paintings, their hearts would not resonate with the concept of the higher self. In fact, I would be even more separated from the herd because of my desire to live in the higher self and even more vulnerable because of the ferocity of the group mind, which had the uncanny ability to identify and villify anyone who is different, like the aliens in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
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| Three of Cups: Mercury in Cancer |
I shuddered as I gazed at the rays of water; if it hadn't been for my intuition that something terrible might happen that night, I wouldn't have slept in a locked room, and my wife would have found me the next day, a lifeless, bloody lump on the couch. What kind of guilt, I wondered angrily, would my wife feel now if I died in suspicious circumstances?
Suddenly I felt the car wobble a little. God, not now in this rain, I thought, as I pulled over next to an orchard. I flicked the hood of my jacket over my head, grabbed a flashlight from the trunk, and inspected the tire. The head of a nail glinted in a vulnerable slit between the treads. Slow leak. At that instant, a white Ford pickup truck flew by, splashing water from a large puddle all the way over the roof of my car and onto my face and jacket.
My landlord, John Blackmore, owned a white Ford pickup truck. Every man with any money in the San Joaquin Valley owned a white Ford pickup truck. The truck in the distance appeared to be turning around; I thought I glimpsed the headlights far off sliding over trees and then slowly growing larger on the wet pavement. Blackmore might have his gun. Blackmore could kill me and bury me deep in one of these orchards, and nobody would ever know. In a panic, I clicked off my flashlight and hustled over to the first row of trees, hiding behind a thin trunk. Sure enough, the white Ford pickup swung around and parked behind my car.
A man with a flashlight, about Blackmore's height--it was hard to tell due to the hood of the raincoat--bent over to inspect the tire. Then the man stood up and gazed down the road. Soon the shadow turned the flashlight on the orchard, and I dropped down to the roots of an almond tree. The man got back in his truck and drove off slowly down the road. Shaking slightly, I swore bitterly to myself as I watched the red tail lights growing smaller. But then the truck, far off in the distance, turned around again.
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| Ten of Pentacles: Mercury in Virgo |
A veteran trespasser, I knew that I would have to remain completely still until the man became distracted or wandered away; remaining calm, I decided that I would then move as quietly away from my adversary as possible. I could not escape in my car, obviously, due to the flat tire, but I might circle around and try to see the license plate number of the pickup, to prove once and for all to my wife that Blackmore was a homicidal maniac who would stick a nail in one of my tires and then follow me to work on a wet, dreary night. I decided instead to disappear farther into the orchard and wait until the truck left for good.
I leaned against the tree, suddenly remembering a moment which had occurred over twenty years before. I, my second wife Karen, and my eight year old son from a previous marriage were all standing in the badly lit kitchen of our apartment. Karen, who for five years had rarely gotten along with my son, out of nowhere called the boy a “bastard and a mother f--ker.” She had attacked me vociferously many times before in front of the boy, often without what I would consider provocation, but she had never before, to my knowledge, verbally assaulted the boy. Karen would sometimes harangue me for hours, becoming more and more furious as I tried to smooth things over or end the argument by going into another room; she would follow me wherever I went, still screaming. I remembered the moment clearly, possibly because it was the beginning of the end of the relationship: she had carefully enunciated the explosive words and then simply stepped back, waiting, as if she had just dropped a grenade between me and my son. My hand shot out, slapping her hard across the cheek. Furious, I then stomped into the bedroom, shoved open her closet door, grabbed as much of her clothing as I could and ran to the door, throwing the clothes in a heap on the front step.
I had already imbibed several beers. I sat down on the couch, watched TV and finished off the six-pack as Karen made a phone call. Soon, my former lover, Anne, showed up on the doorstep where my wife's clothing still remained in a heap. That was meant to make me cringe: I had met Karen after she had become Anne's roommate in college. Anne had mercilessly teased me several times before and after going to bed with me, and since Anne had decided to marry another man, I decided to pursue other interests, in other words, the new roommate.
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| Eight of Wands: Mercury in Sagittarius |
Before my spiritual transformation, I had been an agnostic. I had started meditating, however, and during meditation and ritual had touched the hem of eternity, envisioning archetypes and sensing intelligences that transcend anything humans could ever consciously understand. A human was little more than an amoeba compared to them. Those great intelligences remained ineffable due to the limited brain capacity of the species. Oddly, however, their presence could be felt if one exalted consciousness, and for some reason, the Gods would elevate the human soul--as if the evolution of humanity were somehow significant to them. Their energy exalted me and made me stronger emotionally and mentally than I ever before believed possible.
I tried to black everything out of my mind and, failing that, I focused on the image of Thoth. In my painting, the figure of Thoth stood against a yellow background and contained flashing colors--in other words, complementary colors of purple and yellow that vibrated if one stared at them long enough, the intense colors helping the mind tune to a higher vibration, so that the worshipper could more easily tune to the higher energies of the spiritual plane. I tried to hold the image in my mind, but instead, I remembered the argument that had occurred decades before.
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| Six of Swords: Mercury in Aquarius |
Stop tormenting yourself, I thought. Since then, I had purified myself over and over, physically and emotionally and mentally and spiritually, forgiving everyone who had harmed me. I had not seen or talked to Karen or Anne in two decades. The torment, of course, had continued. Karen, through her fiction writing in college, had become the darling of a popular feminist writer, so I was not rehired as a teaching assistant or as a tutor at the English writing lab the following semester. I wrote a shrill letter of complaint to the feminist professor, who asked me over the phone if I was going to sue her for sexual misconduct. Dumbfounded again, I could only give a weak reply in the negative, sensing that my eight years of grueling work at the university was all for nothing. After that, if I ever submitted a resume which mentioned that I had worked as a TA or a tutor at the university, I wouldn't get hired.
Old wounds were opening, and I suddenly knew why. When I had graduated from college, I had become an environmental activist instead of going into a doctoral program or becoming a teacher, encountering John Blackmore at numerous political meetings. Suddenly I shivered. I was getting soaked as big drops plopped from the branches above onto my jacket and pants. When I closed my eyes, I imagined Blackmore, after completing the perfect murder, taking my wife out on a date.
I suddenly envisioned Blackmore's torso enveloped in blackness from which the snarling heads of wolves protruded. Blackmore was clever enough to hide his homicidal tendencies, and those wolves in his black heart kept anyone from getting too close to him. At some point in his life, Blackmore had chosen to channel dark, ferocious energy, which presented itself to my psychic vision as astral wolves demanding blood.
In my imagination, I created a mirror around myself, which would send any negative thought-forms back to whomever was sending them to me. The soul, or higher self, thought of simplistically as the conscience, was like a mirror; my enemies would see themselves for what they were if they gazed into it. I realized then that the higher self does not care about social status or money or what kind of job you have or even if you are harmed by following its dictates. I had never regretted sending the letter to the feminist professor or being an environmental activist. The higher self is a magic mirror, I thought--and life would be intolerable without magic, without a belief in something higher.
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| Eight of Pentacles Tree of Life: Mercury in Hod |
I opened my eyes. I could see the trees more clearly now. Perhaps the moon had broken through the clouds. I slowly stood up, groaning, and tip-toed down a row of trees, careful to avoid startling any wild animals. After what seemed like hours, I came to the edge of the orchard and ambled along a muddy road. I saw headlights moving far away. I picked up the pace, hearing another muffled howl. Finally, to my great relief, I saw a parked car in the distance, and I trotted along in the mud, howling, in my mind, for joy.
I quickly changed the tire and brushed my hands off as I stood up with a groan. A smudge of gold glinted just above far-away mountain peaks as one light on the road suddenly split into two, far off in the distance, rapidly growing larger.
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