Wheel Wisdom Reading

Wheel Wisdom Question:  How do we let go of the fear of change and embrace, or at least accept, impermanence?

(13th century manuscript illustration of the goddess Fortuna turning her wheel.)

Today I’m using the Four Noble Truths/Medical Model Spread, with Arcana Stones for the four main positions and cards (Lo Scarabeo Visconti Mini) for the path cards.

Symptom:  What is the character of the fear of change?  0-Fool-Clear Quartz.  If we are completely honest with ourselves, impermanence is a very, very obviously a fact of life.  But it is part of the human condition to feel naked before it, and yes, fear it.  Simple survival concerns practically dictate a discomfort with and fear of change.  In fact, routine and stability are an important part of a child’s healthy mental and emotional development.  But for continued emotional health, children and adults also need to accept change’s inescapability.  As soon as that cold fact slaps us in the face, we begin to weave a web of self-deception, fooling ourselves into thinking that we’re resting on a firm foundational base of absolute security and permanence.

Diagnosis:  What causes the fear of change?  12-Hanged One-Sodalite.  Just as the Fool feels naked before change, the Hanged One must acknowledge his/her helplessness before it.  When you’re strung up by your ankles, there’s not much chance of getting out of there, except with help, or at least long, patient effort!  So, the feeling of helplessness is the true cause of the fear of change.  If we felt like we have some control or that we can make change happen in line with what we’re aiming for, fear and discomfort would diminish a good bit.

Prognosis:  Is acceptance of impermanence possible?  4-Emperor-Carnelian.  Speaking of control . . .  Yes, accepting and even embracing impermanence is possible, not by fooling ourselves, but by taking control of it in an active and rational manner as much as we can and accepting the rest.  Serenity Prayer, anyone?  And I mean accepting what we can’t control, not by throwing our hands up in the air and sighing, “whatever,” but by taking control of our own minds and the way we “spin” our role in otherwise uncontrollable events.  Am I a victim of circumstance or a competent person doing the best I can with what I’ve got, with an eye toward the next opportunity I can act on?

Prescription:  So how do we accept and appreciate change?  17-Star-Blue Lace Agate.  Count your blessings, 1, 2, 3!  We need to simply realize that all good changes are changes!  Every blessings is a change!  Yes, there are unpleasant changes, but think of all the wonderful changes we experience every day.  Well, technically every experience is a change.  Growth, of a child, a plant, or an idea, is a change.  Life itself is a product of change.  So here we are again, back to the whole unity of opposites--you can’t have good changes without bad changes, or change itself!  Once again, clear as, uh, the Fool, but so often overlooked or confused as we fool ourselves.

Now the Path of cards.  (Since the Star is 17, we get a true eight-fold path!)  How do we put the advice of the Star into action?  I arranged the cards in a numerically progressing path.

Fool.  Here’s the Fool again, looking particularly naked.  The Fool of historic decks is usually a poor wandering beggar who is not quite in his right mind.  The feathers in his hair are allegorical illustrations for “light thoughts,” perhaps fleeting, uncontrollable, and/or recurring thoughts that don’t have much relation to reality.  So the first step of accepting the reality of impermanence is to realize we are fooling ourselves if we don’t accept it!

Ace of Wands and Ace of Cups.  Acceptance is both an active and receptive step.  The important thing is to make a start. 

3 of Swords.  Accept that bad things happen.  To anyone, good or bad or in between.  The race is not always to the swift.  It’s just a fact of life in an imperfect world.  A more numerological meaning for this card gives us 3=manifestation + swords=thoughts.  Manifest your thoughts.  We can accept the whole imperfect world thing in theory, but when it happens to us, it’s often met with “why me?”  The insights of the Emperor are the advice here:  Take control of what you can change and what you think about what you can’t.

4 of Wands and 4 of Cups.  Celebrate and accept your blessings.  You receive them every day, whether you know it or not!

9 of Cups.  Not only do we receive generic blessings every day (like health, good food and shelter, loving family, etc.), we almost always receive the specific blessings that we wish for!  Consider all the wishes in your life that have come true, or may yet come true.  They’re all the products of change and impermanence!

King of Swords.  This king is here to reiterate the message of the Emperor.  In many ways, we create our reality with our own minds.  If I tell myself I’m a victim, or that I never get what I want, guess what, that’s what I am and that’s what I get!  And the opposite is true.  If I think I’m blessed, I know I am!  And if I have a positive attitude toward change, change will be positive for me!

Hermit Wisdom Reading

Well, I’m kind of burned out on the stone and card method, so I’m going back to the old tried and true from the Arcana Stones booklet, the Stone Arrowhead Spread.  The positions are modified a bit to accommodate the wisdom reading, but I think it has worked well.  You be the judge.

 

Hermit Wisdom Question:  What is the wisdom of age that we most need to learn?

Basic answer:  11-Justice-Aventurine, 14-Temperance-Rose Quartz, 10-Wheel-Botswana Agate.  Throughout our lives, we try to do the right thing/embody morality/be good, and take care of ourselves by having balanced physical and mental health, but chance and change always take a role in how things turn out.

What causes us to learn this wisdom?  21-Universe-Onyx.  Because that’s the way the world is.  Nothing in this life and in this world is perfect, and nothing is all one way or the other, everything is always blended.

How do we receive this wisdom?  7-Chariot-Amethyst.  If you live long enough, it makes itself known in the course/ride of life.

How can we actively pursue this wisdom?  6-Lovers-Rhodochrosite.  Unconditional love/acceptance gives is the first clue that nothing and no-one is perfect, but that doesn’t mean that it/she/he doesn’t have value.  We love anyway.  This is the active understanding of impermanence.

What is the outcome of learning this wisdom?  8-Fortitude-Tiger Eye.  All wisdom, if we accept it, makes us stronger, but accepting what we can’t change and what changes us is true strength.

How should we live with/live out this wisdom?  14-Temperance-Rose Quartz repeated.  Although the concept of the unity of opposites sounds esoteric, or at least complicated, in practice it just makes sense.  Life is a unique and usually unforeseen combination of cause and chance.  And the higher wisdom of Temperance is acceptance.  There is no use railing against fate.  That’s the result of an unbalanced, one-sided vision of life that can only cause an unbalanced, one-sided way of life.

Hmm, interesting reading.  Using all majors/stones in a reading does make it a bit more abstract, but I think the reading flowed and made a lot of sense.

Fortitude Wisdom Reading

Question:  Where should we draw the line?  What should be non-negotiable?

La Forza is from I Naibi di G. Vacchetta by Il Meneghello.  I like her (even though numbered 11) because she has both the column and lion attributes of Fortitude, plus she’s no-nonsense but not violent in her lion taming!

11-Justice-Aventurine on 3 of Wands and Prince of Cups.  The first thing that should be non-negotiable is fairness, both in the public (Wands) and private (Cups) arenas.  Fairness in actions (3 Wands) is a necessity that shouldn’t be compromised by circumstances or pressure from others.  But we should also have the strength to be fair in our beliefs and inner feelings (Prince of Cups).  And then fair actions easily follow.  Hidden reservations or prejudices, perhaps even hidden from ourselves, will eventually manifest (3) in our actions (Wands).

6-Lovers-Rhodochrosite on Prince of Cups.  A strong person will not give into the desire to fully submerge herself/himself into a relationship.  The Lovers stone suggests that in a relationship, two are joined but not thoroughly blended.  The Prince’s mysterious lake is not the right place to sink into.  It’s great to skim along the surface in a snazzy eagle-drawn chariot, but don’t get distracted by the magical appearances in the cup of emotions enough to fall in or dive down into oblivion.  It is each person’s responsibility to take care of herself/himself, and that includes maintaining a viable and separable individual self.  Lovers says give all of yourself, but don’t give up yourself!

3-Empress-Malachite on 7 of Wands.  Go ahead and enjoy the fight, but life and death are much deeper issues.  Empress understands that using force, physical or energetic, is sometimes necessary.  It’s a part of life.  And sometimes it can be enjoyable.  (7 is the number of Venus, and we have Mars in Leo, showing off how forceful (masculine?) we are by being a great warrior.)  But there’s a line (or there should be) between beating your chest, and maybe punching someone in the nose, and killing.  That’s something that can’t be taken back or made right.  We should never be so blinded by the love of the fight that we change or end someone’s life irrevocably, including our own. 

Chariot Wisdom Reading

Chariot Wisdom Question:  Are we progressing or just chasing our tails?  Conversely, are we part of the rhythm or off on a tangent?  (In other words is time more like an arrow or more like a cycle?)

14-Temperance-Rose Quartz on 8 of Swords.  I’m trying to limit reality to how my mind works.  Obviously, time is both arrow and cycle, and Temperance says I have to do better with being able to hold opposite ideas in my mind and my understanding of the world.  There is creative tension in both sides being true.  Jupiter in Gemini says let the doubleness (Gemini) of things expand (Jupiter) my mind.

21-Universe-Onyx on 10 of Wands and Knight of Wands.   The Universe is what it is, and that is HUGE!  Human minds are finite and can’t help but be overburdened (10 of Wands) when trying to understand everything about it.  Saturn in Sagittarius says as much as we speculate and philosophize (Sagittarius), there are limits (Saturn) to what we can know.  Knight of Wands says we have to act on partial evidence.  Otherwise, nothing would ever happen because we can never know everything!

3-Empress-Malachite on Knight of Wands.  Life force goes against the law of entropy--life comes from and causes more organization of matter, not less.  Entropy finally succeeds on the individual level with death, but even that continues to feed more life and more organization.  So we have the arrow of life moving forward, along with the cycle of life and death.  Perhaps the Knight of Wands riding upward and forward is showing that evolution is an arrow, ever improving the complexity and usefulness of life forms, as a complement to the Empress’s emphasis on the cycle of life, passed on from mother to child.

And all this brings us to the concept of the spiral, which is a cycle that rises to a higher level with each turn.  (In this case, thinking in 3 dimensions is probably more accurate than in 2!) 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

Can the center hold?  I think having Universe in our reading here says yes, it can.  Maybe not in a way we expect, but in the way that nature has of healing herself.

For the final word, let’s look at the Chariot card again.  Wheels make forward movement possible, giving us the perfect combination of arrow and cycle.