Back when I was at Pendle Hill in 1990, I was introduced to the Jamie Sams and David Carson Medicine Cards, which offer spiritual/Native American interpretations to the energies of various animals. Blindly choosing "eagle" as my totem animal led indirectly to that year's automobile trip around America and to Duluth. Over time, I have acquired several other sets of cards, but never the classic Rider-Waite Tarot deck until a few years ago, when a friend gave me an unopened pack and a book to help me interpret them. Having inherited our cultural fear of them (from movies, etc.), I was surprised to find I loved the imagery, and the richness of the readings I was fairly quickly able to do from simple spreads.
The other day, I asked for support in the process I am going through. I literally feel like I need a guardian angel. I did the usual, and shuffled the cards face down (challenging, as they are slightly oversized and still stiff) and picked a card by feel. Intriguingly, I chose one of only three cards in the pack that actually represent an angel -- Temperance. What was weird was an immediate connection to the angel, not just as a guide, but almost as a self-portrait. Before I even read about her, I could tell that, with one foot on land and one in the water, she "is" me.
The most noteworthy thing about the image of this angel is that she is pouring water diagonally from one goblet to another. At first, this doesn't register (in fact, it seems oddly calming and balanced) until you realize that, in real life, gravity would make this impossible. As Rachel Pollock's Tarot Wisdom puts it, "...Temperance shows us how to act magically while seeming to do nothing" (page 170). Perhaps Temperance is the guardian angel of all creative beings who display an almost supernatural inner balance during times of quiet contemplation before birthing inspiration's outward manifestation, be it a painting, an essay or poem, a musical composition, a piece of choreography...or even an entirely new life direction. This gestation time, which is a big "nothing" to our economy, is everything to an artist, writer or mystic. (If you break the word down, the prefix "temp" must come from the Latin tempus, for "time.")
I have to laugh as parts of the "real me" come into focus, and I can finally embrace them rather than push them away. Has any one being ever personified passions as diverse as choral evensong, the Regency-era England of the Bedwyn family (Mary Balogh books), "Time Team," and the Tarot? For that matter, have these things ever before shown up in the same sentence? (I suppose this is where I also need to confess my passion for fast food burgers, fries and cola.) It is time to turn off the left brain effort to "make logical sense" of all this, and just right brained-ly love my imperfect efforts to balance it all, Temperance-style.
