Reading of Portland’s Spiritual Climate 7/16/2013

Waning Influence: The Devil

In Portland’s recent past, there’s been a lot of fear, deception and bondage–and not the fun, sexy kind.  The Devil is a card about living in chains, about the deep feeling that we’re trapped. This sounds scary, but it’s both less and more scary than it might at first appear.  Because the chains of the Devil are ultimately illusions; we’re only trapped because we believe we’re trapped.

But that, of course, can be a very difficult trap to get out of.  We often allow ourselves–more or less consciously–to be confined by the Devil, to be bound up in lies because we’re scared of what the truth might be.  We’re scared of the rawness, the intensity, the utter unpredictability of truth, whether it’s beautiful or ugly or something beyond categories.

This avoidance can easily become a feedback loop.  But, no matter how long we’ve been struggling with addictive patterns, no matter how familiar it is for us to give our power away, there is always the possibility to step away, to choose differently.  In the image in my deck, the chained figures standing in front of the Devil seem to be unaware that the links that hold them are far too big to actually restrict their movement.  At any moment, they could leave.

In the context of a reading for the whole city, these dynamics are most likely playing out not only within people but also between people, and not just in interpersonal situations but also in broader sociopolitical dynamics.  People and institutions in powerful positions have been lying, tugging on the strings of fear, in order to manipulate others and control situations.

When you play the game of the Devil, you can’t help but be inhabit both roles in some way. There’s no way to exert deceptive control over others without reinforcing some deep sense of helplessness within yourself.

Despite this card’s corrosive power, its time is waning. The compulsions and illusions of the Devil–and the frantic or despondent choices we might have made while in his grip–are starting to recede into the past. His lies sound less and less compelling, but the impacts of this card are what began the chapter we find ourselves in now.

Full Influence: Sister Earth (Page of Pentacles)

There’s a kind of calm that is very present in Portland right now, a slow, quiet happiness. This is new, and in some ways tentative or experimental. There’s something very contemplative about it, almost heavy–even, paradoxically, mournful.

Sister Earth brings a kind of spring with her, with the fresh hopefulness that implies, but you might say that for a certain cast of mind the passing away of anything–even winter, even the lying chains of the Devil–carries with it a tinge of sadness. The spring of this card isn’t exuberant or fast. Sister Earth is gentle and thoughtful, deeply in touch with her body.

Or learning to be so, learning to listen to the rhythms and pangs and joys of her heart, learning how to be slow and still enough to hear.

This slowness, this bodily introspection, can be frustrating. Group processes might appear to be grinding to a halt. This is a time for patience, for gradual, earthy renewal, for the slow blossoming of trust.  In other words, an excellent time to free ourselves from the grasping clutch of the Devil.  If we step away from the circular bonds of addiction in this moment, we will find gentle earth ready to hold us, ready to sit quietly with us as we learn to hold ourselves.

Waxing Influence: Four of Fire (Four of Wands)

The Four of Fire is a card that asks: what are the structures, the solid shapes that support the exuberant dance of fire? This is a question that is bubbling up with increasing urgency. How can we create containers that nourish and hold our passions? How can we balance our needs for predictability and order with our needs for excitement and transformation?  

We will soon be called to find these answers. This card can sometimes indicate a sense of perceived scarcity: people pulling back, storing up their fuel for a coming winter. Here it seems to me to be more optimistic. It’s a natural maturation of Sister Earth’s journey. She finds, in her slow, methodical way what she’s been searching for. Then she must build a place where it can thrive, a shelter for tender seedlings.

The tortuous games of the Devil take up an enormous amount of energy; as we move further and further away from them, this card suggests that where we place that newly freed energy will be a deeply important question.

The Oracle’s Advice: The Emperor

We are entering into a time conducive to building structures: temples of fire, spiritual workshops, containers for creative and transformative endeavors. We would to do well, the Oracle suggests, to seize this opportunity. To build the deepest structures we can, sacred sites whose foundations rest in our souls, that rearrange the essence of who we are–replacing who we were, who we thought we were, with a stronger, clearer, more aligned version of ourselves.

We might be tempted, after our release from the Devil’s space (and whether or not we have chosen to leave behind our voluntary shackles, all of us are experience at least a partial reprieve) to avoid any structure for fear of being confined. But the Devil’s heavy chains and the Emperor’s sturdy walls are not at all the same. The Devil is a kind of laziness, a despair, a turning away. The Emperor is active, engaged, deeply connected with the world through the movements of his hands and feet.

Freedom, in this moment, isn’t about avoiding confinement. It’s about building power so that we can create the lives we truly want. Certain things are only possible through discipline and commitment and hard work.

That work isn’t only or primarily physical. Part of the work is a precise inversion of the Devil: a sacrificing of the stories we are attached to, a surrender to a greater vision, a blueprint we can’t always see. Taking the risk to trust in the unknown.

We can, if we choose, access our inner Emperor and use our sacred wisdom to build a boat that will carry us where we need to go. But once we’ve built that boat and boarded it and left behind the shores we know–well, the boat will begin to build (and rebuild) us.