The Hanged Man with Nine of Cups

Witches Tarot by Ellen Dugan

I love this time of year. Autumn is indubitably my favorite season. I love the transition between the frenetic energy of summer playtime into the ubiquitous static of the winter months. My senses dance with delight as the cool days make their way in, carrying the earthen scents of crisp shed foliage in their rusts and oranges, coppers and browns. There’s an ambivalence in the temperatures that keeps me alert and refreshed on an hour by hour basis.

Sitting smack-dab in the middle of this season is one of my favorite holidays. When Halloween shakes its bony rattle for the last time to remind us that all things slide into entropy, giving way to Christmas music and bloated newspaper ads on November 1st, I sit patiently waiting for the epitome of the season to come sauntering my way. That is Thanksgiving, the holiday often drowned out by the din of Western culture’s obsession with rampant consumerism.

Thanksgiving represents to me the ultimate in what the season is all about. In a nod to our agrarian ancestors we acknowledge that the last harvest has passed and we need to ensure that our food reserves will hold throughout the dead winter months. Rather than hedging our bets and hiding our food away from the inspections of Old Man Winter, we shrug and say, “I’m not sure if I have enough food to last me through winter for myself but I do have enough food to share with my family, friends and loved ones”.

The idea expressed in this holiday brings me so much delight because it is selfless. It is displaying such a deep level of gratitude for our family and community that we are willing to surrender our potential sustenance a few months out to ensure that we can all partake of our bounty today. It is also a nod to the Universe that the cornucopia extends beyond the symbolic, that we have a great enough trust that the great Gestalt will provide for us during the leanest times, thus we can share from our coffers without worry of any possible future deficit.

The best way to ensure anything returns to us tenfold is to give it selflessly to those without. Good fortune comes to those of us of good will. If one slice of bread is only enough to feed one person for one day, we do better to only eat have a slice and to give the other to our neighbor or eat a tenth of the slice and give the rest to nine others. We all may be less full but we are all a little less hungry. The alternative is to keep the whole slice for ourselves while the rest perish, so the next day we can gorge on that withheld bounty but to find ourselves surrounded by our own loneliness.

I saw this statement on a readerboard last week that illustrates this beautifully: Do good with what we have, or what we have will do us no good.

Three of Cups with The Star

Quantum Tarot (1.0) by Kay Stopforth and Chris Butler

There is the old saying “No man is an island”. Personally I like islands, so although I get the gist of what John Donne was trying to convey through that line in his Devotions I want to tell him his line doesn’t bother me so much.

I would like to take a moment here and bastardize that poetic statement with this revision: No man (or woman… this ain’t the 17th century) is a party. See, with the image of an island, I imagine one basking somewhere between the dotted latitudes of Cancer and Capricorn, sipping on some fruity beverage likely spiked with the devil’s sweat, one’s palm serving as a pillow and sighing “Ahh… this is the life!” But sitting solo chugging from a red Solo cup with a lampshade for a crown is not a party, it is an indication of a twelve step program potentially on the horizon.

Hope and inspiration are twins separated at birth. We need these siblings to come pay us a visit when we are feeling despondent and lost. Feeling hopeless and uninspired are solitary acts, and it is more often than not that our own light has become so dim that we cannot see it to be moved by it. We need to look outside ourselves for our inspiration. We need to allow the infectious ebullience of the celebration of others to touch our joy trigger. When we see others in exuberance we can find a source of inspiration. When we are inspired we rediscover the sense of hope that had faded to a struggling ember inside us.

Hope springs from the celebration of a community. It is the cheer of a thousand voices rising to call us forth to indulge in the ecstasy of living. It’s the light of the candle of every heart reaching every other heart that illuminates the world. Hiding in our own darkness desperately fanning the fading wick will not do the trick.

Few things are more inspiring than a sky filled with countless stars twinkling down upon us. A single star standing alone in an immense black sky… come on, you have to admit that it would be rather underwhelming.

Four of Wands

A garland of harvest bounty is suspended between two pairs of wands while two figures raise their bounties in jubilation

The intent to manifest is most commonly associated with abundance. We wish to manifest an abundance of what we desire most in life.

To encourage such abundance in our own lives, we need to remember that abundance cannot be exclusive. We cannot successfully manifest abundance for ourselves without fostering abundance in those around us. If we do manage to manifest abundance for ourselves in a way which decreases abundance for others in our society, we will end up creating a deficit for ourselves in some other aspect of our lives.

This extends beyond charity. This extends into the aspect of community. Where charity is giving of ourselves for another’s prosperity, communal abundance is about fostering welfare for all involved, including ourselves. It is a true sharing of the harvest of life, that all are entitled to the fruits and yields of the efforts we contribute through our efforts as unique individuals.

When we share our fruits and gifts with those around us, an energetic cornucopia is created. To celebrate in our gains by sharing the wealth creates a shared joy. The energetic amplification of joy from a multitude increases our own joy, raising our vibration, and attracting further abundance into our own lives.

My complicity in the state of the economy

A few days ago I read the op-ed article by Warren Buffett posted in the New York Times entitled Stop Coddling the Super-Rich. As is hinted by the title, his article implores the members of congress to impose the same weight of financial accountability on the wealthy toward improving our economy as is expected of lower income folks.

Dealing with the aftermath of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan occurred on Friday. Three days later and I’m still trying to process the whole thing.

The craziest part is I’m trying to understand my emotions in relation to the whole event. For some odd reason the way I’ve been dealing with the event is in a compartmentalizing sort of way. To break it into chunks, one chunk deals with my level of compassion… the devastation these people must be experiencing, the horror, the panic, the loss, the struggle. All very natural, understandable, and human responses.

So why am I not in a state of depression?

Corporate incentives to give vs. gain

Greed begets greed, I told my coworkers the other day.

This comment came in the midst of a discussion about the failed attempt to break the Superbowl attendance record in Cowboys Stadium last weekend. In their efforts to build an attendance high enough to reach the heavens, God manifested in the form of inspectors that found the additional seating did not pass safety standards. The Tower of Babel that collapsed under the weight of the hubris of Jerry Jones and the NFL resulted in seriously disgruntled fans that were turned away and are demanding to be recompensed.