Working with the Tarot deck really closely this past week has begun to solidifying my understanding of it as a complex narrative and as a symbol set. It’s just like anything: repeated exposure and actual practice is what brings mastery. I’ve been comparing it a lot internally with the process of learning songs and with writing songs, and have even begun funneling some of the readings I’ve been doing (usually one a day, sometimes a second later on as a follow-up) into interpretations and thematic backdrops for the songs I’ve been creating lately.

The key card I pulled today was the Strength card, the eighth in the Major Arcana or the Trumps. I’ve always heard this card as being connected to “soft control”, as opposed to the Chariot, which is about sort of the Triumph of the Will, and marching in and mowing down enemies and stuff like that. The Strength card, on the other hand, depicts a woman dressed in white garlanded with flowers who is either petting a lion, or in some decks who appears more to be prying open (or shut) its jaws.

I’ve been interpreting this card, at least for my own purposes, as basically Gentleness. And along with that patience. Patience is something I suck at, but Gentleness I understand, so I’ve been using one to transition into the other: practicing gentleness as a bridge into patience. Today was a great success as far as that stuff goes for me on a personal level, and I feel as though I’m understanding the Strength card in a whole new way: as more of the strength and endurance that an aged and stately tree has because it is firmly rooted in the earth.

But at the same time, I’ve been working on flexibility and on balance. On bending over backwards actually, I’ve literally been working on it in my room. I’m not sure what yoga pose it is, but I’ve been doing the thing where you kind of make your body into an omega shape, hips up in the air. I learned about it in Ocean City. The first few times I started messing around with the pose again back on terra firma, it was shaky and difficult. But it’s been getting easier and it’s been helping me to imagine myself as like a reed in the wind: bending but not breaking. In conjunction with that, I’ve been contemplating this passage from the Tao Te Ching:

76
Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plats are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.

I’ve also been standing on one foot a lot, with my arms out and my leg up and extended in all different kinds of directions, and working on my tippy-toes and all kinds of funny positions. I’m picturing myself in that scene in Karate Kid where he’s practicing the crane pose over and over on that wooden column at the beach. Don’t be surprised if you see me there soon!