Teheuti said:
Enrique, it's great to hear from you again. I had a discussion a while back with someone who said that emotion always follows thought. From my research on emotions I had come to understand that primary (primal) emotion precedes thinking: for instance, primal fear which leads to flight, flight, or freeze. Whereas secondary or more complex emotions (sometimes called feelings) follow thought. I'm curious what you meant by the word "urge". For instance, Jung made a distinction between affect and feeling. Does this relate?
Could you relate the process you describe above to the numbers of the Minor Arcana and perhaps expand on them a little with some examples from the suits? I know you've been working deeply with the Marseilles deck for a long time.
Mary
Until this week, I hadn't been in this forum for months, so, I wasn't aware of Mary's direct question in relationship to my previous post. My apologies!
By "urge" I was translating from Spanish "urgencia" meaning a pressing need. I feel Tarot shows us how all our processes start by a need manifested by the body. Now, I don't see that "body" just as a physiological instance. (I find useful Arnold Mindell's idea of a dreambody, whose symptoms and flirts are manifestation of unconscious dreams delivered by a different channel). We not only have the urge of eating, reproducing, or getting ourselves into safety. We also have creative urges or many kinds. In other words, our body knows that we want something, even before we consciously know that we want it. Tarot helps us to make that unconscious urge, conscious.
Now, before answering the rest of your question I would like to share some of my own visual considerations about the minors:
We all have seen how the minors are divided in four suits: Coins, Wands, Swords, and Cups. I like to see them as four processes that take place simultaneously in a person:
- A bodily process, represented by the Coins
- A creative process, represented by the wands
- An intellectual process, represented by the swords
- An emotional process, represented by the Cups
These four process together compose what I like to see as a vertical narrative. There is a fifth process, composed by the major arcana, that I like to see as representing our horizontal narrative. The Major arcana are the map that signals the road (well, this days I guess we should say is the GPS
). The minor arcana are the control panel.
(NOTE: In his extraordinaire book “La Vía del Tarot” Alejandro Jodorowsky defines these as four “centers.” I prefer to see them as “processes” because I don’t think they can be localized in any specific part of the body. In the same way, Jodorowsky, whose book is IMO the best book on Tarot out there, defines the wands as sexual/creative. I think that sex is the creativity of the body, but creativity can manifest in several other ways that are very relevant for us when we read Tarot. That is why I prefer to include sex within creativity, and not as a separate, or unique category).
Now, if we simply look at the cards, and I do believe these cards are intended to be seen just as we see the majors, we will notice how one of these four elements becomes a recurrent presence that permeates the other three. I am talking about the floral element that we relate to the wands, but that in truth starts manifesting in the Ace of Coins. That “vine” spreads itself all over the 56 minor arcana!
Now, how does it behaves? If we follow its behavior, we start seeing a story evolving, just as we can see a story evolving in the 22 major arcana.
The vine starts at the Ace of Coins when four branches pop out from the golden mandala, animating it like Cinderella’s pumpkin right before turning into a carriage. From that point on, we will see that vine behaving in the same way luxurious nature manifest in reality: is starts crawling over everything! The two of Coins shows us how that vine reaches out and embraces a new coin that appears within the card’s area. When a third coin appears, in the Three of Coins, the vine will reach out and encircle it, setting down a pattern: every time a new element/coin makes its appearance, the wine will reach out and embrace it. It is almost as if the vine, that I like to see as the creative principle that lives behind all things, were creating reality by agglutinating cells, or molecules.
As a bodily process, we see how the vine reaches out in the odd cards, and gets stabilized in the even cards. This is, the body expands while active, and finds balance by being passive/receptive.
For me, the Ace of Coins is telling us: “I am!”
Zulu people says that the universe started when Time fecundated the “Fertile Darkness”. I like that. I like to think on our unconscious as that fertile darkness. Give it some time, and jut like the ace of coins grow branches, it will create an “urge.” For me, that urge is always of a creative nature. It wants us to do something.
Now, after the body/dreambody/unconscious has generated that creative urge, it manifest by calling our attention. That is what I see represented in the Ace of Wands. There we have the creative principle behind all things saying “I want!” The thing is, this creative urge has no name yet. At a personal level we may feel restless, or disoriented, depressed, angry... we only know that we feel different, or incomplete, and we have a torch shading light over our gut feeling, so we don’t forget about it!
How does behave our “vine” in the Wands series? It does what creativity needs to do in order to grow stronger: it looks for an structure. From Two to Ten, the wands will multiply themselves creating a fence very similar to the one we see in porches or restaurants, so the vine can crawl up. Here, we detect an alternative pattern: there are only leaves in the even odd numbers, and flowers in the even numbers. This is: creativity flourishes when is receptive.
When our structure is firm and complete, the vine crawls up. Place the Ace of swords above the Ace of Wands (like Jodorowsky does in his book) and you will see the flames of the Ace of Wands continuing into the Ace of Swords. The vine ascends to the intellect. This is, the creative urge find an structure in its quest to make itself conscious.
How does behave our vine in the Swords series?
Something interesting happens: there is no wild vine anymore. It gets “trimmed” by the swords. In fact, we will see how there are swords in the odd cards, and flowers in the even ones. This is, the intellect flourishes when it is receptive to new ideas. When is active, it has to take action, adjusting and reshaping our useful thoughts, and cutting off the poisonous ones. The intellect is the “gardener” of our creative impulse.
The Ace of Swords tell us: “I understand!”
The nameless urge has become conscious. Our wild vine became a garden.
Now, we all know how dry thoughts can be. They only have us reaching true excitement when we sprinkle some emotions on them.
That is why we have to water it! And we got plenty of water in the suit of cups.
The Ace of Cups tell us: “I know!”
When I see the way our vine behaves along the Cups series, I see an harmonious garden. Flowers and vases are arranged in a progression that ends up when the vine dies, as shown on the Nine of Cups. The way I see it, a trimmed vine, intended to be put in display, just as our emotions are intended to be shared with others, dies when it had served its purpose. In other words, a creative urge disappears when it is fulfilled. But here is the thing: while the Ten of Cups shows no remaining vine, there is a flower hiding in the tenth cup (I have been using the Jodo-Camoin deck for years, and I don’t recall if this flowers are present in other versions of the deck, sorry). The seed for the new garden! This is the flower we see at the center of the golden mandala in the Ace of Coins. The cycle starts over again.
For me, reading the minors is like taking a pulse, or four different pulses. (Chinese and Ayurveda medicine have both that idea of different pulses that has to be taken in a person in order to establish a diagnosis. I feel Tarot works under similar premises). In each suit I see a progressive rhythm that goes On and Off in a binary way, from active to receptive. I really don’t read too much in each one of the cards by themselves. For the reading to be useful, I need to understand each card in relationship with the rest of the series.
So, instead of telling someone who got the Seven of Coins that it means a limping old lady taking her dog to a hair dresser, I would tell the person that in her body process, she is in a god time to reach out and embrace these elements that may help her to learn how to take her actual feeling of harmony to a deeper level. This is a more or less literal description of the card I am seeing in front of me. The card shows me that it is time to expand and grow. I would tell my sitter not to feel threatened if she feels she will have to leave that sense of harmony behind (6Coins left behind); and to to use this time to move forward, knowing that in very little time she will feel stable again, ready to process all these actions and decisions and turning them into a sense of accomplishment (8Coins coming ahead). Depending on the specific understanding we are having of “material world”, this can be expanded on several levels, from a financial investment to a fitness routine.
But Usually, I won’t see one single card like that. I will contrast the card to one of the majors, representing the client’s energetic imprint. Therefore, the above paragraph may get re-framed as an attribute of that Major. (This is getting off topic, sorry).
So, summarizing, I see in the minor arcana a description of how a nameless urge is brought into consciousness, affecting our emotions in a way that is directly proportional to our capacity to fulfill it. We all have something inside whose fulfillment will define us. When we make it conscious, we also become aware of the challenge that honoring that urge represents. Being successful at honoring it will elicit certain emotions. Failing at doing so will elicit certain others. The nature of these emotions will have an effect on the body, because the nature of these emotions defines the “seed” that will fecundate again our “fertile darkness.”
Now, back to your initial question, can we really say that these emotions are different in nature from the "initial" urges? I don’t know. It is hard, if not impossible, to define were the cycle really starts, because it actually has no end.
Before I sign off, I would like to say two more things:
First, I have tried to be as brief as possible (Yeah, right!). If there is anything you feel needs expansion to be better understood, please let me know.
Second, please understand that this is a subjective view, that by no means pretends to exclude any other possibility, nor being the final answer to anything. I find it useful because my sitters find it useful; but I am sure that as long as my understanding of Tarot evolve, many other storylines will emerge from the minors.
Best,
Enrique Enriquez
