The Sustainable Joke: A Fey reading of Cosmic Tarot significance

After responding to the thread discussing whether tarot is a Cosmic joke or a Sustainable truth, I decided to bring the discussion to the tarot itself. My first step was to formulate a query. The basic question I was meditating on was:

“Can tarot be proven to carry a sustainable truth?”

I have decided a few months ago that I would concentrate on using the three-card reading. I find that using this spread with so few cards, I am forced to focus more in depth on each individual card. I do a three-pile cut and use the top card for each part of the reading. I have adapted it, however, from an idea in Rachel Pollack’s Forest of Souls, in that I incorporate “teachers:” cards that inform the reading some more, give more information on the nature of the reading or that particular area. These cards work to elucidate the messages of the reading cards.

Ok, not wanting to do a standard past/present/future reading—and even though the question I began with looked more like a yes/no question—I decided that I would go for deeper questions. Also, I decided not to deal with reversals in this situation.

Here are the queries that I decided upon for each card:
CARD ONE—What is a sustainable truth?
CARD TWO—What does tarot do?
CARD THREE—How can tarot follow this sustainable truth?

The deck I chose for this reading was the Fey Tarot. I didn’t choose the deck necessarily for this reading. It just happened to be the deck that I had with me to explore since I haven’t much worked with it yet. I am not sure how others do readings online, haven’t done many myself, so I will give you my procedure. First I will describe what I see in the card, then what impressions I get from those images, and then some conclusions I drew on what the card was saying in regards to the query. I did not have the book with me when I did this reading, and I haven’t consulted it at all, so I am going purely on intuition and background tarot knowledge. So here is how the reading turned out.

CARD ONE: What is a sustainable truth?

I drew the 2 of Chalices. Generally, the card depicts a male fey, shirtless, sitting upon a rock in a cluster of rocks in the middle of an seemingly limitless expanse of blue water. His feet straddle the lower rocks and he’s clad in shin guards, with wooden soles beneath his sandals. Below him is a female fey sitting on another rock between his legs, her gown giving her a mermaid-like quality, as it spreads out into the blue waters. She holds up what looks like a coiled shell to the male fey above her. As she stares off into the distance, he gazes down into the water held within the shell.

After pondering this card, I had to laugh. Sustainable truth. To sustain means literally to hold up. I thought of the popular cliché, “Can it hold water?” How typical of the fey to answer to the letter, yet through that smarty pants attitude to by holding up a plain truth.

And what is a truth? How do you illustrate one? Here it was. A vast ocean of reality all around us as we sit upon our rock of consciousness, searching through the vast, non-delineated flow of waters. In order to define any “truth” we must find some container to hold it before us, define it, literally bring the infinite down into a finite form. And it is the container itself that defines the truth. Without the cup, the chalice, it is not definable amongst the vast depths. Something comes from beneath, a being of both the sea and ourselves (the female mer-fey), and holds up the truth to us to gaze upon. The male fey reaches a hand for it, but it is with trepidation that he does so. Notice how his fingers are drawn back, his elbow still bent though he reaches, as if he realizes this truth is what he seeks, yet he realizes that he cannot fully possess it.

So what is the tarot telling me about sustainable truth? It is something held up to us, from the depths of our being drawing out of the depths and held before us, defined momentarily. Sustainable truth is something we can see and contain, perhaps, but we cannot fully possess it. Also, it could as easily slip right back into the vastness of truths, mingle with them. Scoop it out again, and it will take shape in our vessel, but it will not be exactly the same truth, since it doesn’t contain exactly the same water. You never step in the same river twice.

I looked then at the teacher card underneath this pile. It was the 7 of Pentacles. A sinuous trunk with roots stuck down in the waters in which it is surrounded. A comfortably dressed fey, wearing a coned hat with a large orange jingle bending it forward, sits back as if in the most comfortable of lounge chairs, contemplatively smoking a pipe. Above him, a myriad of golden coins make up the leaves of the tree, ripe for grabbing, for picking. Yet there he sits, the cap perched down almost to his eyes, the contented caretaker of this tree in the middle of a great lake. How does this card inform? Well, his golden fruited and abundant tree has its roots in the unseen depths of the sea. The sustainable truth works deep in the unseen waters, unknown, and not in any firmly seen earth. Yet this fey feels comfortable in its roots and doesn’t even look up at the golden abundance above him. We look at truth as stable and comfortable, and reap its benefits confidently, but do we really know the solidity from which it draws?

All of my interpretations as I have listed work out of the imagery of the Fey tarot card that I have chosen. I have not talked at all about the significances of the 2 of Cups itself as a tarot card, not the numerology, no the suit symbology. I am sure that those reading this first read that I drew the 2 of Cups and thought one word: “Love.” The 2 of Cups is perhaps THE representative card for Love. A sustainable truth? Love! True love is the constant, sustainable truth. Shakespeare wrote a wonderful sonnet on the constancy of true love, calling it “the star to every wandering bark,” that is, the North Star that guides all ships since it is the only star that can be counted on to be in that direction. Yet, how do we discover Love? From the depths of emotions, passions, desires. From a great sea of souls, one soul emerges most often without clear reason and becomes the greatest constant in our lives. You cannot totally grab and control it, perhaps you can contain it, nothing more. Yet if the Love is true, it becomes a sustainable truth.

CARD TWO: What does tarot do?

For this position, I drew the 6 of Pentacles. The image on this card resonated immediately. A female fey dominates the card. She is hairless and unclothed from the waist up, except for a large pentacle on a chain hanging to her chest. What one notices even more prominently are her hands. They are grotesquely large and glowing golden. The hand closest is open palmed and spilling forth small golden orbs. About her are smaller fey, each one different and each reacting to the orbs differently. Here is a fey dressed as a professional magician, complete with black cape and top hat. A golden orb floats between his hands as if he has conjured it. A robed fey just visible at the edge seems to juggle three of the orbs. A nude, green female faces away opening her palms under an orb as it is so close to her face it practically touches her nose. She is gazing deeply into it. A yellow haired clothed female reaches up to touch another orb with her fingertips. A distant, flying fey pushes one away as it looks down, descending to earth.

To me, it was clear that the tarot was represented as the main fey. The golden hands represented the dealing of the reading. Hands are very important to the tarot, in the shuffling, the drawing, and the arrangement of the cards. In fact, many feel hot or cold sensations coming into their decision of choice of cards. In the practice of tarot, it is figuratively a very large appendage, so much being dependent on them. Such a random action as shuffling and blindly selecting cards with your hands (or a querent’s hands) couldn’t possibly produce such a truth device, or so a skeptic might think. Yet, we who have done readings, and even those who have had readings done, marvel at the spot on truth revealed in the cards. Even in this reading, that first image depicting the idea of “sustainable” seemed just too eerily literal to be randomly chosen. It literally holds water. Those of us who read tarot see this type of truth come up more than principles of coincidence might allow.

So the female fey is tarot, the hands are the deal, so the golden orbs are the messages of the cards: perfectly spherical, glowing, magically afloat. What do we do with these messages? Look at the other fey. You could be the magician, dazzling your audience with this “magic” as a profound prestidigitator; or perhaps the juggler, showing off your dexterous skills; maybe the introspective female, turned inward to gaze deeply and meditate on the message; perhaps the seeker, touching its beauty upon your fingertips, yet feeling it is just out of reach; or you could be the skeptic, pushing away the message and looking for more grounding and substance. Tarot, therefore, gives us the golden orb and each of us works it to our own fashion.

And the teacher beneath this card? It was the 10 of Pentacles. On this card, five fey sit around a pentacle table. In its center is a long, tall burning candle. Hedgehog creatures mill about at the feet of the table. Each fey here is different in size, shape and attitude: one looks contemplative, looking at stars which hang on strings from the unseen ceiling; another is rotund and smiling, eyes closed; a third is sharp featured, grim mouthed, chin on hands folded on the table, staring at the base of the candle; the fourth, a female, is turned towards the grim fey, gesticulating with her hands as if she is attempting to explain something; and the fifth is small, young, sitting upon the table, seeming to look curiously at the rotund fey. None of the five fey look at the candle flame, the very source of light and center piece of their meeting! The only being on the card even looking at it is one of the hedgehogs on the floor, who is not scurrying about the floor, but has happened to stare up at the flame and stands with mouth agape and eyes fixed to the flame.

So is this teacher saying that the true light is there to see, but we in our idiosyncratic ways are often avoiding the true flame? Is it the simple hedgehog who is the one to capture this truth? I see the hedgehog as the one without the preconceived ideas, or perhaps the one to be without pretensions who is able to see it.

CARD THREE: How can tarot follow this truth?

Here, I drew Trump 0: The Fool. In the Fey Tarot, the fool wears stitched motley garb of green and purple, one arm and shoulder bare. Rings of keys, all different shapes and sizes, jangle all about him. He holds up (sustains) a Jack O Lantern, with its sharp eyes and sinister smiling mouth, which glows from within. The Fool wears a golden crown with a large keyhole upon its front, and he stares wide eyed into the Jack O Lantern’s mouth.

Ahh, the fool, the traveler, who travels upon a path out into the nothing. Usually, he is seen stepping to the edge of a cliff, eyes to the sky and unaware of the nothingness of his path. Here, he looks into a Jack O Lantern, a carved icon of Halloween, in which a candle is placed. Yet, depicted here, there is no evidence that the glowing light within is merely a candle. Those looking upon him gazing in awe at the “message” of this carved pumpkin see him as the Fool. But does this mouth actually glow with a magical message? Does it speak a sustainable truth? Seeing this card, I thought immediately of the clown character, as used in Shakespearean drama. They were comic relief, for sure, but often the clown was known to speak the truth of the situation more honestly than other characters dared to do. In fact, in my knowledge of the court jester, it was his prerogative to be able to mock the king and tell him his frailties and truths as no other in the kingdom dared get away with. The Fool, therefore, felt he could look truth straight in the mouth with impunity.

So then, is tarot’s role here to follow the truth by speaking to those willing to risk looking the fool? How many threads in this forum involve the theme of ridicule received by others who look upon us tarot readers as fools, charlatans, hucksters, Satanists, ad nauseum? And here it is, dead on literal. This reading was done in response to the thread, “Cosmic joke or sustainable truth?” Ahh, so tarot itself is saying “Cosmic joke”? I have the feeling it is saying, “Yes, it is, so do you want to get in on the joke?” Is a joke any less true because it sounds foolish? In analyzing laughter, why we humans laugh at jokes, many feel that one of the reasons is that we find some truth in the joke as to the foibles of our own lives. That certainly makes it a sustainable truth, a joke that can elicit laughter from a large audience. Should we then take tarot so seriously, with a grimness and reverence, trying to arm ourselves with proofs to ward off the scoffers?

I turned over the teacher card to this last pile. It was the Knave of Pentacles. A blue female flies aboard a veering pentacle engraved with a crescent moon and stars. She has whirling beaded belts about her, orange pants, and a wide-eyed, thrilled expression. She barely holds the edge of the dipping vehicle, and seems to just hang on for the ride, not even in control. Take it for the roller coaster ride it is!!! Enjoy the wild plunges, the lack of control, but the wonderful, fun truth it holds. A Cosmic Joke? Sure. So what? Tell me something in life which, if you stepped back from your personal involvement in it, would not look like a foolish joke?

Enjoy the ride, folks!

Let me know what you thought of this reading, please. Offer any other insights you have. I rarely do readings on here, not because I am afraid of readings or can’t think of how to interpret them, but because so much comes to me that I know I probably won’t find the time to complete all my thoughts. This one took me about a week. I hope you find it in the least interesting, or somewhat coherent.

Khatruman, that was wonderful! I loved reading it!

Dang! That was some reading! It was very inspiring, and at first, a little intimidating (always thinking of myself, I was questioning whether I could ever get so much out of a 6-card reading). I'm glad you mentioned the length of time that it took. It made me feel better, and taught me that patience and sustained attention yield deep results.

Thank you for posting this.

This was too cool! Your questions were great, I really enjoyed your wonderful descriptions of the cards and how you settled some questions, or rather the Feys did, so eloquently and logically. I loved reading this and practically started clapping when I read about the shell, smiled when I saw the 6 of Pentacles (it seemed so perfect) turn up and laughed when the Fool appeared. Excellent !

Khatruman,

I don’t have the Fey, but your descriptions were so good I didn’t need the cards to see the pictures.

In looking at the “mystery” or the question, however it is conceived, you have used a mixture of imagination, intuition and method to design your questions. There is some degrees of science in this. Are your questions the containers? Method then becomes art.

There are threads right through the entire reading, and they are beautiful. It is as if the Tarot is throwing us glimpses of the truth in the way the light must flicker through the branches of that tree in the first image. Reading the cards literally huh? That means to look at them in the way the hedgehog looks at the flame in the second card? It is quite funny to think of all the work we do on symbolism, numerology and constructed meanings and other things and here is the truth like a kid’s picture book. I am not saying that all that work is wasted. It is like a metaphysical compost heap from which all manner of things can grow

You have done more than just describe and read the pictures, however. Perhaps I am sounding too fanciful here but it is a though the images then become the containers of meaning. And from those you weave possibilities.

No, perhaps more than possibilities. I think you demonstrated your point about a sustainable truth very nicely in the first image. I also very much appreciated your comments about randomness and its occurrence more often than the principles of coincidence allow

Using the three card spread and the teacher card really worked and I plan to try that for myself . To return to science is this Pollack’s Tarot version of a double bind study? Or perhaps it is a double bind use of intuition.?

Khatruman, I love this reading and I will keep it in my folder of classic readings. You have made me think a lot about both the art and the science of reading. When I read that you took a week to do it that inherent part of me which is deeply skeptical said It should not have taken that long…. If it’s intuitive, it should have just poured out . I think I have been harboring the illusion that in truly talented and intuitive readers everything just flows like a geyser from the collective unconscious I have always felt a bit guilty that it often takes me so long. But perhaps that is sometimes what it takes, and it is perfectly all right to wait for inspiration from …..the unseen depths of the sea…….the unseen waters, unknown…..

And by the way, your description of love, in the second question, is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

Oh, Khat, what a great reading! It was amazing how the Fey answered your questions here so simply. It made me laugh.

What struck me most was the second question, what is Tarot. The Fey is dealing out the the cards and the cards are represented as gold! It is gold at our fingertips! All the many different Fey below her looking at the cards many different ways seemed to be all of us and our many different uses and ways of seeing what Tarot is. Yet, in each case, it is still gold.

The teacher card for this position was very eye opening as well. All of these Fey sitting at the table having these great discussions, but missing what is important.

And the last position was awsome. I looked at the Fool card and thought all those keys and they are all different. Perhaps they all fit. The teacher card was so good too. Perhaps we should all jump on and enjoy the ride and stop worrying so much about the details. Maybe we should set it free instead of trying to contain it in, lets say, a pumpkin!

I have saved my favorite part for last.

I am sure that those reading this first read that I drew the 2 of Cups and thought one word: “Love.” The 2 of Cups is perhaps THE representative card for Love. A sustainable truth? Love! True love is the constant, sustainable truth. Shakespeare wrote a wonderful sonnet on the constancy of true love, calling it “the star to every wandering bark,” that is, the North Star that guides all ships since it is the only star that can be counted on to be in that direction. Yet, how do we discover Love? From the depths of emotions, passions, desires. From a great sea of souls, one soul emerges most often without clear reason and becomes the greatest constant in our lives. You cannot totally grab and control it, perhaps you can contain it, nothing more. Yet if the Love is true, it becomes a sustainable truth.

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The perfect analogy!

sigh....why can't all men be as poetic and romantic as you????

Mimers said:

And the last position was awsome. I looked at the Fool card and thought all those keys and they are all different. Perhaps they all fit. The teacher card was so good too. Perhaps we should all jump on and enjoy the ride and stop worrying so much about the details. Maybe we should set it free instead of trying to contain it in, lets say, a pumpkin!

Click to expand...

I realized after I posted that I neglected to speak about the keys, which became significant to me also. Keys... the tarot keys as they are often called. Again the Fey being so clear and literal. All the different keys hang about the Fool, if we the reader are the Fool. And where is the lock to open? It is right in our heads. That is what we unlock! The truths held inside us.

This also goes back to what Moongold says,

In looking at the “mystery” or the question, however it is conceived, you have used a mixture of imagination, intuition and method to design your questions. There is some degrees of science in this. Are your questions the containers? Method then becomes art.

Click to expand...

All of that indeed mixes in, and as you say later, Moongold, it is composted and used, almost intuitive. I think, indeed, that is where intuition comes from, our learning and experience.

So many wonderful additions here to ideas that I saw. I want to comment more on others additions, but it will have to wait until a wee bit later when I have time. Thanks for all these insightful comments.