This month’s pull is the Ten of Cups, again from the Starman Tarot by Esther and Davide De Angelis. My usual Tarot deck is the Robin Wood Tarot, and the visual language is so different from this one, and yet, somehow, it has a lot of the same feeling of it (connections, community, family). The Starman card is just more dynamic and magickal. Because: David Bowie.
There is something exquisite and miraculous about journeying with fellow travelers on this road called life. We are not alone. Loneliness is a great deprivation, and it’s becoming more prevalent in the face of divorce, increasing mobility, and an ageing population. The people in our lives offer up reflections of ourselves, like some great fractal, different facets of ourselves are revealed, contrasting edge of our character flame into existence with another personality, another energy, life giving and sustaining.
When we are alone our needs remain unseen and unheard, our stories unshared. We lose ourselves in the vastness of thought and the emptiness of four walls. Only now is loneliness ‘coming out,’ being seen to be the great premature killer that it is. And so it is that we can be incredibly thankful for all the people who show up in our lives: service providers, neighbors and colleagues, community members and friends, and if you have been so blessed, the families we have. This was one of the most poignant contrasts we found in Bali, with little room for loneliness when old and young live all together in extended family compounds. Besides the all year-round warm weather and the nature of their spiritual traditions encourages meeting outdoors.
We see a family in this card, within a bejeweled circle of cups which seem to burst with rainbow light, the full spectrum of color available to them. Cups, as we know, represent the element of water. Visible light is the only part of the electromagnetic spectrum that can refract in water. This led to the evolution of the first appearance of eyes millions of years ago in the cast oceans of earth. A mother, father, and their daughter, who looks set to make her mark on the world, are being showered with gentle golden light from the cups above. The family cat completes the scene, communicating embodied sensuality and independence, a soul just happy to chill in the sun.
The Ten of Cups invites you to take time to connect with special people in your life, those you love and have traveled with for some time. Acknowledge their presence in your life with fresh eyes. Experience their beauty, their courage, and fortitude, their wisdom. Feeling into and through their stories, to fathom their radiance. Everyone around us is a gift, a reflection. Everyone around us is a teacher, showing us where we get caught in the web of judgment and self-righteousness, of separation and ignorance. If we could only give ourselves more moments to experience first the joy of loving connection with ourselves and then turn to the other, to give love and appreciate the miracle of their existence.
The family that birthed and grew you, and the family you intend to create for yourself are realms of incredible possibility when you choose to let them guide you to become the best version of yourself. To love and enjoy your family, you must first accept them as they are, accept yourself as you are, and then invent ways to touch and be touched by their lives. Let old ancestral patterns fall away. Pick up the arrow of judgment and transform them into flowers of love, gifting them to yourself, your family, and the world.
So focus on connections this month. How do you connect with others? Where does your judgment separate you from others? Practice allowing yourself to be present with those you care about. When meeting new people, look for the similarities, not the differences.
Italicized Text and artwork Davide and Esther De Angelis, (c)2018 Lo Scarabeo srl