Reorienting to Now
the 9s
A quick reminder that Tarot Study Hall is this evening at 7 PM CDT, on Zoom. Paid subscribers get the link to come hang out and practice together. It’s so fun and I hope to see you there!
I’ve spent the last not-quite-48 hours at an absolutely magical little sanctuary on the shore of a lake here in Central Texas. It is truly a place that has been divinely cultivated, and I can’t say enough good things about my time here. But what I want to talk about today is the Hermit and the minor 9s, and their relationship to the present moment.
Of course, like on any good retreat, I have been plunged into the NOW at this place. We are just sitting and soaking it in: the breeze off the water, the flight of the osprey and great blue heron, the Buddha-like squat of the leopard frog all day on the same mossy rock. Time stretched out, spacious and kind. I am recalling my own enthusiasm for living.
Of course, I found a good book in the sanctuary library, and speaking of Buddha, this is what I read in ‘Without Buddha I could not be a Christian’ by Paul Knitter:
Knitter, a professor of Christian theology, takes a group of students to a Zen center. “In the conversation with the Zen master that followed a half-hour of sitting meditation, the first question asked was, ‘What is the Buddhist view of life after death?’ We were all nearly knocked off our meditation cushions when the master calmly answered, ‘We don’t have one.’
Grinning at the stunned silence, he went on to offer an explanation that basically boiled down to Buddha’s response to similar queries: ‘Your question does not fit the case’. What we Christians were asking was not important—or better, it was not needed-in light of what Buddhists are trying to achieve. The focus of Buddhist energies and concerns is not on what comes after death. It’s not even on tomorrow, or the moment that is to follow this one. Rather, it’s on this momement, now, right here. They wish to live their lives by being fully present….convinced that if they can be fully responsive to what is going on now, then what will happen next will take care of itself.”
I pulled the Hermit for this passage, which I loved. That is essentially the lesson of this card: be here now, and what will happen next will take care of itself.
And all the minor 9s (recall that Hermit is the Major 9) have this flavor as well, though we tend to pull them when we are future-focused. We pull 9 of Swords and 9 of Wands when we are worried about what’s coming—the trials we will have to face in the future and if we’ll have the capacity and wherewithal to survive them. And even the ‘good’ 9s, Cups and Pentacles, while seeming to be grounded in the now, tend to show up when we are decidedly not in the present moment. 9 of Pentacles comes time and again for people whose concern is whether they’ll be materially okay in the coming years and decades—if they’ll have the resources and the good health to thrive then, just as 9 of Cups shows a preoccupation with ‘achieving happiness’ someday, while not experiencing it now.
So I think each of these cards is trying to reorient us. They are gently shifting our gaze back to the ground beneath our feet and what we are actually experiencing. We worry so much about what will happen that we don’t experience what is happening. I do this all the time. Talk about 9 of Pentacles: I pull this card constanlty because I am always worried about 30 years from now and if I’m going to be feeble and impoverished when I’m old. So I work too much and I run on fumes and I rarely look around to relish the abundance of NOW, where I actually live. What makes me think I can create an abundant future if I am never attentive to abundance?! It doesn’t work that way, I am slowly, slowly learning.
That’s ok. The Hermit is ok with slow. The ground is always at our feet. Every moment is an opportunity to remember that this is the only place we can live: here, now.
A couple prompts for you:
What do I keep waiting to experience someday, when it is actually available to me right now?
If I attend to this, here in the present moment
Then this will take care of itself
What do I keep waiting to experience someday, when it is actually available to me right now?
Princess of Wands
If I attend to this, here in the present moment...5 of Disks...I love hajo banzhaf's description...Basically moving from stability to instability to new stability, growth.
Then this will take care of itself...3 of Cups!