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Mystical Tarot Realms
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The Fool: the Element of Air
awfool
00:00 / 04:28
APT. 10
Apartment 10 appears nondescript on the outside, but when you step through the door, you smell incense and notice paintings of gods and angels on the walls. The apartment is deeper than you imagined, with ten rooms, each with a different color scheme, and each displaying different archetypal symbols. You wander into a room that has a blue color scheme, a painting of an opulent king on a brilliant throne, and a table with a pure white tablecloth, on which is set out a golden plate and chalice, with a golden, equal-armed cross floating above them. You suddenly feel magnificent, full of harmony and abundance, but then you also begin to develop a sense of superiority and become aware of the hints of hypocrisy and gluttony and tyranny in your nature. You move to the room across from it and discover a red color scheme, with a painting of a fierce warrior king in a chariot and weapons everywhere, a fire raging in a pit in the center of the room. Suddenly you feel strong, unafraid, full of energy, ready to take on any problem, any foe, but then you become overpowered by thoughts of cruelty and destruction. Each room, you discover, contains a different subtle energy represented by images and symbols, and each subtle energy has a virtue and a vice, a spectrum with a positive and a negative pole. The longer you stay in a room, the more the subtle forces influence you, and the more you understand the need to maintain harmony in your psyche. The key, you realize, is remaining balanced. Once you have achieved balance in all of the rooms, you finally reach the inner sanctum, where you are impressed by an overwhelming sense of power and eternity, and you notice a painting of a fool about to step off of a cliff.
Suddenly you understand the Fool: he is either about to fall into the manifested world or into the Abyss. You somehow know that he is full of the most divine wisdom and the most blinding innocence, for he is the eternal child who experiences all and remains spiritually free. If the fool is falling toward the manifested world, he is going to know all the contrasts and challenges and beauties of the Kingdom. While there, he will feel separate and fragmented at times but whole and connected to the Source at others. Within the Kingdom he is going to experience the underlying unity of consciousness and to know complete and utter loneliness and terror. He is less than the dust one moment and a king the next. He is a tiny cog in the machine and a hub whose spokes touch the edges of the cosmos. He is the observer, the observed, and the act of observation. He is a beast and a God.
If, on the other hand, he is falling into the Abyss and rises toward the Crown of Creation, he is going to experience the transcendent act of Union, which means that he will retain the human experience but be completely translated into something else.
As you gaze at the painting, your personality vanishes. You blaze with the subtle light of unified consciousness.
Rooms that Dream
(Suddenly you notice a box in the corner. You lift the lid and find what appears to be the first chapter of a novel. The pages smell fusty as though the story was left in the temple long ago. You decide to take a few moments to read it.)
TEMPLE OF THE TREE OF LIFE
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Peter paused before the punished door of the apartment. His mom was vacuuming while his brother was watching the tube. Where was his stepdad, though? Peter listened a few more seconds. When he peeked through the door, his mother was vacuuming with her back to the living room, so Peter tiptoed toward the bedroom, his stepbrother mesmerized by the TV. Peter caught a glimpse of his stepdad lounging on the back porch, a beer can next to his chair, the aroma of grilled hot dogs and hamburgers wafting through the screen door.
Peter slipped into the bedroom and closed the door as quietly as he could. Then he dropped his backpack on the floor, stretched out on his bed and emptied his mind. The day before, after meditating for over an hour, he had envisioned a gray, horizontal figure eight floating above his head. He had seen it and the wall and ceiling so clearly that for a second he thought he might have opened his eyes without realizing it. So he blinked, and the figure eight disappeared. Now, the dull roar of the vacuum and the jabbering of the TV set destroyed Peter's ability to fall into the void.
Then Peter heard his mother and brother talking. A few seconds later, his mother peered into the bedroom.
"Why don't you come out here and make yourself useful?" she asked.
"Why don't you have Chuck help you? He's just watching TV," Peter moaned.
"At least he's doing something. You're just being a lazy bum. C'mon, get out of bed and help me with dinner. I need something from the store. Why don't you ride your bike over to SAFEWAY and get a bag of salad and some ice cream?"
On his way to the grocery store, Peter stopped in front of a hole-in-the-wall bookstore called THE GOLDEN CHALICE. He immediately glimpsed a pack of Tarot cards in the store window and suddenly felt the urge to check out the store; when he got inside, he noticed his neighbor reading a book.
"Hey, Mr. Cashing, how ya' doin'?" Peter blurted out. Since Peter was normally shy, his sudden friendliness surprised both himself and Cashing.
"Just great, thanks. How 'bout yourself?" Before Peter could answer, Cashing glanced at Peter and smiled, "I didn't know you're interested in esoteric philosophy."
"I didn't either. I'm just on my way to the grocery store, and I noticed that deck of cards," Peter pointed at the store window.
"So you want to tell the future, eh?" Cashing laughed in an amused, slightly ironic tone.
"Sure, why not! Is that really what they're for?"
"That, and much, much more, from what I understand," Cashing replied.
"Maybe you can help me pick out a good deck," Peter blurted out.
"Here's a good one, and it's used, so it's half price. Only ten dollars. Better check it to make sure you'll be playing with a full deck." Cashing opened it and looked carefully at the cards.
Peter appeared nonplussed. "Ten dollars. Wow, that's a lot. I only have five. Darn it."
"Don't give up so easily. Give me your five and wait here. Let's see if we can make a deal." Cashing ambled over to the register, unobtrusively slipping out his wallet. He pointed at Peter and chuckled. The cashier put the deck in a paper sack. Cashing walked over and gave the bag to Peter.
"Wow, you got it. How'd ya' manage that?"
"I've got friends in all the right places," Cashing laughed.
"Wow, really, I owe you one. Maybe you could show me how to play these cards sometime. I got to go now, though. Thanks again!"
"Don't mention it, really," Cashing replied quizzically. "Have a good evening."
After dinner, Peter took a look at the cards. To his great surprise, a gray, horizontal figure eight floated above the head of a figure in a card called "THE MAGICIAN" and above the head of a woman in a card called "STRENGTH."
It was exactly like the figure-eight Peter had seen in his vision during meditation two days before. Peter could not believe his eyes. He stared at both cards a long time. "I've got to ask Cashing about this," he murmured to himself.
The next day after school, Peter made a bee-line to Cashing's apartment and hammered on the door.
"Well, hello again," Cashing said.
"Yeah, well, I wanted to thank you again and ask you a couple of questions, if this is a good time."
"Sure. Come in. Come in."
Peter stepped into a dim room. As his eyes adjusted, he could tell that Cashing made minimal effort to keep his apartment tidy.
"Please, don't mind the mess. Come in and sit down. Now what can I do for you?"
Peter sat on a dingy couch. "Well, you know those cards I bought--we bought--yesterday? I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about them."
"Sure, I suspected that you might have questions. Fire away."
Peter pulled out the pack. On top were the two cards that contained the gray figure eight. "I was hoping you could tell me what these are."
"Why, they're called lemniscates. The lemniscate is the mathematical symbol of infinity. They are floating above the heads of these figures to suggest their awareness of the infinitude within. In other words, they recognize that they are eternal spiritual beings."
Peter stared speechless at the cards, then at Cashing.
"Is something wrong?" Cashing asked.
Peter hesitated. "Well, I'm not sure I should say this, but...ah, but I was meditating a couple of days ago, and I saw the same symbol floating above my head. It was gray too and everything."
Now Cashing looked surprised. "You had a vision of a gray infinity symbol?" Cashing whispered.
"Yeah, I guess. You don't think I'm crazy, do you?"
"Oh, no, on the contrary. Tell me more about it. You can't be more than sixteen. What made you start meditating?"
"Fifteen, actually. Well, you see, I need to rest a lot. I have this problem, food allergies. Anyway, I lie down a lot even though my parents think I should always be doing something. So I got this book on meditation because I guess I wanted to look like I was doing something when I was just resting. Anyway, it said that a person should mentally cleanse the chakras, which are energy centers in the aura. So I did. I imagined each chakra as a turning margarita glass. Then I wiped out each one mentally with a white cloth. When I was finished, I started having visions."
Cashing tried not to look startled. "What kinds of visions?" Cashing asked.
"You really don't think I'm crazy?" Peter paused. Cashing shook his head. He too had experienced visions during meditation, but he didn't want to mention it just yet. Peter continued, "Well, when I was done clearing the trash out of my crown chakra, which took hours, I had a vision of a pure white, four-petaled flower, which suddenly blossomed into a brilliant white flower with lots and lots of petals. I thought it was a rose, but then I kept hearing the word 'lotus' in my head. I did some research the next day on the internet and discovered that the thousand-petaled lotus is associated with the crown chakra."
"My God! Have you told anyone else?" Cashing asked.
"I told my family at dinner, and they just kinda' looked at me strange. My stepbrother called me gay for the thousandth time."
"He's probably just jealous. Typical sibling rivalry," Cashing replied.
"Yeah, well, he likes to beat me up. I don't know how typical that is."
"Sometimes older brothers just like to beat up younger brothers. All I can say is try not to let him discourage you. This is remarkable. It's one of those things that force people to entertain the possibility that there is something beyond the physical realm."
"What is so strange about this, I mean the figure eight, is that I saw it in my vision several days before I actually saw it in the cards. How do you explain that?"
"I'm no expert, but I'll tell you what I think. The mind, during meditation, sometimes slips into a timeless state and can see basic patterns, or archetypes. Then, through what some call synchronicity and others call coincidence, the inner vision or mental state is sometimes reflected in the physical world. Most people assume that what one thinks is the result of what one experiences in the physical world. Others would say that what we feel and think ultimately manifests in the material realm, which is basically a reflection of our inner state. Others say that the mind and the physical realm, the self and the non-self, form a combined reality reflecting each other."
Peter looked puzzled.
"Okay, maybe I'm not explaining this very well. Let me try again," Cashing paused. "Imagine that there are different dimensions of reality. There is the physical dimension that we all know and love, the 'world of action.' But imagine that there are other dimensions that we can't perceive with our senses. Some people believe that there are other dimensions behind physical existence. Behind the physical is the foundation of all physical manifestation, known as the etheric plane, or the 'world of formation and of the angels.' Behind that is a dimension known as the 'world of creation,' or the 'world of thrones,' where the great powers of harmony and creation establish stability. Behind that is the archetypal world, which contains the basic patterns for all the forms in existence. The archetypal 'world,' so to speak, generates the basic ideas, which then manifest as diverse forms in the 'world of creation,' which then manifest in the 'world of formation and of angels' and ultimately manifest in the physical realm as the physical objects and events that we perceive with the five senses. Are you following me so far?"
"Is this the asoteric philosophy you were talking about yesterday?" Peter asked.
"Esoteric, yes." Cashing smiled. "Esoteric means 'for the few' and is often associated with the word 'occult,' which means 'hidden.'"
"These ideas are hidden from the average person?"
"Exactly," Cashing replied. "I think most people would agree that there are at least four dimensions to our being. Even college professors, I think, would agree that we are physical, emotional, and mental beings. Our esoteric philosopher friends would say that there is also a spiritual dimension which sometimes intrudes in strange ways upon our sense of reality. Look at it this way. You're an artist, right?"
Peter nodded.
"When you create, you usually start with a basic inspiration, right? Then you create some kind of basic pattern, which as you develop your ideas usually turns into a more complex, concrete idea, which ultimately manifests as an image on the canvas, right?"
"Yes," Peter replied.
"Well, according to our friends, God works pretty much the same way, except his canvas is the world, or more precisely, the cosmos. According to our esoteric friends, we use the same process because we are made in God's image."
"So I'm seeing basic patterns--what did you call them, arc of something...?"
"Archetypes. I believe you might somehow be tapping into the archetypal energies of the cosmos, possibly because as an artist you have developed your inner vision," Cashing paused. "Another explanation is that the archetypes are part of the collective subconscious, and we can access them through our own subconscious, the way one might find a channel from a lagoon out to the ocean. In any event, what you have experienced is a kind of synchronicity which cannot easily be explained or explained away. But by all means don't let anyone make you feel like you're crazy when you have visions. It's a gift, a very special gift."
"I doubt anyone else would think so. What do you think I should do?" Peter asked.
"Like I said, I'm no expert. I think, though, that you should continue working with the Tarot cards since something or someone appears to have pointed you in that direction. Memorize them, visualize them, meditate on them. They are rich in symbolism, in archetypal energy, so to speak. Come back and tell me what you think, if you feel like it. I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say."
"Thank you," Peter said, as he was leaving, sincerely grateful. "I'll let you know--if anything happens."
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Pounding Stone with Pestles near House Pits
1sum
00:00 / 06:34
APT. 11
A faint path leads under the bed. You move the bed and follow the path to the closet. Behind a stack of boxes is a door that you have never noticed before. After prying the door open, you follow the trail as it meanders under sofas and tables, into other bedrooms and closets. The trail leads through endless rooms; occasionally a door will open onto a trail that leads you through ruins and then back to rooms where people still appear to dwell, but the trail goes on and on through all the stuff of the tribe, and you realize you might never find the ideal rooms you had halfheartedly hoped to find--or your way back to those first rooms that you now recall with nostalgia.
Finally, a path leads you into the woods where you follow another network of trails, all connecting creeks and the pounding stones of a tribe gone for over a century. Pestles still remain in the mortars of some of the grinding stones. Occasionally you hear a sound like laughter or feel someone staring at you, but looking around, you find no one. As night approaches you sit down on a ridge in a constellation of flowers, which slopes down towards the lights of the city--a thin constellation which spreads out towards constellations of stars.
(You realize that you must be following the right path because you find a metal box containing the second chapter of the novel that you discovered in Apt. 10.)
Ancient Path near a Pounding Stone and House Pits
ROOMS THAT DREAM: CHAPTER TWO
Peter was painting a picture of a gray, horizontal figure-eight floating in the air when Chuck burst into the bedroom without knocking.
"What the hell kind of crap is that?" Chuck scoffed.
"It's the symbol of infinity."
"Oh, that's what it is. I thought you were just painting like a monkey," Chuck laughed, scratching his ribcage. "Why DO you paint, anyway? Oh, C'mon, everyone knows why you paint."
"Yeah? Why's that?"
"Because you're 'different,'" Chuck made quotation marks with his fingers.
"What are you trying to say?"
"You're gay, obviously."
"That's it. Get out of my room!"
"Make me. It's my room too, jerk off."
Peter lunged at Chuck, who easily shoved him to the ground.
"Why don't you focus on developing yourself physically, for a change, so you're not such a little girl? Act like a man instead of a sissy, and stop painting this stupid crap. Everybody thinks you're a sissy, and they're starting to wonder if I'm weird, too, because a' you." Chuck held up a threatening fist.
Peter looked up with tears in his eyes. He darted out of the room, got on his bike and pedaled furiously. Since it was Saturday and he had finished his chores, he headed east toward the foothills. He felt tired a lot of the time, but occasionally when he was on his bicycle, he could pedal for miles. Now he was determined to keep going as far as he could, possibly never turning back.
At about two o'clock, he reached the end of the grid, where the road suddenly veers northeast and curves gently into the lower foothills. He crossed the Friant-Kern canal, which contains the water of the San Joaquin River flowing south now instead of west and north in its natural course. Then he stopped, watching the swallows loop above the water, in figure-eights, he imagined. He took a slug of water and chewed a while on a granola bar. He had a package of energy bars in his backpack that might last him a couple of days.
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​Ancient Village Site near Friant-Kern Canal
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About a hundred yards from the canal, Peter noticed several large, flat stones that contained circles from which grass was growing. He got off of his bike and rolled under the barbed wire. He found a Native American village site next to the road on a slight rise above a narrow stream that emptied into a marsh next to the canal. Imagining that he was a Native American standing by the pounding stone, he gazed a long time at an egret, a white question mark reflected in the shallow water, while he listened to faint, tranquil buzzes and chirping noises. He crossed the road and climbed to the top of the rise where he found two more pounding stones. Whoever had made the road had just plowed right through the village site, probably demolishing pounding stones and destroying house pits which might have also been graves.
Peter had written a report about the Yokuts people after he had found several village sites one day while he and his stepfather and brother were looking for a fishing hole on private property. The creek was too small for decent fishing, so they wandered around the trails in the area, terrifying the cattle. Peter had been the first to notice something unusual about the ridge. The earth was more disturbed, less even. Then he noticed the holes like cups in the stone and faint paths that led to indentations in the ground. They followed a path and found another village site. His stepdad had sneered, "This is what happens to you when you're weak."
Peter checked his watch again: almost three o'clock. Then he pedaled to a more wooded area, where hiding from passing cars would be easier. Deciding that he should try riding his mountain bike on the trail, Peter heaved his bike over sagging barbed wire and then rolled under. The main paths in the area were smooth and easy to travel. Every now and then, however, he would encounter a rock or a branch or an incline that would force him to get off and walk his bike. He finally curved down toward the floodplain of the creek. Between two small hills, he found a pounding stone with eleven pestles on top. He got off of the bike and rested in the shade. The sun was beginning to sink toward the western horizon. He was getting very close to the moment when he would have to decide whether or not to go home.
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THE WORLD: Saturn
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He took out his pack of Tarot cards and decided to examine the last the last card in the Major Arcana, known as "THE WORLD." In the center of the card, a woman floats in what might be a large mirror fringed with leaves of some kind. At the top and bottom of the mirror, a red ribbon twists into a horizontal figure-eight that holds the victory wreath together. In each corner of the card is a head: in the upper left corner the head of a man, in the upper right the head of an eagle, in the lower left the head of an ox, and in the lower right the head of a lion. The previous night he had read that they represented the four elements of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire respectively. He had read also that card twenty-one, "THE WORLD," represented the thirty second path--the path between the material world and the lower astral plane.
Peter closed his eyes and cleared his mind. The woman floating in the mirror might represent the soul in the center of the elements, spirit manifested in matter. Since the body is floating, however, Peter thought, perhaps it represents the soul detached from matter, a ghost floating in another dimension, on a different plane. She appeared to be ascending; perhaps the soul can only ascend if it has mastered existence--if, totally centered, it has mastered the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of life.
Peter began to wonder how he could possibly master all those aspects of existence. The material plane dominated his life, or perhaps it was the other way around--his mind only reflected the material plane. The only things that connected him with those other levels were art and meditation and now the Tarot cards. Peter looked around at the pounding stone, where the pestles seemed to have been abandoned only yesterday, then at the one strand of barbed wire still linking the leaning fence posts, then at the smog obscuring the creek in the distance, the earth tranquil and quiet.
Maybe Cashing could help him understand it all. Peter got back on his bicycle and pedaled home, making it just in time for bed.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Prisoners at the Gulag
infin
00:00 / 03:42
APT. 12
Apt. 12 contains a model of an amusement park where crowds watch endless variations of every imaginable entertainment. Visitors gawk at action heroes who battle with villains while, nearby, gourmet chefs reveal exotic dishes, and dinosaurs drink from a pond. Vampires, werewolves and zombies are caught in various stages of descending upon their victims while singers compete with each other, the audience poised to vote. Wrestlers twist and turn into bizarre positions, their muscles straining and rippling. Sprawling dead bodies wait for detectives, and the mafia gets ready for a gun battle as aliens peek through windows. At the edges of the park are mass graves and concentration camps and people starving, which some gaze at in horror or curiosity or secret amusement. Tired of injustice and corruption and drama, a few wander off alone--while, here and there, a few people carefully observe them.
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(You realize that you are still on the right path because next to the model of the amusement park you find an old wooden box with Chapter Three of the novel Rooms that Dream....)
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Tiger Lilies Resembling the Tree of Life
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ROOMS THAT DREAM:
CHAPTER THREE
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Justin woke at two-thirty in the morning, but he came very close to drifting off again by three-thirty. By then his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the streetlight casting thin bars of light on the walls seemed so bright that he began to realize that attempting to sleep was probably an exercise in futility. At that moment, he had the sense, as perhaps most people do when approaching middle age, that he hadn't accomplished much with his life, and he knew then with certainty that he wouldn't sleep much anymore that night, thanks to that one thought. Oddly, though, Justin suspected that even if he had become emperor, he would still feel the same lack of satisfaction, a thought which, though giving him a strangely unexpected sense of liberation, did not help him get back to sleep.
As these thoughts were whirling around in his head, Justin heard a woman screaming and cursing as if from deep inside a cave, and he believed for a moment, irrationally of course, that his thoughts had somehow caused her despair. Like attracts like, and Justin suspected that he felt comfortable around people who cannot hide the damage that life has done to them. That was no doubt one reason that he had ended up in Sin City, a place where the precariat--one step away from homelessness or jail-- came to barely survive or hide or die, or in some cases, recover. Originally known as the El Dorado District, Sin City had the highest poverty rate in the state. Celia, the drunk in Apt. 105, occasionally howled in the early morning hours until the police or an ambulance arrived, so Justin knew he wasn't dreaming. The people in his apartment complex just couldn't hide their damage or their strangeness, which was strangely comforting to him. Shirley, downstairs, a housewife, was a living skeleton who always had a friendly smile, as if no one could see her condition. Kevin next door would take half a bottle of baby aspirin for a rush if he didn't have any crank. Albert, who was terribly obese, had boasted that he had dodged the police once already for credit card fraud--Albert had loaded what little furniture he owned into his station wagon and disappeared one night. His rent three months over due, Jackson, a small, sickly man, loaded many rifles into his van in the early morning and drove off, never to be seen again.
Justin shared an interest in music with his next-door neighbor Tom, the wildest-looking man Justin had ever encountered, and they jammed together occasionally in Tom's living room--Tom's entire apartment containing only a mattress, two chairs, and a motorcycle. Justin had the urge to offer something that might help Tom in some way, but Justin was always afraid that he would appear presumptuous if he offered any help, so he usually just remained polite.
And in the early morning hours, Justin would sometimes hear what seemed to be a howl from one apartment which then morphed into pained, ecstatic groans from another, so that he wasn't quite sure how to react. The voices would fade away or stop before he could tell with certainty where they were coming from. Even though they might have been coming from next door, the voices seemed far off, from another world, like the voices in his head that sometimes had told him what would happen that day or decades later.
At first light, moans and curses turned into blood-curdling screams. Justin peered out his window to see an old woman strapped down to a stretcher, clawing the air, weeping and groaning as she was wheeled out to an ambulance.
Peter had stepped out into the courtyard to observe. Justin stepped out of the door and stood behind Peter. "The most vulnerable are already losing it. That's what happens when the owner raises the rent thirty percent. Most people here, I suspect, are already a month or two behind."
"My stepdad says she's just a crazy old drunk. Is that true?" Peter asked.
"That old gal has suffered a lot in her time. She was once a music teacher who lost her job after slapping an incorrigible child--at least that's the story she told me. Other people have told me that after she lost her job she started drinking heavily and neglected her own child, who was eventually taken away from her. Then she started drinking even more and resorted to prostitution. I once invited her to my apartment for dinner because she really looked like she needed a decent meal. She didn't touch a thing I served, and later she started asking me what I really wanted. I told her that I just wanted her to feel better, and she started weeping bitterly and insisting that I wanted something from her. She finally just went home."
Peter dashed over to the woman and grabbed her hand. The old woman, who had been screaming and moaning, suddenly relaxed and closed her eyes as Peter held her hand.
Cashing squinted, staring at Peter, and followed them over to the ambulance. Suddenly Peter beamed at Cashing. "You know, I had an idea last night. Can I tell you about it?" Peter looked over at Cashing's apartment.
"Sure, come on over," Cashing motioned to his apartment.
"You see, I've had other visions too," Peter mentioned when they got inside.
"I should have known! Go on."
"Well, once I had a vision of a golden, equal-armed cross. Then I had a vision of a golden crown on my head. Another time I had a vision of a golden plate and chalice on a brilliant white tablecloth. They all seemed to go together. When I had these visions, I felt like these things were not just for me but for everybody. What do you think they mean?"
"What do you think they mean? That's what's important," Cashing insisted.
"I think they are good things that we all have inside us," Peter said.
"Very good things indeed," Cashing replied.
"Why do you think everything was golden?"
"Well, gold, because it is incorruptible, is often a symbol of the spirit. White, by the way, not only symbolizes purity--it also suggests unity since white is a combination of the primary colors."
Peter continued, "Last night I started imagining some of the people here I know with a golden crown on their head, a golden balanced cross in their heart, all seated at a table with a white tablecloth, covered with golden plates and chalices. I felt like I was helping them somehow."
Cashing looked Peter in the eye, "Well, maybe you did help them in one way. It seems to me that you were seeing them all as magnificent spiritual beings with divine harmony in their hearts, seated at a banquet of spiritual abundance. Just looking at other people that way helps you to have more reverence for them."
Peter looked seriously at Cashing. "But it seemed like more than that. Like these symbols were magical and were actually helping them. I don't know how to explain it."
"You mean that concentrating on these symbols was actually affecting those people somehow, as if we are all connected to each other on a spiritual level?"
"Yeah," Peter paused for a moment. "I've had a vision of a black cross too, a real cross, the kind you see everywhere, not an equal-armed cross."
Cashing smiled, "You mean a Calvary cross?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I imagined giving all of my pain and all of the bad things I've done to it. I could see all the blackness leaving me and going into this cross, and then I felt much better. It was like magic."
Cashing looked surprised. "Okay, wait a second. You're suggesting that these symbols exist in some other dimension but that we can use them here in our lives? I have to confess that I've never thought of using archetypes in quite that way before. In other words, the black cross exists on a different plane to take away our sin and suffering and create harmony in our lives. It would have to be the plane, by the way, where the archetypes and symbols appear in picture form for our subconscious mind. According to our occult friends, the higher spiritual planes are formless."
Peter looked puzzled.
"Okay, wait a minute," Cashing blurted out. "I'll be right back." Cashing trotted to a closet in his bedroom and came back with a book.
Cashing held up the book. "This is a picture of the Tree of Life, a very ancient glyph, or composite symbol. Legend has it that an Angel gave it to humanity. Notice that in the center of the Tree there is a yellow sun, and in the center of the sun is a black Calvary Cross. This central sphere with the cross is the Christ center, the center of equilibrium. I think I understand what you're saying--by God, the black cross is literally a magical symbol. If you're right, saviors have experienced the archetypal sacrifice to establish the magical symbol of the black cross in the 'center of equilibrium,' the sphere of balance, and it remains there for all of humanity. In other words, we can give our negative energy to the cross in order to re-establish balance and harmony in our lives. I had considered it as essentially a symbol of the transmutation of force into form, or vice versa, depending on which way you are travelling, up or down on the Tree. The sun is not only a symbol of the source of life--it is a symbol of purification, the cross within the sun symbolizing the cleansing of the soul. Why, this is, at least, a wonderful idea!"
"Anyway I was thinking that we could use it to help other people. I don't mean your average person who is doing all right. I mean like that old woman who might die or go crazy."
"You mean we shouldn't try to help a person in trouble unless that person can't help herself?"
"Yeah, something like that. I mean maybe you should only use a magical symbol, without asking them that is, only if somebody is really in trouble and can't help themselves. You might also have the right to use it, without asking, if somebody, you know, somebody like the landlord, is going to harm you or a lot of other people."
"We shouldn't interfere with someone else's karma unless we can keep something really terrible from happening?"
"Yeah, something like that."
Cashing wiped his eyes. "You know, some people believe that interfering with another person's karma has bad consequences, even if you're trying to help that person, so we need to be careful. What do you propose that we do?"
"Maybe that's true, but there is one thing that I would like to try. Maybe we could meditate together, and we could ask Christ to take the black energy away from the old woman. Then we could imagine the blackness leaving her body and going into the cross and her whole being filling with light.
"That is a beautiful idea. I'm willing to try it. Unfortunately, right now I have a few things to take care of. Can you come back in a few hours?"
Peter nodded.
"Great," Cashing said. "Why not try it--you know, it couldn't hoit."
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
The Four of Cups: The Moon in Cancer
orogan
00:00 / 04:10
APT. 13
In Apartment 13, you can freeze a moment in your life and examine each aspect, even down to the molecular level. While someone is about to slug you, his fist raised, you can observe the fly by your ear, the dust mites under the chair, the body ash all over the furniture, the atoms floating in what you once believed was only empty space. You can examine the facial expressions of your loved ones revealing fear, disapproval, anger, amusement. You can go into other rooms to observe things before they are used up, suggesting or corresponding to or reflecting what you perceived as the meaning of your life at that moment, slightly puzzling in retrospect, all the molecules acting as though conscious of how the patterns fit together, as if all possibilities were known.
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(You realize that you are still on the right path because on a couch you find an old wooden box with Chapter Four of Rooms that Dream....)
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The Foundation
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ROOMS THAT DREAM:
CHAPTER FOUR
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Justin had little discretionary income but indulged in short trips to the foothills, where he would often trespass to explore the trails and Native American village sites along creeks and rivers--the price of retaining his sanity, he rationalized. One day as he drove on a single lane road along the Kings River, he glanced at the floodplain and for a second glimpsed the concrete foundation of a large building below in the flood plain of the river. He experienced at that moment a twinge of remembrance but did not recall the significance of the foundation of the house until he was falling asleep that evening; he suddenly remembered a trip to the Kings River with his family when he was eleven or twelve, not long after they had moved to Fresno from Los Angeles. He and his brother had slept on the back seat as the car slowly wound its way up the hills, both of them waking as the car glided into a grassy area next to the road, "In the Ghetto" by Elvis Presley blaring on the radio, his Dad, before turning off the car, uncharacteristically allowing the song to reach its conclusion.
As his Dad fished from a sandy bank, Justin gazed transfixed at a huge spider web in the foliage near the road until he located a bulbous spider in the corner of the web and jumped back, horrified. Justin's brother called from a dirt road next to the river, excitedly yelling that he had found something, then dashing off down the road and vanishing in bushes behind a tall tree. Justin sprinted after him but couldn't keep up with him.
Feeling suddenly very alone, Justin tip-toed between the bushes, expecting an ambush, until he noticed his brother off in the distance in a clearing.
"What took you so long?" his brother sneered.
Justin saw several large slabs of concrete. Looking closer, he recognized that the concrete formed the foundation of a large building, a fact that had initially escaped him because several trees were growing inside what used to be a mansion. He jumped up on the foundation wall and inched around it until he reached a point where the concrete was broken up by the roots of the trees.
Confused, afraid and fascinated all at once, suddenly feeling paralyzed, Justin stared at the uncountable oak leaves inside what was left of the house.
"Let's go!" his brother shouted.
"No," Justin responded, uncharacteristically.
His brother squinted. "C'mon, let's go! What's your damn problem?"
Justin had stared at the tumbled concrete of the foundation, and his brother dashed away, leaving Justin alone again. He looked around carefully, disappointed, on one hand, by his inability to comprehend the feelings inspired by the foundation, and, on the other, by the fact that he would never be able to tip toe all the way around the house on the low, concrete wall, as if on a tight rope.
Finally, Justin got down from the concrete, suddenly hearing a loud voice, "You will be back in thirty-five years."
Scared out of his wits, Justin raced back through the bushes to the dirt road, wanting to tell everyone about that voice. But when Justin crept up to his father, who was silently reeling in his fishing line, suddenly the voice didn't seem real anymore.
Thirty-five years later, Justin noticed the foundation of the house as he was driving by, never before glancing down at the river bottom at exactly the right moment on any of the other trips he had taken to the Kings River.
The next day, during the meditation portion of his daily ritual, Justin envisioned the God Horus standing on a concrete stage at one end of the foundation. That didn't make sense to Justin because he only remembered the concrete where the walls of the different rooms had been, so he drove back to the Kings River the next week to investigate the foundation and discovered that the house did indeed have two concrete patios resembling stages at both ends--his waking vision more accurate than his memory. When he stood next to the concrete, everything seemed to be as it had been that day thirty-five years before, as if he had been gone only a few minutes, the river flowing serenely beyond a small beach of white sand, the dirt road still heading beyond huge sycamores and oaks, the spider web gone, his father dead of a heart attack a few years after that fishing trip decades before.
During the period during which he had rediscovered the foundation, Justin had communed with Horus, Isis, Thoth, and Osiris during his spiritual rituals. In the process, he had experienced symbolic death several times in meditation as well as an overwhelming sense of cosmic harmony, and he recognized that the Christ is not a man but a cosmic force that the symbolic forms of savior figures such as Horus, Dionysus, and Jesus personify, enabling the worshipper to channel the force into heart and mind and soul. Thoth, the god of magic and communication, embodies the mighty Logos, the Word that channels the primal forces into manifestation, and Isis looms as the Celestial Mother, the root of all form in the manifested universe. Horus shines as the symbol of the higher self, the expression of Divine Will on the physical plane, conceived after Isis found the body parts of Osiris and put them back together.
When he returned thirty-five years later to the foundation of the house, Justin imagined Horus standing on the concrete slab, which was more like an altar than a patio or a stage, and Justin's inner voice whispered that he should not give his spiritual power away to anything or anyone in the physical realm. Justin consciously became at that moment what he had always suspected was awaiting him, as if he had suddenly grown into a set of clothes that had always been in his closet: He was a spiritual renegade who would go his own way no matter what. He wondered for a moment if his new-found friendship with Peter was in any way part of his path now.
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Knight of Cups
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At breakfast, Peter's mother asked, "Why are you spending so much time with that man?"
"What man?" Peter replied.
"The man in Apartment 104."
"Oh, you mean Mr. Cashing. We just talk about stuff."
"I bet I know why he spends so much time over there," Chuck whispered. "Because he's gay!"
"Mom," Peter whined.
"Does that man ever touch you?" his mom asked.
"No! What are you talking about? We just hang out together."
Chuck stepped behind his mother and mouthed the word "fairy."
"Where did you get these?" Peter's mother held out his pack of Tarot cards. "Chuck found these in your top dresser drawer."
"Tell him to stay out of my stuff!" Peter yelled.
"Did that man give these to you?" his mom asked.
"No, he just helps me understand what they mean."
"And how does he know what they mean?"
"He knows a lot of things. I don't know. He reads a lot. He's an esoteric philosopher," Peter replied.
"I don't want these cards in my house," his mother insisted. "Your father and I agree. We are a good Christian family and these ungodly cards do not belong here." She threw the Tarot cards in the garbage.
"Mom!"
"I don't want you wasting your money on sacrilegious crap anymore, and I don't want you spending any more time with that man. You can't trust anyone these days. Now go clean your room. I don't want you to come out until that room is spotless."
"But, Mom!"
"Go, now!"
Later that day, Peter sneaked out of the apartment. When Justin opened the door, Peter mumbled, "My mom found the Tarot cards. She threw them in the trash, and she doesn't want me to talk to you anymore."
"You're kidding? Do you want me to have a chat with her?" Justin asked.
"No, she won't listen to you or anyone else. She gets an idea in her head and won't let it go. She doesn't trust anybody."
Justin stared at Peter. "I have an idea," Justin replied. "Can you sneak out to the church down the street? We can meet there and act like we're praying."
"Okay, I'll meet you there in ten minutes," Peter blurted out.
Peter hustled back to the apartment, grabbed his bike and told his mom that he was going out for a ride. He rushed out the door before he could hear her reply.
He was down the street in no time. Pretty soon, Cashing parked his Corolla next to the curb. They entered together and plopped down in a pew. No one else appeared to be in the church.
"Remember how I described it, the meditation, I mean," Peter said.
Cashing stared at the cross on the altar for a moment and then closed his eyes. As Cashing imagined the black Calvary cross, it seemed to come alive in his mind or in some other dimension, and Cashing imagined that black energy was floating from the old woman's body to the cross. Then Cashing imagined her whole being filling with light, and, perhaps because of his compassion for her, Cashing had the sense that he might really be helping her.
Then Cashing suddenly felt regret for things that he had done wrong, and just as he was about to ask forgiveness for himself, he heard a voice, "Can I help you?"
Cashing and Peter opened their eyes. The minister was hovering over them. "We're just prayin' together," Cashing said.
"I'm sorry. I know Peter here because he comes to youth group, but I'm afraid I don't know you," the minister said.
"Justin Cashing. Peter and I have recently become friends," Cashing replied.
"It's so wonderful to have both of you here," the minister said. "It's not easy to find men who will mentor the youth in our community. Do you go to a nearby church?"
"I'm just getting back to my roots, so to speak. I thought I would check out your church because Peter spoke so highly of it."
The minister looked surprised. "Well, feel free to come by anytime," the minister smiled.
"Thank you," Peter and Cashing chimed together.
"I think it's time to go," Cashing mumbled after the minister strolled away.
"Do you think we had any effect?" Peter asked.
"I'm sure we had an effect, but I'm not sure it's the one we wanted. How well does the minister know your parents?"
"Pretty well."
"Well enough to ask about me?"
"Yeah, maybe."
"Well, maybe it's time you got home."
"Okay," Peter whispered and quickly rode off on his bike.
"We probably had an effect, all right," Cashing muttered.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
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