The Tarot CureJul 03, 2021
30. Beyond The Pleasure Principle
“The clock in the back of the deserted house (everyone’s sleeping) slowly lets the clear quadruple sound of four o’clock in the morning fall. I still haven’t fallen asleep, and I don’t expect to. There’s nothing on my mind to keep me from sleeping and no physical pain to prevent me from relaxing, but the dull silence of my strange body just lies there in the darkness, made even more desolate by the feeble moonlight of the street lamps. I’m so sleepy I can’t even think, so sleepless I can’t feel.”
This episode begins with a restless nights for two literary alter-egos: Fernando Pessoa's Soares and Richard Matheson's (I Am Legend) Neville.
Pessoa grapples with insomnia, intertwined with alcoholism as well as various existential anxieties in Fragment 31 of The Book of Disquiet, a meditation on sleep, death, and the nature of being.
Neville, the protagonist of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, finds himself seemingly the last human on Earth, haunted by the undead. His struggle for sleep mirrors Pessoa's, hinting at a similar psychological issue: the manifestation in his life of the Death Drive as explored by Freud in his 1922 essay "Beyond The Pleasure Principle".
Also, a fascinating historical footnote: Pessoa's role in crafting early advertising copy for Coca-Cola in Portugal, resulting in a government ban on Coca-Cola imports that lasted for over 50 years.
29. An Arid Heart
"Sadly, or perhaps not, I recognize that I have an arid heart. An adjective matters more to me than the real weeping of a human soul. But sometimes I’m different."
-Fernando Pessoa
--
Every so often, I sit down and write a letter to Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet and writer.
I not only write but also send each letters to the postal address where Pessoa spent the last fifteen years of his life before dying at the age of 47 with cirrhosis of the liver - most likely due to the alcoholism.
He hasn't written back to me yet, even though I put my own name and address on every missive I send (Steve W., 111 Ruskin Gardens, Kenton, London, HA3 9PY). One day he, or someone very much like him, will perhaps write back. I live in hope.
28. The Centaur (part iii)
In the last episode of my Tarot Cure, I take on the Yuri Challenge: “When people die, you've got yer 5-Stage Kübler-Ross model of recovery, right? So how about a 3-Stager for breakups? Breakup Therapy? Breakup Recovery. What are the three stages?” The tricky part is that he then got me to create my three stage model based around three of our favourite Kendrick Lamar songs from Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. United In Grief N95 Die Hard I tried. We also find out how things worked out for conceptual artist Marina Abramović and her partner Ulay as they attempt to cross heaven and earth, (and The Great Wall of China) for each other and their art. And finally (finally!) Madame Kalathaki delivers her enlightenment KO in our quest to understand what’s inside that fricken fourth cup on the Tarot card she drew for me!
27. The Centaur (part ii)
26. The Centaur (i)
In which I take myself off to consult a professional tarot reader at London's main hub for the Tarot Cognoscenti (Treadwell's Bookshop) to see if she can help me with the "stuff" that I’m still trying to work through in relation to my last romantic relationship.
One of my favourite centaurs (Alain de Botton) also shares with us his theories on Romanticism and Love, whilst Marina Abramovic digs into her infamous, and all-too-thorny relationship with fellow performance-artist/lover/muse: Ulay.
THE TAROT CURE OMNIBUS: What A Fool Believes
Before falling in love with the Enneagram, I had a thing for Tarot.
And so I decided to put this thing into a podcast called The Tarot Cure.
Here's an Omnibus edition of those episodes, spanning the length and breadth of my 50th year.
It was a good year :)
25. The House of Belonging: The Three of Wands Tarot Cure
--
This episode of The Tarot Cure is sponsored by two poems:
REQUEST
Please love me
And I will play for you
this poem
upon the guitar
I myself made
out of cardboard and black threads
when I was ten years old.
Love me or else.
-Franz Wright
THE HOUSE OF BELONGING
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the gray day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,
the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
-David Whyte
24. Dick Pics & Living The Questions: The Ace of Wands Tarot Cure
[This episode also features an Intro to a new Tarot Cure offshoot: The Burning Questions, where I sit down with a guest to have a chat about a question that is burning within them: be it a personal issue or one related to a topic close to their heart. Some kind of creative intervention is then applied to each question (a tarot card , a poem, a piece of music or art) in an attempt to "try to love the questions themselves - like locked rooms, or a book written in a foreign tongue (Rilke)", but also with the hope for some magic, insight, and an interesting conversation.
Listen to The Burning Questions [on Spotify] [on Apple]
--
This episode of The Tarot Cure is sponsored by the following passage from Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (translation: Charlie Louth):
“But all the same I believe that you need not remain without solution if you hold to things like those now refreshing my eyes. If you hold close to nature, to what is simple in it, to the small things people hardly see and which all of a sudden can become great and immeasurable; if you have this love for what is slight, and quite unassumingly, as a servant, seek to win the confidence of what seems poor – then everything will grow easier, more unified and somehow more conciliatory, not perhaps in the intellect, which, amazed, remains a step behind, but in your deepest consciousness, watchfulness and knowledge. I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear one, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually,, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future."
--
Music:
Hania Rani – Live from Studio S2
Sting - Fragile (Piano Cover)
Celestial Sphere by David Crowell
23. Incense(d): The Five of Swords Tarot Cure
22. Either/Or: The Hierophant & High Priestess Card Tarot Cures
21. How Fragile We Are: The Tower Tarot Cure
This episode is sponsored by Dorianne Laux's poem What Is Broken:
The slate black sky. The middle step
of the back porch. And long ago
my mother’s necklace, the beads
rolling north and south. Broken
the rose stem, water into drops, glass
knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s
pot of parsley and mint, white roots
shooting like streamers through the cracks.
Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath,
the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken
little finger on my right hand at birth—
I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t
been rent, divided, split? Broken
the days into nights, the night sky
into stars, the stars into patterns
I make up as I trace them
with a broken-off blade
of grass. Possible, unthinkable,
the cricket’s tiny back as I lie
on the lawn in the dark, my heart
a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.
--
LINKS:
Elizabeth Streb talks about her work.
Maggie Nelson's The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning.
Chase Eagleson acoustic cover of Sting's "Fragile".
20. The One Thing I'd Love To Know About You: The Eight of Wands and Five of Cups Tarot Cures
Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of the card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious.
19. Tree, Tree, Tree: The Queen of Wands Tarot Cure
Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious.
Links:
Tree, Tree, Tree by CARMEN GIMÉNEZ-ROSELLÓ [poem]
Tree, Tree, Tree by Fred Rogers [song]
Baby Bushka playing Kate Bush's Running up that Hill
18. Don't Be Cruel (To A Heart That's True): The Five of Pentacles Tarot Cure
It also delves a little into why vegans don't (or shouldn't?) eat honey, and whether we'd change our behaviour towards people and things, if they had an SUC (Subjective Unit of Cruelty) measure attached to them.
Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious.
Links:
Initial quotes: Ed Winters on why vegans don't eat honey [video]; Maggie Nelson's The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
"I Have Got To Stop Loving You" by Ai Ogawa [poem]
Lucille Clifton Reads Three Poems
Music:
-Ave Maria (Tomás Luis de Vittoria)
-Don't Be Cruel (Elvis Presley)
17. Winner Takes All: The Five of Wands Tarot Cure
Why do we sometimes struggle to commit to certain kinds of behaviour, whereas others come naturally?
Why do we procrastinate and self-sabotage?
Once you've understood how the Winner Takes All mechanism works in your mind, as well as the "mind" of our 400 million year-old ancestor, C. elegans (aka: the nematode, or roundworm) you'll be on your way to understanding all of the above. As well as the Five of Wands archetype ;-)
Links:
Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos (by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam)
Ogi Ogas interview with Michael Shermer
Chaise Longue by Wetleg
16. Leaving The Atocha Station: The Emperor Tarot Cure
15. Expectation Minus Disappointment Equals Suffering In Time: The Judgement Card Tarot Cure
Are you willing to take your place in the forest again? to become loam and bark
to be a leaf falling. from a great height. to be the worm who eats the leaf
and the bird who eats the worm? Look at the sky: are you
willing to be the sky again?
You think this lesson is
too hard for you You want the thing you're struggling with to end. You want
to go to the movies as before, to sit and eat with your friends.
It can end now, but not in the way you imagine You know
the mind that has been talking to you for so long—the mind that
can explain everything? Don’t listen.
You were once a citizen of a country called I Don’t Know.
Remember the burning boat that brought you there? Climb in.
(Marie Howe: What The Silence Said)
Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious.
--
Music:
Ariel's Song
No human or non-human creature was hurt in the creation of the slap sound used in this podcast.
14. What Is This Life If, Full Of Care, We Have No Time To Stand And Stare? (The Sun Card Tarot Cure)
LEISURE
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?-
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty’s dance,
And watch her feet come alive to our glance:
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
-William Henry Davies
DON'T HESITATE
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when wonder begins. Anyway, that's often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
-Mary Oliver
The quote at the top of the episode is from Phillip Roth's The Facts.
The Beatles cover is sung by Nicole Milik. You can find her YouTube channel here.
Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious.
13. Love Is Apart From All Things: The Hermit Card Tarot Cure
THE GREAT FIRES
Love is apart from all things.
Desire and fulfilment are nothing beside it.
Neither body nor mind can truly love.
Even if they try to lead us there.
What is not love provokes them.
What is not love quenches them.
Love lays hold of everything we hold dear,
But we are not able to hold onto it.
Passion is one of its many paths
but passion does not bring us to love.
Desire opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find there
the inner mystery of love:
hidden, intangible, silent.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each of us walks in our own fire
for our sins. Only Love allows us to walk free
in that sweet, transitory music of our pained and particular hearts.
-Jack Gilbert
Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious.
12. Fire and Ice: The Tower Card Tarot Cure
11. Poems For Ma: The Death Card Tarot Cure
If you would like to continue on the Poems For Ma path with us, that will now be occurring on a daily basis here, as well as here.
10. On Having Your Cake And Eating It: The Magician Card Tarot Cure (v)
How does the Magician archetype get us into, but also perhaps out of this conflicted, cakey business?
MUSIC:
All We Do For Love - Benny Sings (MNLA cover)
9. Three Spells For Getting Over Someone (3rd Spell): The Magician Card Tarot Cure (iv)
Here's a final spell to help us get through and over, based around a Tarot card that accompanied me and helped me to heal (get over/get through in a therapeutic way) my last break-up: The Two of Cups.
PS: This podcast has been designed to be listened to on 🎧
⚡ SPELL THREE: A Spell for Beholding ⚡
Ingredients:
The Two of Cups x 3
Your Anima/Animus expressed through music, writing (or some other creative pursuit)
Hope, Faith, Love
Music used in this episode:
Villagers - "Everything I Am Is Yours" (Live/Acoustic)
Jacob Collier - "Make Me Cry"
Dirty Projectors + Björk - "On And Ever Onward"
Jacob Collier - "Feel"
Glen Hansard - "Love Don't Leave Me Waiting"
Glen Hansard - "Bird Of Sorrow"
Glen Hansard - "The Song Of Good Hope"
Spotify Playlist for this episode: open.spotify.com/playlist/4nykZuTSPEpgWL1OMv5aJb?si=74b08bf29c4847d9
8. Three Spells For Getting Over Someone (2nd Spell): The Magician Card Tarot Cure (iii)
7. Three Spells For Getting Over Someone (1st Spell): The Magician Card Tarot Cure (ii)
6. It Is Sad, But It Is What It Is: The Magician Card Tarot Cure (i)
Links:
The Sound of The Sun (poem) by George Bradley
Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul (poem) by Frank O'Hara
The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
The phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence (Gomez, Verdu, Gonzalez) - 2016 article in Nature
Music:
Lost With You: Patrick Watson
Wiz Ofuasia: Magic
Hot Chip: Bath Full of Ecstasy
5. Constant Craving: The Fool Card Tarot Cure (v)
4. To Life, To Life, L'chaim! The Fool Card Tarot Cure (iv)
L'chaim!
3. Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away? The Fool Card Tarot Cure (iii)
2. What A Fool Believes: The Fool Card Tarot Cure (ii)
"The ‘trickster’ figure that anthropologists have identified in ancient myths and legends, the chaos-makers and sower of discord, who frighten the hell out of us, but also appeal in their vitality and creativity, might at some point become bound and contained in a mutually advantageous partnership with a tribal chieftain or king; advantageous to the ruler because they provide him with necessary recreation (fools could often play musical instruments, sing, tell stories and jokes) but also, because the fool possesses little social capital themselves, they are not vying for status like everyone else, they are nothing but that form in which they manifest moment to moment, having through circumstance or by conscious choice, stepped out of zero sum game of status and the being of a somebody which seems at times to be the only glue that holds the human animal species together."
1. In The Middle of The Road, There Was A Stone: The Fool Card Tarot Cure (i)
"The fool, the so-called insane creature, just like that anxiety provoking number or anti-number zero is a kind of provocation to everything within our physical as well as mental realm, everything that appears to “add up”, suggesting that when we are all stumbling across a rock-strewn stage of life, upon which we are very much stumbling now, that there is no ultimate essence in our conscious experience onto which we might cling, no matter how vivid any of it feels or seems, only surface, only dream, a plight that for many has been and will continue to be maddening in various ways."
--
Links:
Love Is A Losing Game
What my friends Jackie and Guy (circa 1987) taught me about Eros.