VI CHOICE

VI is a card with a long and convoluted history. Traditionalist that I am  - no really, I am! - I have based the Sacred Earth Seven Element card on the oldest known image associated with card VI which was, in that incarnation, known as The Lovers, a name that stuck with it right up until I got my hands on it and that is because of the great value that I place on clarity.

We used to live in what the Japanese might call a polite world. We used to live, back the days when the tarot first made its appearance, in a world where people didn't come right out and say what they meant. There are many reasons for the existence of the polite world, some are political, some are compassionate, some are paranoid, some are manipulative. Not saying exactly what you mean leaves a great deal of play both in how the person hearing words interprets them, taking the burden off you because you can let go of the words, allowing yourself to feel as though you have at least in some way said what you had to say, and also relieving you of responsibility for those words since the burden of interpretation lies with the individual doing the interpreting.

The oldest image for card VI is that of a man standing between two women, one aged and one youthful. These women are his mother and his lover, hence the appelation, The Lovers. The meaning of the card was then the same as it is now, choice. But because the world back then was couched in saying things the long way around, it was called The Lovers, implying the dilemma in which that young man would soon find himself but The Lovers was a name that would go on to confuse the more literal world that we became, causing changes in the image itself - the older woman being transformed into an angel - and misunderstandings in the meaning of the card that were so far from the primary interpretation that people tended to view the card as lovely. It isn't meant to be lovely. It's meant to be problematic.

That's the reason I chose the image I chose to illustrate the dilemma of being caught between a rock and a hard place. In the case of Choice, I doubled up on the meaning because there are at least two choices implied in this card, one is external, one is internal because isn't that way it is? Isn't that why tough choices are tough? Our choices say something about who we are, requiring that we define that to ourselves.And then, of course, there's the possibility of a third choice...things are often more complicated than they seem at first blush.

Choice, you can't help but notice, follows card V, Wisdom. In fact, it follows a whole series of single male and single female cards, each of which brings a little something special to the party. The implied story line the cards unfold is that of growing up, of coming fully into your power as a human. Ideally, this prepares you for The Choice. We all have to make choices sometime and if we but look to the resources we have within us, look to who we are at our material and physical best, than we are able to make decisions that we can live with.