XXIV Validation

I spent hours yesterday with my long time friend, now turned mentor, Jan Keys, filling my head with information, information, information. Among the things she shared with me was something that Ra Uru Hu, the vehicle for Human Design System, had said about the tarot. Human Design, a revealed system for grasping the intricacies of the human body and personality that leaves old fashioned astrology in the dust, (It does! I was a practicing astrologer for twenty-five years when I met HD and I dropped the old stuff like a hot potato when I saw this!), brings together any number of metaphysical systems, merging them with the cosmic input of the stars, to create an in-depth understanding not only of the Self but of the interaction of Selves...and if there is anything in the mundane world more important to us, functioning as a species, in bodies on earth, than inter-personal relationships I don't know what it is.

Anyway, to get back on track, what Ra mentioned was that the Tarot was not a part of Human Design because it had been so perverted and so tainted by the mind of man and because its original function had been, in essence, lost. When I read those words I began to understand why the necessity for this deck had been revealed to me, why it would not let me go until I had begun to real-ize it. My task was to drain the deck of the influences of politics and religion, to embrace all the cultures of the world, and to restore to tarot connections with the natural patterns inherent in nature and with our own sense of ourselves as beings who have embodied to experience the challenge and great potential of consciousness on a physical plane.

I was also reminded, in those words, about how many subtle things lurk within our minds that can hold us back, perhaps not keeping us from doing what we think we want to do, but from doing what we actually could do, were it not for our attachment to concepts and ideas which may even seem very nice and helpful and even sometimes magical. I remembered how, when this deck was finding its way into specific images, I was so delighted at its being 108 cards that the above card, Validation - and I knew the moment that Julia Lehman sent me the image, really just for my own enjoyment, that Validation was its name - had to walk with me in my consciousness for quite a while before I realized that I was trapped in the very loop the cards were empowered to leave behind.

108 is, has been, a magical number for centuries, It is the number of beads on a mala, the number of beads on a rosary. My intellect was seduced by the very resonance the cards came in to shift. It was the pure power of this image, Julia's ability to capture truth wherever she turns her lens, that shattered my attraction and allowed this deck to become whole and fully functional.

The "new" major arcana cards in this deck carry messages that would have been dangerous to express in the world at the time of tarot's original proliferation.

  XXII Humility

To even suggest that we are all students...and all teachers, would have been pure heresy in a world built on a better-than foundation, a world where there are those who rule others, a world where people are told what to think. To intimate that you or I might be as valuable as a king, queen or cardinal would have been cause for incarceration at best and more likely, hanging.

But in the world we are co-creating - because that world is based on natural and spiritual laws, not human-contrived ones - it is essential that we recognize that we are all, in fact, equals.

  XXIII The Mystery

This is a concept that the burgeoning Christianity  of earlier centuries was trying as hard as it could to quash. For them, to ensure their positions of power over, there was no mystery about it: there was God and there were the men (men!) who could translate the rules of that God to the people.

Penalty for not buying into that system, burning...after torture, of course. Denying The Mystery ended up disgracing humanity. It is essential for embracing Humility that we understand that there are things we can never know...and that we are a part of that.

And last but not least, XXIV Validation, the late comer, the one that can not only pull up the anchor that has held you put, but throw it overboard, allowing you to pilot the ship wherever the tide and the waves will carry you, in harmony with the natural flow of the Universe.

You are correct...for you.

Enjoy the ride.