The Heroic Journey is a major project for me as in many ways it brings together a near lifetime’s work. Very soon you will be to watch short videos on my YouTube channel which will bring this whole thing alive. The wonderful Ray O’Brien who appeared here in Malvern last Friday (October 13), presented his hypnotising life story within a structure based on the Hero’s Journey.
Another person who I admire, David Wilcock, made reference in one of his recent presentations to the links between the hero’s journey and the tarot.
The first tarot card and perhaps the most significant is the Fool. The Fool is the hero of the tarot journey. “The conservative, cautious, realistic side of us watches with horror this wild, youthful spirit who, trusting in heaven, is prepared to walk over the cliff’s edge without a moment’s hesitation… the Fool represents the irrational impulse toward change and toward opening life’s horizons into the unknown… But if we never respond to these calls from the other world, then we sink into drab, meaningless, banal lives, and wonder, at the end of life, what we have missed and why the world seems so empty.” *
I’m assuming therefore that a drab, meaningless and banal life is not for you? A life of purpose, “overwhelming significance”, health and vitality, being a role model for others, helping heal the world, maybe paying off some of your karma is the one you aspire to...
Look no further, help is here.
Let the Hierophant assist you in your search for meaning, engage the Wheel of Fortune to illuminate your destiny, see Death as the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. Watch as the Tower crumbles so do your old forms and as you gaze at the Moon let go of your fear of uncertainty…
Guardians who will help you on your journey are the Magician, the Emperor, and the Empress. And who would have thought, the Hanged Man, Prometheus in my tarot deck, would represent self-sacrifice in service to all sentient beings?
What do you want from life? And what might life be calling from you?
Another metaphor that seems relevant here is about The Call. Our Soul’s/Heart’s/Fool’s heroic journey always begins with the call. The first call may be a whisper in your ear or a tap on your shoulder. You ignore it. The second call is the equivalent of a slap across the face with a wet fish. You ignore that too. The third call is when God sets about you with a baseball bat. Yes some people ignore that as well. Chronic illness, a serious accident, significant loss in all its forms, fit into the baseball bat category.
However because it is God who wields the baseball bat, you can recover. Yes it is better to hear the first or second calls, but stubborn bastards like me and like many of you, need the big hit.
There are so many tarot decks available. When we consider our favourite card (usually from the major Arcana), we can be swayed by the beauty of the imagery. So when I tell you my favourite card is the second card the Magician, perhaps it has more to do with my spirit guide being Merlin and that the Magician is the primary guide of the Fool than the skill of the card designer.
We are all Fools; we are all sparks of the Divine. Isn’t it about time you realised your potential?
Await the next episode; how you can begin to do this…
And why the King of Swords as the image above and not the Magician? You would have to ask Vanessa...
Jack Stewart, October 18th 2017.
* The Mythic Tarot by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene.