Image description: A hand is holding a Tarot card, Wheel of Fortune by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot. At the center of the image is an orange wheel set against a blue background. There is a devil sliding up the underside of the wheel, a sphinx at the top and a snake coming down the side. In each corner is a winged being: an angel, eagle, lion and bull, each who are holding an open book.
Since closing my books for Tarot sessions last year, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about new ways to continue working with Tarot that would feel aligned with the things I’ve been learning and thinking about.
I enjoyed pulling Tarot spreads and discussing them with people, but began to struggle a lot with being in what felt like an “expert” position. In a lot of ways that position is bolstered by the structure of a reading: A person comes to me with a question and then I throw cards and lead the meaning-making process, sharing my own ideas about the cards based on what I intuit will feel useful or relevant to the person I’m sitting with.
In my clinical work, I’ve become very concerned with not wanting to “give” the people I work with language or meanings for their lives that don’t feel true for them, in part because I know that helping professions tend to fortify the expert position in a similar way.
In general, my awareness has grown around the meanings I give to situations that in fact I know little about compared to the person I’m speaking with. And I’ve been very interested in processes that facilitate openness to new meanings that aren’t what I or the person Im working with, would have expected.
I often have big ideas when I’m going through hard things. I’ve been going through something similar to what King Pentheus went through when Dionysus arrived in Thebes; a place in which things were a particular way until a wild traveling winemaker came through, triggering ecstasy and dancing and the performance of unruly, secret rites.
The winemaker said he was a god, and with that all the women began to abandon their hearths for the forest to do heaven-knows-what, in his honor. One glimpse of this god and they could think of no one else. As you can imagine, this upset Pentheus greatly. All manner of tantrum and protest ensued.
When I read this story in December of 2021 I felt so bad for Pentheus. He’s one of the least likable characters in the story but his behavior is, to me, completely understandable. You shouldn’t judge a man like Pentheus until you’ve experienced the unique terror that comes with being exposed to a future that acts very differently than what you thought you’d agreed on.
There is an instinct in such times to shut down the change at all costs, to capture the agent and stop him from causing any more trouble. Of course the problem is that the women have not forgotten the ecstasy or the dancing.
When Pentheus sends the guards to capture the new God and vows to kill him, Dionysus smiles as the guards cuff him and haul him off. Shackled in the King’s court, he responds to the jeering King’s questions with riddles.