No time to read? Well, here’s the audio version of the newsletter for your listening pleasure.
Background music by Axlefree from the “Music from A Hampshire Farm”
I don’t know where I go from here. Or do I?
Day in and day out, I pull a card to start my day, then work on a handful of projects involving writing and reading cards, manage our home, go deep into learning Vedic astrology, take evening walks with my husband and Curly. Rinse and repeat. I try my best to look as far out as I can in terms of planning, to know and understand my workload as well as manage the limited energy and time that I’ve got. But looking back on how I used to work, I’d consider myself as an utter, miserable failure.
I’ve abandoned the concept of the five year plan. What is it with this five year period? Is it a random number pulled out of a hat? What makes it the magic number? Every chat ever since I graduated from university and whenever I found myself interviewing for jobs, they would ask “How do you see yourself in five years?”
What did you imagine yourself to be at the start of 2020? How did you see yourself in 2025? And how’d that turn out to be? Speaking out three years from that time period, I laugh and click my tongue at how it’s nothing how I’d imagine in even my wildest of dreams.
This made me think about The Hanged Man, the twelfth card in the Major Arcana. On a T-shaped tree, a man hangs upside down. One foot tied by rope to the top, while the other crosses behind his thigh. It’s as if he was sitting cross legged, but then still upside down. Both hands seem to be tied around the trunk of the tree and behind his back. While in a naturally uncomfortable position, when all the blood and liquids of one’s body rushes down into that sphere called the head, he looks calm, peaceful, radiant even with the halo around his head.
When one pulls this card, it is a call to surrender. It is the control freak’s worst nightmare. Anyone else a control freak like I tried to be? Your world was turned upside down and the more one struggles, the more uncomfortable it gets. So might as well release the desire for control, hang loose for a bit, enjoy the change in scenery. Maybe one could learn a thing or two from the experience. Maybe even gain peace from it.
Rachel Pollack in “Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot” discusses how this card is one of the trio of the Major Arcana’s midway point in the fool’s journey - The Wheel, Justice and, finally, The Hanged Man. One decides to make a change, acts then considers the impact of it against the bigger world and, finally, faith that the dipping one’s finger into the water will create ripples. Allow the self to see the impact of one’s actions not by tightening the noose, but through letting everything just happen as they would.
One thing important thing I learned after the eruption of the COVID pandemic is that there are a million and one things (or even more!) beyond my control. And it’s a futile exercise to exert so much effort into forcing our human hands to shape our fates entirely, to have 110% control over everything and everyone else.
“Bahala na si Batman.” A saying we, Filipinos, quip when we are at our wits end or just throwing our hands up in surrender after we’ve done the needful to the best of our abilities. “Inshallah” a Muslim saying that I picked up in the Middle East as a permanent fixture in my vocabulary, meaning “god willing” or “If God wills it…” So does God alone will it?
As part of my Vedic astrology learning plan, I am reading part of the puranas, an encyclopedic body of knowledge about legends, mythology of the cosmos. It is a vast ocean of topics, so in my interest, I focused on the stories surrounding the nine key planets or navagrahas in Jyotish.
It starts with the creation of the world by Lord Brahma. He was tasked to Create the world by his father, Mahavishnu. So Brahma set to creating by sitting down and meditating on his mantra. First came the maanasaputra or mind-born sons - Sananda, Sanaka, Sanatsujatha and Sanatkumara. To the four of them, also collectively known as the “kumaras,” he passed on the task to create, telling them he will create them wives, so that they could make more children. To make his Creating job a little easier for him. But his sons resisted, explaining that they were not born to procreate, but intended to live their lives according to another purpose - to remain celibate and spread the knowledge of the Vedas or holy scripture. Brahma was left flabbergasted by their clear disobedience of their very creator and father.
The kumaras were not just any beings, but immortals. And even they had the audacity to be who they were meant to be, standing against the will and wrath of the almighty Brahma. The Creator even had to surrender, having no choice but to allow his sons to go along their merry own ways.
So if God himself cannot will it, then who does? Simply put, it’s complicated. Gods are going to god. Humans are going to human. Living beings are going to go on living and do what’s best for them in the moment. It is a cosmic dance of interactions of gazillions of molecules, beings to ultimately enact what is to happen. There is nothing left for us to just surrender to the inertia of the actions we’ve planted in the Universe because there is nothing left to control.
So day by day, I put one foot in front of the other, do the best I can and just hope that whatever ripples I’ve sent out to the Universe will boomerang back. Hang tight, or rather, hang loose, then I will simply adapt to what life throws at me. Five year plan be damned.
Sources:
What I’m Watching:
I just finished the show finale of HBO’s (Now, strangely rebranded again as Max) “Succession.” It was a proper closure to the corporate “Game of Thrones,” a family’s wrestle and struggle for power to the business empire built by its patriarch Logan Roy. I warn you to abandon reading the next paragraph for spoilers. But most probably its all over social media if you’ve hopped on it and did not prepare to block off any #Succession posts and content.
I absolutely loved the ending for Shiv. I was nodding my head vigorously in agreement. It was proof that no matter how powerful, rich, well-connected, successful a woman is, there will always be a man to F- you over. It’s cruel, even though I wished it would be a fairy tale win for Shiv. But that is clear as day on the struggles that ambitious women face - you’re there, but not allowed to be there and pushed back to your “place.”
Tom was the clear winner. If you’ve worked in the corporate world, he’s the guy you’d love to hate on. He’s the leech that latches on to any body of power and sucked until it was fed.
I always loved how the siblings were portrayed in all their powerful glory as children, at the end of the day. And it was best embodied in Kendall, who still managed to thrown into the ring the childhood dream and ambition that was planted as a seed by his father when he was seven years old. No matter how adult you are, you still will remain to be that child forever damaged by the scars. Sadly, Kendall was pulverized into the dust of the self he projected himself to be.
And Rome. Oh, Romulus. He was my favorite of the lot. His scruffiness and ruffled contemptuousness made him look so much like his father. Or is it just me who noticed that? And that smile at the end was a not so secret sigh of relief and freedom from the burden of being under the shadow and force of his father. He got two billion dollars and can hopefully do whatever he wants with it. Must be nice, right?
Did you get into “Succession”?
If you’d like to read more about tarot cards and their meanings, head on over to what I’ve written below:
Major Arcana
Minor Arcana