Entering the Cloister: Tarot and the Contemplative Life

Being a medievalist can make the subject of one's religion a tricky issue, at least in my case. It's even harder if you're also a performer of early music, or just choral music in general. It's practically impossible to escape Christianity if you participate in either of these two things, especially as regards all things medieval. This is sort of where I found myself during my sophomore year at Vassar. I hadn't thought about my religion in years, though I had been raised Catholic. As a child, I was totally enthralled by the Church's mystery, drama, mythology, iconography, just about anything. I lost interest very quickly during adolescence along with my parents when the sex scandals became an issue, and ended up treading through general agnosticism for the rest of my high school career. I dabbled in Buddhism for a hot minute and then reverted back to a general "spirituality," though I couldn't even define this for myself. When I entered college, I started singing more medieval and Renaissance music by participating in the Vassar College Madrigal Singers, and I absolutely fell in love with all of it (thank you, Drew Minter). Since I was a music major, I had to take music history in the first semester of my sophomore year. Naturally, we started from antiquity and ended with the beginnings of the Baroque period. I don't think I've enjoyed learning about any kind of music quite so much as I did medieval music, and I was officially obsessed. I began taking out any CD of early music I could find in our music library, and found myself starting many of my days listening to chant, orwalking to my classes with Josquin masses in my earbuds. Though I love medieval secular music as well, I was inherently drawn to the period's sacred music, maybe because my attraction to religion has always been a guiding impulse in my life for unknown reasons.

But here was the issue: I didn't really believe in Christianity anymore. I had no clear sense of what religion meant to me and therefore experienced a relatively excruciating cognitive dissonance. How could I truly sing early music - half of it actually being prayer - with any sincerity if I didn't have some kind of personal connection to the music's text that went beyond just "finding it interesting?" Well, from then on, I took as many classes on the Middle Ages I possibly could, and ultimately completed what would have been a major if I had only taken another semester of Spanish and written a thesis. As was predictable, many of my paper topics that I got to choose myself dealt with medieval theology, saints, and Christian iconography. I became deeply interested in the monastic life, and wanted to know what it

was like in any degree. I admit I, like many others, sort of spun a highly romanticized image of what it entails, but even when I thought about the supposed "cons," I still felt the whole experience would be worth it.

I believe my answer from God came in the sumer after my sophomore year when a friend I'd recently made read my tarot at a party. He's slightly notorious in our friend group for being shockingly accurate, and I certainly remember being just that - shocked - by the time he finished. Something inside sort of clicked at that moment, and I knew I wanted to be able to read myself. It's been all downhill since then, especially since I vowed to myself that if I were to do something as New Agey and publicly frowned upon as tarot, then I was going to go all the way with it and find out as much about it as possible. From there I purchased Aleister Crowley's Book of Thoth materials and got to work. I couldn't read them to save my life at first, and it really took about a year before I started feeling like I knew what I was doing. This took reading lots of Crowley's other works, as well as material by Israel Regardie and traditional Gnostic texts.

As I did more readings for myself and others, I became increasingly

convinced that there was more to it all than I had ever realized. For one, I am yet to do a reading for someone that is wildly inaccurate. And readings I did for myself were sometimes devastatingly accurate, impartially showing me my reality as I had made it or had left it. The solutions these readings provided resonated deeply with me, because they suggested things that I had already felt to be true, but hadn't had the strength to accept. With enough time, I had to accept that there was a part of me that I clearly didn't consciously know about that was guiding my readings, and also that knew what was best for my well-being. This is the real kernel of all my stories in this post: because of tarot, I can affirm, without a doubt, the existence of a Higher Self because I have experienced indirect communion with it through divination. This is the real basis for faith - empirical experience, not juvenile acceptance of "truth" simply because others label it as such.

I think what was most important about the way I approached tarot was that, despite my interest in Crowleyan literature, I always tempered it with my medieval

background and my love for some of Christianity's tenants. I saw tarot not as "fortune

telling," but as contemplation and prayer. I came to feel, as St. Teresa writes about, that there was a Christ-like being hidden within my fabric trying to rectify my actions. This is the goal of

mysticism and monasticism - to prepare the individual for this sort of divine consultation so that they can attain perfection and beatification. I can't remotely compare myself in direct parallel to this awe-inspiring doctor of the Church, but at least I can say I understand what she was talking about. But as wonderful as this is, there is also a darker side to it that is utterly torturous: I have learned how utterly weak I am. I am truly a being prone to failure, as I am never able to fulfill the Divine Will proposed for me in my contemplation. And yet, Christ forgives. The story of the Passion has never been so vivid before, and I can only lament that I am exactly like Judas, betraying God for petty things. I know that I do this and yet I continue to do so because my will is not strong enough to overcome the fickleness of emotions, logic, and instinct.

This is where actually leading a monastic life would be beneficial. It would force the body and mind into a way of life well-suited to simply listening to God and being ever ready to accept His Will. Monasticism produces individuals who are able to put aside their egos in order to better serve God, and they are more equipped to deal with the body's constant throes. But it is still important to remember that tarot can be a crucial aid to self-contemplation, the "vivisection of the soul." Reading tarot for yourself certainly is the equivalent of prayer, and God in His mercy gives us the answer we are looking for, even if it is painful and difficult.

Love Through the Dark: The Implications of a Dying God

Since today is Good Friday, a singularly bleak day in the Christian calendar, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the meaning of the Pascal Sacrifice.

Of course, the mythology tells us that Christ was incarnated in the flesh in order to redeem mankind from sin and to liberate those trapped in Hell by dying on the cross. Superficially, it is easy to see this action simply as one of the deepest love and conviction. At another glance, it seems to me to become a quagmire of questions. How does God incarnate himself into one singular human being when God supposedly exists within all things? One only has to read the beginning of St. Augustine's Confessions in order to see how this is a conundrum in itself. But it is highly relevant for our discussion here. If God is within everything, including "sinful" humanity, then what is Christ? Metaphysically speaking, he is co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and he is also the Logos, the Word of God - the mouthpiece and inventor of the Divine Will. But this still doesn't help us understand his incarnated form as both God and man. How can everyone be made of God, be a part of God's body, and there be only one Son? And if all of this "stuff" is also God, who is supposedly infinite and eternal, how can it "die" in the first place? Can we not only say that it appears to die?

The only solution that I can remotely come up with is that we are all the Son of God. Therefore, we must all equally partake in the Passion, and we are all enduring its trials, its temptations, and pains, its changeability as opposed to the divine's constancy. The Passion becomes not a literally story about the redemption of man, but is revealed to be a deeply moving allegory about the nature of divinity in its relationship with that which it has created. We are taught that God sacrifices Himself out of love. Therefore, we must draw the conclusion that God loves not only us humans, but loves the gross and the fine equally. The term "sacrifice" implies this, as well as the old medieval adage that Christ dies a dishonorable death, one suited for common criminals. God humbles Himself in order to love and admire his own creation, his own Self. For how can a Being that is One distinguish any part of itself? How can it say that it loves anything if it sees everything as one and equal with itself? Love therefore demands divine sacrifice.

How, then, does this affect the most crucial aspect of the myth? - that Christ's sacrifice opens the door to Heaven. I believe there are several ways we have to look at it. Firstly, if we consider the sacrifice in terms of God's general incarnation - the divine becoming mortal and becoming subject to change in order to experience itself - then the Paradise that is opened is not one beyond our reach, but is rather the world we are exposed to by living. Another way of looking at it is that, since Christ also represents the recognition that the human contains and literally is the divine, Christ's sacrifice provides us with the opportunity to understand our divine natures. By doing so, we come to understand that we are here for love, and that all our experiences happen for love. Everything we see as painful can also be seen as an expression of divinity's intense love. It loves what it has created so much to the point where it is willing to surrender itself unto endless terrible experiences. It never questions these experiences either. Christ gives in quite willingly, and tells us to literally "turn the other cheek."

Now, Christ is also a King of Glory. This humility must not be taken to extremes. The Crown of Thorns is a symbol of triumph through adversity, and we must all wear our respective Crowns with pride and eagerness, not with shame and despair. Simply being in existence warrants the crown of paradise - there is little reward beyond this. The only other reward is love in its purest sense! It is not love that hinges on expectations, falsity, and foolishness, rather, it is the love of a lover that has so forceful a faith in itself that it believes that the death/surrender of love cannot destroy it. It sees dissolution into the beloved (in this case Christ as the lover dissolves himself in physical death and pain - the ultimate condition of his beloved, corporeality) as an opportunity only for joy and pleasure. It is fearless, and bears no inhibitions.

Since everything in the physical world then is a sacrifice of sorts on the part of the divine, then the idea of sacrifice nullifies itself. Again, there is only love - there is no greater love. This analysis begs the question, "why do we give things up for Lent?" Is it not enough that we take a whole month to egotistically celebrate ourselves as beings who undergo sacrifice for love? It's ironic in this light, isn't it? It's as if humanity has been playing the largest prank possible on itself. Happy April Fool's Day! it would seem. So Easter should not remind you that you are a sinful being, racked with guilt and grief. It should not hammer into you the idea that the only recompense is self-sacrifice. It should, however, remind you that you are constantly going through this self-sacrifice already, and that it is a wonderful, amazing, miraculous experience. The only thing which you should feel guilty of is not enjoying it all enough.

This is the Kingdom of Heaven. Its doors have been opened for you in all sincerity and love. It is a virginal paradise, with inexhaustible potential. Learn to make use of it.

Image: The Crucifixion by Raphael