It’s Valentine’s Day Again, People!
Valentine’s Day shows up annually as a cultural marker post for our society, even though I wonder who really celebrates it with the florid enthusiasm national sales and marketing efforts would suggest? Maybe the flush of infatuation or the hyper-romantic stage of dating require all these red, lacy boxes of chocolates and explosions of roses, but I think most people just give this holiday a nod.
And if not a nod, perhaps a gesture, guilted into picking up some token at the drugstore or a bunch of flowers by the grocery checkout. I can’t believe for a minute that the wider public has an insatiable appetite for what must be millions of themed plush animals, candy hearts, and overpriced greeting cards. Not right now, at least, when things feel harsh in the world and money is really tight. Where does all this stuff end up?
But we still buy into this holiday (literally) every year. It’s a good example of a repeating theme in the Major Arcana: what beliefs constrict you, and what beliefs expand you?
If I feel obligated to show up with Valentine’s stuff because I don’t want to get in trouble, then the sentiment around Valentine’s Day is constrictive. But if I find it an opportunity to give care and attention to people who are important to me, it flips the whole production into something nurturing and expansive.
But for either of these two experiences to be something we can learn from, they must be by our choice and not forced on us.
There are a number of cards in the Tarot that stand out for their energies of constriction and expansion. Each has a remedy and a counter, like how the burdensome Eight of Wands and later, the struggle of Ten of Wands to stagger over the finish line beneath the weight of all those chosen obligations are nothing like where we started with the hushed, expectant energy of Three of Wands.
Three of Wands is a sweet and tender vibrancy, a wish and a prayer, an exercise in faith. Like all Wands (Wants,) this card has hope enough to cast its bread upon the waters and wait for something to come back. It’s an expansive energy.
And the Swords! This suit is constriction seemingly without relief, although the underlying, whispered solution is the ability we have to get ourselves out of trouble simply by telling the truth about our lives. Swords are the suit of communication, and when communication creates restriction, it is awful. But when it creates expansion through truth-telling, is there anything higher or more pure in intent?
The Devil card combines the worst qualities of all the suits, twisting the desires of Wands, the presentation of self by Swords, the emotional territory of Cups, and the earthy pleasures of Pentacles into a mess of indulgence and secrets. What we do, and then don’t want people to know about, finds a home in the Devil and what we find to be irredeemable about ourselves is the ultimate constriction.
Not what others find irredeemable about us. What we find irredeemable. We have to learn to forgive and embrace ourselves to escape the clutches of the Devil. Did you think the Lovers card would do that, by bringing a divine force to swoop in and magically fix everything? Nope. The Divine will help us fix ourselves, but the Divine will not do it for us. The Lovers card knows that we have to tackle that, and be alright with who we are before uniting successfully with someone else in partnership.
The card that wipes the slate clean, symbolically, is Death. The Death card represents the ultimate fuel of expansion in the Tarot, because this card knows where we are, where we have been, and where we are going. Death’s energy of transition moves us from a nonfunctional state to a place of positive potential. The job of the Death card is not to judge, just to be responsible for the shift.*
Did you see that one coming, that the antidote for the Devil’s energy is the Death card? Bet you wanted me to write, instead, about a joyful card like the Sun or mention the Temperance angel!
No, we’re in the mud here. We are usually wrestling with the forces of constriction and expansion, as they battle in our consciousness to see which has more influence in shaping how we see the world and how that influences who we become. When we are in the breaks between skirmishes we can call on the Temperance angel to firmly hold us up in the messy middles, and further down the Tarot road we can have our days of clarity and remembrance in the Sun’s walled garden.
There’s a funny meme out now that says, “Just checking this morning to see which day of Revelations we are in.” When the world is in chaos, it feels safer to monitor the continued roll-out of shattering events than go to the store to buy a pink teddy bear in a tuxedo, a box of Rocher, and a tiny pot of ivy with a big plastic heart pick stuck in it.
One of these engagements feels real, and the other feels performative and scripted. But the question is, which of them feels like it constricts you, and which feels like expansion?
*Please note that I am not promoting physical death here as a life choice to fix problems, because it doesn’t. It just defers and complicates their eventual resolution.
