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Six of Cups
In the tarot deck, the Six of Cups represent a return to our younger days with a focus on happier times and memories. Tarot cards have a range of interpretations, though they work from basic symbols and metaphor. Often, when this card appears in a reading, we may be warned not to become entrenched in the past, though it can be a joyful place to visit. In the card, there are five cups filled with blossoms, with the sixth gently being offered as a gift. It signifies a certain kind of abundance in the world, and represents a vibrant aliveness between the giver and the receiver.
This notion has been resonating with me in my own life, and more recently, with music. Music is heard and felt in time and space. I’m older now, and many of the musicians I loved in my youth are older too, some are passing on. While in the present moment, a song from the past is transporting, evocative…and we visit our past with such vivid, emotional abundance. Longfellow wrote, “Music is the universal language of all mankind.” The universe is a heavenly realm filled with rhythm and harmony, reaching out to the furthest corners of the earth. The musician is the giver, and those of us who listen are bestowed the gift.
One of my little pleasures has been mingling with the creative community on Twitter. This was my last tweet, a retweet, on January 18th. It was from David Crosby. He died the next day. Eleanor Rigby on a rainy day. The Beatles, The Byrds, Crosby, Stills and Nash. The six of cups reminds us to take the gift and its blessing. Linger, but don’t get lost.
David Crosby, eternal bad-ass and brilliant flame, rest in peace.
Out of This World
A star so bright, it hurt your eyes to gaze upon it, but you had to look. It was dazzling, mesmerizing…and you never saw anything like it, before or since.
How it pulsed in rhythm and frequency determined where its waves originated, how they traveled, and what the star was made of. These variations set it apart from other stars, revealing the unique sound of the light. This celestial music was as vivid and brilliant as the light. I know. I was there from the start, watching, listening, sprinkled with stardust. It was luminous, amorphous, androgynous, rebellious, mellifluous, marvelous, glorious.
A star so far ahead of its time, was it using up its light faster than it should?
In the star’s evolution, it eventually loses its internal heat source, and becomes a white dwarf. This is its last visible stage — it is still shining because it is still hot. It can feel itself cooling, losing energy. A white star. A thin white duke. A resolute transformation, writing its endpoint, sharing it with you, celebrating it with you. It cools to meet the temperature of the cosmic surroundings, until it can no longer shine, and becomes invisible. Black into the blackness. A black dwarf. A Blackstar.
The brightest star was fearless, flawless, measureless, weightless, Lazarus…
Touching A Magic Chord
Archaeologists argue the actual date when the first painter stenciled his hand onto cave walls, somewhere in the vicinity of 40,000 years ago. Earliest man was compelled to make a mark, to leave something behind. A memory of him. A gift to us. The human hand is a powerful symbol of our human potential. Flesh and blood, our life coursing through our veins, from our hearts to our hands, and into our sensitive fingers. Touch is how we experience the world.
The hand can reach and grasp: a tool, a paintbrush, a pen, a weapon. Perhaps its greatest strength is what it conveys through gesture, in both the secular and sacred world. Our non verbal communication is a affirmation that something beyond words connects us. The symbolism of a hand gesture may only be within the context of esoteric rite or ritual and known only to that community. Or, it may extend itself to the global family. Our communal symbols and signs are how we experience the world.
From the shameless to the sublime, we know what gestures signify. It is the rudeness of giving someone the proverbial finger. Thumbs up, thumbs down. The calm of the open V peace sign, the power of the fist clenched in solidarity. Deliverance. Defiance. The Hindu and Buddhist mudras. Hands in prayer. The bending of ring finger and pinky in benediction blessing as a sign of the Trinity. A kohen (priest) forming the Hebrew letter “Shin” with both hands, fingers split (“shin” also represents the word Shaddai, a name for God) to confer a blessing.
In an episode of television’s Star Trek called Amok Time, Leonard Nimoy‘s character, Mr. Spock, half human, half alien, is introducing us to other people of his Vulcan race. We are glimpsing an alien greet his alien community. To signify the moment, and to create a richness of their culture and civility, Nimoy created the single hand, split finger version of the kohen’s Hebrew blessing he had seen as a boy. The Vulcan race, with its manner of ritual, of greeting, of community, offers the sign to one another with its message: “Live long and prosper.” It was the power of the hand, the strength of its gesture. Nimoy said that it “touched a magic chord.” It did. We immediately understood.
Leonard Nimoy died on Friday, February 27, 2015. He was 83. He has left his mark, his memory, and his gift to us, in that same unending way as the early man stenciling his hand on a cave wall. To the far reaches of space, where words and time hold no sway, the enduring image remains.
Orbiting 250 miles (400 km) above earth on the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Terry Virts commemorated the passing of Leonard Nimoy with the Vulcan hand gesture. To the right of Virt’s hand is Nimoy’s home state, Massachusetts, though Leonard Nimoy’s world would become so much bigger. We give the greeting to Mr. Nimoy, who gave it to us, this one last time. We offer it in softest silence, as he, now with his fully human heart at rest, makes his voyage to the eternal frontier.
This Thursday in March
Our wonderful friend and writer, Re Harris…not only has exquisite writing chops — she is a musician too. Her work is up on Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRecord. Give a listen, dance because you’ll want to…. You can download her tracks too.
Water Over Fire 