I’ve been searching for my heart outside my own body.
But first let me go back a bit and start somewhere simpler.
A few weeks ago on my birthday, I pulled the Five of Pentacles card.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Tarot cards and with card reading, the Five of Pentacles is not the most auspicious nor reassuring of cards. In Tarot, the suit of Pentacles focuses on all things earthy and tangible—resources, health, money, the physical body, and how we can provide and care for ourselves and others. And the Five of Pentacles depicts poverty and lack at its most tragic and hopeless.
So. It’s a strange card to pull on a birthday, isn’t it? Not the most reassuring nor cheering of heralds for a new year. And yet, the more I’ve look at this card and allowed my mind to dwell on it, the more I have become grateful for its appearance in my life. The more it’s made me think and question and, perhaps, learn.
Different tarot decks tell different versions of the same story. Whatever image we happen to see cannot help but influence our interpretation of a card’s meaning, and every deck creator puts their own unique spin on any card they illustrate. This holds true for my current deck of choice, The Little Sister Tarot by Ginny Thonson (pictured above).
In Thonson’s illustration for the Five of Pentacles, two naked women lie huddled together beneath a blanket of sea-like cerulean blue underneath the ground. They appear to be sheltering in some barren cave. As the viewer of the card, we might almost feel the bone-deep chill and the hopeless, helpless isolation of the two forlorn figures. And yet, aboveground and just beyond the two women in their hidden exile, rises a cathedral-like structure with stained-glass windows aglow in warmth and cheer. This vibrant jewel of a building seems to invite the women to emerge from their barren cave and turn toward solace and succor.
A traditional reading of this card warns the querent that they’re facing a time of poverty and hardship, but also offers reassurance that some sort of benevolent help is near and gladly being offered, if only the querent can raise their head and see it. And if only they can allow themselves to accept this help, and trust in the goodness of what is being shown.
But somehow Thonson’s illustration feels different. Because both women face away from the offered help. Their eyes are closed. Their faces are serenely unaware, with almost willful disregard. It’s like they’ve deliberately forsaken the distantly glowing cathedral and its offer of help.
So what’s going on? What does this mean?
From the moment I flipped this card over on my birthday, I’ve had conflicting feelings about it. I’ve felt the tug of differing responses to the image itself, and to the card being presented to me at this time in my life. I do not believe that Tarot cards foretell the future, but I do think that they can help us build a more whole and empowered vision of our present by showing us a new lens through which to understand and articulate elements in our life that we might have missed or found inexpressible.
So what might I have missed? What’s lain hidden and unexpressed inside me?
First off, I’ll say that am relatively well. I am safe. I am warm and well-fed, and, objectively, I know that I am cared for by many people. I’ll even go so far as to say that I am cared for by my cat—even though cats are fickle creatures and often revel in ambivalence and scorn.
Yet when I stare down into the image on the Five of Pentacles, I feel the bone-deep grief and isolation of the two travelers alone in the cold night. I do feel abandoned. Why is this? Why do I feel such lack? Why does my body feel wreathed in poverty?
And here’s the answer I’ve come to:
I think it’s because I’ve been searching for my heart outside my own body. I think it’s because I’ve unknowingly taken myself out of my own body.
And I think it’s because that distant, beckoning cathedral in the Five of Pentacles is my body.
There are many reasons we leave our bodies. Sometimes we may not even be aware of this leave-taking, this vanishing. I think I’ve been outside my body for a long time and only recently have I discovered my own absence. It’s a funny thing, becoming aware of my own lack of borders, my own un-shape. But becoming aware of something doesn’t really fix it, does it? It only opens a doorway and asks a question. It’s up to me to answer that question and—possibly—go through that doorway.
Apart from a few brief months of awe and exploration in 2012, I’d say I’ve been single for my entire adult life. I am 37 now, so that’s no small feat. I haven’t lived this way purposefully. It is simply how my time here has played out. And, to a certain extent, I think this is some sort of extension of my absence from my own body, my searching for my heart in other places.
The longer I’ve been alone, the more desperately I’ve searched to find completion with another. And yet, in some strange way, I’ve always known that not being fully present in my body may have been the barrier to finding and feeling closeness and intimacy with a partner all along.
So staring down at the Five of Pentacles, I find myself asking: what would it mean to return to my body? How could I do so? And what might change if I could return and find my own heart complete and whole within myself?
I think I will always feel the impoverishment of the Five of Pentacles if I am always searching outside myself for completion and wholeness. And, like the two naked women in Thonson’s card, I might not even be aware of the reason for my sense of lack. I can always keep closing my eyes and turning my face away. I can always keep desperately searching for wholeness and presence in others.
And yet. And yet. What might it feel like to come quiet and soft back into myself? To find my heart? To feel my heart as a friend and an anchor? Because for all my grand, earnest talk of the beauty of questions, I do wish my questions to find their ends. I do wish to have answers and find resolutions. My missing-heartedness is only the beginning of any possible alchemy. At its best, it’s an invitation to explore and learn and perhaps complete the alchemy that’s been begun through the turning over of this card.
So I’ll look to the sun in the back corner of Thonson’s illustration. I’ll call it dawn, daybreak, an opening for some new revelation to pour through. And I’ll think upon these questions:
Why am I scared of my heart feeling things?
Who am I when I am alone?
What am I really searching for?
Why am I scared of loving myself?
What does it feel like to stay in a body?
What does wholeness mean to me?
Why does my mental leave-taking feel like I’ve been abandoned?
And perhaps, like me, you often feel as if you’ve left your body. Perhaps you’re wondering how to return to yourself. What wisdom might you share? How can we begin this journey together?
For my part, I’m working on creating this alchemy in myself and gently exploring the questions above. More soon.
M