Woo-woo and geeky cosmology mash-up warning. 🙂
No Black Holes in the Human Psyche
Great pic, yes? One of many I’ve looked through for a cosmology-based Tarot deck I’m working on. Can’t use it, though. Funny thing is, in human archetype-world, there’s no symbol for a challenge like a black hole that sucks you into oblivion so you can never be reborn or recover. You can check the entire Tarot deck. No such card. Humans are very hopeful creatures as a rule. The idea of something that sucks everything in and flattens it like a pancake to go round and round in the darkness “forever” just doesn’t make sense to most humans.
We humans have a pattern of bright joys followed by dark sorrows, but the weird thing is that even in the midst of our darkest inner black holes, outside the window of our grief, the stubborn sun refuses to stop shining, the grass refuses to stop growing, the trees refuse to stop blooming in spring. Resurrection of life (but not necessarily restoration of the old) seems to be the norm.
It’s All Temporary, Everything!
Yes, our losses in a lifetime look permanent, and for this lifetime, they may very well be. But absolutely everything in our universe is temporary in form and permanent in essence, even the essence of what gets sucked into a black hole (you can check in with some of the work of Stephen Hawking for more on how black holes treat matter).
The Tarot, with its psychic connection to the collective consciousness, knows about the dance of light and dark, love and loss in the universe. It’s perfectly symbolized by the Death card.
Can you see the skeletal face on this image of a planetary nebula? I know it’s called “planetary” but it’s about a single star’s death. When it dies, it shrinks and blows off a bunch of energy and matter out into space. Sad. But wait! It’s that glowing dust that will wander around, be captured by gravity somewhere else and condense again into a new solar system.
Always, the Dance of Light and Dark
Wherever there is death, there is birth. Wherever there is darkness, there is the potential for light. The Tarot card of Death is not about physical death as a rule (and not because it’s been white-washed by New Age readers). It’s always been about going through a loss we didn’t expect, releasing what doesn’t work, and starting anew. Even in the traditional card with Pamela Colman-Smith’s image of the skeleton on a horse walking through desolation and taking down kings and children, the sun is rising in the distance. The morning always comes.
I often notice in the night sky where I live the fact that the darker it is, the more stars I can see. Go out yourself some night and find a place away from the human light pollution, at least as much as you can. You’ll see this ultimate cosmic irony. The darkness supports the light.
