I don't see myself anywhere but in that past...
I'm no prisoner of reason. I said: God. I want salvation to bring freedom: what do I do?...
If only God gave me heavenly, aerial calm, and the power of prayer--like ancient saints. --Saints! What strength! The anchorites were artists abandoned by the world...
Ah, to rise back to life! To look once again upon our deformities...
--But it seems my soul sleeps.
Were it truly awake from this moment forward, we would be approaching a truth that, even now, may be encircling is with her weeping angels!...
It seems that in order to survive, we tell ourselves stories. We soothe ourselves with tales of how we became who we are, pore over the minutiae of our pasts as if they would point a way forward, arm ourselves against uncertainty with the names we've established and the possessions that tell us we've achieved something real and lasting, a comfort and a legacy we can rest in.
The religious have the promise of salvation, a simple plotline to follow that assures them of a satisfying ending; turn away from the temptations of the world, strip yourself of pride and face up to the multitude of sins that cling to you, and you'll find a place made for you at the side of God. The secular are mostly concerned with the image they've worked all their lives in the service of, the belief that there is a just reward waiting for them if they stick to the plan society recommends as the right one clung to just as fervently as any spiritual decree.
We tell ourselves stories, as children are told fairytales that order a world too large and frightening; the good prosper, sacrifice is rewarded, evil will always be caught out and punished by the righteous hand of justice. We'll be safe and happy, protected in the arms of a family and leaders that want us to succeed. If we follow the example of the hero and steer clear of the shadows, if we drop a trail of breadcrumbs so we'll always remember who we are and where we came from, we'll never get lost. There's no such thing as monsters, it's just your eyes that deceive you. Anyone who has reached the age of majority with their wits intact knows in their heart that the truth is not so simple, and never easy to recognize.
More often than not we suffer, and we walk around pregnant with our own shortcomings, carrying the suffering to the end as a badge of honor because there seems to be no other way of coping. Victimhood as a coat-of-arms is the extreme example of this; giving in to the comfort of admitting oneself powerless means there is no more need to keep trying. The Queen of Swords is traditionally viewed as a widow, a spinster, a woman without a partner, and of all the tarot queens she's the only one defined by a loss or what she lacks as opposed to her own personal characteristics. And here, she appears wary of anyone stripping her of that mantle; she isn't quite powerless, but she's resolutely turned away from the future, seated, and has no apparent interest in being otherwise. She looks to the shield, her name, her defenses, centered in the four coins that mark the boundaries of a life.
The Hermit seems to have a different approach. He's always been identified as some kind of seeker, and here he raises his lamp to Judgement; is it his own resurrection he's looking for? The Hermit is, as his name tells us, solitary, and the work of revising a life, of re-vision in the service of moving forward, is of necessity a solitary act. No one can know what's in our hearts but ourselves, and much as we might try we cannot hide what is buried there from ourselves. The Hermit is wise, to a point; he works in the service of illumination. But the act of looking backward to see what has already died, digging up the corpse of the past again and again to inspect the wounds, doesn't necessarily show us a way to avoid suffering them in the future. Too often we stop at recognizing that the moment for a profound upheaval has arrived; and too often we acknowledge it only because it blares in our ears and we can hardly ignore it any longer. The truth presses upon us, and we can sit in the coffin waiting for the revelation, or we can climb out on our own.
The lies others tell us, the lies we're expected to collude with in order to be received into society, are easy to see and resist if we choose. It's our own lies that are so insidious; it's the stories we tell ourselves as we wait for someone else's permission to begin the climb out of the hole we've dug that are so hard to resist. Seeking forgiveness from a god to whom we hand the reins of authority and resting our hopes for the future on the illusions of the past, buying in to the role we're expected to perform or becoming a reliquary that forever exhibits our own failings; these are comforts we can't afford to keep.
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