Ten of Crystals/Delusion: Voyager Deck
In the Voyager deck, the archetype of Delusion is also at the mental level of the Fortune card. The Fortune card urges you to believe that: “Fortune comes from following your passions.” The mind that achieves abundance is always working to expand its thinking. Be inventive and use your imagination. Fortunes are built on dreams. At the same time, realize that your mind-boggling ideas will be considered delusions by many. Your imagination may give you mirages, false suns, or diamonds in the sky. But you won’t know until you pursue your dream vision. Be a dreamer; follow the dream.
The Voyager card, the Ten of Crystals and Delusion, is really a delusion in itself. This card means vision. However you look at it, vision is an illusion until manifested on the physical level of reality.
Even if we materialize our dream, is it real? Is not everything an interpretation of the mind? Maybe it is all a mind game, all a delusion. But is not an illusion as real as anything else?
Try not get caught up in the endless machinations of the mind but allow your thoughts to be what they will be. At the same time, be entertained by them. In conclusion, follow the illusion/vision of your choice—what your heart wants to do. This is where your passion lies. Be not fooled, your mind will give you plenty of answers all of them true and all of them false.
More traditionally the interpretation for this card is “Ten of Swords.” Symbolically, Swords represent a particular mind-set. Ten is the last number of the suits and represents the end of something but also the beginning of something new. The “Fortune” card is of the Major Arcana and represents a larger archetype. In this case, the larger picture is the Wheel of Fortune, which can turn either way, for better or for worse. However, we cannot hide from the very human responsibility of “choosing” a direction at any given moment. Which will you chose--the shadow of delusion or the light of vision?
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You are the totality of the universe acting through a human nervous system. You came from a source that was never born and will never die. And you are here to create the world in every moment.
-- Deepak Chopra
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
– Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, 42-3
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Editor's Notes
Toni, What a great issue…I especially liked the article by Meredith Jordan….what a deep person she is!
Thanks for all of the wonderful work that you do with your Journal…it is exceptional and I always enjoy each issue.
Sonja Simpson, RN past president of the American Holistic Nurses Association
Obama and The Palin Effect
From: Deepak Chopra | Posted: Friday, September 5th, 2008
Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.
She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.)
I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.
Look at what she stands for:
--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair America's image abroad.
--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.
--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.
--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.
Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all right, Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness.
Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.
Submitted by Aaron Levine, Bainbridge, WA
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