Wheel of Fortune: A Musical Journey throught the Major Arcana of the Tarot

Number: 10

 

Symbol: Decad or Tetraktys, 

 

Kabbalistic Tree of Life

Sound/Music reference: Chromatic change

Quote: "A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune." - Anon

    

Song: Ch-ch-ch-changes- David Bowie

A Change Will Do You Good- Cheryl Crow

Revolution – The Beatles

REVOLUTION

EVOLUTION

EVOL mirror image of LOVE

Round and Round We Go

Do you recall the episode of the Brady Bunch when Peter and his family sang the song It’s Time to Change because his voice kept cracking as he reached puberty? Well, the Brady’s were offering us Fools an important metaphysical message: The world need not change…only you do. Change your mind, and your view of the world changes and evolves.

The number 10 represents the duality of completion and change. The 10^th card of the Tarot is called the Wheel of Fortune. No, this isn’t the kind of wheel where you buy a vowel from Vanna White. This Wheel is the wheel of fate or karma, and it had a significant message for me: Change is inevitable. To push against the wheel of change is to push against the flow of life, for all things are constantly in a state of flux.

If all things in the universe are in a state of vibration and change, then the spinning Wheel represents motion, and the ups and downs of our lives. When the wheel makes one full turn, it is called a revolution. If a society engages in a Revolution, the desired outcome is always change: A change in political leader, government, or social reform. I am posting these blogs because I want to do my part to help change the consciousness or evolve Foolkind. But change is the ego’s nemesis, and I discovered that the hard way on my rock 'n 'roll bus tour.

I Won’t, I Won’t, I Won’t Change! You Can’t Make Me!

My ego wanted nothing to do with the writing of the book. “Who are you to write a book, you Fool. No way are you putting these loco concepts out there about spirituality and rock music. You’ll get persecuted, humiliated, and everyone will hate you.” A bit dramatic, isn’t it? Our ego’s job is to protect us from being hurt and feeling pain, so it detests transformation and creates major illusions and excuses so that you don’t change because it equates change with pain. It’s kind of a self-perpetuating loop of hell. But listening to rock music helped fortify my spine, so that little by little, I could begin to bitch slap my ego’s fears. The intense desire to put the messages I was uncovering into the world forced me to change my old beliefs about myself, but man, my ego fought me every step of the way. I have the claw marks to prove it.

Okay, Well, Maybe I’ll Change Just a Little Bit…

You see, while I was doing my research on group reincarnation, for some reason I was drawn to writing about my childhood. After several months, I noticed themes from my childhood that were occurring in my life NOW. It was like a parallel existence, except I was twenty or thirty years older. I wrote about feeling ostracized and tormented by other kids as a 12-year-old because of my appearance at that age, and those emotions began to creep back after twenty five years. I had a looming fear of rejection pop up whenever I thought of meeting the band, and the same knot I felt in my stomach as a kid would surface. It made absolutely no sense intellectually. But our heart is not concerned with intellect and thinking. It’s interested in emotions and feelings and purging old ones that no longer serve us. 

I pushed aside this strange reaction for years, until one night I saw Cheap Trick in concert from the second row and my ego was totally triggered. The music which generally connected me with joy, acted as a catalyst for suppressed emotions from my teenage years that night. It triggered the feelings of rejection and rage in a powerful way. Once I understood I was transferring my fear and anger onto the band because they energetically represented the kids who taunted me in 7^th grade, I could begin to heal and change my old beliefs.  Rock ‘n’ Roll as psychotherapy. Who would have ever imagined?

Evolution

What do you think will happen to our civilization if we don’t heal and change our current perceptions? Your ego might tell you to let everyone else change…you’re perfect just as you are. If you’ve reached enlightenment, perhaps no change or growth is necessary. But for the rest of us Fools, our motto might be: Evolve or face extinction. LOVE backwards is EVOL:  The beginning of evolve and evolution. Love is Evolution, and Evolution is Love. It is the divine force that says, “As eternal beings we can never be finished or complete; that’s why we are eternal! Love what is, because it’s time to change!”

Sound of the Day-Musical reference- Chromatic Change

Fools might be sloths when it comes to change, but fortunately in music, chromatic changes are fairly common and far less painful. A chromatic change or modulation is when you create a harmonious passage from one key to another in a song. Like going from the key of C to the key of A#. To shift keys in your life, you’ve got to trust and surrender to the process. When we change our old destructive patterns and beliefs, and replace them with new, more life affirming ones, in essence it’s like we’ve shifted to a higher octave.

If you keep doing and thinking the same things, you’ll always get the same results. What is the same old song and dance you’ve been playing in your life which you can shift to a new key in your life?

The Hermit: A Musical Journey through the Major Arcana of the Tarot

Number: 9

Symbol: Enneagram

Sound/Music reference: Labyrinth

Quote: “The aim of music is not to express feelings but to express music. It is not a vessel into which the composer distills his soul drop by drop, but a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal.” – Pierre Boulez

"Music isn't just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play to the music of your soul." - Katie Greenwood    

Song: Revolution #9 – The Beatles

Seek Within and Ye Shall Find…

I call the ninth card of the Tarot, The Hermit, the Jimmy Page card. During my early study of the cards, I watched the Led Zeppelin movie The Song Remains the Same for the first time, and in one sequence Mr. Page transforms into the Hermit. I didn’t know at the time Page had a fascination for the Tarot. John Lennon had a thing for #9, and there’s nine letters in Rock ‘n’ Roll. Nine is the end of the natural integers, and therefore marks the completion of a cycle.

The Hermit stands atop of a hill with only a lantern to guide him. He represents a time in our lives for introspection, and searching inside ourselves for answers. He can also be a mentor, gently guiding you on your journey. A man who worked for Cheap Trick passed away shortly before my awakening, and though I’d only met him briefly a few times, when I asked the Universe for help with my writing of the book, he showed up symbolically in a dream. He even looked like the Hermit when he was alive. Over the years after my awakening, I believe his spirit had been my mentor as I’ve worked with him through the Tarot cards. Once again I was being shown that the cards truly do represent how our lives are patterned after these archetypes.

The Long and Winding Road

The physical correspondence to the symbolism of the Hermit is a traditional labyrinth, which represents our passage from the outer world of everyday life, to the sacred center. It is not intended to confuse like a maze, and only has a single route that spirals to the center, frequently originating from nine points at its core.  “The traveler reverses direction nine times through eight rings, cycling in rhythms of left and right, outward and inward. Reaching the mystic center at the eighth ring, the pilgrim completes the octave and transforms to a higher, or deeper, realm, the core of Self.” (Beginner's Guide To Constructing The Universe) pg 313 

In July of 2002, I asked the tarot, “What is the meaning of rock music to the people of my generation?” The Hermit showed up as one of the cards in this powerful spread. To me, it symbolized how many rock fans used music to connect with some deep part of themselves which seemed to go unnoticed in our daily lives. Drugs added another dimension to the experience. But true spiritual enlightenment does not come from a random use of a mind altering substance. It comes from understanding yourself, and the only way to do that is through introspection and a willingness to face our ego (at least IMHO).

Rock the House Down

I believe our souls wanted to make a difference with the coming of the new millennium, and so the old walls of morality had to be broken down before a new level of consciousness could come through. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius meant we could step up to the plate and change the previous millenniums of war by moving towards a vision of peace within ourselves. It wasn’t just about pointing fingers and blaming all the other Fools for screwing up our world. We are the world. For the first time in recent history, a generation of people attempted to use music to create a revolution and change in consciousness without the use of physical force. As a collective, we embodied the Hermit, at least for a while, and Rock ‘n’ Roll was the driving force in bringing us together to be the change in the world we wanted to see.

Sound/Musical reference: Labyrinth

According to Michael S. Schneider, “Initiates ritually traversing labyrinths changed tones as they followed the path. The lost clues to their music are built into the labyrinth’s structure. Each ring of this labyrinth corresponds to a note of the musical octave.”

I found several references of using sound and toning notes when walking the labyrinth. The notes reflect the paths you walk in the labyrinth, and correspond to your chakras.

    

Even if you can’t find a labyrinth to walk, you can print out two copies and trace the lines with your fingers. Some people swear this works just as well. See if any tones or sounds emerge from your voice when you travel along the path of the labyrinth. Just allow whatever comes up to be expressed without judgment. This is the sound of your soul!  Music can bring us inward, as we spiral towards the inner reaches of our consciousness. Enjoy the journey.

http://www.equinoxbooksandgifts.com/html/labyrinths.html

Strength: A Musical Journey through the Major Arcana of the Tarot

Number: 8

Symbol: Octagon

Sound/Music reference: Octave

Quote:  “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” -  Albert Einstein 

"Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes." -- Bill Cosby

“Our music has depth, and attempts philosophical thought and meaning with discussions of infinity, eternity and mortality. There is a line which people cross that turns it into some magical, mystical realm, for which I don't claim responsibility and don't hold any great truck with.”- David Gilmour of  Pink Floyd  

    

Song: Eight Days a Week, The Beatles

Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9.

A few summers ago, I pulled some Oracle cards to kill some time while waiting for Cheap Trick to come on stage, and several were numbered with an eight…8, 28, 38, 48 etc… I thought it unusual to see that many eights in a spread, but what did it mean?

When the band took their places, the drummer had on a shirt that at first glance resembled the number eight. I thought it was an odd synchronistic event, and when he came closer, I realized there were two black 45 rpm records stacked on top of each other (they represent music) to give the illusion of the number 8. I wondered, “Okay, drummer boy, what are you telling me through the law of synchronicity?  What do I need to know about the number eight and how it’s related to music?” I put my hand to my head and did a little Winnie the Pooh imitation, and said, “Think…Think….Think.” Aha! Eight = Octave- the tone that is eight full tones above or below a given note.

But what did I need to know about the octave? I wound up writing an entire chapter on the significance of the number eight, but to give you the Reader’s Digest version, the answer is…reincarnation and eternity.

Infinite Infinities

Yikes. Are you ready for all this? The number 8 is actually a vertical infinity sign. The symbol is like two circles, entwining one another with no beginning or end, or eternity. Two sound waves overlapping one another create the infinity symbol as well. Sound can connect us with the infinite because it is infinite. In the Tarot, the infinity symbol represents a balance of forces, and appears above the head of the woman in the eighth card, Strength.

This is connected to reincarnation because the night of my awakening, I wondered why legions of rock music fans were still so passionate about their favorite bands. Why were some of us as enthralled as when we were teenagers? I asked what I thought was a benign question, but in an instant, I heard, “Group Soul Reincarnation,” and my body felt as if I’d touched a live 100,000 volt wire. Energy surged through me, and somehow I knew I wrote a book about this clue and that it had a significant impact on the people of my generation. It was so profound, so life altering, that for months afterwards I walked around in this intense state of bliss, grinning like the Cheshire cat wherever I went.

Reincarnation, like chakras and all this other woo-woo stuff, is just big piles of cow poop, right? Well, that’s what your ego will tell you, and my ego tried to ram it down my throat over and over again during my journey. But day by day I discovered more and more evidence that maybe this wasn’t temporary insanity. Maybe I was being led to important hidden clues about rock music and numbers and reincarnation for a specific reason.

Reincarnation and the Spiral

Here’s why. Some metaphysical leaders use a spiral to describe the basis of reincarnation. Our souls come back many times in the attempt to evolve, expand and heal.  Our souls, which I believe are waves of vibration, carry our karma so that energetically we can repeat our “past” in order to transcend it (aka, heal our baggage): to move up an octave so to speak along the spiral.

What is an octave?  It is a repeat of the same note but at a higher vibration. Supposedly, when we heal ourselves “now,” we heal all of our past selves as well as our future selves in other lifetimes. Because we repeat similar emotional patterns lifetime after lifetime*, we are being given an opportunity to heal our past and move up an octave on the spiral, to a higher vibration. Perhaps this is why I was given the clue that group soul reincarnation and rock music were connected.  I wondered if rock bands play music which drew the souls who resonate with their sound together in order to heal trauma from our childhoods, which in turn is possibly a repatterning of previous lifetimes. 

There’s a bit more info is below under TERMS, but that’s all I can squeeze into today’s post without having your head engage in spontaneous combustion.

Sound/Musical reference: Octave

There is another important connection to the octave in science. Early chemists noted that chemical groups repeated every eight elements. It was named the octave rule, and compared to a musical scale. Music and the physical world correspond once again. 

Numbers are archetypes and carry inherent meaning for us. Sound and music are numbers expressed as vibration. Eight is the number of periodic renewal, and like the octave, constantly seeking a higher vibration. Can you intentionally lift your consciousness to a higher vibration with music? What music brings you to a higher octave?

TERMS

*In numerous past life studies either using hypnosis which taps into the subconscious or superconscious, or spontaneous recall, a person often sees similar emotional patterns that are present in their current lifetime in a past life in order to address an area of their lives which needs healing. Most Fools say, “Well, how can our consciousness survive death? How could those memories be real?” Good question. Here’s a possible answer I made up.

Human beings, on their most fundamental level, are packets of quantum energy. According to researchers, since quantum waves also encode information, it’s also as though, on the tiniest level of reality, a memory of the universe for all time is contained in empty space that each of us is always in touch with.**  Energy at the quantum level also suggests, to me, that the waves which make up us Fools could encode our various levels of consciousness.

Are our memories stored as waves, and when we physically die, those memories remain within the matrix of our soul? When you incarnate into your next lifetime, are the memories and emotions tucked neatly away in your subconscious as a wave pattern? Through your soul’s guidance those emotions which need healing begin to once again be expressed in your life’s experience. Until we Fools raise our consciousness, we just keep repeating the same emotional patterns over and over again until we consciously decide to make a different choice and change our minds and hearts toward love and forgiveness of ourselves and others.

Whether you believe the past life recall is possible or just tapping into the collective unconscious or sheer fantasy is up to you. But there is overwhelming research from many different disciplines which are highly suggestive that a soul experiences many lifetimes in order for it to grow and learn.  

** https://www.facebook.com/notes/curran-russell/the-field-the-quest-for-the-secret-force-of-the-universe-by-lynne-mctaggart/645957895465608 From author of the book The Field, by Lynne McTaggart.