Yesterday, I updated my Temperance article on Angelorum. This morning, I began to understand more clearly why this Arcanum matters so much to me.
My name adds up to 14 in the numerological system I use. XIV Temperance has therefore felt personal for a long time. But there is a difference between recognising yourself in a card and allowing it to show you something you would rather keep covered.
The word that surfaced this morning was wholeness.
It arrived through prayer, a restless night, St Jerome and a chapter of Agrippa. A fairly typical collection of companions for my mind, admittedly.
The Hunger Beneath the Reading
Last night, I lay awake longing to feel the Lord’s presence. I wanted intimacy with God, and I couldn’t feel it.
I understand that dryness is part of prayer. The absence of a felt response does not necessarily mean that nothing is happening. But knowing this didn’t remove the hunger. If anything, the quiet made me more aware of how starved of Presence I felt.
Reading Brother Lawrence had helped me put words to what I wanted. Yet there I was, recognising how often I had tried to feed that longing with more book learning. Another idea. Another correspondence. Another piece of the great puzzle.
Books have given me a great deal. Still, I was asking them to satisfy a hunger that required prayer and relationship.
Eventually, I fell asleep again. After several nights of tossing and turning, I finally had a decent night’s sleep. Perhaps that was the gift available to me: rest. Perhaps the Lord knew that my tired mind wouldn’t be able to handle His presence.
Meeting St Jerome in the Morning
When I woke, I read about St Jerome in Saints of the Isles. It is 30 September, his feast day.
His account of being accused in a dream of following Cicero rather than Christ landed rather close to home. In his letter to Eustochium, Jerome describes loving classical literature while finding the style of Scripture unappealing. The experience occurred during a severe illness, and he understood it as a call to change.
I recognised the kind of accusation my own mind might produce. Had I loved magic, miracles and mystery more than God Himself?
That question deserved an honest hearing. But after praying, something more precise surfaced.
The gifts had made me feel special. They had helped compensate for the lack of a healthy, secure sense of self. I had looked for things to dress myself in so that I would appear whole in the eyes of others.
I was naked like Adam and Eve, grabbing at the first fig leaf I could find that suited my inclinations.
The Gifts and the Fig Leaves
That recognition changed the question for me.
I could see how spiritual gifts, knowledge and experience had become part of the clothing I wore. They offered an identity. They gave me something to point to when I struggled to feel that I was enough.
My AuDHD mind naturally becomes deeply absorbed in the things that fascinate it through cognitive immersion. Symbolism, Tarot, magic and the mysteries have occupied an enormous part of my inner life. In many Christian circles, that fascination made me suspect. Had my special interest been science, I doubt it would have provoked the same response.
I am not trying to make every interest or practice of mine exempt from discernment. I am trying to understand what happens when an already wounded person hears that the way their mind reaches towards wonder is itself a reason for rejection.
It becomes difficult to separate a question about something you do from a verdict on what you are.
Richard Rohr’s Falling Upwards has helped me approach this with more honesty. Prayer brought it into focus this morning. Beneath my need to feel special was a need for wholeness, and for the security of being loved without having to display my spiritual credentials.
Agrippa, the Hebrew Letters and Psalm 119
Alongside Jerome, I was reading Book II, Chapter XV of Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia: the numbers above 12.
What struck me was how much of the chapter drew on Scripture. Agrippa’s discussion of 22 connects the number with the fullness of wisdom and the 22 Hebrew letters. My mind naturally went to the 22 Major Arcana.
Meanwhile, the reading accompanying Jerome in my saints book came from the Mem and Nun sections of Psalm 119.
Mem begins with love of God’s law and meditation upon it. Nun opens with the familiar image of God’s word as a lamp for the feet and a light for the path. Reading those passages, I found myself contemplating the Tarot correspondences again.
These belong to different traditions. In the Golden Dawn system associated with RWS, Temperance corresponds to Samekh. In the Continental sequence by Papus, it corresponds to Nun, the 14th Hebrew letter. The Tarot associations are a later interpretative layer, rather than the original meaning of the Psalm.
For me, that meeting of texts opened a question about how knowledge becomes something we live. A lamp is useful because it helps us take the next step.
Temperance and the Work of Becoming Whole
After yesterday’s writing, the angel with the two vessels feels especially relevant.
There is movement in this image. Something is being poured, received and brought into relationship. I recognise my own unfinished work there: learning how my intellect, imagination, woundedness and longing for God can belong within one life.
I have spent a great deal of time acquiring things with which to clothe myself. Temperance gives me an image for attending to what those things are doing within me. How much space do they occupy? What do they nourish? What am I asking them to make up for?
My connection with Arcanum XIV makes this reflection personal. It doesn’t provide a finished explanation of who I am. If anything, it helps me stay with the work that remains.
This also gives me a different perspective on my Tarot practice. The cards can offer images through which I recognise my motives and bring difficult questions into prayer. I want to pay attention to whether my work with them helps me become more honest, more loving and more present.
That leaves plenty to discern. I don’t need to settle every question this morning.
What Creature Did God Make Me to Be?
I will keep reading Agrippa. His philosophical fumblings feel familiar. I suspect the Richard Rohr book I am listening to will not be my last, either.
But prayer and meditation need room in my life that another book cannot fill. The simple message of Brother Lawrence helped me recognise what I have been longing for all along: presence and intimacy with God.
I wonder what will happen to my inclinations as I become less dependent on them to establish my worth. Which interests will deepen? Which will loosen their hold? What might I be able to give when I am less concerned with how the giving makes me appear?
The question I want to carry into prayer is this:
Where will my inclination lead me when I allow God to show me what creature He made me to be?
I have no complete answer. This morning, I can at least recognise the hunger, and turn towards Him with it.
Prayer
Mother Mary, please pray for me as I learn to bring my whole self before God. You know my longing for Him, and the wounded places I have tried to cover.
Help me trust that I am loved before I have anything to show for myself. Pray that my gifts and interests may find their proper place, and that I may have the courage to release whatever keeps me from your Son.
Hold me in your Immaculate Heart when I am afraid to be seen as I am. Teach me your openness to God, your willingness to ponder, and your readiness to answer Him.
May I grow into the creature He made me to be, with room in my heart to receive His presence and love.
Amen.
