The Question I Had Been Avoiding
During my morning quiet time, I pulled Aconite (Death) from the Oracle of the Hekatean Path. Meditating on the message, I realised I was standing at a crossroads where something indeed had to die.
For months now, I’ve been immersed in exploring what I have come to think of as my Christo-Hekatean path. My days have been filled with the Gospel of Philip, Jewish mysticism, Greek philosophy and modern writers such as Seren Bertrand and Sarah Iles-Johnston. Every new connection has sent me down another fascinating rabbit hole, and I’ve loved every minute of it.
Yet, despite all that study, one thought landed with uncomfortable clarity this morning.
I’d been asking everyone except Yeshua.
So I asked him.
I told him, as honestly as I knew how, that if this wasn’t a path he would walk with me, I would choose Hekate.
I don’t mean that as a rejection of Christ. Quite the opposite: it was my way of acknowledging that I can no longer deny the reality of what has happened through my relationship with Hekate. If following Christ required me to pretend that those experiences were false, then I wouldn’t do it.
I wanted the answer from him, not from another book or another expert.
What the Tarot Reflected
Only after praying did I lay out the Tarot de Marseille.
The 9 of Swords captured the mental agony of trying to get everything exactly right. Crossing it was the 10 of Batons, which felt like carrying far more than any one person could reasonably bear. It wasn’t simply my own uncertainty. It was centuries of theology, historical debate and the constant pressure to make sure every insight could be justified by someone else’s authority. It was the oppressive weight of feeling divided against myself.
The Queen of Batons appeared as the action card. She has represented Mary Magdalene for me for many years, so seeing her there made me smile. She doesn’t argue for her authority or apologise for it. She simply lives it.
The quint was Le Soleil.
For me, the Sun is Christ.
I smiled again.
That was my answer.
The near future cards were the 4 of Cups, the Page of Coins and the Ace of Cups. Rather than seeing four cups, I suddenly imagined the Page discovering four fountains from which to draw wisdom as he continues his journey. I’m still sitting with that image and suspect it has more to reveal over time.
What Aconite Was Really Asking to Die
Only afterwards did I understand why the day’s oracle card had been Aconite – Death.
The thing being asked to die wasn’t my love of study or my fascination with history. It was something much older.
Growing up, my father taught me that my will didn’t matter.
If I wanted to know what mattered, someone else had to tell me.
That pattern followed me into adulthood more faithfully than I realised.
Whenever something important happened spiritually, my instinct wasn’t to ask whether it rang true in prayer. It was to ask whether I could find an ancient source to validate it. If not an ancient source, then perhaps a respected scholar. If not a scholar, then at least someone who wasn’t a blogger but who had published a book.
The Resurrection
Looking back, I can see that I wasn’t really searching for theology.
I was searching for permission.
Permission to trust my own encounters with the Divine.
This morning, I stopped treating prayer as the beginning of the conversation and started treating it as the place where the conversation could end.
For me, that changed everything.
It’s not about the need to find the correct belief. That need kept me trapped in the 9 of Swords space. It’s about becoming whole, and this is where the Ace of Cups leads me.
