My Chaos Card 0 of Void – Tarot of the Silicon Dawn
Chaos and the Tarot
I walk for two to three miles three times a week. If I am by myself it is a time of quiet openness. I try to keep my mind quiet – like my sensei in college suggested – “Have your mind be like a pool of still water”. It is a moving meditation. I am open.
Last week I looked down and saw the back of a faded card. Being a card reader, I was curious what card it might be. I turned it over and it was…blank. There was no image. I felt the world slip away a bit. How could there be no image? There is always an image. Even the Fool who come from nothingness as number zero is an image.
The first paragraph of Genesis came to me:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”[1]
My next thought was of Enrique Enriquez. We had met in October in New York over coffee. Enrique is fond of wandering the city in an open state ready to receive. With experience rooted in art and Tarot Enrique is very awake to messages the world places in front of him. I had a notion that he had left this card for me so that I would better understand his inspired wanderings. Was he wandering 2,500 miles away in his concrete canyons or smiling at me over my shoulder?
I left the card there, vaguely afraid to pick it up. I took a picture and walked away deep in thought. I thought of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. The blank card reminded me of the nothingness that is there after Shiva is done and before Brahma begins creating the universe again.
I thought of the progression of the Tarot majors from nothingness to completion and back again. I thought of the space between the Tower and the Star. I thought of the Zero of Void card in the Tarot of the Silicon Dawn – pure Chaos that can be come anything.
A story came to mind – one I had read decades ago. In the story, when the world was young there was little space between the Divine and man. Magic flourished everywhere, but one day it left… Man became entrenched in his control of the world and his left-brained mastery ruled for ages. And then one day the magic came back…
There was a scene in the story where a man (the protagonist) is leaving the city and driving further and further towards Faerie. The road starts out as a smooth highway, striped and with telephone poles. As he drives further the road becomes less smooth and vines begin to grow at the base of the telephone poles. The road gradually disintegrates and the vines surround the telephone poles and they eventually disappear. The highway becomes a country road in increasing disrepair and then a path. He abandons the car and continues to follow the path into Faerie. All of man’s creations slip away.
All of this from a blank card? I guess it’s an occupational hazard!
[1] New International Version, Genesis 1