Saturday, August 14, 2010


Perhaps the most misunderstood card, the Devil is not "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or the Greek god Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon. With Capricorn as its ruling sign, this is also a card about ambitions. It may indicate addiction and/or enslavement to habit. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This too, is a form of enslavement. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you wish to be.

I was four years old, almost five, when I saw "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne and Maureen O'hara. I remember my mom was expecting my sister, it was summer and she was fat with baby, the movie was on PBS, it was afternoon so no cartoons were on. It was hot, my mother was cranky, I was running around in my underwear like a heathen as per usual. I was supposed to be napping but I wouldn't, I wouldn't settle long on the movie either . . . then that spanking scene came on, and I watched that part, with keen interest I can still recall, a proto-naughty lightbulb switching on above my curly little head, noting that when a grown up girl got a spanking it didn't seem at all the same . . . noting that fancy frilly underwear she had on in that cowboy bar, so armscrossy that she couldn't bother getting dressed before she chased him in there . . . "huh", I thought.