The Reconditioning of Relationships

with a few Fives

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May-June astro/ tarot readings

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Dear Reader,

I feel simultaneously fragile and unfuckwitable.

And so may my writing reflect that.

Winter by the Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

I been pulling all these Fives lately, and they are like the barren season where citrus is the only winter fruit. It’s sour but not simple.

When I pull a Five I know the tank of self-respect needs some gas. Self-respect is rooted in behavior. So when our behavior reflects our deepest values, the difficulties and sorrow we encounter won’t be as disheartening because that pain won’t reflect a lack of basic self worth.

The cards help me monitor my self-respect. They become barometers to the choices and perceptions you make toward ethically loving yourself. I do see it as a substance, an energy that is in circulation that motivates meaningful action, integral behavior. It’s drawing on the substance of spirit, spirituality, to make materiality. And the tank acknowledges a vessel of capacity within. And the living need to pull from this energetic substance of self-respect to form any relation that actually feels worthwhile.

And in these relations I’ve been meditating on rules vs boundaries. Whereas a rule is meant to enforce or dictate another’s acceptable behavior, which may be appropriate as a teacher, guardian or parent, I find them inappropriate in intimate interpersonal friendships and romances. So rather than making rules in these relationships, I work to maintain boundaries, which are about monitoring my behavior. They are responsive and adaptable, and emerge from the values that anchor my sense of self-worth when life denies me, when people inevitable disappoint me. They keep me from feeling discarded, irrelevant and then despondent.

But I been pulling all these Fives lately, and Fives show up when a boundary is being transgressed.

Basically a bitch be left out in the cold waiting for your reply. But you son of a gun, don’t go thinking this is about you. But I keep pulling a Five and I keep confronting peoples inability to show up like I want them to, when I want them to.

A Five is wanting to break some shit. It’s getting mad about being sad, it’s all the smashing and thrashing that accompanies a love that has no sure success. You feel like a failure for falling so suddenly to the ground, but at least you get catharsis.

Fives are like, here is this pit, this cave, this hole in the ground that opens to hell, that I go to die in. Then emerge into life with none the wiser. 

Striving toward life comes from an appreciation of death. Informed by loss, we know life is limited. We know that there is a border, a boundary that breaks us every time. Where you expect and aspire to receive life, love, care death shuts you down. Rejection becomes you.

A Five is learned in loss. They condition the querent, as in emotional-physical-psychic conditioning that stresses and strains you to make you stronger, more capable, more unlocked, more developed, more potentiated. 

The Five of Cups pictured above is actively emptying the cup. They are pouring wine, blood, back to the earth. Pull it and tend your death altar, pour one out for your fallen. It might be solemn and sacred but not necessarily sad. Life expands to accommodate grief when it becomes a card you pull regularly. I can’t help but wonder what will grow from that spot, what barren earth will be restored, if the substance of that cups is so sacred.