“No Blame” — Between the Ideal and the Irredeemable*

*Between the ideal and the irredeemable lies the imperfect or slightly flawed that, with prompt corrective action, can still be salvaged. (A creative rewrite of Benebell Wen’s I Ching text.)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve been thinking about the often-repeated advice of the I Ching that “there is no blame,” in essence meaning that, although mistakes have been made, none of them is fatal and we can still avoid any permanent harm. This quote is strongly reminiscent of the dramatic difference between the public gaffes of an inexperienced politician (the “bull looking for a china shop” who shall remain nameless) and the adroit maneuvering of a “Teflon Ron” Reagan, to whom nothing negative would stick for very long and who accrued no lasting political damage from his errors of judgment (regardless of what you may think of him as a President). Here I will translate that into tarot terms. (All images are from the Thoth Tarot, copyright of US Games Systems, Inc, Stamford, CT.)

The three-card pull is a serviceable vehicle for my purpose. If we receive three auspicious cards in the draw that are perfectly attuned to one another, we can anticipate that the outcome will be an entirely satisfactory one. In nautical terms, think of gentle breezes and smoothly rolling seas; we can fly before the wind with little thought for navigation. (To illustrate these vignettes I’ve chosen the most stereotypical combinations I could come up with.)

Three cards of a divergent nature — some encouraging and some not — will create a misalignment that could take some effort to fashion into a workable success path. It suggests sailing into a steady headwind that will require zig-zag “tacking” or “beating to windward” in order to make any headway.

Three cards that are united in their adversity can result in an insurmountable barrier to progress. Prospects look bleak and the best choice may be to cut your losses, beat a strategic (and hasty) retreat and wait for another day. The nautical equivalent would be unforgiving gale-force winds that keep you at anchor; if you venture out of the harbor there is the risk of having a shipwreck that will send you to the bottom.

There is a commonly-held opinion among 21st-Century diviners that a tarot reading must always close on a positive note, leaving the querent with an upbeat, life-affirming message. Getting down to the objective, unflinching “no blame” point of a mixed-blessing outlook can be challenging for them. In such unsettled cases, rather than cheer-leading, I prefer to shoot for a constructive conclusion that gives my clients something they can work with in the way of useful guidance. To me, this is the essence of empowerment; it provides the wisdom and the roadmap to craft their own solution when the cards are reluctant to grant it willingly. I call it “handing them the ammunition and pointing them at the target.”

The more cards we introduce to a reading, the more difficult it becomes to achieve a blameless transparency, particularly when the spread includes a large percentage of inauspicious cards. The scenario can resemble a coastal “riptide” that generates cross-currents of irresistible force, a situation that the beleaguered querent would be fortunate to escape in one piece. If we venture farther out to sea, we could encounter an oceanic maelstrom that grinds us to bits like Longfellow’s proverbial “mill of God.” A useful comparison would be a simplistic 50-piece jigsaw puzzle as opposed to a 1,000-piece behemoth. One is “so simple a caveman (or a novice tarot reader) could do it,” while the other demands a practiced eye, profound patience and a lot of time to sort it out with any degree of proficiency.

In the meantime we can aspire to the tarot version of the old cliche that grants us the ability to reclaim what we can from a less-than-ideal situation, the courage to abandon what we can’t recover, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on June 2, 2024.