Cards for the Day from the Samurai Tarot: An opportunity, if we have the strength to follow our hearts.

I haven’t blogged about the Samurai Tarot enough–and the last few days the air has felt so heavy that it seems like a struggle just to stay awake and work. So with struggle a theme before I even pull the cards, it seems like we’re ready for a Samurai Tarot day. I decided to make my usual two cards a mini-spread, asking the following questions:

1. What is the struggle about? Ace of Pentacles, a new opportunity, a chance to plant a new seed, make a fresh start, or in this case, cross a new bridge. This is a chance to let our past be like water passing under the bridge, while we move onto something new and better. It’s a chance we may or may not choose to take — and a bridge we may or may not choose to cross. Do we even see it for what it is?

2. What is the missing link? (What is the one thing that we need in order to make sense of this struggle and prevail?)

Of course, I wound up pulling two cards for the second position: Strength, and the Queen of Chalices. In the Samurai Tarot, Strength is represented by a sumo wrestler, and stands for vision. We should look clearly in one direction and go for it with everything we’ve got.

What is it that we’re going for? What we love–what we feel passionate about. In the Samurai Tarot, the court cards are each represented by a particular person from Japanese history, and the Queen of Chalices is erotic poet Ono no Komachi. Komachi was so beautiful that her name has become a synonym for feminine beauty — and so passionate that her poems are considered some of the most erotic in any language. Here is one of her poems that I found at a wonderful page dedicated to her poetry: http://www.gotterdammerung.org/japan/literature/ono-no-komachi/:

Since this body
  was forgotten
by the one who promised to come,
my only thought is wondering
    whether it even exists.

Why did I choose this poem to quote, out of all the beautiful Komachi poems I found when I looked her up? Because this poem seems to represent the missed opportunity — the opportunity that, if we don’t look for it, see it, and go for it, may well wonder of itself whether it even exists.

Notice also that yin (represented here by the Queen of Chalices) and yang (represented here by our strong sumo wrestler) must act in concert. Recognizing and going after an opportunity, when it appears, takes both the yin and yang sides of our characters. Strength itself is both yin and yang — and so is love.