Stone Riley's Magic Mirror Tarot Set
Some Poems
I wrote most of these in 1980 when my life with Tarot was just
beginning. They were part and parcel with The Simple Tarot, my
other deck, in its first edition.
On the other hand, the final poem on this page, called Journey To
The West, came eighteen years later and tells the story of the
voyage to that point. Then twenty-three years on, work began
on this deck in your hands.
And here's one other note that may be interesting. In this
first poem, Invitation To A Student, in 1980 of course I was
speaking as a student.
Invitation To A Student Of Tarot
This is a fortune telling system, a magic book,
a diagram of human life and soul wherein your intuition
speaks the truth your self can never know or soon forgets.
Here is the classic deck of picture cards,
the old city of 78 squares, the ancient map drawn
up as though life were an ever-shifting game of 78
tiles whereon each human token at each moment falls.
In this book of pictures, poetry and prose
you will come upon a certain numbering of roads,
a careful survey of the gods and men in their abodes,
a full accounting of the ancestor odes.
Naked, clothe your self in daring
and simply touch the flow of an infinite
and ever-present moment which you know is now;
feel at once the night and morning; thus come to be
like a dolphin touching echoes in the ever-present sea.
Ask a question, touch a page; there study what
good fortune and your own eye have to say. To learn of
life just ask for guidance; your own hand can point the way.
If you wish now, come with me; stand upon
my shoulders as I walk the sea. Repeat the journey
trod when you were young; hearken to the tale from
your own tongue. At every marker stone embrace the view;
Comprehend the truth and speak it new.
O: The Fool
A clown leaps from the height,
this prince, this god of fools.
Unfurling colored wings of immortality
he soars out high. But, drunken
with the dizzy speed and power,
he folds one wing and falls
|
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x
x
x
x
x
x
to this world. |
1: The Magician
A clot am I of earth, wind, fire and water.
A breath am I of earth, wind, fire and water.
A spark am I of earth, wind, fire and water.
A drop am I of earth, wind, fire and water.
And yet I speak !
A human thing who names the gods.
2: The High Priestess
Cast your eye to the farthest shore
then cast you heart beyond.
There open your heart to the velvet touch,
the holy touch of dawn.
3: The Empress
Oh
QUEEN OF HEAVEN
mistress of our prayers;
Oh
grandmother EVE
you who first bore child
and gave it suck,
you who first laid hand
upon the newborn human brow;
Oh
PERFECT MOTHER OF US ALL
I,
fruit of your womb,
call your name BLESSED
and kneel here at your feet.
4: The Emperor
Oh
honorable father Adam,
you who measure space
and count the hours;
Your voice of power
invigorates both demi-god
and demon.
You
who cast a legal deed
upon this shadowy realm
and stamp a seal
upon all that is yours;
At will you call the lightening bolt
or lift a roof beam high.
5: The High Priest
This endless eddied world of surge and flow
may here and there forget to know
that it is All
but dreams instead
that it is You
or I.
Yet in each heart will ever lie the soul's deep pool,
the porphyry bowl of lotus wine,
the self-dissolving sigh,
so to my lips the endless draught you pour.
When I have drunk
and bathed
and drowned
and sunk beneath the waves I've found
my self somehow composed once more
and lifted to a sunlit shore where
wind-soaked flesh
and bony core
become an echoing ocean sound.
So now the eyes within my head look round
surprised to see both You and I
with callused feet on stony ground
still at unbounded ocean's edge
immersed in flowing sky.
6: Lovers
Love, thou art perfect in all thy ways,
Perfection whispering on the waters.
(Consider our joys, have they not been
a strengthening bond these times?
Do I not know thee fair and well?)
So shed all lies which others tell,
lies of blind hunger, of fearful
jealousy and pitiful defeat.
Gaze into my clear heart wide, calm and deep;
see here your own beauty rippling.
7: The Chariot
Like a mighty engine throbbing,
pistons counter-thrusting within steel,
our worlds are driven by
their opposites within.
Cock jays perch in opposite trees
and shout their individual song:
"I say, keep away !"
One living world is made.
The engine, armored centaur, heaves.
Upon its flank an emblem of its
government proclaims:
"I say, keep away !"
Split, we feel a master in our selves,
a governor in a bastion tower who hoards
up goods and keeps
a watch fire warm.
With rumbling gear inside of gear,
the turret and the cannon scan
beyond the border,
beyond our land.
8: Strength
Raindrop hanging still from a leaf tip
knows the mighty tug of Earth and yet moves not.
The filaments of liquid crystal knitting it,
pure star stuff,
have their own way.
9: The Hermit
Oh master of the high pass,
priest of the scouring wind which keens among my bones,
reach down your knotty staff unto my grasp that I may climb;
hold high that glorious lamp to show my feet the stony way
and raise a song to greet your long-forbidden love.
It was your song which drew me out,
which echoed through my heart and soul,
a faint high thrill to which my body chimed;
so up from the master's pillow jerked my head
and out from the castle cloister flew my feet
till here at last before you now I stand,
trembling and childlike, in your silence,
and pray you to caress me once again.
Why don't you sing? Why don't you sound the pipes?
Why don't you toss aside that cloak, that spectral mien,
and clasp me to your bosom with a hearty laugh?
Why now at long last chill and numbing silence?
Within the shadowy hood which blacks your radiant face
I do perceive half-lidded eyes which hint forbearance
and a tight-lipped little smile which answers: "Go !"
Bereft and yet obedient still, I turn away and blink aside
the tears to spy my barren home so far below.
And yet behold ! The wind has laid down to a murmuring sigh
and somehow, through your magic charm,
the waste I go to tread has turned to sparkling jewels
and to gold.
10: The Wheel Of Fortune
Tumbling headlong with its next step,
the great animal plunges through a matted screen
which hid the tunnel mouth and down
to the cave floor below.
Plunged from dusk into night,
but bred to a forager's quick wit,
it casts a glance about to see what light is shed
by the hole it fell through.
Suddenly landed in a new place,
it pulls itself up now to a comfortable squat and,
being one of the laughing apes,
grins back at its own breathless fall.
11: Justice
The firefly, tragically struggling,
sheds her phosphorescent glow upon
prismatic drops of spider glue
which a patient hunter hopes may hold her fast.
Here in a meadow in a wood on a plain,
now on this first night when all the suns
and moons together call her kind up
from a long waiting winter sleep in the earth;
Now on this first night of love,
of life within the soaring phantom body
of a swarm of light, she has cast herself
into a net of jewels and hangs suspended,
half terrorized, half reconciled to fate.
12: The Hanged Man
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Look ye with true eyes heavenward !
Behold:
! !
! !
** The Chariot Of A God **
! !
! !
this infinite-faceted jewel,
crystalline dream spindle,
heaven-spanning diadem of the god:
! !
! !
** Infinitude **
! !
! !
bridge between all stars,
from which I,
! !
! !
** A Priest **
! !
! !
descend.
13: Death
Youth is tenuous memory and
old age looms a fantasy somewhere;
room by room in a spiral hall
I walk the land.
What dread surrounds that door ahead !
What dreams lie there? What friend
or beast turns ear to the distant
measure of my tread?
14: Temperance
Water, blood of the earth,
come wash the poison from my flesh and bring back life !
I dwelt with the others and thus became thus;
now I give my self to you.
15: The Devil
A living creature crushed beneath a hero's thumb.
Seething hunger moist on lips and tongue.
A writhing knotty snake within, if not on constant victory fed,
will climb up on the hero's spine and pluck his heart instead.
By stealth or dare he feeds the beast,
each morsel meaning he lives still.
He is too strong to sacrifice that scabrous fruit of will.
16: The Tower
Upon this precipice built he a tower
to rule from high rich Eden's bower;
he fled the eye of God to cower,
to hoard up wife and goods and gear.
Spoke Fate: "In brittle silence sit you here,
"in age-long soul-deep hate and fear,
"all for the sake of goods and gear,
"and jealousy of love."
"Stand off !" cried Adam to the dove,
"Repeat my mortal boast above:
"I am a man ! Earth's pulse shall move
"beneath the tapping of my thumb !"
But thunder rolls from God's great drum,
the gale and wave and earthquake come,
with ripening time all strivings sum,
and every fortress finds its hour.
17: The Star
Breaker waves 'neath lowering cloud
of autumn, driven by an icy wind;
here I stand transfixed with longing
on the shore of Skysealand.
Human eye drawn always outward
stretches forth the human hand
toward ever distant grey horizons
where the elements all blend.
Cold the heart and cold the soul,
cold the marrow in the bones does grow;
the yearning eye knows what to seek
but is the dogged flesh too weak?
Where is the rescue promised me?
How can my swooning heart yet come to be
a vessel of white light and sanctity
when all is dark and far from God's humanity?
A light !
Thank God,
upon that distant curve
of blackening sea, at last a light !
So here I stand and through the eye
that piercing light darts to my soul
and there explodes into prismatic glow,
suffusing all.
18: The Moon
Whispering shadow on my pillow lay.
(Arise ! Barefoot ! No robe ! Away !)
"How far the chase tonight?" I say.
The moonlight never answered.
19: The Sun
Soaked with the cold blind night, I stumble,
blunted sword in hand, panting,
not even breath enough for prayer,
my charges huddled in the broken circling wall
not knowing where the next attack may come.
But children of two eternal ones are we;
He whose word is fire
and She whose breast is clay.
Oh glorious mighty SOL !
The first ray of Your rising
pierced me and my heart flew up
to suck Your breath of flame !
You kiss me as You kiss the mother Earth
and bring back mighty life !
I thrust down roots into Her breast
and turn my face to you.
A circling temple from the broken stones
with altars male and female I heap up;
thereon this precious incense now I burn
to welcome You.
20: Judgment
Maze walker,
creature of a million colored chambers,
creature with a million colored patterns in your eye,
long ago lost here, almost guideless, almost friendless,
guessing every turn,
your steps have crossed a million beckoning portals,
tramped a million halls.
Now a new eye opens,
the eye above your self, holding no patterns, and sees:
the foot and floor, the patterned walls, light dancing to
the counter-patterned eye; now all is one !
A dance of all reality, of great and small infinity,
whose tiny steps and boundless whirls make up yourself,
all that there is.
Now see the truth of All:
All is one thing, a world of self-same strangers,
cable of many threads, garden of night and noon and morning,
magic loom of all there is.
21: The World
Unbounded parkland;
where the master gardener passes
exotic seeds flame
into great maturity.
Of course
the weathered lips reveal a smile;
all a wish could name
is here today.
Journey To The West
Love is not the thing, nor hate. Hope is not the mouse's
scurrying feet and owl's sharp beak, no more than these are fear.
What is the purpose of the poppy's fate then, or the logic of my heart
blood's heat, or yet the celestial motive of the sky's Great Bear?
How do we live? Why has the Cosmos brought us here?
When I was full of hope, I thought that was the beginning and end
of all things. Then, full of yearning to be loved, I dreamed
love was the wellspring of delight. But then, immersed in deep
despair, I chose to live this life for purposes that were far too
obscured in smoke and flame for me to know and name. Why did I,
in that dark hour, choose to live this life?
Why did I not yet
fly away?
Love is not the thing, nor hate. Faith is not the prisoner's
chain, nor doubt the prophet's holy flame, nor greed the mother's teat
touched to the sleeping baby's lips, nor is blessed charity the tyrant's
grip. All this is life, but what is life? What is the
melting of all opposites?
There is a man I truly hate; there is a woman whom I love. That
man is dead as he once wished for me, the woman never met although my
eyes search through the worlds for only she. Where is this woman
who'll return my glance? Where is that ancient foeman now when in
my hands I hold his broken blunted lance? And where am I?
Where is this land wherein I stand alone? What is this place?
Is this my home? I simply call this place my Skysealand.
One year when I was young and starting out across this continent, I
strained my eyes to look ahead to map the way. That year, each
Monday I would take a poem from an ancient wisdom book and I would fold
up the coded rhyming wisdom neatly into my purse. Then for seven
days I'd search the curving trunk of every tree and every mottled
turtle's shell that I might pass beside the way for explications written
there by unseen hands for me. Well, the Gods were generous and kindly
gave some of their secrets up, but the boy I was then did not know their
language well.
An eagle's mighty flight; a turtle shell; amid the lovely ripples of
a brook, the various colored pebbles very artfully arranged; I made the
best of it I could. Indeed, several turnings of the way and
crossroads were very helpfully pointed out to me in advance by these
magic signs. But now I've come a good way further on and, even
though the sunlight and the stars and meadow flowers and hills and snow
now all sing and whisper to me audibly; and even though the web of jewels
of which all things are made stands manifest and visible and palpable to
my fingers; yet even so, more hidden secrets still remain.
Buddha says that all is bliss. Solomon recommends a carefully
considered trust. Christ says you should take his word on faith.
Ganesh and Krishna both respectfully suggest that you can dance your life
with happy grace. But for me, Merlin stands with a lantern held high
in his hand, leaning on a wooden staff up on a windy mountain top.
That wind blows down to gently touch my face and it speaks to me in a
woman's voice and all she says is just: "come".
No, love is not the thing, nor hate; not victory nor defeat.
Whatever guides my fate, whatever it may be that lures me on, whatever it
may be, it is not anything that I can know so as to name.