Day 5. Feast of Mothers, Christmas Eve: - Dec 24th
This card shows how we can connect with the spirits of our ancestors for communion and to ask for wisdom and guidance.
Card:
4 of COINS
I wasn't near my
Dylan Tarot so I shuffled a
RWS deck I had at hand and pulled the 4 of Pentacles. Thinking this was a weird card to pull for this reading, I went and pulled from my DT and - wouldn't you know it - pulled the 4 of COINS. Here we have a small (and thin) Dylan, circa. 1965, dwarfed by medicine bottles. This was during his amphetamine use, as reflected in the upright song,
Ballad of a Thin Man. Addressed to a "freak" named Mr. Jones - most likely one of the reporters who hounded Dylan at the time - the narrator mercilessly ridicules Mr. Jones for being out of touch, unhip, a square. Dylan had a mean streak, especially during the years he was running on speed, and this song is perhaps that streak's apex (or nadir). What could this card/song mean, then, with regard to connecting to the spirits of our ancestors for wisdom?
Of course, the answer resides contrariwise, as underscored by the card's reverse song,
I Am A Lonesome Hobo. This modest song appears on
John Wesley Harding, Dylan's first album after his motorcycle accident (which in fact was a pretext to kick his amphetamine dependence). In contrast to
Thinman, it is a simple, first-person narrative retelling how a man of wealth and privilege lost everything because he "did not trust his brother". He warns the listener to "stay free from petty jealousy, live by no man's code, and save your judgments for yourself lest you wind up on this road." Rather than making ourselves sick over what seems so all-important in the moment, we need to disengage, take a step back, and gain perspective - something our ancestors afford us and actively personify. Rather than "speed", we need to slow down. Rather than making ourselves big by making others small - which only makes everyone small - we need to direct our energies to what really matters rather than the exiguousness (or thinness) of worldly matters.
Wisdom is amassed through experience, and our ancestors embody this from their big-picture vantages of time and detachment. Often, we ourselves know these things if we allow ourselves to listen to our conscience, which is actually the voice of our ancestors, instead of inflating our egos and drowning out those voices with our own complaints about others.
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