“From great suffering comes great art.” Abigail D. Engel
I admit this one has been a doozy for me. This card is a very powerful card. Traditionally it indicates a need to think on past experiences to gain a new perspective on a situation.
As it is a Cup Card it has to do with water and emotions. Get ready for a wild ride.
It is not enough for me to just know what my cards mean in the book that came with them. I desire a deeper connection that sears them into my soul. Initially, I had a hard time understanding the connection Uriel had to this card. I ended up doing a lot of research on this card to figure it all out. I am pleased that I took the time to gain a deeper understanding of it.
On first sight, looking at this card, we see an angel that is under water. He is reaching for the surface of the water. As he breaks through the surface of the water, he begins to transform into a lobster clawed being. I could not figure out why he was transforming. But, I could clearly see that he was.
I wanted to know more, so I consulted with my spiritual guides on what to focus on and went even deeper into the card. I ended up taking a brief journey into the Kabbalistic Tree Of Life to find out what was meant by the books reference to “the sun of Tipareth”. Here I found exactly what I needed to know to connect to this card. It all came together for me very quickly.
Tiferet on the Tree Of Life is located in the Sacral Plexus of the Chakra System. It is represented in the sigil drawn over Uriel’s midsection. This Chakra regulates our emotions, our sense of self control and our gut reactions to these types of situations. Not having control over this region leads to anxiety, fear and an overall lack of self control.
In Kabbalah, the human soul mirrors The Divine, The Creator Of All. Uriel represent us in this reading. He is the Archangel of art and creativity. Passionate artists often pull from the recesses of their soul to find ideas for their art. At anytime, we can freely ask Uriel to take this journey with us. We can ask him to take us there, show us what we need to see, reveal to us what it means when we see it and tell us how it will translate into the creative work.
The Six Of Cups asks us to take some time to go inside of our subconscious selves to get to the root of hidden issues. As we dive deep into the water of our subconscious, we meet with our shadow self. This is not an easy journey in any way shape or form.
We need to face these repressed aspects of ourselves and find why we supressed them, causing us to hold ourselves back from connecting to our higher self. We need to journey deep inside ourselves, face these issues, bring them into the light just as Uriel is doing in the image on this card and break the cycle that we have been stuck in.
This card actually represents the joy of the moment when all the work we have been doing is working.
We have taken the journey, transformed ourselves by stepping back into our subconscious, facing the darkness there and made the necessary sacrifices. We have actually committed to changing how we see things and adopted a new way of thinking, thus shedding our old selves and becoming a new and improved version of ourselves.
The transformation from his physical self into a lobster with claws symbolizes breaking through the cycles we get stuck in just as a lobster is capable of breaking free from his claws to protect himself from danger, regenerating to a stronger sense of ourselves, thus protecting ourselves from falling back into the shadows we have worked so hard to break free from.
This moment when we begin to see the transformation actually happening before us represents enlightenment and personal growth, a moment in which we reconnect with parts of ourselves that we had lost touch with and we are all the better for it.
The Mary-El Tarot; Landscapes Of The Abyss