Temperance: Measure. Moderation in all the pleasures of the senses. This is the definition of Little Robert (small indeed, but great by the talent). It applies wonderfully to the arcane tarot initiation and my own experience. Willing or not, Temperance brings me out of familiar ruts: to eat, to drink, to kiss. Temperance does not require abstinence except in my case.
I continue here the story of my life in the light of the major arcana of the initiatory tarot. Year 1992. I am far, far from the pleasures of the flesh. Gender at the antipodes. I have no taste for good food, I stop cooking, I hardly drink. My relationship with Micha does not work out, our beautiful sexual connivance belongs to the past. Question slip party, I put on the ear to smoke later. Without libido, it’s the bide in bed. That’s what comes back to me first when I mention this dark period. I do not like going back to see it.
Nevertheless, there are good sides. The great cleansing of the nameless arcane allows the energy to flow vigorously throughout the energy scheme. Rises of energies can occur at any time. Like a coiled snake that is recovering, the kundalini begins its ascent along sushumna, the central channel. It goes down very quickly. The channel is not ready yet. This missing work will be done in the following arcane, XV The Devil. These repeated puffs impress the arcane with an unpredictable character, even if we expect it. Without warning, the world is taking on colors and relief, the pace is accelerating, my eyes are wide open.
Something else, more important: this mystery, as I have experienced it, was for me the school of moderation. The crises of excessive enthusiasm followed by severe blows of depression are no longer relevant. My cyclothymic tendencies fade gradually until disappearing. Moderation is the main quality of the warrior. In the more than abundant mail I receive every day, very few show it. This stage is not reached by all, certainly, but others seem to have exceeded it without dwelling enough, too bad … They will be good, one day or another, for a catch-up session.
Moderation is comparable to a hydraulic dam. The role of the latter, by varying the level of the reservoir, is to store a portion of seasonal floods. It is said that it has a function of clipping floods. I observe the same phenomenon with regard not to the water level, but to that of moderation. The warrior uses it primarily to keep from skyrocketing along the scale of emotional tones. The principle is easy to understand. Whoever indulges in enthusiasm will soon have to disillusion. The higher he climbs, the lower he will descend. The harder they come, the harder they fall. And harder will be the fall …
It is difficult, even impossible, to go out alone from a serious depression. The warrior who understands it will stop climbing too high, to avoid falling too low. Moderation of the enthusiasm, trivialization of the most intense moments, to protect oneself from the madness by finding harmless the most astonishing phenomena that the ordinary magic of the kundalini will be able to put on our way. To cultivate moderation, to learn to conceal the blows of fate with the same indifference as the good news, to repeat to oneself that action is indispensable, while knowing that one must not wait for any result of one’s action, this is what was for me the school of moderation.
The revelations of the arcane XIII gradually make me understand who I am, who I am still. An unquenchable thirst for renewal takes me further and further away from the life I live without really getting involved. All pretense, one after the other, burst into pieces. The old Adam is dead, the new is coming. Transition. Digestion. Patience. Every morning brings me back to the desire to take off. Every night pushes me to be reborn. Every night shows me the inanity of a companion who has become too different. Our roads have diverged, sad enough – but what to do? The law of personal development pushes us to walk apart. The trials that await us will not be the same, the coming joys will be lived apart.
It’s time for the balance sheet for our couple. Micha and I have just lived more than 20 years of romance, adventure and let’s say, madness. A story like ours is not forgotten. But we must turn the page, out of respect for the blessed hours, so that the abject tearing does not ruin everything we have been able to build. Our relationship is tense, fragile. No desire either to go elsewhere, as I often did, and she too. No more taste for the deduction. Temperance, moderation …
I keep the memory of a curious mixture of nostalgia and excitement. The excitement at the approach of a new life, of which I already feel the energy pulsing in me, but that I try to restrain; deep nostalgia for a story of love and everyday life that ends sadly, brutally. This time the living does not take gloves. I’m leaving alone and Micha is babysitting. The break will be a sad evening in November, when Micha drives me out of the family apartment. I could have made a tour of the neighborhood and come back down the line asking for forgiveness. But of what ? Disenchantment?
We had a common account, but to do nothing to him, I left him my credit card and my checkbook. I left like a prince, nothing in my hands, nothing in my pockets. There are gray, cold days where I sleep curled up under my desk, in the agency that I created eight years ago, and which, too, flounders. This end of mysterious XIIII Temperance looks like Hanged Man … Fortunately I meet Marie, a young and luscious chick who cheered me up. And then the magic adventure continues in Rochefort on Mayenne, the great orchestra of the Blue Rock continues its gala evenings under the direction of Maestro Flornoy, and for nothing in the world I would have missed a single bit of it …
