Don't Stir the Pot of the Past!

 






Don't Stir the Pot of the Past!

by Madeline Montalban

The Six of Cups is one of the most puzzling cards in the whole minor arcana, for it has no clearly defined meaning of its own, and can only be interpreted according to the cards with which it is associated. Here, in brief, is its meaning. When the Six of Cups falls upright in a pack, then the cards which are associated with it refer to actions that took place in the past. If the card is reversed, these things have not yet come to pass, but will do so very shortly. Judge of the events in the divination according to the cards associated with the Six, and make your analysis.

That, in a nutshell, is the arcanum of the Six of Cups. It is one of those cards that tests to the full the Tarot reader’s ability. When interpreted, it gives any examiner a complete insight into the interpreter's powers (or otherwise) of making a correct, analytical and well-balanced deduction.

It takes many years of hard practice to extract from the Six of Cups its full value in a divinatory spread, but if you will follow the simple rules given above, in time you will learn how to interpret it.

Now, in divining any spread, it must be borne in mind that every reader of the Tarot works in a completely different way. It is quite hopeless just to use "the meanings of the cards as written", for even experts disagree on just what each card does mean, and this is for a good reason. Each card means many different things, and all Tarot readers have to find out just what any particular card means to themselves.

There is no such thing as "rule of thumb" about the Tarot; one has either a natural faculty for using it, or not. Theoretically, it can be learned by anybody. In actual practice, it can be mastered by very few. To me, the Six of Cups has come to mean something very peculiar indeed. This card often appears in conjunction with the card of the Querent, and when it does, I know that Querent is either obsessed with the past or has, in some cases, a very peculiar bee buzzing in his bonnet. So here, for your guidance, are a few things I have found associated with this card when it holds prominence in a spread.

If you have had an unpleasant love experience, and come off worse in the encounter, then never try to revive that association. It will lead only to further heartbreak if you do. Dead love is the deadest thing out . . . nothing can revive the flame.

The Six of Cups often denotes somebody who will not leave ill alone, but must "stir the pot" time and again. Get involved with a person like this and you have an insistent pest on your hands – and what pests some people can be! One of the reasons that I do not read the Tarot for others is that certain people just will not be told. Advice not to stir the pot falls on deaf ears. They stir it, and back they come with a new crop of misfortunes as the result. They will vow that they did act upon the advice and it all went wrong! The same thing, in a minor form, applies to reading the Tarot itself. If, after months of practice, you can't make head or tail of it, then leave it alone. It is just not for you.

Things, like people, can be "not for you". We all have our dreams that cannot be realized, but when so many of them can be, why worry about those that don't come off? If you would all just let the dead past bury its dead; if you would start life afresh with a new mental slant each day, saying: "That was yesterday . . . today is another life", you would be much happier, believe me.

To tie yourself to misery by the invisible chains of memory is a terrible thing to do. Heartache and disillusionment cannot be forgotten in a day, of course. The pain is there, but if you tell yourself you've got to live with it, you will find that, each day, the pain lessens a little until, in time, it falls back into its true place as an unfortunate experience that has taught you something.

Now, a lot of you write and say: "It's all very well for you to say this and that, but if you had known my troubles," etc. And on you go, assuming that because I am an occultist nothing like this could ever have happened to me. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before the powers permit any of us to teach or advise others, they put us through the hard school of experience. A true occultist has known every human misery from heartbreak, poverty, ill health and disillusionment right through the card. They must do so, or they are powerless to help and advise others.

That is why the idea that a person of occult power must be celibate, a non-drinker, non-smoker, non-eater of flesh, etc., is quite fallacious. A true occultist learns by experience to use everything, but to misuse nothing. They teach in song what they learn in sorrow! You need not be anything near a saint to have occult power. All you need is the wisdom of experience and the never-forgotten pain of what certain lessons taught you, so that you may sympathize with and advise others who are suffering similar ordeals.

So many of you tell me you want to "help and advise others", but do you know what this entails? It means carrying the mental miseries and burdens of every person who consults you. It means the giving up of every private interest, every hour of your time to other folks. It means a dead weight of human misery chained to you for ever and ever.

Everybody who goes to a Tarot reader for advice goes because they are in trouble. The accumulated burden of everybody's troubles robs the Taroist of every quiet hour, every pleasure, and every human activity in time. Such a burden is very great. You must love humanity very much indeed to take up such work, and you must be prepared to put every private interest aside to do it.

I have a friend who reads the Tarot professionally. I have called on this lady to find her mentally and physically exhausted, too tired to eat or sleep, and crying with sheer weariness. No, I don't envy the professional Tarot readers. It's one of the hardest ways of making a living there is. To be a helper of others means being a human pack-horse, and unless you have great physical and mental strength, and have no family or other ties, or duties that absorb the greater amount of your time, then don't attempt to take up this work professionally.

I mention this because the Six of Cups often occurs in a position where it denotes that the Querent thinks he has "occult ability to help others". Some have – very many have not. The wish to help and the necessary ability to do so are two different things. There is always some way you can help others without using occult forces. The odd shillings in your pocket can buy some comfort for those who need it. The spare time you have can be given to helping the ill or disabled with their housework. If you have good health you can spare the vitality to help others towards it by spending your own strength in shopping for them or taking physical work from their shoulders. And if you "haven't time" for any of these things, then you don't really want to help humanity at all. Humanity needs more than words, sympathy and "psychic help". It needs food, shelter, warmth, nursing and all the essential physical things first. None of us can give everything. All of us can give, or do, something.

All of us need some kind of help, but before you ask for it, either from the unseen forces or another human being, ask yourself this question. "What have I done for others that I was not compelled to do? What have I thrown into the Pool of Mutual Help that allows me to ask help from it?"
[Prediction, July 1959]