One of the most interesting thing I’ve learned, speaking with the cards, is about the element of sacrifice in our lives. Throughout our lives in this world, we experience the loss of our emotional and psychic energy, maybe even our lives. The cards tell me these sacrifices of energy and time are taken very seriously. 

    I learned about this when I began to ask the cards about deaths that just seem ridiculously unfair, deaths caused by systemic oppression or genocide. I asked why, as we all do, horrible, horrible things have to happen to perfectly ordinary innocent people. 

    As always, the answer is learning. We all have to learn how to be cool, and it just takes a really long time for souls to learn. Sacrifices and gifts are how the energy is managed to facilitate this learning process over time. We learn individually, and also as a race. 

    There seems to be a difference between ordinary life sacrifice and that which is imposed by overwhelming outside forces. All of us have to give things up during the course of our lives. Sometimes simply to make room for something new. Other sacrifices are personally monumental, potent events arranged by destiny to form a crux or crossroads in the life of the soul. 

    I find the idea of sacrifice and loss to be aligned with a powerful force of atrophy that has been personified as Goddess throughout histories and cultures. The Greek explored this concept in depth and called her Atropos, Ananke (Necessity) and Nemsis. Many cultures have an old woman or witch deity that carries the same vibe. She is the one who knows what is necessary to remove and represents the actions that presses things no longer a viable part of the time-line out of existence. Her activity is sometimes confused with destruction, but I find it more to be in line with a peaceful fading or decaying, or maybe a force of heavy, steady pressure. The things that destroy are exciting, uproarious forces that seem more aligned with other entities. In readings I see her in the High Priestess card and sometimes the Justice card. In the Nigh Sun deck by Fabio Listrani that I use alot, I see her also in the Queen of Cups card that seems to carry that sense of extremely firm decision making. I would also associate the idea or process of sacrifice with the times in life when we experience Pluto transits to important planets or points in our horoscopes. 

    I could see how the force of atrophy could be a necessary part of life, and our lives. But I still did not understand the deaths of innocence. 

    Of course, looking at things from the cards point of view, where each soul in an intriguing and hard-to-fathom story, mysterious and long-winding, it’s hard to say how events fit into people’s lives. Because learning is the foremost goal of the life process, and only the gods in their underworld and the soul itself are privy to the whole story, every sacrifice is a unique event. 

    But still at the same time, there are sorrowful and extreme group events that are hard to fit into this picture. It’s hard for me to think that what happened to the Irish in the 17th century, or Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries can just be chalked up to their souls needing to learn all that…. I mean… maybe but… 

    A modern example is the people fighting in the Ukraine. I had asked about what happened to the soul of the people who died in warfare. They are fighting against a superior force, and the reason they are fighting is innocent, they are fighting to protect their families and way of life. We know this to be true and real from the stories of what happened to the people under previous Russian occupations  of the Ukraine. But this nobility does not protect from the fact that death is war is violent, disgusting, terrorizing and rage causing, in fact, very traumatic. 

   They told me that the goddess of Ukraine, the one with the angle wings up on the pestle downtown, could plead on their behalf for the concessions due to the sacrificed. And, as far as the gods are concerned, this is really great and totally makes up for dying horribly under miserable circumstances. As you can see, I am often shown how different their value system is from a human one.

    They told me that there is a long running system of energy benefits that are used to adjust things between groups. It’s not unlike the draft system in American sports. 

   When someone is killed in unfair, overwhelming situations, that person is considered to be sacrificed. Being sacrificed is painful, and it causes you to loose a portion of your all-important personal energy. This energy either goes to pay a dept, or is outstanding and must be repaid. 

    Here is the reading where I learned this. I used the Roerich deck. Really nice little deck my friend Kate gave me. It works well, for an art deck, and I like to use it during the waning moon phase, or in the afternoon when the energy used for divination is low, and the answers you get are subtle and sophisticated. I though this would be an appropriate one to ask about the situation there, since this tarot was developed with the work of a Russian artist, Nicholas K. Roerich.