Under the Window / Joel Newberger

Like Miriam, I was given a deck of the Tarot with no instructions in the springtime. I did not know what to do. I drew a card. Under the window, I saw him in a ragged smock, limping behind a hooded woman in the snow, and I knew, no matter what else came to pass, I would not die that day. 
 
While the Torah shows us God face-to-face, in the Tarot there cannot be one God or conjugal deities or a three-personed God or ten sephirot or the Great Goddess or any pantheon at all. Pulling any card an unprecedented being is born. So, it is sexual. It destroys the idols. It destroys you and me. For the card we draw inoculates the mind against sameness. It allows us to know the day, to see its figure and divine its meaning, to write its special name. Thus, the Tarot fulfills the prophet’s prayer: renew our days as of old. The card redeems our days.