Connecting Tarot With Music: The Wheel

Admittedly, when I decided to write about this card and assign it a song, I didn’t feel enthused. This is one of my least favorite majors despite the rich symbolism it contains.

It’s easy to look at this card and think “seasons, changes, rhythms of life, wheel of the year, blah blah blah” as if you’ve heard it all before and there’s nothing new to see. But there is always something new to see.

What turns the wheel is love.

Fresh eyes provide fresh insight into the significance of each change we experience. We live in a culture that doesn’t honor thresholds, new beginnings, life initiations, except for the big ones like births, deaths, marriages, birthdays.

We get close to honoring thresholds in religious atmospheres (in my experience that would be the baptism I don’t remember, my first communion, and the many ritual and traditions that come with being Catholic – except confirmation, which I declined).

What about honoring the new day, every day? The sun initiates a new day when it rises and a new night when it sets. What about a new friendship, job, house? What about loss? What about fights in relationships, feelings, spiritual states?

There is a sense of time and change but a lack of depth to the significance of the life journey and human experience to which we are privy. It’s worth letting the truth that there is nothing too small to be sacred settle into your bones.

And in it all we are reminded that we aren’t running the show, that there are forces larger than us. We will all one day die. What rises also falls. Joy and sorrow are two sides of the same face.

I chose Jack Johnson for this card, his song “Home.”

I’ve gotta get home

There’s a garden to tend

All the fruit’s on the ground

The birds have all moved back into my attic,

Whistled in static

The young learn to fly

I will patch up the holes once again

Well, I can’t believe that my lime tree is dead

I thought it was sleeping, I guess it got fed up with not being fed

And I would be too, I keep food in my belly

And hope that my time isn’t soon.

Isn’t soon.

And so I try to understand

What I can’t hold in my hand

And whatever I find, I’ll find my way back to you

And if you could try to find it too

‘Cause this place is overgrown, it’s a waxing moon.

Home is wherever we are if there’s love here too

In the back of my house there’s a trail that won’t end

We went walking so far

It grew back again

And now there’s no trail at all

Only grass growing taller

Get out my machete and battle with time once again

But I’m bound to lose ’cause I’ll be damned if time don’t win

I’ve gotta get home

There’s a garden to tend

All the seeds from the fruit buried and began

Their own family trees teach them, thank you and please

They spread their own roots, then watch their young fruit grow again

And this old trail will lead me right back to where it begins

And so I try to understand

What I can’t hold in my hand

And whatever I find I’ll find my way back to you

And if you could try to find it too

‘Cause this place is overgrown, it’s a waxing moon.

Home is wherever we are if there’s love here too

I said,

Home is wherever we are if there’s love here too

Connecting Tarot with Music: The Wheel