Talking about anger, part 2

There's a funny aftermath to my story immediately preceding, about the discussion of anger in Sangha last night. Already then I was thinking that I wanted to write about it here. So I'd been mulling that post since last night.

This morning I drew Tarot cards for a basic divination on the question, "What do I need to understand about today's events?" The card that I drew to characterize today's events was Strength Reversed. Really? What does that mean? Well, on my own all I could think of was "Weakness," which didn't tell me a lot. So I checked a little manual that I use often, and one of the meanings that it lists for Strength Reversed is "Fear of overwhelming passions."

"Aha!" I told myself. "This card is just telling me that some time today I'm going to write that blog post. Good to know."

Then at noon I joined an online class on Platonist thought, discussing Simplicius's commentary on the Enchiridion of Epictetus. (Yes, I know, I need to get out more.) Most of the discussion focused on Simplicius's claim that when you choose a friend, the most important thing is to choose a friend who is ruled by reason rather than by irrational emotions. Simplicius talks about this quite a bit, gives many reasons, and the class spent a lot of time deciding whether we agreed. 

Hmm. OK, I guess that's a second instance of "Fear of overwhelming passions." (I mean, counting my blog post as the first one, even though I didn't actually get it written till the end of the day.)

In the evening, I dialed into a presentation given by my professional association on how to carry out one of the functions that we do. It's a task I've done many times, but everyone has his own take and I wanted to hear what the presenter had to say. Well she gave a very lively talk, with lots of good advice. But one of the things she said is that when you show up at a business to carry out this work, you have to check all your personality and emotions at the door so that you can focus strictly on the work itself. Nothing else matters, and anything else will be a distraction.

Wow. Looks like that's three for three. I guess that one theme really did characterize the day's events, huh?

It's only fair to mention that the last card I drew, representing the Outcome, was the Queen of Swords upright. I looked in my little manual, and none of the listed meanings made any sense in context. I was about to shrug and give up when I decided to check one other source (Rachel Pollack's Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom). And literally the first words (related to the Queen of Swords) that my eyes lighted on were these:

"... the Queen of Swords symbolizes experiences of both sorrow and wisdom, and especially the connection between them. Having experienced pain ..., and having faced it with courage, acceptance, and honesty, she has found wisdom."

Wait, isn't that exactly what I said in my blog post immediately preceding this one? Except that I wasn't so bold as to claim "wisdom" ... but the rest of it is pretty exact. So was the reading trying to guess what I was going to tell you? Or was it trying to say that yes, this is where I am now with this topic ... in real life, I mean, not just in my blog?

That latter reading actually makes a lot of sense to me.