Finding Comfort in the Unknown: Spirituality in Time of Plague
Uncertain times often make people yield to a higher power, and the current pandemic is no different.
by R.M. Mazo
Everyday I shuffle my tarot cards. I concentrate, thinking of my intentions for the day, and spread them out or wait for one to fall. Then I look at the card and the meaning behind the symbols and try to see how it could help me get through the day.
Today I drew the card numbered 13. It is a card that often instills fear in many people, not only because it’s unlucky, but also because it’s the card of death.
Since the beginning of 2020, I found myself using the cards to help me focus when I felt confused or demoralized. But as the year went on, I kept returning to them to ease my fears, refocus my energy, and to ground me on my priorities.
Has it helped me? Maybe. All I know is that the images and symbols in the cards helped me get through the difficult times, and there is no more difficult time than these pandemic days of 2020.
Calling to a Higher Power
Admittedly, although I do not belong to any church and consider myself a free thinker, I am drawn to things that other people might call God, and which I refer to as the great unknown, eternity, the universe, spiritualism or even philosophy.
Especially in these times, when all the institutions that I thought would last are slowly crumbling under the weight of a microscopic virus. Even as the world’s trust in science and medicine have been put to the test, I now see that despite our advances, evolutionary forces can create a virus that can still destroy modern civilization.
And under all that, the demand to stay at home and distance yourself from friends and family can be a burden. Human beings are social creatures. To force them to stay away from their loved ones even if to protect them from the threat of death can still affect people. For some, the only choice left is to call to a higher power.
Higher Power or Higher Consciousness?
That does not mean I have to call on God. Some people might resort to prayer. It can work, and I have seen some of my friends who attest to the power of prayer in their daily life. It gives them a community that provides support; it brings their family together, and it helps ease feelings of helplessness, especially when you feel that a higher power is in control of your life.
But some people find it more meaningful to explore other means of achieving higher consciousness. They use meditation, yoga or even physical activities to find a higher state of being. Sometimes they could be using a ritual to cleanse themselves of “negative energy” and to create a more positive energy field around them.
I have seen Wiccans do this, and they believe the ritual creates a better environment that brings them positive energy and beneficial results. Some believe they could control the power they bring into their lives, and a ritual can help them banish what doesn’t help them. After the ritual, they feel that their lives have improved. They also feel they have some control in how they live their lives even during the chaos of a pandemic.
Thinking Makes It So?
But what could people like me do in times like these? I am not a religious person, nor do I consider myself spiritual. I have a curious and imaginative mind, but sometimes I find that my curiosity and imagination aren’t enough to give me that kind of spiritual comfort or even a sense of spiritual power over my life.
Shakespeare would have recognized the feeling: like Hamlet and like most people, I am a creature stuck between earth and heaven, not knowing what to do to help me find my focus or to gather my energy to do what needs to be done. And so I find myself resorting to the next best thing: divination, tarot, feng shui, and even astrology.
We all know the limitations of these tools. Divination does not show us the future. It only reveals the possibilities, and it all depends on what we do in the present. So I am using the tarot to see how I respond to the symbols and images that chance or luck shows me. It makes me understand how I feel about certain things in my life, and what I could possibly do to improve my feelings of uncertainty and fear when the images were not to my liking.
Which takes me back to the image I drew today: number 13, the death card. In the tarot deck I use (the Wildwood Tarot deck), it is called The Journey and has a bull’s skull with a murder of crows flying over it, while another crow stands on the skull, scavenging its meat and skin. Some people might think it literal, as we are all a step away from death today. A possible death, or a possible end.
But that’s not how I use my tarot decks. I use them to help me focus or meditate on my day. And on this day this card tells me that there is life after death, that there is no true ending, and that life goes on, in different forms or different phases. Death is a journey we always take every day, and for me, it means that if I have to say goodbye to old habits and beliefs because it could help me create a better life.
It might be only me talking myself to a better point-of-view, but it helps. Is it the same as praying in a corner, or meditating on a lotus flower? I would argue “yes” because it gives me a saner and more philosophical way to live my life in these times.
Would I recommend it to other people? Perhaps not. It’s better for people to go back to images that are familiar and comforting, and anything that helps them overcome their feelings of helplessness.
So it’s no coincidence that in the New Testament Christ tells his followers to “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Because that is what resorting to a higher consciousness does: it comforts you, unburdens your worries, and protects you from your fears.
No matter what religion or belief you follow.
RM Mazo is writer-at-large and a full-time editor who spends most of her time reading, drawing and making up stories when she’s not traveling.
