This is what I am doing. this is what I will be doing. This is occupying 7/8 of my frontal lobe so this is what you get right now.
The Hero Returns
So Tell Me Now, Just Who Is The Hero? Not to the people listening to the story, not us, to the people around them. “There were two brothers, and then there was Jack.” The beginning tells us that the hero is not someone held in high esteem in his home country. He is someone expendable. His leaving doesn’t rock the boat. He won’t be missed if he doesn’t come back. The Hero is someone who doesn’t fit in.
All the reasons that he doesn’t fit in at home become the reasons that he can meet and vanquish his enemy. Look a little closer at Jack. He is willing to share what he has with people who are outsiders. He welcomes people with unusual talents. He sees the heroing business as a communal task and works well in a group. He is able to do his job because of these qualities. At the end of the job Jack goes back to his community carrying the head of the monster.
On the surface you would think that he would be coming back to a respected place in the community. Communities don’t work like that. He left as the outcast. He will not come back to a respected place because the community doesn’t want to give him the respect he deserves.
If Jack (or whoever he is in the story) doesn’t know this, he finds out soon enough.
No, the real reason he returns to the community is to let them know that the monster is dead. Otherwise he just disappears and nobody knows if he did the job or not. Just telling them wouldn’t be enough though. So Jack brings back something that the monster could not live without (The head being a favorite part.) They can look at it and know for sure just what it was that was causing the problem. There’s nothing like two hundred pounds of smelly, fly infested dragon head (or Gorgon for that matter) to pound the point home.
Then Jack Says “sayonara y’all” and heads off with his band of odd ball cronies to live the heroing life. Terry Pratchett’s character, Cohen the Barbarian is a hilarious take on heroes. After all what does happen after they get to retirement age? and what happens to barbarian teeth?
The point of the card here is that outcast is outcast and after the triumphal entry with your smelly prize, your best act is to go out where people appreciate your good qualities because nobody at home will.
Hitting the Wall
The wall is that place where you know that if you continue along in the way that you are going, you will die. You know it with a clarity that is as cold and hard as a stone wall. There are no more roads to travel, down that way, and if you proceed you are lost.
It is related to husks and swine, only the message is much stronger and more urgent.
Where the husks and swine message is one of pain and shame, and getting over yourself to change your path, this is a life and death message. Change or die.
The Hole In The Sidewalk
This is a well known poem by Portia Nelson.
The card signifies the problem that you fall into time and time again. My commentary is that the reason that we fall continuously into these damn hole is that we go through life backwards like the hero of Kingley’s god awful book The Water Babies.
The hero has to go on a journey walking backwards with the help of a dog that can show him what is coming up by his reactions.
What a wonderful description of what it is like moving through life. We can manage on ground that is familiar because we have been there and we see the signals that tell us what is coming up. This is why change can be so difficult. We don’t know the ground. If we are lucky someone is with us when we go through needed changes that is a bit ahead and can call out information about the ground where we are going. The problem as we start out is that we tend not to listen to those who have been along the route because we don’t like what we hear. Then we fall repeatedly into the same hole and blame everyone but ourselves.
