Greek tragedy, Afghanistan and the Tarot
How a plan to help a family caught up in a still-unfolding collective trauma was born.
Resonant World #11
In this age of the polycrisis, it’s very easy to push somebody else’s suffering away.
I’d been doing it in my own way since the Taliban overran Kabul in August last year.
An old Afghan colleague, who I’d lost touch with a decade earlier, had managed to contact me via a convoluted process involving the Financial Times, where I’d worked as a correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2009-2012. Terrified of reprisals for his association with Westerners, and unsure how he would feed his family as the economy cratered, my friend was looking to me to help him find a way out.
At first, I felt I was making progress. I was able to connect him with an international organisation I knew in Kabul who provided invaluable support processing initial US visa applications. I later paid the cost of passports for his wife and children, and sent the odd cash donation.
But as the months wore on, and it became increasingly clear that there would be no quick fix, I began to feel increasingly powerless. I detected a temptation growing within me to shut down — to wash my hands of his problems, and tell myself I’d already done more than enough.
The Suppliants
Early this summer, I recorded an interview with Bryan Doerries, artistic director of Theatre of War Productions, and a personal hero of mine, for the Collective Trauma Summit 2022. I’d first got to know Bryan while writing my book Aftershock on the struggle of British military veterans and their families to find new ways to heal from the psychological scars of war. Here’s an excerpt from our discussion, which went live on September 28:
I highly recommend Bryan’s fantastic book Theatre of War, which tells the full origin story of his remarkable mission to harness the timeless power of 2,500-year old Greek tragedies to support contemporary communities to address legacies of trauma. To summarise: Bryan was so disturbed by the lack of support for US combat veterans returning from Iraq that he began to translate scenes from Sophocles’ Ajax that spoke directly to their suffering. Theatre of War Productions has now performed at hundreds of military bases, and broadened their scope to address issues from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthworkers, to social justice, racism, migration and many other themes.
In preparation for our discussion, I watched a recording of the company’s recent production of Aeschylus’ play The Suppliants — featuring top U.S. actors Oscar Isaac, Willem Dafoe, and David Strathairn, and a chorus of Ukrainians, either living in the country, or as refugees.
The play tells the story of fifty women who attempt to flee forced marriages in Egypt by sailing to Argos to beg King Pelasgus for asylum. Pelasgus faces a dilemma: Allow the women into his city, and risk an attack by pursuing Egyptian warriors — or abandon them to be raped and enslaved.
Pelasgus is at first reluctant to honour their request, but he relents as the Argive people rally behind the women. When a large group of Egyptian men lands on the shore of Argos, Pelasgus sends his army to drive them back into the sea.
The visceral impact of hearing pleas for protection from antiquity rendered through the voices of Ukrainian men and women of all ages is hard to over-state.
And I almost found Defoe’s portrayal of Pelasgus’ indecision a little too close to home.
Paper dolls
Three things helped break me out of my stasis over my Afghan friend.
Firstly, a friend of mine named Tom Coghlan, a former journalist who’d also been stationed in Kabul, had run a crowdfunder for a Syrian colleague who had fled with his family for Egypt and needed money to continue his dentistry studies. Like other friends who had staged crowdfunders, Tom had managed the kind of feat of physical endurance that seemed way beyond me: In his case an epic swim in the 10km Dart River annual race in Devon, England.
The second was an image that came to me: I was holding my friend’s hand as he clung on to the edge of a cliff, his family dangling beneath him like a chain of paper dolls. The message seemed to be that I couldn’t handle the strain alone — and needed the support of other people who could wrap many more hands around his wrist, and begin to heave the family up.
The third occurred during a week-long retreat in Germany earlier this month with Thomas Hübl, which I wrote about in Resonant World # 10, and which gives me an excuse to take this newsletter into more esoteric waters.
Matrix Of Light
In his 2020 book Healing Collective Trauma, Hübl writes various entries on the subject of “light” — in the mystical sense of the term.
Here’s one of my favourite passages:
“We are each a pulsing fibre optic cable alive in a matrix of light. The source of this light, whatever we call it — source energy, life’s seed, the Divine — touches us from the authentic future. It is an evolutionary intelligence that seeks to download itself into and through us.”
Put another way, there is a metaphysical information stream constantly pouring down onto each one of us — seeking to guide our way to ever greater levels of self-expression, creativity, innovation and service.
When we carry unintegrated trauma, our access to this datastream can falter. It’s always there — showering us for eternity. But unless we’re able to tune in, a lot of the inspiration and wisdom this stream carries can pass us by.
Hübl is a big advocate of meditation for precisely this reason — it helps us to synchronise to this living, intelligent flow. But that’s not the only way to dial in.
When we come together and establish the level of trust, safety and intimacy necessary to heal collective trauma, we create the kind of coherent group field that naturally supports each individual to tune into their “light”. New insights and ideas start to arise spontaneously in such an environment, faster than in everyday life.
I think that’s why, a few days into the retreat, an idea for how to help my friend crystalised suddenly: Forget a Marathon. Run a Tarothon instead.
“Dear Unknown Friend”
I started learning the Tarot last year, and have become fascinated with the symbolism infused through the 78 cards. I’ve found them to be an amazing tool for gaining greater clarity on a dilemma; identifying hidden internal resources, and placing a situation in a broader perspective, to name a few possible benefits.
So I decided to set the weekend of December 16-18 aside to stage a 48-hour “Tarothon” — offering readings in return for a donation to the crowdfunder for my friend and his family. I aim to raise £4,800 — a war chest to provide for them this winter, and fund initial relocation costs as visa applications slowly progress.
I’m still a novice with the cards — but I’m starting to gain a glimpse of the sheer depth and breadth of their multi-valent meanings, thanks in large part to the monumental Meditations On The Tarot: A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism, originally published in French in 1980 after the anonymous author’s death. I had never heard of this 665-page book until a friend recommended it to me. But I’ve rarely found a spiritual work with such enthusiastic blurbs:
“It is simply astonishing,” writes Father Bede Griffiths. “I have never read such a comprehensive account of the ‘perennial philosophy.’”
The chapters are organised as letters concerning each of the 22 Major Arcana — the cards representing heavy-duty archetypal energies such as The High Priestess, Death, The Devil, The Tower, The Hanged Man, and Judgment — to name a few.
As soon as I discovered that each chapter begins with the phrase “Dear Unknown Friend,” I was hopelessly hooked.
The Magician
On one reading, the 22 Major Arcana can be read as an allegory of the journey of our egoic self (As symbolised by the The Fool) to realise that we are not separate selves at all — but rather expressions of the divine whole (as shown by the last card in the series, The World). That, of course, is barely scratching the surface — and I think the book is a huge gift for anyone with even a passing interest in Western esoteric thought, eastern belief systems, and Christian mysticism.
In “Letter I: The Magician,” the author expresses a sentiment that doesn’t sound too far from Thomas Hübl’s explanation of the power of meditation to help us connect with our light. The author writes that all genuine spiritual experience requires the ability to be at one with oneself — and at one with the spiritual world, by cultivating a “zone of silence in the soul.”
“In other words, if one wants to practise some form of authentic esotericism — be it mysticism, gnosis or magic — it is necessary to be the Magician, i.e. concentrated without effort, operating with ease as if one were playing, and acting with perfect calm. This, then, is the practical teaching of the first Arcanum of the Tarot.”
Savour those phrases:
Concentrated without effort
Operating with ease, as if one were playing
Acting with perfect calm
I’m not sure I managed any of those today, but tomorrow beckons.
And if the Tarot is calling you, then do email me to book a session in next month’s Tarathon — and help me to help my friend and his family through the Afghan winter.
It’s hugely energising for me whenever anybody signals their appreciation for Resonant World with a donation, which also helps make the project sustainable. A big thank you to all those who have generously contributed!
Beautiful. All of it.
Thank you. And best wishes for the magic initiative (it's ok to say 'magic', too 😊).
I hear you, I hear you :-D.
Feels great to normalize that, right?
I do enjoy your posts, indeed. Your writing lands in as a refreshing breeze of emotional and intellectual honesty and openness.
Keep it up