Carpe Diem #1125 The Road to Santiago is part of the Tarot.

!!! The Spring Retreat 2017 "fragile beauty" has started !!!

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a belated episode of our Haiku Kai. We are on our way to Santiago, on our virtual pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James. While we are on our way we are reading "The Pilgrimage" by Paulo Coelho.
At the beginning of our pilgrimage I told you about the miracles of the Tradition, you will remember the story about Paulo's sword that he lost. It's that sword which drives him to walk the Road to Santiago, one of the most known pilgrimages on our planet and one of the most spiritual paths we will ever encounter.

Today, as you can read in our title, I love to tell you a little bit more about the connection between the Road to Santiago and the Tarot. (To learn more about the Tarot, you can download the CDHK E-book about it in our library, or visit May 2013). Maybe you know that the Tarot works with 54 cards, it has a "major arcana" and a "minor arcana".

Roncesvalles

While Paulo and his guide are on their way to Santiago, they visit the cloister of Roncesvalles where they meet with Father Jordi. Father Jordi is not only a monk, but also a sorcerer, a strange combination, but Father Jordi is a sorcerer in the Tradition. He and Paulo have a conversation together which I will re-produce here:

[...] "Father Jordi sat at the table, leaving me standing. He took some herbs and lit them, filling the place with their perfume. More and more, the situation reminded me of my encounter with Mme Lourdes. ‘First, I want to tell you something,’ said Father Jordi. ‘The Jacobean route is only one of four roads. It is the Road of the Spades, and it may give you power, but that is not enough.’
‘What are the other three?’
‘You know at least two others: the Road to Jerusalem, which is the Road of the Hearts, or of the Grail, and which endows you with the ability to perform miracles; and the Road to Rome, which is the Road of the Clubs; it allows you to communicate with other worlds.’
‘So what’s missing is the Road of the Diamonds to complete the four suits of the deck,’ I joked. And the father laughed.  ‘Exactly. That’s the secret Road. If you take it someday, you won’t be helped by anybody. For now, let us leave that one aside.” [...] (Source: The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho)

As you can read in this conversation Father Jordi tells Paulo about the four pilgrimages. Paulo knows three of them, but the fourth he didn't know and I didn't know about that one too. It's the so called secret road, this points more towards the Tradition and more to the spiritual growth. Maybe we will see more about this pilgrimage later on this month.

Those four roads are refering in their name to the Tarot and I hope to tell you more about that in episodes to come.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until January 20th at noon (CET).