In this age-old wandering of the soul, our bodies are shut in and protected by the walls of our homes. Just over a year into the life of the “Via Francigena in Tuscia Association”, which gave us the chance to get to know one another on the “roads” of life, we now find ourselves sharing our emotions, internalizing our “journeys”, marked as always by the individual steps of hundreds of thousands of people, on a shared path even while staying at home. This Holy Week, not even the Pope was able to perform the Via Crucis; his journey too was interrupted, but not that of faith.
The feeling of finding ourselves in the intricate labyrinth of our lives, which leads us to wander through the tortuous paths we come across, makes us at once “protagonists – spectators” of one of the most unsettling scripts ever imagined. And yet even before, we were wandering without being aware of it; the more isolated we are from the world, the more we manage to see it in the right perspective. We have been forced to put on new glasses, and these different frames and lenses, just as if we were scientists in front of a microscope, let us see even what was previously invisible to us. This new perception leads us ever more toward discovering ourselves. It’s a bit like a journey in reverse. Still, like the fixed arm of a compass point, and the more we open the other arm, the wider the circle grows – the “world”, made up of the network of pilgrims, still but united by a single purpose, by the same intentions, and even with different cultural and religious identities, breaking down distances, becoming two arms of the same body.
Life has its task, and it asks us to fulfil our own: today more than ever. In this polarity of stillness and motion, we find ourselves, still, within the visible and invisible world. In this deep night into which we have plunged, it is only by raising our eyes to the sky that we can see a light: the shimmer of the “stars”. Our earthly life, imposing material bondage on us, lets us sink into the darkness of shadow, into total blackness, and without the help of a starry sky, humankind would flounder blindly in the total dark of night.
In this earthly mission of ours, the stars remind us of the powers these “celestial bodies” hold over us. They are condensers of influences that act upon our souls. And so Arcanum No. XVII, “The Star”, releasing its light, becomes a beacon showing us a road to follow, a direction. And so hope lights up in us once again, knowing that reaching a goal takes far more than a leap, a single step – it takes many wanderings.
My own personal pairing for this card in the Arcana of Faul was precisely “The Pilgrim of the Via Francigena”. The star lets itself be crossed by every mystery, it represents a spiritual guide, it is the stranger we carry within us, connected to the deepest forces of the universe. The force born at the centre of the universe, represented by the stars, descends toward the human being, purifies the earth, and in a movement of eternal return, goes back to where it originated.
On Holy Thursday there was a very pleasant live chat with Andrea Devicenzi, whom I had the chance to meet as a pilgrim, thanks to Alessandra Croci, President of the Via Francigena in Tuscia Association. On that occasion we presented the “theme” of our weekly meetings, which will take place every Thursday at 11:00, which I have titled “The Twenty-Two Codes of the Soul”.
I mentioned the power of the secret language of the arcana, and Andrea asked me whether I believe there is a written destiny. I believe in a “celestial script”, in a screenplay assigned to us, but we certainly have the power to change the lines, if not entire “acts”. All of us can step in on the “draft” of a screenplay assigned to us that we don’t like, and rewrite it – otherwise we risk wasting this opportunity, settling for living a life that isn’t truly ours.
Andrea is a case in point: he is an actor who, on stage, changed his own script, turning a dramatic screenplay into an action, adventure film. In this moment when all of us have “limitations”, Andrea is proof of how much a limitation can make life limitlessly special.
These celestial lights, the “stars”, give us the strength we already carry within us; they keep us from feeling abandoned, and so help us fulfil our destiny. And so the pilgrim’s body, resting at night, takes up its journey again every morning. Even the darkness of sleep is a source of information, and perhaps dreams were humanity’s first initiators. The pilgrim allows themselves the rest needed to regain their strength and store up the energy to be used. Their time is precious, and they waste none of it, neither asleep nor awake, always immersed in the beauty of life… as if in a dream.
These masters of the art of living, in their journey, appreciate in their daily lives everything that comes from the earth – which they tread ceaselessly all day – just as much as everything that comes from the sky, as if it were a gift. Following these two paths, the “earthly” and the “celestial”, the pilgrim begins their journey, and follows a light that, step by step, will become a “beacon” – the beacon of themselves.
The symbolism of the Star arcanum is that of hope. It indicates heaven’s favour toward the endeavours we are undertaking. We need it so much. Happy Easter.
