When you meet the devil on the road

Be sure to ask his name

We are eternally returning to the past.

This last weekend I went camping at Manatee Springs. I grew up around those parts, but it’s been a long long time since I had been back for anything longer than passing through on the way to somewhere else. It’s the kind of place that exists somehow remote both in time and place. If you’ve ever been, you know what I mean. Dirt roads flanked by palmettos and pines. Dollar stores and desperation, but also absolutely magical places where the water boils up from the ground in azure abundance. Manatee Springs is one such place of beauty. Weeks before, I had dreamed of being at this very place, well before I had the spur of the moment idea to camp there. Maybe the dream influenced the decision, maybe not.

I’ve lately been thinking about how place exists spiritually and physically. I don’t know how long one must exist at a place in order to firmly establish that place in one’s astral geography. What I am certain of is that this is a process that does happen, perhaps in a split second or perhaps a decade. A place can soak into your bones.

I think, when that happens, it acts like a magnet for synchronicities to occur, especially over long time distances. Exhibit the first; running out to get a few supplies, I turn on the radio and I hear a song I listened to excessively in high school —don’t judge, a Creed song. Cheesy as it was, it was so bound up with the essence of that time in my life, the hardships and strong feels of a time in my life when everything felt lost. My mom was struggling with cancer, my dad had just left for greener pastures. I would go to the springs almost daily after school to exist in a place that was beautiful and that was most importantly away from all the shittiness of my home life. What are the odds the very song that somehow, in my mind, embodied that craziness would play on that short trip to Walmart to buy a lighter and a blanket. I met the Devil on the road, and his name was Time.

Guess my name

In the Marseilles tarot, the Devil looks directly at you. He stands over two chained figures, staff in hand, but with a rather bored look on his face. Naked, the Devil stands with everything hanging out for all to see. The Devil doesn’t hide anything, it’s only our own interpretation of events that color the view. If we get it wrong, the Devil won’t correct us, either. Our memories can be like the two chained figures, each seeing something slightly different. The chain connects us to the Devil, linking the objective and the subjective in a relationship we call material existence.

Traditionally the Devil corresponds to Capricorn, the sign of cardinal Earth and ruled by Saturn. Time is also place. It’s no surprise that Saturn is the god of Time and also the god of things that grow in the ground. The ancients were smarter than us.

In my dream of Manatee Springs, I dreamed that the spring was ruined, that the banks of the boil had been concreted over, and that flocks of people crowded every square inch of the water. I dreamed of trying to find the true spring that I knew was no longer there. I wandered into a place outside the park and into a crossroads. You know how the Devil feels about those. In my dream I gazed down the road and knew. The road was somehow the truth of the place, and in that way it was the truth of every place.

What are the metaphysics of place? I asked the tarot in my tent under the stars: what is the essence of this place? The tarot said: ace of coins, six of coins, ten of coins. I think this says everything you need to know. Place is the ground we walk on. Place is the resource, the wealth, of our embodied existence. We are the place, but so is the ground.

At the crossroads, one stands still and considers the space one is currently occupying. There are choices to be made, but the possibilities are still floating out in the quantum foam, nothing solidifies yet. It’s in this liminal space where the Devil can manifest most clearly. From the crossroads, we can see where we’ve come from, and where we can go next. The crossroads is the quintessential place to which we always return. The crossroads are a memory, a home town, an argument, a place. Stand at the crossroads with the Devil and conjure your future.

Praxis

Take your tarot deck with you everywhere. Hint: you always have your phone handy, so take advantage of that fact and use one of the many tarot apps out there! They work, trust me! I like any of the Fool’s Dog offerings.

Get in the habit of doing a quick spread for every new place you visit. Ask: what is the essence of this place? Variation: what is hidden here? Try to get a sense for the magical currents running through a place, and see what can be discovered. I tend to like the basic three card spread, but let your intuition guide you.