The Stairway

Keywords: Realization or the Way Within

The Stairway is within a stone chamber, one of the megalithic Underworld chambers of the ancestors. We see huge upright stones and a massive capstone, as if we are inside an ancient structure. The Stairway itself has rough wooden treads laid over the stone steps, showing that the way is maintained and kept open. The stair spirals around to our right, towards a mysterious source of light. Upon the wall, where the rays of light touch the stone, is a relief carving of a maze, for in some circumstances the stair leads towards the Trump of The Maze.

In a personal reading or vision This Trump is whatever leads to new levels of realization, a fresh reality of transformation. It is the Way Within or the paradoxical Shortened Way of the Underworld. The stair seems to lead upwards, yet by taking it we move downwards and within to reach the light within the earth and the deeper Trumps of the Pearl Realm. The Stairway embodies the idea of movement from the personal to the transpersonal in one direction or from the transpersonal to the personal or individual in the other.

The Stairway is the middle Trump of the three thresholds or transformations of Table, Stairway and Observatory. Thus it can link either upwards or downwards. It is also the middle or balance Trump of the deck, hence its paradox of interchanging directions. In visualizations the spiraling stair is a major image for entering and leaving the Underworld, and the wooden treads on the stair represent the opening and maintaining of this way through the centuries of neglect and suppression.

In another sense this is the Trump of the womb and tomb. The chamber in which we find ourselves in the card is the mother womb of earth, the vessel of form, the giver of birth. It is also the tomb, the end of form, with the stairs leading to a new awareness at the moment of physical death. So The Stairway card reveals both beginnings and endings, births and deaths; with the important qualification of intent. In the Pearl Realm movement in either direction, within or without, is made with will and intent. If we choose to move into the deeper Realm of The Whirlpool we approach the Unknown willingly; if we choose to surface, to return to outer consciousness, our understanding of the Trumps in the Stone Realm is transformed.

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