5 — The Right Way

What kind of force this is

Someone has died, and within an hour it’s already clear who in the family will go for the memorial pies and who will say the tablecloth should be a different one. Usually it’s the same person. The number five is about the one who knows how it’s done right. Not right in general, but very precisely: how you hand over a shift so the next person doesn’t have to clean up; how you talk to old people; how you set a table when nobody has the head for a table. The order here is not barracks-style but everyday: it helps when there’s no time to think and nobody has the strength. And it doesn’t ask whether you have any strength left. In the old symbolism the fifth arcanum is a teacher between two pillars, crossed keys at his feet. Keys — because he opens the entrance to those who have come: he introduces, explains, passes things on. There is a measure for everything here: what time you leave the house, who writes first after a quarrel, where someone else’s cup gets put. And saying it out loud is not frightening — what’s more frightening is staying silent and then redoing things. The price for this is steady: say it out loud — and from then on people ask it of you, and stepping aside becomes awkward. Check whether this is even about you. Recall the last three times when, in front of you, an order was broken that doesn’t concern you at all: someone cut the line, stood in the wrong place, did the work not by the instructions. If at least twice out of three you felt the pull to step in — the theme is yours. If you walk past and don’t even notice — say so and move on. Then this whole talk about “the right way” is not for you.

When it works

It works when you pass things on rather than judge. With a trainee you explain not the item but why the item exists. It’s checked quickly: afterwards did he do it himself, or come to ask again. At home it’s clear with you: what is allowed and what isn’t, and the rules don’t slide with your mood. A boring and unnoticeable thing: while it holds, nobody names it out loud. You carry through what is easy to drop. Calling your aunt on her birthday. Seeing the papers through to the last signature. Not dropping out of the race when it has stopped being interesting. You keep agreements in your head and don’t write them down. Hence the arguments afterwards: there is nothing to prove it with, and you remember it differently. Just look at whose expense this form is held at. Usually at the expense of your evenings and other people’s spontaneity. Maybe it’s worth it — that’s for you to decide. But it’s better to see the bill in full.

When it turns against you

Let me start with myself: my first reaction to other people’s work is “but that’s not how it’s done.” I’m not proud of it. But that’s how it is. In the minus, the measure stops being a tool and becomes a club. The difference blurs between “this is more reliable” and “this is how it’s supposed to be.” The second wins. After that this force starts correcting: how bread is sliced, how someone else’s child is raised, how a daughter-in-law irons shirts. People listen to it out loud and don’t hear it in substance, and it sincerely doesn’t understand why. The second shadow is quieter. It constantly looks for someone to ask permission from: a course, a mentor, a boss, a book — as long as somebody tells you how it should be and takes the choosing off you. And then your own life goes by someone else’s lecture notes. This isn’t a verdict on you. It’s one of your settings. But you are the one who presses it.

What it looks like in everyday life

You explain the same thing to a trainee for the third time and catch yourself: it isn’t hard for you, you’re interested. The third time — and you’re looking for a new comparison so it finally gets through. The parents’ chat blows up to forty messages. You write one: what we’re deciding, who does it, by what date. And you notice it had come together in your head back at the tenth message. Your mother says: “that’s not how it’s done in our family.” And you hear in it your own intonation from yesterday — the very one from the conversation with your son. You stand in a friend’s kitchen and keep silent with all your might. She is washing the dishes the wrong way. It is physically hard for you not to say it. What follows will be denser. You don’t need to remember everything — take the line that stung, and the rest will come back by itself.

How it reads in different places of the chart

If it’s your birth number

Sorting things out, bearing witness, negotiating. If people ask you for this — look at what exactly they are asking. Most often it’s not “decide for me” but “tell me how it should be.” Almost the same to the ear, but the price differs: in the second case you are already answerable for someone else’s choice. You were trusted with grown-up matters early. The role of the elder stayed even where nobody asked for it. Inside there is a firm “you can’t do it that way,” and you revisit it rarely. You learn all your life and teach someone all your life, usually at the same time. And the most uncomfortable thing: it is easier for you to answer for others than to ask for yourself. Count over a week how many times you ask for something for yourself. The number is usually unpleasant and very accurate.

If it stands in your purpose

To be the one through whom knowledge passes. Not the author — the bridge. To take something complicated and explain it so that a person does it on their own, without you, and doesn’t run back to ask again. Mentoring, teaching, any work where you have to bring someone up to speed. One condition: pass it on while leaving the right to do it their own way. If you demand copies of yourself, the task isn’t fulfilled, however much you know. It works where the point is not to shine but to put a person back on their feet.

If it stands in the karmic corner

Authority comes hard — your own and other people’s. Usually it’s one of two things: either you weren’t listened to, and it no longer matters who was right — the voice learned to press; or you were crushed with rules, and now you rear up at any “must.” What you have to learn is the middle. To say “I think so” without pressure. To hear someone else’s “no” without taking offense. And to tell a rule that works from a rule that is merely habitual. The difference shows with one question: what will break if it’s done differently. If nothing — it’s a habit.

How it shows in your wellbeing

You get tired not from volume but from control. Check, remind, finish after someone else — and around and around. Your attention is always occupied with other people’s affairs, your own gets put off to “later,” and “later” never comes. Your rest is also on a schedule — and therefore not rest. What helps is what has no right option. A walk without a route. Cooking by eye, without a recipe. A day that nobody will check and that there is nobody to hand in to.

This isn’t a diagnosis or medical advice. It’s about how a person gets tired and what restores them, not about illnesses. For questions about your health — see a doctor.

What we drew on: Papus/Christian, “The Book of Hermes. The Meaning of the 22 Major Arcana” (translation edited by A. V. Troyanovsky, 1912); P. D. Ouspensky, “The Symbolism of the Tarot”; A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). All three are in the public domain. Taken: from Papus/Christian — a mentor between two pillars (the law and the freedom to submit or not), the gesture of concentration, conscience as an inner voice, two figures at his feet; from Waite — the “power of the keys,” the external, institutional side of teaching, order and recognized hierarchy, the danger of the form turning to stone, and among the divinatory meanings — alliance, bonds, dependence, and “over-kindness” when reversed; from Ouspensky — the teacher who is heard wrongly and retold in people’s own words, and those who “do not enter themselves and hinder others”; from Etteilla (card 13 “Marriage”) — connection, chain, constraint and, on the other side, accord and harmony. Hence my two poles: the passing on of order as support and measure, and the measure that has become a club or someone else’s lecture notes. The everyday scenes and wording are mine.