The thief = DISPOSSESSED “What have you stolen?”

Thieves are always with us. In the Garden, even Time can be a Thief. Although we care so lovingly for the plants and fixtures, obsessively training them in the way we want them to go, do they really “belong” to us? Can they ever? Thieves “break in” perpetually to interfere with our most cherished plans, our blueprint of how the universe should be designed. We’re all here trying to make some kind of a living, whether that involves storing up seeds for the progeny or craning our necks to grab a patch of sun. I think perhaps the other creatures see us as the Thieves.

Dispossession is much more complicated than mere loss. It means something we took for granted as ours isn’t. Ownership may be quietly transferred behind the scenes, or possibly never existed at all. Entitlement of some kind is at risk. Property? Dignity? Expectations? Possibly those we trust to act for us are fundamentally untrustworthy.

In a class-based society suddenly we find ourselves divested. This is frightening and disorienting. The rules have shifted; the law has changed. We are looked on as an interloper at someone else’s party. Now we are viewed as dishonorable supplicants in danger of capture and incarceration.

There is also the wider meaning; a reminder that ultimately we can “own” nothing: everything we use is really a time-share. Even our own body, this ship we require surmount the seas of life, can turn against us, behaving in completely unpermitted and unfamiliar ways. Feeling dispossessed is a shock to the system. A hustle culture places pressure on us to take, take, take, grab or “lose out.” Thief card appearing in your spread says, time to have some serious thoughts about ownership; what you want versus what you can have; what you can control versus what you can’t and ultimately, who you can trust. Who’s feathering their private nest instead of honoring a contract?

Can we “own” a soulmate? We think of the beloved as “ours”. But aren’t they always “free”? The extent to which we’re not free is prophetic of relationship collapse. Soulmates want rational commitment, with the understanding that nobody’s enslaved.

How can you gain through losing? We do it with weight loss! The hermit crab carries his house on his back. When he outgrows it is when he shops for another house. It clearly wouldn’t benefit him to be dragging two houses around; he wouldn’t be able to move. But some of us are so burdened with junk we’re completely immobilized. Yet being robbed not only isn’t any kind of relief, the sense of violation lasts for years. The only person who can rid us of our stuff is Us. We just have to set to it and figure out what’s baby and what’s bathwater. It’s a lifelong process. But being light and free is intoxicating and addictive. Once you’ve soared you won’t want to live any other way.

#HAIKU: THE THIEF

“No doors there are to this stronghold
yet thieves break in to steal the gold”:
Egg!