Sol: The All-Seeing King

Of all the kings in the Playing Card Oracles, Sol, the King of Clubs, is the one that shows up more often in my readings. I think it's because I have many Aquarian/Air men in my life... including my father, my boss, my stepbrother and others.

I was reading Anaïs Nin's Under a Glass Bell one of these days. It's a wonderful book of short stories... I recommend reading it if you like a flowery prose with lots of subjectivity and surrealism. Some people find her writing superfluous and convoluted, but I love her. Anaïs speaks to my spirit - and to my heart - in a way few authors have ever done.

Sol himself would probably dislike her dreamy style.

There's a story called "The All-Seeing", which is about a man who could really be the King of Clubs. I can't help but think that Anaïs found inspiration in a typical Air man for this story, because the way she describes him reminds me of the Air men in my life. I am sharing some quotes below, along with some comments of mine, as a part of my own study of this card.

"Seeking this that he had lost without knowing it, he became restless and a rover, a prober, he became the archaeologist of his own soul, he searched and wandered [...] He was possessed with restlessness, timelessness, forgetfulness. He lived in a labyrinth and a haze." (The All-Seeing)

Sol is a man who seeks and researches everything, including his own soul. But, for me, he seems fearful of emotions (and all that reason cannot fully control and comprehend), hence why he focuses so much on the rational side. He is an archaeologist of the soul, but his conclusion are always somehow incomplete. The poetry, the dreams, the unconscious, the marvellous... all these things are missing from his left-brained approach. He analyses them, dissects them, question them until they crumble under the weight of his scrutiny. Mystery cannot survive this aggressive investigation.

"No sooner had the marvellous befallen him than he grasped it with his peasant hands with the violence of a man who was not certain of having seen it, lived it, and who wanted to reassure himself of its palpability. Everything which befell him would be ripped apart, analysed, commented." (The All-Seeing)

In this quote we see Sol's tendency to rationalise when something marvellous (or magical, or irrational) falls in his hands. He finds it hard to simply enjoy the moment... no, he must put it under a microscope, put it in perspective, put it in words. Measure, weight, compare. In doing so he gains knowledge, but sometimes he destroys the flame, the impulse, the spontaneity, the poetry. He can be the air the feeds the flame, but sometimes he ends up being the cold wind that extinguishes it.

"You float too easily, you are too easily cut off. [...] But at some time or other you will have to accept having a body, a reality, being in bondage. You will have to enter the prison of human life and accept the suffering." (The All-Seeing)

I think that the heaviness of the earth... gravity, the physical reality... is sometimes very uncomfortable for Sol. Perhaps, amongst all the PCO kings, he the one least comfortable with it. The mind has no limits... but it is still inside a body, and must conform to it. In the imagination, dreams are easily accessible... but when the body is not engaged, all fades away as soon as we open our eyes. Sol's paradox is that, while he's deeply connected to all that is logical, rational, real, scientific, he is at the same time a man of the elusive Clubs realm. And as such, someone constantly uncomfortable with the bondage of the physical life. Someone who want to live reality only through the mind - but reality is not only the mind. It's the body, the heart, the instinct... all that Sol tends to avoid.

I was surprised by how "The All-Seeing" seems to relate to Sol, especially his 'shadow' aspect, and how it unwittingly highlights the importance of Leah, the Queen of Clubs. She represents the unconscious mind, the right side of the brain, and as such she balances Sol, completes him, expands him. She's the mind that softly explores the mystery without brutalising it, without tearing the veils. She seeks to comprehend what can be seen, and respectfully waits for the unseen to unveil itself. When Sol grabs his surgical knife, Leah puts a hand in his shoulder and says "wait - it still breathes". Sol checks if the chest is moving; Leah feels the soul inhale.

As Ana Cortez said, together they make a complete brain.

In my own spreads, Sol used to represent a man I loved... Sometimes when I stare at this card my thoughts fly to the forbidden realms of memories. I remember clearly when I showed him my well-loved PCO deck and said: This card -- this is you, in my readings. The scientist, the teacher, the thinker. We were lying together on the bed, in the post-passion haze. We floated in a bubble of our own making, made of his air and heated with my own fire.

Gone, gone, gone. All that is gone. Now Sol is a rock in the pit of my stomach. And somehow this post is a sad attempt to exorcise the face that still floats above this card whenever I see it. The man is gone, but Sol is still in my readings... now I need to rediscover him, give him a new visage.