In the universe of the Farmers, the Farmer of A Suffering is the one that harvests the pain that lasts: not the great misfortune that strikes once, but the sorrow you revisit, retell, chew over again. Drawing card XVI predicts no ordeal. It says that a pain, old or present, takes up a great deal of room in your life, and it invites you, without rushing you, to stop going back to it out of habit.
A falling golden mask, a robe the color of embers
In its portrait, it stands upright on wet paving stones, before a low sun and ruined arches covered in red ivy. Its head disappears beneath a great golden mask, flat and pointed, shaped like an upside-down shield: two short horns at the top, a long point at the bottom that reaches down onto the chest. In the middle, a pink and violet cutout traces a kind of mouth pulled downward, from which two fangs hang. This is not a face that threatens; it is a face that sags.
The body is wrapped in a long crimson damask robe. Magenta bands cut in sawtooth patterns run around the wrists and the waist. The robe opens in points over two mismatched legs: one plain gold, the other striped with pink and yellow chevrons, like a harlequin costume that has lost half its cheer. On its feet, red slippers with curled toes. The hands, long and pale, hang at its sides, fingers spread and clawed, half open: it grasps nothing, it waits for things to fall.
On the card, the same silhouette stands before an engraved circle, between twisted vines. On the edge, three words frame it: Malice on the left, Caution on the right, Ruin beneath its feet. These are not verdicts, but the three slopes a pain can slide down: turning against others, withdrawing, letting everything crumble.
In the round of the Atanor (clockwise, from the Black to the White), it comes just after the Farmer of A Success and just before the Farmer of A Hope. Pain often arrives on the day after a success that was lost, and it calls up, all by itself, the hope that follows it. Its back is yellow, like those of its two neighbors: one family, echoing itself.
What it harvests: the Ba-Honey of the sorrow that returns
The first volume of Les Fermiers (The Farmers), currently published in French, gives the name Ba-Honey to the energy of heavy emotions: fear, shame, sadness, rage, despair. A dense energy, which lingers long after the event that produced it. This Farmer harvests its most stable portion: not the flash of the shock, but what keeps flowing afterward, months or years later.
A Field Harvester does not create our emotions. Loss, injury, sadness are ours, and they are legitimate. You can picture the Farmer of A Suffering as the one that simply stands near the wound and keeps the return going: it brings the memory back at the right moment, it makes the old story easier to tell than a new one, it gives pain the taste of a refuge. The book says it in a single line: “Cruelty is not what drives them. Need is.” Nothing personal: it is hungry, and a sorrow turned over and over feeds it for a long time.
It does not work amid crashing and shattering, but through repetition. Three scenes to picture it.
The dresser drawer
On a Sunday spent tidying up, an envelope slips out of a drawer: photos of a house that was sold, of a time when everything seemed to hold together. You sit down on the bed, and the afternoon slips away. Nothing serious: a moment of nostalgia. The Farmer knocked nothing over, but you can imagine it sitting beside you, patient, gathering the slow flow of what might have been. The next day, you open the drawer again. And the day after.
The same story, at another table
On a break, the conversation drifts toward that boss from years ago, that old injustice. You know it by heart; you know exactly where the others will nod. There is a strange sweetness in telling it again: it is familiar ground. Each repetition leaves its drop in the jar.
The letter you will never send
In the evening, you write in your head the letter meant for the person who hurt you. You correct it, you go back to it once you are in bed. It will never be sent, and that is what makes it inexhaustible. You can picture the Farmer as the most faithful reader of these drafts.
“It is said of you”: the pain, the dream, and the situation
The sentence does not judge. It does not say “you are exaggerating”. It acknowledges that there is pain, then it distinguishes two forms, and that distinction is precious.
Immersed in a situation: the pain is present, current. A relationship that hurts, a job that wears you down, a recent bereavement: a reality to be faced, if possible with those who can help.
Immersed in a dream: the pain is mostly replayed. The situation is over, but you still live in it, like a house you kept the key to. You go back there as if in a dream, almost without meaning to.
In the language of the Atanor, “It is said of you” names what is being harvested. So the card does not reproach you for your sorrow: it shows you where it is being captured.
A Suffering on the three axes
Love
- Character who is submissive, a scapegoat.
- Character who often criticizes others: it is their pastime.
- Loss.
The first two sentences seem opposed; they are the two faces of the same pain. The one who takes the blows and the one who criticizes often carry the same wound, turned inward or outward. The Malice of the edge words is here: not as a character trait, but as a sorrow that spills over onto those close to you. “Loss”, finally, is a reminder that some heartbreaks are bereavements, and that grief asks for time, not advice.
Work
- Social and mental aggression.
- Caution is called for in your activity.
- Be careful not to get rejected by complaining too much.
Here the card may point to a harsh climate, words that wound. It may also advise Caution, the second of the edge words: not to commit now to what you would commit to in better shape. The third sentence, a delicate one, does not make complaining a fault: it observes that repeated complaint ends up wearing out those who listen to it, and that you then find yourself more alone with your sorrow.
Soul
- Character who feels persecuted.
- Character who is sovereign.
- Character who is depressed.
“Sovereign” comes as a surprise in the middle of this list. You can read it in two ways. There is the one who reigns over their pain like a small kingdom no one else may enter. And there is the one who, at the heart of sorrow, remains master of themselves. As for the word “depressed”, it deserves to be taken seriously, which means: not entrusting it to a deck of cards.
Recognizing it at work in yourself
You can sense this Farmer by what it leaves in the body and in your habits. A few signs, to observe without blaming yourself:
- A heaviness in the chest or shoulders, which returns each time the same thought passes through.
- A gaze that drops: eyes toward the floor, head tilting, exactly the line of its mask.
- Ready-made phrases: “it always happens to me”, “anyway”, “ever since…”. They come on their own and have the smoothness of worn pebbles.
- A pull toward whatever reopens it: the song from back then, the photo, the profile you go and look at for no reason.
- A tiredness after telling your story, where you had hoped for relief.
Book II describes this background Ba-Honey as “a permanent inner complaint, never put into words”. None of this is a fault: these are reflexes, often set in place for good reasons. And a reflex is something you can see.
What the card invites you to do
Read too quickly, this invitation could sound harsh. Look instead at the central word, ease. The past dream is easy because it is familiar: you know where the furniture is. The future has no furniture yet. The card does not ask you to stop suffering. It asks you to notice when you go back, of your own accord, into a room that hurts you.
Here the universe of the Farmers offers a path that is neither forgetting nor willpower: the Third Honey, an emotion fully felt from a stable inner space. The sadness does not disappear. It stops being lived in the dark.
You do not chase away the Farmer of A Suffering. You do not declare war on it, which would only be one more sorrow. You see it, that is all. And seeing it often makes the next gesture a little less automatic. On this way of feeling without being swept away, see lucid non-reaction.
A small practice: noting the return
For one week, each time you revisit the old story (in thought, in words, by opening the photo again), draw a line on a piece of paper, and lay a hand flat where your body tightens. Three breaths. No analysis, no reproach. At the end of the week, look at the lines: this is not a grade, it is a map. The returns often have their hours and their places. Knowing where you go back to already means no longer going back entirely in the dark.
A Suffering in a reading
The Atanor predicts nothing: card XVI announces neither misfortune nor ruin. It shines a light on a sensitive area. Full text in the 24 cards.
In the Three-Axis Reading. In Love, a relationship where one takes the blows and the other criticizes, or a loss that is still raw. In Work, a trying climate, a time to consolidate rather than commit. In Soul, a sorrow that keeps replaying and asks to be seen, sometimes with support.
In the Wheel. Near the Black, it readily points to what hides at the starting point: the old pain from which the rest flows. At the heart of the path, it is a stage, not a place to settle. Just before the White, its invitation becomes the last step: moving forward, precisely there.
With its neighbors. If it comes out with A Success, read the pair: an achievement that came at a high cost, or a sorrow born of what was lost after the triumph. If it comes out with A Hope, the reading traces a very human movement, from pain toward the expectation of something better. It is a fine slope, as long as you don’t replace one dream with another.
Keep the smile with which the deck is held: a card is not a destiny, it is a lamp set on the table.
