Auditing why a person or organization is stuck in perpetual self-inflicted crisis despite having every resource needed to succeed right in front of them. ---

You will see that human beings suffer from evils of their own choosing, blindly chasing external goods while ignoring the good right beside them, rolling like cylinders in endless, self-inflicted conflict. Whereas Card 05 addressed fated external blows (*Moira*), this passage diagnoses the vast majority of human misery as *authaireta pēmata*—**self-chosen woes** (Greek, p. 120). Wretched mortals neither see nor hear the good things that are *pelas ontōn* ("right near at hand," rendered by d'Olivet/Redfield as "whose source within they bear"), and very few know the *lysin kakōn* (the release/solution from evils). Why? Because their minds (*phrenas*) are damaged by an innate, unseen companion: *lygrē... eris symphytos*—**grievous, inborn Strife/Discord**. Driven by this internal disharmony, uninitiated humans roll back and forth like *kylindrois* (stone rollers or cylinders, translated by d'Olivet as tossed on waves), colliding endlessly with one another. The Pythagorean rule regarding this internal Strife is strict: do not provoke it, but yield and flee from it. [INTERPRETATION: PRISCA THEOLOGIA / ESOTERIC] In the Neoplatonic and Hermetic reception, this passage is the myth of the Fall of the Soul into matter without blaming the Creator. The Divine Good is omnipresent—closer to the soul than its own body—yet incarnate humans project their desire outward into the "shoreless sea" of *Hylē* (primordial matter, always symbolized by the turbulent ocean in Platonic exegesis). The "inborn Strife" (*eris symphytos*) is the inherent contrariety of the four elements in the mortal body. By identifying with the elemental body rather than the indwelling divine spark, mortals become passive cylinders rolled down the hill of fate by their own unruly astral passions.