I thought I’d write a short intro to the guest post I wrote on Pop Tarot, one of my favourite places for tarot writing on the Internet, but then I ended up writing a mini essay. So I’m going to plug that guest post first so you guys can click and go read it! I was so honoured to be asked by Jamie; it was the best surprise ever to find that request in my DMs. I landed on the Queen of Wands, a card I feel a kinship with but do not yet feel closely connected to. Here’s an excerpt, and you can also read Jamie’s excellent piece on the same card here.
My first encounter with the Queen of Wands was from the Morgan Greer deck, and the calm yellows of the card, the soft leaves on her staff and crown and the big open sunflower in her hand did not make me think “warrior queen”. But her piercing gaze has stuck with me since, looking you right in the eyes, surveying a battlefield a breath before the clash, or in the ringing silence of the aftermath. I often read Wands as quite personal because what’s more personal than passion? But of course fire’s nature is to spread. Passion shared between people kindles a lot of generative energy, and generative energy powers a lot of movement.
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Four cards all depicting the Queen of Wands from four different decks, on a backdrop of white sheets with a print of small green leaves and white and yellow flowers. L-R: A big red heart containing flames, a flower with a large white center and multiple long and narrow yellow petals, and a white figure with breasts and long hair with a lit candle wick emerging from their head. In front of the heart is a white cat, and atop the heart is a lit yellow candle (Apparition Tarot). A long haired nude figure with breasts, rendered in white outlines and shading against a black starry sky. They hold a tall golden tree with many empty branches in their arms. In the right hand corner is a dark red circle (Visionary of Branches - Slow Holler). A royal figure dressed in voluminous yellow robes over which they wear a cloak clasped at the throat. In one hand they hold a wooden staff with green leaves sprouting from it, and in the other a large open sunflower. There is a wreath of leaves in their crown, they have bobbed blonde hair and they’re looking forward (Queen of Rods - Morgan Greer). A figure with straight and long fiery orange hair sitting and looming high with a sitting leopard and jagged red and orange “flames” or shards covering their bottom half. They hold a long metallic green staff across their body, topped with what looks like a pineapple without its crown. They wear a similarly metallic green cape covering their shoulders and chest, with a bright red lining, and a crown with ornage-red rays emanating from it (Thoth Tarot).
When I started this newsletter in January 2019, I was very careful about setting goals for myself. I had started too many writing projects with the vague but oppressive intention to use those projects as ways to spur me to generate more content and to garner more attention. Because at one point I wanted to be known as a Writer, because I had tied up some parts of my self-worth with my writing and who read it. I had to take a break from this whole framework for a few years, starting from about end 2016 to end 2018, where I just took a break not from thinking of myself as a writer, but from engaging in the whole performance of Writing.
In late 2016, I took a course with my co-brain Liy called the Creative Focus Workshop, run by Jessica Abel. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that course has been a really integral and significant experience that still shapes my approach to creative work (in a lot of direct but mostly indirect ways!) One of the big activities you do at the start of this workshop is called Idea Debt, a term Jessica got from Kazu Kibuishi that essentially means “when you spend too much time picturing what a project is going to be like, too much time thinking about how awesome it will be to have this thing done and in the world, too much time imagining how cool you will look, how in demand you’ll be, how much money you’ll make. And way too little time actually making the thing.”
So during the workshop, you are given a template where you list and then categories all your creative ideas. You see which ones are fueled by nostalgia (the vampire story you really wanted to write when you were 16), which ones are hampered by perfectionism (I have to figure out the political landscape of three fictional worlds before I can write this cool sci-fi adventure novel), and which ones just don’t make sense anymore in your current context (one of Jessica’s examples is: “Sequel in a series? 2009. After the first one didn’t work? Why would I do that to myself?”). Then you see which ideas that you still feel something for, that you still want to work on, and this becomes the foundation of your Creative Focus roadmap — because now you know what you want to spend time on (and why) and you then get to figure out how you’re going to make time and finally make this thing happen.
When I made my list in 2016, of the, I don’t know, dozen or so ideas I listed — I got to trash about 10 of them. And that was so freeing. It was so freeing to say, I have maybe 1-2 ideas I want to execute and I think I can make one happen in a short amount of time if I focused (and I did!) and then I don’t have anything I desperately want to create. It was freeing to decide to take a break, to realise I needed to step back to generate new ideas, and that not having ideas and a constant stream of things to constantly work on wasn’t a failure. I gave myself permission, which I’ve learned is one of the Greatest Power Moves of All Time.
I still wrote things here and there, usually for and/or with other people. But nothing that came from my own engines. And a few years went by like this. It was like a semi-retirement! I stopped feeling that weird nagging guilt of “I should be writing more” because then I’d just tell myself, there’s nothing I really want to write! (Okay full disclosure: I still felt that guilt sometimes related only to the one other idea that survived my idea debt list that I have said I wanted to work on since 2011. It involves family and personal history and I’ve reconciled with the fact that it’s the work of a lifetime, and there has been progress but it’s slow).
By the end of 2018, I started getting the itch again. I started getting Ideas. And it felt like it was right on time, and also that I would have been okay if I didn’t get Ideas for a few more years. Record of a Year came from that itch, which was directionless and plotless but a strong enough feeling that I actually saw it through. The strength of the feeling was fueled mostly by the new certainty I had that all I had to do was show up for the Idea as long as it served me and no longer. That the biggest function of the Idea was not to “win” or “gain” anything, but to make space where I get to give myself permission.
We’re in that space now! I write whatever I want in here, I don’t tell myself I “have” to do anything for this newsletter despite whatever structures I’ve created for it and I’ve been able to make writing this newsletter a pleasant, unrestrictive, generative habit that threads through my weeks. Thinking about what to write here can be a real challenge — I’m always driven by the desire to make useful things, to make things that others can connect to. But it’s an enjoyable challenge that pushes me and stirs up new thoughts and perspectives, it is not an obligation. And sometimes people respond to how I address those challenges. Sometimes people will write to tell me they resonate with something I’ve written here, and that will always be such a rewarding rush. (The last two times I’ve felt this were a) when I started blogging into the void at about 17 and ended up finding a small gang of pals I’m friends with to this day and b) when I started a One Direction tumblr in 2014 with a manifesto that focused on enjoying myself and not worrying about being popular or subscribing to prescriptive rules, and I ended up finding a small gang of pals I’m friends with to this day!!!)
I started writing this all just to try and convey the depth of how honoured I was to be asked to write a guest post by someone I’ve never met or spoken to before, who lives somewhere else entirely, whose writing I found through another newsletter by someone I don’t personally know, whose writing I enjoy and respect, whose writing has helped me understand tarot in more enriching ways. I’m still so blown away when that stuff happens! Quite inadvertently (or not?) I feel like I recalled both Page and Queen of Wands energy in this post. I’m grateful for this space. I’m grateful, usually, for all the ways the Internet can facilitate connection. I’m grateful to those of you who read my words. Thanks for taking the time. I hope July is treating you all well.
Book a tarot reading with me! Due to work engagements, I won’t be offering many slots in the last two weeks of July, but I will be updating my availabilities for August by the end of this month, so keep an eye out if you want a read soon! 50% of proceeds will be donated to initiatives helping workers in need, migrants, refugees and queer people in Malaysia.
As ever, if you’ve been enjoying the newsletter and would like to support the work, here’s my tip jar. Shares and comments are also always appreciated.
I do monthly short written tarot readings on here, and you can anonymously submit a question to me any time you want! Previously, on Tarot Letters 6, I answered four questions that all roughly dealt with how to accept and work with where you are.
Wanted to shout out some Malaysian tarot and astrology readers: Erin Malikhain (they’re also fundraising for queer friends in East/Borneo Malaysia affected by COVID-19!), Suprasensory Shahir, Shahir has also worked with: Feisty Pisces / Cosmic Witch and Meredith Mynrose, Virgo SunTarot. If you know of any others (Malaysian/Southeast Asian) shout it out!
Thanks for sharing about Idea Debt! I've been struggling so long with this weight that I didn't know had a name for, Syar. It feels so good to put a name to something, give it the time for recognition and then move on to feel lighter.