Hi friends and new subscribers! Happy to meet the end of this month reading some cards for these questions, to be able to take the time to contemplate and consider and have conversations with some of you in my mind and heart. If you’re new here it may help you to read what this newsletter is about and to find a few more links about me and my work.
I hope you enjoy reading, or find something that resonates with you. Shares and likes are always appreciated! You can send me more questions at this open form here. Previously, I wrote about three as a magic number in the tarot minor arcana, and how the threes move you into the work of the collective.
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How do I stop comparing myself to other people - how can I see myself truly for what I am and at the same time not place limitations on who I can be? I feel like I’m thinking the “grass is greener” and I can’t see the wildflowers in my own field.
Try this visualisation exercise with me, if you can. Imagine you are walking along a path. Note what surroundings you have put yourself in — a city street, a vegetation-rich jungle track, gentle beach waves lapping at your feet? Give yourself a little time to notice more details about where you are and where you seem to be going, the immediate track you see in front of you, that you seem to be following or making as you go. If other people appear, ignore them as best you can, if you dodge somewhere else to avoid them, fine, just take note if the scenery changes drastically. Now that you are focused on your path, think about your feet. Look down at them, and note whether you’re wearing shoes, if they’re dirty, if they’re injured, the textures you’re feeling underneath your soles as you walk onwards. Think about your arms, if they’re swinging or if they’re tucked in close to your body, if you’re waving them around. Think about your skin — do you feel a breeze, are you sweating, are you getting bitten, do you feel cold or warm? Think about your breath — laboured? Slow? Are you exhaling through your nose or your mouth?
You could lengthen this exercise until you feel like you have noticed every single thing there is to notice about your body in motion, in a specific environment, moving towards any kind of destination (decided for you or by you), you can notice your feelings in these movements, in this journey, you can go back to noticing the path you’re on and the surroundings. You can be wildly curious and impatient about oh my God, where am I going, what is it going to be like, what will I do when I get there? My point is, you say you can’t see the wildflowers in your own field, so what The Chariot is asking you to do is to try. Because you can see them, you can find them, try and name them, ask questions about them, and that’s all kind of your job. You are on your own special journey right now, back then, always, and when you focus on deeply knowing that special journey, you become in relationship with that journey, you claim it. You claim yourself, who you are, who you were, who you are now becoming. You become active in the story of yourself and all its twists and turns and little details. And then maybe it will become less important what color the grass is anywhere else but under your own two feet.
I'm in the worst physical health of my life, and I'm unable to see a way forward. Will I survive this?
Dear friend. Unfortunately, neither I nor the cards can tell you or anyone else if we will survive anything. I have great hope, however. Wands are about energies and boundaries and our illness and health is often about energetic boundaries — where are things leaking or depleted, what’s draining them, what’s attacking them, the things they need to be fortified, are we focusing them more in one place and not another. When I look at the Four of Wands it makes me think of a community working to raise pillars or a tent, working to raise something bigger than them that can house all of them, that can stand as testament to their work and energies, that can stand as symbols of celebration. You are in a state of depletion. It may feel you have no energy left, and to go looking for more may feel like it would cost you things you can’t even begin to think of paying. It may be in this moment the way forward is microscopic, the smallest possible atomic movements of the body and spirit.
The Four of Wands is about home and safety and being held in a structure of complementary passions responding to one another. Illness often traps us in our own bodies and the experience of living in it, and the systems we live in often are not kind to the ill. Many are left to survive, with perhaps some distant hope to heal, alone. I hope that is not the case for you. I hope you have stores of energy to reach to that live in other people, live in their care for you, their desire to see you survive, and heal, and thrive. Their connection to you that is rooted in the knowledge that your wellbeing is their wellbeing too. I hope they are within easy reach, I hope they know what you are going through and that you need their help and support, I hope they give it to you, I hope you are able to find the energy in whatever way, to tell them this if you haven’t already, and I hope you are deeply listened to as you deserve. We all deserve to build together and benefit from a tent of care, to know other hands join with us to hold up the sanctity of all our lives, in health, in sickness, in all manner of being in between. I am sending you good energy, and I am holding you in my thoughts.
PS: As I wrote this answer I thought of my friend, Nidhi, and her newsletter: “a space to share poetry, excerpts from my reading and to talk about my healing from chronic illnesses and mental health conditions.” It has often helped me better understand my own relationship to my body as well as my ableist notions of illness and health, and it’s also given me great energy watching her navigate moving forward (and being stuck, and feeling like she’s regressing, and moving sideways, and moving much more slowly than anyone else would expect, and so on) in her own experience of illness and health. (She also has a column!!) Maybe it will be good company to you too, in this time.
I wonder if I have an unhealthy attachment to my work. I love my job. I already ran this by my therapist who asked if I feel bad when I'm not working (I don't) or if my self-worth is tied to how well I perform (also no). When it gets overwhelming, I feel comfortable taking a step back for self-care. So apparently I'm fine. But I can't help but feel a bit self-conscious that when asked to elaborate on my interests and hobbies, nearly all of them are work-related. Do I lean into it because it makes me happy? Or should I put on the brakes and try to find meaning in things not related to work?
When I read your question, I wondered at the layers and layers of asking but no real question beneath them all, and I hope you don’t take that as me being impudent. Apparently you’re fine, you say. And I think I can add to the chorus of, yes you are! I wrote about the Nine of Cups recently: “There’s beautiful balance and abundance in the Nine of Cups, and sometimes the shadow of that is thinking Well this is good, but surely it can be better and in striving for more, one may forget the true shape of what you already hold in your hand, the gift of what already exists and is real.” There’s some measure of that in all the Nines, the suggestion it makes for you to actually for real reap what you sow, and the difficulty some of us might have with the concept of “settling” for “enough”.
The Nine of Pentacles here depicts a well-kept and manicured garden beyond stately gates. It promises or entices us with the possibility of lush growth, beauty, luxury, comfort. We are at the gates, poised to step in or perhaps hesitating. Why hesitate? There’s nothing in your question that indicates anything is wrong or needs to be fixed, except perhaps your mention of feeling self conscious that your interests and hobbies are work-related. Is anyone outside your inner voice making you feel this? If so, leave them to their garden and either enjoy yours in peaceful solitude or find others who prefer the plants your garden has on offer. If it’s mainly or only your inner voice telling you there’s something “wrong” with your attachment to work, and you feel you have not conversed enough with this voice (found out where they’re from, what context they’re speaking from, what concerns they have), then do that. As for finding meaning in things not related to work, you can do that if you really want to (and not because you feel you should), and still be as into work as you are.
Sometimes the simplest things evoke the most complicated reactions in us. Step into the garden. Enjoy it. Revel in the fact that you love your work, it lights you up in many different arenas of your self and life! That you’ve made decisions, encountered setbacks, gained victories that lead you there. What a gift that is! The garden here asks for nothing but for you to be in it. You don’t have to water anything (they’re already watered), or prune anything (they’re growing just fine and not endangering anybody), you don’t even have to plant anything new (there is enough)! If you haven’t already, try and take that step. Try on just being for size.
I feel lost, and not just since this crisis; uncertainty seems to be my default mode right now. I'm aware that I need to turn inwards for guidance but at this point I'm wondering, what are the signs I should pay attention to?
I’m fascinated by the posture of the young bird in this card, how it seems to be looking at the world upside down. I also wonder at the wavy wisps behind it — snow drifts? Smoke? Steam rising from the ground? Cloud formations? No right answers, only ideas. That’s the Child of Swords vibe. I’m on an island right now with my friends, and every day we ask questions about the nature around us, and none of us are really inclined to bring out our devices, call up the all-knowing Internet, and confirm our theories. We’re enjoying the possibilities created by us saying “I think maybe it could be this” or “It looks like this, and I’m thinking it could be connected to this?” It’s childlike and we’re getting so many things wrong, but we’re also having a lot of fun. We don’t know so many things, and we’re so curious about so many things, and somehow we are imagining new answers to those many things, pulling from all the different things we encounter, think and have absorbed.
So perhaps look to the things that make you curious, that give rise to a lot of questions in you. Questions often produce a lot of friction — how well (or not well) we deal with uncertainty, not knowing, not having access to answers. If that’s the case, how can you play with questions a bit more, formulate them differently, ask different kinds, collect interesting ones from other people, how can you turn your head upside down, turn your questions upside down, to look at something strange and mysterious in a new way? Perhaps the Child of Swords asks you to step out of your committed relationships with answers, to explore other ways of existing in not knowing.
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Image descriptions: VII The Chariot - A rushing river, dark blue with white froth and waves on top, carves its way forward and straight through a high-walled valley or canyon. The sky is faint yellow and the sun hazy bright on the horizon. It is unclear if the river will bend or end in a waterfall. Four of Wands - two pairs of crossed wands, each with one black and one white are positioned next to one another. Yellow-orange sparks issue from the tip of each wand, a luminous reddish pink glow emanates from the bottom of the card and extends around the shape of the crossed upright wands, against a larger backdrop of hazy medium blue. Nine of Pentacles - a checkered possibly metal gate opens onto a yard or garden. A tall spiralling green plant, reminiscent of a Christmas tree or other evergreen stands in a wide base pot, whose edge is decorated with circular pentacles. Beyond the plant/tree are green border hedges, possible dark mountains and more greenery. Child of Swords - A black bird is perched on white ground (possibly snow) with its wings folded back and its head leaned down to look between its legs, possibly at the upright sword positioned behind / next to the bird. There are curving white wisps against the pale grey sky, and along the horizon are dark grey faraway mountains.