Hello friends. I wanted to write a little short note as this year winds down / winds up and comes to a close (don’t call it a comeback etc). I’ve missed this space and I’ve missed my twice monthly ritual of sitting down to write about tarot etc for this newsletter, and for you. But I also know I still need a lot of time to recover from a lot of things, to keep making myself go slower and slower, to keep making the space around and inside me bigger and bigger.
The central card of my year ahead spread of 2020 was The High Priestess. I returned to her time and time again, even as this year docked at the pit stops of The Hanged Man, The Hermit, The Devil, The Tower, Judgement, Death. I had one image in my mind as I thought about the card, one I felt resonated throughout all of this year’s cracks and shifts, revelations and devastations — that of someone (myself, or the Priestess themselves) descending into the dark, dark depths of something rooted and far below ground, far below the surface, far away from light. So many times this year, tired and despairing and desperate, I’ve told someone, half jokingly, that if one more thing happens I’ll walk right into the sea, that I’d like nothing more than an excuse.
Things, of course, kept happening one after the other, bad and worse all together, uncaring for whatever the hell any of us were going through, and I kept going. I stayed on land. I had thought until now the wish was about wanting to disappear, to escape. The ocean scares me, you see. It fascinates me, and it scares me. I’ve lived so much of this year in fear, and then facing those very fears suddenly, surprisingly (and through a lot of therapy). Really trying to look at the shape of them, the way they hold themselves. What’s in their eyes. I think of the High Priestess when I realise that wanting to walk towards depths that terrify me, to walk right into an unknown, is not wanting to disappear. It’s wanting to see in the dark, it’s wanting answers, it’s wanting to confront, and find humility in not knowing. Find awe.
As this year ends, I will pull one single Major Arcana card instead of 13 tarot cards. An adjustment to a yearly ritual that feels more fitting to the relentless uncertainties we’ve lived through, to the new curiosity and desire to lean into mystery. We’ll see what I will hold in my center as we wade into the waters and currents of a new year. Inside me now, still, The High Priestess dangles like bait on a string, far below what we can imagine, holding a light if only in their mind, and looking around into blackness to find meaning, awe-struck by everything she doesn’t know. Some things won’t survive the journey back, can’t be brought out of darkness to be witnessed in the light, but in the looking the Priestess will find a knowing and a perspective that didn’t exist before, and that will change everything.
Another adjustment to a yearly ritual is my year end review for 2020. The review is a practice of mine for 9 years running now, but this is the farthest I’ve strayed from the question and answer format. This year I tried to record the stories of all the different lives I lived, to tell the story of the person I am now, to tell the story of being and becoming. Of ongoingness. What are the stories of your year? If you’re keen on sharing any, my inbox is open.
No reading list this year, but if you have a Goodreads profile you can check out the books I read this year and my Pocket account for the articles I read and recommend. I’m posting less on Twitter but I’m still active on Instagram. I’m not sure when I’ll be back on here, but I’ll be in your inboxes (if you still choose to have me) if and when. I hope you are safe wherever you are; I hope there is rest, and time, and enough — for you, for all of us.
Take care,
Syar