My Pisces Soul Is Awake Now...

Hello friends & tarot lovers,

Back in February I made a promise to myself and set an intention to get back in touch with my Pisces soul. I knew it was still in there, lurking, occasionally forcing up hiccups of emotion but never really screaming to the surface. I am always me to an extent, but too much emotion wasted on the wrong people had buried this most essential part of me and after time to heal and breathe...I missed that me. I missed feeling sensual in my sheets in the morning because it was morning and I was there. I missed feeling truly connected with friends and partners when we snuggled or held each other. I missed being able to cry, sob, and freak out when I was upset. I missed feeling truly happy, joyful, connected during late night conversations or when witnessing brilliant art. 

So I made a water altar, and I've been loyal to it. I've forced myself to start journaling a certain amount of pages every 2-3 days (and they can't be business notes). I've tried to take a deep breathe and really be IN the moment when the time calls for it. I'm a better tarot reader than I was. I'm a more emotional, clingy, weird friend and family member than I was but no one has complained (quite the opposite, in fact). I have ideas for storytelling and personal stories to pitch to various outlets. I have so many ideas for the next show I'm directing. 

And yet...I wasn't prepared for the feelings of overwhelm and sadness that come with bad situations. My empathy guard falling has made me a better friend but I am kind of a mess some days. I know it's time now to strive for balance. What originally made me feel good and inspired and like ME again has made me have several days over the past few weeks of unfocused, scattered energy, irritability, and deep feelings of loss even when no real loss has occurred. Pisces me is here and restored and feelin' stuff. But I have to be able to work and function. 

I didn't take neuroatypicality into account when I set my intention. I didn't expect my Pisces soul floating to the surface to inspire my PTSD and anxiety to have their way with me. This was a magickal error on my part, having missed something I tell clients all the time: make your intentions crystal clear with no room for error. I like being sad, crying, and overanalyzing what went wrong in real time when something is wrong. I don't like a normal day completely knocking me off my feet. I don't like the outrage I felt at a slightly frustrating day yesterday. I don't like feeling completely isolated because the people I love aren't available right at the very moment I thought company might be nice, but I do so love my renewed and deepened love of those relationships.

As usual when at a loss, I turned to the tarot for guidance and answers:

The Slow Holler Tarot essentially confirms everything I just said, but like I tell clients: if this is not new information, it allows you to focus and cut out anything not mentioned here. So if I take the card's advice on enacting my vision more clearly, the problems with empathy and isolation will fall away on their own. My whole spread promises water stuff is good, heart stuff is great. I should be loving and celebrating and rejoicing in my rediscovered Pisces energy. The dissenting card is this Visionary of Knives--a stark and necessry reminder that I am all of the things a Pisces is...but I am also grounded, ambitious, and rooted by a deep need to create something big and bold for my community. Finding balance is about remembering my goals and placing them on the same pedestal as I do my heart and its needs. I love this top row. It is affirming it and just seeing it helps me blend the things I'm going through into something viable. This deck can be verbose and challenging when that is what I need. It can also be succint and affirming when all I need is permission.

It is the outgoing message though that surprised me and that I write all of this to deliver to you: Growth is slow, and takes time. It might hurt in the meantime. It will probably cause a hundred different areas of your life to throb and glow at once. This time will pass, and it will have been worth it. Keep growing.

Blessed be y'all!

Whelp, That Happened

On Tuesday so many of our worst fears got confirmed. Hate, anger, and fear won--for now. What I'm having the hardest time wrapping my head around spiritually is this: it shouldn't have. By which I mean Clinton won the popular vote and when you factor in third party votes or conscientious abstainers, well over half of America voted against hate. And yet our government is structured so that it won anyway. Love had numbers on it's side, and hate still won and I am still reeling from trying to place that somewhere productive in my milleu. And I know the fight isn't over. It's never over, and it's wouldn't have been over under Clinton who I enthusiastically voted for with every intention to keep her accountable on the issues I didn't agree with. The good fight has undeniably received a huge hit though, and I made a spread to follow up my pre-election post from Sunday. If it's useful to you, use it as much as you can.

This one is five cards. Deck used is this one. I started with an overarching question that many of us who have been reading about faithless electors, impeachment, and eradicating the electoral college have been thinking: is this round actually over, or is fighting worth it at this point? The Six of Earth reminds us that nothing is really over until we say it is, that there are safe places and touchstones even in the darkest times, and that fighting is always worth it. A bit vaguer of an answer that I wanted, but after reading an egregious amount of journalism, real and pseudo, over the past few days, I believe it's saying this: we should fight all the fights that are feasible to keep the Trump/Pence ticket out because it may not work this time, but it's crucial for future progressive elections and will make a huge difference in the long-term. AND we may actually see something come of it. Don't give up, have hope, and know that even if this is it, and Trump is our answer, that there are still safe places and people we can build community with now.

The next three are more straightforward and more about us and less about the election. The placements are:

1. What do we do to cope in the immediate?
2. How do we change our behavior so this doesn't happen again? (IE how do we stop contributing to white cisnormative heteropatriachy supremacy)
3. What DOES the future look like right now, and how does that affect us?

The final card in this one is "What do I need to know, no matter how things turn out?" That's the top one.

This sample reading, mostly geared towards me but potentially useful to you says this: our coping mechanism is the 10 of Air, a card of tarot specifically in this case. For me, tarot has always been my healer and my saving grace. It has gotten me through major stepping stones in each of my careers. It has aided my therapy. It has given me answers, guidance, and hope when I didn't even know or think I deserved them, and so for me this is obvious: turn to the tarot like I've always done. For you it may not be tarot--the message I have for those reading based on this is turn to whatever has always healed and soothed YOU, the thing that has gotten you through crossroad after crossroad and threshold after threshold. That thing hasn't gone anywhere. So I'm going to keep flipping cards, creating art, and writing it all down to share with you. I'm going to snuggle my queerplatonic partner and my cats even harder and more often. My coffee habit is going nowhere in the immediate. And you--you do whatever the equivalent to these things is to you.

The cards then remind me to always be fair and balanced if I want to tip the scales of progress in the future. Flying off at the mouth may not be my best bet right now. For some people it absolutely will be, remember, this was primarily a personal reading. For YOU this one is about always putting your money, your carbon footprint, your mouth where your heart is. We all need to evaluate our own part in getting to this point. No white person, no cis person, no man, no straight person, no able-bodied or healthy person is completely innocent. There is more you can do and the time to evaluate that is now.

Unfortunately with the God card here, we're in for it to be a little rough for awhile. Those coping mechanisms and our community building skills are going to be crucial. We will be struggling against white supremacy and patriarchy for awhile. It's important to remember that even if somehow this vote gets overturned, this ticket has uncorked those who have been dying to act out hatred and bigotry for Goddess knows how long. That's not going to go away overnight. Getting a different president in will not solve all of our problems. We have to keep fighting back, we have to expect change to be small at first. We have to be strong and disciplined and strategic. That last keyword is just as important as the others now.

Finally, the "what do I need to know?" card gives us a card of cows and farms and "slow but steady." Remember that there is enough to go around. Do not center your movement in greed and power grabs--that's how we got here in the first place. Donate to organizations that need it if you're able. Try to live your life as normally as possible. Trust that true change takes time but hearts are softening as we speak. Your home is still your sanctuary for now, and if it isn't, there is a sanctuary for you. Find it.

BUT WAIT--while this spread gave me a ton to plan, think about, meditate on, etc. I really needed to pull one more card, to see if there was any hope that the next 4-8 years would either not be Trump or Pence-led, and if they were if there was any way it wouldn't be terrible. And the deck gave me this:

Check out that 90's-tastic fabric on my favorite ugly chair.

Primal matriarchal, earthy energy. Fertility, success, creation. Love. Compassion. Your Divine is still here and it is listening. Make of that what you will.

Until next time, Blessed Be.

Election Anxiety and Beyond-A Reading for Hope and Healing

I've had nightmares about this upcoming Tuesday all week and my chest tightens at the mention of election anything. Living with PTSD is never a cakewalk but this election cycle is another monster entirely. For so many of us living with anxiety, trauma, and mental illness it seems like there's a new trigger at every turn, a new reason to be fearful every time we check into Facebook, a new person in our lives we learn we can not trust because of the levity with which they treat these triggers.

Tarot will probably not save the world--but as a spiritual person I serve liberation and empowerment, and with most things in life that starts in our homes and in our hearts. So while I did a not-quite-cheerful reading about the election with the intention to share it with you all, I ultimately decided against it.

Because we KNOW Tuesday is going to be a living nightmare of anxiety and we KNOW that many will take their anxiety out on others, creating a dreamscape Stephen King himself couldn't have dreamt of, and we KNOW that equity and compassion might lose. Big time. And ONE function if tarot is to warn us of what's to come or give us the truth about where we are right now--but it's not it's only function.

Because like the bulk of my spiritual work, tarot is also about healing and empowerment. It's about learning how to move on even when we don't want to or don't think we can. It's not about the Death card, it's about how we learn to live again after the fact. So here's a simple spread, and a simple reading for all of us to hold on to until Tuesday about how to cope and rebuild.

This is a three card spread--an overarching energy to show what we're actually dealing with.

A card for how to cope and find balance in the meantime

and a card for healing and rebuilding. Even if the worst doesn't happen, this is taking a lot out of us. The initial high of defeating our worst fears will give way to exhaustion and allowing ourselves to feel and live in our spent-ness. And of course, the worst could happen. So this card is how to grow from there.

As for our universal reading (which I did with the Cosmos Tarot and Oracle), we show that we're not wrong--there is definitely an aggressive energy permeating through everything in American society (and those societies closely linked to and affected by it) right now. And Mars is a card of war which is why even those of us who live in magick and whimsy are so prone to pick up pitchforks and begin yet another speech with "OKAY, first of all..." right now. But Mars is also a card of action and vitality--there is good life left in our fight yet. Applied correctly, we could still turn this mess around with Mars looming so closely.

Our "immediate coping mechanism" shows us digging deep down for those last reserves of strength. For better or worse, it's only 2.5 more days. Repeat that to yourself ad nauseum. For better or worse, it's only 2.5 more days. Don't stop fighting for what you believe in for this election because even when it doesn't seem like it, some hearts will still open and some people will still "get it" last minute. But also remember that Hercules has a weakness, as we all do, which forces us to rest and retreat from time to time. Do everything you would normally do for self-care in times of duress. Sleep more. Do less. Love just as hard as you do in good times and hold them all tightly. Remind yourself that you are not how you reacted to this election season. And as a side note, sometimes the cards make a more surface level metaphor. For those physically able to do so, pouring our emotions into exercise and physical activity may be your saving grace right now. Get outside. Eat lots of protein. Put your remaining energy reserves into the things you've been working hard for all month/year/life-long. They will still be here tomorrow and you need the outlet now.

Finally we see the Page of Air. We don't know what things are going to look like from Wednesday on, but we do know we'll have new insight and ideas into how to rebuild. It is important to have a plan for healing and regrowth in your mind, but leave room for freshness and flexibility. Again, lean to those you love and as for help when you need it. Plan a day trip with one or two you hold dear to blow off steam. Remember, there's no shame in hiding until the fury dies down if your life allows you to do so. And hilariously, this card does allow for what we've all be threatening--moving out of the country if we just really can not.

As a final note, while Fire oversees us, the other cards were Swords/Air. So use logic--you know there is an end to this and a next step. Try to get some clarity--meditate, vent to a friend, exercise your brute strength with some rad kickboxing classes--whatever you need to do to just clear your mind and escape the inundation of poll reports and internet fights. Wednesday will come. And there will be one the week after that. And the week after that. Hold on to the GOOD that you know is real--not just the bad that we are swimming in.

Hope this was helpful, lovelies. Blessed be.

"All We Are Is Our Stories"

This is something the flawless Desiree Burch said during Nerdcon in the fall, and it is a sentence that haunts me and comes back over and over again. It grows deeper every time--when it was stated, Desiree was giving a speech on why stories matter, and basically said that stories matter because we matter, and all we are once we leave this plane is the stories we leave behind. That is such a stunning and beautiful concept, such an impetus to speak your truth. Then this kept showing up in my readings.

This is the card "History," a special card added into The Tarot of the Silicon Dawn by Egypt Urnash. You can see an in-depth review of this card (that I did not write) here. It is devilishly queer and the extra cards are so wonderful and perfect add-ons for my life. This History card is starting to get under my skin as I grow and evolve, and keeps showing up in readings to really push the point home.

I've had a rough life, you guys. I make no secret of this, but I don't harp on it either. It is what it is, and I like to think that in spite of a rough upbringing, several chronic illnesses, and the reasons behind my PTSD and severe social anxiety disorder I am learning to move and thrive, and I am. I so am. The past year was so wild and I remembered how much potential and promise I truly have. Still there is something holding me back at times, and it is that voice that sounds like everyone who didn't believe me, everyone who hurt me, everyone who thought they were better and tried to oppress me. I have grown leaps and bounds, and still this card keeps showing up.

This card, you see, is about what we make of our history. It's about the stories we tell ourselves about our histories, and therefore our futures. In the card we see our figure bound by their words, bound by their stories, bound by their history, but this is not a card about how great bondage is. (Those cards are in this deck though, don't you worry ;) ) This is a card about how crucial moving forward is, but it exists to remind us we can not move on until we take control of our stories. This card tells us we can rewrite them, and we can rewrite their ending, and that we have too. We have to write our history in a way that we are empowered and we come out the victors in the end. We have to rewrite the stories we tell ourselves if those stories put us down and reinforce our insecurities, we just have too. We deserve stories where we persevered and we are so powerful. We deserve stories where we win. We deserve stories where we recognize that the story isn't over and anything can happen. We deserve empowering stories.

Because all we are, after all, is our stories, and we can't leave marvelous tales of wonder to the world when we just keep telling ourselves the same old horror stories.