Balance, neutrality, patience

This card urges balance and peace. It reminds us that what we know to be true isn’t always. It suggests we make room for grace and growth, and the restoration of harmony is the energetic force at play. There is an unusual fluency between the inmost depth of spirit and the outer facing mind expressed by this card, which encourages both exploration and exchange between these states.

I have been about this work for what feels like a very long time. I know that isn’t strictly true in the temporal sense, but the effort feels like it has been underway for long and long indeed.

I have spent most of my life in a hurry, and I know better than anyone that it is both difficult and necessary for me to slow down. The pause prior to action is not as seductive as the headlong reel. I am fighting an instinct I have not fully decoded, knowing it will benefit me nevertheless.

Things have a strange intensity at this moment, but it has been tempered by a patience I am unaccustomed to feeling. I am not casting ahead for answers; instead waiting for them to emerge from the veil. I cannot say what I believe I want but feel able to dwell there for the first time I can remember.

Co-Star seems to think I am right where I belong. That the unfamiliar quality of this moment is not a signal for it to change.

I heard somewhere that humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less. So perhaps it is with humility that I am poised. It allows me to bring the full force of my compassion to the moment. To feel present in both the pleasure and the heartache of it without attempting to create a particular result.

So perhaps Temperance appears less as a scolding than a recognition of something I am only rarely able to achieve. A reminder that I can practice patience, as I am doing in this moment. That I can allow the ebb and flow of forces beyond my control and understanding to wash over me without struggling for breath. That if I can but wait, harmony will be restored.

It is difficult to articulate how it feels to be a conscious person in these times.

I am at various moments terrified, numb, and driven nearly to hysteria at the slow* motion calamity that is unfolding around me.

The object of many spiritual practices is to shed the notion that each individual person is separate from the wholeness of the divine. To remember that there is no difference, in essence, between us other than the illusions we have chosen to embrace.

While I try to keep this top of mind, for it is a soothing notion, it is impossible to ignore how estranged I feel from the ranks of people making globally impactful decisions that are producing ever more frightening implications and consequences.

That they have admitted to stealing this authority is upsetting enough, but what they have chosen to do with it is horrifying. The open contempt for rule of law, for foreign sovereignty, for the health and safety of their own citizens is both infuriating and deeply chilling.

I do not know how to reconcile myself to this illusion. To understand why it is what they choose to embrace. I do not wish to, for it is the foulest vision I have been exposed to in this lifetime.

“To encounter the World […] is to encounter a great unity and wholeness.”

It feels like a gentle admonition to find such unity and wholeness somewhere. To remind me that is the only refuge at my disposal, come what may.

So, I look within for echoes of alignment. I breathe deep and slow. I settle into my body and listen to voices that share my anguish, my confusion, my dismay.

For though these voices are as weary and frightened as I am, I know they belong to those that – given the chance – will be there to help rebuild the world again.

*Though gaining speed at an alarming rate

The Winter Solstice was 12/21

I am always happy when it arrives, not only because it is the birthday of one of my favorite humans, but because it augurs the moment it has become as dark as it is going to get for the year, and the return of the light is about to begin.

I have felt the darkness quite keenly of late. Having always lived above the 45th parallel I am no stranger to the dimness of winter, but this year, despite a milder than average fall, the darkness encroached in other ways.

I put up my Christmas tree the 2nd week in November to bring a little extra (de)light into view. I have been lighting candles and reveling in small luxuries to cope. I recognize I am still walking through the Dark Night of the Soul, but have been able to use the opportunity to marvel at the starlight and notice the faintest hint of pink on the horizon that assures me dawn is coming.

I have also been spending time planning for what I want to see in my life when the light is shining on it again. My magic can be difficult to harness unless I have the clearest vision for it to follow; my efforts are all directed at building the most lucid and precise template for my future.

In the past I have almost exclusively focused on the things I DO want for my life, and assumed the things I don’t want will be crowded out. The last few years have made it clear to me that only speaking to the bright and shiny things leaves a lot of negative space – literally and figuratively – to fill itself.

So now, in this time of darkness that is turning toward light, I confront the shadows within and without. I declare that I invite prosperity and deny tumult. I welcome great love and refuse obsession. I embrace refuge and reject domination.

As important as it is to understand what my future is, so too must I project what it is not.

It isn’t always about money. It is, in my experience, much more often referring to “resources” more broadly. Emotional, financial, temporal…

I have been engaged in some significant shadow work for a while now. After avoiding it for many years – and seeing how much it has harmed me to do so – it feels a bit like clinging to a careworn raft in a dark sea. I know shore exists, I just can’t locate it yet.

Though I am uncommonly good at seeing in darkness, it is not always easy to know where it might be safe to land. It has been made apparent that integration, and not just excavation, has to be a part of my healing. Uncovering painful truths and bringing them into the light accomplishes no more than giving further shape and definition to my pain if it is not accompanied by active change.

Just the other day I was inspired to begin a project to help define when I am calling into my life. To create the Wishing Wall anew. This time it will be about more than just a partner I am seeking, but the shape of all my intentions brought together.

I see the Ace of Pentacles appearing at this time as confirmation that this undertaking will be fruitful. The image here is sowing seeds; to manifest future abundance by planning judiciously in the present.

That I am assured of the value of this effort is a welcome encouragement.

It’s not to say that’s easy or particularly common, but when it happens it seems like magic.

Because it is much much harder to truly and clearly identify exactly what we want in life than we have been led to believe.

It’s easy to speak about aspirations and hopes. It’s commonplace to daydream and imagine the future. But how often do we really sit with our desires, and all their shades of light and shadow and say with clear and unwavering purpose “This is what I want.”

There are so many things to consider. You can ask for the things you know you want, but how do you know how to exclude the things you don’t want until you know you don’t want them?

It’s tricky, that.

In the book illusions by Richard Bach there’s a scene where the reluctant Messiah is explaining to the skeptical barnstorming pilot that he can manifest anything he wants.

The barnstormer selects a blue feather as an item to attract. When it does not immediately appear, he asks the Messiah

“Where’s my feather?”

To which the Messiah replies

“If you had it clear in your thought it is even this moment barreling down on you like a Mack truck.”

And so once upon a time, I built the shape of a feather…

I spent months imagining what I wanted out of a partner. Their qualities, characteristics, temperament, and habits. I built a dream for myself and my imagined beloved bit by bit with care and attention in a project unlike anything I’ve ever sustained.

And someone appeared! And he was all of the things I had asked for. But he was also things that scared me, that overwhelmed me, that made me feel contempt.

Be careful what you wish for.

My primary focus these days is on myself and my healing, rather than attracting a partner but I’m planning to resurrect my wishing wall. To spend days and hours minutes and years creating something that reflects what I want my life to look like so that it is perfectly clear in my mind.

And I know beyond a doubt that once the picture is complete all I will have to do is step forward and claim it.

For years now, I have had the inconstant custom of pulling a tarot card everyday and then journaling about it. I have typically made an art project out of the journal in which I did this.

I undertook this both as a way to structure what has always been a fairly uncertain habit and as a way to become more deeply familiar with the tarot in general. There are a lot of cards I can pull out and immediately recognize their meaning and significance. Two of Cups? Mutuality! The Tower? Brace for chaotic change!

Apart from a few dozen cards I know like the back of my hand, I often need to pull out a book or two to complete a reading. This project was an effort to foster a closer relationship with the tarot and gain a greater understanding of the both the traditional meanings in the canon and to develop my own particular interpretations.

So today I pulled The Sun – reversed.

A word about reversals – there are two schools of thought on whether or not to include the position of the card in the interpretation. My introduction to the tarot included the idea that cards that came out of the deck upside down – or reversed – had an alternate meaning than those that came out upright. I tend to lean toward that pose philosophically, but I also refer to the materials that come with a particular deck; they each have their own energy and character so if the guide that comes with the cards doesn’t include reverse interpretations, I don’t either.

The particular deck I am using is the one I got myself for my birthday. The Folk Lore Tarot by Rowan Ortins. I was really drawn to the imagery and tone of this deck.

It does include reverse interpretations, so I am applying them to my understanding of this pull.

In the reversed position, the Sun often implies a certain lack of warmth, light, and focus. Upright, the Sun represents a healing and motivating force that can be relied upon to guide the querent* toward a particular goal or outcome. Reversed, it can mean a lack of clarity or optimism.

In my case, this meaning doesn’t resonate in particular at the moment. I am enjoying a welcome respite from a flurry of happenings in what has been a tumultuous year. Rather than missing the glaring light of summer, I am reveling in the peace of the falling dim.

And that’s the thing about the tarot; sometimes the card can be quite literal in suggesting what’s happening. In this case, I think this card was referring to the very concrete reversal of the sun in its course. Which I for one am perfectly content to celebrate.

*Person querying the tarot