collectivecartomancy

[collectivecartomancy]

everyone says join your local mutual aid groups and build community, but uh, what do you do if a lot of them seem to have dissolved and the other ones don't have consistent recurring meetings.

[collectivecartomancy]

Dandelion & Diabetes

Hey Everybody! Here’s my final for Rootwork Herbals People’s Medicine School.

Once it’s accepted, I’ll be a real, live community herbalist and I’m so excited! 🥹 🥹 🥹

Please feel free to put any questions or concerns in the comments, or email me directly at cyreejarelle@collectivecartomancy.com.

Thanks for bearing witness to this wonderful experience :)

As ever, wishing you well,

Cyree Jarelle

Dandelion/Taraxacum officinale: Overview

Dandelion is a perennial flowering herb that grows from a long taproot.

Its name has been associated with the Persian tark hashgun, which means wild endive.

Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs, suggests an origin in the Greek taraxos is more likely. Taraxos is a Greek word for "disorder" and as Rodale's writes, akos means remedy.

This is the relationship that humans have kept with Dandelion. It's abundant, nigh unkillable, and easy to identify. The designation officinale refers to Dandelion's inclusion in early apothecaries. Its earliest written virtues are in the Tang Bencao, written during the Tang dynasty.

Dandelion has a history in Europe and the United States, where it's used to treat diseases of the liver and GI tract.

Dandelion is a bitter stimulant with diuretic and laxative properties.

Unlike other diuretics, dandelion does its work without depleting potassium in the body. This is due to the potassium richness of dandelion itself.

Type 2 Diabetes & Dandelion

Diabetes is an endocrine disorder. It primarily affects the pancreas, an organ in the digestive system found in the upper abdomen. The pancreas produces the hormones to control blood sugar, including insulin, glucagon, peptides, and somatostatin. It also makes enzymes essential to the digestion of food.

Diabetes has many risk factors and symptoms, but all types of diabetes involve insulin.

Type 2 Diabetes is characterized by the pancreas no longer making enough insulin to process sugar in one's diet. This can cause disruptions throughout the body, with notable impacts on the heart, liver, and eyes.

Wirngo et. al published "The Physiological Effects of Dandelion (Taraxacum Officinale) in Type 2 Diabetes" in 2016. There they attribute Dandelion's anti-diabetic properties to its "bioactive chemical components." These include "chicoric acid, taraxasterol (TS), chlorogenic acid, and sesquiterpene lactones," they write.

Wirngo et. al. assert that herbal medicine and other traditional medicines have "demonstrated potential to alleviate diabetic symptoms, enable recovery, and improve health." Dandelion does this by fighting inflammation, which can harm tissues throughout the body.

Dandelion's bitter taste is due to "sesquiterpene lactones." These include "taraxacolide, dihydro-lactucin, ixerin D, taraxinic acids, phenyl propanoids, and ainslioside." These constituents have have anti-inflammatory properties. Dandelion's foundational action as a bitter facilitates proper digestion.

Dandelion is so rich with CGA that it is a viable alternative to proprietary antioxidants. CGA itself is anti-diabetic, and it's best in it's natural form according to Wirngo. It also contains high levels of CRA, which combined with other inulin rich herbs such as Burdock Root and Chicory, helps people metabolize fats better.

When we metabolize fats better, it can decrease our cholesterol. CRA can also make us produce more bile, which breaks down fat and helps flush waste from our livers. CRA is also a strong anti-diabetic.

Bile breaks fat down into fatty acids. Fatty acids provide our bodies with a source of energy. Their presence also impacts the body's response to hormones, including insulin.

In fact, the way our bodies work with fatty acids can be very important for individuals with diabetes. This is because many people with type 2 diabetes have insulin resistance. Their bodies may not be able to store fatty acid as easily.

As a result, these fatty acids may deposit in the liver. This can cause Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver disease, which allopathic doctors cannot treat well. They generally just tell patients to lose weight and lower their cholesterol. (Ask me how I know lol.)

According to Sears and Perry, "90 % of obese type-2 diabetic patients have NAFLD." Even people without diabetes are likely to have NAFLD though, due to poor nutritional options in the United States. They go on to note that researchers expect 50% of Americans to have NAFLD by 2030.

Dandelion is a beautiful medicine for people in this position because it supports the liver and helps lower cholesterol. It does this while also stimulating the metabolism, and aiding digestion. It's highly anti-oxidant and anti-carcinogenic. Dandelion root is also among the vegetables highest in beta-carotene. Beta-carotene becomes Vitamin A in the body.

Vitamin A improves eye function, helps the immune system and keeps our skin healthy. This is essential for people with diabetes, because they are prone to complications with all three, many of them serious.

Dandelion has the potential to ease symptoms of diabetes at low cost.

Specifically, it can lower the cholesterol, which is a major risk factor for the heart and liver complications of type 2 diabetes. This is essential because 80% of people with diabetes live in countries without high incomes.

As Chen et. al report in their article "Income-related inequalities in diagnosed diabetes prevalence among US adults, 2001−2018" the " burden of diabetes falls disproportionately on low-income populations."

In the United States, the people experiencing the strongest correlation between poverty and diabetes are Black and Latina women between the ages of 45-65.

These are the people who have the most to gain from dandelion medicine. It's free in most cases, can be cultivated even in small spaces, and it's cheap. It's identifiable even by children, and abundant nearly everywhere.

Dandelion reduces blood sugar through its caffeic, chicoric, and chlorogenic acid components. It also "effects glucose uptake directly and indirectly" through its "alkaloids, glycosides, amino acids, terpenoids, inorganic ions, steroids, carbohydrates, and galactomannan gum" components.

Importantly, Dandelion has extremely low toxicity.

Dandelion Vinegar

Many diabetics avoid alcohol. If you're not into alcohol, try this vinegar!

Ingredients:

- Fresh dandelion tops

- Fresh dandelion leaves

- Dried dandelion roots

- Apple Cider Vinegar (with the mother, if you can get your hands on some)

Directions

1. Clean a glass jar of your choice

2. Sterilize the jar with boiling water.

3. Let the jar dry

4. Wash your fresh ingredients so that they are completely free of dirt and bugs.

5. Grind all ingredients down as fine as you can using a clean coffee grinder, clean blender, or a mortar and pestle.

6. Fill cleaned and sterilized jar up halfway with Dandelion parts.

7. Cover Dandelion parts with vinegar, then fill jar up to 1/2-3/4inch from the top with vinegar.

8. Stir and release any air bubbles

9. Top with a plastic cap. If you have no plastic caps, use parchment paper between the metal of the jar top and the rim of the glass jar.

Works Cited

The Role and Anatomy of the Pancreas. Animated Pancreas Patient. Youtube. September 6, 2013. Accessed January 26, 2024. 

Article Source: Income-related inequalities in diagnosed diabetes prevalence among US adults, 2001−2018

Chen Y, Zhou X, Bullard KM, Zhang P, Imperatore G, et al. (2023) Income-related inequalities in diagnosed diabetes prevalence among US adults, 2001−2018. PLOS ONE 18(4): e0283450. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283450

Choi UK, Lee OH, Yim JH, Cho CW, Rhee YK, Lim SI, Kim YC. Hypolipidemic and antioxidant effects of dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) root and leaf on cholesterol-fed rabbits. Int J Mol Sci. 2010 Jan 6;11(1):67-78. doi: 10.3390/ijms11010067. PMID: 20162002; PMCID: PMC2820990.

Fan M, Zhang X, Song H, Zhang Y. Dandelion (Taraxacum Genus): A Review of Chemical Constituents and Pharmacological Effects. Molecules. 2023 Jun 27;28(13):5022. doi: 10.3390/molecules28135022. PMID: 37446683; PMCID: PMC10343869.

Gamboa-Gómez CI, Rocha-Guzmán NE, Gallegos-Infante JA, Moreno-Jiménez MR, Vázquez-Cabral BD, González-Laredo RF. Plants with potential use on obesity and its complications. EXCLI J. 2015 Jul 9;14:809-31. doi: 10.17179/excli2015-186. PMID: 26869866; PMCID: PMC4746997.

Kania-Dobrowolska M, Baraniak J. Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale L.) as a Source of Biologically Active Compounds Supporting the Therapy of Co-Existing Diseases in Metabolic Syndrome. Foods. 2022 Sep 15;11(18):2858. doi: 10.3390/foods11182858. PMID: 36140985; PMCID: PMC9498421.

Li J, Luo J, Chai Y, Guo Y, Tianzhi Y, Bao Y. Hypoglycemic effect of Taraxacum officinale root extract and its synergism with Radix Astragali extract. Food Sci Nutr. 2021 Feb 26;9(4):2075-2085. doi: 10.1002/fsn3.2176. PMID: 33841825; PMCID: PMC8020951.

Li Y, Chen Y, Sun-Waterhouse D. The potential of dandelion in the fight against gastrointestinal diseases: A review. J Ethnopharmacol. 2022 Jul 15;293:115272. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2022.115272. Epub 2022 Apr 8. PMID: 35405251.

Pfingstgraf IO, Taulescu M, Pop RM, Orăsan R, Vlase L, Uifalean A, Todea D, Alexescu T, Toma C, Pârvu AE. Protective Effects of Taraxacum officinale L. (Dandelion) Root Extract in Experimental Acute on Chronic Liver Failure. Antioxidants (Basel). 2021 Mar 24;10(4):504. doi: 10.3390/antiox10040504. PMID: 33804908; PMCID: PMC8063808.

Sears B, Perry M. The role of fatty acids in insulin resistance. Lipids Health Dis. 2015 Sep 29;14:121. doi: 10.1186/s12944-015-0123-1. PMID: 26415887; PMCID: PMC4587882.

Seo SW, Koo HN, An HJ, Kwon KB, Lim BC, Seo EA, Ryu DG, Moon G, Kim HY, Kim HM, Hong SH. Taraxacum officinale protects against cholecystokinin-induced acute pancreatitis in rats. World J Gastroenterol. 2005 Jan 28;11(4):597-9. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v11.i4.597. PMID: 15641154; PMCID: PMC4250819.

Suo C, Polanski K, Dann E, Lindeboom RGH, Vilarrasa-Blasi R, Vento-Tormo R, Haniffa M, Meyer KB, Dratva LM, Tuong ZK, Clatworthy MR, Teichmann SA. Dandelion uses the single-cell adaptive immune receptor repertoire to explore lymphocyte developmental origins. Nat Biotechnol. 2024 Jan;42(1):40-51. doi: 10.1038/s41587-023-01734-7. Epub 2023 Apr 13. PMID: 37055623; PMCID: PMC10791579.

Wirngo FE, Lambert MN, Jeppesen PB. The Physiological Effects of Dandelion (Taraxacum Officinale) in Type 2 Diabetes. Rev Diabet Stud. 2016 Summer-Fall;13(2-3):113-131. doi: 10.1900/RDS.2016.13.113. Epub 2016 Aug 10. PMID: 28012278; PMCID: PMC5553762.

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Embodying Tarot's Queen of Cups (Without Becoming a Total Doormat)

Did you know Collective Cartomancy was originally called Queer Queen of Cups?

Well, it was. I changed the name about ten years ago when I began to socially transition. I felt like people would see me as a woman if I kept it.

And being seen as a woman, even by those I kept close, was very hard for me at that time. I felt complex and tender about these encounters. I was in a very vulnerable place.

Tarot is a tool that sees us in our fullness. That's part of its strength.

Regardless of how I've tried to change or navigate it, I generally show up to my deck as the Queen of Cups.

After all that negotiation, I'm still a queenie Jersey fem. Not much I can do about that.

My relationship with the Queen of Cups as an archetype reminds me of some of my best parts. I'm an experienced psychic, an award-winning poet, and quiet as it's kept, a natural sweetie. Am I a Pisces? You know I am—Sun and Venus!

But the Queen of Cups is also a useful reminder of some of my worst traits. Being sweet can mean you're a pushover, a doormat. It can mean you're too quick to fight fires you didn't light, or clean up someone else's messes.

You can become a people pleaser. That usually accompanies a tendency towards playing the victim in two person dynamics.

What to do about this, my fellow fishy friends and friends of fishes? As Beth Ditto once said, "listen up!"

Everyone exists as more than one archetype. Yet leaning strategically into one at certain point can help us unlock its magic in our lives.

Now gather round and I will share my tips for embodying the Queen of Cups without letting people walk all over you. Feel free to add yours in the comments!

Mine include:

1. Don't Volunteer First

2. Assume People Are Who They Show You They Are

3. Your Friends, Lovers, and Family Members are Grown People

Here we go!

1. Don't Volunteer First

People moving in the Queen of Cups archetype are helpers. They hate to see anyone in pain, or without what they need to be comfortable.

This can be the kind of person that donates to cat shelters. This is the person who babies and dogs love.

Over time, living beings can come to rely on the Queen of Cups' giving nature. This doesn't always mean they value it, or reciprocate.

Therein lies the problem. People begin to expect those moving in the energy of the Queen of Cups to give, give, give.

To make matters worse, the Queen of Cups person tends to give 'til it hurts. Then they give some more.

All this giving can leave the Queen of Cups person burnt the fuck out, or just burned.

People love to take advantage of the Queen of Cups. They don't always realize it, so they can't always stop it.

A good way to counteract this, I find, is to wait a second before volunteering your help.

Wait a second, and consider what you have going on, your history with the person asking, and what you want. Are you expecting this person to give back? Are you trying to prove your worth?

Check for your own ulterior motives, and theirs too, before jumping into helper mode.

2. Assume People Are Who They Show You They Are

The Queen of Cups is kind hearted. This isn't to say folks moving in their energy can never be mean, or sharp tongued--we're all human.

Yet at their core, they believe in the capacity of people to change. Unfortunately, they may believe this even when their intuition tells them otherwise.

People who move in the energy of the Queen of Cups often fall for people in trouble. They may be going through difficulty in their life, or have had a rough past.

The Queen of Cups is happy to look past that, which can be an admirable quality. It's not admirable when that person is using that hard time against you.

If someone isn't treating you right, and can't be accountable for their actions, you're not doing anyone any favors by sticking around.

One of the challenges of the Queen of Cups archetype is to learn when enough is enough. Everyone has flaws, but we can't disregard them all. We have to address problems when they arise, even if it's uncomfortable.

When someone is consistently nasty, snide, or competative with you, that's y'alls dynamic. It's not a fluke if it happens every time you see them, babes.

The Queen of Cups has to learn the difference between a close friend and a nearby enemy.

3. Your Friends, Lovers, and Family Members are Grown People

Ok, but read the heading again. Your friends, lovers, and family members are GROWN PEOPLE!

Unless they are children, they can do for themselves. When you do things for adults that they can do for themselves, you rob them of their opportunities to learn.

Let your loved ones fuck up. Let them make mistakes without you rushing in to help.

This can be very hard for people who embody the Queen of Cups on the regular! We can want to swoop in and help. This is not as loving as it seems.

Think of all the lessons you leanred through your mistakes. Think of all the lessons you learned with no one giving you advice.

You may not need to be the fixer, but can you be the listener instead? If your love looks like enabling bad behavior, is it self-loving?

Consider when you're not needed. Consider what you don't have the desire or time to give. Nobody is bending over backwards for you. Why do you think you need to bend over backwards for them?

The Queen of Cups folks are the embodiment of the "Girl, stand up!" meme. Sometimes I look in the mirror like "if you don't get yo ass!"

And I must! It keeps me in check. It preserves enough energy in my life for other things that enrich me more.

Sometimes you gotta save some for yourself. When the Queen of Cups folks learn how to do that...

Well, we'll just have to see lol.

Further Thoughts

Five of Cups, Five of Swords: Two Sides of Shame

Living in Our Feelings: Rereading Tarot’s Cups

Queering Tarot’s Queens: Reclaiming Our Power

Intuition for Queer Empaths

Queering Tarot’s Court Cards

Join Tarot in Community

Get the Temperance Queer Tarot Newsletter

Book a tarot reading

Read more of the Queer Tarot Blog 

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The Devil: The Expansionist

2023 was a year that saw the expansion of whiteness and attempts to expand whiteness.

We witnessed the fall of affirmative action. An activist court repealed Roe v. Wade. Genocide, war, tyranny, and violence hit every corner in the globe.

Fascism has risen and we should all be real about it. The threat is not somewhere in the far-flung future. It's here.

The Devil is an avatar for capitalism.

It individualizes our pleasures. It makes us beholden to the whims of the wealthy, even to meet our most basic needs.

Tarot's Devil card is an expansionist. To tarot's Devil, too much is never enough. It's a flame that's never completely fed. It always wants more.

The more tarot's Devil desires is never the more for which the people cry out. It's more for shareholders, business people, and bankers. Tarot's Devil's more more more means less for you and me.

There's been a push among tarot readers to neutralize the work of controversial cards. Archetypes like the Devil, Death, and the Tower get painted over and recast in a more hopeful light.

A political reading of tarot asks us to do two things at once.

It asks us to acknowledge the Catholic context in which tarot came to be. It asks us to wrestle with the lens that tarot presents.

It requires us to appreciate the Devil as a celebration of sex, the body, and pleasure at the same time. To do only one and not the other is incomplete.

The Devil is a card traditionally associated with Capricorn. It's connected to the entertainment industry. There's a focus on true artifice, not illusions like The Moon.

What's more artificial than capitalism?

What's more counterintuitive than paying for water, apples, and grapes, as Orlando Brown recently said, to great applause:

What can you say when you watch this video but “hell yeah!” He's right. It's evil to charge people for food, water, shelter, and the other things they need to live.

But capitalism isn’t just evil, it's contrived.

The laws of capitalism would rather lock baby formula behind plate glass than lower the price. It costs society less to feed an infant than make a criminal of a mother—but it costs shareholders more.

The corporate bottom line matters more to the government than its taxpayers. More than clean air, food that's not poison, and potable water.

They remind us of this every day.

Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other sovereign nations put their bodies and lives on the line to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, they were deemed terrorists. But to whom? By whom?

What's terroristic to other human beings about not wanting a pipeline to break all over you and your kin? What's terroristic to the land about wanting to keep it safe and healthy? No, they were deemed terrorists to the dollar, the corporation, and the "American way of life."

In the topsy-turvy world of The Devil, those who protect life at the expense of those who seek to end it are villains.

The Devil isn't an archetype to sanitize. It presents us with tricksy, misleading situations and doublespeak. It's treaties and contracts are bad news. We don't always have the power to refuse.

That's because The Devil speaks to things that take away our power. Things that bind us if we don't bind them.

Whiteness is one of those things.

After the 2016 election, we were told white women voted against their interests. This makes no sense. They simply voted on other interests--namely around whiteness.

The Devil is a contract maker and a contract breaker. So is whiteness.

As we've seen in stark relief for the past year or so, whiteness is a category that expands and contracts depending on the needs of the most white.

When fear rises that white people will be overtaken as the largest ethnic group, more white people can be made. One can go from proximity to whiteness into the real thing overnight.

You can literally go to bed classified as a person of color and wake up white.

The contracts The Devil and whiteness present are never settled. They're are always shifting. No one can be sure where they'll end up.

I rarely talk about it, but I wrote a kids book on contract almost a decade ago. It's called How Greek Immigrants Made America Home.

I learned a lot about how someone can go from non-white in the eyes of America, accepting only 70 immigrants a year to being solidly white.

It means selling other people out. It means leaving your culture behind. It means being used as a weapon against non-white people.

Whether through fighting a war, becoming a cop, or promising to vote republican, a near white can become white. It sounds impossible until it happens.

All that's needed is skin that's not brown, and a willingness to engage in violent anti-Blackness, imperialism, and piety.

In short, if you'll enter a devil's bargain, you can be white, depending on where you come from. This is because whiteness is a negotiation that never stops.

But that's not the end of what writing that book brought up. When I accepted the assignment, I was clear that I was a working writer taking on project not because I was Greek, but because rent was due and I had an interest.

I was clear that I was a Black person in the US due to chattel enslavement.

When it came time to promote and sell the book, my publisher decided to say I was Greek. What the everloving FUCK!?

I was livid and immediately got in touch to rectify the problem. They assured me they'd correct it at once, and they did.

But a few months later, when I checked in on their work, they had changed it back. To sell the book, they needed me to be dressed in digital whiteface.

While it pisses me off, I understand that whiteness reproduces itself through tricks, traps, and lies.

To whiteness and The Devil, the truth is unimportant, as our individual needs. All that matters is expansion, and profit.

Further Thoughts

The Tower Comes to Destroy

Justice: “Do You Want a Revolution?”

Five of Cups, Five of Swords: Two Sides of Shame

The Hierophant: The Gatekeeper

Justice: “White Man’s Paperwork”

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Justice: “White Man’s Paperwork”

👀 Looks like you’re interested in learning tarot. Have you checked out Tarot in Community, my online space for queers, feminists, and leftists to learn tarot and merge it with their work in the world? Learn more here!

I have no empathy for those who grease the wheels of the powerful. Still, this week's trials of Fani Willis and Alejandro Mayorkas can teach us some things about America. Specifically how the sham trials and everyday procedurals correspond to tarot's Justice card.

American leaders presume to rule by divine right. This is another unbroken link they have to their European lineage—whatever their actual race may be. This is why they swear on the Christian Bible. This is why our money says "In God We Trust."

The motto "out of many, one" doesn't so much indicate that we are a cohesive people.

Rather it reminds us that out of all the laws around the world, we will all be ruled by this one, oppressive set. That out of all the Gods in the world, one has been chosen, and the rest of us are expected to submit to him without issue.

Alejandro Mayorkas and Fani Wallis find themselves before the court for being the wrong color or culture in to high a place.

The role of the court in these cases, and tarot's Justice is to enforce not law of the land, but the customs of communities that matter.

No one actually believes tarot's Justice card means real justice.

A better term for Justice is "paperwork." It talks about everything official, everything documented, every document that can eventually be used to trap you or free you.

The traveling passes slavers gave those they enslaved are reflected in this card. Marriage licenses, deeds, leases, and wills all fall under its auspices.

When I was a kid, when my mother would talk about marriage, even just in a general way, her boyfriend would bark "white man's paperwork."

To him, such formality were trivial, artificial. What mattered was love and family. But Black love and black family means little in the face of white supremacy. Rarely, but sometimes, white man's paperwork is all that stands between you and losing both.

Justice does not depict the goddess Justitia. Justitia wears a blindfold to show her impartiality. The figure on tarot's Justice card is the titan goddess Themis.

Themis was the prophetic dispenser of divine law, and presided over the oracle of Delphi.

An early wife of Zeus, she was often the one to let him know how divine order and fate actually worked. After all, the Titans preceded the gods. She intended to help Zeus become a good governor of human life and destiny.

Jutitia is the Roman version of Themis' daughter, Dike.

Dike is associated with the execution of sentences and trials, as well as deciding when people will die. In this Roman form Dike, and Justitia is more a concept than a diety.

She indicates impartiality before the laws and customs of society. She's there to ensure the law is evenly applied.

Where does it start to break down. Well, Themis is also associated with customs. She encourages conformity and piety. She was a goddess of people getting together...like juries.

She also presided over gender and gender roles, making her a precursor of the current fights about trans rights in the court.

I'll be teaching this month's workshop in Tarot In Community on places we find the people's justice in the cards.

That's on Thursday, so if you join before Thursday at 7pm ET, you'll be able to access the link!

(Don't worry if you can't make it. The recording goes up within a few days of the initial workshop!)

Themis’ role is intended to be divine. That's why they require not blindfold.

God may display favor, but God doesn't discriminate between their subjects. Thus, the thinking goes, neither would Themis.

But under white supremacy, the paperwork, the rules, and the legal theories of Christianity all convene under this card.

This is what rightfully makes Justice the opposite of the equity and social justice most of us crave. The white man's word is conflated with the word of God. On paper, they are monotheistic. In practice, they worship themselves and money.

The trinity of white supremacy holds white man up as the Father, the Bible as the Son, and the spectral nature of money as The Holy Ghost.

What justice can we reach in the face of all that?

When I think about tarot's Justice card, I think of people who bought their own children out of enslavement.

It's Sojourner Truth suing her New York slave master for selling her child to Alabama. She won.

Enslavement, after all, was a legal institution. Slave law as it was called was big business.

There are times when an appeal to the law is the only power you have in the situation.

The enslaved Africans apprehended on The Amistad understood this. They needed an opportunity to speak to the people with the power to free them or keep them in chains. They had exhausted all other options. They knew what little they had left.

But the law is designed to work against those who aren't deified in this country.

As a Hairston, my family's particular slavers were often encouraged to go to college to study slave law so they could be better slavers.

Enslavement and its legal bolsters are why we have the electoral college, why foraging is criminalized, college is expensive.

White folks will deny themselves help and pleasure happily, so long as they know a Black person will be denied that pleasure tenfold.

That's the other working of Justice. The balancing of divine scales. The settling of scores. The paying of debts.

Reparations for enslavement, the practical administration of them should they be delivered, would be the work of this card. So would any approach to abolition and manumission that went through the court.

The Emancipation Proclamation is a good example of what I mean when I say Justice is a representation of white man's paperwork.

Justice, as tarot presents it on the Justice card, is at once necessary and evil. It will never be where real social justice or equity lives. The best it can do is keep the customs of the land going.

It's not there to deviate, alleviate, or rock the boat. It's there to keep the ship upright and sailing. It's there to further muddy the line between divine law and the work of nation building.

Like Americans, ancient Greeks believed that their nation was divinely inspired. The Gods lived in the soil and had affinities, even liaisons, with humans. This troubled the line between human and divine.

American sees itself as more Roman than Greek. Notably, the Eagle was a symbol of Roman military might. We find the eagle on the Emperor card as drawn by Patricia Coleman Smith. Its that power that defines America.

In Ancient Greece, the Eagle was a form Zeus was known to assume. Zeus, the husband of Themis. Zeus, who needed the the guidance of Themis.

And so it is still, as we watch the former president be indicted again and again. The power of the leader against the power of the court. This is not the usual order, as the court was designed to advise and strengthen the Emperor. We'll see where it goes.

We're living in times where we are at the mercy of the merciless court. We are living in times where law means nothing to oppressed and oppressor alike.

Justice shows us the caprice of the law when it comes to needs of the most marginalized. It reminds us it can make someone who clawed or lucked their way up marginalized once more.

Further Thoughts

Join Tarot in Community

TL;DR Tarot Card Meanings (Yes, All 78)

Judgement: Do You Want A Revolution?

The Right to Free Thought: Rereading Tarot's Swords

How To Read Tarot Cards For Yourself

WORK WITH ME

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Tell them

the olives ripened

no one to gather them

the children

did not gather

nor ripen

tell them

—Suheir Hammad, Palestinian poet

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[collectivecartomancy]

as promised, the transplanting tutorial

most sources make transplanting sound incredibly difficult, but transplanting young seedlings from areas with sparse dirt, like a driveway or roadside, is actually incredibly easy and can get you some great stuff. Once I worked out the method, i've had a very high survival rate

it took me like a month of trial and error to figure this out so you don't have to.

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

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Two Eves: The Lovers & The Devil

Poets are born to sing of love. I am a love poet. The focus of my work is Black love, in all it's complexities and subversions. I write about finding love, keeping love, hiding love, and losing love too.

When you are a poet of love, love itself tends to test you. You'll get D'Angelo love, but you'll also get SZA love, Frank Ocean love, Donny Hathaway love, Anita Baker love and my favorite, some Stephanie Mills love. (What can I say, there's just something about the comfort of a man.)

Obviously, I made a playlist for this week. Here ya go.

There's no acolyte card people are fonder of than The Lovers. Once The Lovers hits the table, most folks float away on rose scented breezes into fantasy love. The imagine their most idealized lover, their most idealized version of love.

As I've written before, however much we hate it, capitalism sculpted what love can look like in its image. So it's impossible to think of the virtues of The Lovers without finding the face of capitalism.

The face of capitalism is The Devil. Of course our Capricorn card shows us the traps of practicality and sensuality. The Lovers asks us to choose. The Devil reminds us that our choices are overdetermined.

I'm studying to become a two-headed doctor. My mentor assigned me a book I've read most of, but not well: The Bible.

I was hesitant, but game. Then I got to the second page. "God made male and female." One could be tempted to read that passage and assume that the story about the rib would not follow. Yet a few lines later, here comes the rib nonsense once more.

Tarot is a book, but it's also a library with a wide range of religious references. Most of those references, though certainly not all, relate to the Christian Bible.

The Lovers and The Devil are two examples of such blatantly Christian messages in tarot. They subvert each other's purpose. They are each other's mirrors.

While I was reading for my mentorship, and now, as I write this, I can think of nothing so much as the two eves.

The Two Eves

The truth about The Lovers and The Devil is that we are two excited about one, and not excited enough about the other.

Your heart may race at the sight of The Lovers, but are you ready to do the work of finding real love? Are you ready to do the work of maintaining relationships? Do you have the maturity to let go of a relationship that's no longer operating with dignity and trust?

These are questions that The Lovers rarely provides us time enough to ask. The Lovers, in fact, rarely asks us directly to love. It asks us to choose. Every question presented by The Lovers is a Yes or No question.

When that question does manifest as a question about love, it is often about our belief in our own lovability as it is about our choice of lover. There is always a wrong answer, and you are free to choose it. We are as likely to choose the wrong answer as avoid it under The Lovers' influence.

We see this in the Smith Rider Waite imagery of The Lovers. There's the choice between two trees. There's the two sides of the mountain which, from a distance, look the same.

But there's also the common Eve, the Eve who deceived by God. The Eve who the adversary educates (which is what many Black Christians call The Devil.)

It would be so simple to believe this divine presence knows what's best as it hovers above the card. Until you remember the story.

God tells Eve if she eats of the tree, she will die. The serpent tells her true--that she will not. She eats of the tree and she does not die. She is punished, but she does not die. What does that say about the influences at play on this card?

There are two ways to look at this, in my understanding. The first is that God is lying by omission. Eve will die, eventually but not immediately. God didn't say immediately. The second is that it was just a regular lie, told to restrain and control.

Hence another question: what reference would this Eve, so recently made, have for death? There were only two people alive. No one had ever died! Would she even understand the concept?

The Lovers

It makes sense that we'd prefer to see The Lovers as our fantasy, rather than the gamble it is. We have no idea what twists of fate may befall us.

These are the stakes of The Lovers. This is why we so often find The Lovers and The Devil together.

Let's go back to the first, and more apocryphal Eve, since she is the Eve of The Devil. This Eve was made at the same time as Adam.

The presence of the Eve on The Devil is proof that there is a wrong answer to the The Lovers that still feels right. It shows us that even in the absence of forever, in the presence of our worst tendencies, there can still be pleasure.

It also presents the possibility for love that isn't predetermined or divinely assigned. It reminds us the worst thing about tarot reading generally, about our free will.

We have the power to choose a lover who cherishes us for all that we are. We have the power to choose a lover who indulges in our vices with us. Either could be the lover we need at the moment. One can look like other in the night of a bedroom. One can look like the other in the morning sun.

The Devil

The Devil reminds us that we are responsible for our choices. It's important that it comes up after The Lovers and not before. It's a result.

These are both acolyte cards, subject to the whims and will of others. Yet we can be tempted to perceive one as free and one as hopelessly lost.

I won't romanticize The Devil. After all, it's a card of tricks, deceit, lies, even addiction and abuse. But it's also a card of the body, of our flesh. It allows us to know better even if we do better.

It's the Tommy Gnosis line "Eve just wanted to know shit." And she did, which is exactly how we find her in her predicament. Her story is pulled by the strings of a patriarchal God intent on controlling us all, through our desire to know the truth.

So what should one make of what the serpent revealed to her? Did he reveal a lie, and thus, her chains. Or did he lie to her, thus distracting her from God?

What you believe about the story can influence what you believe about these cards. Where do you find free association? Where do you find unfair restraint?

Within that question is the potential of love itself. It can hurt us. It can lead us down the path to our worst self. It can swell our hearts. It can make it easier to love ourselves. It can, surprisingly, do all these things at once.

When we understand that love is overdetermined we see how we've been misled by the powerful. We can see how our idea of loved is shaped around what's marketable, what our oppressors prefer. When we understand that love is a choice we make, we may find away to love better, love more.

The Lovers and The Devil are fraternal twins. They tell one whole story about love. To understand one well is to understand them both. To dive all the way to the bottom of either archetype is to commit to the whole of love.

Further Thoughts

Capitalism, Scarcity, and Tarot Love Readings

Five of Cups, Five of Swords: Two Sides of Shame

The Aphrodites: The Lovers & The Devil

Understanding Tarot’s Acolyte Cards

The Ace of Hearts:: The Light

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Read more of the Queer Tarot Blog 

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Surviving Capitalism with the Ace of Pentacles

Part 1 of the Acing It series

Joe Biden wants america to believe the economy is improving.

He routinely points to job growth, lowering inflation, and something the wealthy call "economic growth." News outlets like CBS insist that despite dizzying interest rates and wages that can't buy a carton of eggs we're doing great.

Anyone who regularly buys their own groceries knows the economy is shit. The real economy. The one actual people live in, not hedge fund managers and people living off the reparations they owe me.

The economy doesn't improve around here. All my life it's gotten worse.

I remember how my mother became a dislocated worker when Bush Jr. outsourced her job. I remember the decline in wages between dancing under Obama and full service under Trump.

Capitalism has always sucked for most of us. Now it sucks for almost everyone.

Regular people like you and me need all the information we can get.

That's part of why tarot is so great. It makes you less likely to believe whatever lie is going around. It empowers you to make a way out of no way.

Tarot's Aces are like lighthouses. They point us in the direction of fulfillment, though alone they can't provide it in the long term.

Intuition can't solve all the problems capitalism causes. Yet I know it can help us survive them through building alternative paths and maximizing our options.

Here's how to activate the Ace of Pentacles to find some stability in a soul sucking world.

1. Let it help you find a foundation

2. Work with it to draw stability

3. Look for it as a sign you're on a new path

1. Let the Ace of Pentacles Help You Find Your Foundation

The Ace of Pentacles can be like a metal detector. It can search shifting sand for something that won't rot away.

A recent layoff (or layoffs) could have you feeling unmoored. You could be looking for a new apartment, but find that everything on offer is trash.

Consider that you may be asking the wrong questions.

Find a quiet place and pull out your cards. Do what you need to be ready to read yourself.

Don't forget to have a notebook or other recording mechanism handy in case you want to remember what came up!

Isolate the Ace of Pentacles from the deck and place it where the center of your reading will be.

Here's a sample spread:

Write down or otherwise record what you got. Decide on your next steps and make some new moves!

2. Work with the Ace of Pentacles to Draw Stability

If your rituals for stability have any written component, tarot can be part of that.

Aces in particular have an ability to draw what you need towards you and open new paths.

The energy can sometimes be a rush, even a bit unstable so make sure your magic accounts for that.

You may be working with candles, lamps, or in a more natural setting. How you work the Ace of Pentacle depends on your tradition, your needs, and your experience.

You can write on the Ace of Pentacles, burn it, or soak the image off into a bath or other water ritual.

It's very important that when you do this kind of work, you know what you want!

It's also essential that the cards you do ritual with aren't the ones you use to read for people. A lot of decks don't like that. But if yours does, do you. But definitely ask it first.

Also, cleanse the cards. Stuff builds up on tarot decks without proper care.

Caring for magical items is spiritual hygiene too.

3. Look for the Ace of Pentacles as a Sign of Coming Steadiness

Let the Ace of Pentacles bring a sigh of relief when you see it in coming readings.

Working with the Ace of Pentacles opens new doors. These beginnings can often lead to more permanent situations than the other aces. Pentacles are built to last.

So when you see the Ace of Pentacles in your present or future placements after working with the card, you can be sure your work is working.

The Ace of Pentacles can help ground us in what we want. It can help us connect with our bodies and with the earth itself. Let the Ace of Pentacles help you find fertile ground, your footing, and even your happy medium

It can bring us things that support us in meeting our material needs, whether that's money, a home, or even cash.

Keep and open mind, and rule nothing ethical out.

Even as things get worse, our intuitions have our back. Look out for progress if you're willing to do the work to pull it in.

Further Thoughts

The Hierophant: The Gatekeeper

The Tower Comes to Destroy

How to Read Tarot for Yourself

TL;DR Tarot Card Meanings (Yes, All 78)

More than Money: Rereading Tarot’s Pentacles

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Tarot for Taking Back Your Power

A Study of the Eight of Pentacles

What happens when the docile posture of the figure on the Eight of Swords is our best choice?

The Eight of Swords is what happens when trauma has you in a rut, and you can't admit it.

What happened wasn't your fault. That's what makes changing your life so hard. Why should you be the one to clean up the mess someone else made?

Well, what's the other option?

Honesty is a habit. It's not a virtue, not an inborn trait. I suspect this is especially true for artists.

As a poet, this pressure is sharp. I don't want to tell thee truth, I want to tell a truth. Maybe even the truth at the center of a lie.

Life imitates art. You can't convince me otherwise.

What we do not see, what we cannot dream, we will not be.

This is why we need artists, the best liars society has to offer. Conversely, the most truthful people in any society.

How do we manage this? By balancing watching and doing. By balancing truth and artifice.

I've mentioned before that I'm SURROUNDED by Cancers. My partner and closest friends, all tropical Cancers. All Cancer artists, I should say.

But they insist on an honesty too complete to be true.

This mirrors the question presented by the Eight of Swords. Conventional, or traditional, meanings asks us to see learned helplessness in this card.

What if what we're looking at is felt witness, intuitive witness, or event the refusal of honesty. What if what we're looking at is confusion.

What happens when the Eight of Swords comes up as sitting with? Can passivity, or rather the illusion of passivity, ever be a strength?

As a domestic violence survivor several times over, I know that seeing is dangerous.

Growing up in a household that rang with punches was desensitizing. I came of age thinking that if no one was arrested, if we didn't lose our housing, there was no abuse.

At twenty-four years old, watching a partner throw his phone through a wall, I snapped out of this idea. It was sudden. I could see inside the structure of our rented rooms. I had no clue what might happen next.

I shallowed my breathing. I softened my voice.

I worked as hard as I could to calm him down. I didn't think about how this was only the beginning, because I didn't know how to extricate myself.

I could only live moment to moment.

When things are spiraling out of control, it's understandable to take the stance of the Eight of Swords.

The blindfold the figure is wearing could be shock. It could be confusion. It could be internalized isolation.

Everyone wants survivors to immediately jump up and walk away, Eight of Cups style. This is rarely possible.

The Eight of Swords presents the freedom to allow the blindfold to lower over time. The Eight of Swords allows you to shimmy out of the ropes that bind you so slowly it seems you are standing still.

This could be what it takes to make it to the hard healing process the Nine of Swords presents.

The Eight of Swords can pop up when we know something is wrong intuitively, but can't put our fingers on it.

In these cases it's better to take a beat and listen to your wise mind, rather than acting without all the information available. Such moments ask us to be still and listen for a sign that it's safe to make a move.

Not all information received intuitively needs an immediate response.

Sometimes the information comes so we are aware, not because we need to change our lives right away.

Intuitive informaiton may come to us so we can plan the next step. It may fall on us because we need to start the slow process of changing our lives.

We don't have to try to beat all life's challenges in a footrace. Sometimes intuition is simply a heads up. Sometimes, as much as it sucks, there's nothing we can do to improve our lot beyond being aware of what's to come.

It's informative that the Eight of Swords emerges from the rapid action of Seven of Swords. If immediately rushing in worked, you wouldn't be moving through the Eight of Swords at all.

The Seven of Swords can make us feel like we're getting away with something. The Eight of Swords shows you why the actions of the Seven of Swords rarely win in the longterm.

In fact, the Eight of Swords may find you trapped by hastily decided past actions. It opens up an excellent time to evaluate what didn't work about prior decisions.

What happens when we are able to open ourselves to the Eight of Swords as a space of planning and review?

What emerges when we invite the Eight of Swords as a site of consideration, rather than a punishment?

Further Thoughts

The Tower Comes to Destroy

5 Pillars of Tarot for Liberation

Understanding Tarot’s Acolytes, Part 2

Judgement: Do You Want a Revolution?

Seven of Wands: Tarot for Conflict

WORK WITH ME

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[collectivecartomancy]

The Tower Comes to Destroy

Part 1 of 2

The Tower comes to destroy a house

It does so regardless of our affection or malice towards the catastrophe. It does not stay to help you clean up the mess.

The Tower will not recommend a therapist of color in your area. The Tower will not leave a casserole on your porch with a note of condolence.

It's spiritual bypassing to say "The Tower is necessary" and leave it at that. We must also say it is terrifying, it is unfair, it is dramatic.

We're entitled to our full range of emotion. We're entitled to our shame, our rage, our fear.

The Tower comes for us all. It does not come for us all equally. Sometimes we long for it to strike, and we're stuck in Hanged Man pose--or worse, chained up with The Devil.

We also live suspended in The Tower as a country. War follows war. Tragedy follows tragedy. Public cruelty piles atop already under resourced lives.

Yet this is not the only archetype of The Tower--the Tower of Babel. The House of God Struck By Lightning.

There is a younger archetype within the lore of The Tower.

By scrutinizing that image, we can better understand the complexities of tarot's morality.

The Catholic Church as a colonial power provides tarot with most of its archetypes.

They reflect a world colored by the church and the European renaissance.

The obsession with ancient Greece is there. The alchemists are present. The devil looms behind every corner. Even the costumes give renaissance.

We must consider the role colonial Christianity plays in creating tarot's archetypes.

Tarot for Liberation works to change the vantage point from which we see tarot.

It goes beyond card meanings to form a metatheory of how tarot can help us. It bypasses simplistic discussions about where queers fit in tarot. It asks instead how tarot can change the way we see the world, and how we live in it.

The Tower is a card whose impact depends on where you sit.

If you built the Tower, you're probably having a shit time. If you're trapped in the Tower, you may now become free--if you can survive the fall.

But it also matters whose side you're on, and which tower you think is falling.

Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho

My family began to worry my Christian education wasn't working when I turned fourteen.

My grandmother finally ended her overlong tenure as my sunday school teacher. I entered the Teen class with a sigh of relief.

She had kept me in her Junior class an extra year. (She was very serious about my walk with her god.) She read through her bible once a year while listening to it on tape. Yes, both at once.

When I'd stay over, I'd wake to the drone of her tapes. I'd see her, before dawn, still in her night dress, her huge bible with its pink floral dust jacket open on her bed.

My grandmother was a constant interlocutor, and a friend of my mind. But that year, I found we viewed biblical history through different lenses.

And she was OBSESSED with history. Particularly Black History, of course, and as such, Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was having a moment in the 1990s--King Tut and all that.

My grandmother took it a little farther, as is our way. She had the print, the necklaces, the rings. If they had it, she had it.

To my grandmother, Egypt was proof that Black People helped to make the modern world.

It was a part of her religion. It was part of her self-understanding.

Nevermind the empire. Empire was part of her religion too, a bigger part than Egypt.

So when I told her my concerns about Joshua's behavior in Jericho, she did not share them.

The Joshua of the Christian bible rose to power when Moses died. God comes to him, and is like "make a colonial state for yourself in Canaan."

The biblical book of Joshua makes clear why Christianity is the premier religion of imperialism

A entire nation becomes an army. They carry the tablets Moses brought down from the mountain in a magical gold box. These tablets of liberation become a tool for colonization--the Ark of the Covenant.

Joshua and his army circle around the busy city of Jericho for six days. They blow horns. They carry the ark of the covenant. They pray.

On the seventh day, everyone shouts. The walls fall.

This, too, is The Tower.

And for Christians, this Tower is great.

All because their God hated the Canaanites. All because it was foretold to Abraham.

All because in the book of Leviticus, they were said to lie with animals, have gay sex, and believe in another god.

To know Leviticus was never anything more than a book of propaganda may provide the gays some relief.

I had already had my suspicions with Lot's wife. (Another Tower tale.) Let alone Lot's daughters. I sparred with my youth pastor about Tamar.

But the idea of laying low a thriving city was where I drew an internal line.

Only two books prior, the reader is asked to rejoice about the murder of every man in Midian. We're asked to side with Moses when he's pissed his soldiers left the women of Midian alive.

To Christians, the only perspective that matters in the bible is that of the colonizer, of the patriarch.

How else do you believe the story of Lot over that of his daughters, pregnant with their father's child?

How else do you celebrate a war built on gossip and prophecy? Whether you believe the gossip and prophecy or you don't.

Imagine yourself besieged inside of Jericho for seven days. Spied upon, then attacked, then sacked.

This, too, is The Tower.

Of all tarot's archetypes, The Tower brings the most immediate danger. Accidents, injuries, imprisonment, and sudden acts of violence are all manifestations of the Tower.

To even acknowledge this is to challenge the overly-psychological readings of tarot that have become all too common.

Tarot, like most spiritual technology, is reduced to mere self-help. It's capacity to speak to some of the most difficult experiences in human life is minimized in service of individualism.

Yet archetype is powerful because it's recognizable, even in crisis. Even without a lecture, or a plan of indoctrination that starts young.

In 2003, what could I see in Joshua that I didn't see in George W. Bush? What could I see but another warmonger, using god to cover his crimes?

What could I hear in those shouts but "Axis of Evil?" What could I see in Leviticus' gossip but "Weapons of Mass Distruction?"

How could I love a god of war? How could I love a god who created people he didn't love, solely for the character development of those he did?

These questions were the lightning that struck my tower of faith.

It bothered me that the priests came to shout down the walls. It bothered me that burnt the homes, and looted the residents.

To my grandmother this was fine. God had said so. No other justification was needed.

It's simple to believe as you are taught. It is simple to do as you are told.

I'm not a biblical scholar, obvi. I'm an ex-evangelical church girl from New Jersey. And there I was force-fed what politicians have said all week:

That winners win and losers lose because of god. Any other answer, whether racism, or systemic abuse, or neglect, or poverty is an excuse.

A passive reading of The Tower reinforces the narrative that god loves some people more than others.

A liberatory reading of tarot may draw our eye to the construction of The Hierophant.

The Hierophant who passes along bias with knowledge. The Hierophant who stands in for the church. The Hierophant who soaks up and mystifies the power passed to them by the Empress and Emperor.

The Hierophant who hides their hand inside of a god whose mouth they control. A god who reflects their own biases.

Further Thoughts

5 Pillars of Tarot for Liberation

Capitalism, Scarcity, and Tarot Love Readings

Seven of Wands: Tarot for Conflict

Building Responsive Power: Queering Tarot’s Kings

Understanding Tarot’s Acolyte Cards, Part 1

LET’S HANG OUT

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The Joker and The Dogs

Personally, I keep both in the deck. I need as much information as I can. Even more than I can handle sometimes.

It's easier to settle into knowledge over time than to let the mystery catch you.

The Joker is a trickster, neither good nor evil. The Joker is the chaotic beauty and terror of living on earth. Of living on earth in a body.

Of living in a body that dies. Of living in a body that dies more often and worse because it is Black.

If there wasn't a Joker, we would have to invent it. Which, if you are living in America, we did.

The Joker isn’t welcome in every game. It's a space of possibility and intention and mis/fortune.

Game of Tricks

Euchre, the game for which the Joker was invented, has an origin story as murky as the Joker's. Some credit its origin to France, others to Germany. Little proof is available.

Card reading has a way of obscuring its origins. The tales are full of apocrypha. There's no way to decipher which thread is longest.

You will believe as you believe.

What we know is that the Joker came to be during the American Civil War. What we know is that Euchre is literally a game of tricks.

In a trick-taking game, each player lays down a card on a set timeline. All cannot win in a single trick. One will, some won't.

This is the very nature of the Joker.

On his 1863 Joker, Samuel Hart, a playing card manufacturer in Philadelphia, put a dog on his.

1863 is the turning point of the Civil War. It is the year where emancipation became a central goal for Union forces. Prior to that, the hope had been to restore the country to a single unit.

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. It went into effect on January 1, 1963.

January 1 to enslaved Black people was Heartbreak Day. Our slavers called it Hiring Day.

Watchnight

Watchnight was for praying that you would not be kidnapped once more. That prayer was often a tarrying prayer, it did not cease.

Watchnight, December 31st was for loving on your people one last time before they were possibly rented to someone else. Or sold.

Watchnight, December 31st, is the only birthdate in cardology associated with the Joker.

Yet even in this hiring, there was rebellion. There was flight. There was insurrection.

Survival required many to be more than one thing at once, to embody the Joker. Enslaved kitchen workers acted as spies for the cause of freedom.

Blacksmiths, shoemakers, and other enslaved people who moved around as part of their work spread the word. They shared information in secret meetings.

They left to tend to their metal, their nails, their labor.

The Dogs

But there were also dogs.

Dogs followed our ancestors as they took flight, leaving their rows for the crows. Dogs tracking them to a river, but no further.

Dogs on the Best Bower card, the Jolly Joker. The dogs of whiteness and slave society.

This is one of the ways the Joker comes to be erroneously equated to tarot's' Fool. The presence of the dog. It is not tarot's Fool.

The Fool is an everyman. The Fool is sometimes a dupe, sometimes a king; here a loser, there a winner.

George Washington wrote in a letter to an estate manager "It is not for any good purpose Negros raise, or keep dogs; but to aid them in their night robberies; for it is astonish to see the command under which their dogs are.”

If an enslaved Black person was found to have a dog, they were to be "severely punished." The dog, hanged.

Dogs were trained into our enemies. Our enemies, however conditionally, they remain. Whether police dog, drug sniffing dog, or the dog of a racist neighbor, we all know they're dual.

The hunting dogs that pursued our ancestor's footsteps sometimes caught and sometimes lost.

Dogs retain in them something of the wolf. Dogs may see the dead as they pass. Their howling announces the departure of spirit, or their arrival.

The Joker is the essence of that for which we cannot plan. The Joker defies explanation and logic.

The Gentleman, Then as Now

Some say red Joker, black Joker. I say big Joker, little Joker.

As the decks change, so too change the colors. The big Joker is bigger.

The big Joker holds the print, the stamp of the maker. The little Joker may be scattered, and is often printed smaller on the card.

The big Joker holds the stamp of the maker. The big Joker tests what the universe will allow.

It tells us a coming is coming, though we do not know what until it has come.

The Joker may be the winner or the wild card. It depends on the game. It retains this meaning in fortune telling and divination.

Like a jester, speaking truth to the powerful and powerless in a single speech, the Joker sits in between.

While a Joker, fool or jester, is in relationship to the royal court, they are apart. While the Joker is not royalty, they are lifted up from the earth. They are a drawing towards.

Whether disaster or wholeness or both, they are a drawing onto that no one dare resist.

European playing cards have a longstanding association with the Roman god Mercury.

It is Mercury's accouterments that form the four suits in tarot and playing cards. They are the four ways Mercury spoke to humans.

Those four ways are "the Caduceus, stylus, or magic wand; the Coin or ring, emblem of eternity; the Sword, and the Cup."

This information comes from Prophetical, educational, and playing cards (1912) by Mrs. John King van Rensselaer.

She also writes "the Joker combines...the versatile qualities attributed to...Hermes." And "the Joker takes every card in the pack."

When we talk about the Joker, we are speaking of what is outside of the royal court.

When we talk about the Joker, we are speaking of what is outside of those subjugated by them.

To speak of the Joker is to speak of God. To speak of the Joker is to speak of the adversary.

Most of all, to speak of the Joker is to speak of the Man at the Crossroads. The Joker changes our fortunes in way only they can forsee.

They are the embodiment of “expect the unexpected.”

Deus Ex Machina

We understand that card divination is a technology. The Joker is deus ex machina. So too, are our intuitions applied to a deck of playing cards.

Through fortune telling with cards, we can see what's hidden from us. We cannot, however, see everything.

The presence of Joker reminds us of the presence of god, of fate, of mystery.

Even as we work and wait, we pray for the answers. We watch for the signs that freedom is coming.

We do so without ceasing. May we evade the dogs.

May the dogs always lose, though we know sometimes the dogs will win.

May we win our trick.

[collectivecartomancy]

Make Your Own Values: Introducing Tarot in Community

We must be critical of new age practices even as we work with them. 

New age spirituality easily slides towards the right because it easily slides. 

It's malleable. It's individual. 

That individualism leaves new age practices without an inherent values system. 

They can be picked up by anyone. They can be used in any way. 

Some of the practices that fall under "new age" were once part of much older systems of belief. Stripping such practices of their origins made them easier to sell.

This is why much of new age practice is ideal for capitalist individualism. 

The 1/6 "shaman." Trump's Christian witch (look it up.) The person who says a vegan diet and crystal meditation will cure an active cancer diagnosis. 

These people are united in using these modalities on the side of hate.

Because there's no organized new age values, no real elders, and the isolation of practitioners from one another, there's no other side. No collective force is mounting an opposition.

Tarot is neither ancient, nor new age. 

It's a lifted tool used for leisure time play by Italy's colonizer class. 

Yet because of its inclusion in new age spaces, we're wise to be wary of the way its archetypes are universalized and depoliticized. 

Tionfi, the playing card game upon which tarot is based, was, well, a game. 

The archetypes that shaped it were exported with European colonialism. They were codified with the founding of the United States over the bodies of Indigenous and Black people. 

They exist in our laws, our culture, and in our bodies. 

Tarochi, what Tionfi became, emerged in the early 1500s. By 1526, the first enslaved Africans reached the United States. 

Tarot is as old as that. Tarot is as young as that. 

It's no surprise it can be hard to peg it. We know a fair amount about tarot's history as a playing card game.

We know little when it comes to its history as a tool of divination. What we have are compelling historical anecdotes and conjecture. 

So, in the immortal words of Rihanna, "what now?"

We find our own values and let them guide our practice.

Values form our ethics. 

Values and ethics guide our actions. Ethics and actions decide whether we are a safe reader, let alone a good one.

When we're clear about and acting in alignment with our values, we seek out people who are doing the same.

I hope Tarot in Community can be one of those places.

If you're ready to join Tarot in Community, here's a rundown of what the next month of your life will look like:

Now--October 30th, 2023

Course: Tarot for Liberation 

This is the first course in Tarot in Community! 

Courses will be delivered via the app and the internet once every quarter. One segment will be made available each week until the whole course is visible.

This is called a "drip course." Right now, I am opting for drip courses in Tarot in Community so that people are able to learn at a slower pace. 

If you're anything like me, you may be tempted to watch every video available in the course, then experience burnout, then be surprised when the course wasn't fun anymore. 

In a couple of weeks, you'll have that option lol. But for now, let's take it slow and ease into this learning community! 

Thursday, October 5th at 7pm ET

Welcome Party 

We're having a party! Come meet the other members of Tarot in Community and celebrate learning tarot to merge it with our work in the world! 

Thursday, October 12th at Noon ET

Tarot Reading Swap

Come Flex Your Tarot Muscles! Tarot in Community's monthly reading swap will give you a chance to practice with others and sharpen your skills

Saturday, October 21st at Noon ET

Workshop: The Emperor Beyond Gender 

The Emperor is a card that makes a lot of queer people feel, uh, very uncomfortable. 

But it's not as gendered you think in a capitalist society. We'll talk about how patriarchy is a learned behavior, minor arcana influences, and feminism (of course!) 

Thursday, October 26th at 7pm ET

Book Club Check-In 

The monthly check-in for our quarterly shared read. 

That may be confusing, so let me explain! 

We'll read 4 books together per year. That's one per quarter. But we'll meet once per month to check in about how the book is progressing.

Make sense? If not, ask me questions. 

I'll update the event name once we pick a book at our welcome party and in a poll on on the feed in Mighty Networks for folks who can't make it!

You can learn more about Tarot in Community here. 

If you're ready to join, click here 😁