Tarot, elections, decisions, et cetera
Nov. 8th, 2020 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabinetzinThe Tower is my personal tarot card. If you don't know why that could be interpreted as an extreme statement, a quick explanation: the Tower is the "worst card" in the tarot. People who aren't tarot readers see Death and think "oh fuck"; tarot readers see the Tower and think "oh fuck". Death is transition and change, but the Tower is the change you can never come back from. The tower is shaken from its foundations and comes apart stone by stone, and the figures leaping out of it don't help. The Tower is the extreme limit, the end of all things, the slate wiped clean by force.
So choosing the Tower as my personal card is kind of an edgelord thing to do, on the surface. But it goes beyond being my favorite tarot card, or my favorite card to look at, or the card I judge a deck by (it's not; that's the Hierophant). It is the one that expresses me, my relationship to the tarot, how I see how life is constructed.
When I was first learning to read, I was in college. Everything was (over)dramatic, and everything was crashing to the ground all the time. I pulled the Tower over and over and over, and I couldn't understand why. I felt like I was being punished, but I kept going.
But over time, I came to understand that the Tower is how I live my life. I can't just get a job and leave it; I get into fields that are all-consuming, and when I leave them I leave them completely. I can only think of one of my exes whom I still speak to; all the rest of them I don't speak to at all, and I have most of them blocked and all of them muted. I have lived my life this entire time by stripping down and rebuilding.
I am rebuilding even now. After I was hospitalized in 2011, I quit paganism entirely. I stopped reading tarot, I effaced my book of shadows. I deeply regret doing that, but I'm back and I'm building it back up. This year I'm starting a, I don't know, spiritual journey? I don't want to talk too much about it in case I stall out or realize it was a bad idea, but it's basically a research project more than anything.
I was going to start on Samhain, as is traditional, but like everyone, I've been absolutely wrecked by the election. I haven't let myself feel any of it for a long time, but by mid-October I was in a state. Samhain was just a couple days before the election and I had massive family drama, so there was no way anything was getting done.
But now, I feel like I can breathe again, because this election is the Tower. A group of corrupt, racist, misogynist oligarchs built an edifice to themselves, and we have ripped it from its foundations. We have destroyed their work, and we will rebuild in their place. And the Tower is here to teach us that nothing is certain and everything is conditional, but for now, all that matters is the building.
So choosing the Tower as my personal card is kind of an edgelord thing to do, on the surface. But it goes beyond being my favorite tarot card, or my favorite card to look at, or the card I judge a deck by (it's not; that's the Hierophant). It is the one that expresses me, my relationship to the tarot, how I see how life is constructed.
When I was first learning to read, I was in college. Everything was (over)dramatic, and everything was crashing to the ground all the time. I pulled the Tower over and over and over, and I couldn't understand why. I felt like I was being punished, but I kept going.
But over time, I came to understand that the Tower is how I live my life. I can't just get a job and leave it; I get into fields that are all-consuming, and when I leave them I leave them completely. I can only think of one of my exes whom I still speak to; all the rest of them I don't speak to at all, and I have most of them blocked and all of them muted. I have lived my life this entire time by stripping down and rebuilding.
I am rebuilding even now. After I was hospitalized in 2011, I quit paganism entirely. I stopped reading tarot, I effaced my book of shadows. I deeply regret doing that, but I'm back and I'm building it back up. This year I'm starting a, I don't know, spiritual journey? I don't want to talk too much about it in case I stall out or realize it was a bad idea, but it's basically a research project more than anything.
I was going to start on Samhain, as is traditional, but like everyone, I've been absolutely wrecked by the election. I haven't let myself feel any of it for a long time, but by mid-October I was in a state. Samhain was just a couple days before the election and I had massive family drama, so there was no way anything was getting done.
But now, I feel like I can breathe again, because this election is the Tower. A group of corrupt, racist, misogynist oligarchs built an edifice to themselves, and we have ripped it from its foundations. We have destroyed their work, and we will rebuild in their place. And the Tower is here to teach us that nothing is certain and everything is conditional, but for now, all that matters is the building.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-08 05:24 pm (UTC)<3
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-13 11:21 pm (UTC)I had to leave the cards behind 30 years ago, and you're spot-on re: the Tower and this moment.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-22 06:09 am (UTC)I don't know why I wasn't already subscribed to you? I swear I was? But it's fixed now.