Canadians, How Are You?

I’m over here with cheese, chocolate, and doom-scrolling (I kicked smoking and alcohol years ago)—but I’m not sleeping either.

I check the news twice a day because I can’t help it.

I caught a glimpse of my face in a Zoom meeting with a colleague a few days ago and I’ve appeared to age radically (however this may be due to lack of sleep), and in phone calls with my daughter who is living abroad for six months I try not to exacerbate her long-standing, pandemic-originating concerns that there is “no future for her generation.” Of course all of her peers agree: things have gotten pretty messed up for them.

Try googling “Trump talks and Great Lakes and border” and feel the blood rush out of your body.

Suddenly we’ve got sovereignty in the balance, and gun control, our healthcare plan, and higher education (the field where I work) which already faces chronic underfunding; I do not want its death sped up, please.

The plunging stock market and our (warranted) consumer sentiment make a recession seem inevitable—and a few boycotts thrown in don’t seem to help when the whole USA-European Alliance seems shot to s**t.

It’s no surprise that ‘Territory’ came up in the oracle cards. But we’ll get to that.

I know I said I wasn’t going to be gloomy in these readings—my apologies. But like every other Canadian, I’m asking how our sense of security built over decades could change so swiftly.

And, yet, it has.

What do the cards say?

Page of Cups flew out before I even began to shuffle—and an orange creature has popped up where he shouldn’t be.

Yep.

To be honest, the cards are lovely this week, except for the icky bit in the middle (more on that in a minute).

Page of Cups, from Tarot of Mystical Moments by Catrin Welz-Stein, carries the energy of a sensitive child. This could mean you (and you’re feeling sensitive), or someone close to you (ditto), or it could mean a world leader is having a tantrum.

The abstractions in tarot illuminate both our external and internal landscapes at the same time. The outside world and the inner world are spooning. Or think of it in the way a good metaphor works by connecting two seemingly different things, which aren’t so different after all. The external and the internal are very much connected.

Page of Cups says ‘Anything is possible,’ and this means on the world stage and in your own small sphere and family. It also means that anything is possible for better or for worse, and it does seem like the door has swung open and we’re all suddenly in a new place and we can’t know what to expect at any given moment, in the news and in the reverberations we feel in our bodies. Yes, we hear you Page of Cups. Something unexpected has popped up and we are staring it in the face.

Moving further into the cards for ‘where we are right now’ …

The 3 of Wands also feels quite accurate.

This rendition—which is a clever reimagining of the traditional 3 of Wands—shows a figure, hand on hip, defiant, holding a ship the early settlers would have sailed. Buildings of an earlier time are fading into her flowy skirt.

I’m particularly drawn to the birds in the sky on this card for the first time—I’ve never noticed them before—and they appear a little like the ‘mobbing’ crows in the ‘Territory’ oracle card later on. (‘Mobbing’ in bird colonies is used to attack intruders, and their methods include flying about, dive bombing, and loud squawking.)

I suppose we’re not taking anything lightly and not sitting down, which … is good. Three of Wands can mean that you and I (and, us as a nation?) are beginning to understand a current ambition, and take pride in ourselves. We’re leaving the ‘secure’ behind. We’re anticipating obstacles. And we’re taking the long view.

So, although last week was rough, something is rising from within and taking hold. We know what we want—especially with The Magician here, too.

As clarifier, a major arcana card (also in this first position a few weeks ago), this guy is giving dapper polar bear.

We’re reinventing or changing something about our life and ourselves—even if it feels tenuous because we’re leaving some form of security behind.

Obstacle/Challenge

Full disclosure: I don’t love the next card.

A human dressed as a ladybug walks into the woods alone, while mating pairs dance around her. There is implied loneliness and a journey into darkness, and what does the ladybug dress mean? But it isn’t just the image that makes this card feel difficult for me.

Ok, strap in because I do get there.

I studied tarot in books and online for years before I ever acquired a deck. It just intrigued me for some reason—this new way of looking at what we’re doing and why. I was raised Christian but I didn’t like bible stories. I’d sit beside my older brothers and our parents in our church pew (on the right of the pulpit, 4 rows back) and stare at the stained-glass-window-pictures in confusion and boredom. None of it sank in.

After much trepidation I bought a tarot deck and one of my earliest spreads was with this same deck, Tarot of Mystical Moments, a spread called my ‘life landscape.’

This exact 8 of Cups came up in a position called ‘the environment I was born into.’

After much mulling, I agreed. I did grow up in an energy that feels like the 8 of Cups.

Hello, very old obstacle of mine.

And so, first, what we’re up against this week is probably very old, and a core narrative we’ve carried since childhood.

Ok.

8 of Cups is also about leaving.

A lonely kid, introverted and analytical, I spent most of my time in my bedroom at the top of the stairs listening to music on a turntable my grandpa passed down to me (yes, you could play 8-track cassettes on it).

But my early years seemed ridiculously secure—nice house, nice yard, and nothing could ever change that—when, in fact, our family environment was drifting and changing into something else. We just didn’t know it yet.

When my parents’ marriage ended, chaos ensued. And everyone went to their separate corners to work out what the fu** happened, and then we never found our way back again.

So I don’t love the 8 of Cups, defined by a feeling that everything is changing. The train has left the station and there isn’t a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it.

Something you put a whole lot of yourself into isn’t turning out as you’d hoped.

This does not mean your marriage is ending, or you are going to lose your job, or someone is going to die. Sweeping literal predictions are not what this is about—and that’s just not a thing on this blog.

But you may feel disheartened this week, and that brings us squarely to the 5 of Wands. We’re talking about the world stage, which is depicted here so accurately with dingos in suits going at it while balancing on stilts (if you look very closely they are actually fighting over the same stick).

Your internal landscape is likely nudging you to approach a significant area of your life in a different way now too—because you can’t keep doing what you’ve always done.

It’s a shift.

You are not cutting and running, but leaving an old way of being and acting, and you know you have to, even though you probably don’t want to.

Something to ponder—which is more the point of this blog :)

The Advice

For everything I don’t love about the energy of 8 of Wands, The Empress is the very opposite.

We arrive in the ‘advice’ with an ultra-soft landing.

After my parents’ divorce I had a really rocky twelve years or so. Yes. Twelve. I won’t go into the details but it was pretty unpleasant—and then my life took a distinctly more positive direction when I decided I wanted to be a mom.

In the subsequent few years I met my husband and we had our daughter and everything changed. A sense of purpose took hold where I’d been adrift before, and a sense of relief too, that I no longer had to think incessantly about myself.

I just knew how to do this one.

This is The Empress. The creation of life and its sustenance through loving care and attention.

It’s what you feel when you’re in the woods on a warm day with someone you love, and maybe you know change is coming but it’s the best kind of change. It’s connection to the earth and cycles and a shared humanity—and it feels good to have so much life ahead of you.

And sweet Strength, with her quiet resolve and fierce serenity.

These two ladies are our beacons this week, vulnerable and unafraid. Look at the places where you are not budging or not expressing what you really feel, or where you have unleashed a fearful part of yourself, only to discover you’ve attacked a part of your own sweet soul in the process.

Two more cards slipped out with advice for us, too.

The swan couple from the 8 of Cups has replaced that fishy orange know-it-all from the top of the spread. Ah ha!

Which suggests that if you decide to take things a little less personally, a love relationship can firm up your feelings this week—and you can trust it. Lean in and believe what your heart is telling you. It can make things feel more secure again.

And the 6 of Wands, quite simply, means … victory.

Following this chic lady’s lead, I’ve been actually styling my clothes in the last few days. For no reason more than ‘cause it’s kinda fun. This card tells us to act like we’ve already won and strut a little. You’re Canadian :)

The Oracles

Writing this post over the last few days I can tell you that I’ve turned the news off for a while, and I can breathe again.

From Urban Crow Oracle, by MJ Cullinane:

‘Territory’ indicates that someone may be invading your space uninvited … trying to step on your toes or take over something you cherish. You may need to define an area that is solely yours and yours alone.”

Consider consciously defining how much of the noise of the world you allow into your private world these days, and how much you can take.

In a reading where I touch on my Christian roots, my pregnancy, and the territory of ‘Canada’—which is a colony afterall; other people were here before us—I find it fascinating that ‘White Buffalo Calf Woman’ came up. It also reminds me of the moment a few weeks ago when I said to my husband that I don’t want to buy anything produced in the USA anymore, and he said, “But what about the American farmers?”

From The Wild and Sacred Feminine Deck:

“White Buffalo Calf Woman, a weighty card, calls up the enormous responsibility you share in walking on the earth in a sacred manner, as if every step were a prayer.

Honor yourself by honoring all existence.

When you orient yourself on this axis of integrity, the Good Red Road unfolds before you. Your living becomes an offering, not just to yourself but to the whole circle of life that you touch, that touches you, and that the earth will inherit.”

And our last words this week, poignant as they are?

Change. Is. Here.

Resources

Chris-Anne. Tarot of Curious Creatures. Penguin Random House, Inc., 2021.

Cullinane, MJ. Urban Crow Oracle. Hay House Inc., 2020

Dewart, Niki and Elizabeth Marglin, with illustrations by Jenny Kostecki-Shaw. The Wild & Sacred Feminine Deck. Shambala Publications, Inc., 2022.

Frost, Asha, with artwork by Hawlii Pichette. The Animal Elders Oracle. Hay House Inc., 2024.

Welz-Stein, Catrin. Tarot of Mystical Moments. U.S. Games Systems.