Goodbye Stranger
I’ve been reading Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger and it’s been making me think about doubles.
Who I am. Who I thought I was. What has actually happened in the last decade, working my butt off and using the internet to numb myself out in my downtime.
For those of us born in the early 70s, we didn’t grow up with personal computers (ie: electric typewriters and maybe Atari) and the contrast in the way our minds work now is notable. Or maybe that’s just aging. It’s hard to tell.
The reading for the weeks ahead mirrors this in really interesting ways. We’re looking deeply at someone we’re used to, or a self we’ve been, and we’re so sick of them. Love ya, babe, but it’s time to go.
And we’re getting hints about how we might get back to that someone we really miss.
Where We Are
I recently went two weeks without scrolling or streaming anything—because for me the internet has increasingly become that jerk at a party who talks too much and mostly out of their ass, and as hard as I try to avoid them they pull me back into their stupid conversation.
It’s miraculous when you realize you can just turn it off.
And I did.
Because I want my old self back (the one who can’t put a book down and who makes interesting stuff all the time, and not just some of the time).
This is from my journal and it’s the reason my screen abstinence came to be:
Dear Internet, I went to the woods and hung out by a silent lake and had no cell service for 4 days, and my compulsions were entirely different. A walk on the flat rocks. A swim. A canoe at sunset.
The 6 of Cups is the nostalgia card and so you may also be in life-review territory—the way turning off regular life in the summer can sometimes bring that on.
This nostalgia is coupled with a card that always reminds me of how I was when I was young (she comes hurtling back when I go off-grid) … the Page of Swords.
I’ll always carry my ‘page-of-swords-me’ in my heart, but sometimes I wonder in the day-to-day … Are you still in there? Where did you go? It’s amazing she even made it from there to here, honestly.
Page of Swords is an idealist, honest to a fault, and a really good communicator :)
Inventive with insight that seems to spring from an inexhaustible source, she can also be all talk and no action, seeing too many details and trying to connect them, which has caused me my share of mental health issues, especially in early adulthood. P.S. If the Page of Swords feels a lot like you too, it’s important you find people who believe in your vision, no matter how wacky your plans might be.
I’m still trying to find a soft landing for her.
Still.
The greater message for all of us here—in this end-nugget of summer when we are prone to reflect—is about our lost dreams and ideals.
There may be a time a few years back, or many moons ago, when you were in such a great stretch.
Why was it so great? And where did it get off-track? And why?
I tend to think about the years our daughter was small, or when I lived in remote BC in a deeply supportive community where I felt truly seen. Especially in households with school-aged kids, September can feel like the start of the year (resolutions abound), and a little sad. Look, the kids are getting so big :(
But nostalgia has its place and when it hits I think it’s okay to let its hooks into you—because often new insights can appear.
So our first order of business?
What’s become more obvious as you sit in the sun this summer? Which ideal(s) did you discard somewhere, and what have you left behind that you didn’t want to?
The Incoming Energies
This reading feels like it’s all about me.
Me me me me me.
But you’ll look at the images on the cards and hear my words and listen to your own life. An image, a thought, each one reminds and connects; it’s how humans make meaning. Our big brains can’t help it.
Ace of Wands wants us to get this idea loud and clear. Aces are ‘inception,’ and this one says, Look how much life resides here. Something new is available, a conduit for inspiration, a hell yes from the universe.
Couple this with the clarifiers—The Chariot (again after our last reading) and the 2 of Wands—and this message remains.
From the spacious White Sage Tarot, rather than a charioteer steering opposites by will, this feels more like a reflection of our own double nature (there’s the double thing again). One horse is lazer focused and agressive, while the other seems on the verge of giving up (hello, I so get this feeling). There’s a need for integration as we direct our energies, dual as they may be.
Confidence vs. insecurity.
Anger vs. love.
Reason vs. emotion.
The Chariot says bring it.
In the coming days, it seems we’ll continue to feel the push-pull of feelings in opposition, and yet we must set forth all the same. The 2 of Wands (which fell out at the same time as The Chariot) is about deciding on our direction.
From tarot scholar and pyscholgist Jessica Dore’s book, Tarot for Change:
“The traditional 2 of Wands shows someone in fancy clothes, in a tower overlooking a vista, yet gazing off into the distance, yearning for something else. It isn’t that where they are isn’t nice and pleasurable. It’s just not what this person needs deeply.”
When I find myself in the vacuum that is anxiety-boredom when I previously would have hit up a streaming site, I briefly circle and land on what I’ll do instead. That’s 2 of Wands—orienting ourselves toward something new at the very least—and the 2 coming after the Ace implies taking baby steps, one after another, in order to curb a compulsion perhaps.
The Advice
The advice is lovely.
A card that represents ‘values clarification,’ the 9 of Cups invites us to explore what we truly desire.
The figure on this version is backed by immense blooms. Roses grow from her very scalp :) and the image just feels good in all its metaphor-y goodness (as if by turning off the internet my brain will eventually be like that instead!).
Lots of tarot readers call this the ‘wish’ card and I’ll add Jessica Dore’s sentiment that “making a wish sounds deceptively simple, but finding a void where a wish ought to be is profoundly distressing.” Note that taking the time to clarify one’s desires is just as important as taking the steps to realize them.
What might this look like for you?
For me, the image on the Ace of Wands is a bit of a hint and it does make me feel like I’m on the right track with my retreat from the internet. For you, this will likely look different. But I would advocate removing something, making an empty space where you may need to stew a little before you land on your next moves.
And that’s not quite all.
The last card is a doozy and it wants to give us a bit more advice.
This particular High Priestess looks so tame and a lot like our sweet feline, Blossom, who passed away at the age of 20 about 8 years ago. But The High Priestess is anything but tame.
She is its opposite, the wild side of any dual nature, the most mysterious, radical card in the deck. She’s the guardian of the unconscious and she knows the secrets of those realms. When she appears I tend to think of her as my alter-ego, the witchy-er counterpart to the Empress (the mother).
In the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith deck, she looks like this:
In the advice position, clarifying the need now to hone in on what we really desire, she tells us it’s time to be a better listener to the self behind yourself, to gut feelings and anything that feels mysteriously intriguing.
Look for what’s hidden and yet you ‘know’ it, as doorkeeper to your double. You are much wilder than you think.
Last Thoughts
I don’t know why I called this post ‘Goodbye Stranger.’
I like the way it sounds—that we become strangers to ourselves sometimes, and how does that happen? And I like the Supertramp song (fun fact: the waitress on the album wears a nametag with my name).
I think there’s a reason I called it that.
Maybe you’ll click on the link and listen to the song. Maybe you need more Supertramp in your life (doesn’t eveyone?). Or it will make you think of someone and you’ll text them out of the blue. Or it will remind you of Alexander Supertramp from Into the Wild.
Jessica Dore says “wands have to do with desire, the inital spark of response within us before we have time to think about what it means.”
And that’s all we’re really asked to do in the next few weeks. Think less about the meaning of stuff and just follow the spark of response—and your mysterious, wild double will guide you along.
Resources
Dore, Jessica. Tarot for Change. Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance, and Growth. Penguin Random House, 2021.
Hutch, Theresa. White Sage Tarot. U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 2022.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. Penguin Random House, 1997.
Supertramp. “Goodbye Stranger (Remastered 2010).” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8pVZ5hTGJQ
Tea, Michelle. Modern Tarot. Connecting with Your Higher Self Through the Wisdom of the Cards. HarperCollins, 2017.
Welz-Stein, Catrin. Tarot of Mystical Moments. U.S. Games Systems Inc., 2020.
