Here We Go
As the world is poised for god-knows-what—and for the sake of everyone’s mental health I’m not going to get into it—we’re being asked to believe in ‘The Gift.’
This is the kind of exchange where something is given without explicit agreement for reward, and acts of kindness are at least some antidote to the catastrophic aggression on full display in the news cycle.
The irony being that if we’d all been more compassionate in the first place the world wouldn’t be this f***ed right now.
(Sidenote: I know fascist violence is nothing new but in these parts, in this time period, we’ve been sheltered from it.)
From the Oracle of Mystical Moments, this pale figure with dense feathers for hair, twinning with a swan friend, says: Make the phone call you know you should make, hang back and let a sports car cut in front of you, walk a lost pedestrian all the way to their destination, concede an argument, hug people.
Unlike our roided-up market based on profit at any expense, ‘gift’ economy thrives on social ties and trust and a more mystical outcome than we can measure with our meagre tools.
And some sort of actual gift has come to you recently too, am I right?
Something that makes you curious and excited, puts you smack between your dreams and the truth—and it feels a bit fun suddenly.
Our other overall oracle card, ‘Pull Yourself Together’ from the Human Spirit Oracle, depicts a woman who wears a mask with a still image of a heart held up where her beating heart should be. Take this as you will.
The description for this card implores us to find ways to pull the pieces of ourselves into some sort of whole.
For all the scary-ish astrology (I hear Uranus is moving into Gemini after seven years, and Mars and Saturn are currently duking it out in Aries), finding a way to soothe yourself (that doesn’t do more damage to you in the long-run) will help kick-start your heart and integrate your (possibly flailing) inner selves.
Not sure what else to do, I’ve been taking long rainy walks and reading short stories by Lorrie Moore which feel as strange as the image on this card, a comfort (while also making me wish I could write as well as she can).
Where We Are
Author, psychologist, and tarot scholar Jessica Dore says The Empress is the most misunderstood card in the deck. The Empress is ‘the mother’ and in her ideal form she encompasses all that is warm and fertile.
Mothers can, however, be difficult figures—ensuring that the connection we all long to have stays just out of reach. This version of The Empress, from the 1930 Tarot de Marseille, would suggest we’ve been dealing with a more severe sort of mother energy lately.
My relationship with my mom is perhaps the greatest test of my lifetime. This is not an exaggeration; she seems like a sweet old lady but she is hell on wheels. And for all my efforts to break that cycle when I became a parent, I fear my daughter is not too fond of me at the moment either. (Did anyone else have a rough Easter weekend?)
I’m quite sure my daughter and I will be fine; we are deeply bonded. But a retreat, for whatever reason, has been critically necessary.
Disenchanted with all the answers that have already been provided, The Hermit (who appears here with The Empress, and they are both major arcana cards which makes this even more significant) represents a desire to turn away from the pomp and talking heads—or a mother figure close to us—to focus on our own inner realms.
The Hermit means we’ve been taking very private rainy walks, or the equivalent, and recently (in my case, at Easter) firmly shirking responsibilities that never should have been ours in the first place.
What’s Coming In
In my tarot notebook, on the page for Page of Swords I’ve written: “This card feels a lot like who I was as a young person.”
The Page of Swords is an idealist, a truth-seeker to a fault—and so, as highminded as we thought we might have been, we’re seeing new truths now: brutal and necessary.
Paired with The Chariot, a new challenge is arriving too, and in order to approach it successfully we’ll need to ‘grow up’ in some way.
The Chariot suggests more than the usual amount of discipline may be required, a more self-assured sort of determination.
Life is not some obstacle we need to muscle through, but for the next couple of weeks it sort of is :)
The Chariot is about self-control—and directing our energies so they take us where we want to go. You’ll have to steer against two opposing forces, represented by this black horse and white horse butting heads, and it wouldn’t be terrible to set forth into the next few weeks with that in mind.
The Advice
When it feels like we’re in supremely weird territory, I pull a card from this deck by Deborah Koff-Chapin. These cards have no captions or definitions.
You are just supposed to get a vibe.
When you scroll down and look at this card, don’t think too hard about it.
Whatever comes into your heart as you gaze upon it—that’s what it means for you.
Here it is:
I won’t go into my own sense of this card as it relates to my personal life at the moment; please understand when I say that’s a field too far.
Just note that your own interpretation may be taken as code for your own situation right now, if you wish!
Our more direct advice comes to us via L’Etoile (The Star) and the water this maiden pours onto the earth represents tenderness, inspiration, and love. It’s time to feel hopeful, and why the hell not?
The Page of Wands, from The Dreamkeepers Tarot, which clarifies L’Etoile, only doubles down on this advice—gifting you permission to lose yourself in daydream, or get creative, or roam.
When something or someone clicks your life-force back on, you don’t need to doubt it.
It’s real, and sometimes—when the weirdness gets weird enough—maybe it makes sense to say ‘Yes’ after saying ‘No.’
Here we go.
Resources
Dellagrottaglia, Jena. Human Spirit Oracle. Learning to Reconnect. Rockpool Publishing, 2023.
Dore, Jessica. Tarot for Change. Penguin Random House, 2021.
Grimaus, B.P. 1930 Tarot de Marseille. Vieux Monde Express.
Huston, Liz. The Dreamkeeper’s Tarot. U.S. Games Systems, 2020.
Koff-Chapin, Deborah. Soul Cards. The Center for Touch Drawing, 1995.
Welz-Stein, Catrin. Oracle of Mystical Moments, U.S. Games Systems, 2017.
