Luminous Warrior

As I was shuffling, 9 of Swords (anxiety) and 10 of Wands (burden) appeared, briefly.

I spotted them and they gave a wave. Hello, I see you; I know you’re there. But they didn’t come right out and sit on the table.

Where We Are This Week

A couple of weeks ago, the 7 of Cups was a clarifier in the ‘where we are’ position and I’m not sure if it’s just me but this is an energy I’ve often felt over the last decade. There is always a lot going on—in a multitude of emotional cups—and I don’t always know where it’s best to put my attention and what I’m supposed to settle into.

Not to mention the sh**show on the world stage (we all caught that Zelenskyy/Trump meeting?) and the looming tariffs for Canada, people I love seem to be dealing with a smorgasbord of grief, loneliness, anxiety, illness, or work insecurity.

I am too, to be frank.

When I’m not obligated by work that pays our bills, should I visit my lonely elderly mother who doesn’t live close by, or call a friend whose husband died a few months ago? Do I spend time with my husband (who ordinarily works away on a ship), or turn to the book project I’m currently killing myself to bring into being? At what point in the day do I go to the gym? And what do I eat for dinner?

Can’t I just retreat?

Maybe I’m the only one who gets confused and paralyzed by this sometimes, but how do we choose each day what’s most important, and then fit it all in with the time/energy we have? What’ll have impact and what can slide because it won’t matter when I’m on my deathbed assessing fulfillment and regret (and whether I was good to the people who peopled my life)?

I recently read a book called Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman. Mis-marketed as self-help designed to whip your time management into shape, it’s so much more than that: a profound, well-researched look at what the human brain does to contend with the finite boundary of our human lifespan.

We only have so much time.

Burkeman doesn’t tell us what to do, of course, because that must be determined by us, but he made it clear that you can’t possibly master every artform, or attend every event or party—or visit every country, if that’s your cup of tea.

At the core of it, a battle happens in the brain as it deals with the idea of our limited time to make and do stuff. Our brain also—as I’m sure you know— tends to spend a lot of time avoiding the question altogether.

That’s why the chalices in the 7 of Cups, from The Radiant Tarot, by Tony Barnstone, with art by Alexandra Eldridge, hold poisonous flowers—datura, the poppy, morning glory. Pick your poison, or favourite form of procrastination: Netflix, booze, substances, gambling. Fantasy, temptation, and wishful thinking are in the air (although this is a minor arcana card and it doesn’t hold the serious weight of The Devil), so we’re looking for distraction.

(Aren’t we always?)

But luckily the clarifying cards that fell out to accompany 7 of Cups are in the realm of pentacles. We have a multitude of desires (and a lot of ways we could spend our time), but our first cards show us that we are also putting back-labour into our endeavours as best we can—and heeding the advice of last week’s reading perhaps, to persevere.

Come hell or high water, we’re doing the work that must get done so that we stay tethered to the ground.

Ace of Pentacles is called Ace of Disks here, from The Field Tarot, by Hannah Elizabeth Fofana, with the added summary word ‘Wealth.’

I tend to ignore the summary words in this deck, over the more layered meaning of each card and image relative to the rest of the cards and their positions in the spread.

Ace of Pentacles means a seed of productivity has been planted in your life, and you feel a need to focus on practical matters and seek experiences that help you feel secure (and potentially bring you wealth).

We’re figuring out our watering schedule and the conditions required to grow something.

For instance, I’m having the darndest time managing extra writing projects (not to mention obligations to family and friends) with my work schedule. And it’s throwing up a lot of stupid sh** in my mind about self-worth and not bailing and what the eff is important anyway?

Paraphrased from Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change:

“The pentacles suit, as a whole, is an exploration of what we need in order to determine what’s precious to us, so we can act accordingly. Pentacles represent the ability to behave in alignment with our values, no matter what our mind is doing.”

Eight of Pentacles, or Disks, the other clarifying card, is very straightforward, depicted in the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck with an image that says exactly what it is. It’s a guy hammering away at something and producing results. Simply put: it’s work. The ‘chop wood, carry water’ card may spell out drudgery but it’s work that has to get done.

Like a monk. Like a minion. You know what you have to do and you’re doing it.

Depicted in The Field Tarot, by Hannah Elizabeth Fofana with a wolf, its back to us, staring at the dark, flat horizon, with the moon in the sky in all its phases, this card whispers: In time, it will all look different, and not so barren.

(Perhaps.)

The Obstacle/Challenge

As if our first cards didn’t already illuminate a bit of a challenge, this is where things get interesting. The energies that are making things more difficult this week … the King of Wands, clarified by The Star.

We’re talking about leadership and hope.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The King of Wands depicted here feels excessive to me. A king with a big ego, with a general sense of ‘bigness.’

There were more than a few incredulous moments in that Zelenskyy/Trump meeting this week, and I won’t rehash it here—because … I can’t. It drains the life out of me. But let’s just take the small(ish?) issue of the repeated remarks admonishing Zelenskyy’s outfit—which wasn’t a suit.

My father wore a suit and tie every day of his working life for thirty years, until he moved out of our house when my parents separated. He refused to wear a suit and tie for a number of years afterward, which was tricky in his line of work—finance—especially in the early nineties. But he couldn’t seem to manage it. The suit had become a symbol of everything he needed to change about who he was and what he had become.

The suit works well for Trump and other politicians, who excel at ‘appearances,’ at shoveling sh** that isn’t the truth because it will get them further. But it makes no sense that a suit shows more respect than actual words and behaviours. Shall we mention that time Trump made fun of a disabled person by mimicking them? Or when he talked about grabbing women’s genitals whenever he felt like it?

I don’t have to instruct anyone here to pick sides. Every person watching this gong show in the news has their own evolving opinion.

And yet the time has come as we watch the leaders of the world, and one terrifyingly self-proclaimed ‘king,’ to ask ourselves what we will choose to follow now, and how will we do so. How will we show our own leadership?

A friend of mine just cancelled her family’s subscriptions for Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, and they have stopped buying food produced by the United States (I’m considering following her lead). The supply chain is complicated, and we can’t be sure the money is going where we think it is— regardless—and what about the American farmers who are losing income? But she’s making a statement and, if enough people follow with similar actions, a damn loud one. She’s altering her life and comforts to do so—which is something.

How will she spend that Netflix time instead?

And that cabbage from Ontario (instead of the greens from California) means she’ll cook new and different things to feed her family. Canadian patriotism is changing the structure of her days, and likely making them more interesting.

So leadership (in others and in ourselves) is triggering something this week, but a bigger issue may be that our hope is wavering.

The Star is the only major arcana card here and, for most of us, a hopeful outlook may be hanging on for dear life. I feel this. The Star appeals to us to reach for serendipity and faith, but instead we’re prone to indulging in frenetic, uncentered hoarding and hiding. (Ok, I’ve said it.)

I think we’re just scared, and it’s bringing out really difficult energies. We don’t understand how anything works anymore.

The stars continue on their graceful, enigmatic trajectories. The Universe continues to expand into the infinite. But it just feels terrible. (That’s supposed to be a star in the sky on this card, but it’s a weird square of fire instead.)

And “not everyone has the conditioning and temperament to imagine the future as one that is likely to be favourable, or even safe,” writes Jessica Dore in Tarot for Change.

“Hopelessness is a core feature of depression and a feature of being a person who was not afforded the luxury of feeling safe in early life. It is not wrong for a person with a track record of not having their needs met to have a hard time believing that, one day, they will. Why take the risk of believing in something that has no evidence of being realistic?”

Trump aside, some of us have never felt optimistic that there is an abundance of goodness waiting for us—and we have to work on that belief daily.

The Advice

This spread is asymetrical, imperfect.

No matter how I arranged the cards for the photo, I couldn’t seem to get it right.

There seems to be an imbalance to things right now that can’t be settled, and pentacles, pentacles, pentacles. Our material security is forefront, that’s for sure.

The description for the 4 of Pentacles in the guidebook for The Radiant Tarot is about ‘careering,’ from the word ‘career.’ Moving headlong down a track can cause us to not “notice the exits, much less imagine finding our ways onto quieter, more beautiful blue highways and sideroads.”

Four of Pentacles asks us to reinvent and reimagine how we look at what we spend our money on, and perhaps restructure this view.

Can we buy unfamiliar vegetables, and pay more attention to where our food comes from, and watch CBC Gem and Brit Box (or read) instead? It will take getting used to, but it may make us feel better by forcing us out of routines, and off the usual track—and we’re choosing with at least a little agency.

Traditionally, the 9 of Pentacles, or Coins, shows a woman in a lush garden with a falcon perched on her hand. Grapes and gold coins are all around her. This last bit of advice suggest that refinement comes only from our own careful planning and dedication.

The 9 of Pentacles recommends you make good decisions on behalf of your future self, and be deliberate about it.

Lewis Hyde said, “Each being in this world must find the set of opportunities fitted to its nature.” So, yes, ultimately it’s on you.

And I’m getting another meaning as I write this, too. It’s very possible that your domestic circumstances don’t really fit you so well anymore anyway, and you’re in dire need of a reboot, or shake-up.

Further Advice

The oracle cards this week start out pretty drab (and this relates to the section above about wavering hope). You may feel like you are working hard, alone, in a hole.

Soul Cards, by Deborah Koff-Chapin, have no numbers or words, and no guidebook. I love them. (Have you seen the Latvian film, Flow? Sometimes what we all need is no humans talking, please.)

The image on this card is its only message: someone is (possibly stuck) in a hole, and peering up at the light.

The next card, from The River, by Nick Bantock, dominates our entire spread and all the light-coloured cards above it. It’s called The Night Walker, aka The Rapture.

Bantock’s artwork has a quality that always rattles me a little, but I reach for his decks when I want their intensity, and the darker side of humanity does feel like it dominates the landscape right now. This figure is drawn toward the moonlight.

“The moon draws him from his cave and washes his features with a chalky light. It leads him across the wilderness …”

The Snake and the Fern call us to start anew.

Regularly shedding its skin, the snake is a symbol of rebirth (and 2025 is the Chinese Year of the Snake). In many cultures, the fern is associated with new life and new beginnings.

So, we must start again—again—as much as we need to. Because staying in the light might take a lot of work this week, or feel like a battle alone in the dark for a little while, but forewarned is forearmed.

And, luminous warrior, dress for this however you like.

Resources

Flow. Directed by Gints Zilbalodis. Written by Gints Zilbalodis, Matiss Kaza, Ron Dyens, 2024.

Bantock, Nick. The River. Sailing the Stream of Consciousness. Llewellyn, 2023.

Barnstone, Tony, with art by Alexandra Eldridge. The Radiant Tarot. Red Wheel/Weiser Books, 2021.

Burkeman, Oliver. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Penguin Random House, 2023.

Dore, Jessica. Tarot for Change. Penguin Random House, Cananda, 2021.

Fofana, Hannah Elizabeth. The Field Tarot. U.S. Games Systems.

Koff-Chapin, Deborah. Soul Cards. U.S. Games Systems.

Roux, Jessica. Woodland Wardens. Simon & Schuster, Canada, 2022.

Villoldo, Alberto, Collette Baron-Reid, Marcela Lobos, with art by Jena DellaGrottaglia. Mystical Shaman Pocket Oracle. Penguin Random House, Canada, 2023.