Canan Yetmen is one of these. She presents as an easy-going intellectual type, with a ready smile and perceptive wit. But scratch the surface and you’ll soon discover Canan’s tenacious creative Will. It’s driven her not only to create masterful stories, but to midwife them through the editing, production, and distribution process herself, foregoing the slowdowns and creative compromises sometimes demanded by the traditional publishing industry. The result is Canan’s self-published, IPPY Award-winning Anna Klein Trilogy; the sequel and fourth installment of which, The Pretense of Memory, is set to release in June!

Meeting together to talk about her process, Canan and I drew the Four of Wands to guide this next step in the project’s journey—a fitting invitation to celebrate the timely, resonant, life-affirming historical fiction novels she has created.

Character-driven and meticulously researched, the Anna Klein series follows the story of a young woman living through the aftermath or World War II balancing her roles as mother and Monuments’ Men operative. (Not familiar with the Monuments Men? Get ready to become obsessed: they were a select group of Allied architects and art historians who worked within the armed forces to preserve and recover cultural artifacts and artwork stolen or confiscated by the National Socialists during the war—more on them later.)

My conversation with Canan inspired me to think deeply about the role of creative practice in ancestral healing and gave me a renewed appreciation for the Badassery of supporting Art of all kinds—including your own!—even in the midst of utter chaos and humanitarian decline. If you want to be inspired to do your own creative/spiritual/soul-driven work in the face of TOWER-level chaos, read on with me now!

Moving the Myth to the Mundane.

Canan explained to me that she didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a writer. She never thought of writers as real people. “There were no writers at the grocery store standing in line next to you.” They were “untouchable,” out there, like Steinbeck, she said—as mythic as the characters that populated their works.

It wasn’t until young adulthood when Canan’s mother-in-law took her to one of Sue Grafton’s promotional events that Canan thought, “Wait, she’s like a normal person. She’s figured this out.” It looked, Canan said, like fun. And immediately she had that lightning-strike feeling of—I want to do that.

Canan let the notion percolate for the next decade-plus while she built a career in the field of architecture and design. She learned what it took to bring something to print by working for Texas Architect magazine and honed her writing skills as communications expert for the Texas Society of Architects. Meanwhile, she was happy to be able to work with writing everyday. It felt like a privilege and the best case scenario for someone drawn to language and aesthetics.

Then her daughter was born and something shifted.

“I had the urge to just claim something for myself, where I could shut the door and have it just be mine.”

Ironic, seeing as early motherhood is maybe the hardest time to pick up a new creative practice. The demands on mothers’ attention and time are so great at that moment: their lives have been upended, time is unreliable and energy even less so. Yet, Canan’s eyes twinkle as she recalls that season of her life when she committed to a daily practice of getting up at 4 am to write in those sweet, solitary hours before the house would come awake.

“It was so sort of precious, because nobody knew what I was doing. Nobody really cared. I didn’t know what was going to happen. It never really occurred to me that anybody would read these stories…or that it was good or that it was of interest to anybody… I just loved figuring out the puzzle.”

I find myself reflecting on the creative urgency that spearheaded my own writing in the early years of my children’s lives. I’ve heard relatives remark about on the creative-rush of new parenthood and seen it play out in friends and among the writers and musicians I know. Whether mothers fuel the creative impulse into new parenting tasks, making baby food or making hand-made toys (I did both of these when my kids were small), or we use it to turn up the heat on long-simmering artistic projects, matrescence seems to encourage us to remake the world, for ourselves, for our children, or for some greater evolutionary aim that lies outside of our awareness.

Out of chaos, we create.

For Canan, the creative drive-increase of early motherhood involved revisiting lingering questions about her own identity as the descendent of World War II survivors.

“My mother was born in Germany in 1940 during the war. And my grandmother, at the end of the war, left my grandfather behind, took her mother, and my mother—so three generations—and fled west when the Russians were coming…She was a displaced person.”

“She landed in Darmstadt, which is just outside of Frankfurt…She got a job working for the American occupation, because she knew how to speak English. She was literally plucked off the street. Someone was like, ‘does anybody speak English?’ And she was like, I do….that saved them.”

These broad strokes of family lore became the basic backstory of Anna Klein, the protagonist of Canan’s trilogy about a young mother unraveling the mysterious whereabouts of artwork confiscated by the National Socialists.

“I happened to just come across a documentary on PBS one night [on the Monuments Men] and so many of them were architects. And I work with architects in my day job…And then one day I was on a walk on Town Lake and those two ideas [family history and art history] just collided.”

Uncovering the history of the Monuments Men while collecting and revisiting the details of her familial history, amounted to a body of work that feels both historically significant and deeply personal. Canan’s writing unearths so much of what was tenuous and unstable in the postwar period—accounting for both the fragility of the moment and the resilience it demanded.

“I walked around my whole life with this understanding that if World War Two had not happened the way it did, that if the Nazis had not come to power in Germany, I would not exist...I feel this very visceral connection to that time and place. It’s like, there’s some connection to something else that I can’t explain.”

With distance I might label Canan’s experience as a type of inherited trauma—like how our DNA can hold onto the memory of war-induced scarcity, while our minds build out stories to try and catch up—but what I say in the moment is that the Inexplicable, “sounds like a spiritual connection.”

“Yes,” Canan says. “Which I’m terrible at articulating. But yeah, there’s definitely an ancestral connection and definitely something else at work. I will say that.”

For me, the JUDGEMENT card sort of floats into the darkened space where the words don’t reach here. I often read JUDGEMENT as an invitation to ancestral healing—or at least the possibility of growing in awareness of one’s psychosocial familial inheritance.

So much of the writing process is this kind of excavation (digging up the bodies, or “writing down the bones” as Natalie Goldman says) that it occurs to me how omnipresent JUDGEMENT energy is for all of us when we put our stories to paper. Like the poet, Seamus Heaney resting his squat pen between finger and thumb, when we write, we write alongside all of our ancestors.

My personal worldview holds space for the possibility that creative practice opens a place where we can commune with our beloved dead directly. In the act of creativity we make peace with parts of our psyche that we’ve inherited or revive what has lain dormant. We start to communicate with what lives inside of us and, in turn, we connect with the seen and unseen world more explicitly than we could before.

For Canan, this intergenerational creative channel had a real-life equivalency. Like many women who lived through the post-war period, Canan’s grandmother was reticent about her life as a refugee. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Canan was able to travel to East Germany with her grandmother for a short time, identifying the places where their lives had, serendipitously it seemed, unfolded. A tension grew between her grandmother’s silence and Canan’s recognition, standing at those sites, that the past revolved around real events and real people—rather than abstract historical concepts.

The person to help relieve that tension was Canan’s mother.

“My mother was very excited when I started this project. She was sending me articles constantly. We were discussing it. I was giving her pages. My mother is a huge reader. And she was also a very honest critic. And so I trusted her…She would tell me about her childhood…little details would come from the things she remembered….we would watch movies together…and would just talk about it all the time.”

Sometime after Canan published the first book in her series, her mother developed dementia. By the time that the second book was published, the condition had progressed so that her mother was unable to read it in its entirety. “I lost her during that process,” Canan says. “That was really difficult.” And yet, the fictional world that Canan’s mother had helped her to build continued to grow and evolve in Canan’s imagination.

TOWER in the Collective.

“When I wrote the first book [it] was 2008. So Obama had just been elected and I was like, oh yeah, I’m gonna write this book about the aftermath of World War Two, from the standpoint of like, oh, we’re never doing that again. Like, look at us, we learned our lesson…To be sitting here now…things [have] changed.”

We talk a bit about the flattening of cultural diversity under the National Socialist regime—how particularly insidious this process was for women and marginalized groups and how it played out in the degradation and mobilization of art under Hitler.

And yet, Canan’s story offers hope in the figure of Anna Klein, who, like so many women, so many mothers, survived through impossible situations. Their creative impulses cut a path through the most unimaginable of circumstances.

Canan says that she thought a lot about those mothers in the early days of her parenting—this was while drafting The Roses Underneath the first book in her series—when struggles like getting her daughter to put on her shoes seemed like monumental tasks.

“I remember one day thinking, like, how do people do this? Like in any other situation than this ridiculously privileged one that I’m in where it’s like: ok so she doesn’t put on her shoes. You’re five minutes late. Who cares? It hit me that, okay—there are women on the planet right now who are dealing with this exact scenario, under insanely different circumstances.”

Imagining Anna Klein’s determination gave Canan an opportunity to explore what it must have been like for her grandmother, what it is still like for many mothers, to parent through what I would call extreme TOWER moments, involving political persecution, food insecurity, and the persistent threat of bodily and psychological harm. Anna not only ensures her own and her daughter’s survival, but works through the wreckage to (symbolically at least) restore the diversity that the Nazis had tried to snuff out—through the rescue of the country’s stolen art from hidden enclaves.

The Magic of Persistence.

I ask Canan where she finds the motivation to persist with her project now, almost two decades and four books later, in a vastly different personal and political moment. In addition to watching movies, visiting museums, and being open to inspiration in the every day, she says:

“I love the research because you get these little nuggets of things…Like some big political policy or some law and how it effects someone’s every day life, in a way that they don’t even connect it like that. Like they’re just sitting in a cafe. Or they’re sitting in a TSA line at an airport wondering why it’s taking four hours, right? They’re not necessarily making that connection all the way up to these sweeping historical events that we’re all going to read about in 30 years…To go even smaller than that. To [go to]: who is the mom with the child standing in line for four hours with the hungry kid and misses their plane? And then what happens? It’s that trickling down from the big into the individual effect. That’s where I get inspired.”

Canan’s newest book, The Pretense of Memory, expands the world of Anna Klein’s series into Germany’s midcentury economic boom. It follows the postwar generation, as they must weigh the risks of self-expression, while social momentum seeks to reassert the status quo.

Pre-order Canan’s book! It’s a huge help to writers to hit pre-order thresholds before their release date. Also—it’s going to be a fantastic read.

Commit to your own practice.

• What does it mean to you to create through chaos? I’m exploring this concept with my Austin-based in-person Tarot Circle on April 27. Please join us as we employ the TOWER card to reflect on the complications of living through the political and personal upsets of this moment. They are far-reaching, I know, but I truly believe we can get through them if we support our efforts to create in community.

• To that end, consider reflecting back the support you receive here by sharing this page, commenting, or subscribing. Interacting with my posts is the only way I know that they are not just rolling out into the void. Plus it helps other people uncover the magic.

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• Do you want to learn more about working with your deck to unlock the mysteries of your soul-led life? Message me to book a reading.

• Keep going to your decks or picking up your pens, paintbrushes ukuleles, or whatever the medium may be, so that we can continue to dive headfirst into the mystery of sounding out this human story. What matters to you? Let’s hear it, people!

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Most of us come to the Tarot seeking clarity, understanding, a cure for our own myopic vision. We want to see MORE. We’re searching for cracks in the walls of our pre-patterned logic where the light can still come in. The HANGED MAN1 promises just that kind of opening. A doorway to heightened awareness. The potential for divine revelation.

Gimme, right? But—

One look at this card and you know that the revelation is not going to come in easy.

Guy is HANGING upside down. You don’t have to know that his one-legged suspension alludes to medieval carceral punishment (for traitors mostly) to understand that this energy might be uncomfortable.

Like the Norse God Odin, who willingly hung himself from Yggdrasil (the World Tree) for 9 days, thereby gaining the wisdom to read the sacred runes, the HANGED ONE suffers for the gift of Sight.

Runes, like tarot cards, are symbols that transfer visions from the spirit world to the material realm. With them you can see beyond the veil into the imaginal realm of possibility; their symbols of sound and meaning are encoded with the mystical capacity of language to transcend space and time. As the does the ancient Hávamál, when it tells how Odin sings of receiving the runes:

Do you know how to write? Do you know how to read?
Do you know how to tint? Do you know how to try?
Do you know how to ask? Do you know how to offer?
Do you know how to send? Do you know how to slaughter?2

To receive, Odin’s song suggests, you must be willing to sacrifice.

That said, if you get this card in a reading—it doesn’t mean that you’re doomed to suffer bodily harm or mental anguish. It’s your routine take on things, not you yourself, that’s on the chopping block.

Familiar, upright ways of seeing are no longer relevant.

Remember how I said that it was mostly TRAITORS who were hanged in this manner (by one foot, inverted) in medieval Europe? To embody the HANGED MAN can mean turning your back on social norm, thwarting sanctioned allegiances, going your own backward way. If you’re thinking that this sounds pretty badass, you’re not alone. Who doesn’t love a rebel?

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But being in HANGED MAN energy is less about standing firm in your unorthodox beliefs and more about being open to the possibility that you could be wrong. You have to be willing to REVERSE your own stance. To say openly that you don’t know. You sacrifice the need to be right. (Not-so-coincidentally this is a great energy to bring to your deck.)

Like James Dean, the HANGED MAN swings “without a cause” because the cause itself would be too restricting. To stand/suspend oneself in the name of the Unknown is to adopt the posture of ultimate Freedom.

To access the deep magic of the HANGED MAN you need not “walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.”3 Instead, you have to be willing to suspend your belief in the way things ‘are,’ ‘have been,’ or are ‘supposed’ to be.

Admit that you don’t have the full picture.

Only when we relax our ego’s need to know and surrender to the broader scope of divine knowledge, can we receive the wisdom that waits for us beyond the status quo.

Life itself suspends us in the UNKNOWN.

The gift of the HANGED MAN is that when we accept the imperfection of our knowledge, we are blessed with an expanded field of possibility. Our subconscious suddenly feels free to float us new ideas in our dreams. The activated imagination builds a bridge to our intuition.

As under the light of the MOON, we are gifted with visions.

From this new perspective we can read the the Runes. We can decipher Truth from Tarot. We can hear the voice of our divine inner knowing. Like the HANGED ONE, we are crowned with the orb of sacred insight.

Where we are humble, HANGED MAN says, we are holy.

The Dance in Divine Opposition

As with so many of Tarot archetypes, the HANGED ONE asks us to dance the fine line between two opposing energies. On the one hand there is an assertion of the will here—apparent in modern decks that depict the HANGED MAN as yogi or aerial acrobat, speaking to the disciplined, muscular intent of this energy.

On the other hand, the HANGED ONE demonstrates surrender, humility, sacrifice; sometimes alluding to the crucifixion with marks of stigmata on the HANGED ONE’s hands.

Pulling the HANGED MAN, we might ask which opposing pole would bring us closer to our Truth—are we being asked to surrender the pull of our Ego? Or take a stand? Where might the two find balance? Determining either or may not be as significant as the acknowledgment that both energies are necessary for the process of transformation. And to my mind, that’s often what the HANGED ONE represents—deep, integrative transformation.

Our Piscean Companion

Collectively, we are always in the midst of profound transformation. “Being in the middle of a crisis is something chronic to humanity,” Walter Benjamin said.4 And here we are—things seem to be reaching a kind of tipping point on the Human Stage (yet again). Maybe, like me, you’ve been struck recently with the stirring need to act coupled with a growing despair over geo-political and local environments where it no longer feels comfortable or even safe to do so.

Fellow astro nerds may attribute this to slow-moving Neptune, which began its 14-year stay in upstart Aries on January 25; while Mars (Aries’s ruling planet) will be in Pisces (Neptune’s “home” sign) March 2-April 9.

Warrior Mars can have a hard time with Neptune’s HANGED MAN humility. (HANGED MAN corresponds to the planet Neptune in the hermetic teachings of the Golden Dawn.)

Together Mars and Neptune ask us to put our spiritual lives into action. We will, with Maren Morris, have to navigate what it means to stand up for ourselves and not “cast a shadow.” It’s a constant shift in calibration, learning to lift up what needs lifting without pushing others down.

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But the possibilities for personal and cultural evolution are immense in this moment. With the HANGED MAN to guide us, creative solutions may be divined from the deep wells of our imaginations. Unseen futures may take shape in the Piscean swirl of our collective visions for peace.

But first we must traverse the tension of the REVERSAL—the undoing of what we thought we knew.

So let’s talk about Reversals…

There are lots of thoughts and theories about Reversals and many of them are understandably confusing. A Reversal, like the HANGED MAN, can operate like a mini-undoing of what we think we know about a situation or the card we pull to represent it.

For my practice, it’s helpful to think of Reversals as HANGED MAN+ It’s not that the card in question now represents its opposite, but that some new insight or perspective will be brought to bear upon it.5 Preconceived notions may need to be unraveled before the energy of the card can come through. Patience is likely required. The revelation can’t be forced and may take some time to crystalize before the meaning becomes apparent. But the HANGED MAN affirms that the discomfort in not knowing how to read the situation will be worth it. On the other side of the Reversal, we step into new ways of embodying our Truth, of bringing our essence into the material world. We can adopt the HANGED ONE’s steadfast gaze into the unknown and, in that sense, remain upright even when the world is turned on its head.

Try This:

Pull a card on each of the following questions to see how the HANGED ONE is showing up for you this Pisces Season:

• What am I learning to see anew?

• What might I need to give up in order to see clearly?

• What new visions are eager to flow to me?

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One more thing: Did you know that Maren Morris worked with an artist to create a deck of divination cards accompanying each song on her album Humble Quest (2022)? Apparently Morris and her crew regularly pull tarot cards to focus their energy before performances, and the cards are a reflection of Maren’s encouragement to lead her listeners on Humble Quests of their own.

How could you use Tarot to help you transition in and out of important moments in your day? Week? Year?

It seems a practice that the HANGED ONE would recommend.

This month marks a special initiation for Arcana Craft as we expand our monthly Tarot Circle to welcome YOU for an in-person practice at the Healing Temple, starting February 23, 7-9pm.

If you live in the Austin area and would like to participate in this free event, please check out the event page or message me with your questions.

The Fool is our constant companion through the cycles and seasons of the Tarot. Numbered 0 in the Major Arcana deck, we never truly leave him behind. The FOOL is there at the beginning, returns at the end, and carries us through the Tarot’s entire archetypal journey. This card regularly depicts a joyful traveler, rose in hand, sun shining benevolently upon his path, with a lively animal companion to champion his cause. The FOOL is a childlike energy: naive, effervescent, full of optimism for what lies ahead—despite the fact that he is about to walk straight off a cliff!

When, at 18, I left my home in rural Nebraska to pursue my dream of becoming an actress in Southern California—I was replete with FOOL energy. I had no inkling that I would fail. Honestly, I don’t think I even cared if I would fail. Deep in my soul I just knew it was time to GO, win or lose, sink or swim.

In the two-bedroom Anaheim apartment that I shared with three roommates, I hung a small collage print on the wall. It said—

I knew what I was about: FOOLish faith—

1. to know that falling is probable.

2. to be (nonetheless) willing to leap.

Anyway, what really is the difference between falling and flying?

I sing in a blues band at local women’s music school, Girl Guitar. We’re composed of a rotating crew of stay-at-home parents and retirees. Most of us play to make a little noise outside of our quiet lives or because we’ve always had the inkling to play and now we finally find we can make the time. We perform regularly around town in 3-song sets that try our skills and our nervous systems equally. One day a couple of us in the band were lamenting over stage-fright and our teacher, Mandy, told us how she once heard that anxiety and excitement sit in the same place in your brain—neurologically speaking. This, she said, helps her deal with jitters.

When my heart races before a performance, I try to hold space for the idea that it’s joyful anticipation causing my hands to shake, rather than spine-tingling fear. Does that sometimes feel a bit delusional? Sure! But there is no real danger here. Only my own fear of evaluation and shame.

The FOOL knows no shame.

She wanders widely, steadfast in the conviction that ALL of her side-quests hold the potential to benefit, teach, and expand her awareness for the better.

(Also, she’s learned that the adrenaline spike of stepping up to the mic can be pretty addictive.)

Don’t discount your inner Pollyanna.

Cynicism feels protective, but the FOOL’s unfounded optimism is like a secret, magical weapon. We recognize it in pop psychological phenomena like Beginner’s Luck and Placebo Effect.

As Michelle Tea wrote, “whatever mythical deity watches over idiots, drunk people, and children is besties with the Fool; setting out on this new adventure with innocence and purity of heart ensures that you are being cosmically looked out for.”1

Is it foolish to believe that the universe is looking out for you? Certainly, Michelle says, but that’s the invitation of this archetype. What might you try if you were willing to believe that some greater power was there rooting for you?

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Try Something New.

FOOL energy favors experiences that fall out of your area of expertise or comfort zone, so if you want to cultivate the kind of trust-in-cosmos that it inspires, experiment with a new hobby or course of study. Something which doesn’t already carry the burden of your expectations around reaching certain levels of mastery or achieving specific outcomes may be easier to practice. Or—conversely—take a stab at that thing that comes with lots of high hopes and emotional baggage! Maybe the FOOL wants you to stop resisting the brave stirrings of your soul and finally do the thing!

The point is that no matter where you set your sights, you don’t have to throw yourself against the rails to tap into the FOOL’s sweet magic.

The Hills are Alive.

The FOOL, with his arms out-stretched and chin up-tilted, puts me in mind of a favorite childhood character, Maria Von Trapp, singing along with the vibrant voices of rocks and trees, hills and streams in the green and glowing Austrian Alps. Can you relate to that mixture of longing and serenity in Maria’s song? Where do you hear something otherworldly calling out to you? In nature? In art? Sharing coffee with friends? Playing with children?

The FOOL can serve as a good reminder to seek out the experiences that make you feel like you’ve got the sun on your face and the wind at your back. That body mind and spirit are all alight with anticipation and appreciation for what is.

The more often we allow ourselves to play in this energy, the more courage we cultivate, so that when the cliff’s edge approaches, we are ready. We know we have the capacity to fly.

Or that if we fall, we will pick ourselves up off the ground laughing, looking for the next hill to climb.

Try this:

Pull cards on these three questions to see how the FOOL is showing up for you right now:

• CARD 1 — What new adventure is calling to me?

• CARD 2 — How can I release what holds be back?

• CARD 3 — What practice will strengthen my wings, should I step from the cliff’s edge?

Thank you for being a part of the Arcana Craft community! Please reach out, share or comment if this post was meaningful to you. Every time you engage with an article it helps other folks find me—encouraging me to keep the magic going for next month, when we will be exploring the courageous offering of the HANGED ONE.

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On an ethereal plane, high in the clouds of Heaven, a piece of your soul is dancing. Inside of you she is dancing. Dancing for you as you are. In the messy middle. In the mud. In this mucky, sticky, naked moment of your beloved, cosmic unfolding.

I love reading Tarot with children. When my kids were smaller and I was just learning about the cards, I made sure to have decks around with imagery that they would find approachable.

They loved to flip through the cards and make up stories about the illustrations they found most silly, sweet, or scary. Some archetypes they identified with quite deeply, others they soundly rejected. Like most children, mine intuitively understood the concept of “reading” tarot, like an unbound book.1

A playful, creative act of self-expression.

Sometimes while pulling cards among friends, their children will want me to read for them. We start turning cards and the kids quickly become my little teachers. They aren’t afraid to ask questions of the readings they get and, unlike most adults, they trust their own interpretations and are quick to assert them. Without fail, their intuitive responses are rich with insight and meaning.

The lesson I take from them again and again is — don’t discount the gut reaction! It tells so much.2

Like when young readers ask me: “Why are there so many naked people in these cards?”

And I blush, having forgotten that nudity isn’t a symbol when you’re eight. It’s just awkward!

Have you noticed that the WORLD is almost always naked?

Adults can easily extrapolate all that exposed skin. We’ve seen this kind of art before. It represents: Wholeness. Confidence. Authenticity. As Sally Nichols writes, the nude in the WORLD is “intent on the purpose of being—being herself”…“free to express herself effortlessly…without prudery or shame.”3

You might say she’s childlike—except that this is a figure who has experience.

The WORLD card is numerally positioned at the end of the Major Arcana. By the time we access this energy, we have been forged by the fires of experience through all the majors that came before. TOWER, DEATH, SUN, MOON. All phases were leading to this moment.

Now, in the WORLD, we reclaim the state of pure, shameless PRESENCE we embodied as young children, but with deep wisdom to boot.

I’ve been reflecting on this card throughout Capricorn season—a time of year when I like to reimagine what truly “being me” could feel like. I try to picture the version me that could move like the dancer in the WORLD—free of self-judgement, wholly self-possessed, confident in her spiritual-alignment.

No surprise: there’ a gap between where I am and where I want to be.

Like the rest of the new-year’s-resolution-wielding world, I ask myself what steps I’ll take to bring myself closer to that ideal version of me, closer to the WORLD. With the energy of the determined sea-goat to back me, I try to put these ideals into action. Lists. Calendars. And intention-setting rituals are the bread and butter of January for me.

At the same time, I recognize the trap of putting myself in constant comparison with the WORLD. I know first-hand that clinging too tightly to visions of my ‘best self’ can leave me exhausted, disheartened and stuck.

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I have a very vivid memory of drawing the WORLD (perhaps for the first time?) when I was about to give a talk I had prepared on unconventional narrative structure at the Writing Barn. I fancied that my perspective was a bit unconventional itself—which made me both antsy and passionate. Add that to that the fact that I was out practice at giving talks. (Early motherhood benched me from the symposium game.)

I was VERY nervous.

So I went to the cards for clarification. What energy was to accompany my talk? The WORLD.

Auspicious.

But it didn’t erase my fears of inadequacy or my negative inner chatter. The response to the talk was enthusiastic and the discussion that followed was lively, but I still felt unsettled for days afterward. I felt—naked.

One happy ending to this story: someone in attendance mentioned my talk to her writing mentor who then hired me—for actual money!—to give the talk again to her mentees. Look at that! My own crown of laurels to commend my efforts! But even though the gig was nice, I don’t think that was what the WORLD arrived to show me.

The WORLD makes us vulnerable.

The WORLD looks like a promise of purely divine, consummated purpose—a climax in the realm of the spiritually orgasmic. But in the real world this energy can feel pretty destabilizing. After all—when we leave the WORLD, the cycle starts over. We are about to become the FOOL once more.

So the kids were right to point it out—being in the WORLD means being stripped. Some part of you gets revealed. How could this be comfortable when you are still living in a body on the literal world, EARTH?

It’s just awkward.

In regard to my talk on unconventional narrative structure, I think the WORLD arrived to remind me that I was fulfilling (if in a very small way) some kind of soul-appointed purpose. The discussion themes around making room for experimentation, decentering western story-telling ‘norms,’ and asking deep questions about how stories most want to be told—are all massively resonant to me. My nervousness was evidence of how deeply I cared about the topic that I wanted to share.

On the soul level, it wouldn’t matter so much how it was received. Only that I’d opened up and released the ideas wanting to flow through me. (How often does creative expression demand this of us? That we follow its yearnings without promise of ‘successful’ outcomes? SO often.)

Reflecting on this now, I’m reminded of how the Majors (in contrast to the Minor Arcana cards that speak to embodied life) depict spiritual states as they exist on a soul plane. With the WORLD my soul could speak with the fluidity of a dancer, unconcerned with shame or discomfort—unfussed about imperfection. But on Earth—I could not.

We may never fully embody this or other Major Arcana energies the way that we might the Queen of Wands or King of Cups. The Majors move through us, alerting us to cosmic, otherworldly seasons to which we can only surrender.

So if you are drawing the WORLD card reading your guide book and thinking: “But this doesn’t make sense. I’m not experiencing any closure, accruing any accolades or feeling especially fulfilled.” It’s possible that you’re too close to your human, body-wearing existence to see how beautiful you truly are in this moment.

You are! You, spirit-vessel of flesh and bone.

Spirit honors you.

I like to think that the WORLD arrives with the invitation to believe that no matter what you may be feeling on the earthly level—no matter how naked, how exposed, or exhausted—on the soul-level you are in full-bloom. Dancing with the elemental energies of the Universe and channeling her co-creative force.

DRAW a few cards to reflect on this for yourself:

• Where are you channeling magic that even you have overlooked?

• Where are you living out a purpose so bone-deep that you’ve begun to take it for granted?

• What does your soul long to celebrate in and through you today?

When we imagine that Spirit sees us, we can open up space to see ourselves (without reference to unrealistic ideals) as the vibrant, divine channels that we are. So if you have been pounding through Capricornian to-do lists and wellness rituals, perhaps allow yourself to consider the ways in which you are already Vast. Expansive. Childlike and Ancient. Right now.

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Thank you for reading! Keep in touch for updates on Tarot events that I will begin offering regularly in the Austin area this year! There will be opportunities for you to

• receive readings from me,

• join in in-person Tarot Circle sessions,

• take part in creative crafts with fellow magic-makers.

I’ve been stewing (uncomfortably) in this energy for weeks—sitting with the invitations of the WHEEL as I contemplate what it means to winter, to trust divine timing, and to discover an appreciation for the smallness of my life.

I wonder if—for you too—the distractions of family gathering and gift giving and colored light displays don’t quite lift the existential weight that comes with knowing that the WHEEL has spun us to this threshold yet again.

Another year will be put to rest.

As ALL will be put to rest one day. For each of us. In time.

I look at the WHEEL of FORTUNE card as designed by Pamela Coleman Smith and see a representation of TIME itself: the seasonal shifting of the material world as effected by cosmic energies, perhaps as written in the STARS. Each of the 4 astrological figures at the card’s corners reads from a separate book of sacred knowledge—perhaps reciting the scientific laws that govern our universe. Or the decrees of other godly forces, the FATES and their machinations.

Much remains a mystery. Multi-faceted figures: the Snake, the Devil, the Sphinx, spiral together with mystic letters and arcane runes, swirling out into vast appendages of mystic meaning. A whirling galaxy of symbology. The WHEEL gives us too much to hold in the mind at once—it implodes with spiritual resonance.

In fact, I’d contend that to contemplate the WHEEL’s numinous WHOLENESS is an act of Saggitarian ambition—a fire-hearted search for the BELIEF-SYSTEM expansive enough to hold all of THIS. The Everything, Everywhere, All-at-Once of this: strange, fucked up, magnificent world.

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I wish I had it. That system. That Book to spell out all the TRUTHS that seem to be whispering through the cycles of seasons, singing through the magic of synchronicity, alighting in consciousness through dreams.

I would copy it all down here for you and we could read it over Christmas Dinner and enter the new year with Julian of Norwich’s certainty that All Shall Be Well.

But I have no such system or text. What comes to mind instead is a bedtime story I used to read to my children. Will you claim a moment from this busy season to hear it?

“The Princesses and the Kingshuk Tree.”

Four princesses lived in a grand palace surrounded by rich, verdant gardens, which they loved to explore. One day they heard tell of a magical tree, the Kingshuk, that surpassed all the others with its beauty.

The princesses, desperate to see it, for they were full of curiosity for all the wonders of nature in the garden, asked the Gardener if he would take them to see the Kingshuk. But the tree was so sacred, the Gardener explained, that a person could only view it once a year—and only on their birthday. Otherwise the tree remained invisible.

The princesses were willing to be patient.

They waited until the Spring when the eldest princes had her birthday, then sent her with the Gardener to the place where the Kingshuk grew, far on the edge of the royal forest. There, the eldest princess saw a magnificent towering form with branches wide and bursting with tender leaves, still unfurling into a green so bright that the tree dazzled the princess’s eyes. The sight of it filled her with such optimism and hope for the future that she skipped back to the palace. But when she returned to her sisters, she found she could not tell what she had seen. “It is too beautiful to describe,” she said. “You must see it for yourselves.”

In summer, the second eldest sister celebrated her birthday at the palace, then went to the Gardener before her party had ended and asked to be led to the Kingshuk tree. At the edge of the royal forest, they found it: a mammoth tree covered in a wild explosion of bright blossoms, gleaming like silken starbursts in the sun. The princess gazed at the tree in complete and utter happiness, but—back at the palace—she would not tell her sisters what she had seen.

The heat of the summer eventually cooled and the season turned to autumn when the third eldest had her birthday. She could not wait to visit the Kingshuk and went to the edge of the forest early in the morning just as the sun was rising. There the tree glowed in the slanted rays of sunrise with all the hues of a burning fire. Red, orange, yellow, and flashes of purple, too. Drawing closer, the princess saw that the tree bore fruits, nestled like jewels among the leaves. The sight of them filled the princess with a sense of contentment and satisfaction, as if after a long meal or a very pleasant dream. She wanted so much to share the experience with her sisters, but she felt sorry for the youngest, who was still waiting for her winter birthday to come around. And so the third Princess kept quiet and calm when she returned to the palace.

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Finally, winter arrived. And the youngest princess’s birthday along with it. She found that she was a bit afraid to see the tree that she had waited so long visit. What if it didn’t meet her expectations? What if something went wrong, and, unlike her sisters, she wasn’t able to see it at all? By the evening she had garnered her courage. She walked slowly and reverently toward the place where the Kingshuk grew while the sky darkened and the moon rose high above the snowy forest. She saw the Kingshuk from afar, the wide arbor glinting as if covered with diamonds of frost and snow. It looked as though it were covered in threads of silver that shimmered in the cool air. It ignited a sense of peace and magic in the heart of the youngest princess. She drew closer, laying her hand on the rough bark and wept with gratitude and relief. She had trouble leaving the tree behind, but eventually she returned to the palace where her sisters were waiting up for her, their eyes bright with anticipation.

As they had all seen the tree, they felt they could try and describe it to each other in more detail now. Only—their stories did not match up. The wide variation in their tellings—one tree being green, another red, fruiting or silver—made each princess suspect that her sisters had seen a different tree; while remaining certain that the tree she herself saw was the only magical Kingshuk in the forest. They woke the gardener to let him settle their dispute. But he only laughed, explaining that even magical trees change their appearance with the seasons. “You would have to visit the tree in all seasons to truly appreciate it. But, because of its magic, each of us only ever sees it in part.”

When I pull the WHEEL of FORTUNE, I imagine all of us living in the same vast, verdant, ever-changing garden. Like the sisters, we can only ever see a small piece of what lends this place its magic and mystery. But each of our singular interpretations are equally valid, meaningful and significant. Only by gathering our stories together do we grant each other the opportunity to fully appreciate this place and its wonders.

A Time that is Timeless.

It seems to me that one of the most potent invitations of the WHEEL is to live your piece of its spinning body as fully as possible, knowing that however lonely or singular you may feel—you are connected to all else that rotates in this radiant, burning galaxy with you. Where the threads of my story leave off, other stories begin and on and on and on.

The WHEEL reminds us that we can surrender larger movements of the wheel to the Cosmic Mover and take care of what lies right here in front of us now. What is here for me to love? What is here for me to carry?

We take care and then we can turn to our neighbors listening to them with an ear for the mystery that underpins all our motivations, loves and longings. Letting go of the urge to orchestrate it all, we share our burdens as one.

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Because in the WHEEL we never know what is coming, but we can give purpose to our roles here by sharing our experiences with one another. Spinning stories. Spinning webs of wonder. Spinning tapestries of beauty and meaning as only our magical human minds can do.

As much as the WHEEL represents time—it invites us to consider what it means to be timeless. To be eternal. To be a piece of the eternal inside of our solitary seasons.

I hope this season brings you boughs of inspiration, joy, satisfaction and peace. May it come with consistent, unavoidable reminders of this TRUTH: that somewhere, right now, in this vast and verdant garden, a tree is sprouting. Green. Golden. Gleaming in the sun.

For all of us. For you.

Readings for the Year Ahead:

Are you interested in an hour-long zoom-hosted reading with me? From now until January 1st, every $10 donation you make to the Central Texas Food Bank will enter your name into a raffle to win a Year-Ahead Reading with me. You can make your donation @ Central Texas Food Bank and send me an email with your donation confirmation to confirm your entry at melissa@aracanacraft.com.

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Happy Holidays! And thank you for being a part of this magical practice with me.

Timely rituals of this season call the dead back into the land of the living. All Saints Day. Dia de los Meurtos. Halloween. These allow us to imagine that the dead can once again commune with us; that we need only reach out for the deceased and they will be there, acknowledging us from the other side.

JUDGEMENT, the 20th card in the Tarot’s major arcana, depicts such a moment of communion with the dead—and a radical one. Here, the dead are not simply interrupting the world of the living for a single hallowed night, the span of an instant in eternity…they are called from their graves by the Archangel Gabriel to witness the End of Days:

the ultimate Death/Rebirth.

Understandably, JUDGEMENT can bring up a lot of discomfort in a reading. (Dead-looking people crawling out of their coffins spells disaster to most of us children of Hollywood). Maybe the religiously inclined can shout a Hallelujah, imagining the coming Rapture, but in the day-to-day, who really wants to be judged? Who wants to be around folks (or tarot cards!) that are gonna be judgy?

It’s not just that we don’t want to have our flaws pointed out. It’s that on some level we know that most people are trying to do their best with the tools that they’ve got. All of us get it wrong—likely in ways we aren’t even aware of.

I love the JUDGEMENT card because, to me, it signals the trumpet call of my own awareness toward something I’ve been doing that isn’t working, isn’t right for me anymore, and is ready to be released. It’s a cue to follow Maya Angelou’s stellar advice: “Do your best until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Only when I’m cured of my own ignorance can I amend my behavior.

Mercifully, this awakening doesn’t have to be accompanied by an onslaught of GUILT.

JUDGEMENT isn’t really about making us feel bad for where we’ve went wrong…those dead folks in the image are there to remind us that our patterns really don’t even originate with us, they are part of a continuum that transcends life and death.

JUDGEMENT speaks to ANCESTRAL HEALING, freedom from inherited beliefs and patterns that may not be self-created, but for which we can now take responsibility. In JUDGEMENT we EVOLVE.

Communing with our Beloved Dead can help with this process.

I grew up in a religious context that frowned on ancestral devotion practices—the deceased were banished to some far-flung heavenly plane, definitively out of reach. If you were grieving, struggling, or in pain, you were asked to turn to God, not your ancestors.

Ghosts only populated folktales where they represented a break in the natural order, confused entities trapped between worlds, spectral vestiges of violence and treachery. Sparse were the tales that allowed the dead to return as familial messengers, reaching out with wisdom, warnings, love and support.

But biology teaches us that our ancestors live in the very structure of our DNA. As witch and futurist, Chaweon Koo has explained, we are living altars to the folks that came before us.1 When we recall that our hot temper is an inheritance from a crotchety grandfather, or our eye color mirrors that of a favorite aunt, we acknowledge that we aren’t alone in our bumbling, fumbling attempts to live ‘right’ on this Earth—however we define what that means.

We don’t have to have known our ancestors personally for this to be true.2 I think we all are equally shaped by the books we read, the movies we watch, the reels we consume. We have cultural as well as physical forbearers.

As an academic in Comparative Literature and Visual Culture, I dedicated the better part of two decades to the belief that understanding where we come from helps us gain the self-awareness that empowers positive change. I examined long-forgotten fan ephemera and movie posters from the Weimar period, hoping to shed light on the deluge of visual material acting on our attention now.

What I learned is that so much of what we do with art, with language and image, is a game that allows us to play with the malleability of our own perception. It often feels like silly fun, but the mechanics of the imagination crank open the doors of possibility and often yield real, material results.

These days I’m putting that knowledge into practice a little more explicitly.

Reach out to your ancestors for support.

I keep framed photos of Walt Whitman and Jonathan Larson beside my writing desk, reminding myself of the magic in their creative efforts. Both artists gave shape and form to my emotional life when I was young—becoming mentors of a sort. I express my gratitude before the photos and invite their determination, energy, and love to resonate in everything I write.

I imagine that they hear me—and the Sisyphean task of writing a novel transforms into something dignified and meaningful, even if my efforts don’t take shape as I expect.

On weekends, I make German egg-cakes for my children, following our family recipe. I whisk together the milk and eggs, thinking of my great grandmother, Metta, who twice lost all her possessions in post-war Germany—once when she fled with her children from the East to live in a refugee camp and again in a fire that consumed their small apartment. I talk to her. I ask her to guard us and guide us, to fill us with her love and resilience.

She enjoys our breakfast with us—and our mundane Sunday morning gleams with magic.

I truly believe that our ancestors are here to support us in our everyday efforts—to care for others, to find joy for ourselves, to amplify the love available to us all. Calling on their strengths, acknowledging their challenges (even when we feel they got something wrong) invigorates the process of our healing and the transformation that JUDGEMENT portends during Scorpio season.3

When we shed the patterns and defenses that aren't working for us anymore, our whole ancestral line celebrates with us. They blow trumpets of appreciation from the other side of the veil. They step with us onto a new Earth. Our shared potential dramatically increases. Our collective wisdom deepens and expands.

As we continue our journey through the dark half of the year, the veil will remain thin, the ancestors will continue to reach out with their love and support. Bring them on the path with you. Celebrate how far you have come. It is the end times…and a new era will soon be dawning.

Try this spread.

To dive deeper into how Judgement is showing up in your life this season, pull cards for the following questions—

• Which of my inherited beliefs or patterns are ready for revision?

• How can I support myself through this process of evolution?

• Which of my ancestors is here to serve as a guide?

Thank you so much for being a part of this newsletter community. Please share with others who are interested in cultivating a little more magic in their lives.

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And, if you’re new here, welcome! Please subscribe to receive monthly tarot messages corresponding to each astrological season.

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Every night I say a prayer, in the hopes that there’s a heaven.
And every day I’m more confused as the saints turn into sinners.

With synthesizers, harmonic vocals and swelling guitar riffs, the song implored some mysterious divinity to offer a sign in a world steeped in disappointment and loss.

Show me the way, show me the way.
Take me tonight to the river
And wash my illusions away.

A few weeks ago, I woke with the song in my head after dreaming that an old friend asked me to name the most meaningful song I could think of. I listened to the recording after breakfast and cried for the child within me who is still searching for answers, for a way to navigate the uncertainties of life.

This Libra season I’ve been reflecting on the archetype of the Hierophant and I think he came for me in the form of this particular song…to remind me of the depth of my own spiritual longing for a Path, a Way into sacred mystery.

The (appropriately weird) title, Hierophant, refers to the greek priests of the Eleusinian Mysteries, ancient rites that honored the cycle of seasons as symbolized in the myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. During the mysteries, initiates from all walks of life participated in fasting, prayer, pilgrimage and consumption of the psychoactive drink, kykeon, in order to experience the ascension of the spirit and gain access to the wisdom of the goddess herself.

The Hierophant administered these rites.

When I pull the Hierophant in a tarot reading, I believe that the querent is being called into his or her own initiation with the Sacred.

Mystery beckons.

Spirit has arrived for us, but still we may be confused. Where is the call coming from exactly? And how do we take ourselves out to meet it?

Many guidebooks and tarot teachers read the Hierophant as an invitation to dedicate to a spiritual tradition or to seek out a spiritual teacher of some kind. But in a globalized world, with access to more practices and gurus than we could ever commit to in one lifetime, the search for the best approach can be overwhelming.

I’ve struggled in my own path to find a tradition that is sufficiently vetted (by ancestral fortitude) but still speaks to my life in a contemporary context. Among other qualifications, for me, a rich spiritual practice must

• be inclusive while allowing for divergence;

• expand my sense of possibility beyond the material, without straying into the realm of the irrational;

• be rooted in the Land, while sustaining me in the simulacrum of cyberspace.

In conjunction with Libra season (the current astrological moment) the Hierophant serves as a good reminder that all of these elements require a moving, dynamic approach to balance: Internal and external. Shadow and Light. Analog and Digital. Material and Spirit.

Ideally, our well-balanced belief systems (healthy Hierophant) would support our Justice work (the card of Libra season), helping us to live out our values— but this isn’t always the case.

Hierophant asks us to interrogate the belief systems that guide our actions. What do we believe really? And where do those beliefs come from? Are our actions aligned with those beliefs? How?

What are you doing?

Take a look at your daily activities, the things you do routinely if not every day. Why do you do them? How are they supporting you? (Or not?) Every little thing that we engage in has the opportunity to become a spiritual practice, if we can remain aware of how it aligns with our values.

Something as simple as setting the table for dinner becomes a sacred rite; a gesture of gratitude for the food on the table and the people that sit around it.

Some of us scroll for an hour after dinner every night. Where is that coming from? Who or what makes us feel this is beneficial? Is it?

I’ve found a lot of enjoyment and inspiration on social media, but it starts to weigh on me when scrolling tips into over-consuming. In front of a screen, it’s too easy to receive (ideas, energy, arguments) without offering an energy exchange of my own. In person, the exchange goes without saying—we are participating in an interpersonal, alchemical process by the fact of our presence alongside another person. But online, this flow seems to get backed up. The value of our attention is reduced into a commodity, instead of uplifted as a conscious energetic exchange.

You are the keeper of the keys.

The digital world often puts us in the role of the student by default. We receive the message of those who teach, convince or entertain us with one offering or another. Influencers become cyber gurus. We expect too much and also not enough from these modern-day Hierophants.

Perhaps now more than ever, we have to be careful about where we place our spiritual trust.

Who serves as our Hierophant? Who leads us to the experience of sacred Truth?

I’ve been heartbroken so many times in the last decade by the toppling of my own idols. So many admired teachers, artists, leaders reach a point of popularity that disconnects them from their own humanity. They either fold under the pressure of so much attention (falling into addiction or mental health crises) or inflate to the point that they harm others (sometimes committing literal crimes) without any recompense.

Unlock the door.

Consider the possibility that the Goddess (spirit, divine creativity, God, however you want to name her) lives in the temple of your own body. Your mind. Your spirit. You are the guardian and the priestess of her mysteries.

I think when we pull the Hierophant, wielding the staff that channels messages from the divine, we are reminded of our innate human ability to stand in our own authority as creatures of divine intuition.

We are the stewards of our own paths. We may appoint more experienced seekers as our guides, but we are the ones who give them their power. This is the meaning of the old adage: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Teachers are granted their position through the willing attention of the student. The most important lessons of our lives come at the urging of our own Souls, not someone else’s curriculum.

What does your Soul want to teach you?

Try this:

This Tarot spread will help you identify your Soul lessons and connect with your inner Hierophant.

• Card 1 — Where am I placing my spiritual trust?

• Card 2 — What spiritual lesson does my soul want me to learn right now?

• Card 3 — How can I lean into my own spiritual authority to support this learning process?

Make your way.

Styx’s lyricist looks for the Divine at the river’s edge, at the mountain, in dreams. Ultimately, I believe that the Goddess is ready to meet us ANY DAMN PLACE we’re willing to acknowledge her. Like the giant brain-shaped God in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, her wisdom rushes toward us. All we have to do is lift a finger and she’s there reaching out to us in return.

All the spiritual paths, traditions, practices and teachings out there are only as good as their ability to keep that direct connection at the forefront of our awareness.

As one of many potential practices that can do this, Tarot works well for me. In practice, I exercise my intuition and inner knowing, while the cards help me reframe challenges as opportunities for growth, strengthening and care. This process feels sacred and vital and spiritually alive to me. If you’re here, maybe the same is true for you.

I’m glad that we could walk this holy path together for a moment in time.

Please share your reflections in the comments below (bonus points if you tell me YOUR first favorite song) or invite others to join us. We are all each other’s teachers. We are all each other’s students.

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Then MAGICIAN saunters into town, folding table under one arm, carpet bag on the other. With a flash of his cape and a tip of the hat, he sets up shop in a shadowed corner of a busy square (permit? nope). He beckons you near.

Prepare to be amazed! Mystified! Delighted!

Will you stop? Will you let him pull a red rose—its scent as fresh as children’s laughter—from the curve of your neck? (Or the sleeve of his coat?)

Labor — Sacred and Profane

I have been busy with autumnal tasks this month. Taking stock of what I’ve grown this year and ramping up for a final productive push before the holidays sweep me up in their current. Virgo is ruled by Mercury and so I’m hoping the messenger god’s sharp thinking can help me get the job done. And yet…with Mercury, the process rarely unfolds in the way that I expect.1

He’s a trickster after all.

The MAGICIAN is Mercury’s card. And he’s looking quite priestly here in the Rider Waite Smith deck—crowned with a lemniscate, like the goddess in STRENGTH; adorned with Sophia’s red robes and flowers. His raised and lowered arms suggest power—the ability to manifest the many wonders of the spirit world. (As Above, So Below.) Wielding the elemental tokens (pentacle, cup, sword, and stave) as tools of the trade, he’s an impressive ally for makers of all kinds, reminding us of the sanctity of our creative labor.

And yet, there’s something delightfully profane about MAGICIAN, too.

Older decks dubbed him the Conjurer, emphasizing his skill in the art of deception, illusion, and sleight-of-hand. As art historian, Laetitia Barbier says of the MAGICIAN: “He is both a charlatan and a prophet and his tricks don’t have to be real to produce real effect.”2

MAGICIAN asks us to suspend our disbelief in order to get at some deeper element of Truth—capital T. Like children fashioning mudpies, we open ourselves to affect, to experimentation, with the aim that we might learn something through the process—rather than obsess over outcomes. MAGICIAN implores us to come out and play.

It can get messy.

There’s a touch of the chaotic in this energy that serves as a powerful antidote for Virgo’s tendency toward “perfectionism” in the guise of efficiency and attention to detail.

As Mercury’s envoy, MAGICIAN announces that Spirit has a message for us. But we cannot receive it unless we open ourselves to unexpected possibilities. In other words, (talking to myself here!) go ahead and make your to-do lists, set your goals, assemble your tools and “manage” your time. But leave some room for surprise—for FUN for gods’ sakes—or you may lose the vitality that set you on this path in the first place.

Banish your inner Trickster and you risk becoming a “martyr” to your work. As Elizabeth Gilbert explains (with a good dose of humor) in her book on creative living, Big Magic, creative martyrs often become rigid, austere, sad and—ultimately—lifeless. But the mercurial Trickster in us always finds a Way through ‘No Way.’

And if he can’t…well…at least he had fun trying.

I love Trickster characters in myth. Maybe because I have over-indexed on being ‘good,’ the Trickster’s moral ambiguity appeals to me. He is, as Lisa Martiano writes, “willing to subvert conventional values in service to growth and life.”3 As a child, I loved stories of Robin Hood, “Prince of Thieves.” Of Peter Pan and his lost boys. My favorite Marvel super hero? Loki!

MAGICIAN invites us to take a page from the Norse God of Mischief. Why not? He always manages to have a little bit more fun; he laughs a little more heartily; states his beliefs more confidently—but with a wink.

I may be a good protestant worker out of habit, but when I draw MAGICIAN, I look to game my own systems, asking myself: If I have to do this task, can I insert a little levity?

Shouldering what’s Heavy

Times are tough out there. We are reaping a harvest that was sown generations before we got here and some of it is rotten, folks. But if we can share a laugh, or conjure up an image of something beautiful, something we can appreciate together in wonder and in awe, even if it’s an illusion…it helps. If we’re lucky, the trick will surprise even us. The lie revealing a truth that we can’t yet see.

So play! Play with your tarot cards. Sing to your soup bowl. Make a mess of things and dance while you pull the pieces back together. We can only be as free as we believe ourselves to be.

Try this spread

Connect with your inner MAGICIAN. Draw tarot cards on each of the following questions and reflect on your results.

• CARD 1—What does my Soul want to create?

• CARD 2—How can I have more fun creating it?

• CARD 3—What rule may I need to bend in the process?

• CARD 4—What (surprising!) tools are at my disposal?

Receive a free reading from me!

In celebration of Arcana Craft’s Birthday, subscribers can still receive a free one-card reading from me through the mail! All you have to do is send me an email with your mailing address to melissaomeeks@arcanacraft.com. If you would like your reading to be on a specific question, you can include that, too.

Thank you for being a part of this magical space with me. I wish you bountiful creative joy through the close of Virgo Season and until next month, when we will meet again in the hallowed chambers of the Hierophant!

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To celebrate the anniversary of our inaugural post, (on the Hermit! The card that won’t leave any of us alone this year!) I am offering subscribers an intuitively selected oracle or tarot card, sent via snail mail with a channeled message from me.

To receive your personal message, please email me at:

melissa@arcanacraft.com

Please use the subject line: Birthday Card, and include your name and mailing address in the body of the email. If you would like me to have a specific question or theme (love, career, family, etc.) in mind when pulling your card, you can include that, too. I will be sending responses from now until the end of September. This offer is good for both new and returning subs, because I love all y’all.

Looking ahead.

I wasn’t sure how this newsletter would shape up when it started 12 months ago, but we’re in it now! Let’s go! I’ll continue to share my deep dives on Tarot archetypes corresponding with current astrological seasons. You can look for my post on the MAGICIAN coming up in a couple of weeks, just in time to ground us within all of the buckle-up, back-to-school energy that often drives our momentum into autumn.

In the Magician-like spirit of magical making, I am deepening my commitment to revisions on the historical fantasy novel I’ve been writing, which means scaling back on Arcana Craft Artist Interviews. They won’t disappear completely; I have loved connecting you with the inspiring, creative people in my life. But allowing them to appear in ‘special,’ rather than regular installments, means the interviews will be more deeply aligned with cosmic and divine timing—for me…and probably for you, too. ;)

Guest Appearance on Susie and Sparkle Show

Speaking of interviews, this Thursday 8/28 at 7pm I’ll be talking Tarot with gubernatorial candidate, Sparkle Williams, a power house of creative magic and compassion for the collective. I’ve been so inspired by her decision to run for office as “Texas’s Favorite Transgender Politician” and honored by her invitation to connect with her and her co-host Susie Epstein, previous Arcana Craft interviewee, on their YouTube channel: Susie and Sparkle. You can find login information for the interview or check out the recording after the fact at Sparkle 4 Governor.

THANK YOU!

Once again, thank you for being a part of Arcana Craft’s readership. You are much appreciated. In magic, friendship…and bananas I guess, since this is the only recent photo of me I could find…,

Melissa O. Meeks

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I’ve been thinking a lot about RAGE lately. Its undeniable HEAT. How it sweeps through my body like a wave. Or creeps in slow, simmering away my sense of ease. I like to think I have a high boiling point, but everyone has their limit. This year I’m meeting mine more than usual—and I don’t think it’s entirely to do with perimenopause.

Something dormant is being poked, poked, poked.

And when it wakes—it ROARS.

Psychologists sometimes categorize anger as a secondary emotion—one that masks or distracts from deeper feelings of grief, inadequacy, fear, and/or helplessness. It’s described as a hold-over from our early evolutionary lives when we roamed the wild in loin cloths carrying clubs—a rush of anger is useful for battering an attacking lion. But, today, we mostly experience anger as an interpersonal nuisance. We snap at a spouse. Roll our eyes at a coworker. Avoid saying anything at all lest someone get hurt. And yet…

Emotions are messengers.

Emotions carry important information about the needs of our instinctual, animal bodies and reveal our core values. Even difficult emotions, the ones that we have been taught to fear in ourselves and others: Rage. Disappointment. Loneliness. Desire. They are sources of power, ready to be harnessed—if we are to live into our full potential as individuals and members of a beloved community. This is the message of the STRENGTH card.

Its traditional imagery depicts a powerful animal (usually a lion) under the care and influence of a human figure (often a woman). In the Rider Waite Smith Tarot, the figure is adorned with flowers, roses and greenery; a lemniscate, or infinity symbol hovers above her crown. She often has her hands placed in or around the mouth of the beast, like a caregiver about to remove a shard of bone wedged painfully between the creature’s teeth. Her gaze is gentle, relaxed. She isn’t nervous, as I would be, that the lion will turn feral and claim her supple fingers as a snack.

These attributes mark the figure as somewhat otherworldly or at least as a version of our Selves impervious to the threat of pain; if she’s not immune to the gusts of ALL 8 Worldly Winds, those attachments or aversions that buddhists say keep us trapped in Samsara.1 We might refer to the caretaker in STRENGTH as our Higher Self. Jung would have called her the anima.

She differs from our conscience (or Freud’s super-ego) which regulates our behavior based on learned societal norms. Instead, she is our personal embodiment of Divine Grace—our own internal Sophia.2 Under her patient, compassionate caress, the lion of our base emotions yields its power without complaint.

It’s impressive. Old-timey circus performers would have made a killing if they’d had half of this Sophia’s skill.

After all, Jung called the lion “a ‘fiery’ animal, an emblem of the devil, [that] stands for the danger of being swallowed by the unconscious.”3 Like so many animals appearing in myth, legend and fairy tales, the lion represents a primal force, a bevy of instincts, that must be integrated for the hero to reach maturation—to level-up, as it were.

Who are you in this picture? The Caregiver or the Creature?

When I lead our monthly Tarot Circle for Wildflower Church, I often ask participants to reflect on any associations that they have with a card’s imagery before they refer to their guidebooks. Taking note of significant colors, shapes, numbers, and the stories that the cards bring to mind, helps to unlock each person’s intuitive relationship to the cards. When we gather our impressions together, the group develops a unique window into the Collective Unconscious around these archetypes. Our impressions are critical to developing our own lexicon of symbols—which cannot be accessed in any guidebook.

For me, the STRENGTH card evokes the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, which I encountered, like most people of my generation, through Disney’s animated feature. This was never my favorite Disney adventure. I did love Belle—my favorite scene was the opener, when she voraciously gobbles up fantasy novels amid a social setting that doesn’t quite “get her” (Relatable!!) But even as a child I never could quite buy that Belle would fall in love with THE BEAST—an actual horned animal, that basically kept her as a captive in his lonely old castle. I don’t care how many books he has in his library or how fetching are the castle wardrobe’s gowns.

When my undergraduate professors in Women’s Studies taught me to read Beauty and the Beast as a parable of female subjugation—an insidious story that encourages young women to overlook their partners’ beastly tendencies in the name of love, I felt my aversion to the tale was finally justified.

However, there’s a sense of loss, for me, reading fairy tales primarily as tools of patriarchal indoctrination. It’s not that those themes aren’t there—but are they the whole story? It feels reductive—boiling them down to mere means of subjugation. That’s why I loved Lisa Marchiano’s book The Vital Spark: Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire. Like Belle with her library book, I gobbled up Marchiano’s Jungian analyses of myth and legend—enthralled by her use of fairytales as touchstones for reclaiming personal power. In a Jungian sense, every character in the tale represents an aspect of the Self, replete with legitimate longings and dreams, strengths and shortcomings.

We are, in fact, both the Lady and the Lion.

The Beast in the classic tale represents our unchecked temper: anger unleashed in service of selfish interests without regard to people or surroundings. The story’s insistence that only love can break the spell and transform the Beast into a human again—provides a clue as to how to integrate these impulsive reactions in ourselves.

Like Belle, we must learn to meet our animal selves with compassion, curiosity, and care.

Most of us don’t do this reflexively. Because we live in a carceral society, we police each other externally and thereby police ourselves internally. When we have a ‘bad’ feeling, we subject the feeling to a degree of punishment. Cage it. Keep it captive. Underwraps. We send our so-called negative feelings into our SHADOW (the spooky West Wing of our psyche) and we tell the other parts of ourselves: Just don’t go there. It’s forbidden.

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There’s more than a bit of wisdom in this pattern.

None of us wants to live in a world where all of our wildest impulses are allowed to run rampant. I bet you can think of a few people you know who would do better to reign in their stickier traits. (Agreed.)

But I heard something recently from a spiritual channeler I follow that affirmed a sense I have around the intrinsic value of troubling emotions. He said that a flash of anger, from the root chakra upward, can actually serve to open the heart.

There’s something in that claim that feels very mysterious to me, at least when I consider my own relationship to anger. I react to anger in myself and others with hardness. Shields. A pattern of disengagement. But the anger itself…the heat of it in my body…I think I can almost imagine how it might give way to a sort of softening, an internal release. Almost. I’m a long way from putting this into action.

The first step, it seems, is to be the gentle goddess to ourselves—to meet our emotion without judgement. “Allow the emotion to be felt,” as therapists obliquely advise. But most of us don’t have a concept for what it means to feel our emotions. Maybe we’ve been injured by others’ destructive emotional reactions so often that it’s frightening to imagine coexisting with our wild natures. Our collective history is so full of harm—it is a special kind of challenge, asking any of us to embody the STRENGTH we would need in order to allow these impulses a place at our figurative table.

But if we can bring it back to Belle—I wonder if accepting her own animal impulse is what allows her to open up to real, embodied intimacy. That opening scene that I loved so much, of a girl content with her novels and stories, only allows connection in the abstract. Belle cannot be in “real” relationship until her anger (externalized in the form of the beast) is integrated as a part of her Self. It’s no mistake then, that this anger is what liberates Belle from the threat of internalized, toxic masculinity represented in her suitor, Gaston. (The best, worst Disney Villain, IMO). Maybe Disney in this instance got it right.

In the movie, Gaston and the Beast duke it out on the castle’s edge, but for us integrating our anger might look like learning to identify (and ultimately stand up for) our unmet needs in relationships. (I am so bad at this.) This takes a lot of damn self-awareness and also—TIME—which many of us are used to experiencing in short supply. But this work, the work of the STRENGTH card, is worth it. It’s the only way to break the spell.

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Set Yourself Free.

When we pull the STRENGTH card, we’re meant to ask ourselves, what would happen if I allowed myself to feel ANY and ALL emotions without judgement? Without fear? What if I could cultivate the confidence to work with my difficult emotions, knowing that no matter what feeling arises, I will never abandon myself?

Therapists, again, suggest that when we are cultivating this relationship to ourselves it helps to “validate” our emotions. But what does that actually mean when our emotions so easily out-pace reality, routinely slipping into the nonsensical?

Oren Jay Sofer, teacher of non-violent communication, argues that our fiery feelings arise when there is a real or perceived threat to our needs and values. This reaction is legitimate. It sucks to meet with the realization that none of us has all of our needs met all of the time. But we CAN live in integrity with the VALUES that our emotions reflect, whether or not they are satisfied. Advocacy then becomes valuable in its own right, independent of outcomes—putting us in a stronger position to maintain our efforts and engage creative problem solving. But first, identifying what needs/values really matter to us relies on our ability to investigate the emotions that signal them.

Emotions like anger—that produce a lot of palpable energy—seem particularly rife with potential. Fire, after all, is the element of transformation, creativity, evolution. It is the source of alchemical magic.

Likewise, the Lion of our heart is meant to roar. It holds the key to our power; our ability to enact change; to encourage healthy, aligned personal and societal growth. As Sallie Nichols writes:

“experiencing the beast’s power does not mean that we must act out our rages and aggressions at the top of our lungs, indulging our hysterics in the name of therapy. On the contrary, whenever we throw our affects at others, we throw away something that belongs to ourselves: the experience of the beast as our beast— and we lose contact with his strength.”

In other words, when the BEAST comes, he comes from and for ourselves. Yes, his energy may fuel our efforts in expressing our values; yet we cannot put his energy to its best use, until we are willing to tend the Beast with compassion and care. Only then can the burn of anger, alchemized through the heart, ready us to create. To make life new. To further our aligned action. We desperately NEED this energy to propel us forward on the looping lemniscate of our spiritual evolution. Let’s not tamp it out, but greet it as a protector. As a friend.

Connect with the Lion Inside

Try this 3-card spread.

• CARD 1 — Which of my needs/values does my Lion yearn to satisfy?

• CARD 2 — How does my inner Lion try to protect me?

• CARD 3 — How can I demonstrate more compassion for the Lion inside?

It takes courage to live with a lion. Let’s give each other some credit for trying. We all know how hard it can be.

Thanks for reading.

Your time is precious—thank you for sharing yours with me. If you found this article useful or thought-provoking, please consider sharing it with a friend or liking/commenting below. It helps other readers find me and encourages me to keep up these monthly missives.

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Emotions were running hot. There were tears, shallow breaths, sweat and snappish exchanges all around. I petitioned to Mercury — Please get us home. Get us home and I will write you an ode everyday for the next thirty days.

Maybe the god of travelers, tricksters, and thieves couldn’t guarantee that we would make our flight. But envisioning the fleet-footed celestial clearing a path for us with his snake-entwined caduceus, I remembered what should have been obvious all along: if one travel plan fell through, then, like good little tricksters, we would make ourselves another.

There is power in symbolic thinking.

Like spoken affirmations, evoking a spirit helper, I’ve found, can focus my energy, reducing overwhelm and inviting solutions outside of my usual cognitive spin. In the security line my stress was tempered by curiosity: what shape would my odes take? Could I sustain a new writing commitment for that long? Redirecting my mind to an enjoyable task soothed me.1 Amid the fuss over water bottles we hadn’t had time to empty, the whiff of the unknown felt less like disaster and more like an adventure.

We made the flight. Though I will say…it wasn’t a total win. I had planned to provision us with snacks and drinks before lining up on the jetway. Now there was no time. For 10.5 hours were at the mercy of the in-flight team for every tiny plastic cup of water and morsel of food — most of which my picky eater refused. But at that point who really cared? In the grand scheme these were minor discomforts. We were safe. We were together. We were going home. Thanks, Mercury.

On a spiritual level, we are all migrants.

My brain kind of squirms around phrases like “spiritual journey” and “life path” — metaphors so well-worn that they’re full of holes. But the Tarot luxuriates in cliches, it revels in their imprecision. To the cards, we’re all on a Fool’s Journey, traveling through the energetic states of the Major Arcana from birth until death.

Our lived experience of travel can remind us of this—quite viscerally. It’s one reason that I think so many of us are nervous fliers. It’s not just that it feels existentially suspect to be crossing oceans at inhospitable altitudes in the time it takes to read a paperback and down a few glasses of ginger ale. All of our issues around control and uncertainty come barreling at us through the security gates.

Chances are your brain is clanging around with your own stories of missed flights, lost baggage, botched itineraries. You’ve had your share of discomfort, disappointment, even fear out there on the road. Sometimes, particularly if we present as women, BIPOC, or LGBTQ+, that fear is warranted.

But I’d bet that some of your sagas also sparkle with serendipitous meetings, unexpected supports and encounters with unplanned marvels. Many of my most treasured travel memories begin with me, stranded at a train station in a place where no one knows me.

So why resist every proverbial bump in the road?

Like our travel stories, the CHARIOT reminds us of our capacity to adapt to shifting terrain, unexpected weather, and moving milestones along the road of the soul’s journey.

Take a look at the Pamela Coleman Smith Chariot illustration: Here is a person who is Provisioned. Crowned with glorious starlight. Attended by mythical beasts. The Charioteer (our stand-in) appears ready to meet life’s challenges head-on. Their armor symbolizes preparedness in the event of conflict. But the battle ahead is metaphorical—waged against blocks to our self-actualization. Many of those blocks will be self-created, barriers crafted earlier in life to keep us safe. The CHARIOT represents the container we need to carry us from the safety of the fortress to the great green wilds beyond.

In the CHARIOT there is an acknowledgement of what we have already achieved. We have likely worked hard to prepare ourselves for this departure. We have some skills and resources at our disposal. Still, the card reminds us, we are likely going to need to adapt to conditions we could never have predicted at the outset of this journey.

On the brink of such uncertainty, the CHARIOT reminds us to tend to our vessels: the body, the mind, the heart. Are you getting enough sleep? Inspiration? Connection with others?

What do we do when the going gets tough?

The CHARIOT often shows up with the suggestion that new methods of self-tending are called for. It’s a midlife card. The old ways of coping have become outdated. Consider that CHARIOT corresponds to Cancer season. In this energy we’re all crabs, sloughing off our outgrown shells.

Emerging from the portal of the June solstice, we are all experiencing the apex of light/dark on our planet. This is a moment of extremes. In response, the CHARIOT asks us to recalibrate. Check the oil. Balance the tires. Maybe consult the map.

Did you set intentions six months ago around the beginning of the year? Are they still relevant to you?

Sometimes even the best laid plans are better left to fall by the wayside. But maybe you want to recommit to your plans. Maybe you only need to re-chart your course.

How do we greet unexpected labors?

I respect those who interpret the CHARIOT as a card denoting VICTORY. I think those readers are right to emphasize the card’s ultimate affirmation that no matter the mess we are in at the moment, we have the means to prevail. (Or, like good tricksters, we will make new ones). But I confess that I don’t love pulling this card anymore than I would love learning that my flight is delayed or canceled.

In my experience, the CHARIOT suggests that some new effort will likely be required on my part.

Even if it just involves waiting around and resting when I’d rather be on the move, it’s annoying. On the larger scale, it’s cataclysmic.

My family’s overseas respite came during a period of intense upheaval—right as we were navigating the death of my husband’s tender-hearted and fiercely intelligent father. Through the on-going journey of this loss, I have often felt like the Charioteer in Chris-Anne’s Light Seer’s Tarot: perched precariously on the wobbly container of my life. Though protected from the brunt of the grief experienced by my husband, children, and beloved in-laws, I was tasked with keeping the vehicle of our life rolling. So many things went strangely on as normal—meals made, bedtimes kept, laundry folded—though emotional upheaval swept in at a pace I wasn’t sure I could match.

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With my partner deep in the portal of loss, I wanted to be able to hold onto reigns of our life all by myself until he returned. But the truth was that I needed every offer and expression of support that came my way. I am especially grateful for those friends who came just to sit with me when I was isolated at home with the kids through that first, long month of summer.

One thing I’m still learning: Though the path can be lonely, we don’t have to drive the CHARIOT on our own. Even when our people can’t be there for us, it helps me to remember that our spirit guides remain in whatever form we choose to imagine them: God with a capital ‘G’ or his/her/their lesser aspects. Celestial supports. Divine intermediaries (hey Mercury!) Archetypal energies. Or our beloved dead. We can always take a breath and call them in.

You live on planet Earth. You’re up against a few roadblocks of your own. Whatever shape they take for you this season, I hope you find the resources and support that you need to keep the CHARIOT rolling. If we’re all here to learn, then God was just in his affirmation: “Victory is yours.” Claim it.

Try this spread to help you adapt to changing conditions on your path:

CARD 1 — What am I learning from this leg of my journey?

CARD 2 — How can I support myself moving forward?

CARD 3 — A card to represent the Spirit Helper who wants to accompany me.

Don’t be a stranger! Let me know what this spread reveals for you in the comments below. Every time you interact with a post it helps other folks find me and encourages me to keep writing these missives on mystery and making art out of life.

I’m putting interviews on hold for the rest of the summer. Putting a little more breathing room in my CHARIOT during this busy season. But I’ll be back with a reflection on the STRENGTH card and Leo season next month. See you then!

My tween daughter and I are cracking through a summer reading challenge. The first book on my list is the initial installment of Junie’s favorite series: Keeper of the Lost Cities. There’s a lot going on in Shannon Messenger’s middle-grade fantasy novel: secret societies, dinosaur sanctuaries, and alchemy exams proctored by Tolkeinian elves. It’s all fun, but what I like most is to guess at how Shannon will ship Sophie, the book’s human-raised elf prodigy. (For those who don’t have a Gen Alpha daughter to translate, this kind of “shipping” has nothing to do with UPS or ports of call. You "ship” two people you hope will form a romantic attachment. As in relation-ship.) Junie and I are agreed: though Sophie has plenty of options, she would do well to choose brainy, loyal Dex, the overlooked underdog of the story. Just—please Shannon—anyone but golden boy Fitz. Movie star smiles and gilded castles are so 1900s.

I find myself asking why it’s so fun to speculate on Sophie’s romantic side-plot? After all, we’re supposed to be living in a post-romantic age. My generation set the 21st-century task of unraveling the chains of love-lorn delusion inherited from Disney et al.

But, Eros, I just can’t quit you.

In stories as in life I want it all—careful research, cultural commentary, expansive world-building, surprising prose. But if you can do all of that alongside one heart-felt vision of reciprocated affection that upends a status quo? That’s pure gold to me. An adolescent pleasure that I’ve never outgrown. A longing that crackles in the air whenever I pull the LOVERS card from my tarot deck.

The First Taste of Love

Rachel Pollock, who modernized the tarot with her seminal books in the 70s and 80s, calls the LOVERS card ‘a parable for adolescence.’ Why? Because during our coming-of-age years, Eros’s driving arrow fast-tracks our process of individuation, offering us a counter point to the Self as understood within the comfort and confines of family. With the LOVERS we leave home. We step into the wilderness of relationship—and open the field to who we may become. The stakes are incredibly high; both because our love may not be returned and because the social norms we inherit may not sanction the love we practice.

I think of LOVERS energy, like adolescence, as momentary, propulsive and transformative, life-affirming but potentially destructive. The LOVERS may be populated by people, but it’s often less about a person than a feeling, a swell of attraction that can be so strong as to short-circuit our learned habits and push us toward unprecedented leaps of faith. Think back on your own early attachments, you can probably see evidence of this compulsion. We “fall” in love and sometimes break upon impact. But on the soul level…well, it’s all part of the process.

In its archetypal form, the LOVERS promises disruption, hence the Garden-of-Eden expulsion imagery in the Rider Waite Smith Tarot. The fated union of opposites destroys in its revelations, transforms in its fires. In this reading of the biblical myth, we’re not witnessing a comeuppance for sins committed. Adam and Eve are posed in the midst of spiritual revolution—one of divine providence (if that angel above has anything to say about it). The apple of experience moves the lovers from the ease of childhood into the shaky terrain of adult uncertainty. From here on out, nothing is guaranteed.

This “tale as old as time” only really gets old when love fails to break the bonds of generational expectation and starts to reek of self-suppression. (Thus our current-day crusade against patriarchal marriage-plots *keep it up*). Literature’s quintessential LOVERS—Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Iseult, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy—knew the collective importance of their coupling. Their stories show us that to love is to edge closer to freedom, self-expression, and a new way of being in an often repressive world.

When Junie and I debate about which ship will win out in Keeper of the Lost Cities — we’re really talking about what kinds of freedom we yearn for. If not in life, then at least in the story world, which has its own rules to be broken.

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The Sacred Libido

When we pull the LOVERS card, we may be pulled in turn by passions that we can’t release, no matter the circumstance. Often we want some kind of external affirmation of an internal wish—a book deal, an award, a finished project, a kiss. (All of the above, please). Lindsay Mack reminds us that what we long for in LOVERS, we already possess within ourselves…but we are a little bit like Ariel in this moment: we’ve got everything, but who cares? We want more.

Rather than write off the stirrings of our heartstrings, these impulses are here to illuminate the aligned trajectory of our soul’s growth.

The LOVERS card signals an opportune moment to examine your desires, your secret passionate interests. Preferably without judgement. What golden apple in the boughs of your garden begs to be bitten? What are you ceaselessly reaching for? Do you really want it? Don’t be afraid of what comes up here. There’s no wrong answer and you don’t have to act on anything that you uncover. The LOVERS isn’t a call to live by the whims of libido. Desire stems from the subconscious and—like dreams—love’s visions have to be unpacked to reveal the soul’s longing that generates them.

As Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano says: “When we fall in love with somebody, when the arrow of Eros lands for us, part of what’s undoubtedly happening is we are projecting part of our own soul onto that other person. It’s some potential that’s unlived in us…It is an invitation to the depths…We first think it’s about the other person, but really we’re being introduced to ourselves.”1

Try this: Consider the characters, people, or ways of being that you find crush-worthy. What latent elements of yourself might these lovers be asking you to embrace? If you think you’re too old for limerence (you’re not) consider how this energy plays out in platonic relationships, too. My grad school friends and I would confess to “academic crushes” on thinkers that shaped the trajectory of our values and methods. What about:

• the friend crush that pushes you to become more out-going?

• the mentor crush that invites you to take your work in a new direction?

• the artist crush that pushes the bounds of your creative capacity?

When we feel a tug of longing for another person, a strong affinity for the way that they live or how they help us to see ourselves anew, we are invited into sacred growth. When we resist the urge to separate from our desires, they support us. As in Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic,” desire becomes a source of joy and power. Libido operates like an arrow pointing us toward spirit-aligned expansion.

Sehnsucht — Romance with a Capital ‘R’

The German department where I studied for my PhD was very Enlightenment-focused. Our scholarship was materialist in nature—heavily backed by historiography and citation, the metrics of literary academic vigor. Romantics were discussed with an indulgent smile, their methods rejected with a bit of an eye-roll.

But the bold mysticism of Novalis and Hölderlin rang some kind of inner gong in me. These poets basked in the wonders of nature, sought the divine in the fragmented space of symbolic language, and rallied around the subjective experience of the numinous. Sehnsucht was their touchstone, one of those German concepts that doesn’t quite have an equivalent in translation, but means something like “spiritual longing.” This drive toward the sublime felt at home in me—like the sinews (Sehne) linking muscle to bone. And even though there is a good reason to differentiate (R)omance from (r)omance, I feel both resonate when I’m reading a good love story.

I may have squirmed through the love scenes in Rebecca Yarros’s wildly popular Fourth Wing, but I don’t think we should discount the draw of a little bodice-ripping. Stalwart Goethe wrote and collected his own blush-worthy verses in a folder he titled ‘erotica.’2 The Bible makes use of Eros’s power with its Songs of Solomon. The romantic, erotic impulse, as with other forms of longing, offers a portal to the divine: a vehicle towards spiritual union that transcends rational measure or score.

Ship yourself.

So much of life presents as a challenge—we need moments of passion to propel us through the hard work of being alive; LOVERS energy speaks to the kind of fiery impulse that makes us willing to lose a night of sleep just to be swept up in its embrace.

What shape does your dream lover take this Gemini season? A potential partner, a new hobby, a deepening friendship, a plan to travel to a far flung destination? How does the object of your affection speak to your own growth edge? Your purpose? Your innate longing for the divine?

Try this tarot spread to unlock the LOVERS passion that burns in you this season:

• CARD 1: What is here to sweep me off my feet?

• CARD 2: How do I want to experience passionate love?

• CARD 3: How might I give myself what it is that I am truly longing for?

Summer Seeking

Starting Saturday, I’m running away for a few a weeks of soul-searching with my family—call it the pull of Sehnucht toward distant shores. I may not be as responsive to comments, but I would love to hear from you and will be back around before you know it. I also won’t have an artist interview to share this month, but I plan to return in early July with a reflection on the Chariot for Cancer season. May love find all of us as we journey on in the meantime.

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I had never heard of oxymels before attending this class—but from the moment that Caroline splashed a tablespoon of the deep red infusion into a jar of sparkling water for me to drink, I felt limerence brewing. The spritzer was beautiful! Pink. Sparkly. I took one sip and then another and, yes, there was a shift. I was calmer, more present. I even felt—not that my headache had been eliminated—but that the tension I had been holding around it for the previous two days had eased.

In the year since that day I have kept a habit of filling, emptying, refilling jars with herbs, honey, and vinegar in my kitchen. At the end of the day, when I want to relax into the routine of making dinner and settling in with the family, my oxymel spritzer is my companion. I’ve hosted oxymel nights with friends, shared them with my bandmates, wrapped them up as special gifts. They are a regular source of creative joy for me, supporting my body, my mental health, and my connection to nature magic.

What a pleasure it was last week to reconnect with Caroline to THANK her for bringing this powerful medicine into my life and to hear more about Caroline’s inspiring work as an herbalist. Her place-based practice, I came to learn, is truly a co-creative engagement with the Food Forest that sustains Mutable Earth and its community. Caroline’s years of working with plant medicine and permaculture, have taught her to be observant of the evolving life of the Forest, to be responsive to its surprises, and to trust in its abundance.

The Food Forest

I met Caroline in her apothecary, a yurt on the edge of the Food Forest, whose circular walls are filled with infusions mid-process, herbs drying in cloth racks, and bottles of tinctures, medicines and oxymels ready to be sold, sipped and shared. She is finishing up with a mentee when I arrive right in that sweet little window of time between working in the garden and when we both must meet our kids after school. I settle in at the long wooden work table that cuts through the center of the yurt and Caroline tells me the story of how oxymels became a part of her work as an herbalist.

“This is pretty funny,” she says. “I actually started making oxymels because I found these really sexy bottles. They were this recycled colored glass, like apothecary bottles, from Spain…They were square bodied, red, blue, and yellow or green, and they had cork tops. And I was like, I don’t even know what's going to go in these, but I have to order some.” When they arrived, one of the women who was around at that time said, What about an oxymel? “And I was just like, ooooh, pleasure medicine! And then I just go off.”

“I find myself standing in front of my jars and I’m like, who wants to go in there?” Caroline gives herself a loose framework for all of her oxymels—pairing mineral rich herbs and pungent, aromatics, “usually in the vein of an herbal action,” she says. Like Chilling Out, an infusion to help cool you down in the hot summer months (or during hot flashes), or Free Spirit, which encourages the sipper to follow their heart.

The exact ingredients, she says, can change, based on seasonal availability and what the garden happens to be offering up at any given moment. This responsiveness to the ebbs and flows of the Food Forest form a cornerstone of Caroline’s place-based herbalism. “I work with plants that grow here. My inspiration comes from the way that the plants express themselves throughout the seasons, as well as season to season.”

Caroline will still ship in herbs that she loves, like cinnamon, that just won’t take to Texas’s climate, but the plants that thrive here serve as the primary inspiration for her work. In fact, more than once, she says, plants have serendipitously shown up in the garden at just the right time. “I didn’t seed oats here,” she says. “I feel like we needed it and I called them in almost…They traveled on the wind…The wild oat population planted itself around the boundary last year.” Similarly, the nettles that grow in the Food Forest hitchhiked in the soil of a different plant that Caroline had ordered for the garden. The original plant died, but the nettles came up from the soil.

Oats and nettles, Caroline explains, are some of her favorite mineral rich herbs to include in oxymels. Nettle, she explains, “is so nutritious. It relaxes the nervous system and supports elimination in general, which I think we all need that.” Nettles cleanse the kidneys, she says, helping to release pent up anger and ease the nervous system.

“Oats,” Caroline says, “has this very soothing, almost emulsant quality to it, where it’s kind of lubricating. And in that way, it’s very much an aphrodisiac. It’s like: I feel nourished, I feel lubed up, and I feel relaxed. So what do I want to do? I want to sleep, I want to make love, and I want to, like, eat good food.”

Another favorite in Caroline’s oxymels is red clover for its support of the cardiovascular system and the way it moves any companion herbs through the circulatory system. These herbs are powerful, but also safe for most people, she says. They replenish the body’s mineral stores and delight the senses, especially when paired with aromatics or colorful herbs like purple pea flower, hibiscus, or Hawthorne berries.

Pleasure meets Potency

From the first moment Caroline gazed on those beautiful little bottles, pleasure has been the guiding force behind her oxymel infusions, but she is quick to emphasize their medicinal potency as well.

“In the beginning I was like, this is a pleasure medicine. And there’s medicinally to it, but I was holding a judgement that tinctures were stronger and that if we need a powerful punch of medicinal remedy, go to the tincture…And then there was this point where I was like, oh, this is a whole vibe, actually.” She was being asked to brew oxymels for parties and for gatherings in her markets. “And I was really able to see that the tulsi, rose, hibiscus, evening primrose, these herbs are very much potent in this honey and vinegar extraction.” The infusions noticeably heightened the energetic experience of the gatherings where they were served. “We're all like in this collective medicinal experience together and it’s coloring this whole event for people.”

I’ve had the same experience sharing oxymels with friends and family. And, I explain to Caroline, as a long-time social drinker, I was so excited to find an herbal alternative to alcohol. I suffer from social anxiety that makes me crave chemical support for mingling—but with age I’ve gotten more sensitive to the negative effects of a glass of wine. Oxymels actively shift me into a different state of mind, making me feel more relaxed, playful, and present, without severing my connection to higher functioning or leaving me with a hangover.

Caroline’s oxymels reflect her passion for sharing this plant medicine with her local community, especially its female members. From the young women in their 20s who are shy about picking up Caroline’s aphrodisiac blend, Orgasmic, to the older women who are like “heck yea! give me one of those!” Many of Caroline’s herbal offerings are crafted with women’s health in mind—whether they need support getting through postpartum energy slumps or are dealing with perimenopausal symptoms. Oxymels, Caroline explains, are an accessible source of support for those who may not be as excited about taking a tincture or tea.

Plant Support for your Creative Heart

I love everything about the process of creating oxymels—selecting my herbs, glugging that honey into the jar (liquid gold!), sketching my labels. I get such satisfaction watching the finished mixture swirl into my sparkling water, turning it purple, red, or a rich amber color. I feel like a potions master—and maybe I am!

The herbs, by supporting my parasympathetic nervous system, allow me to reach a state of relaxed creative flow with greater ease—and that feels like some serious magic to me.

More than that, the process of making an oxymel infusion contains lessons for the creative life. You teach yourself to gather your ingredients lovingly, learning what you can about their properties. Then you bring your elements together in an intuitive way.

As Caroline says, “I’m not weighing out herbs for the oxymels. It’s a folk remedy, so that means we take a jar and we fill it about halfway up with herbs, and then we do half apple cider vinegar and half honey on the volume side of things.” Ideally, you’re doing this with intention, keeping in mind the medicinal properties that the herbs bring along with them, while also infusing the process with hopes for how their magic will help you heal or transform.

Then you wait. Oxymel infusions take two to four weeks to set.

This can be the hardest part for me, creatively, giving my ideas time to rest and mature before I go digging into my harvest. I’m as addicted to instant-gratification as the next person, but the oxymel’s wait time itself is medicinal, heightening both my anticipation for the treat to come, and my curiosity as to how it will turn out. What if I brought that same approach to my writing process? Stopped pushing and let things steep for a while?

I like this as a model for how to create—harnessing my intention to work with the elements at hand, then allowing for time and space intercede when I hit the limits of my capacity.

As Caroline explained to me in her apothecary yurt last week: so much can be gained from just learning to slooooow down. Such an approach respects the seasonality of the earth, as well as the body and mind.

Caroline embodies this insight herself, having stepped back from year-round retailing at Mutable Earth to incorporate periods of dormancy and rest into her calendar year. Instead of rushing to fill orders and order in ingredients to restock her shelves, she focuses on small-scale, community-based production and teaching that allows her more time for bonding with her family (she has two kids ages 7 & 10).

Caroline’s story reminds me of how deeply our creative lives reflect and—so often—reshape our lives as a whole. Our conversation strengthens my belief in the importance of maintaining a creative practice and marks the process of making as a spiritual one. When we return, open-hearted, to our visions and strive (over and over again) to combine them with the materials of our reality—we become new. Our realities shift. Healing becomes possible.

Get creating with plants!

Mutable Earth Botanicals hosts Community Herbalism Days throughout the year, inviting folks to come and help bring in a harvest, learn about the Food Forest and make medicinals with Caroline. If you are in the Austin area you should definitely check these out—especially her OXYMEL CLASS at the apothecary coming up on June 8th!

If you can’t make the class, you can purchase oxymels from Caroline at her online shop www.mutableearthbotanicals.com, make your own with one of many recipes available online, OR you can follow this basic recipe:

• Fill a canning jar 1/3-1/2 full of DRIED herbs or fruits (Avoid fresh ingredients as they can get funky, according to Caroline. Instead, save the fresh herbs to garnish your drinks).

• Fill with equal parts raw apple cider vinegar and local, high-quality honey

• Shake, seal, and allow to sit for 2-4 weeks before straining and bottling.

• Store in a cool place and enjoy in spritzers, mocktails, or as salad dressing.

My Tips: I sometimes simplify my herb-search by using a tea blend that I like from the Herb Bar, as I did last fall for my Sleepy Hollow Cider (it tasted like oatmeal stout!) But I’ve also enjoyed making oxymels with herbs whose healing properties align with tarot archetypes—an evening primrose/lemon grass/nettle blend for the Hermit, a rose/hibiscus/motherwort blend for the Empress. Similarly, it’s been lovely to time the oxymel infusion period with astrological movements, the cycles of the moon, or the transition of a planet into a new sign. There are more than a million ways to work with this plant magic!

If you give oxymels a try, I hope you’ll pop on and let me know what you think! Thanks for reading, as always. If you’d like to support this newsletter, please consider liking, commenting or sharing so that others can find it.

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She is the ground under your feet. The air in your lungs. She is that whole spectrum of light waves that your eyes perceive as GREEN and the melodic sweep of the song that sends your shoulders swaying.

On our planet, living in these bodies, there are more ways to encounter the Empress than there are stars in the sky. We need only be open to receiving her gifts:

• Beauty

• Sensuality

• Creativity

• Pleasure

• Nurturance

I have always connected the Empress with Taurus season (rather than the traditional Taurus+Hierophant pairing) because I live in the Northern Hemisphere and late spring, with its flowers and promise of summer bounty, seems to offer the perfect vantage point from which to ponder the Empress’s power. But—admittedly—her generosity cannot be confined by season: the twelve stars in her crown suggest her supremacy in all twelve astrological signs. Surrounded both by verdant summer trees and ripened autumn wheat, she spans the globe (IS the globe!) encompassing the whole spectrum of gestation and harvest in its perfect rolling spin.

Her orbed scepter wields the power of all nature-based deities. The pomegranates on her dress align her with the myths of Persephone, the grain at her feet with Demeter, but the symbol beneath her opulent, cushioned throne marks her primacy as an aspect of Venus (ruling planet of Taurus)—the goddess of love, connection, and sensuality.

There’s something markedly primordial about this energy—to me, it suggests a type of being-ness that precedes individuation or separation. We all emerged from the Empress’s womb—but this card suggests that, well, maybe we didn’t really emerge so much as unfold. We do not exist without Nature. And though we seem to walk and move independently of the Empress’s cradle, there’s still a force here on Earth that holds us. However imperfectly. She protects and provides for us. She encourages our evolution and, if we’re open, showers us in wonders.

When I receive this card in a reading, I feel I’m suddenly called into a mystical relationship with my surroundings. There are the old-world standards: Trees that listen. Birds that talk. But also the things that people have made: the laptop I’m typing on. The coffee in my cup. They all take on a kind of sentience that cracks my heart open a little bit. I find myself asking: what are we to each other?

Everything takes on a cosmic gleam.

When I can sustain this frame of mind, my senses are heightened. I feel the temperature of the air as it arches up the bridge of my nose more acutely. I’m drawn to feather the pages of a paperback between my hands, marveling that the pulp of a tree now sounds like a flutter of wings and emits that bookstore scent that always has me swooning.

Decadence! I want to sigh. The Empress is decadence! Not because she’s overindulgent or chasing beautiful diversions, but because she’s living fully within the gorgeous interplay of things as they are.

Periodically, I try bringing this depth of awareness to a ‘mindful eating’ practice. Have you tried experimenting with this before? It’s the practice of taking luxuriant time to eat—savoring colors, textures, tastes of food, acknowledging the time and effort it took to grow, ship, and prepare it.

I’m not great at mindful eating. I only get through a bite or two before I’m overwhelmed with sensations (or sometimes boredom) and my mind, mercifully, distracts me with its banter. Separating me from the world as only it can.

The Empress comes around to soften the mind’s hard edges. She invites me to experience embodied life as an unending love affair with Creation. It’s a shame I shut her down so often and so quickly — but the truth is I have trouble trusting her. Nature’s lessons don’t always come in easy, I have learned. Her lifeblood is fueled by inevitable destruction and death. Like the Celtic Cailleach, she is Womb and Tomb.1 I expend so much effort to avoid the grief, illness and discomfort of living in my time-bound body, that I forget to appreciate its ecstasies.

Or maybe I fear I don’t deserve them?

There’s a line between self-indulgence and self-nurturing that I often have difficulty navigating. Not because I’m plagued with so many destructive habits, but because I was raised to believe that pleasure must be earned. The message I received went something like this: “Only through blood, sweat, and tears might you make yourself deserving of {enter desired experience here}” As a result, I’m constantly weighing the value of my labor against the degree of enjoyment I’m allowed to receive.

The energy of the Empress radically shifts this perspective, because she insists on the value of everything and all of us without exception. We are worthy of her sustaining gifts simply because we ARE.

Even in our worst moments, when we have to own up to terrible mistakes, the Empress will still bless us with sunshine on our shoulders, a cool breeze in our hair, a kaleidoscope of leaves overhead, offering us forgiveness and transformation. Through the portal of grief, she ushers us toward new pleasures, reminding us of our unending capacity for healing and love.

Appreciation and Restoration

Like me, you may think on the Empress and experience pangs of regret for the ways in which we have collectively and personally taken the Earth’s generous presence for granted. It’s easy to imagine the Empress a bit like Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree, dolling out gift after gift to her human companion until she is nothing but an old stump. It’s a depressing story, worthy of its many parodies and critical retellings.2 In this age of ecological crisis, most of us will want to shake that brat kid in the story and tell him that if he has to cut down every part of the tree, at least he could say thank you. Show a little gratitude. Maybe he’s gotten so used to the tree’s generosity that he’s learned to look past her? Maybe it’s easier to look past her than it is to admit, that without her he has nothing at all.

There are a million ways in which we’ve tried to cut the Earth down to a stump. There’s no taking the sting out of that.

And, at the same time, the Empress is not just the tree; she’s the ground and the sun, the air and sky. She’s the house that the brat kid built and she’s the brat kid, too. The magic of the Empress, I think, is that she doesn’t arrive to reprimand us for receiving her—or even for transforming her as we have. She teaches us to accept her bounty and create within it, always keeping in mind, that our flourishing is her flourishing—and vice versa. We’re in relationship with this planet. The Empress invites us to imagine that relationship as a loving one.

Silverstein’s Giving Tree, too, wants only to share in the boy’s pleasure as he swings in the tree’s branches and eats her sweet apples. The Empress offers us so many opportunities to do the same—to delight in the material world and appreciate its magic. (In the Emperor we learn how to responsibly wield it.) For the span of this season, we’re called to be guided by the Empress’s loving presence—to revel in the gift that it is to be embodied on this Earth. To be Us. Collectively and as individuals. Not as we could be—but as we are. Because we are hers. Our Mother’s.

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Connect with the Empress

Try this 3-card spread to awaken the immense power of the Empress in you:

• CARD 1 — Where in my life am I ready to receive?

• CARD 2 — What is here for me to love?

• CARD 3 — How can I find more pleasure in my life as it currently is?

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SUBSCRIBERS—I wanna connect with you in the analog space! When three or more people subscribe to Arcana Craft based on your referral, you will receive a personalized tarot or oracle card message from me via good ol’ snail mail. Thanks for your ongoing support!

I met Dakota Rhoad at the Unitarian Universalist Church off of Oltorf and Interstate 35 in Austin. One Sunday morning, Dakota walked barefoot down the center aisle of the sanctuary, took the mic in front of a group of instrumentalists (about to become a band) and asked to be held by the congregation in love as the group worked their way through their first musical offering together.

I can’t recall the song they played, but I do remember how, with an Emmy Lou tenderness, Dakota’s youthful voice seeped the space with its old-soul aura. The offering was so genuine, so heart-felt, that the sanctuary hummed with collective affection.

She had asked to be held by the congregation, but she held all of us in Spirit.

Here beats a vital, creative heart.

I asked Dakota if she would chat with me for a while about her creative and spiritual life—what I got was the conversational equivalent of an adventure. Our interview trekked through a coconut farm in Indonesia, a water rafting expedition in Oregon, long weeks spent in tents or on the road working for hire, and culminated in a quest for creative homecoming—as she described the impetus behind her small business, The Wander Center. There, she hand-crafts fantastical party decor for the young at heart, while simultaneously protecting the vitality of the planet that supports us all.

Dakota’s vision for her small business stems from her environmentalist roots.

“My Mom was the ‘Can Fairy’ when we were little. She started the first recycling program in Conroe, Texas…When my oldest brother was in elementary, she looked out one day and she saw that the kids were like— playing in the dirt. They didn’t have a playground—they were just playing in the dirt. Then she connected the two.”

Her mother started a program for elementary school students to collect cans and bring them to the school every Friday. Classes would compete for end-of-term pizza parties and the money earned from recycling would go to support the school.

The Wander Center aims to reduce waste both by recycling unused party supplies (Austinites can learn how to donate your gently used items here) and offering whimsical, handmade or thrifted rental items for backyard parties.

Dakota’s self-forged entrepreneurial path incorporates skills she acquired over many years of working for small businesses with the passion she felt as a student of Wildlife Biology. Like her student cohort she nurtured dreams of being “like Jane Goodall,” but breaking into the field proved near in possible after she received her degree in 2016. With scant funding in the environmental space, positions are few and highly competitive.

“I’ve always wanted to be the wild one.”

As she faced a gamut of applications and rejections, Dakota’s wanderlust was growing.

“I wanted to just drive, right? And then I had this boyfriend that traveled for real…and he left for six months right after we started dating and I was so jealous…It was the worst six months of my entire life. Not because I missed him—I did miss him—but I was just like, out of my skin jealous that he was doing it…and he didn’t have anything that I didn’t have. He had a lot less actually… but he was just doing it, and I didn’t know how.”

The relationship didn’t make it, but it did galvanize her to chart her own adventure. She spent six months overseas supporting herself through work-away programs for two weeks at time; sometimes as a manual laborer, sometimes as a teacher of English, she took on volunteer positions in exchange for housing and often food. She came home right as the quarantine hit, but felt called to continue her travels. She used a website to connect with seasonal jobs around the U.S., working for a rafting company in Oregon, a snowmobile company in Colorado. She lived in a tent at a site with other laborers, worked on a farm in North Carolina.

I am thinking this all sounds pretty romantic when Dakota says:

“There’s things you can’t do when you’re on the road. And I have these creative things that I wanted to build that I couldn’t do…I had to come back.”

She decided to take the wild, creative energy that spurred her out onto the road and use it to put down some roots in Austin. But the transition hasn’t been easy.

The Dog and the Wolf

“I’ve wanted to get this tattoo for a long time,” Dakota says. “It’s a nature woman…her hair is messy…she’s dirty…and she’s next to a wolf. And then in front of her, smaller, is a modern woman with a dog on a leash. And I live right in the middle of those two women.”

Sometimes Dakota feels stuck in that place between.

“I’m always asking how in this modern world do you connect with [the wild one] and be her…And it’s really hard here…I’m like this dog on a leash.”

Dakota’s tone is heavy, but her description of this image sends me into a heady spiral — I tell her how, in the tarot, the Moon card often depicts a dog and a wolf flanking two sides of a river. This river strikes me as a site of transformation, leading as it does past the animals, between two monolithic towers, and into a rolling landscape beyond. It’s almost as if, to evolve, one has to account for both the wolf and the dog within.

But in a world of tight leashes—how do we connect to the wild within?

“I made this list one time...: what makes me feel wild? Because right now I don’t…being barefoot, sitting in the sun, and having my windows open. Singing, creating, and building, all connects me to that [wild] woman in a modern way…that’s the balance. It’s like: ok, I’m here in this world and I’m also connecting with her.”

I’m struck by the thought that this might be the ultimate work of the creator—to take what is wild and bond it to structure, to material, whether that takes the shape of a business, an artwork, a song, or a travel plan. Our creations combine unbound spirit with domesticated form.

Yet, pet owners know, in some ways the dog will always remain a wolf. We can celebrate that.

Celebrate with Creative Magic

With the Wander Center, Dakota continues this dance between wild and mundane—helping clients to transform their everyday spaces into sites of magic and wonder. Her decorations ignite joy for party guests of all ages, helping them to tap into their sense of play and fun—their wild!—in a way that is sustainable, responsible—tamed of its ravenous consumerism.

Ultimately, Dakota would like to grow the scope of her offerings into the education space, taking inspiration from her mother. Her Earth EdVentures would create meaningful, hands-on, environmental experiences for children, allowing them to bask in the glow of nature’s magic and put their efforts into conservation at the same time. As young participants compete for real-time incentives, Earth EdVentures helps to ensure that creatures of all kinds have their chance to howl at the Moon for many generations to come.

In the meantime, Dakota is tracking her creative life on Instagram (you can follow her @thewandercenter) finding ways to incorporate wild acts of creativity into her daily life, as well as sharing news from the Wander Center. She’s also singing in the church band. “We have practice tonight…practice is so fun,” she tells me.

Strong agree. Let’s practice.

How do you HOWL?

Try this simple three-card spread to tap into your own creative wild-side. Let me know how it goes in the comments below!

CARD 1— what wants to grow wild in my creative life?

CARD 2—how can I make space for this wild growth?

CARD 3—where do I set down creative roots?

SUBSCRIBERS—I wanna connect with you in the analog space! When three or more people subscribe to Arcana Craft based on your referral, you will receive a personalized tarot or oracle card message from me via good ol’ snail mail. Thanks for your ongoing support!

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Chaos, crisis, entropy and upset are endemic to our planet, our species, and the universe itself—but not to the Emperor. He’s the counter-balance:

• stability

• order

• wisdom

• endurance

The harbinger of Aries season, the Emperor observes the explosive vitality of spring (in the Northern Hemisphere) with a discerning eye. He appreciates the natural abundance of the Earth by setting himself these tasks: to chart avenues of future growth, strategize sustainability, and allocate resources.

Pulling this card in a tarot spread portends great capability. The Emperor is a creator. With him, you will get shit done.

Yet, too often I see people draw this card and assume that it means they need to put themselves under a stricter regimen. Get up earlier, work harder, stick to the program. If that’s your read of this card—I hear you. With three personal planets in Aries, I’m also a fan of a harder, faster, longer approach to problem solving.

But the Emperor shows up just as often to tell us to SLOW down, consider non-reactionary options, wait and see a little bit.

Build your Empire.

We are all masters of our own domain. We may feel that we are subject to the whims of chance or the needs of our communities, our country’s leaders or our families’ needs, but ultimately we are responsible for our actions and how we show up and take up space on this planet.

Unfortunately, western models of Emperorship leave a lot to be desired.

Authoritarian, carceral and narcissistic, our historical (and present-day) emperors have mostly fallen into the business of expanding wealth and power for its own sake—at all costs. Their methods trickle down into our communities and our relationships. They shape the ways we interact with others and ourselves.

This is a critical moment to engage the imagination in crafting a new vision of balanced authority relating to this card and its archetype. Tarot can help, as can nature.

I’ve often heard the Emperor of the tarot compared to the towering redwood tree or imposing saguaro cactus. These giants of the natural world know how to protect themselves (with thick bark or cactus needles) while also providing shelter and sustenance for whole ecosystems.

What if we recognized caregiving, not conquest, as the purview of the Emperor?

I want to hold up the Emperor Penguin as a prime example of Emperor energy, not for his size, but his adaptive capabilities. This animal is a master of endurance, nurturing and cooperation; one of the only creatures to survive the harsh conditions of Antarctica. Were you enchanted by the 2005 documentary March of the Penguins? I was! These tubby birds are cute AF and totally inspiring. Penguins trek for miles to frigid breeding grounds, where males incubate their single eggs through winter months that look like Armageddon. Meanwhile the females quest for far-flung hunting grounds. Once the chicks are hatched, colonies of Emperor penguins form a creche (the French term for nursery), where chicks huddle together for protection in a fluffy little cuddle fest.

How do we care for our young? Our communities? Ourselves?

The balanced Emperor works diligently toward finding sufficient answers—then puts them into action.

Reclaim your power.

Like the saguaro cactus towering against the dry, desert night or the penguin huddled against the harsh, Antarctic winter, perhaps humans are chronically situated on the edge of the abyss. The crises of our time, of Walter Benjamin’s time, can’t be denied. But for me, it’s helpful to hold space for the possibility that sometimes what feels like a crisis, might be us riding the ever-shifting edge of evolution. As a writing mentor of mine, Bethany Hegedus, said of the creative process—to breakdown is often to breakthrough.

The Emperor shows up to remind us that HOW we deal with the breakdown is significant. Despite what our modern and historical emperors might model for us: This is not a card to claim that our ends justify all means.

In fact—it’s the opposite. The Emperor calls us to CHECK our motivations and means—Are they aligned with our highest good? Are they non-harming? If so then this card is here to reassure you that YOU’VE GOT THIS.

Ultimately—YOU have to be the one to decide if you need to tweak your methods. The Emperor is not here to tell you how to handle your situation. Do not give this card (or any tarot card!) that much power.

YOU ARE THE EMPEROR. YOU HAVE THE POWER.

If we read the Emperor as a message that we must be strict, unyielding, and (possibly) punishing with ourselves to get results—we’re locking ourselves (and likely others) in a painful box.

Only the shadow-side of the Emperor is forever stubborn in their objectives and endlessly strong of will. Yes, he routinely places longterm stability over short-term satisfaction, but he remembers that his efforts are in the service of joy and fulfillment for all. Himself included.

The balanced Emperor facilitates full, abundant springtime profusion, but with compassion, clarity, and conscious intention.

I like what Tarot for the Wild Soul creator, Lindsay Mack says about the Emperor—that he comes to remind us that “We are here on purpose.” We exist by design, not by accident. The Emperor prompts us to ask: “What do we want to bring to the world? What do we want to offer to the world? What do we want to come home to?”1

As our own authorities we determine what ‘purpose’ our being here entails. Like the Justice card that forms its astrological counterpoint in Libra, the Emperor asks us to get clear about our values and act accordingly.

In the last days of Aries season, may we learn

• to step into our fullest, most compassionate means of leadership.

• to experience break-throughs that bring us into greater alignment with our values.

• to find (and give) the support we all need to keep ourselves upright.

Tend your growth.

Try this three-card spread to dig deeper into the Emperor/Aries energy showing up in you this season:

CARD 1 — What kind of Emperor am I?

CARD 2 — How can I best show up in community with others?

CARD 3 — How can I best care for myself?

SUBSCRIBERS—I wanna connect with you in the analog space! When three or more people subscribe to Arcana Craft based on your referral, you will receive a personalized tarot or oracle card message from me via good ol’ snail mail. Thanks for your ongoing support!

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“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” — C. G. Jung

I was eight months pregnant, attending a pre-birth information session at my O.B.’s office. A tall, no-nonsense labor and delivery nurse gave a lobby full of parents the rundown on the stages of labor and explained the spectrum of pain relief available for navigating the most-challenging “transition” stage. Because I am a good little student, the nurse only confirmed what I had already read up to that point. Then—she went off book. She explained about the nightmares.

“I know it’s hard right now,” she said. “You’re exhausted, uncomfortable. You can’t wait until the end of the day when you can—literally—crawl into your bed and sleep. And then what happens?” Her wide eyes swept over the expectant mothers collectively holding their breath and their pee. “You have the most vivid, horrifying dreams of your life.”

It wasn’t just me?

“You’re not crazy. The dreams are not a sign that you’re falling off the deep end. It’s just hormones and being pregnant.”

I gripped my belly—expansive, wide—as if I had swallowed the Moon.

The Moon who rules—

• the Realm of Dreams.

• the Subconscious.

• the watery depths of the Oceans and the rolling of its Tides.

• Imagination.

• Intuition.

• Menstruation.

• all Earthly cycles of Death and Rebirth.

While my body swelled to take her shape, the Moon flooded my mind with nightly visions of my most secret longings and bone-chilling fears. Dreams that followed me into my waking hours. Making me jumpy. Paranoid. A prequel of the postpartum anxiety that would sharpen into a thousand points once the tasks of new parenthood overwhelmed me.

The blessed utterance of that nurse: “You aren’t crazy,” served as a life raft. She normalized my experience—paving the way for me eventually to see my doctor about a prescription for Zoloft and a therapist-rec for some much-needed postpartum support.

Today, with my youngest child having just turned 9, pregnancy is a distant memory. (Most) of the frightening images cooked up in my waking and sleeping hours during that time have receded. Yet, I will always respect the capacity of those Dreams to knock me off center, even now as I practice a more playful engagement with the Moon and its symbolic landscape: the Dream World.

When you draw the MOON card

The energy of the Moon comes to us cloaked in mystery, pregnant with possibility, and tinged with danger. Perhaps that’s why it is a favorite emblem of witchcraft and divination. It promises insight that cannot be grasped by the rational mind and sheds its murky half-light onto what remains hidden, sacrosanct, illegible.

The Moon in a tarot spread indicates that something from the subconscious depths of your mind is rising to the surface asking for your attention—not to be understood, because there’s no promise of resolution here. The Moon asks only that the shadow of the Self be acknowledged, allowed, and (best-case scenario) accepted. When you pull this card, you are asked to make note of your Dreams.

But a quick note of caution—this shit can get freaky real fast.

I mean, look at the Moon card! What are those slavering hounds? Werwolves? (They’re actually symbols of our animal nature—one tame, one wild). And what about that giant lobster creeping up from the depths? (The shell-shedding psychopomp, traversing the liminal space between land and sea). Why are tongues of fire raining down on the landscape? (It’s just weird!) Under the Moon we encounter the strange and uncanny. We are plunged back into the amniotic ocean of our making, acting as both mother and midwife in an unending process of re-birthing ourselves.

You are invited into Dreamwork

You can’t keep yourself from dreaming, but you can opt out of Dreamwork.

I did not “work with” my dreams as a pregnant mother. They were too triggering. But by baby #2 I had learned to accept their appearance as part of my experience, then to release them. I think it’s fine to respond to our subconscious with the message—“thanks for bringing this up, but no thanks.” Sometimes it actually cues your brain to try a gentler approach. And sometimes your hormones really are just making your visions whack. Part of the difficulty of the Moon and its Dreaming is that it can be hard to discern the Truth from within the rolling tides of fantasy. Hence the traditional association of this card with delusion.

But there are treasures in the surf.

Even if you—like most folks raised in modern western culture—have learned to dismiss dreams as trivial nonsense, the chances are still pretty good that somewhere down the line a friend or family member pulled you aside to whisper: I had the strangest dream…

• A nocturnal vision that later surfaced with a sense of déjà vu in waking life.

• A nighttime visitation from a deceased loved one.

• A creative tip for a poem or a song they were writing remembered upon waking.

Maybe something like this has even happened to you?

If not, then you’ve probably still heard about Einstein’s dreams—where he generated his greatest scientific discoveries? Or of Harriet Tubman’s narcoleptic visions—which guided her path along the Underground Railroad?

I loved reading astrophysicist Stephon Alexander’s account of a dream that lead him to a key insight into the nature of cosmic inflation (the expansive propulsion set off during the Big Bang). Alexander writes: “Perhaps dreams are an arena that can enable supracognitive powers to perform calculations and perceptions of reality that may be incomprehensible in our wake state.”

We’re taught to chide ourselves for ‘spacing out,’ but recent studies have revealed the intellectual benefits of “robust daydreaming” as it correlates to “superior intelligence.” Some thinkers employ a practice of dream-seeding, a ritual method of prompting the mind to solve specific problems in the dream-state. Since the 1990s, psychologists at the Tavistock Institute have been working to develop a method of social dreaming, which asks members of a collaborative group (employees of businesses/schools/churches) to share their dreams with one another in a process aimed at co-creating new, wholistic approaches to their work. Tricia Hersey, author of Rest as Resistance, advocates for the importance of preserving the DreamSpace, that realm of the imagination, reached through rest, that holds the key to imagining true emancipation from capitalist and white supremacist culture.

Many indigenous cultures (as well as those in the ancient west) honored the visions and messages of our slumbering psyches as portends from the Spirit Realm. These practices were codified in ritual and religious ceremonies that persist in practice to this day despite the modern tendency to dismiss dreams as a form of temporary luna-cy. Many Latinx families begin their days by detailing their dreams over breakfast; perhaps your family does this as well? I love the crackling energy that arises between me and my children when we exchange retellings of our dreams. The laughs we share over their comic absurdities smooth the edges of the more troubling images that sometimes come forward. My daughter and I encourage each other to adapt vivid dreams into comic strips or story scenes.

If you have ever kept a dream journal, then you have probably shared my experience of rediscovering dreams—totally forgotten, yet eerily etched in your own hand—whose details jump from the page with revelatory insights months—or sometimes years!—after the dream occurred.

Carl Jung theorized that to dream offers us a field through which the unconscious and conscious mind collide, possibly generating a more authentic, self-actualized version of ourselves. He even gave this process (individuation) a sexual-creative dimension by (cis)gendering the conscious and subconscious, as the anima and animus, which through their coupling create the ever-evolving whole of the Self. Remember what I said about midwifing your own rebirth? In dreams, we all swallow the Moon.

Our Collective Dreaming

Jung also taught that the dreamscape was infused with images from the Collective Unconscious—that our visions spoke to the fears, hopes and concerns of others as much as ourselves. The process of sharing our Dreams, then, offers a potential site of collective healing and transformation.

In this last week of watery Pisces season and the wake of a lunar eclipse, let’s make a trade then—a dream for a dream. If you keep reading, you have to agree to write down a dream of your own, even if you burn it after.

Deal?

On waking, I had the immediate sense that this dream arrived to offer me matrilineal support. Professor T and Mary Oliver appeared as maternal archetypes, (in German—my area of study—the word for academic advisor is Doktormutter), exuding nurturance and care. The fact that their real-life counterparts never had human children is a good reminder that we all mother by creating and shaping the world within and around ourselves. In their own way, each of these women irrevocably shaped me.

And let’s not forget the poem I struggled to recall in the dream! “Wild Geese” — a verse all about BELONGING TO THE GREATEST MOTHER of all, the wild, spinning planet Earth. It opens with the audacious claim: “You do not have to be good.” A relief for this dreamer, who has been struggling to “be good” most of her life — good kid, good student, good wife, good mother, good friend, good writer. And—even in the dream!—a good Mary Oliver fan.

If “Wild Geese” reminds me that being good is not a prerequisite for belonging, Mary Oliver’s dream-presence encourages me to surrender to the needs of my “soft animal body.” Rest—she said—and open to the “harsh and exciting” possibilities of the imagination. The realm of the Moon.

This is one of those dreams that, like a folktale, a tarot card, or a favorite song, accrues meaning the more times that I revisit it. After all it’s not every night that I receive a visitation from a dead poet! But anymore, I am struck by how clearly the women in the dream represent two sides of my own creative process—intellectual rigor and intuitive release—the latter of which I was only just beginning to appreciate when this dream arrived for me.

I like the notion that dreams help us build our own personal mythologies, symbols and archetypes that we can return to for support, as I return to this dream when I’m caught in the habits of overworking I learned as a student.

Your Dreams—

Try the following tarot spread to help you unpack your dreams in the final, potent days of Pisces season:

• CARD 1 — What are your dreams asking you to acknowledge?

• CARD 2 — What are your dreams encouraging you to release through the next lunar cycle?

• CARD 3 — What new version of you is Luna helping you to gestate in the Dream World?

Your dreams don’t have to be particularly memorable or vivid for this spread to work, though you may experience an increase in your dreaming if you do it! Any kind of dream work sends a message to your subconscious that you are open to nightly insights, making it more likely that they will come in the future.

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My hope is that your nights be filled with marvelous dreams and divine visitations until we meet again. BUT—if you stir up a nightmare or two, remember what the labor nurse said: “You are not crazy.” You are a brilliant, shining mystery—gestating something new.

Fast-forward almost five years and I’m writing these regular missives on tarot/creativity/spiritual life; I probably don’t need to tell you that Claire’s approach to tarot struck a chord. It was incredible to learn that I didn’t have to be psychic to read the cards, that they could help to reframe and anchor my spinning thoughts, and that they could open up a portal to the imaginal realm that I (subconsciously) craved in my writing and my life.

I’ve continued to work with Claire in the intervening years as her coaching client, tarot querent, and as a member of her Bluestone Writers group, always benefitting from her intuitive, grounded approach to uniting craft with the ‘cosmic.’

Last week, as I sat down with her to talk more specifically about her writing and tarot practice, our discussion often danced between such binaries—

• craft and cosmic

• action and interiority

• tedium and wonder

• embodiment and mental flow

This reconciliation of opposites is deeply embedded in the symbolic imagery of the tarot itself. (See JUSTICE and TEMPERANCE.) My conversation with Claire reminded me that the alchemical interplay between sprit and matter, which the tarot teaches, lies at the center of every creative process. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW.

Social Imperative — Innermost Delight

As her client, I’ve come to associate Claire’s zoom box—backed by a shelf of abundant books, pocket-sized artwork, and a card to represent the lunar phase—with dramatic insights related to my own creative conjurings. It’s an extra pleasure to begin our conversation by asking about her current projects.

Claire describes transitioning from work on a horror novel (recently finished and out with agents) to the “true-fantasy-novel romp” that she’s in the midst of revising.

In the horror novel, Claire says, “some of the villains are literally like Elon Musk’s little lackeys…like little interns turned absolutely dangerous, as a form of chaos.” A good example of a kind of timely cultural criticism revealing itself in the story. “It’s a bit serious, even though it’s a romp in its own way.” It falls into the realm of work that feels “important,” Claire says, but with an affected, nasal tone—actively resisting any pretense.

In contrast, Claire’s voice brims with enthusiasm as she declares her fantasy novel: “just a damn good time.”

“It feels much more broad in a way. It doesn’t feel tied to a time period,” she says. This sweeping scope left more room for Claire to develop a main character (MC) that sought pleasure to an extent that surprised even Claire. “I am used to writing sharper protagonists,” she says, so when a beta reader remarked of the MC: “I like her ‘cause she’s soft and fun,” and that “she’s finding joy,” Claire was taken aback. “I cringed initially,” she laughs.

But after a beat, this feedback felt just right. “I was like…this is so great…as I said: that’s the whole point of the novel. A fun ride.”

Embracing the pleasure of the ride for its own sake, we both agree, can be subversive in its own right; particularly in a cultural context that routinely demands its members (especially women) suppress their desire in the service of others. This subtle resistance creates a generative tension: “I think it can be really good grist for the mill when you feel like something is maybe not quite what you’re supposed to do or not quite what you’ve been taught,” Claire explains.

“In grad school I always felt like a bit of a fish out of water because while I was desperate to write creative nonfiction, which is what I was studying at Sarah Lawrence…I was not a creative non-fiction reader like my peers were. They were like devouring the greats…They read stuff like Gore Vidal…current non-fiction and all the canonical stuff. And I had this revelation where I was like, oh, I read fantasy. That’s what I’ve always read…and I’m finally coming back around to it in my writing.”

I tell Claire about my own experience in graduate school—five years in, I had been racking my brain reading Goethe, Schiller, Gunter Grass, scouring medieval texts for their historical-cultural underpinnings, all in a language I was still struggling to comprehend, when a high school friend leant me her tween daughter’s copies of Twilight—complete with Edward’s name scrawled in hearts at the margins—and I was absolutely floored. I had forgotten that people actually read and wrote like that. It was pure ecstasy.

Claire is fully supportive of my indulgence in the “Twilight Cupcake.”

“It can be really important and really revelatory to think about what reading experiences shaped you, even from a really young age, when you’re trying to find focus in your writing life. It’s like: what are the anchors that I always go back to? For me, they’re just like pure magic, wild, made up stuff.”

Claire shares her memories of breaking from the work she did on her undergraduate thesis to gobble up C.S. Lewis’s The Space Trilogy; “they were just so weird!” Or when she had her first job out of college, which was with a wonderful employer but the work itself was “just sometimes a bit of a snooze.”

“One of my friends from childhood, whom I hadn’t spoken with in probably, like, ten years at this point, mailed me the first Outlander novel because she was like: ‘I just read this and the main character’s name is Claire, and I just thought of you.’” Reading Outlander became a touchstone of magic and wonder in her work day. “I was just sitting in the park with the pigeons; like reading was just this treasured kind of anchor in the day.”

I can’t help but notice this metaphor coming up over and over: ANCHOR. And I wonder aloud if the potency of our reading/writing experience is partly determined by the extent to which it helps rebalance whatever energy we happen to be sitting in at the time. An anchor, after all, is something that helps us resist the urge to drift off course—protecting us from moving too far with the current, whether out to sea or against the rocky shore. The anchor is the grounding tether that, ironically, helps keep us afloat.

Cerebral Swirl — Focused Action

Tarot, too, can function as an anchor.

Claire received her first reading, she tells me, almost by accident back in 2018. She’d planned to photograph her friend and writer, Jen Brown, as a character in the apocalyptic fashion blog that she wrote with her spouse called, “Have You Seen Me?” Jen was to portray a tarot reader, so Claire and her friends picked up an oracle deck by Kim Krans, drawn to its beautiful animal imagery. It turned out that Jen was very familiar with tarot and so after the photo shoot she gave the group a reading. “We were shook,” Claire says. “The cards were reading us all.”

About a year later, working as an organizer for the Writing Barn in South Austin, Claire connected with Cecily Sailer of Typewriter Tarot and began to learn from her approach to using the cards in creative practice.

“And then I had a really horrible job,” Claire laughs. “Anything magical [comes] out of having a horrible job.” During the peak of the pandemic she rotated in and out of an office with her colleagues completing mundane tasks—ending up with long stretches of time alone in the building with her hands occupied but her mind free. She listened through Lindsay Mack’s extensive back-catalogue of Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast episodes, while deep in the psychic experience of the pandemic when all of us, Claire says, were asking: “Who are we? What are we doing?”

“I think as writers we’re always looking for meaning, we’re always like: but what does it mean? What does it mean? And I think of Tarot as a reframing tool…that’s really grounding and also opens up possibility…It wakes you up a bit.”

This doesn’t mean that you always get the card, or the experience, or the energy you are hoping for when you go to your deck, Claire says. But whether you find the cards supportive, confronting, or encouraging, it’s all useful information. It also helps the overwhelmed mind to focus its attention.

“We love writing stories because we’ve got a lot of thoughts and a lot of feels and we got a lot going on in the brain pan…[Tarot] is a way to channel the swirl.” A card gives you a point of focus—sometimes that’s all you need to get your feet back underneath you.

Embodied — Ethereal

Claire credits tarot with helping her get through a particularly jarring heath crisis in 2021 as well as irrevocably shaping her approach to her writing. These days, however, Claire says she’s finding her time outdoors to be the most nourishing aspect of her spiritual practice. Whether working in her garden or leaving small offerings of flowers in gratitude while on a walk, the physicality of being in nature, she says, provides a necessary counterpoint to the mental labor of writing.

The body, the landscape, in turn, become important points of emphasis in Claire’s approach to craft. Often her courses ask writers to anchor into the body, crafting from the visceral experience of the character. Claire and I speculate for a bit on the relationship between intuition and the body—and I feel us coming upon one of the tarot’s oppositional unities again—spirit and matter.

When writing, Claire suggests, you can go with the emphasis that feels most familiar first. “Sometimes it’s like: I know exactly how she (or I or they) feel in this moment;” other times it’s easier to see it. Write where the energy is and add the supporting element in revision. “Once you have both it’s three-dimensional as opposed to just being one or the other.”

The Transcendent Third

I love this notion of a balanced duality giving rise to a vibrant, dynamic third element. To me it resonates with Jung’s notion of the “transcendent third” — a psychological state generated by holding space for tension between two opposing forces. As creators (and humans) we are always operating in this middle ground—between creative vision and execution, perception and reality, conscious and subconscious; so of course art that mirrors that dualistic state would develop its own vitality—its own life.

Claire is incredibly adept at holding space for this tension with her clients. Fittingly, her spring offerings deal directly with the dual requirements of creative life: robust labor and sacred rest. Her three-month “Spring Creative Commitment,” beginning March 3, builds on the seasonal sessions she gave at the turn of the year, focused on the magic of the tarot’s Nines and the energy of the Hermit. Now that wintry recluse encounters the springtime thirst for abundant growth.

“It’s about balancing that desire to complete something in the course of a few months…and then do that with a kind of gentle and nourishing approach to the body and spirit. And reinforce that with a community who’s on board for the same attitude and energy. It’s not like pushing through at all costs…it’s more like I really wanna do this thing and I want to do it with support and I wanna do it in a way that best fits my capacity.”

The course kicks off with a free webinar: “Winter to Spring,” this Saturday, February 22. (If you don’t have the opportunity to attend the webinar a recording is available on request.) “It’s going to be a chance for us to talk about: how are we doing this winter-spring thing? Where are we going? What are we doing?”

• You can find out more about Claire’s mentorship offerings and tarot readings at Bluestone Writers. Or connect with her on Instagram or Bluesky.

In whatever way that you find to hold the tensions stretching through your life this season, I hope that the dance between is generative, transcendent, and full of joy.

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“We are living with the reality that nothing lasts;
we need to learn to love anyway.”
—Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Sometimes I feel as if my story (the one I am chiseling into a novel from the marble rock-face of my subconscious) has its own sentience. It seems to do what it wants, leading me down paths I don’t expect into places that I don’t anticipate. Often (through the rabbit holes of my research), it introduces me (whether in real life or through writing) to people who become important teachers and guides—not just for my project but for my life.

It’s Aquarius season for just a few more days yet—meaning we are in the archetypal energy of the STAR card. Appropriately, my story recently introduced me to Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astronomer now credited with the discovery of PULSARS, neutron stars that emit spinning beams of radiation from their magnetic poles; energetic waves that, from our earthly vantage point, pulse with light. (I say now credited, because Bell Burnell was left off of the 1974 Nobel prize award bestowed on her two male advisors for the discovery she made as a graduate student in 1967.) By tracking the rate at which the pulsars’ orbits decay, astronomers have since been able to measure the gravitational density surrounding these stars with unprecedented accuracy, enabling the testing of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. Science literature often compares the pulsar to a lighthouse at sea, alerting astronomers to the shape and structure of the vast, ineffable universe.

And here we are—you and I—sitting on our watery planet, bathed by these celestial beacons, looking at the STAR card.

Wow, right?

I’m marveling at the (coincidental?) way in which the figure on the card, stripped of all pretense (and clothing), trains her focus not on the heavenly bodies above her, but the work of her hands—the pouring out of water into a pool, onto the ground. She doesn’t look at the stars, and yet I get the sense that she is aware of them. Perhaps listening to the stars overhead as Bell Burnell did back when she first noticed their surprising, rhythmic pulse?

Where so many of her predecessors had used visual telescopes to conduct their research, Bell Burnell helped to build a radio telescope that could track the precise location, positioning and brightness of a star based on the frequency of the energy it emits. Only by listening to the stars could Bell Burnell discern the pulsing beat at the heart of the neutron star.

To my mind, this speaks to the subtle energy of the STAR card. Its message

• of hope,

• of restoration,

• of the vivification of the soul’s purpose

is felt, rather than seen. Whispered rather than demonstrated.

The STAR follows the TOWER in the major arcana. It arrives after our battlements have been trampled, the outward trappings of our knowledge tumbled along with the foundations underneath them. The TOWER crumbles and leaves an absence—like the void of space, ready to be filled with our STAR-lit dreaming.

Reading Bell Burnell, I’m reminded that the transition from TOWER to STAR parallels the macrocosmic story of our very bodies. In a 2013 lecture reflecting on her Quaker faith and her role as a scientist, Bell Burnell alludes to Carl Sagan’s famous quote “we are made of star stuff,” reminding her audience that we owe the chemical make up of our bodies to the deaths of stars that winked out long before our Sun was born. We were made through cataclysmic destruction, without which, Bell Burnell notes, the universe itself will not survive.

“One thing that will happen in the distant future is that the stars will go out…All those useful chemical elements like oxygen, carbon, gold are formed inside stars, and at the expense of hydrogen. There will come a time when in some dark clouds new stars will form, but will not light up because they do not contain enough hydrogen to start shining. Meanwhile the old stars will be reaching the end of their lives and fading. So there will come a time when the old stars die and no new stars start—the lights will go out.”

It’s a bleak picture—a universe that demands upheaval and promises only death.

And yet, as Bell Burnell says, “we need to learn to love anyway.”

This is the gentle urging of the STAR card—

Love anyway.
Pour your heart out onto the earth anyway.
Dream anyway.

We need, Burnell says, to adopt a new understanding of hope:

“We tend to believe that hope is about happy endings, about things coming out OK in the end, and if that is what we believe we are in trouble here! There is an alternative understanding of what hope means. It is one that says hope is less about the future and more about the now; it is an attitude, stubborn and persistent, consistently doing what feels to be right and not giving up, even when things are dark. It is about identifying things that are good, and putting effort into them; it’s about finding meaning in all forms of existence. It’s about believing that through such actions we may bring something to fulfilment.”

All of this rings true, and yet—there’s more.

The STAR card reminds us that we are not alone in our dreaming. The seven star-sisters (the Pleiades) that surround the central star, the flowing pool of water that symbolizes the oceanic union of all things, the winged animal-aspect of Thoth, God of Wisdom, perched in the landscape—these elements speak to the presence of divine, benevolent support for our central figure. But to feel this presence ourselves we have to practice what Bell Burnell calls an “a-rational way of working,” based in intuition rather than reason or logic. A-rationality, Bell Burnell reminds us, is different from ir-rationality, which is “illogical or not reasonable.” Thus she eschews religious accounts of the origin of the universe, knowing that they don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, but declares:

“I ‘know’ that there is a God, a living, loving God who works through people, prompting, nudging. A God of inspiration, of creativity; a God we can sense in the silence of a gathered Quaker meeting. One who holds a mirror up to us so that we can see our behavior, keep our standards. One before whom masks, poses and postures drop away; one who knows us as perhaps only our parents knew us; there we are most truly ourselves.”

Burnell’s point of contact with this divine presence is the Quaker Meeting, a communal practice of sitting in a meditative circle with members ministering to one another as intuition compels. But the central, solitary figure in the STAR card, naked, kneeling, reflects a similar experience of sacred presence, even if she is only half-conscious of her participation in it.

The figure pours one pitcher out into the pool (knowingly, as she is looking at it) while the other streams over the earth beneath her without her conscious involvement. “I am aware,” Bell Burnell explains, “that I have been several times prompted to minister in a Meeting for Worship, or to speak on a particular topic, without understanding why, but follow that leading to do so, subsequently to discover I was speaking to a need unknown to me. Over time I have learnt to pay attention to such promptings, but suspect I still fail to recognise some.”

Bell’s account of her experience in Meeting suggests that when we act in alignment with our purpose, as advocated in the STAR card, (and we might argue advocated by the practice of tarot as a whole), we end up watering flowers that we didn’t even know were in need of our tending. Our gentle, aligned effort becomes a gift, not just for our own healing and restoration, but that of the world around us.

This effort need not be particularly active, or apparent. In fact, in STAR energy, the best effort is often that which opens a space for REST.

“So close is the sense of communion that breathing becomes prayer. I encounter a God who supports us, cares for us, grieves with us, empowers us and acts through us in the world, but particularly at such moments calms, heals, holds and sends us out again a little more sensitive, a little wiser, to make a better world.”

This is the kind of energy that the STAR card suggests is waiting for you to claim as your own when it comes up in a reading. And, as our guiding energy for Aquarius season, I hope it has found you, supported and guided you through the turbulent early weeks of this year.

In the monthly tarot circle that I host for my faith community, we drew a trio of cards to clarify how STAR energy might be showing up in our lives with the following prompts:

CARD 1: What light is here to guide me?

CARD 2: What waters are here to replenish me?

CARD 3: What light shines through me as a guide for others?

If you try this spread I invite you to share your findings in the comments. Your insights may provide a sign post, a lighthouse beam, a pulsar’s beacon, across the dark expanse of the internet to another reader. Plus, it’s FUN.

And—as my story likes to remind me—fun is worth the effort of its making.

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Quotes above from:

• Jocelyn Bell Burnell. A Quaker Astronomer Reflects: Can a Scientist Be Religious? The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia, 2013.

Luckily we're not alone. Fellow searchers are out here in the darkness, cleaving a way through confusion with their light.

One such lantern-bearer, is creative polymath Ana Vidina Hernández.

When I asked Ana, a musician, composer, writer, artist and social worker, to chat with me over lunch about her creative process, I had no idea how closely her personal story would mirror the archetypal experience of the Hermit, but (as is so often the case with creative magic) energies aligned. You know that saying, when the student is ready, the teacher appears? It was a bit like that.

We had arranged to meet at Opa!, the Greek place I love for its proliferate evil-eye decor and reliable seating. It’s only downside is the South Lamar traffic flanking its front patio like a shark-infested moat. Just navigating my way into the parking lot felt like a win that week, as I was still deep within my mid-January funk. Like me, the coffee shop seemed not to have emerged from its holi-daze. A line of flat, red Christmas stockings hung limp from the ceiling; in the corner, the twinkle of a tinsel tree competed with the strobe effect of sun on windshields flashing outside.

Then Ana appeared, adding the beam of her own bright smile beneath a poor-boy hat to the scene. She seemed to carry the assurance that all of this was right on time. And as we settled into a quiet corner table, I got the sense that she was right.

Ana began to tell me about her time as a social worker and the all-too-common burnout she experienced post-graduate school. She had thrown herself whole-heartedly into the field, completing a secondary degree, and beginning her own non-profit program to support immigrant families in Texas. The work was meaningful, helping to bring a trauma-informed lens to immigration law and its practice, but she was so busy, she said, that her nervous system suffered near-constant disregulation. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit and she was forced to scale back on her work, that she began to experiment with her own energetic rhythms more intentionally. During that time, she picked up Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, prompting a profound personal transformation.

Cameron’s book, subtitled A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, is well known among artists for assignments like morning pages and artist dates. It outlines a twelve-week process to help blocked creatives reconnect with the deep wells of their own insight, mostly through play and low-stakes experimentation. Working through the activities in the book strengthened Ana's resolve to change her situation dramatically—she had already planned to step down from her position at the program she helped to create and commit herself to a several-months-long, self-funded sabbatical. The book helped her chart the path forward. Serendipitously, her completion of Cameron’s twelve-week program (for the second time), coincided with her last week at work.

Enter the Hermit.

For months Ana made no demands of herself outside of meeting her basic needs and following her creative whims. “I did legos,” she tells me, eyes twinkling. “I took a road trip.” Her body tips back in her chair, as though the memory of those weeks emits a physical force, a cleansing breeze that lifts a weight from her shoulders.

“That time off was the best part of my whole life,” she grins.

Then she laughs: “I didn’t make a list for like 4 months!” This was such a far cry from the days when each of her multiple projects warranted its own color-coded notebook full of carefully prioritized to-dos. “Of course I do make lists now,” she adds. “I do have to remember things.” But it’s different.

The gift of this self-designed hermitage allowed Ana to reset her nervous system in away that felt impossible under the pressure of all that doing.

Of course, this kind of retreat isn’t accessible to everyone, at least not to the same degree, Ana acknowledges. “You can look at the injustice in the world and you can look at how it can be a privilege to have these things. To have time to adjust your schedule. All of that’s true. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not something you should think about.”

Ana sites artist and activist Tricia Hersey’s work on "Rest as Resistance” and the Nap Ministry as a source of inspiration.

“For me the power of the Nap Ministry is [the reminder that] there’s no financial requirement for self-compassionate rest. It’s a human right…and rest is an act of resistance. Community care is an act of resistance….and art…is some of the best community care.”

Hersey began her own resistance movement against grind culture as inspired by her grandmother, a black woman with multiple jobs helping to raise grandchildren. Despite labor-intensive demands of work and caregiving, Hersey’s grandmother took an hour everyday to sit on the sofa and meditate, young ones playing around her. Every time that we create pockets of time devoted to rest, Hersey advocates, we reclaim our human dignity. Our right to rest as spiritual beings. (See Rest as Resistance).

Ana’s retreat from work alongside the revival of creative play that she’d kicked off with The Artist’s Way, helped her to reimagine what kind of work she wanted to put into the world and how she wanted to do it. “I wanted to build a business where I could bring my whole self.” So in 2023, Ana launched her creative consulting practice, Vidina Visions Consulting, helping other folks to take their intuitive ‘nudges’ and follow them toward the cultivation of their Self-aligned, authentic lives.

Of course, it wasn’t a smooth and easy path forward. Two months after taking the risk to launch her business, her partner had his hours severely cut in a round of nation-wide tech lay-offs. Ana ultimately had to seek out a full-time position, but it was with a different set of personal parameters in place. She was able to schedule her work week around her own energy flow and to continue to build her own business. Since July of last year, she has been back to consulting full-time. Through her business she supports individual clients, her “Take up Space” groups, as well as organizations in the non-profit sector where she had worked in the past—only now she incorporates the creative, self-intuitive approach that she continued to hone in her personal practice.

“It wasn’t like: oh I did the Artist’s Way and now I’m intuitive,” she explains. “This is all the peeling back of the onion that I was doing.”

In fact, her transformation via the Artist’s Way was meaningfully amplified by earlier work she had undergone in developing an intuitive eating practice. “It was like: ok, first I reconnected with my body, I didn’t hate my body anymore…a different way [was] possible.” Then, she embarked on a Marie Kondo-led transformation of her living space in tandem with her partner, who, as a half-Japanese American, resonated with the Shinto foundation of Kondo’s organizational method. Shintoism, Ana explains, is based in the idea that “every object has a spirit—is alive. And framing [personal organization] as your relationship with the objects in your life was totally different” for her; particularly given the severe hoarding situation in which she had grown up.

Ana brings this up, she explains, because the basis of Kondo’s method, which relies on the process of considering whether or not to keep individual belongings by weighing one’s internal response to that object, is the practical application of intuition. “Thinking about taking every object I own and holding it in my hands and deciding whether it brings me joy or not? It took me a really long time to be at a place where that didn’t feel threatening.” But in time, she found the practice healing. It allowed her to develop “the ability to inhabit” her space and “feel ownership” over her place in it.

All of these practices kept guiding Ana gently back to her own intuitive heart, which she likens to the therapeutic concept of Self-Energy in the psychological framework of Internal Family Systems. By this model, each of us has a guiding, benevolent consciousness, the Self, that works in tandem with our “parts,” these being patterns of ours that develop out of personal experiences (good and bad) and which we call upon to help us navigate our lives. The Self is the higher-knowing, the calm, creative, curious consciousness that, ideally, helps us delegate among our parts.

It’s not a stretch for me to picture this Self as the wise elder depicted in the Hermit card, carrying the guiding light of our soul’s purpose, illuminating the parts of us that so often operate in shadow.

Already, 2025 seems poised to confront us with the exiles of our unconscious, our individual and collective responses to uncertainty, grief and fear. If (as I believe) creative play offers a means of acquainting ourselves with our parts and practicing what it feels like to act from our Self (rather than our reactive patterns) then I want to know how to keep doing it—even when it’s hard. And Ana, as the composer and lyricist of four musicals, knows how to keep a project going.

“Do something for your artist every day,” Ana advises. “I used to write letters to my inner artist child or from my inner artist child. And I think that builds the intuition muscle.” But it can be anything. Something as small as drinking tea from a favorite cup, she says.

“It’s like a mindfulness practice,” I note. “But with an added element. I observe things as they are, but I’m also asking how I relate to them, how I might be able to change them.”

How am I a co-creator of this moment?

“Exactly,” Ana says. She explains how she has learned to keep herself motivated by centering your own interests. When writing, Ana says, “I ask myself what is the most fun thing that could happen [in my story] right now. What is the most me thing that could happen.” Additionally, she sets up her space for experimentation, with a wide, open table and enticing supplies. Ultimately, she says: “If a project isn’t feeling playful, I usually do a different project.”

“Maybe it’s like a sign,” I say. “That it needs to rest.”

“Yes!” Ana draws out the affirmation. “We need to rest and projects need to rest! I hadn’t put it that way before, but I like that…I also find that I do really well with prompting,” she says. She’ll leave active work on a project with a specific question in mind, about a character or a song, and “prompt” her brain to work on it subconsciously. Throughout the day, often in the shower, she’ll get little insights around her question that arise in moments of relaxation and she’ll take notes when necessary. Several of her projects, she tells me, even originated from the subconscious, making their way to her through dreams.

This way of working takes a lot of trust and patience, but for someone like Ana, who describes herself as “super autonomous,” it works better than the demands of “accountability,” on which artists so often rely. “It’s really freeing to take the pressure off,” Ana says, and it helps you to develop “a different way to approach asking questions and finding answers.”

It’s an hour or so into our conversation and I can envision how such a practice must have helped to cultivate the warmth that Ana radiates—her easy laughter and sparkling intellect. There is a joy and a delight in imagining the path forward not as a rigid mode of grinding onward, but a wide field of possibility and surprise.

“I always say that when there’s only two options, that’s always a lie…” Ana says. “There’s always a third option. When you look for the third option…in my reasoning that means there’s a fourth and a fifth and…infinite options. You almost always find something that you didn’t expect.”

This is a way of moving forward that feels sustainable, enjoyable, and free—but how does it stand up to the weightiness of these times?

“I think about the things that made my life better growing up—and it’s all art,” Ana says. “I’ve talked to people who struggle, especially people who come from a justice background, people who are in social work, too, and they struggle to validate their desire to create art…And I’ve just been like: what were the things that changed your life growing up? What were the things that made it bearable? What were the things that made it better?

“And it’s the books you read and the music you listened to and [how] it described your reality or it gave you an escape, or whatever it was. [Art] makes such a huge impact on our lives that for us to discount it so much, for us to undervalue it, for us to not think that it’s a valid contribution to the world that deserves time and money and space…that’s bananas!”

“It’s quite oppressive,” I whisper.

“Yes!” Ana says; her voice strong, steady, practiced. “And art often speaks truth. So there’s reason for it to be oppressed.”

This year may or may not offer us long swaths of time and space to devote to our creative practices. We may or may not be able to carve out a Hermit’s cave where we can sink into serenity and calm. Like the wanderer on the tarot card, the labor of the journey draws us onward. Yet even the smallest actions, the subtlest shifts in attention, can connect us with our inner Wise One.

Light the lanterns. Forge the path. And rest. Don’t forget to rest.

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You can connect with , check out her poetry, listen to demos from her musicals, buy prints of her art and learn about working with her at:

https://www.vidinavisionsconsulting.com

On Instagram you can follow both Ana’s business: @vidinavisionsconsulting https://www.instagram.com/vidinavisionsconsulting/

And her art: @vidinavisions https://www.instagram.com/vidinavisions/

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I’m grateful to be able to create this newsletter for free. Yet if you feel called to participate in an energy exchange based on what you’ve read here, please consider donating to one of the following non-profit organizations recommended by Ana:

• Rooted Texas: An organization supporting undocumented and immigrant students at UT Austin who lost the Monarch Program in 2024 as a direct result of implementing SB 17. https://www.gofundme.com/f/ut-austin-immigrant-student-fund

• Casa Marianella: An Austin shelter for immigrants that also offers access to legal and medical resources, food, clothing, English classes, and other resources. https://www.casamarianella.org

• American Gateways: An immigration legal nonprofit https://www.americangateways.org