Week 2: 8/31/25

Welcome back. If you’re new to this new blog (hi there!), each week we’re asking the cards, How do we survive the next week at the end of an empire.

We’ve drawn: King of Swords (4), The Devil (2), Justice (1), Queen of Cups (3), Hermit (5). 

Lots of majors! 

The Justice card always demands that we figure out first whether this is real justice, or whether it is systemic justice—which isn’t just at all, but is often legalized enslavement or devaluation. Take the example of Les Miz: Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread because he’s hungry. He gets caught and sentenced to years of hard labor, and then after he gets out he’s pursued by a fundamentalist asshole (with an admittedly good 11’clock number) who simply hates the guy on spec. Actual Justice would be Valjean being able to feed himself and his lived ones and not getting arrested for stealing. Systemic justice is what happens in the play. 

Flanked by the Devil, and the Queen of Cups, I think we’re actually being asked to question what we view as Justice. In this case, we’re seeing The Devil in his more negative aspect when partnered with the King of Swords, who actually mimics the Justice card in tone and posture. This is systemic justice, emotionless, logical, and punitive; this is the justice of private prisons and increased wealth for enslavers, and it is injustice to the impoverished and persecuted. 

Modern culture, so-called merit-based culture, culture that loathes special treatment, unless it’s for cis gendered straight white folx with. money, is this card combo—and so, even today, many of us will rally around a Robin Hood, a Zorro, and Elphaba, we’ll cheer them at the box office—but when the Robins and the Zorros and the Elphabas arrive in real life, even many of the most progressive of us remarks, “Well, they should have protested peacefully” or “they shouldn’t have blocked traffic, people have to get to work.” This is the cold, sharp-eyed colonial cynicism not of the american political right, but increasingly of the so-called american political left—which is really just rebranded right-of-center status-quo-ism. This is the Bill Nye-approved “astrology isn’t real because I can’t see it, even though the scientific method demands that I assume something exist until I find evidence that it doesn’t.” 

The Queen of Cups and The Hermit, on the other hand, are weirdly guided by the exact opposite. The Hermit here, holding their light up to this queen is saying, “Fuckin’ look, assholes, LOOK! Believe the evidence of your own eyes and your own hearts. Your hearts know that what stands for Justice in this world isn’t; your heart knows what you’re seeing is wrong. And you’re wise enough to know that this is about you as much as it is about anyone else. Our heart-minds, as I’ve heard them called recently, know when shit is fucked up. BELIEVE WHEN YOUR HEART-MIND IS TELLING YOU SHIT IS FUCKED UP!”

The Queen and the Hermit in this case make up the idea of the heart-mind; it’s a mind guided by actual love, rather than cold, so-called objective injustice. 

Thus, the way we get sustain and survive this week is through a rethinking of our views of Justice. We’re are we still clinging to colonial cynicism and bigoted, corporate, “logical” justice? And where are we being guided by the human’s innate heart-mind, by the union of love and perception, so that we can actually see what we’re really seeing. 

To put it another way, where is there a gap between your basic human empathy and your learned sense of colonial cynicism and “logic”?

Until next week, dear ones. 
Let me know how you are. 

TB. ​