week 7: sing out, louise

Queen of Pents (left), The World, Ace of Arrows (Center), the Fool (Above), King of Cups (below), Two of Arrows, Two of Wands (Right) from Tarot of the Woodland Wardens.

Here’s a deck that I find cute-but-not-cloying. I’m not among those who find animals wearing human clothing or engaging with human things weird or silly. I find it charming, and that’s probably because I’ve always been a lover of the idea of fairy tale. It makes total sense to me to see animals behaving like humans and humans behaving like animals, because my sensibility was so strongly influenced by Lewis Caroll and Narnia (alas). Of course, the seductive thing about fairy tale is that they’re generally morality bullshit wrapped up in magic. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, one of my all-time favorites as a child, chief among them. Fairy tale seduces because we want magic. We just don’t need the christo-colonial dogma they bring with them. 

This deck seduces with a charm and refinement that makes these cuties (how much do I identify as the chubby little mole in the Two of Arrows?) seem dignified. And I’m not joking. It’s Tarot of the Woodland Warden.

Not dignified is the absolute mess of a cardstock choice. I already have done this number several times, but the thickness of cardstock creates accessibility issues. You can see my “open letter” on Instagram, and I’m sure the publishers I tagged, including this deck’s publisher, will do nothing about it—but, well, at some point this squeaky wheel needs to get some grease, amiright?

Other than the stock, there’s nothin’ I don’t like about this eminently readable and not-too-suite curios. Alas, my hands hurt from shuffling. 

The Ace of Arrows is flanked by The World and the Two of Arrows. Here, arrows=swords. I pulled “influence” cards for each of the three, mostly just because I find the deck so delightful to look at that I simply wanted to see more cards—and I nearly drew more, which shows you how delighted I am by the artwork, and this how mournful I am of the stock. 

“Everything” — that’s a way I typically read the World. And I’ve found in dialogue with my guide that he frequently uses that word when he’s overwhelmed. In this case, it’s usually in a positive way, but for so many of us right now it isn’t. Everything…. is a lot. 

But it’s worth considering that the wearier, more despairing, least certain of us right now are the ones who have the least amount of experience living under oppression. Queer people, particularly trans people, people of global majority, children of global majority, and the people in nations whose natural resources are torn from the earth so that I can share this and you can read it, these communities have known how mythological “democracy” really is. It’s just that straight, white, and cis folx are discovering that they, too, can have their rights taken away. They’d taken them for granted. A lot of never had that luxury. 

“Oh a lecture, from a cis white boy who calls himself queer.” Sure. Get defensive. It ain’t gonna help you survive. Because if you keep feeling EVERYTHING as CAUSE FOR DESPAIR or, on the other hand, TOTALLY FINE, you’re going to crack. 

The Queen of Pentacles, who influenced the World, presents us with the quality of survivalism. Ah, survivalism—a specifically American concept: “I’m fine living totally underground off ancient canned goods while everyone else is incinerated/raptured, and I will definitely not go mad from complete and total absence of sunlight.” 

You do you, babe, but global problems require collective solution. The “at least I got mine” attitude of stereotypical survivalism is exactly how we wound up here. (I recognize some people tend toward survivalism thanks to trauma. But if that were the only reason, it would not be a billion dollar industry because one thing this country doesn’t give a fuck about is trauma responses.)

Hoard your resources! Everything is bad! 

“Nay, bitch,” sayeth the Ace of Swords, “one bite at a time.” 

The Ace of Swords is influenced by the Fool and the King of Cups (who I almost called “the king of beavers” in a thing I’m now unlikely to forget any time I see this card now). My friend Liz is taking a long workshop focusing on the big “tome” by Robert M. Place The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, & Neoplatonism (3rd ed.), and she reminded me of something in the older images of The Fool: the animal scratching at the poor dude is meant to indicate that the guy is a stranger in a strange place. He doesn’t belong there, which is why the animal chases him away. 

If you look at the way I arranged the cards impulsively, it looks as though the Fool is actually leaping away from the Ace of Arrows and into, literally into the World. The King of Cups, on the other hand, looks away from it all. It is foolish for us to think we can do everything, solve everything, suffer everything, and to do that all at once.

It is the emotionally mature thing to recognize that we don’t have to onboard all of that. We just have to start speaking--softly, and then a little bit louder and more passionately. 

Arrows/swords aren’t just thoughts, they’re words. The suit of swords is the suit of saying. Say the things. You don’t have to from zero to sixty, just form one to two. The energy (Two of Wands, influencing the Two of Swords) will kick in—and because twos are magnetic, you’ll begin finding this truth-telling addictive, and you should, because it is healthy and correct and the more voices raised in singing, the less dangerous it us from the people currently singing out. 

Using your voice is not just about arrogance or grandstanding. It is the recognition that when vulnerable people stick their heads out to tell the truth, they are far less likely to get their fucking heads chopped off if there’s a hundred other heads. They can’t chop off all the heads. 

This is a reading about joining the choir, even if you feel like you waited to long.

Join it. If you wanna sing out, SING OUT. 
It’s time. ​