July 1, 2024 / The Bad Ass Tarot Deck
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Intro Notes to the Deck & Reading
Like many of you, I’ve been going through a metamorphosis over the past several months. Many moments when I could have hidden myself in the safe confines of my usual, overthinking excuses. Or, I could accept the challenge and rise to conquer my own demons by soothing their fears and sparking my heart to hope again.
Every transformation is a death. How we choose to see it is how we’ll embrace this season of change. For example, when I pulled the cards on Sunday (admittedly later than normal), I couldn’t fathom how this energy could have flowed from the more soothing messages in last week’s post.
The universe is peering at us, much like Six in Battlestar Galactica’s opening scenes, asking us “Are you alive?” This is the opening blow of a threat we created. Maybe passively, but the bomb still has humanity’s fingerprints all over it. Our complicit values are programmed within – the same values that now unravel our reality.
This Badass Tarot Deck takes no prisoners this week. The writing is clear on the walls – something is happening – SCOTUS happened. Which is why the reading is on a Wednesday this week instead of Monday…I needed to take a step back to process everything. As Queen of the Tower Moment I am reminded that only when things come down can we finally see how rotten it was from the core. Sometimes that’s the only way to expose the problem and find the right, not easiest solution. I am a believer that we have to clear the decks to build structural societal change…but even I am looking out at the world thinking, I knew it wasn’t gonna be pretty, but damn… did it have to feel like this? on to the reading…
Where We Are This Week
Five of Cups (R)
Heart Chakra
There are quite a few who are sitting in a space of denial as we start this week. People who said, “Trust the justice system to do the right thing”. The American Cancer Society in an amicus briefing told the Supreme Court what a disaster eliminating the Chevron deference doctrine would have on health care – but they did it anyway. The mistrust that people like me have at people who blindly thought that the system as usual was going to save us has me rolling my eyes all the way from 2016 when we predicted this shit. At this point denial’s vote is going to cancel itself out as the rest of us construct the safety nets and mutual aid networks that will catch the remainder when they fall. My loves, the Tower card might not be here this week, but that’s because you listened. You did the hard work and followed the signals. The rest are barely getting started.
Messages from our Guides
Ten of Pentacles (R)
Crown Chakra
Look, you’re just gonna have to improvise on this. Not all the family members are present and ready for the family photo. Nor is life looking like the paradise you’ve had on your vision board all these years. That’s just how it’s shaking out right now. Remember this doesn’t have to be our final destination, but there is a certain amount of “love the ones you’re with” during an apocalypse. I get a sense of family brought together by common struggles instead of intentional affection. Make the best of this ragtag team.
Messages from Lady Gaia/Mother Earth
King of Swords (R)
Root Chakra
Oh, you didn’t think they’d go there? They wouldn’t go after all contraception or condoms? Didn’t think they’d remove your union protections.Didn’t think you’d lose your disability or retirement? “Oh sweet, summer child…know your enemy,” says Lady Gaia. She should know. She’s been the subject of the worst of what the domination cults of patriarchy, white supremacy, and all its unholy kin have wrought on the earth. She’s waiting for us to not just pay attention, but feel the anger and rage of it from the ground up. Do not doubt their willingness to unalive us all for a scrap of comfortable power. Know your enemy for they certainly know us well enough to divide us.
Messages from the Ancients
Seven of Swords
Throat Chakra
The first thing that comes to mind is the revenge of the Cylons that kicks off the events of Battlestar Galactica, but I also see the righteous uprising of an oppressed people against those who would categorize and commodify us, exploit and eliminate us. Nor can I ignore the astrology of this time or the deep wounding that has been rising to the surface like zombies taking over a city. The question is whether this is revenge fueled by injustice or simply the consequences of our actions. And what’s sad is that it’s most likely both.
Messages from Our Future Selves
Ace of Swords (R)
Sacral Chakra
Each of us is still living half awake, tethered to a collective dream where “working for the weekend” is the default of our normal lives, but also living in a reality where distortions of capitalism are sold as a substitute for stability. We exchange our labor, we listen to the radio on the commute, and we pay more and more for coffee because that’s just what we do right? Part of our collective problem is the lack of creative vision to think of a different way to live. This is why I love sci-fi and fantasy because if it isn’t commentary on our present or our past, it’s giving us a launching point to imagine a different tomorrow. However, we’re so stuck in these systems of duality, the half-dream of normalcy that our souls can’t reach for that creative juice to break free. We have to be okay with upsetting the collective attachment to the status quo if we’re ever going to build something better.
Messages from Mother Mary
Two of Pentacles (R)
Third Eye Chakra
It isn’t often I will interpret this position as reversed – Mother Mary usually offers us a bridge between our past and our future selves. But here it’s from an attack to inhibition. The natural order and balance of our lives have been thrown off by both ignorance and paying too much attention to material comforts instead of the balance of the soul. The comforts obscured the deeper lessons of what uncritical allegiance and wormholes of ignorance were going to lead to this moment. Realizing the distortions at the heart of everything will get us further than continuing to apply our resolve to fixing the system we have. We’re not supposed to give up, but we are told to leave our earthly ambitions at the door and let go of our attachment to the way things were.
Extra Card
Nine of Cups (R)
Sacral Chakra
Many of us are moving out of the social spaces that we once inhabited. What once was a fulfilling community of like-minded people, even chosen family, may now start to feel a bit strained. What once felt like a joyful expression of love now might feel more and more like work. Relax. This is a natural part of where are right now. We are all realigning to spaces and people who can care for who we need to become to survive these times. What got us here may not be what sees us through. But more than that, don’t let jealousy or resentment invade these otherwise gentle goodbyes. There is too much bitterness in the world to pass it on to others. Wish them well and let each of us grow as we need without the burdens of envy or regret.
Undercurrents
The Emperor
Solar Plexus Chakra
Notice who benefits from gaslighting, domination, and control. Looking to those forces for relief will only be an exercise in self-delusion. Turning to the dealer of illusions, the naked emperor who pulled the strings of his own ego with every misstep, won’t rescue us. This version of leadership plays dirty, thinks winning is everything and blames his problems on everyone but himself. And he isn’t above pushing the buttons of our collective addictions and traumas to get his way. It is exactly this kind of hubris that steps into a leadership vacuum…so beware of the kinds of coercive behavior we tolerate or endorse. We are in a free fall of public accountability – so many of the mechanisms that we have used to hold our society in check are disintegrating like sand through our fingers. Don’t fall for those who sell our ashes to medicate a dying world into submission. Patriarchy is gonna show its ugly side fast, don’t drink the poison he offers mistaking it for relief.
Final Advice
The Lovers (R)
Heart Chakra
My loves, I don’t know how else to say this, but we’re not going to get through this together unless we finally start to find ourselves worthy of love. Worthy of the love that we show others. Worthy of the love that we receive from others. This isn’t “love yourself first” advice – this is a liberation language of “you’ll never put in the kind of fight we need to build a better world unless you too realize your sparkly, weird ass matters deserves this world as much as everyone else’s”. I spent too much of my life believing I was too fatally flawed to receive the love that was being offered to me. I willingly deprived myself of the additional emotional security, hope, and replenishment that Love affords me. This meant I was going into these battles with only half my strength and no ability (or willingness) to protect myself. This is not sustainable. For it is the lack of love for ourselves that convinces us that we’re somehow worthy of abuse, exploitation, or unhappiness. It is that belief that duality uses to keep us separated and scared. Fighting for a better world includes fighting for ourselves too.
Parting words from a Geek Empress
So, the Janet of 2016 is coming back with a lot of side-eye for those who told us we were overreacting. We are facing some intense consequences as a society right now. Such as the devaluing of creative work with AI we trained, which also consumes an enormous amount of resources. We’re facing the outcome of what happens when we sit out an election or treat all viewpoints as if they are all equally based in fact. We’re seeing the looming darkness we endorsed when we followed the trolls down rabbit holes of bot-generated, profit-protecting, fascist-loving misinformation. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again”. Our complicity in the center generating the toxic message.
The pandemic was a dress rehearsal for a bigger crisis – one that will require sustained connection, empathy & a reliance on expertise to prioritize safety, equality, and accountability. Considering how many defiantly risked not just their death but others’ so they could skip the COVID-19 vaccine, protest masking, and appropriate disabled voices to “protect my freedom”, says a lot about what will happen when we need each other during the eventual climate crisis. Many of us now know we cannot rely even on our own families to prioritize our lives as much as their own illusions of freedom. That so many identify as Christian tells us how seriously they take “Love others as yourself”.
Similarly, the Insurrection was a dress rehearsal for what the United States is entering now – a period of legal and political free fall. Immigrants and scholars alike have been warning us for years that this is where we are heading. January 6th was a test of our national appetite for accountability versus theater. How much are we paying attention? I mean, they actually published and shared Project 2025 out there in the open…it’s not like the agenda is hiding. It’s us who are hiding. The universe is asking “Are you alive?”
Because if we were alive and aware, we would have taken command of our fears once we saw the fabric of our systems fracturing under the weight of modernity and decided to grow with it. We would have anticipated the consequences of electing a puffed-up fraud backed by evil and done all in our power to stop them or alter course.
If you knew your destruction was coming and you did nothing to stop it…ummm….are you even alive?
We have principles, but no longer any structure to hold it all together – no predictability for a system that the “small government” types have, in their hubris, removed the stabilizing supports that were holding it all together. They use our defenses against us to teach us a vengeful lesson. But unlike Caprica Six who seduced Gaius Baltar to get access to the global defenses to effectuate a genocide, too many are ready to hand the keys over to a liar king who would do the same. All because he’s wearing an ill-fitting patriot costume and labeling it “greatness”.
The lurking monsters of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism love to play the victim at the first hint of a threat. The difference is that they’ve been doing it for so long that their power is weakened. If we stand together with more than a socially wary trust, we have the power to withstand this temper tantrum of resistance. They will crash and howl, rattle us with threats of harm – but so long as my shield is up and protecting you…you’re not alone. If each of us reach out and combine our talents with someone we resonate with, it becomes harder to pull us apart.
This is what has me hopeful…I believe this is our time to break the cycle and that the fire our humanity is finally catching into a groundswell blaze of courage and heart.
No matter what this week brings know that I am with you, always, in love 💖
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