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I don't bother thinking very hard about the tension between free will and determinism unless I'm depressed and my usual self-regulation efforts aren't working. But it's rare that I start thinking about them without already noticing the depression and self-regulation stall.

This was not the week I thought I was going to have.

I got turned down for a job I really, really wanted. I trust that it's going to lead me to better things (or potentially I reapply later), but a lot of my cognitive load had been going to daydreaming about relocating and now it's not really sure where to go.
A trans woman died in my community. I had only met her once or twice: long enough to get a massive crush, not long enough to learn her last name. But I went to the grief circle tonight and offered what support I could to her grieving parents and others.
The friend I trust to be untrustworthy may be about to lose one parent to illness and another to the grief. I really wish people would call on a care coach or family diplomat during such difficult times. This particular friend just stormed off and probably got high.
Speaking of mental illness, when I started gray-rocking my fam-o about three years ago, I never would have imagined they would just stop participating. I have literally no idea what's happening over there right now, because they each started dealing with heavy shit and they simply do not know how to communicate out of anything other than idleness or overwhelm.
My ostensible dating partner and friend of 30+ years abruptly reconnected with an ex last week and derailed our plans to share physical space (which is a big deal because their family doesn't mask consistently so I have to build a lot of faith and request 5 days of relative isolation). I can't help worrying that some of this was sparked by their recent realization that I was going to move away sooner or later, but they are not strong at self-advocacy nor even certain kinds of self-awareness and I horrible at navigating the unspoken.
My planned road trip to visit hyper-cautious loved ones in central Texas did not happen because 2/3 of us got nasty spring colds (I allow for the fact it could have been COVID, but I have zero evidence and a lifetime of experience with allergies turning into sinus infections and it felt like the latter; that said, these things just plain heal more slowly than they did before my two cases of COVID).
Signs currently point to a new hypomania as I come out of sick-space: the excitement of the big change being redirected into staying calm combined with having been rather idle the past two weeks, so that's why I'm still up at 7am (I did have a 3-hour nap earlier, which is usually navigable for me) documenting some of the goings on instead of sleeping.
Have had a strong urge to write the past few days thanks to a writing group I'm co-leading, but I'm wavering between too much and too little to say.
My therapist wants to terminate after over ten years together because she has nothing left to teach me, I'm figuring it all out on my own. I agree it's time, but that doesn't mean I'm enthusiastic about it.

I should probably read the Tao or something contemplative, then try again to sleep.

Current Mood: restless
Current Location: not my bed
Current Music: A friend sent me Kpop, but it all just sounds like 90s knockoffs

In less than two hours, we'll cross the equinox. I have a stronger tie with Autumnal Equinox than Spring, but this year I've been keyed into the need for renewal and fresh perspectives an hope.

I'm in the running for a job that, while not ideal, move my family into a new part of the country, where we feel safer emotionally, politically, and environmentally. As in-person capitalistic ventures go, the environment sounds nearly ideal for me, and I hope for it to be a place where I (we) could root.

We've been feeling the magic renew around us; if this isn't where we are headed, I'm certain it's going to be a signpost on the way. Maybe it convinces me to focus my job search on college towns like where this is. Maybe they don't hire me yet, but bring me back a few months later. Maybe we try out the company but end up someplace nearby later. I'm not worried.

It's exciting sometimes, but it also doesn't feel like I have a choice in the matter. I see a future here, and I haven't seen a future in a long time.

May the contrast of light and dark be steady so our paths are clear, may our sleep be sound and our thoughts be lucid, may our dreams be vibrant and our disappointments minor. May time be gentle and healing and urgency rare. May the cycle of life and death and living and dying spin more in the direction of those who take and less in the direction of those who are taken from.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: dusk in a plains city

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Current Mood: process-y
Current Location: not doing my outside work
Current Music: thank goodness I finally got Del Amitri out of my head...

As a continuation of thoughts I raised in my recent post about Techno-Paganism (which I still need to look up, because it's totally a thing) and practices with the

eclecticwitches, I want to take a moment to ruminate on the relationship between technology and magic, which I have found to be subtly social and attitude-dependent.

( That is to say, whether an individual's relationship is antagonistic or affirmative... )

Current Location: my desktop computer has a name but is agender
Current Music: Metropolis Suite seems relevant

During our conversation with

eclecticwitches today, I was thinking about the tensions between colonialism, urbanity, and time. There was a time when most capital-P Pagans I knew seemed somewhat oblivious to the privileged and hegemonic approach they took to gathering practices and traditions, picking and choosing the parts they liked, and starting a practice without consulting the living, breathing practitioners of the present day. That time seems to have passed, fortunately, and people are a lot more thoughtful and respectful in how they find and engage traditions they did not inherit.

(A known struggle among immigrant communities is that migratory generations try to enforce their culture on their children while that culture has continued to develop and shift back home, leaving them to be strict about traditions and practices that are already changing elsewhere in the world. I see this with settler pagans who try to reassert ancestral traditions while those traditions may persist in a different form today.)

But there's still a bit of... pastoral nostalgia?... about it all that doesn't resonate for me. Everyone seems focused on trying to re-connect to the land, reconnect to the elements, reconnect to things lost or distorted by time, and I'm trying to connect to the here-and-now.

I've never lived in the countryside, I've been terminally online since adolescence, and building a coven over technology is less far-fetched to me than a woodland retreat or starlit meadow. All of the moments of my life where I felt magic around me have been socially and materially urban, so it makes sense to me to make more room in my practice for technological and postmodern sensibilities, not less.

I recall that a witch I dated about 15 years ago was perpetually losing things and had a knack for frying technology around her. It reminds me of the relationship I once had with time -- seemingly antagonistic, but really I was going against a resonant element instead of accepting it as a force of nature. I'd like to think my relationship with technology has only ever been as contentious as I forced it to be, either by not knowing myself and my vulnerabilities or by not knowing the tech and its vulnerabilities. Turns out we get along quite well when I align these in the same direction.

And I link this question with greater tensions such as being a settler in colonized lands. It is paternalistic and naïve to assume that giving land back to indigenous communities (for example, and BTW we should totally be doing this) would lead to no cities -- it would lead to different cities, or more likely a shift in the cities that already exist. Abandonment could still be toxic. Why not adapt? Aspiring toward balance instead of growth does not mean destroying what has been built, it means building less and repurposing what already exists. We cannot easily unmake urbanity, we can only redirect it in the future, learn from our mistakes, and adapt with more hope and forward-thinking, less capitalism and environmental antagonism.

According to my understanding of entropy and time-cycles, I don't think these particular eggs can be un-cracked. What is built in destruction is still built, and would be at least as destructive if we tried to break it all back down. So for me, at least some of my spiritual practice will need to be a recognition that technology only occludes our relationship with nature, the universe, the elements insofar as it has emerged in post-spiritual contexts, not that it is inherently anti-spiritual or even spirit-neutral. There's still magic there, I think, for those who are open to it.

The human mind wants some things to be perpetually true, even to the point of wanting to pause or reverse progress, despite the human nature of perpetual change. Accepting change so well that you can perceive and accept it is, to me, the heart of mindfulness and of time magic. So I will add to my long list of lofty spiritual goals to find ways to deepen my practice that work with technology, cityscapes, and urban living rather than against them.

Re: the title of this entry, if the term "techno-pagan" already exists and has meaningfully different connotations, I'll try to come up with something else. If it has not been developed at all, consider this me calling dibs.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: heading to my very urban bathroom

Last year, I started sniffing around for a support group for facilitators, but not much turned up. I believe firmly that the capacity to hold space for others carries a specific mindset that can be difficult to take off or put on at will; if those who hold space for others cannot find ways to commiserate and consult, we burn out much faster.

But having the idea and having an execution are two different things!

I suppose the closest I have found is the Grief and Care Under Capitalism Support Group, which has been an invaluable space the past 6+ months. I've also felt connected to the person who facilitates, but I don't quite know what degree they are open to talking more outside the space. (I suppose I could ask. Ugh. I've been in too many normie spaces the last few years and just like forgot how to be bold and sensitive at the same time. Which I suppose it what makes me a good facilitator, so I haven't forgotten I just compartmentalized it as a work skill?)

Professionals do this: therapists have therapists, massage therapists get massages, social workers consult each other, Civil Rights activists literally invented "self-care" and "kitchen table activism" because they were necessary to sustain the movement.

As a professional, I'm pretty liminal (but as a liminalist, I'm pretty professional?), so it can be hard to find my people. ( (Tangent about people drifting apart.) ) The best thing I can do is accept their terms and hope they change some day. That in itself is a form of holding space for someone.

Anyway, if anyone ever wants to connect about holding space in bleak times, HMU.

Current Mood: receptive
Current Location: about to go get groceries
Current Music: Florence + The Machine: My Love is stuck in my head

Without going into the long version, suffice it to say I have a problematic relationship with leadership. As someone who is tall, male-ish, articulate, and white, I have often found myself elevated (dare I say privileged) in ways that did not necessarily match my skill set or even my emotional fitness for the moment. (It gets even more complicated when I step into such a role because I am qualified, but distrusting of my would-be followers because I haven't yet demonstrated why I'm a good fit.)

I posit that leadership (and by this I'm not sure if I mean all leadership or just leadership as I internalized it across my first 40ish years on this planet) is a parasocial relationship: people make assumptions about your knowledge, skills, and integrity, and then they may take it personally when you inevitably fail to live up to their expectations. They will sit quietly when you take a public stand, they will follow your tribulations without offering a comforting word, and they will pile up on you if the winds of popularity ever shift away from you.

( As such, I have triggers around leadership... )

Anyway, a new direction recently emerged for me to consider:

A lover read my tarot and told me I needed to stop getting hung up on it and instead seek out a matriarchal leadership. And I love this idea but I have no idea how to operationalize it. (One of womanism's foundational documents puts forth the idea of a "luxocracy" -- leadership by light -- but I recall it as aspirational rather than practicable and found nothing useful.) I suppose all I have to go on so far is the handful of true leaders and heroes I've ever known and how they were always driven by their love and support of others -- reciprocated or not -- and a vague sense that matriarchal leadership is less likely to be recorded or celebrated in a holiday (which resonates nicely with the Tao Te Ching).

No idea where this inquiry will lead (or even begin), but figure I'll share it here in case ideas emerge...

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: about to get on a call
Current Music: my favorite film, Fast Color, is a womanist tale

"How do you expect to move into the future if you're planning around the body you had in the past?"

"How do you expect to love in the future if you're still grieving the love you had in the past?"

I think I have a new ritual, also: Loud Yoga. I've often found spiritual quiet through more stimulation rather than less: keeping my eyes open in meditation or saunas, listening to music rather than silence, aligning a lot of feelings instead of no feelings, etc.

Current Mood: relieved
Current Location: fresh out the shower
Current Music: Someone Great by LCD Sound System

( On Journaling... ) The vast majority of the social sciences as we know them are so steeped in "Western" hegemony that studies will be impossible to replicate under other economic, cultural, and technological circumstances. Seeing the present moment, vis à vis pandemic(s), war(s), and corruptions(sss), as roughly an apex or precipice culminated on everything that came before (and with very little room to go anywhere but down), we have a unique birds eye view if we take the time to appreciate it. We have way more information about humans than has ever before been accessible, and we are at the peak of human understanding before it either crashes back down or is handed over to computers to process on our behalf (or hell, maybe both). Why not try to use this purview to leave something behind that is beyond ourselves?

( Something that might help the next great society avoid some of our hubris and failings... )... but there's no academic hub I can find that pulls it altogether and says, "This is how human relationships and cultures reflect their material relationship with time." I don't think it could help being metaphysical (even spiritual), but then the emergence of sciences are rarely the cold, calculating laboratories we bias today.

Anyway, if you know any good books on sociotemporality (whatever its authors call it), let me know?

Current Mood: cerebral
Current Location: the present

None of my research into hypomanias has reported highs without commensurate lows, but this is the first year I've been paying close enough attention to witness it.

Coincidentally or not, I am experiencing some intense challenges at the moment; my partner and I have both recognized that unlike my hypomanias, my hypo-depressions likely have a chicken-and-egg relationship with difficult changes.

No more than a couple of weeks ago, the atmospheric "vibe" around me shifted. I paid close attention, as if the universe was trying to tell me something. Since then, though, I notice my daily mood tracker has shifted: tense and worried, even a little anxious. It came to a head Sunday, one of the hardest days I can remember (though my memory is way more faulty when I'm depressed).

My mom told me both that she had COVID and that she had no one around to help her out (my brother and his on-again-off-again girlfriend and some number of her progeny all just moved back in, but they are out of state and no one told me). I spent most of the day gathering up-to-date info, making sure she got on Paxlovid, and fetching her prescription and vitamins. My debit card doesn't always get along with Walgreens on nights and weekends, so I had to make two trips and spend all of my cash.

Simultaneously, I was being called in by an online community I've been connecting with. I don't want to comment on the specifics just yet -- I believe there is a valid concern and am trusting the process while simultaneously finding the process opaque, slow, and discordant to my neurodivergent traits. I feel like my ego is being tested, but so far I have not wavered in putting the community's needs ahead of my own discomforts. The greater struggle, I think, is that without clarity from that community I have to look outside it for emotional support, processing, and clarification, and no one whom I've entrusted so far sees it the way I do. My partner and most of the white people I know simply aren't as far along in their anti-racist reflections as I am, and so there's a lot of people who want to stand up for me or ask me why I bother. These statements are unhelpful at best and further isolating at worst. (That isn't to say my partner hasn't been tremendously supportive in other ways -- she's really shown up for me the past 24 hours in particular -- just that I have to be careful about bogging her Aries mind down with specific that she, in her infinite runner-ness, wouldn't fuck with.) I need spaces like this because I frequently practice alone and it's been a great platform to build something socially, but there's not been an opportunity for me to unpack what I've signed up for vs. what is being foist upon me (and I allow for the possibility that it is all the former in ways I have yet to comprehend). But I need spaces like this to exist and feel safe for those thriving there far more than I need to be a member of it, and I will walk away if it is best for the space itself. It wouldn't be the first time I've been a lightning rod for someone(s) and their grief and I do not internalize any more than my own mistakes.

The inciting incident happened while planning this damn speed-dating thing with an overlapping group -- I honestly should have shut it down or walked away from weeks ago because it lacked cohesion. I definitely suffered from the sunken cost fallacy, but I also recognized over the past week that the space would not safe enough to open. Sunday, in a Tao kind of leadership, I prompted the planners to cancel the event and let me draft a note explaining why. In the time of processing all that, though, the other planners -- all white women -- got wind of some of what was going on. Ironically, the person who was nearest to the controversy has been the most forthcoming and accepting, recognizing that she had failed to contain her feelings in a moment of vulnerability and ended up creating a hostile space. She says she's in a better place and seems very mindful of the space she takes up (and how to not do so, at least most of the time). Meanwhile the woman who started the dating project but has otherwise been least involved (and was very much not present at the inciting incident) has been just BESIDE HERSELF with internalized blame so I've had to facilitate that a bit.

And my kettle broke and the replacement won't get here until tomorrow. :(

I'm having trouble staying asleep, so I may be gaming and reading all day, just waiting for any reactions to my apology and next steps.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: not my bed

My article went up and I like it but don't love the cuts they made. Algorithms are burying my shares, but several people who have seen it said very nice things. May recite a longer version for a salon at some point.

Today a lot of weird little interactions between me, the house, and wild minifauna trying to get their names on the deed. I got the sense the universe really wanted me to pay attention, but I can't tell if that's for a day or a lifetime. Same as it ever was?

I have in the wee hours, however, learned that one of my best friends (out of the three closest, the one who doesn't live in this state) has been rattled by possible breast cancer in his 20-something sister. I'm going to be checking on him a lot, which limits my bandwidth considerably and means I may not be ready to pause therapy yet after all...

Current Mood: anxious

My directions are all my own, but I depend on others for my momentum.

We think a lot about who is introverted or extroverted, but we don't often discuss HOW...

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: home
Current Music: Wretched by Bartees Strange is stuck in my head

So my best friend and I worked through our communication breakdown a week or two ago, but in the process something subtle shifted. I realized an aspect of her personality that is deeply held (and deeply protected) wherein she must keep her life hyper-compartmentalized. It appears that despite a handful of intimations otherwise, she has no intentions of ever introducing me to her family and that the only friends she does this with at all are a) parents of similarly-aged children who can play with her kids and b) not very close to begin with.

Once the emotional logjam was clear, I realized that I was no longer looking at her romantically. Maybe it's the heartaches of the past or the self-awareness of the present, but I'm just not capable of holding a flame for anyone who thinks the best way to be yourself is to keep every component of your life separate. I'm not sure I'm capable of being romantically interested in anyone who desires to keep things from me at all. (Note: this is not the same thing as something not coming up yet, or even, "I have a trauma and I'm not ready to discuss it but if we are close I will acknowledge it's there".)

(I can't know for certain, but without any shared closure from K back in the day, I have assumed her little corner of darkness -- which she acknowledged but explicitly said I'd never know -- festered after ten years unspoken.)

Hopefully this clearer boundary makes me a better friend to my current best friend, though as my hypomania has waned I've just been drained and a little awkward.

Oh yeah, and I learned a new word: lithromantic or akoiromantic or apromantic: to be attracted to someone emotionally without the desire or need for it to be reciprocated. Now I can't imagine not WANTING reciprocation, but I'd like to think I've gotten halfway decent at not NEEDING it. I think my friend N, who moved out of state last year, really helped me complete that journey. She was undergoing major illness and surgery and I felt like I needed to out those feelings before something happened to her, but my partner reminded me that she had a partner showing up for her and that making my feelings her problem would not be what she wanted in that time. I slipped and told her a couple years later, but she's been a good sport about it and it was way more casual than, "You might die next week, let me unburden my feels." Actually, I attended her wedding this summer and it was a joyous occasion -- other than the hail. But that's another story.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: 100 gecs (recommended by someone on Feeld)

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Current Mood: curious

Feeling a distinct loss of momentum in many directions, as well as the arrival of my seasonal mini-mania, which means my brain will be spinning a lot and doing so in negative directions -- if I allow it to. But if I don't allow it to, I run the risk of accomplishing nothing and accomplishing things is the heart of my discomfort...

( Read more... )
That's the thing, isn't it? Crafting a routine that matches my neurodivergent traits and my unanchored lifestyle without reinforcing the society I'm trying to escape? I haven't tried in a long time. Maybe it could go differently this time?

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Boy as Venus -- Bjork

A lot of values and priorities are fungible when the globe is in crisis and people aren't able to align their actions to their ideals very easily. So I want to try to put in the most basic terms the kind of folks I'd like to invite more of into my life:

I believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is scientific, harmful, and ongoing, and that it requires personal and collective sacrifices to mitigate, address, and recover from.
As an individual, I recognize having some tremendous advantages in my society without negating that I also have some disadvantages. I try to listen to those whose disadvantages are different, and I never question their humanity even when I don't understand their ways of being.
I enjoy and/or benefit from sharing my innermost thoughts with others. I do not believe that questioning a subject negates its innate value, but I make efforts to not materially support harmful projects.
I do not enjoy competition in most contexts, even when I am the one winning, and I try to challenge assumptions -- mine and those around me -- that escalate rather than de-escalate.
Excepting when I am at my worst circumstances, I like to give my time, money, and/or effort to others without attachment or expectation of reward.
I accept that I cannot know or understand everything and everyone, and allow experiences to humble me without their immediately (or potentially ever) making sense to me.

From late 2016 through the end of graduate school, I was low-key fixated on grief. I had lost my grandfather, two very important relationships, and enough of my sense of self that I committed to being reborn. Sometimes it's just easier to start from scratch than to sort through so much. But even then, I think there was a part of Free (that is, the person I was before, his name was Free) that tried to endure. And although my family is doing better than we have any right to 21 months into the global pandemic and the ongoing frisson of capitalism making its (last?) stand, I'm having a really hard time seeing any future that isn't still hindered by the flotsam of Free's dreams, expectations, and idealistic trust. All year I've been wrestling with whether to sit still where it's safe or dart forward into risk, and to my detriment I have had this conversation mostly internally. Moreover, because I have spent about two years utterly unable to see the future -- I mean, not like I'm psychic, but I am used to having some "sense" of what is possible, where to direct my energy -- I have also walled off the past. What is happening now is about the present, therefore I should live in the present -- right?

But I'm not. I'm still building intentions around the future Free saw for himself and his (my) family. Many times this year, I was tempted to give up on taking the pandemic this seriously and just make a go of that future anyway. But something would hold me back, and sure enough a new variant wave would appear shortly thereafter. Guess I'm not completely out of touch with the future, after all -- maybe it's me, my perception/read. So before I start a deeper thinky on where I need to direct my focus in 2022, I think I need to do what I never did when I had my heart set on it: I need to write out the intention, the plan, the expectation. I'm not sure I will be able to exorcise the whole thing unless I actually see it lain out before me.

( Flashback to March 1, 2020... )

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Location: Not Chicago
Current Music: The Rebel Jesus - Jackson Browne

Should I ask friends to connect me with other overthinkers they know? And if so, how?

What I want to say:

Not just people who are ND or anxious or academic (although these are all welcome), but like all the people who never stop asking hard questions when everyone else is exhausted, all people who work hard to accept everyone (including people they don't like or trust), and who are committed to finding joy and spreading it around but never plateauing, always growing.

something like that?

My media consumption has absolutely shifted throughout the pandemic. I was pleased early on when shows were put off for the safety of cast and crew, disappointed when most resumed, and utterly devastated when most of them opted to not address the pandemic in a meaningful way. It was almost as disappointing as finding out that there was no surge in people having sex in public during the initial lockdown (What were they going to do? arrest you??? actually... probably, yeah...). Here's what I'm finding:

Animated shows are great. Whatever universe they're set in, you know that the technology exists for this project to be created and maintained with minimal gatherings, but since fantasy settings are common they literally don't have to address the pandemic if they don't want to. (The only show I've seen do an episode was Bob's Burger, and it was through metaphor, and it was one episode out of a season otherwise consistent with prior seasons.)
Fantasy shows get something of a pass (computers help a lot), but I also find it difficult to engage some traditional plots: Apocalypses, Big Baddies who are confronted by one or several rag-tag heroes, pandemics (including zombie movies, maybe especially zombie movies) all feel pretty dated at this point. Turns out the horror lay within us the whole time.
Timeless shows: some shows are deliberate about not being set in a specific time period, or have enough flexibility that it doesn't feel so far-fetched. I still worry about the casts, but I happen to know that many professional sets are requiring frequent testing from their performers and that brings some comfort. (OMG, I just realized: is traditional porn still being filmed??? Anyway, Leverage mostly gets a pass because it's such a comfort and because it gets @flamingsword to visit.)
Anything contemporary must recognize the pandemic. (I turned on last season of Grown-ish and quickly decided I just couldn't do it.) Worse yet, will I EVER be able to go back and watch those shows?
The more they address the pandemic, the better. I know shows were creating DURING the pandemic, but I haven't seen any yet. They'll either really miss the mark or hit too close to home. Honorable mention to those episodes of SNL that were all filmed from home, that was a golden era. (I've honestly only seen one show that addressed the pandemic in the plot: The Good Fight, which had a really hard time tying up the previous season's lingering loose ends, going some politically relevant new places, and including plots about the *cough*short-lived*cough* pandemic and its *cough*aftermath*cough*, but at least it fucking tried. They showed lawyers in 5-figure suits wearing masks for fuck's sake.)
History, though, can be tricky. Early on I read up a bit more on the Wiemar Republic and Ancient Rome, but I didn't want to see them depicted dramatically (or even documentary-style; instead, I watched both movies about the Fyre Festival, some pre-pandemic stand-up, and that FX series about the history of Pride... at least until I got stuck in the 80s because I can apparently only hold space for one pandemic at a time...)

No show has been perfect so far, and I'm not sure that they ever will be. What matters to me is where art changes after this -- really changes. I'm starting to see the difference in music finally. Here, have a playlist.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: DFW

I decided last weekend (in consultation with VS) that in the week after the Equinox, I would finally set about studying the tarot deck in a more thorough and deliberate way than I ever have before. I'm calling it "Reading the Tarot" because I'm going to try to see each card as more of a book or chapter in its own right, inviting the depth, complexity, and multitudes of interpretation

I have quietly hemmed and hawed about which deck I would utilize, since I have several but they are all a bit esoteric. I even took the Quantum Tarot with me one day to begin, but it remains in my bag untouched.

I decided tonight was the night because I am feeling lonely and listless, and these are the very feelings that have been goading me to improve my ritualistic knowledge and practices. On a whim, I chose my Sun and Moon Tarot, which is relatively untouched because it is my favorite. It follows the structure of the traditional Rider-Waite and even preserves some of the symbolism (unlike, for example, the Quantum Tarot, which likens cards to astronomical phenomena -- which are nearly as esoteric and unfamiliar to me), and yet it is rebellious in its depictions of diverse humans with natural hair and playful poses. When I first bought this deck, I called it my "storytelling deck", because I wanted to use it not for discernment but for improvisational story-making. However, I've never had cause to actually use it in that way, so maybe I just needed to grow into it a bit. (My whim was rewarded, but more on that in a moment.)

I showed my niece the deck a few days after buying it and she insisted on going to the same store and buying the same deck that very day. I have carried it with me without much interaction for several years now. It is both fresh and familiar.

I have wondered whether I should go through the order in some sort of elemental order, and perhaps I should humbly put the Minor Arcana ahead of the Major Arcana -- I briefly even considered drawing them rather than going in order, and quickly dismissing that the obvious first step was to put them in order.

I started by guessing at my relationship with the suits as I began piles on the floor before me: I have historically had a strong relationship with Cups -- perhaps too strong -- and Wands seem to be the core of who I am and how I go about things. I placed these in a sort of temporal order, just guessing. I suppose I'm looking for action next, Swords, and although I am so broke I'm about to get sued by a credit card company, I figured Pentacles were still the furthest off, the far future goal rather than near.

I began to sequence each suit in its own piles, leaving gaps so I'd know whether one card was missing or many. It was fascinating how quickly the cards I already knew filled up, and those who were less familiar seemed to straggle. Once in a while, I would think a gap filled only to find its errant occupant later and reassess. But I let the process guide me: those stacks that filled first were supposed to be read first. Sure enough, the cups and wands filled quickly, but not as quickly as the major arcana (which will go first). I almost wonder if they are there to help me spot the narrative trajectory that exists in every suit more easily: true mastery is in seeing the narrative in all suits? Just speculation.

The other question to emerge was how I wanted to handle the "face" cards; I have historically rearranged them a little in resistance to the idea that gendered cards should rank. I'm pretty sure I've had a deck or two who played with this convention and/or changed up the order, but when I checked the book for this one it did not. (Cannot wait for non-binary esoterism to catch up and give us the decks we need.) I ultimately decided if I was going to make a change I may as well own my bias/gender trajectory, so I ranked them Prince, Princess, King, Queen.

Ultimately, the deck emerged in the following order: Major Arcana, Cups, Wands, Pentacles, and Swords (maybe I should be thinking more about belongings than actions, after all...). I have a broad intention to read one card per week, but I should probably caution that I have a long history of experimenting with weeks that were longer or shorter than 7 days, and will have no qualms about doing so here as long as the inquiry feels robust.

Current Mood: achy
Current Location: DFW
Current Music: Disappointment - The Cranberries

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Gender Jumper

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Gender Jumper

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