"Keep your circle small with postive minded individuals who only come to grow with you, and not to take advantage of you." Edmond Mbiaka
TAROT: 3 of Baskets / LENORMAND: Child, Clover, Ship / ADINKRA: UAC Nkanea
The above photo is of a place in our home next to our fireplace. It is where my partner exercises her visual artistry in the setting of seasonal scenes. This one, though we are still in winter, is what we will gaze at throughout the spring. Comprised of only three colors: yellow, purple, and green, this tableau is a spare one, even as it hints at a season heralded by sumptuous color and heady scent. It is absolutely the case that sometimes, less is more, both in table arrangements and in the “friend” circles in which we move.
It is easy to tell ourselves how wonderful it is that we can count our friendships by the hundreds, and sometimes by the thousands, because Facebook and Instagram say it is so. We count our worth in “clicks” and “likes,” and curate our social media to bolster those numbers. We hesitate to say what we think, lest it be deemed too controversial. We seek the mundane middle, because we so badly want to be “liked,” by more, and more, and more. In the end, we become hollow versions of ourselves, convinced that the benefit outweighs all the carving out we have done of our core, the stuff that makes us really real. And then, when we realize we are shells of who we were, we tell ourselves that it doesn’t matter, that “audience engagement” is the thing that’s really real, and we go at the job of raising numbers all the harder. Is that any way to live? Our cards today have some thoughts on this:
The Tarot card today is from a new deck my partner’s sister gifted me ,(Thanks, Vicki Fite) Black Tarot by Nyasha Williams. It is the Three of Baskets (Cups), and is a card of celebration. Notice that this is not an arena full of “friends”here, but rather a close group of girlfriends, who have each contributed to the picnic they share. The flow of their give and take is personal, easy, full of reciprocity, and without judgement. Can you say you have that flow among your myriad internet “friends?”
Lenormand’s cards are Child, Clover, Ship. They suggest that it would be wise to think of “likes” and “friends” in new (Child) ways. They suggest we might be happier if we choose to be less calculated and more spontaneous (Clover) if we engaged in friendship by moving (Ship) from behind our devices and out into the actual wider world beyond our own doorsteps. Of course, pandemic-era reasoning would tout the benefits of staying indoors and behind screens, but human beings do best when they are up close and personal with each other. It turns out that it is much harder to either demonize or idealize individuals or groups when we have real, lived experience of them.
Further, should such gatherings in person be impossible, for whatever reasons, Emily Dickinson reminds us “The Soul selects her own Society,” which is to say that communion with the self is a noble, healthy endeavor. My father used to go out to lunch all by himself once a week. As a child, I thought this was, as I put it to him, “weird.” He looked at me a long while before he took his pipe from his mouth to say, “Erika, until you learn to be good company for yourself, you cannot be good company for anyone else.” That shut me right up.
One’s own approval is surely not to be found in the clicks and likes of strangers, notwithstanding the fact that I always hope what I write here resonates with someone somewhere. I mostly write for me, which is why I have no compunction about saying that Biden should expand the Court, take frozen Russian money and give it to Ukraine, condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza; that women should be in the streets over the loss of Roe and the proclamation that frozen embryos are people; that racism is America’s Original Sin; that the magickal community is way less magickal than it might be if it coalesced around such issues instead of crass dollar-and-like-and- click-chasing.
Adinkra calls out the mistaking of the artificial for the real with the symbol for UAC Nkanea, which warns against “undesirable technological advancement.” We hide behind screens, and we call it engagement. Come on. Really? Technology has cowed us. Lenormand’s Child, Clover, Ship suggest it is not too late for us to recalibrate our ship’s course, by using technology to amplify the voices of ourselves and others in courageous ways. I will let Audre Lorde have the last word:
Amen and Ase
I love this as it mirrors how I view my work. ❤️
Beautifully written, as always!