"When the debate is lost, insults become the loser's tool." Socrates
TAROT: 10 of Knives (Swords) / LENORMAND: Fox, Snake, Sun / ADINKRA: Asase Ye Duru
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As is so often the case, here, I did not come to my keyboard with a specific idea about what today’s subject might be, so I lit my candle and grabbed my cards, letting Tarot dictate the topic. Nyasha Williams’ Black Tarot puts a twist on the standard imagery for this card. As a rule, the 10 of Swords will show us a person, face down and flattened in pain from the ten swords that have been thrust into his back.
The traditional meaning of the card tends to be twofold. Firstly, it is clear that you have been through some tough things; secondly, the worst is over, as there is generally some lightness in the sky, which you might well see if you changed your body’s orientation relative to the ground. The Black Tarot tells another tale entirely.
In Nyasha Williams’ 10 of Knives, there are the requisite number of requisite knives sticking out of the requisite body, but the body is that of a woman on her knees, her spine arched backwards, and her head tilted so far back that her long locs nearly brush the soles of her feet, as her face meets the cloud-strewn sun. This depiction is no accident.
As the saying goes, “Black don’t crack;” neither does it crumble. That is not to say that Black does not feel pain, does not suffer. In fact, as history would demonstrate, Black suffering is part of the American landscape, the American Great Wound, The ignoble American shame. Common wisdom might have you believe that, because this figure is on her knees and not flat out prone on the ground, as in the traditional 10 of Swords, it must mean that her tolerance for suffering is greater, which would of course lend itself to the specious, pseudo-scientific theory that we Black people are relatively insensitive, the way we like to think of the animals we have slain for our gustatory enjoyment. I call bullshit on all of that.
Instead, let me suggest that, for the sake of today’s argument, this woman in our card is Kamala Harris. The incoming from the other side against her has been fierce and ugly and (both boringly and predictably) racist and misogynistic. Hence the title of this post, that quote from Socrates. We see it in the press, of course, but I have also seen it in the ‘predictions’ of some well-respected astrologers, who say Harris’ current planetary aspects portend an undoing caused by scandal or misstep. I call bullshit on that, too.
Let us further contemplate the figure in this card: she is bowed, and yet, unbloodied, because the knives are old and dull, so overused as to be useless in any fatal way. Not to mention the fact that she has seen them coming, every single one. Even her hands do not seek to ward off the blows, but instead, are clasped behind her, as if to say:
"IF YOU’VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY, SAY IT TO MY FACE!” (See what I did there? ;0)
Lenormand’s Fox, Snake, Sun act as echoes for today’s Tarot card. The Fox is an old pro at being hunted and staying alive; very little gets past her. She knows a Snake when she sees it, and mostly, just a blank stare, a flick of the hand, the response “Next question?” is enough to render the Snake’s weapons useless, whether fang or poison.
The Sun is the light our character carries: the light history casts on our Black past to remind her to expect every incoming missile. Although I am not, Harris is a churchgoer, so this scripture will be familiar to her. It is the refrain of every Black person who stands as sword and shield for Harris:
“No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgement, you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from Me, says the Lord.” Isaiah 54:17
If I sound a little…..extra in my defense of Harris, know that I know she is a human being, with flaws and weaknesses and jealousies and sorrows, just like the rest of us. I also know what Adinkra reminds us, with the symbol Asase Ye Duru, which translates to the adage “The earth has weight.” I take that to mean the weight of the blood of the Ancestors, whose lives are testament to such a time as this; I take that to mean the weight of the metaphysical blanket of support and protection for this candidate, woven first by Black women, and then movingly added to by so many others; I take that to mean the weight of responsibility that lies with all of us to help the rest of us wake from this cultish nightmare spell 45 has cast on our compatriots. If not, the spell will kill democracy, both as we know it and as we envision it as an ever “better union.”
Ralph Ellison, the author of the great novel, INVISIBLE MAN wrote, “All sickness is not unto death.” May our nation’s fever soon be broken, and may those who have stepped up to take the knives for us be protected, comforted, and blessed.
Amen and Ase
Erika