"When We Speak, We Are Afraid Our Words Will Not Be Heard Or Welcomed. But When We Are Silent, We Are Still Afraid. So It Is Better To Speak." Audre Lorde
TAROT: 4 of Coins / LENORMAND: Woman, Bouquet, Man / ADINKRA: Abe Dua
What a week of ups and downs it has been out in the wider world! The Supreme Court continues to throw life rafts to 45 so that he could conceivable become 47 and be the agent of our complete undoing. Haley has thrown in the towel, as we knew she would, telling 45 he should try to earn the loyalty of her supporters. Um….how interesting that that should be her message. Why would her message not be, “I have called 45 a scourge upon the land. Therefore, neither I nor any of you should give him your vote.” Speaking up in THAT way would require a courage Haley does not possess. Audre Lorde encourages us to speak even if we are afraid. Haley’s most recent words give lie to her campaign. She has wished and washed. She will soon enter the orange-tinged fold fully, I promise you. I give her a week. Not even. Cowardice, whether on the Court or the campaign trail, has become both coin of the realm and its king.
It is cowardice that propelled Mark Robinson (I hate that we share a last name) to GOP candidacy in the North Carolina governor’s race. With the vitriol he spews, could no one catapult him from contention? He and Clarence Thomas both move from places of self-hatred and cowardice. I won’t dirty my page with more words about either of them. And Mitch McConnell, whose wife 45 insulted with impunity, who condemned 45 on the floor of the Senate for January 6th before taking it all back with an endorsement this second time around - is he not cowardice’s epitome?
And just so that I sling the cowardice accusation so that it hits all corners, could 46 be a little less cowed by Netanyahu? Innocents are dying in our name and at our hand because truth is not being spoken to power by power. Putin’s Cowardice killed Navalny. The Courage of his supporters gave him a hero’s funeral. We always have a choice about which C we align with.
The rights of women and Black people are being systematically stripped, and where is the rising up/ the roar/ the reckoning? Is the lack of all that a mark of cowardice as well? Tell me again, why did 46 refused to expand the Court? Why was Roe not enshrined in our Constitution the way it has now been in France? There are no clean hands here. The temptation towards silence in the face of all this is great. Because, I mean, what’s the point? Of anything? Such times as these call for the cards.
The Tarot card, from Nyasha Williams’ Black Tarot is the Four of Coins. In the Rider-Waite version, a miserly man sits hunched over one big coin, with a coin above him and his feet firmly planted on the two remaining coins. In the Black Tarot version, a young woman stands outside a closed door. Behind her she holds her treasure, a string of four cowrie shells, which represent earthly possessions, and assess her value to the world. Should that door before her open, she has made sure that whatever is behind it will not ‘see her hand.’ Her treasure has been hard won, and must not be too easily shared or stolen, she tells herself. That is what the world has taught her: to play small, go along to get along, give the appearance of bravery while ‘hiding her light under a bushel,’ lest it be stomped on, or drowned, or otherwise doused. There is so much hedging of bets in this card, I think. But what if those calculations are off?
Lenormand clarifies with Woman, Bouquet, Man. The older version of the Woman along with the younger version of the Man have shown up, so what might that mean? The older Woman in my deck, Erika’s Lenormand of Hope, has seen some things. Life has not always been kind, and her temptation is to follow Tarot’s Four of Coins’ lead and keep her cowrie shells behind her back, lest she be….involuntarily divested of her treasure, be it material or emotional. So much is asked of her, all the time, by everyone. There are times such as these, when she wants to sit with her arms wrapped tightly around her treasure, her feet firmly planted on the surplus she cannot hold. Safety demands this. But cowardice does, as well. The Bouquet reminds her that treasure is meant to be shared; that treasure takes many forms; that the sharing of word treasure can set a powerful example and be a potent antidote to the cowardice that abounds. She is asked to spend and share her treasure from a place steeped in the hope of youth, as seen in the Man card. This Yang youth believes all things are possible, that risks are meant to be taken, that to expose one’s delicate throat to threat and danger by speaking words others avoid out of cowardice, is both birthright and obligation.
Adinkra adds her voice with Abe Dua, the symbol for the palm tree. This tree is full of Coin-type energy, as it produces more than shade, but also wine, oil, wood, and more. The palm tree is full of gifts it shares, as are we all. We ought to spend the coin of our words and our voices in ways that shame cowardice, which is already so full of shame. Haley is no hero. Nor is McConnell, the Court, South Carolina Republicans, or 46, who has stayed too long at the party but is not brave enough to look past his hubris so that the country can find that younger, brighter, better, Yang path. To raise our own voices, to bring our cowrie shells out from behind our backs, to model courage in the face of such widespread cowardice is what the times call for. We can sleep when we’re dead.
Amen and Ase
This is a wonderful, inspired piece that touched me deeply. Thank you. 💜