"Which Wolf Will Win?" "The One You Feed" Cherokee proverb
TAROT: The Moor V(Heirophant) / LENORMAND: Scythe, Lily, Key / ADINKRA: Menso Wo Kenten
This will be a quick one, as I am flying across the country to Florida early in the morning, to teach at StaarCon Tarot Conference. There will be no post next Wednesday, but I am sure to be full to the brim with things to write about upon my return the following week. And perhaps an extra week to ponder on what I will have written here today will be a good and desirable thing. Who knows?
The news this week, and for the foreseeable future is full of the legal and the political, what with trials and verdicts and caucuses piling up. As fascinating as I find all of this, I have noticed a sort of snowballing of something else, to which I, at least, intend to pay equal attention. What has flown across my radar low enough that I want to reach out and grab it for a closer look is the increasing emphasis on not so much WHAT is going on, but WHY it is happening. The “it” is what we refer to in shorthand as Trump Derangement Syndrome. The emphasis seems to be shifting away from the Trump piece and moving towards an examination of…the rest of us: our susceptibility to it, the symptoms of it, the antidote to it.
Early in the week, I watched an interview with Dr. Bandy X. Lee, MD, who co-authored THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP, in which she and thirty-six other psychiatrists and mental health experts gave their assessments of 45. The book was first published in 2017, and caused quite a stir. Then….crickets. As it turns out, in return for a generous funding initiative by 45’s administration, the APA (American Psychiatric Association) effectively silenced these experts, discrediting both their methods and their findings. Of course, in the years since the book’s publication, we see the prescient wisdom of these public-service minded health professionals. In the interview I watched this week, Dr. Bandy discussed the danger of contagion 45’s illness poses to the rest of us. Her analysis was chilling
A few days later, I read a Substack article by Alissa Altman (Poor Man’s Feast.) The title is “The Problem of Addictive Rage: On Using Dopamine to Fuel Hatred.” Rather than recapping it here, I really hope you will go and read it. It is a brilliant, confessional piece that writes about rage and its trajectory from the personal to the political and back to the personal again. It is this contagious rage that Dr. Bandy and her colleagues warned us about seven years ago. And it is inoculation against such contagion which our cards address today.
Our Tarot card is The Heirophant (V) or The Moor, as it is given to us in Courtney Alexander’s Dust2Onyx Tarot. With an arm outstretched and a palm that says, “Wait a minute. Check yourself. Breathe. Think,” this Moor is our teacher and our guide. As Alexander viscerally writes, “It is the Moor who brings order to civilization, lest it wallow in the stench of its own filth.” Rage lends itself to wallowing. We see it all around us. Alexander’s Moor wears a turban which has at its center an ornament of opal and amethyst. Alexander tells us these gems “remind the Moor of the importance of spirirtual consciousness, balance, intuition, and protection of the self.” Lenormand approves.
With Scythe, Lily, and Key as our cards this week, we are doubly reminded that we make a decision (Scythe) as to who we want to be, what emotions we will encourage, which wolf we choose to feed. Lenormand is justified in its desire to steer us in a particular direction, since rage is so powerfully seductive. We are asked to choose peace, calm, equanimity, maturity, in the form of Lily. We are assured (Key) that for the best and highest good of all, and of each of us individually, the Lily must be the focal point for our attention, the place from which we move, the recipient of our nurturance.
Finally, the Adindkra gives us a mantra for when we feel ourselves hypnotized by the seductive serpent, Rage. Menso Wo Kenten is the symbol for the sentiment, “I am not carrying your basket.” Which is to say, “45, spin as you will in your own filth. I will not spin with you. Nor will I spin in my own filth AGAINST you.” Rage is rage is rage. I will sit with the Moor, meditate on the pendant on his turban, and seek for ways to feed the right wolf such delicious food, in the form of love and right action and right intention, that perhaps wolves feeding elsewhere will be tempted to come and feed here too, and be healed and changed in the feeding.
Amen and Ase
Yes, Erika. I applaud your words, hold them close, and aspire to do the same. "Rage is rage is rage. I will sit with the Moor, meditate on the pendant on his turban, and seek for ways to feed the right wolf such delicious food, in the form of love and right action and right intention, that perhaps wolves feeding elsewhere will be tempted to come and feed here too, and be healed and changed in the feeding."
Wow, such insight. And so timely! I've been trying to avoid rage by ignoring so much but your approach is what I need: "We are asked to choose peace, calm, equanimity, maturity, in the form of Lily. We are assured (Key) that for the best and highest good of all, and of each of us individually, the Lily must be the focal point for our attention, the place from which we move, the recipient of our nurturance." This post will be printed out and posted!