"America never was America to me." Langston Hughes

TAROT: 5 of Coins / LENORMAND: Dog, Ship, Fish / ADINKRA: Mate Masie

It’s two days before the 4th of July, and I suspect that more than a few of us are approaching this holiday with more than a little side-eye, what with the building of merch-selling concentration camps staffed by alligators, pythons, and mosquitos; what with elected officials voting “ Aye” on a bill that is a catchall death warrant for millions. I had a ton more “what with’s that I actually just deleted. I mean, we are all familiar with all that is going on. There is no need for me to create an anti-Santa’s list of all the things with which we are being “gifted” during these sunny/dark days of summer. The cards totally get it:

Tarot gives us the 5 of Coins. The Smith-Waite version looks like this:

A couple, down on their luck, and one of them on crutches, pass by a lit-up church as they wade through the snow. The message has always been that help is right there for you if you just avail yourself of it. The impression this traditional card has always given me is that this help is from some outside source. Fair enough. I would argue, though, that we have that key inside ourselves.

Nyasha Williams’ Black Tarot shares this fresh take on the card. Here it is close up:

This is a snowy scene as well, but the solitary figure’s vibe is very different from the vibe of the couple in the traditional card. This guy looks like he’s walking a runway. He puts me in mind of one of my two brothers. When he was a teenager, my brother would set off for school in the dead of winter wearing a sweater and a scarf - never a coat or (God-forbid) a hat. The European insouciance of it all was breathtaking. Of course, that was the image he wanted to project: an imperviousness to the elements, a rakish rudeness. Were we not all aiming for ….effect… when we were that age?

The character in this card wades barefoot through the snow. His outfit is what I’ll call “summer chic.” He does wear a hat, but it is of the Panama variety, to complement the Burmuda length shorts, I guess. He carries a long scarf over his shoulder, but would never deign to wrap himself in it, in case someone might think he was actually cold. The thing is, though, he IS cold. How could he not be? And, by the way, it’s not that he cannot afford weather-appropriate clothing, what with all those valuable cowrie shells at his frostbitten feet. Those cowries are the equivalent of the light in that church window in the first version of the card.

These are indeed hard times. We need not pretend that they are not. It is possible, we have discovered, to feel the heat of the summer sun while simultaneously feeling cold dread from an orange source, but remedies abound, if we avail ourselves of them. That couple in the Smith-Waite version of the 5 of Pentacles needs to go knock on that church door. It is certain they would be welcomed inside. The Mr. Cool Model in the Black Tarot version needs to get over himself, gather up those cowrie shells, and head to the nearest haberdashery in search of more weather-appropriate attire. There is no virtue in freezing to death and acting like you’re good with it, and don’t feel a thing. What might this guidance look like for us?

Lenormand answers the question for us with Dog, Ship, Fish.

Mr. Rogers advised us to always look for the helpers. The Dog is the card for that. We must learn the value of becoming our own helpers in times like these: wearing clothes that make us comfortable; making food that delights and nourishes us; being good stewards of where we get our news and information; making sleep and rest priorities. That whole thing they tell you about masks and airplanes. You know what I’m saying. All of that is Dog.

The Ship is our second card. We cannot remain immobile. With the Ship, movement is called for, and stasis is not an option. On this day, so close to the day we have always called Independence Day, it is worth considering what independence looks like to us individually and collectively. To what have we sworn allegiance all this time? Has that ship sailed? Was that a ghost ship all along? If we have sworn fealty to a myth for generations, now what do we do? Do we stay on this ship? Is there another ship headed to a new destination for which we might be better suited? Can we become the ones who sail such a ship? Can we plot a new course? Do we want to? The jury is still out on that one.

Fish is the card for emotion, and many of us are juggling lots of mixed ones, particularly around this holiday. Fish is also the card for ‘plenty,’ however. What would we like more of? I choose more honesty, more transparency, more conversations about the ways in which we as a country are not who we have purported to be. Think of the guy wearing Bermuda shorts in the snow: Perhaps we are better served by being awake and aware of our surroundings rather than pretending we are in the middle of a season we are not, nor ever have been. Pretense has been a large part of our national foundation. To know that about ourselves is a hard thing. To try to unsee it would be to both perpetrate and perpetuate the national sin.

Adinkra asks us to stay awake, woke, eyes open, head on the swivel, with Mate Masie. It is the symbol for the phrase: “I have kept what I have heard.” 47 proclaims, as though it is Holy Writ: “AMERICA WILL BE WOKE NO MORE.” His objective is for us to stay barefoot in the snow while he tells us how warm that white ‘sand’ actually is. We have ‘heard’ a lot. We have a choice in what we ‘keep.’ Let’s choose well, in the hope that one day, sooner than in the fullness of time, our July 4th will not feel off-key.

Amen and Ase,

Erika

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