"There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as an ancient friend." James Baldwin

TAROT: 8 of Baskets / LENORMAND: Garden, Child, Woman / ADINKRA: Mware Wo

So, here we are, two and a half days in, and it already feels like forever, doesn’t it? There were warnings, all along, that these first days would be full of shock and awe, so I hope you are finding none of this surprising. I hope, too, that you have drawn yourself a map for how to walk this road.

My own map has seemed to want to draw itself, with me as its curious cartographer’s apprentice. Today’s Tarot card, the 8 of Baskets, from Nyasha Williams’ Black Tarot, is exactly who I am right now, walking away from what was, with not a backwards glance to give, though the path ahead is cloudy, the air full of that red smoke reminiscent of the California fires around which we are bobbing and weaving, and by which too many have been displaced, unmoored, bereaved. Spare a thought for them, if you will, my own stepdaughter and her family among them. Climate change is real, and rain here is rare. Pray, if you will, for rain.

But back to my map, and what is on it, now that I am on the 8 of Baskets path that asks me to spend no time bemoaning the fact that Dark Brandon never materialized to save the day, and encourages me to send good wishes to Kamala, whom I hope is on a beach somewhere, drinking her water (or margarita) and minding her Black business. Meanwhile, the curtain rises on what she and we, the 92 percent, knew full well would be a tragedy Shakespeare would be jealous he did not get credit for writing. We asked for front row seats to this play, though. Well…. not all of us asked, but all of us will be meted out our seats and our cameo roles.

One of the things in my rearview mirror is my habit of listening to the news first thing in the morning. I want to hear nothing but birdsong and my partner’s warm voice in the mornings now. The world can wait until I am at my desk. That marker on my map has already lowered my blood pressure several points. I walk now, in the afternoons, to music instead of news. I listen to songs like Tracey Chapman’s ‘Talkin’ About a Revolution,’ and wryly remember that she was sixteen when she wrote the song, and she is sixty years old now. The moral arc of history may well bend towards justice, but the arc is interminably long, and possibly (probably) not even discernible in our lifetime. Still, we must choose to walk the road our maps can show us, if justice is our goal and our grail.

Lenormand gives us Garden, Child, Woman today. For Black women, of whom I am one, these cards encourage us to cultivate our own gardens, our own company (Garden) perhaps in new ways (Child) we have never allowed ourselves (nor been allowed) to do before. Our best course of action is to care for ourselves (Woman) in the way the world never will. We get to be our own saviors, healers, gardeners, guides. Others are welcome to observe how we will do this; but that should be the extent of our teaching. For have we not learned that when our words are directed outward, they seem to lose sound, power, meaning? And has that phenomenon not been a cultivated one? And is that cultivation not so that we can be listened to in a way that is purely performative and then conveniently ignored?

Adinkra gives us the symbol Mware Wo, which means “I’ll marry you.” I hope Black women will turn to each other and to their mirrors and mouth these words to themselves. Tarot’s 8 of Baskets assures us we have the right to not be this country’s mule, nurse, teacher, footstool, absolver. Some distance from this tragic drama is what we deserve right now, for our own care and feeding and sanity.

I think I feel called to write this in response to an article in The Contrarian which called upon Kamala to be the voice of the opposition. I love the work The Contrarian does, and I admire this article’s writer, but her words made my head spin. Was Kamala not the voice of the opposition all season long? And was she not rejected, out of hand? And was that rejection not one we can lay solely at the feet of foreign interference but also at the feet of the country’s very own tight embrace of misogyny and racism?

Anyway….

I mostly write these posts for me - they are my water and my margarita, both. If they open any eyes, or offer any balm, then that is a bonus and a blessing. I hope this article has done and been a bit of that.

Amen and Ase

Erika

Thank you in advance for subscribing to my YouTube channel.

The Language of Lenormand

My Website for those who want a reading

Erika’s Lenormand of Hope

My Lenormand Course