"With the Internet, if you erase something, it just means you have to spend another half-minute to find it." Gilbert Gottfried
TAROT: Ace of Wands / LENORMAND: Fish, Snake, Clover / ADINKRA: Asase Ye Dura
So, the Orange One, not understanding how the internet (or anything else) works, wants us to forget the whole Epstein thing, the whole slavery thing, the whole 43 felony thing. He’s put Obama’s official portrait in some obscure, unlit hallway, and says that because his bff Putin says mail-in voting is bad, he’ll scrap it. I hear that tonight, he plans to go on “patrol” with the police and the National Guard in D.C., no doubt hoping that someone will take him up on his erstwhile suggestion (remember 2020?) to ‘shoot protesters in the leg or something.’ Better yet, he’s hoping someone in uniform will invite him to take the first shot. It’s not Fifth Avenue, true, but he wouldn’t look that gift horse in the mouth. He says he wants to go to heaven, but I suspect that deep down, since he knows that’s a lost cause, he’s going to put in an application to be at Satan’s right hand. If he can’t get into heaven, then he’ll just pack his bags for hell. His date with that down escalator is fast approaching, and he knows it. I guess he figures since that’s where he is bound, he might as well bulk up his resume, in hopes he’ll get an office job, instead of being made to work the furnace. He is not looking well. I think by Thanksgiving, we will have much for which to give thanks. Allegedly. For entertainment purposes only.
In the meantime, he will make sure we experience our own version of hell on earth, a production number he is uniquely fit to orchestrate.
Our cards have switched places today, which is something they’ve never done before. Usually, Tarot sets the stage, and Lenormand advises how we should learn our lines and what costumes are called for. These cards feel like the other way around. Here they are:
Since Lenormand has elbowed her way to the front, let’s see what she has to say, and why she is so intent on speaking first, with Fish, Snake, Clover.
(Fish) is playing a dual role today, as both emotion and ‘alot,’ as in that expression “plenty of fish in the sea.” In the next month or two, we will feel so much more bombarded by ugliness and bullying behavior and disinformation that, were we in an ocean, the dangerous (Snake) detritus we would encounter would make it hard to swim. Even treading water will be difficult, without our legs and our hearts and our spirits becoming tangled up by the next thing, and the next thing, and the next. Things will be coming at us fast (Clover.) Lenormand does not want us to be taken unawares.
Now that we have been forewarned, Tarot would like a word. The card today is the Ace of Wands. It is the card for creativity, the spark of new ideas (like Gavin Newsom’s trolling, like Nicole Collier’s courage.) It is a card that embodies the pursuit of passions, the seizing of opportunities, the mustering of mettle. The traditional Tarot depicts the Ace of Wands as a hand holding a staff which is flowering with potential and possibility and power. It is the seed of something, the beginning of everything.
In Nyasha Williams’ Black Tarot, the Ace of Wands is depicted quite differently. In place of the wand there is a tree, and in place of the disembodied hand from the traditional Tarot, there are two impala. (I checked, btw. One can add an s or not to make the word impala plural. I choose to leave off the s. Call it poetic license. ) The tree is a famous one, found in Africa, and called the baobab. In every photograph I have ever seen of the baobab tree, it just looks holy. It turns out that it is. Traditionally, elders and healers and wise men and women gather under the baobab tree to commune in search of both individual and collective internal wisdom. The Tarot advises that we find our version of the baobab tree; that we find our people, too; that we strategize and meditate, and make our lists and summon our strength with all the creativity we can muster.
Adinkra adds the symbol Asase Ye Duru, which means 'the earth has weight.’ It feels like a nod to our metaphorical baobab tree, a reminder that the earth and her gifts ground, support, and sustain us. Take walks outside. Drink water. Sustain your energy with plants. Put your heads together under the baobab tree like these impala. Strategize. Create. Encourage. But remember, too, Lenormand’s warning: What is coming is coming at us fast. We’re at the part where ‘darkness may spend the night.’ There is more to that quote, but I will leave you to Google it. I know we want to flip to the back of the book and get to the happily ever after. Not yet. But, as the old folks say (of whom I am one) “Soon and very soon.”
Amen and Ase,
Erika
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The Language of Lenormand (My Book)
Hi Erika. I, too, am of the old folks variety (79 this year) and want to let you know how much your writing and card readings inspire me. I was active in the social justice and anti war movements of the '60s and '70s and naively thought we had straightened out all of the inequality/injustice afflicting this country. Yet here I am, older, tired, discouraged yet knowing I need to get at it 'one more time before I go'. Your words are the catalyst that make me feel up to the task even though I don't really know what practical form my involvement can take. But you've created a community where I can see that old and young have come together with a common focus and that gives it all that much more potential than resistance and rebellion had when it was by and large a youth movement. Clearly it is the young who will carry us forward, but we old folks who have been there can give them the encouragement and gratitude that their efforts deserve. Whatever roles we each might be required to play, we are in this together Your forthrightness and frank expression are the perfect sparks. Thank you for honoring what you have clearly been called to do.
Thank you, Erika. Your words are a blessing and a comfort. ❤️❤️❤️