Dear Collective,
It’s a new year, a new month, which means a new tarot reading and of course, a new tarot deck! I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of the Next World Tarot by Cristy C. Road. Since it arrived on my doorstep, I’ve noticed that my approach to handling this deck is the same as I would approach anything sacred: with reverence, care, and quiet enjoyment. I don’t want to excitedly exclaim how amazing it is to work with a tarot deck that is full of people of colour, queer folk, and people with all different kinds of bodies – I just want to let people know this deck exists, in the hope that they get to know it themselves.
January’s questions are:
Who will help us best work together?
How can we grow a future power that supports the whole collective, rather than just the privileged few?
How do we let go of the old rules that bind us?
Where do we go to retrieve our discarded dreams and hopes?
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1. Who will help us best work together?
The Queen of Swords
Of course it’s me. The one who will keep you on track by making you watch your speech. What’s that you were going to say? Are you sure you really want to say that? Are you about to use cutting words because you’re feeling vulnerable and you’re really not comfortable with that sensation, and if you say that shitty thing you’ll feel a bit better for a nanosecond or two?
Or are you using cutting words because you fear we have already spent too much time politely talking in circles, protecting those who need no protection and asking those who are thrown to the curb to explain – in essay form with full citations – why exactly they need us to understand their situation better, and help them do something about it?
Can we work best together because we are willing to cut out the bullshit, to say what must be said without the preamble? And if we do it that way can we be clear that even when we’re in pain, our words strike with genuine grace and ferocious empathy?
2. How can we grow a future power that supports the whole collective, rather than just the privileged few?
The Sun
I could be smart and say: Solar power – GO! But that’s obvious right? So is saying “teach young people to have respect and gratitude for the earth that we live on, the air that we breathe and the water we drink. And of course for the sun. Teach them to live in harmony with the planet, for the benefit of all beings.”
Yet maybe we need to be reminded of what isn’t all that obvious. The thing that happens when we gaze at each other with wonderment rather than disdain and judgement. That thing that happens when we sincerely enjoy the very particular ways each of us bring marvellous ideas to the world. When we collectively bounce off each other and brainstorm an action that sheds the collective dead skin and awakens new cells.
What if we were to point to something that is so pure and new we can’t quite describe it? Something that awakens such tenderness that it pains us to feel it, because if we feel this fully we might break if we lose it. Is a supportive collective power something that just requires each of us to hold a steady gaze on what we hope is possible, that can then grow exponentially as we each hold our part of the puzzle?
3. How do we let go of the old rules that bind us?
The Queen of Cups
Old rules? Rules? What rules? I seem to have escaped them somewhere along the way – if they ever existed. Which is why, I suppose, I’ve shown up. How to renounce the rules that bind so completely that you find yourself, inexplicably, drinking tea with an octopus? When you gaze at me, can you honestly say to yourself, “there goes one who tried their very best to fit in and follow the rules”? Of course you don’t! I got here by being curious, by trying on what I was encouraged to not try on, by moving past those who told me to be orderly, those who didn’t realise that by allowing chaos to reign I was allowing myself to reorganise things so much more beneficially. When I didn’t have to rely upon the structures that shame the natural emotional flow and awareness of our collective beauty, I began to see that something new was emerging: a way forward that held my mind with such delicate grace that my actions had to be wild in order to maintain the balance.
Let go of the old rules by examining them. Ask yourself, who made them up? What was their intention and what are their credentials? Who gives them the right to dish out the rules? What inner work have they done to allow them the privilege of exercising jurisdiction over our rights? Do their rules speak lovingly to the freak within, or do they brutalise them or ignore their very uniquely structured freedom?
4. Where do we go to retrieve our discarded dreams and hopes?
The 6 of Swords
It’s a journey that is important and it’s a journey that doesn’t end. Going to uncharted places that start to become familiar until the next realisation that renders it all unknown again. The beginners mind, over and over – a way forward that relies on instinct rather than theoretical knowledge. Don’t you get it yet? You’re going inside your membrane on this journey. Your dreams and hopes reside within you, splintered and stuck behind the conditionings that told you were afuckupjustforgetyoursillydreamsalreadyyouidealistichippiethatsnothowtheworldworksstopstopstop.
I move without fear. You think you can’t do it but maybe that’s because you still believe the lies that people have told you are your truths. And what if they are truths? No one has all the answers and if you need to uncover something inside then grab the hands of a trusted few (professionally and/or personally) and dive on in. Seek support and go deep. No support? Go as deep as is safe and when you do come across a similar mind make best use of the opportunity. Their sentences or their mere presence could rearrange your future meanderings into clear paths of purpose, beauty and strength.
Or not. Maybe the path is just long and quiet and dark, always the moment before the dawn and never the dawn. But it can’t be, right? There has to be something there worth gazing upon. There is nobility in this process and there is honour in it, isn’t there? Shift with the times and speak to the moon, the dust and the cars speeding off in the distance, carrying other people’s lives. What about this life, this dream, this hope right here that sits in a shard of broken glass beneath your foot? It might cut you as you pick it up, but it is your piece to work with, in a life like a dream with visions that no two people will ever completely agree upon. Why forget a part of yourself that could be your gateway to being at peace in this piece of mystery?
© 2018 Sarah Barry ~ Tarot Readings with Psychic Sarah
This Tarot Reading for the Collective was done with the Next World Tarot by Cristy C. Road, © 2017 Croadcore. These images are used here with permission. To find out more about this magical deck go to croadcore.org and Instagram: @croadcore
To find out more about how I work go to sarahthepsychic.com/about/ and sarahthepsychic.com/faq/
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Next World Tarot by Cristy C. Road © 2017 Croadcore