Returning lessons 😈 The Devil
Tarot for the week of 27/03/23 🌂 Accepting the shadow and cutting the power on capitalism
Hi Y’all.
This weekend I did something scary. Something a little out there. Something bold. Something brazen.
I booked a room at my local library! Shocking, I know. Somewhat scandalous.
Ok, but actually, I booked a room so that I could lead an in-person workshop on the basics of Tarot. This live teaching is something pretty new to me. Though I have taught friends and I hope at times, you dear readers, leading a workshop is a bit different.
I’m also looking to offer this workshop online, once I test it out on IRL participants first. Once I get some gauge of interest, I’m hoping to offer a short course on reading the tarot. I will keep you posted.
For anyone in the Ann Arbor, MI area on the 11th of April at 6 pm, please come join me for a free workshop. Not in the area? Share the invite with someone who is…
So that’s the exciting news out the way. Now for the usual. The regular. But this card is anything but regular.
Tarot for the week of 27/03/23: The Devil
When I first saw this card it made me think of the card of the year for 2022. For those of you unfamiliar with how the card for the year is calculated; the numbers for the year are added up and that card is picked from the Major Arcana. So for 2022, it was 6 (2+2+2). The sixth card in the Major Arcana is the Lovers. Last year was all about aligning values and forming or strengthening relationships of all kinds. Not it feels with the Devil the lessons of last year are coming back up.
In the Devil, the card that I pulled for this week, we can see two naked people chained by the neck to a stone plinth on which the Devil, with clawed feed, bat wings and goats horns, crouches. In the Lovers, the card of 2022, two similar naked figures look up in reverence at a deity-like being who is appearing out of a cloud. The Devil card is much darker-toned, with a black background where the lovers has a sun at the top and brighter colouring. What always strikes me is the movement from one card to the other. The snake in the lovers echoing that in the garden of Eden, ready to bring down the pair. Also the fruit and fire motifs, behind the pair there are trees of fruit and flames in the Lovers card, however, in the Devil, the fruit and flames are part of the figure’s tales. They have become part of them.
This linking back to the card of 2022 is saying that the lessons we learnt last year are coming back up. Where we felt we were misaligned, or chafing within relationships is now coming to a head. The small discomfort has become a blister. Impossible to avoid.
Taken at face value the Devil card is associated with attachment, just like the lovers but in a more unhealthy sense. It speaks of addiction, restriction or repression. It is also associated with the shadow self. Not some evil-tainted part of us that we should ignore, but the part of us that hurts the most. The part that causes us to hurt others or ourselves. The part we may think of as unlovable (even if this is totally untrue).
Where the Devil falls in the journey of the Major Arcana is just after Temperance and before the Tower. It warns of falling into materialism, from letting temperance and moderation turn into complacency. The Devil, the warning, the misalignment comes just before the destruction of the Tower. When nothing that isn’t solid and worthy survives.
This card makes me think of the evil we allow. The silence we sit in. The ways we take an easy route and end up comprimising our integrity. It’s a little too on the nose to say the Devil is capitalism. But isn’t it?
I think also of the profound podcast I heard from Niki Franco interviewing Fariha RóisÃn, author of Who Is Wellness For? In it, Farhina states that for white people to enslave people of colour the world over they had to dehumanise those people. More than that, they had to dehumanise themselves, carve out their empathy and commit to the system of oppression.
That is not to take away from the core of the podcast which is about who wellness culture caters to and who it leaves behind. And the real reasons for working on ourselves; so we can better help others.
This feels like a fine line to write about. Rehumanising ourselves, accepting our shadow and working on being better members of the community. Finding no part of ourselves, or others, to be undeserving of care and support. And then, on the other hand, the people actively destroying the planet have names and addresses. And plenty of people perpetuating racial injustice, running for-profit prisons (or any fucking prison) for example, need to be taken to task.
The fine line is this. French unions cutting power to MPs and billionaires. You can continue to be the Devil but people should make it very hard for you to do so. When thinking on the Devil, the systems we are beholden to and the injustice therein, there is an element of knowing. Of complacency. Awareness is not absolution. It is the first step, the next is action.
Journaling prompts for the Devil
This week ask yourself: What parts of myself am I hiding from? How did I feel in 2022? How have I changed? What lessons did I learn? How can I see the patterns coming back around? Where can I act differently?
What do I find restricting? Where are others more or less restricted than I am? How can I remove obstacles for them? Where do I need help removing obsacles for myself? Why don’t the people of Britain and the US protest like the rest of the world?
As always I would love to hear what this brings up for you. How have you been feeling? What’s the devil to you?
I am available for Written and Zoom Tarot Readings. Readings via Voice Note are also available. If you’re interested in getting a reading but have no idea what to ask here is a selection of questions I have answered in my time to get you thinking. All my offerings are sliding scale to make them as accessible as possible. I am also always available to chat and always open to trade etc.
Catch you in the ether,
M
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