Solstice Draw
Happy Solstice! I had the bright idea to try out one of my newer decks for y’all today, imagining that a desert-themed deck would somehow be fitting for the sunniest day of the year.
New decks are tricky. You haven’t figured out the ins and outs yet, their quirks and the places where they diverge from other decks. Each of them has its own internal logic. It’s still too early for me to give a review of this deck, but I was struck immediately by how human-centered it is. I’ve been looking high and low for a desert deck in forests of forest decks. Neo-pagans have made up a disproportionate number of the tarot revival, and their spiritual project has largely been trying to reclaim older European spiritual traditions that were forcibly displaced by Christianity. And Europe is…well…mostly forested. So there’s a real dearth of tarot decks that draw inspiration from other natural places, whether the sea, the desert, the jungle, or even plains. Given what I was hoping for, the lack of desert in this desert deck really stood out. But the artist’s choice to treat each of the four suits as representative of classes of people drew my attention to the degree to which human-centeredness is a feature of Smith-Rider-Waite decks more generally.
At any rate, I don’t want to bore everyone to tears with ramblings about the history of critiques of humanism and the ways that this seemingly positive political theory is both a symptom of and contributor to alienation from the environment (as if, somehow, we as people were in the world but not of the world), but I can virtually promise that I’ll end up circling back around to it in later readings. For now, I’ll go ahead and give you today’s reading.
Today’s draw:
Ten of Cacti (coins. class of aliens and mystics)
Queen of Chiles (wands. class of artisans)
Nine of Cacti
King of Jugs (cups. class of cowboys)
Nine of Jugs
Four of Jugs
Ace of Daggers (swords. class of warriors and nobility)
Deck:
Desert Illuminations Tarot, by Lindsay D. Williams
Are you feeling unstable at the moment? Perhaps you don’t have enough to make ends meet. Or, perhaps you don’t feel like you have enough to make ends meet, or you’ve allowed yourself to be trapped in a life you don’t want because you’re afraid to give up certain types of financial and social security. The cards today want you to ask yourself — really ask yourself — whether that’s true. Do you actually need more to put yourself on firm footing? Or has the footing been there all along?
Either way, you may have less to worry about than you think. With the Queen of Chiles and Nine of Cacti in your court, you have everything around you and within yourself to live an energetic, joyful, creative, and satisfying life, one marked by abundance and independence.
This doesn’t mean it will always come easy, and it’s important to check in with yourself regularly to ensure that you’re on the path you want to be, and that you’re following it in an honorable way. As long as you stay honest with yourself, though, and treat others around you with respect and compassion, you will live a life of emotional fulfillment and satisfaction. Riches come with community.
Spend the moment in some of that inner reflection. Reassess what you’re doing and make plans for any changes you may need to make to align yourself with your best path. Don’t spend so much time navel gazing that you miss opportunities right in front of you, though! You don’t need to second guess endlessly. You can feel, inside yourself, whether what you’re doing is right or not. Be truthful with yourself, and you’ll find the mental clarity you need to expand the world available to you, bringing forward new paths you may have been unable to see before.
