Encouragement From the Oracle
Public divination for collective liberation.
So far this platform has been a bit of a placeholder. I wanted to move away from Facebook and other short-form media. Finding Substack seemed a better fit for me. In the mean time I have been completing my Masters of Divinity from Naropa University with all the accompanying intensity of finishing a thesis paper and my CPE internship as a campus chaplain. Needless to say, there has not been time for developing content here while that was happening.
In my role as a campus spiritual care provider it was my challenge to find ways to support not just in-person students but several hundred online students as well. Attempting to organize events on campus was often unsuccessful due to inconsistent schedules and low bandwidth during the semester. So, what was the thing that worked? A weekly oracle card reading sent out via email. It gave me the opportunity to bring my personal spiritual path into my work and it was a way to slip in practical encouragement to support spiritual practice as well as mental and emotional wellness. The feedback was so positive that it surprised me. I was even encouraged to try it in the real world, too. So…here we are.
I aim to keep my content free or on a sliding scale. I know a great many are struggling. As a chaplain it is my aspiration to alleviate that suffering and to make my offerings accessible to everyone regardless of ability to pay. If you would like to support me in doing this work and have the means to do so, please consider subscribing or making a donation.
Preparing the way
As I do with all my readings I sit for some time in prayer and contemplation before I draw the cards. This week as we were approaching the New Moon and Saturn moved into Aries, a 2.5 year window that happens every 30 years (or so my astrology app tells me)…I held you all in my heart and asked, what needs to be heard right now? These were the cards that came:
Firstly, I think it’s very interesting that Broom is the very first card and Tend and Harvest are, in this order, the last in the deck. There is something nudging here about completeness, about the natural order of things. Share below if you have further thoughts on this…but I am remembering the saying about the wise being one who plants the oak tree knowing that they will never sit in its shade. We are in the kind of times where one isn’t sure if our efforts will bear fruit. Uncertainty abounds and we are facing the possibility that the outcome may be one that is beyond what we once imagined. There is a liminality to this moment. The invitation is to prepare the way for the work that needs to be done. This very clearly needs to begin with a clearing of our energies.
We live in a fractal universe. The micro affects the macro. If anything we do is to be effective, it must come from a balanced place. What can you do to clear the way? Do not discount the smaller actions. Cleaning the dishes can be a magical act. One that sets things in motion. Do not feel overwhelmed, put intention behind these victories. From caring for your home and family, to the larger acts of internal work like healing our traumas and generational patterns, to participating in collective actions, everything done with the intention and vision of transmutation feeds the momentum towards wholeness.
Tend and Harvest together feel like an emphasis. They stress the point that we are entering into a time of hard work where we will have to be careful what we are cultivating. This not only applies to the collective, but to how we are working individually. In the garden of our being we cultivate loving kindness, compassion, wisdom and discipline. When negative patterns arise we work to heal the wounds that caused them, taking them out by the root. If you have ever worked in a garden you know that leaving the root behind will only cause the propagation of the weed we were trying to remove. This can be extrapolated out into our personal healing as well as the global. To change the leader of a country, for example, does not remove the root of the problems that they might be causing nor the ones that got them elected to begin with. There are many underlying roots that fed that outcome. As individuals, where can we plant the seeds of loving compassion, heal the wounds of separation and division and pull out the roots of poverty, isolation, discrimination and disembodiment? Be careful what you fertilize and what you starve. The source of these very things can lie within our own unconscious bias. In our fractal system, we must start with ourselves.
The Harvest card tells us that the fruition of our work also requires labor. Picking the berries and digging the potatoes is also hard work. It is satisfying, however. What might harvest look like in this context? It could be a gratitude practice. Acknowledging the abundance that is already there. If you are fortunate enough to be reading this post at all, then very likely you have much to be grateful for. What does this look like in community? It might mean volunteering at a local food bank. It could mean donating any excess you have to others. It might be supporting small and local business in your area. It might be lifting up the voices of those who have been silenced. Who in your life is not being recognized for the work they are already doing? How can you support them? In the collective, who is working towards our mutual liberation that needs support? Also, how are you building and nurturing community in your own backyard? Do you know your neighbour? Do you know if federal spending cuts will impact their ability to feed themselves? Can you afford to share a meal? Historically, throughout all of humanity, we have survived not by hoarding and fending for ourselves, but by sharing, and helping our neighbours. Recognize that fear, capitalism and individualism have created a scarcity mentality that is at the root of most of our problems right now. The remedy for these is not isolation. It is connection, generosity, compassion and courage.
When I read these cards there was a heaviness and intensity that prompted me to seek further guidance. Friends have been sharing posts from 3am.tarot lately with fresh tarot spreads that have sparked my interest and inspiration. This one I have found rather helpful. The first card indicates what we need to let go of or deemphasize, the second what we need to lean into and lift up.
This first one feels incredibly relevant. Anticipation is one of the main causes of suffering. In the Buddhist tradition this falls into the category of a poison. Worry for the future OR longing for something different than the present moment gets us in trouble every time. The fact of the matter is that we can’t actually anticipate the future. The outcome is never how we imagined, better or worse. If there is one thing that we need to do less of it is anticipation. Even the anticipation of a good thing can rob us of the richness of the moment we are in right now. And now is the only place we can actually do anything to influence those moments to come. While I can empathize and acknowledge that there are things happening in the world that can bring up some very reasonable fear, when we let that override us and cause rumination and anxiety we fall into an inability to be effective. If you fall into anxiety regularly I know that the body sensations that causes can easily ramp us up into panic. The struggle is real.
So what can we do about that? Mindfulness is all the rage, and I teach mindfulness, so I might offer that, but this is not always accessible. Remember that I mentioned that disembodiment is one of the roots of the problems that are happening right now? You might have been confused by that. There is a lot to be said about this. But right now, I feel called to emphasize joy. Joy? Yes. We all have music on our devices. Find songs you love that make you happy, ones that are tied to good memories, ones that make you want to move. I want you to dance. I have chronic pain and can’t be on my feet too much, but you know what? I dance in my chair. You can even dance in your mind if your body is not accessible to you. But the important part is to move what you have, BE in it, feel it and bring joy to it, in the present moment right now. Let the music derail the thought patterns, diffusing the cortisol pumping in our overwhelmed bodies. Shake your booty. Then come back to now. To the breath. To your heartbeat. To this moment. You can CREATE joy. And we need it to strengthen the light.
So now. The Vulture and Asphodel - upheaval. What can be said about this, you may think, that I want to lean into? Vultures are those that seek out carrion. The ones that signal death and destruction. What is this asking me to do? The teaching of this card is an invitation to lean into our grief. It is all too frequent in our culture to distract from, to ignore or to shame any feeling of discomfort. This is a significant cause of our disembodiment. To be in our bodies is to feel our pain, to feel our anxiety and our grief. To Tend, is to feel. To follow the sensations in our bodies that lead us into our emotions, to our grief. We cannot be effective in any movement to create positive change, for ourselves or for the collective if we do not first give ourselves space to feel. Francis Weller’s book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, does an excellent job of describing the layers of grief we may be carrying in the collective and it goes far beyond a personal loss. A grief many of us may be experiencing right now is the loss of our idea of what our country was supposed to represent and the stability we thought we were provided by it. This shift, among many others, is causing a lot of fear and anger right now. Anger is often the result of grief, remember. So if you have no idea where to start in the work that is your life and the wellbeing of the collective, you can begin by grieving. Grieve every idea and hope you had for yourself and the world that did not come to pass. You may be surprised to discover that when we let go of old dreams of what could have been, we open ourselves to the very real joy of what IS.
*Arin Murphy-Hiscock, illustrated by Sara Richard, The Green Witch’s Oracle Deck (Simon and Schuster: Adams Media) 2023.
**Jessica Roux, Woodland Wardens (Andrew’s McMeel) 2022.
Thank you for reading this far! I am still feeling out this platform and I am a Luddite at heart, so it is not my natural milieux. Your patience as I figure this all out! I would love to be in conversation with you, so if this brought up thoughts please share. If you have questions about practices or resources that can support you in this time, reach out. May any merit generated from this work be dedicated to the wellbeing of all my relations. Peace, peace, peace. -M