A gradual series of revelations

peace in darkness & tarot from the heart

Gray November…I’ve been down since July.

Well, apparently I’m starting this post with a Taylor Swift lyric like the basic white lady I am.

Hello friend! I came to my cozy home office today craving a moment of peace, but it’s hard to find peace in my heart. Out the window it is indeed a gray November. And I have indeed been down since July. And now it’s the holiday season when you’re supposed to be happy and spending time with loved ones. But one of my loved ones is gone, others are sick, the broader world is in chaos.

I do believe it’s possible to find peace in your heart even when life is excruciating. But sometimes it is a struggle to find any peace. Sometimes all I can do is stay open to the possibility of even a tiny sliver of peace in my heart.

I drew a card from the Spacious Tarot and it’s the reversed Three of Pentacles, which in the version I’m using we infamously misspelled as Penatcles.

Pulling this card made me think about how I often feel alone, and it reminds me that other people feel this way too. Sometimes we need to just remind each other, hey, I’m here! I may be far away, but I’m here. I may not have a lot to offer you in this moment but we are both existing together.

And the fact that the card is misspelled in this moment reminds me that you don’t have to be perfect to show up and support someone else. That’s a thing that often stops me from writing here. I tell myself “ugh, I’m tired, I have no energy, I have nothing interesting or helpful to say!” And it’s like, okay Carrie, you aren’t feeling perfect. But that doesn’t mean you can’t contribute anything to the collective.

I saw a post somewhere on social media recently that said something like “if you only have 20% to give today, and you gave that 20% then you actually gave 100%.” Good perspective!

I pulled another card and it’s the Moon. It’s interesting because I was talking about peace earlier. There’s a type of peace in the Moon card, but it is also unsettling. Things are calm and dark but also strange. The mushrooms growing here could provide nourishment or could kill you. The glow of moonlight could make things look extra beautiful or extra menacing, or both at the same time.

Perhaps what’s called for here is shifting my vision of peace into something that aligns more with the energy of the Moon. Perhaps the blissful, safe, secure peace that I crave isn’t realistic right now. But the bizarre and contradictory peace of the Moon could be something I embrace at this time.

There’s a quote attributed to Carl Jung (I think from the Red Book but I’m having difficulty finding a definitive source):

Silence and peace come over you if you begin to comprehend the darkness. Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the abyssal in you, you become utterly simple.

That is the peace of the Moon. I am shifting my definition of, and my expectation for, inner peace. The shadows within me don’t have to prevent peace, they can be components of peace.

I thought I would wrap up with one more card and here is the Eight of Cups. I pull this card often. It has a similar energy to the Moon. At first glance, life seems like a linear path. This happens, then that happens, you move on from this cup to that cup. But you can only see so far ahead on the path. Maybe it dissolves and becomes a pit of mud. Or a craggy mountain you don’t know how to scramble up.

And hell, maybe all of linear time is an illusion. I’ve felt this way lately, and I’ve heard a lot of other people express similar sentiments. The pandemic seemed to amplify this. We’re just out here like “what is time, anyway?” This all reminds me of a song from one of my favorite shows Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, sung by Josh Groban:

You want things to be wrapped up neatly, the way that stories do. You're looking for answers, but answers aren't looking for you. Because life is a gradual series of revelations that occur over a period of time. It's not some carefully crafted story, it's a mess, and we're all gonna die.

If you saw a movie that was like real life, you'd be like, "What the hell was that movie about? It was really all over the place." Life doesn't make narrative sense.

It’s so true, life DOESN’T make narrative sense! Yet somehow many of us human beings deeply long for it to do so. This is what brought me to tarot in the first place. That aching need to make some semblance of sense out of the human experience. And you know, sometimes tarot can do that. Sometimes it does help life actually make some type of narrative sense.

But other times, like today, tarot reminds us that we can’t always wrap things up in a simple way. Sometimes being a human is a strange mess, and that’s okay.

Things have gotten weird, but it brings me back to the groundedness in the Three of Penatcles. Which is to say, if life feels weird, you’re not alone. Life is weird. And that’s okay. We don’t need to expect it to be otherwise, we don’t need to wait for it to be otherwise. We can support each other and find small moments of connection in the haze. We can show up together and do something even if we do it quite imperfectly. Yeah?

Thanks for being here,

Carrie