Revisiting Strength + wrap up reading

contextualizing the year + Big Questions from Rachel Pollack

Somehow we are wrapping up 2024, which has been a Strength year if you’re into the tarot numerology method popularized by Angeles Arrien and Mary K Greer. I considered the implications of this in this post at the beginning of the year. It was interesting reading back through this today, as the year winds down. For example, I wrote:

Perhaps this year asks us individually and collectively:

What difficulties are you facing internally and externally? Will you respond with force and violence, or patience and gentleness? Or perhaps some combination thereof?

There’s also the question of perception and framing here. What one person perceives of as gentleness might be perceived by someone else as violence and vice versa. Things aren’t always what they seem.

I can’t help but see this now in the context of the news of these past couple weeks. Someone gunned down the CEO of an insurance company and the interpretations of this event vary widely depending on who you ask. For some, this was a gentle hero taking down a predatory beast. For others, this was an act of despicable violence. Perception and framing.

Finding patience for the long-haul was another major theme I brought up at the beginning of the year. I talked about how the problems of 2024 don’t have simple solutions and we need to find a way to stay present with them for the long term. That seems even more relevant now in light of many events, not least of all the results of the US presidential election.

To take us a bit out of the doom and gloom, I also wrote:

Cherish the moments of laughter and thriving this year. Even when they are small, they matter immensely. That’s part of conserving your energy for the big picture.

This resonates very strongly (strength-ly?) with me on a personal level. I lost my mother to a terrible disease this year and during her last few months I lived with her part time. Even in such dire circumstances, we did share moments of laughter.

Like, one time we were playing Scrabble (one of her favorite games) and I put down the word “peck.” She added -er to form the word “pecker.” Without thinking, I said “wow! That’s the longest word on the board!” We looked at each other and the unintended double-entendre hit us at the same moment and we both cracked up. A silly moment. A cherished moment.

In the aforementioned post I also commented on the facial expression of the woman on the RWS Strength card:

To me, their appearance conveys acceptance. Here I am. I’m in this reality. I may not like it. It may be brutal. But I’m here and I will do what I can.

Weeeellll, I dunno about you, but that PRECISELY sums up how I felt most the year. Enough said…

Now I want to share a Strength themed reading to wrap-up + integrate 2024. This is from Rachel Pollack’s Tarot Wisdom. She designed this reading for personal use. I’m slightly modifying the questions to offer a collective reading. Which, as always, comes with the caveat “take what resonates and leave the rest.” The prompts are:

This year, how were we strong?

How were we weak?

Going forward, when do we need to be strong?

When do we need to be weak?

This year, what strengthened us?

What weakened us?

I’m turning to the Gentle Tarot to explore these questions.

The Nine of Cups shows how we were strong this year. This is a lovely echo of the something we talked about earlier: cherishing the small beautiful moments. The person here lounges with a flower, enjoying the view of a rainbow, visited by birds above. Rain falls around her, suggesting sadness or hard times may still be around. But this moment of joy happens even during the storm.

Each you laughed this year, you were strong. Whenever you enjoyed a small bit of beauty, you were strong. Hell, each time you got out of bed and faced the day, you were fucking strong!

This year we were strong because we found moments of beauty, connection and gratitude despite the many real challenges we faced.

The Star shows up in response to the query “how were we weak this year?” I think this adds more nuance and depth to the messages from the previous card. Perhaps even though we were able to enjoy fleeting moments of happiness this year, our weakness was in projecting that into a longer term vision.

This resonates for me, at least. Sure, I was able to find some small moments of goodness in 2024 as suggested by the Nine of Cups. But I still held a pretty pessimistic view of the future overall. The Star is about hope, so in this position asking about weakness, it makes me think that longer-term hope was weak this year. Does that make sense?

You can’t force yourself to feel hope that isn’t authentic. But you can have the intention to open up more energetic space for hope, slowly but surely.

Going forward, when do we need to be strong? Seven of Cups. Once again, the message of this card seems to weave back into the message of the previous card. We need to be strong when we are faced with distractions and disillusionment. Social media and the daily news present us with dire situation after tragedy after distraction. So it has been for years.

If we don’t cultivate inner strength, all of this results in compassion fatigue, hopelessness, listlessness, disorientation. We need to be strong when we notice those warning signs that the overculture is sapping away our sovereignty.

The Chariot shows when we need to be weak. Rachel Pollack clarifies that weakness is not necessarily a negative trait. She points out that sometimes weakness means stepping back and letting someone else carry the burdens. That is essentially the message I’m getting from the Chariot here.

Generally, the vibe of the Chariot is “keep going! You got this!” But when life tries to pull you down a path that doesn’t feel like the path you’re meant to walk, it’s okay to stop. When the direction you think you have to go feels impossible, it may be necessary to reverse course.

Flower (or Queen) of Wands represents what strengthened us this year. We each have a vital life force within us. Not just a survival instinct, but a thriving instinct. Flower of Wands is that force within us. The part of your psyche that was able to retain some gusto despite all the bullshit you encountered during 2024.

Any tarot suit can represent creativity, but wands especially so. As such, this card makes me think our collective creative spirit was strengthened this year, even if in mostly subtle ways. Maybe as one example, online, people found new ways to connect in decentralized spaces like Blue Sky.

Mari Aparicio-Tovar, creator of the Gentle Tarot, writes of this card:

She is outwardly compassionate and at the same time inwardly focused. The balance of the two is a major part of her strength.

A lovely synchronicity that the word strength comes up again here. And it does feel so relevant that this year strengthened us by requiring that we simultaneously remain aware of the broader world while also being ruthless about tending to our inner realms.

What weakened us this year? The Six of Thunder (Swords). Of course, the Six of Swords follows the Five, which can represent power struggles and aggression. With the Six, we’re past the initial trauma but we’re still reeling from the impact.

This year did kind of feel like Six of Swords moment after Six of Swords moment. As soon as one piece of brutal news had made its way out of the cycle, in comes something else. We never really got the chance to fully recover from one event to the next. This isn’t just true of 2024 but seems to be the result of decades of the 24/7 news cycle.

There’s a rainbow visible on this card, but this past year it felt hard to fully reach that rainbow. Perhaps that’s a call back to the messages from the Star. Perhaps a broader take away here is the need to intentionally carve out spaces for collective hope, and collective healing.

Hard times are never going to stop. How can we open to healing + hope anyway? That is the question.

Thanks for being here,

Carrie