December 2021: Emotional Exchange
Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast
Here in the Catskills, we’ve gotten our first snow. A friend recently observed to me that the bare trees look like dakinis, and now I can’t stop seeing them everywhere I look. The palette has changed completely since last month. The deep teal ribbon of the Stony Clove Creek breaks apart over boulders and fallen trees. It’s taken me many years to appreciate the stripped-bare beauty of winter here. I wonder how the landscape is changing where you are?
In the Learn Tarot department, I’m taking this month off. But I’ll offer Tarot 101 on Thursday, January 14th at 5:30pm est + the Monday evening section of the Study Tarot Series still has room for January’s study of the Emperor and Minor 4s: Sovereignty + Structure. And beginning February 1st, I’ll once again offer my 5-week Tarot + Moon workshop; we’ll meet on Tuesdays at 5:30pm est.
And: my books are open for readings in December. And yes, I do offer gift cards for tarot readings!
Thank you to all of you who continue to support my work in so many amazing and generous ways.
In love + solidarity + collective imagining,
Shea in the Catskills
Money is so many things, and the culture really normalizes having a dysfunctional relationship with it. But money is also a creative medium, a magical + liturgical tool, and a form of communication that we can use to double down on our deepest values and create the world we want to live in, now. That’s why this year I’m giving to the Phoenicia Food Pantry, the Phoenicia Library, Showing Up for Racial Justice, and the Line 3 Legal Defense Fund. No amount is too small to give, because the act of giving can’t be measured.
Who are you giving to this year?
What’s Inspiring Me Now
- I first heard of environmental journalist Cynthia Barnett’s book The Sound of the Sea when I listened to a podcast interview with her about it, and was riveted. “This is a book about seeing what has gone unseen. The life inside the shell; the Maldivian queens and others left out of history books; the connections between the human condition and that of the sea.”
- The turquoise blue water in the paintings of Calida Garcia Rawles
- This episode of On Being with Bessel van der Kolk, updated with his thoughts on what happened to us this past year, left me thinking a lot about the power of storytelling: “…the nature of a traumatic experience is that the brain doesn’t allow a story to be created.”
- Joanna Macy: The Climate Crisis as a Spiritual Path. Old Dog Documentaries has made this 20-minute piece available for free viewing, and it feels like very good medicine at this time. "The culture says, 'Go shopping.' Really, we want to go cry."
- The Brown sisters’ How to Survive the End of the World podcast Sibling Miniseries. Pick literally any episode—they’re all amazing. But this one, with siblings Aurora + Ricardo Levins-Morales: “Every ecosystem of the body rebounds and heals itself, just when you stop the frigging oppression. Whether it’s a coral reef or soil… And it’s no one thing, but it’s all the voices together.”
- Ayana Young’s conversation with lichenologist Kerry Knudsen: “I think that the essence of magic is imagination, in a modern world that we live in through our cultural changes, magic now is the ability to imagine the impossible.”
- Some juicy novels I got lost in last month: Matrix and Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, The Secret Life of Bees and the Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
- Just finished binge-watching all three seasons of Sex Education: wow. The music supervisor really did a thing opening up emotional wormholes through space + time.
It’s the medicine I most need right now, it’s my wish for you as we approach the solstice: friendship, community, fellowship, (chosen) family to share your joys and sorrows with. Here are a few of my own words + a curation of some of my favorite tarot readers’ takes on this powerful medicine.
Three of Cups
Mercury in Cancer | emotional messages, emotional exchange
In its natural habitat: mudita, or sympathetic joy; compersion; Shine Theory, Audre Lorde reading Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
The Three of Cups depicts three people dancing, holding one another up in their joy, reinforcing it. How do we do that? How do we ensure that we’re there for loved ones in their suffering, but also that we reinforce their well-being? “
—Jessica Dore, Tarot for Change
celebrating, putting yourself out there, getting together with people you like, sharing, trusting others, relying on outside help, working together, helping each other, uniting with others, discovering a common good
—Joan Bunning, The Big Book of Tarot
How have you been enjoying yourself? How do you relax with others? What is bringing you joy? What do you want to communicate or share with others? What cause is there for celebration in your life?
—Mary K Greer, Tarot for Your Self
The Three of Cups indicates joy, celebration, and above all sharing the wonder of life.
—Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
Say the thing that is already in your mouth. Feel your thoughts and think your feelings.
—Jessa Crispin, Spolia Tarot
One of the most potent love cards in the Tarot. When one person in our community wins, we all win.
—Michelle Tea, Modern Tarot
...sharing both our joy and our struggles is healing and empowering. When [this card] appears, you know that your community is a resource or something you need to cultivate right now.
—Amanda Yates Garcia aka @oracleofla, BTW podcast
Together, all filled up. There is magic when two join together, but where there are three (or more) a circle is formed. That circle—electric, spiraling inward and outward—is a powerful well of cosmic energy
—Mari in the Sky, The Gentle Tarot
What can you do to uplift not just yourself, but those in your network?
—Carrie Mallon, The Spacious Tarot
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