September 2021: Navigating the In-Between
Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast
Here in the Catskills, evenings are speaking in the overlapping voices of katydids and tree frogs, serenading us out of summer. A verse from Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed—Kindness eases change—is on my mind as we move into fall.
Kindness is a mercy, an unaccountable gift given + received. I’ve been reflecting on how it appears when we experience, remember, or develop the connections that already exist between us and others, between us and everything. Connections that can grow in that space between things—when we play, experiment, reframe, + re-story with others. Human and more-than-human others.
My interest in the interstitial extends to my tarot work, too. More and more I believe the true power of tarot (the true power of anything?) reveals itself through connection and relationship. To that end: my books are open for readings in September. Tarot 101 is happening this Thursday, September 2 at 5:30pm est and there’s still space to join.
The Study Tarot Series begins in the middle of this month with The Magician + Aces—we’ll be talking action + will + power + resources! There’s still a little room to join in the Sunday afternoon or Monday evening sessions. And if there’s sufficient interest, I would love to offer one more round this year of my 5-week Tarot + Moon workshop on Tuesday evenings in October…
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
What’s Inspiring Me Now
- Ayana Young’s conversation with ALOK on this episode of For the Wild podcast truly blew my ever-loving mind and brought me to tears. “There are so many ways to create life.” What an incredibly visionary thinker and spiritual/cultural worker. Grateful to be alive at the same time as them! (They also did a recent interview with the Man Enough podcast that was equally amaze balls.)
- Speaking of visionaries I’m grateful to be living in the time of, scholar and activist adrienne maree brown’s recent blog post The Darwin Variant, and/or Love of the Fittest. “We who are not yet dead are responsible for living fully, without regrets, with deep reverence for the wide range of emotion in the human experience.”
- I’ve been thinking so much about giving expression to grief through the body, and so thank you Catherine B for sharing this BBC documentary called Songs for the Dead about the Irish tradition of keeners—women who were paid to cry, wail and sing over the dead at funerals.
- Looking for lighter fare than grief rituals? HBO’s The Great Pottery Throw Down is Prozac in reality-tv-competition form. All that slow-turning clay on the wheel. And big blustery judge Keith Brymer Jones cries at the drop of a hat whenever someone makes something beautiful, or pushes through a setback and I AM HERE FOR IT. All That Glitters does the same thing with jewelry-making and dear reader, I am here for that as well.
- Gurdeep Pandher’s fierce commitment to joy wedded to place never fails to move me
- My dear friend Robyn Love’s incredible magical spell in the landscape at the Bonavista Bienalle—a true feat of reverential labor and storytelling connected to place. And don’t miss this incredible piece of beauty either!
- This 14-minute conversation with dowser Bill Getz on the Kaatscast podcast. Just: WOW.
- Recently re-read Madeline Miller’s novel Circe (inspired by this amazing episode of Between the Worlds podcast) and I just cannot say enough about it. Superlative in every way.
- Thank you to my BFF for having Melissa Febos’s Girlhood delivered directly to my door. I cracked it open and was immediately undone. Devoured it in 24 hours. Devastatingly beautiful.
- Sophie Strand’s essay The River that Runs Two Ways. “Looking out across its looping current, I have often wondered if, on the opposite bank a future version of myself awaits, barely an inky smudge, waving me into being, pulling me into the choices I need to make in order to become myself.” (Also, her convo with Angel Deer re: Myth, Mycelium, and Rewilding Masculinities was revelatory!)
- I absolutely love what @politicsoftarot is doing with the tarot!
- The random beauty of the Field Recordings podcast
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Navigating the In-Between
I’ve drawn the Death card from The Gentle Tarot a couple times in recent days. Like so many images from this deck, it startled my mind. A hermit crab prepares to leave its coiled shell—its home, its protection—for a new shell. It’s outgrown its current circumstances, and in order to find a new home, it must emerge. Vulnerable, stumpy, exposed to the elements.
As I reflected on this image—as it stared back at me from its propped position on my work altar on the days I drew it—it seemed to speak of those times of death-within-life. Not the final breath of a particular skin-bag, but one of the many interstices that sneak up on us in this life we’re in the middle of living now. We entered an in-between, and it’s uncomfortable. Scary. We don’t like how stifling and uncomfortable the current circumstances feel, but we sure don’t want to bring our tender parts into the bright light of day.
A friend asked me recently what I love so much about doing tarot readings, and I told her: generating medicinal stories with people. That’s what I love so much about it. Playing in the field of relationship to find and create stories that soothe, that heal, that tend + mend, that generate creativity, inspiration + excitement, that make useful meaning to live out of.
I attended a tarot gathering recently where the host talked about how when tarot was created, it was a game. Simply: a game. Since then, lots of people have written books and made up meanings for the cards—meanings that are rich and beautiful and often useful. But, this person emphasized, it’s all made up. I felt the truth of that deeply. While stories borne out of so-called traditional card meanings often arise during readings I do, and can offer potent medicine, often the medicine is found in a story that wanders off the well-worn track of “traditional meanings.” A story, for example, that emerges spontaneously from a question, an association, a memory, a dream, a thought. And for me, the measure of tarot’s magic is in the medicine to be found in mutually generated stories, a kind of making that happens between people.
As I continued to ruminate on this colorful hermit crab, artist Mariza Ryce Aparicio-Tovar’s generous interpretation of Major Arcana 13, I wondered what advice the minor arcana might have about how to navigate and negotiate the in-between. So I looked through the deck and chose a card from each suit that seemed to depict a moment of in-between, and asked what the medicine might be. So here, I offer some thoughts about that. I would love to hear your thoughts about medicine for the in-between.
Six of Swords: another pair of eyes
In this image from the Smith Rider Waite deck, we see two figures—a parent and child, perhaps—huddled in a boat. Their view of where they’re going is blocked by six swords sticking up out of the bottom of the boat. Swords are the element of air, and relate to the mind, thought + communication. These two figures are on their way somewhere. Perhaps they left where they’d been in a hurry. Maybe they wanted to leave, or maybe they had to leave. But here they are, between one thing and another. On a journey to a place they can’t see yet.
Perhaps those standing swords are memories of what they’re leaving behind. Or anxieties about what lies ahead. Thoughts can generate feeling states: a painful thought can feel painful. And thoughts can also be protection from feeling states: obsessive thinking can be a way to avoid uncomfortable sensations in the body. In any case, the ferryman is getting them where they’re going. He has the view. He can see over the swords. Likely he’s taken this route many times before and knows where all the tricky spots are.
The medicine I see in this card is about knowing where to go to find a different perspective. Who are the people we trust to help us steer through a frightening, perhaps deeply unwanted, in-between? People with the view and experience to give us good feedback, encouraging words? A friend, a sibling, a co-worker, a person we share fellowship with. Perhaps it’s a voice within our own being who remembers enough of our own life’s ups-and-downs clearly enough to be able to send up useful reminders: we’ve been through journeys like this before; this leg of it won’t last forever. Perhaps it’s a stretch of creek or a favorite tree, or one of our beloved dead who can speak to us: we’ll see dry land soon enough. How can you make yourself more comfortable in this place? Or maybe Our Lady, by any name you call her—Mother Mary, Green Tara, Kannon, Kali—reminding you: I’ve got you.
Eight of Wands: faith in things underway
In this image from The Spacious Tarot, we see eight glittering white wands flying across a night sky. Our own actions, combined with causes + conditions we can scarcely fathom, have set these wands in motion, and their journey through the sky will end at a point when they begin arcing toward the ground and land in the earth. We’re in the middle of things. The outcome is not yet clear. Things are moving in a particular direction, on a particular trajectory. We can’t go back and change that trajectory. Things are in motion.
The medicine I see in this card is deep faith in our actions that have brought us to this in-between + deep faith in all the many things that have brought us here that we can never know or understand. It’s natural to try to troubleshoot + forecast: How long are these wands going to be flying for? Where are they going to land? What if they don’t land where I want them to? For me, this kind of deep faith is trust in the long story. This faith is like an open hand, an open eye, ready to receive messages, gifts, magic, and the simple kindnesses that are the merciful guideposts on tough journeys.
Eight of Cups: courage
In this image from the This Might Hurt Tarot, a figure walks away from us, into the mountains under a crescent moon, leaving behind eight cups in the foreground. Some of them are broken, some not. The astrological correspondence of this card is Saturn in Pisces, which I gloss as “emotional reality.” Feeling the emotional truth of a situation, we decide to set off for the unknown, to leave behind that which no longer serves.
Here, we choose our in-between. We know deep down we must go to a place we haven’t been before. Minor eights in the tarot relate to Major Arcana VIII Strength, a card that shows the way to work with wildness, instincts, reactions—the electric, erotic current of life. To work well with that kind of energy takes a soft kind of strength, the strength of experience.
The medicine I see in this card is courage. The heart-knowing to see what is really happening and to choose our heart’s desire over what’s expected of us—by us or by others. This figure is alone, heading into the wilderness, at night. While there is a solitude to choosing the in-between, it doesn’t mean we have to take the whole journey by ourselves. If the last couple months have taught me anything, it’s how much courage it takes to reach out and say, “Are you there? I could use some care. Some company.”
No one can feel our feelings for us, or take our internal journey for us, but I believe more than ever that navigating the in-between requires company, friendship. As in the Six of Swords, that company can take many forms—human, more-than-human, living, dead. And for all its challenges, the in-between can be a wondrous place for discovering + strengthening our connections with others.
Seven of Coins: patience + care
In this depiction from the Spolia Tarot, flowers are beginning to bud from seven golden coins embossed with images of growing grain. We’ve prepared the soil, planted in the best place, watered + weeded. We’ve done what we can, and the results of that doing are not yet clear. We can’t see yet if the harvest is going to be good. Things aren’t ripe yet. If we cut too early, we’ll lose the flower and fruit. If we futz too much, well...we know that living things don’t respond well to too much futzing.
The medicine I see in this card, the advice from the earth element, is patience. I also see the medicine as the question: What do we do in the meantime? To me, that’s such a poignant question to ask ourselves in the in-between. In this place, where things are not the way I want them to be, where I just want to get where I’m going, where I feel like the fussiest of fussy babies, or where I feel hopeless + despairing: what do I do in this meantime?
One answer has been: take care. Learning what that means for me is an ongoing and deep practice. Some of the best advice I’ve gotten on this has come from my mother. When I shared with her that I was struggling through an in-between, she said, “When you’re in a space like that, try to make yourself as comfortable as possible.” And: taking care has also meant doing things I often don’t “feel” like doing: going for my morning walk, eating a healthy meal, reaching out to friends, getting off the internet + going to bed at a decent hour. This is the realm of spiritual practice, the realm of the Empress and Temperance cards: of holding a picture larger than my momentary feelings and offering myself the same quality of care I’d offer to a dear friend.
Everything we say, do and think plants a seed. When we’re in an in-between, waiting for a new shell for our tender body, every seed of care and kindness that we plant—for ourselves + for the human and more-than-human “others” in our life—grows and generates more care and kindness.
This time—in my own personal life + in this precarious and heartbreaking moment of transition we’re all living through—is making me appreciate more deeply than ever the importance of reaching across that space that so convincingly appears to separate me from...everything. For me, the medicine is in finding, discovering, creating, growing + crafting connection. Entangled Life author Merlin Sheldrake offered one definition of magic as “the arts of connection.” As I navigate my own in-betweens, I think now is a very auspicious time to practice being a connection artist.
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