February 2023: On Liminality + Surrender
Whether covid, climate, the cops or anything else, I’d say a good starting assumption for leftists is to be guided by our vision of what we want to happen in the world rather than limited by what the status quo tells us is possible.
— Dan Berger
Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast
I have a number of tarot workshops on the calendar, beginning with Tarot 101 this month + concluding with Using Tarot to Work with the Dead in April. This latter program is part of Atha Yoga School’s Let’s Talk About It: Death series, which includes a really amazing line-up…I would love to see you there!
And I’ve finalized the schedule for the new Study Tarot Series cohort beginning next month—this group is amazing. There are still a couple spaces left!
This is the final month to join this first iteration of the Liturgical Book Club, reading Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. Did I mention that Hersey herself may be joining us in April or May? You heard that right!
My books are open for readings in February.
Thank you to all of you who continue to support my work in so many amazing + generous ways.
You Might Be Interested
- Feeling overwhelmed by the accumulation of things? On Saturday, March 11 at 1pm, my friend Peg Conway will offer a new workshop called Making Space: Rituals of Releasing Stuff. For info or to register, email Peg
Also next month, Perdita Finn is offering perhaps my very favorite class of hers: Mothers of Mystery and Magic: A Four-Week Intensive
March 8 – 29 Wednesdays 7 – 8:30 pm EST: “What if we could descend into the land of the dead and find our mothers again, all of our forgotten mothers from our past lives, who have loved us and love us still? Not just the human mothers, but the bird mothers, the mountain mothers, the ocean mothers, all the mothers of magic and mystery.”
Be yourself until you make them uncomfortable
— Alok Vaid-Menon
What’s Inspiring Me Now
- at our backs & at our sides: reconnecting to our white anti racist ancestors by Leahjo & Caroline: “We read books, watched videos, built altars, dressed up as, dreamt about, talked about, spent time with, and created art inspired by these people in our anti racist lineage that we want to publicly and creatively honor. Connection and creativity are some of our sharpest tools in fortifying ourselves and each other.”
- ‘aBiogenesis’ Reimagines the Primordial Soup Theory in a Mesmerizing Animation by Markos Kay: “In an ethereal animation by London-based CGI artist, a mysterious world is in the process of forming”
- “The Men of China Hill” by Matthew Hahn: “Technically, we weren’t allowed to garden, but that didn’t stop us from doing it.”
- Sasha Velour in “Wild is the Wind” from “Smoke & Mirrors,” 2022
- From Loki to Behemoth—waves of the English coastline in pictures: Rachael Talibart captures the ebb and flow of the English coastline through photographs that frame erupting waves and the days surrounding violent storms
- Really Long Distance: Producer Miki Meek tells the story of a phone booth in Japan that attracts thousands of people who lost loved ones in the 2011 tsunami and earthquake
- Lydia Polgreen’s Want to Understand L.G.B.T.Q. Life in America? Go to Alabama: “I traveled to Alabama last month to try to understand the state of queer America today, to try to understand this unsettling whiplash I’ve been feeling lately as a queer person.”
- a single brain cell looking for connection
Thanks to those of you who continue to send me your inspirations!
This is Tortuguita, a 26-year-old climate activist who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers on January 18. They spent their time between Atlanta, defending the forest from destruction + coordinating mutual aid for the Stop Cop City movement, + Florida, where they helped build housing in low-income communities hit hardest by the hurricane. They were a trained medic, a loving partner, a dear friend, a brave soul, + so much more. The mainstream media have been repeating the police narrative—as they so often do—that Tortuguita fired at them.
Tortuguita was in the forest to Stop Cop City. What is Cop City? It’s a $90 million militarized training facility for the Atlanta police that requires 100 acres of forest to be destroyed in a Black working-class neighborhood. If built, Cop City will be the largest police training facility of its kind + become a prototype of militarized police training centers across the country. Local residents gave 17 hours of public comment to the City Council, mostly against Cop City, + the City Council approved it anyway.
I encourage you to learn more about this movement to Stop Cop City, which brings together so many different groups of people: community organizers + activists, environmental justice + climate organizers, anti-gentrification + abolitionist organizers. The choice here—between the forest + militarized police—is pretty stark.
The Hanged One: On Liminality + Surrender
This arcana lives between Justice, where we learn about cause + effect, and Death, where we + life are irreversibly transformed. The Hanged One is the in-between place, an experience of surrender. Perhaps of sacrifice. An invitation into letting our will be transformed.
In a culture that rewards striving, ambition, competition + goal-attainment, where do we learn how to stop? To turn our will over? To trust a process we’re not in control of? The Hanged One may begin in our striving—to be enlightened, to gain wisdom, to fulfill our spiritual aspirations. But its so-called “reward” awaits in the cessation of our struggle to be someone or get something.
In her book On Becoming an Alchemist, Catherine McCoun describes the symptoms of the alchemical stage of fermentation: apathy, doubt, feeling abandoned or unworthy. To abet this process, she prescribes spiritual passivity: “You cannot work while deep in fermentation. You can only be worked on. So take a break. Refrain from any activity you consider ‘spiritual.’”
This arcana is a crucial lesson in taking our hands off the wheel. Or: coming to understand how little our hands are actually doing anything to control the wheel. It requires deep faith in all the work we have put in, all the choices we have made, the power of our longings. Can we trust that there are forces + processes that take place beneath the level of our conscious control, outside + below our airy, swordsy minds?
- When have you experienced a dark night of the soul? What was that like + how did you get through it?
- What helps you trust, relinquish control + turn your will over to a higher power?
- Where + how do you find your ease in uncomfortable situations?
- Think of a time when all of your striving + effort had no effect on the outcome. What did you learn from that?
- What is your relationship to surrender? Sacrifice? How are these different from each other?
Find out more about my tarot work
The everyday human gesture is always a heartbeat away from the miraculous — [remember] that ultimately we make things happen through our actions, way beyond our understanding or intention; that our seemingly small ordinary human acts have untold consequences; that what we do in this world means something; that we are not nothing; and that our most quotidian human actions by their nature burst the seams of our intent and spill meaningfully and radically through time and space, changing everything… Our deeds, no matter how insignificant they may feel, are replete with meaning, and of vast consequence, and… they constantly impact upon the unfolding story of the world, whether we know it or not.
— Nick Cave
