U.S. civilian memory is the safest place for the empire’s crimes —Darius Simpson

Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast

Dear Friends,

Here in the Catskills, things are cooling down as the lush green begins its slow turn. The overlapping curtains of night sounds made by crickets, katydids + frogs draw me into a portal of grief that feels correct. The creek is already so cold that I require a primal scream to submerge, which also feels correct. I wonder how late summer’s overripe lead-up to the equinox is finding you?

Here’s what I’m up to in the next couple months:

• In mid-September astrologer Cory Nakasue + I will co-facilitate a 6-session series called Getting Thru It Together: The Living Language of Divination #inthesetimes. There are only a couple spots left in the Wednesday evening cohort; the Sunday cohort is half-full…we’d love to see you there! Cory + I talked about it on her most recent episode of The Cosmic Dispatch—you can watch or listen
• the new Study Tarot Series cohort beginning in December is nearly full! Check out what people have said about the experience

Also: new tarot offering alert! It’s a 2:1 consultation that robin herold + I have been test driving in which we read a spread together for your question or request—kind of like a tarot reading in stereo. You can read more about it here…

My books are open for readings this month—it’s easy to book with me thru calendly

Thank you to all of you who continue to support my work in so many amazing + generous ways 🙏🏻💚

Love + rigor,
shea in the catskills

You Might Be Interested

• My friend Mary Kerns—creator of The Flowers Are Speaking Oracle deck, which I use on every new + full moon!—is offering a 4-week online workshop called Guidance From the Flowers: Connecting with the Ancient Wisdom of the Earth this month + next month: “…we will connect with the ancient wisdom of the flowers by exploring our entwined evolutionary love story, learn about their radical intelligence so different from our own, and empower ourselves to use our intuition and imagination to hear their messages.” I mean!
• I forgot to mention I have a painting (for sale!) in a summer group show at the Olive Free Library called Monochromatic. It’s on view thru September 7! (did you know I also paint murals?)
• You might be interested in purchasing this rare, out-of-print tarot deck for me?

The scariest thing is how many people worldwide, even governments, want this genocide to stop but nobody can stop it. A very small number of powerful people are doing what they want and what they want is to kill an entire people. How does this not keep you up at night?

—Lexi Alexander

2024 mood board

• election season
• the US government has sent 500 air deliveries of weapons to Israel since October 7, 2023—that’s ~one every 16 hours…but we will wait till late September for the US government to send us 4 free Covid tests
• Tarence Ray: “When I say the Palestinian issue is preeminent for me, I don’t mean that it comes before every other issue. I mean that it’s the primary contradiction around which everything else unravels. This is it guys. This is what slavery was to the 19th century. It is the check coming due.”
• Please break my heart by Jodi Rhoden: “How shocking to be threatened by the specter of a future that is already here; how disorienting to be warned about the impending doom of the thing that is already happening.” (via Beth Howard)
• Kelly Hayes: “The contrast between the pageantry of the DNC circus and the video of a Palestinian child with his head blown wide open tells the story of this political moment. It’s excruciating.”
• Jeremy Flood: “I don’t want the most lethal fighting force in the world, I want to go to the doctor.”
• It would be funny if it weren’t true
• steady diet of cat videos keeping me alive

Of The Empire

by Mary Oliver

We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

via Dr. Maya C. Popa

What’s Inspiring Me Now

• THESE TWO!!! 😭❤️‍🔥
• Protests at the DNC
• To Live in a Wild Sea by Guillermo F. Flórez: “Freedom is what is truly terrifying!”
• Dr. Ariana Brazier’s Imagination Playbook: “The pedagogical power of play is undeniable.”
• Beauty is everywhere
• Organizing can happen anywhere
• Clarinetist Doreen Ketchens playing for her grandson
• Alexandria Masse’s crochet insects

Thanks to those of you who continue to send me your inspirations!

the power of consistency

The power of the Knight of Pentacles is consistency, continuity, thoroughness + discipline. It is the power of inexorability, of it’s only a matter of time. It is the power of practicality in the extreme, of breaking the impossible down into utterly possible steps + then taking these steps with a dedicated reliability.

The Knight of Pentacles is the power of being effective: quality control, proofreading, beta testing, run-thrus + troubleshooting. It is the power of the organizer behind the scenes—spreadsheet, timestamps, follow-up, double-checking, data collection + analysis. The power of attention to detail + keeping everyone on track, of sticking to the script + seeing it thru. It is the power of transforming a big, gauzy vision into material results in the real world. The power of stage management, audio engineering + all the unsexy, behind-the-scenes work that makes the moment shine.

The power of the Knight of Pentacles is bureaucratic violence—the cryptic forms + incomprehensible rules of bloated state systems + structures, designed to exhaust, control + oppress the most vulnerable. It is the power of legalese + government documents to bore + obfuscate in their plodding, acronym-laden reconditeness. It is the power of an unhappy, frustrated functionary to make your life difficult over an incorrectly filled-out form.

The Knight of Pentacles is the power of responsibility, of taking it seriously, of not leaving things to chance, of disaster-proofing the plan. The power of knowing that some things do, in fact, come down to you. It is the power of small-scale iteration + repetition over time to extract us from or plunge us into habits + addictions. It is the power of routine to create stability, the power of predictability + being predictable in an unpredictable world. It is the power of routines, rituals + repetition to be a lifeline thru uncertainty + change.

The power of the Knight of Pentacles is being on time, of knowing how to work with time, space, money + resources, how to navigate systems + structures. It is the power of who’s left to help you clean up after the party’s ended + everyone else has gone home. It’s the power of the killjoy when the seeming “joy” you’ve been chasing is actually killing you.

The Knight of Pentacles is the power of a Steady Eddie, the one you call because they always come thru. It is the power of a wet blanket when things have flared out of control. The power of step-by-step, one day at a time. It is the power of understanding that grand gestures quickly fade, but that consistent action over time is what actually shapes a life.

—

excerpt from my current work-in-progress, 78 Faces of Power

Find out more about my tarot work

WHAT’S INSPIRING YOU NOW?