Card of the Day: XIV Temperance

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Wild Unknown Tarot [/caption]

This is a card I’m working with right now. It comes after Death and before The Devil. It’s a bardo, a respite, a place to sift through losses and see what remains. You’ll see in the other depictions of this card—a non-binary angel defying the laws of physics in the RWCS deck; it’s called Integration in the Osho deck and Art in the Voyager deck; yin-yang angels in the Intuiti deck. And here, a crane mixes water and fire without destroying either one. How is that possible? It’s a mystery.

I’m working with this card as a way of studying how to navigate seemingly opposing forces—light and dark; pleasure and discipline; solitude, silence and stillness and relationship, the world and activity. I’ve been approaching this card as an encouragement to explore “the third thing:” Beyond the binary, or when two sovereign entities meet, what is possible? This is a place of spiritual and imaginative insight, of art-making, of turning karmic currents with the slightest shift in movement and direction.

There’s a lot of dark right now. Sickness and death, isolation, aborted grieving rituals, people so under the spell of racial capitalism that they defy the orders of doctors, scientists and non-partisan leaders to assemble and co-opt the discourse of the reproductive justice movement to insist on their right to work and die to enrich billionaires.

There’s a lot of light right now. Spring buds, birds, peepers, lengthening days. People aching to help others in any way they can. Unspeakable acts of sacrifice, generosity and selflessness.

And there’s a lot of the “third thing” activating in unprecedented ways—mutual aid, art-making, activism. Ideological shifts. Imagining new futures centered on justice, liberation and communal care.

I’ve been plugging into my power sources—water, rocks, trees, the Goddess, magic, tarot, silence and mystery, my own body—to activate the third thing. What are you plugging into right now?