Card of the Day: Mother of Cups

I drew this card in my personal reading this morning. Interesting how that keeps happening. It’s like I get a preview of the Card of the Day in my own reading, after which I shuffle thoroughly. (As Gail Fairfield says about shuffling, in her book Everyday Tarot: “The...unconscious self...will mix them up just right so that the relevant cards fall into place.”) This morning I seemed to know, before I even flipped over the card, that it would be her.

Which is kind of perfect, actually. She (who is not necessarily a “she”) is all about the maturation of the psychic and intuitive realm. Robert M. Place says it like this: “mystery, patience as a spiritual virtue.” I was reflecting on my walk this morning how little our culture supports this. Scientific materialism, getting things done, knowing—it’s like the national religion. And the other 99.99% of what’s going on around us all the time—who has time for that?

I feel it in myself. I have more time and inclination toward solitary contemplation than the average person living in the US, and I contend daily with: Why isn’t this happening yet? Why don’t I understand this yet? I want to know, I want to fix, I want to do.

I’m currently enrolled in an antiracism course called Before We Were White. In addition to clearing space for an ancestors’ altar, our other ongoing assignment is to spent 20 minutes several times a week in a place close to where we live, where we can sit silently and receptively in nature. What on earth does that have to do with antiracism? It’s a good question, a deep and potent one.

For so long, I’ve thought of my efficiency, competence, and “knowing” as “just my personality.” (I’m a triple Capricorn after all.) And it’s true, to some degree. But more and more I’m coming to recognize these “traits”—for which I’ve been valued and well paid in my life—as conditioning in white supremacy culture, or “racial capitalism.”

Twenty minutes next to a gurgling stream and winter-bare trees...doing nothing...what else am I?