Tarot Reading: Courage to be Satisfied
This reading is connected to my January 2024 newsletter.
A quick heads up before we begin!
One of my Encochian cards uses a Hindu symbol of prayer on it that looks alarmingly like the Nazi symbol. The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit roots su (good) and asti (to prevail), and it “represents the fourth state of consciousness, which is beyond waking, sleeping and dreaming,” which you will see is relevant to that card’s energy of purging consciousness (BBC). Check out this BBC article to learn more about this symbol’s history. The Hindu symbol will always have arms lying flat, but other cultures used variations of this symbol way before the Nazis.
Let’s begin.
This tarot reading results from a saturation of the theme of work, both in reflections and experiences, this past January. As I wrestle with the tiny, tangible details of survival, I desire to step back and contemplate on an expansive, even cosmic scale.
I ask questions for the very broad “we.” Whether or not you’re included in the “we” is entirely up to you. In my imagining, I ask this question for all of us under the pulse of capitalism and globalization. I’m seeing our experiences as lessons we are moving through.
I think divination can aid in providing specificity or clarity in our journey.
So I ask:
What is the state of our current relationship with work?
50. AVTOTAR (Ah-veh-toh-tah-reh) Fifth Senior of Air
Close-up of an Enochian Tarot card that says 50. AVTOTAR Fifth Senior of Air. The background is bright yellow, and a masculine figure with firey short hair stands with a sword and cane aloft. He wears a short orange dress with thick legs and wings that swirl around him like windstorms.
The 50. is where the card itself sits in the overall order. It’s the 50th card in the stack. AVTOTAR is the Enochian name of the region. The bottom tells us the name of the leader or main force of the region. Here, the “Fifth Senior of Air” refers to the being that guides this realm.
Strong solar energy.
The principle that rules our relationship to work is masculine energy or the masculine principle. To unpack that statement, we have to unpack the concept of gendered energy I’m working with.
To discuss gender, I think it’s helpful to break down gender into three general categories: biological, symbolic, and power dynamics. They are all interconnected, of course, but the categories help us navigate the tangled genetics of our idea of gender.
I wrote about biological gender in my poem/essay, “Boi’s Blood,” featured in The Tea, about trans identity and menstruation. Here’s a stanza that summarizes that perspective for me:
“Nature does not see itself as male or female. We projected our perceptions. Nature does not see gender; nature seeks balance and forms its shapes and life by that need alone. Some bodies give birth; some bodies spit acid; some bodies wear bright plumage; some bodies shed skin in slinking trails; some bodies have antlers, and some bodies can change between being able to be pregnant and being able to impregnate depending on the environment. These are beings with functions adapted to suit their needs and desires to fit within their larger ecosystem ultimately. It is a call and response. A uterus is just an organ. An egg is just a vessel. The body that holds these is a body and a being that decides one's role and identity.”
Nature doesn’t gender itself. Nature has many different roles and forms to fill those roles.
Power dynamics breaks down the anthological and historical understandings of gender through religion, colonization, property, feminism, trans rights movements, etc. We’re pretty familiar with talking about that one.
The patterns in history are influenced by symbolistic gender.
Humans had a somewhat collective matriarchal past, worshiping goddesses indistinguishable from the natural world, an embrace of death, darkness, and the unknown. The feminine principle is much more intangible. The development of technologies and industry gave rise to concepts of patriarchy and monotheistic masculine god worship/sun worship. Cultures like the Holy Roman Empire would form strict hierarchies of their sun god and spread Christianity throughout the region known as Europe, and then, you sadly see the rest.
Many cultures still cling to matriarchal lineages of belief systems despite colonization’s brutality.
Symbolistic gender is derived from human patterns, a kind of “collective unconscious” where we intrinsically share deep-seated ideas about what feminine and masculine mean despite our specific cultural and personal contexts. An example of an archetype is the Greek goddess of magick, Hecate, who embodies the gendered symbols of the maiden, mother, and crone.
If you study older magicks or really most magick systems, gender plays a vital role in the symbols and emotions of that work. Enochian magick, the magick influencing my deck, is no different.
It has felt important to me to take on the topic of gendered energy intimately into my work as a part of my commitment to balance. Reclaiming divine feminine energy is key to my writing and art as a part of that rebalancing. Uplifting the divine feminine also influences my objective political opinions: we will not be free until all black transwomen are free.
Masculine and feminine symbolize different elements of the universe, like the physical world, which is made of elements. We have ascribed gendered elements to what has been seen as a binary for a long time. As Earth's elements change form and join together under various environments, so too does the concept of symbolistic gender. It is also meant to be flexible and can be transmuted in multiple ways. Nonbinary and transness are physical examples of that mutability.
ALL OF THIS TO SAY!
The Fifth Senior of Air has come to us to declare that our relationship with work is inherently masculine.
Masculine brings what is unconscious into consciousness. It is the making and creating of things, objects, and materials. You can touch masculinity. It is obvious and straightforward. Masculine is the sun, and it illuminates the day, the time in which we work, whereas the darkness is where we rest, historically speaking. Masculine is sun gods, gods of lightning, creation, illumination, ideas, forging, discernment, and ideas.
When I asked about our relationship with work, I expected a nasty card of subjugation or oppression (they’re in this deck, trust me). Of course, the deck subverted my expectations because I didn’t ask about capitalism; I asked about work, work, just the concept of labor. The concept of labor in and of itself is not subjugation!
The bee labors for nectar.
The mother bat carries her infant miles to suckle cactus blooms.
The squirrel searches for nuts most of the year to bury, and many of those nuts are forgotten; then, those nuts labor to grow and become trees.
The masculine principle of transmuting unconscious concepts into tangible objects is beautiful. I’m personally super attracted to crafters/crafty people and people with physical trades; I'm just saying. This is because I have the strong feminine principle of intuition, unconscious, death doula work, and intangible reality in me, and I know I need people like that to survive! That does NOT make my gender more feminine than a woman who can build a house (hi, call me). It defines the most potent and easeful state of my energy as I move through this world.
The question is, IS our relationship with work BALANCED?
Many cards in this deck blend masculine and feminine energy, but this is not one of them. It is strictly masculine- a blazing sun at high noon in the middle of August.
It’s too damn hot!
It’s safe to say that our relationship with work is not balanced. While our masculine relationship to work is not wrong, it is influenced by a history in which masculine is seen as the ONLY right way.
Our skin is burning. We are exhausted. The planet’s resources are depleting. War and industry are lovers. Capital is valued as the pinnacle of freedom. We must pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
These are all results of an imbalance of masculine energy.
Too much creation, not enough rest or emotional consideration or spiritual consultation.
So I will ask the cards.
What would a healthy and sustainable relationship to work look like?
82. IBPR (eh-beh-par) Kerubic Angels of Earth (Inverted)
Close-up of an Enochian Tarot card that says 82. IBPR Kerubic Angels of Earth. The background is bright yellow, and a massive tree grows in the center. Several angels wearing long blue robes with large wings tend to the tree and sit in the tree.
The 82. is where the card itself sits in the overall order. It’s the 82nd card in the stack. IBPR is the Enochian name of the region. The bottom tells us the name of the leader or main force of the region. Here, the “Kerubic Angels of Earth” refers to the beings that guide this realm.
This card carries a similar course of action to the last: “...any kind of precipitation from formless ideas into form and definition.”
This is similar to the solar masculine principle of intangible into tangible, but IBPR is defined by earth, and the symbol is a tree, not the sun.
The angels tend dutifully to this massive tree but also sit in it, resting.
A tree is a perfect symbol for balancing masculine and feminine principles because it requires the sun (masculine) and more fluid or intangible materials like water or carbon dioxide (feminine).
I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and she provides many examples of how human abandonment of nature does not necessarily foster flourishing biodiversity and ecological health. Many species, like the titular sweetgrass, benefit from a symbiotic relationship with human labor.
However, I also received this card inverted.
It is as if there are so many obstacles between us and making this sustainable relationship work that even our healthiest vision has to tell us about ourselves–reveal our rot- before we can even imagine this potential.
They want us to recognize a sense of lack.
Rough.
The book reads that this inverted card represents a lack of guidance, completeness, growth, and control.
Rough.
But we can take the feedback. We NEED to take the feedback.
Work can fill voids. If we don’t feel complete, we work. If we don’t have a purpose guiding our life, we work. We don’t know how to grow beyond our job’s upper mobility and have a hard time imagining what our society would look like if work was not the defining factor of order and value.
These are the sore spots we must tend to, and we must tend to them first in ourselves before anything and anyone else.
It starts with asking yourself questions and following their threads. There are some starter questions at the end.
I pull one more card. To offer more guidance on our journey of recontextualizing, revitalizing, and restoring our relationship to work.
What is required to allow us to step into the reality where we have a balanced relationship with work?
30. TEX (Teh-etz) The Four Regions (Inverted)
Close-up of an Enochian Tarot card that says 30. TEX The Four Regions. The background is split diagonally between green, red, yellow, and blue. Blue has symbols of karma. Yellow says Desire and Emotions. Red says Silence and Inertia and has the Hindu swastika. Green says Restriction and Limitation.
The 30. is where the card itself sits in the overall order. It’s the 30th card in the stack. TEX is the Enochian name of the region. The bottom tells us the name of the leader or main force of the region. The Four Regions define this realm.
If you read the first tarot reading for my newsletter, you would know that Enochian magick is derived from a reality of angels. This reality is dedicated to the experiential/spiritual evolution of consciousness. These realities have layers of dimensions, each with its purpose, environment, and energy. These dimensions are called Aethyrs (old-timey way of spelling ether).
TEX is the thirteenth Aethyr, described as the Aethyr closest to our Earth’s consciousness. The four cardinal directions influence it, and in each direction is an intense state of emotions. If you think of Aeythrs like skin care, you must first wear the volcanic clay mask, it kind of burns, but it removes the toxins from your skin to better absorb the following treatments. TEX absorbs all these emotions from Earth to purge them for the clarity required to follow your spiritual journey.
TEX is dense.
The journey to balancing our relationship with work is dense and categorized by emotional intensity. Still, the reward is a purging of all that does not serve us (and glowing skin!)
And yet, I received this card inverted.
The card right side up is characterized by fear and silence. This Aethyr is overwhelming and honestly painful in its transmutation process.
Inverted, this card represents courage and satisfaction.
Yes, the card tells us that the road is dense, but not without satisfaction. Satisfaction is the opposite of lack, the warning from the previous card.
If lack represents our current relationship with work, then the balm must be satisfaction. Satisfied with what? I think that’s up to you.
What if we worked from a place of fulfillment? What would our work look like then? How would we feel about work?
As work is tied to survival, your mind might immediately go to a lack of material fulfillment—all the ways the system works exactly how it’s supposed to, to exploit you, hollow you, starve you. How can we be satisfied when our working conditions are extractive?
No, no, don’t be satisfied with that.
Be courageous in the face of injustice. Be satisfied in your inner world. Be satisfied with yourself so that no matter what. When they try to tell you that you are not enough and that you require more, you will not be shaken.
We need courage in the face of the painful and dense path to a balanced relationship to work. You are ready for this transmutation with the courage to move forward and satisfaction in who you are.
To connect this card to the first card, this dense path requires embracing feminine principles to balance the overwhelming masculine principles.
Emotionality. Empathy. Intuition. Rest. Darkness. Malleability. Uncategorized. Unexplainable. Unknown. Release. Interconnectivity. Tenderness. Magick. Sustainability. The Earth Herself.
Courage to not know every answer and value the vastness of mystery. Satisfaction in the slower pace of what the Earth naturally provides. Courage to be vulnerable. Satisfaction that allows for deep rest. Courage to rely on others. Satisfaction with intangible concepts and processes.
Before your exploration, we (my Realm of Beings and I) ask that you start with protection:
"I am safe and secure throughout all existence. My attention and energy only call what is of the highest good for myself."
Nonlinear, nonrequired questions
Where do I see masculine and feminine principles and symbols influencing my life? Internally and externally. (Remember, this is not your gender/sex identity, but you’re welcome to list those aspects if you want.)
How can I integrate more feminine principles into my work, relationship to work, and work life?
What is my role in growing the tree of our balanced future?
Where could I use more courage in my life and/or in my relationship to work?
What would make me feel more courageous, internally and externally?
Where am I not satisfied in my life, intangible and tangible? What is in my direct, conscious control—internally or externally?
What would my life look like/be like if I were satisfied?
What would my life be like/look like if I were courageous?
Where can I seek support on this dense journey? Where is my interconnectivity, and how can I continue to foster it?
How can I incorporate more rest in my life?
Where can I let go of my need to know and/or be in control?
Where can I step up in my responsibility towards rebalancing myself and/or the systems?
Always end your intentional reflection time with gratitude—to yourself, the universe, to anyone and anything you wish.