“When the snake sits on the right
The truth is always the anti-venom
The snake sits on the left
The truth is always the anti-venom
The snake sits on the right
The truth is always the anti-venom
The snake sits on the left.”
At the start of this year, I wrote about a question that someone asked me: about the word I’d choose as the masthead for the year to be. A word was spoken in my ear as clear and as distinct as any I would assume resounds in a revelation, & that voice urged: “wholeness.”
At the time, I didn’t know what “wholeness” would entail, but it seemed so apt that I wrote to mark that moment and the change that was to come: I marked it as “year zero” because something cosmic felt afoot. And since then, I’ve written a lot more. I’ve also read a lot. And though there are many creative and heartfelt and maybe even fanciful ways for me to read and write the story of the year that’s been, I feel like this year-end review needs the appropriate container.
These are ten tarot cards I pulled while doing the Year of the Hierophant spread designed by @trivia_tarocchi. I took these photos throughout the day and into the night yesterday.
Here is Temperance, the learner of balance, self-emptying in order to refill and refresh the self. Here is the teacher, the 8 of Cups, with its back turned to certainties, with its weariness and strength—and what’s this? An eclipse? A harbinger of doom? No, it is the the sun and the moon combined.
Here is the careful craftwork behind me and the joyful balancing act ahead of me. And over there, at the end, we see the mystagogue after his year of discernment reigning with his queen of discrimination.
I didn’t want to match these cards with any place in particular, though circumstance and effort came together to shape a day that would make such placements and potential correspondences more possible. Just like in tarot, meaning is the daughter of structure and chance.
Here’s to another meaning-full year and another shuffle of the decks. Here’s to another fool’s pilgrimage a little less blind than before.
“Fear is always the catalyst
Sending shivers through my heart
And I can’t stop it from happening
When I’m falling apart
I can’t stop it from happening
When my hope light goes out
Love is always the aperture
When my hope light goes out
The truth is…”
(Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker – Anti-Venom)