Tarot cards are just bits of paper. As material objects, they don’t have intrinsic power. But their images and symbols as well as the accruing of meaning over centuries can make of them guides and instigators for connecting with the extraordinary, the mythic, the great forces that run under our everyday lives. 

On the Saturday before the  June new moon, I took a walk in one of my usual places. It was an ordinary walk, but I was carrying cards with me associated with the place on the Wheel of the Year where this moon would renew itself and start its journey to fullness. 

One of these cards, the Two of Cups, seen here from the Melanated Tarot, evokes the gifts of love and companionship that flows between two people when they offer something special of themselves to each other. 

Midway through the walk, I turned on the spur trail that runs along the edge of the Mill River. The trail is well trough. The dirt packed smooth. But the knotweed spread its large ovate leaves over the path. I was swimming in a green sea, gently brushing with my hands in a kind of breaststroke through plants and air. 

Ahead of me I saw a man in a white shirt with a nearly bald head. Just tufts of white over the ears lifted into the breeze. Attached to his belt was a leather pouch, well worn. I imagined it once held tools, but guessed that it was now repurposed for a cell phone. 

We continued forward and I saw there was a woman ahead of him. Her shirt white, too, and her hair that touched her shoulders. 

Moving a bit faster than they were, I was close as they stepped from the trail to the open area of a small beach in the bend of the river. 

I’m not sure who reached out first. Maybe the movements happened at the same time. But then they were clasping hands. 

I smiled, held in the circle of their acceptance of each other. The poignancy of the moment heighted by their age. Very close to them now, I could imagine them being in their 80s. 

I wondered if they knew how lucky they were.

A memory surfaced from nine years ago. I was sitting in my Bereavement Group. The six of us had all lost our partners recently. We were raw. Our meetings exhausting but needed. We said the things to each other that we wouldn’t speak to anyone else, that we hadn’t heard anyone else confessing.

We were ready for the woman’s question: “When you see two old people holding hands, don’t you just want to scream at them? Don’t you want to run them over with your car?”

It was a horrifying image. We all nodded. 

Then we laughed a dark little laugh,  the signal that we knew she didn’t mean it literally, but it was still a truth we all were willing to embrace. 

Nine years later the accute pain that trained imagination to murderous scenarios is drained. Instead I feel a joy rise within me seeing this couple because my beloved’s long absence has been my strange teacher about how precious their love is. Precious for them. And precious for me too as I walked around the edges of its power. 

I pased in front of them. The man said, “It is a beautiful day.” I concurred and watched them settle themselves on a bench. 

I walked further to my usual spot for river reflection: the rocky bank looking toward a circle of boulders in the middle of the river. I call them the wisdom rocks. I often meditate here. I sometimes pull a Tarot card. This day the Lovers emerged. How can you not believe in synchronicity?

This is the Lovers from The Shining Tribe Tarot

Returning I found the couple still seated on the bench. I approached them from behind and as I drew nearer heard music. I knew it must be coming from a cell phone but it was grainy like a record playing. I heard plainative words in Spanish and the strumming of a guitar. 

The man seemed to be translating the words for the women. At the moment I walked by I heard, “My love, I am dying.” 

In those words braiding love and death and life together, I heard the answer to my question: Did they know how lucky they were? Yes, they did.

The Wheel of the Solar Year keeps turning and the Moon finds its way to another re-birth. The alignment of sun and moon brings us to the wisdom images and figures of the new moon moment (exact on Tuesday, June 28 at 10:52pm ET) known as The Chariot, 2 of Rivers, and Gift of Rivers when using the Shining Tribe Tarot created by Rachel Pollack.

Contemplating these cards, I hear imperatives for the times we live in:

From the Chariot – Dare to put your hands into the fires of the now.

From the 2 of Rivers – Recognize the light within the dark, the dark within the light.

From the Gift of Rivers – Imagination and transformation are required to meet the moment. 

From the Wheels in all the cards – We live in circles not in lines. We must grasp and guide the Wheel if we would make our visions real.

THE CHARIOT 

The Tarot’s Charioteers often do not have an obvious way of directing the creatures that guide their vehicles. They hold septures or cups, but not often reins. Commentators on the Tarot name the will of the Charioteer as what guides forward motion.

In the Shining Tribe Tarot, the figure holds nothing at all and reaches into the flow of red above their head. Deck creator Rachel Pollack may give a particular meaning to this red flow, but looking at this image for us in our turbulent times of today, I see the figure daring to reach into the fiery flow of the now and feel the truth of its burning. 

There is a wheel over the flow of red inspiring an association with the Wheel of Fortune, the Tarot’s great changemaker. The wheel here is decorated with eyes; four in the dark band and four in the lighter. The eight eyes here invite us to have the strength to truly look at what is happening in the now—and from a range of perspectives. Only out of that recognition of truth can we seek the potential of renewal.

I’m reminded of the book I have been working with since the last full moon, Imaginable by Jane McGonigal (you can read an excerpt on Slate) where she guides readers in imagining change making in 10 year increments. To make her case for 10 as the “magic number” (her words), she lists social and technological changes that took 10 years to reach a major success: US Civil Rights (1955-1964), the fall of apartheid in South African (1985-1996), Facebook growing from 1 to one billion users (2004-2015), and Zoom moving from being tested to becoming our pandemic communication tool (2011-2020). (Of course, these changes were seeded before the 10 year periods noted, but 10 years at the surface of action and consciousness resonates—and makes the Tarot connection to the Wheel.)

McGonigal encourages a practice of mental time travel where we create vivid scenarios for how life might be different in 10 years. To strengthen our imaginations and to equip ourselves better for whatever the future brings, she suggests scenario planning for what I’ll call best case, worst case, and ridiculous case. Best case scenarios give us an inspiring place to move toward while the worst case ones help us to confront obstacles to our desired vision and plan strategies for overcoming bad outcomes. Ridiculous scenarios build our creative muscle and just might be a seed of a surprising future element hard to imagine right now.

The past few years—the last few days!—have shown us that the unimaginable and horrifying can become reality practically overnight, but the unimaginable and inspiring is possible, too. If we are going to guide our Chariots forward we must prepare for changing realities.

TWO OF RIVERS

Whatever reality we find ourselves standing in, the seed of its opposite is close to us, too. The 2 of Rivers shows us this through the light fish with the dark eye and the dark fish with a light eye bending toward each other. This counsels us to take neither the disturbing nor the reassuring as a given. That they exist in a circle echoing the wheel reminds us that change will come; change is the constant.

GIFT OF RIVERS

The Gift of Rivers offers us three guides to follow along through the Two of Rivers passage on the Chariot path: the woman of imagination, the snake of transformation, and the bloom of fulfillment. 

The woman with the fish head is an enigmatic figure. When this card comes up in Tarot sessions, the client and I have to pause and puzzle over her. She isn’t expected; a fish for a head is strange! Preparing this posting, I am realizing that this strangeness is the great gift of this image. We don’t immediately understand this figure so we engage in a different way. We drop down deeper into our imagination. Wonder what it is like to have the consciousness of a fish. We imagine in new ways, intuitive ways, strange ways. She can help us with daring to imagine our best, worst, and ridiculous futures.

The strangeness of the fish woman makes the snake more approachable. We understand this snake even if we are scared of it. (Snakes are my phobia creature that I am learning to befriend.) We can take in its appearance and remember the snake’s significance as a teacher of transformation. They shed their very skin to grow, peel it off, and show that we can do the same. When we follow the snake we flow with change.

From imagination through transformation, we arrive at the flower in bloom. The seed planted has blossomed. The odds might have been against its existence and growth—some might have called it a pest, a weed—but we have brought this flower to bloom with our effort.

THREE WHEELS

Central to each of these images is a Wheel. The Wheel of the fiery flow of now. The Wheel of the Light and Dark reaching for each other. The Wheel that is the bowl at the center of the Gift of Rivers.

These visually echoing Wheels offer us inspiration for riding this new moon moment to another level of meaning. Writing about the 2 of Rivers, Rachel Pollack connects the image of Wheel to the idea of the Center:

The space between the fish is egg-shaped, like the number zero. While we may think of the world as sharply divided between opposites, all experience emerges from the center, which is neither one thing nor another. When we can see through the chaos and busyness of our lives to the quiet center, the nothingness, we free ourselves from the currents that sweep us from one event to another. Paradoxically, people who find this stillness handle events and crises more fluidly.

Is there really nothingness at the Center? I disagree with Rachel on this. I believe the Center is filled with the essential forces. I don’t think anyone one person has the say on what these forces are, but I’ll name the three I sense there: Life, Death, and Love. Yes, Love is there in the Center, not nothingness. To refute Rachel, I will cite Rachel—te, he—because the Wheel at the center of the Gift of Rivers she names as the Holy Grail:

The bowl is the Holy Grail, God’s gift of love and abundance. The Grail is not something we earn by moral correctness, or by fighting for, or by conquering. Its waters of love come to us purely as a gift. 

 When we have a Love that is free from control or condition at the center of our lives, we can look at the realities of the day and no matter what they may be, step forward to live that Love, spread that Love, be that Love.

A PRACTICE FOR DRIVING THE CHARIOT THROUGH THE WHEEL

To gain some perspective, develop strategies, and find the place where hope can be expanded into reality, you might take one of the many crushingly traumatic events of the last few weeks and do some scenario creation. You may want to have the Shining Tribe images here in the enews or your own favorite version of the Chariot, 2 of Cups, and Queen of Cups out for inspiration. Having a journal handy is good, too.

I suggest you start with the best case scenario for 10 years in the future. Let yourself really imagine positive change that aligns with your values and what you want at the center of your life. Remind yourself of the significant 10 year changes named above. Believe it can happen—even if you are faking it until you make it :). Know you can claw rights revoked. Imagine safety where there is little.  Trust that collective urgent action to address the climate crisis is possible and we can cool things down. Imagine an actual day 10 years from now and vividly describe it. What are you doing? Who are you with? What does the world look like? Let yourself bask in the beauty of this vision.

But also do a worst case scenario. Take the most dangerous trends and challenges to your vision and imagine them taking hold. Do a little reading; the news is filled with stories of how bad it could get. As much as you can stand it, imagine a day in detail in that worst-case scenario world 10 years from now. What would you be doing to make things not as bad as they might be?

Finally, think of something ridiculous, something unimaginable. If it makes you laugh that’s good, humor loosens us up. Aliens abduct the Supreme Court maybe? Or the US Congress is suddenly able to work together after learning Tarot on a weekend retreat? Once you’ve had your laugh, think about what deep desire or value this scenario surfaces. Imagine that desire as a driving force 10 years in the future.

Having done all your scenario planning, you might stand like the Charioteer with your hand raised into the fiery flow. Let yourself be with what is and all your feelings about it.

Then remember the present comes from the past where our ancestors have confronted challenges, too. You might call on them for help and to remind you that change is possible. Life is not linear. Our movement toward justice, beauty, and love has been one of spiraling development. Sometimes going up and sometimes going down.

Remember, too, that the present is connected to the future. Call into your memory all your scenario planning ideas. Imagine them mingling together in the Center that is without boundaries, that is filled with Love. Let a knowing come from some place within you—your head or heart or your gut—about what you are willing to work to make real over the next 10 years. When you’ve got that felt sense give a nod of gratitude to the past, present, and future, to the ancestors, to your Tarot guides for bringing you this vision.

Return to your journal. Create a record of the 10 years in the future that you are willing to work to make possible. You might represent it with words or doodles or artwork. Think about next steps for the weeks and months to come that will move you toward that vision. Brianstorm who you can join with to make the vision real and include in your planning how to connect with them. To turn the Wheel of Change many hands are needed.

READING OF THE MOONTH

These questions are offered for reflection and to spark practice throughout the moonth. You may want to integrate them into the scenario pratice above. Pulling Tarot and oracle cards in connection to these questions is appropriate, but not absolutely necessary. You might carry a question with you on a walk for example and observe what is happening in the natural world as a way to find insight into the answer to the question.

IMAGINATION: How can I expand my ability to imagine a future in which I want to live? 

TRANSFORMATION: What can I grow/change/shift in my life to move toward the change needed for this imagined future?  

BLOSSOM: What of my gifts and abilities does the world need most now to move toward this imagined future? 

I do offer this as an e-reading in my collaborative initiative format for $23.  Sign up with Pay Pal or email me about sending a check. When I receive notification, I’ll be in touch to let you know about when to expect to receive your reading by email. I generally have openings to do these readings on Mondays and Saturdays. (FYI, I have a family wedding over the 4th of July weekend so might be a little slower in delivering e-readings this week into next.)

The height of this moonth’s cycle comes with the full moon arriving Tuesday, June 14th (exact at 7:51am ET, time zone converter), and offers a revelation about how the lunar energies initiated on the May 30th new moon are developing. The new moon, guided by its association with the Lovers and 8 of Swords invited us to take the next step.  Out of the full moon revelation about this developing energy, we are issued an invitation to return a gift to the world in the final weeks of the lunar cycle.  

The exact moment of the moon’s fullness comes in the sign of Sagittarius associated with the Tarot’s Temperance card. 

From The Gaian Tarot

The wisdom figure of Temperance takes opposing elements and creates something entirely new. They work with focus and determination rather than speed. This lesson of this way of working complements our new moon invitation to take the next step on the path of Love. Now that we are under the light of the full Temperance moon we see or sense that we can take another step and then another. We don’t have to rush but we are called to keep moving forward. 

For how long? Toward what? The Futurist and Fame Designer Jane McGonigal in her new book Imaginable (I read an excerpt on Slate), say 10 years. To make her case for 10 as the “magic number” (her words), she lists social and technological changes that took 10 years to reach a major success: US Civil Rights (1955-1964), the fall of apartheid in South African (1985-1996), Facebook growing from 1 to one billion users (2004-2015), and Zoom moving from being tested to becoming our pandemic communication tool (2011-2020). She invites readers to imagine what they want to achieve in 10 years and to literally put a deadline on your 2032 calendar. Something that far off in the distance allows for spaciousness—rather than short term limited thinking—in working toward it and a sense of possibility that it could be accomplished. The energy of determination and transformation offered by the Temperance full moon might provide just the right light for your seeing and committing to an inspiring vision.

To encourage a revelation on these themes as we journey through this moonthly cycle, you are invited to one, some, or all of these practices:

~ Moon bathe by sitting or lying under a window or outside on the ground. Let go of your thoughts and soak in the light.

~ Take out any reading or your reflections from the new moon and look at them in a new light. How does your understanding of the cards shift now that time has passed and light has shifted? (If you haven’t done a reading yet, no problem, just do it now under the light of the full moon. You can try the one from the new moon.)

~ Bring out your Lovers and Temperance cards from your Tarot deck and connect them to your new moon reading / reflections. You could place/imagine these cards on either side of your reading or above and below, and then look at how they add meaning into the story your original cards offered you. 

~ Reflect on questions such as: What/who can help me to stay focused on Love? What do I need to bring together to cultivate more Love in my life? Who can aid me in walking the path of Love?  What are the new, perhaps surprising, realities that are emerging from walking the pathways of Love? What is being transformed within me through my dedication to Love? You could, of course, pull cards as responses to any of these questions. You may want to engage in Visio Divina to find the layers of wisdom within the cards.

When you are done, remember to offer gratitude for what you have received. Consider what gift you now want to return to the world. Pulling a card for guidance on the gift is always a fine thing to do. In the coming weeks and before the moon returns to dark around June 25th. offer your gift to the world.

At its heart, this is a very simple practice.

Eat Strawberries on the Summer Solstice

On or close to the actual Solstice moment, stand in a field and eat a strawberry. Let yourself be in communion with the berry and the landscape and the sun.

Freeze Strawberries on the Summer Solstice

Rinse the berries and remove the stems. Place on a baking tray and slide it into the freezer. Once the strawberries are frozen, transfer to a container or freezer bag. Be sure to note that these are the strawberries harvested on the Summer Solstice.

Eat Summer Solstice Berries on the Winter Solstice

Enjoy them simply as a dessert or make them a centerpiece of a bonfire ritual.

 

Doing this simple practice last year connected me to light and dark, life and death, heat and cold, and made me aware of the spirit in the material. It was – to use an overused word with its original depth – awesome. To taste the awesome regularly need not be complicated but it is totally necessary to keep moving through these turbulent times in which we live.

Adding Layers to Deepen the Practice

Add oracular elements 

Bring your favorite divination tool to the field and divine aligned with the berries.

Last Solstice I took cards from Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe Tarot with me to the strawberry field and the 6 of Trees emerged to help me hear a message from the berries.

Rachel says that a key meaning of this card is to keep moving forward. The card meaning and the strawberry reality offered me this message: To keep moving forward create sweet moments in your life. This was an affirmation of my choice to take time from my busy life to engage in my strawberry ritual—and a reminder to build these ritual pauses into my life. Though they are moments when I am not focused on meeting a deadline or reaching a destination, they are moment of regeneration necessary for moving forward.

In the Shining Tribe companion book, Rachel introduces this card with a poem that ends: She walks like a singer,/through the forest of souls. The single human figure is surrounded many souls—of the trees, the earth, a snake  symbols, and the creature that follows her. This has me recognizing the soul of the strawberry and pondering how this bright berry grows from the soul of the landscape. Flowing with these strawberry revelations, I am released for a while from the mechanistic worldview that shaped me. I float instead in the sacred and its web of connections. The mechanistic worldview is deep within me so will pull me back, but now I’ve met the soul of the strawberry I can’t forget it.  I’ve been changed by this recognition and will seek again and again to experience, share, and expand this way of looking at the Strawberry.

Learn about the medicinal and/or magical uses of the strawberry

In many areas of my life, I’m quick to try out new things and experiment even without much knowledge of a subject. But not with plants. Here I have been unadventurous. But as I’ve worked with and been taught by Yesbelt Fernandez of Yes Spiral through our collaboration on Walking the Ways of the Summer Light my ability to work with plants has grown. Yesbelt models a comfort with plants gained from developing an relationship with them that is inspiring. She doesn’t claim to be an expert in all things herbal, but a lover of plants who shares what she knows. She invites everyone to do the same. So since I know I am not allergic to strawberries, I’m looking into using strawberries for teeth and gum care at least while they are in season. Perhaps I can cut down at least a little bit on products that come in plastic tubs!

Explore indigenous stories about strawberries

Wild strawberries are native to—or have been around for millennia in—the Americas, Europe, and Asia so there are many stories to explore. Given its heart shape, it is not surprising to have associations with European Goddesses pop up related to the strawberry in a Google search, though this traditions don’t seem to be that detailed or significant.

Strawberry creation stories from the Native American Indian tradition are widespread. The Nipmuck of the Central Massachusetts and the Connecticut River Valley where I live have a story of the finding and sharing of berries leading to the ending of their quarrels between a brother and sister. The story told on this site ends with:

Each year when the strawberry festival is held it is customary for anyone holding a grudge against someone to invite that person to the festival as a token of forgiveness. Anyone who is not ready to make peace with an estranged friend or relative should not take part in the strawberry festival.

It is a lovely story and—like this strawberry Solstice practice I’ve been sharing—rather simple. But the implications of its connection to forgiveness are deep and challenging. This story offers me the teaching that if we do not take active steps to seek and offer forgiveness then we can not partake of the sweetness of the season.

This invites us to practice forgiveness in the Solstice season.

On an individual level, each of us might want to offer an apology and bring strawberries to the one we have wronged. A forgiveness practice includes both words and actions.

On a societal level and to honor how this practice has come to us through the Native tradition, the US and US state governments can seek forgiveness from tribal nations for the theft of land, genocidal policies, cultural desecration, and abuses of the residential school system with both words and action. It is not impossible to do; there are models, work has begun. In Canada, an apology has been issued and some reparations made.  In the state of Maine, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented the abuse of Wabanaki children in the social welfare system and promoted decolonization and healing. But the work is far from done. The longer the abuse has been perpetrated, the longer the healing will take. Deep national wounds do not heal in one season. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition was created in 2011 to promote a national strategy and cultivate healing; you can see their advocacy goals here.

The benefit of devoting ourselves to a forgiveness practice in the Solstice season is that can call on healing power and soul strength of Strawberry to aid us.