Tag: ex-evangelical

Think

This isn’t an IBM ad. I’m talking about that thing you do with your brain.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

I’m glad I listened to pure impulse and picked up my Steampunk Tarot today. If you search the blog, you can see all the old posts about the Judgement card. I don’t know how much sense any of it makes. Some people have a significator card, a card they feel represents their essence. Or at least most of us have a card or two or a few that we resonate with more than the others. The judgement card, on the other hand, is my nemesis card. It pushes my buttons and pokes at old scars in ways that aren’t always helpful.

I love the steampunk deck’s version of Judgement though. It is the only Judgement card that doesn’t send me into a puddle of spiraling, evangelical induced post-traumatic babble like other versions the judgement and hierophant (aka pope) cards typically do.

The judgement card, like the rest of the major arcana, has at least two major threads of meaning woven into it.

One is the judgement day, face the music kind of judgement, not unlike how we might say a court judgement or a lawsuit judgement. The legal judgement also connects to the second thread…the decision making process itself. The word “reckoning” works here too. An older meaning for reckoning is to settle a debt or account. But it also means calculation or deciding, like “navigation by dead reckoning.” The biggest problem with judgement card is how easily it can slip into petty judgmentalism.

My least favorite representation of the Judgement card is, as you might expect, is the Waite Smith Tarot. Pamela Smith’s art is saturated with christian symbolism with angels, trumpets, dead looking naked people standing in graves. That whole rapture-ish resurrection second coming thing always gives me that nervous eye tick feeling. Past experience shows the slip to judgmentalism is very short with that kind of symbolism around.

Let’s just say if that kind of religion is your jam, go for it. For me it’s a jar jammed full of glowing green radioactive toxicity. In fact, in the back of my mind, I have always low key hoped that my Tarot work would help others who disliked and rejected by the American evangelicals as much as it has helped me to recover from a childhood in that subculture.

But today, thankfully, all of that is beside the point because the card is pointing to the other connotation, the “use your head” and “use good judgement” part of the card.

The Steampunk deck is good for steering intuition away from the Smith artwork. In fact, this artwork has the opposite effect. It could easily have a “face the music” connotation, but in her guidebook for the deck Aly Fell interprets it as “heeding a call.” That is a card meaning I can resonate with. Not so much a judgement in the traditional sense, not so much answering a “calling” in the religious sense, but rather a actively thinking about our life path and thinking about the meaning we infuse into what we do.

The image also calls to mind some of my favorite D.J. and E.D.M. music like Mystery Skulls and Daft Punk. It taps into my cyberpunk side as much as the Steampunk aesthetic for some reason.

It all takes me to a happy place of thinking and reason perfectly blended with abstract ideas and creativity.

It’s a personality thing that works for some people more than others. It also brings to mind Myers-Briggs personality categories. Today’s card is a comfort zone for all the thinkers, all the people with a T as the third of their four letter category. This is one for my fellow geeks.

For feelings people, those with the “F” in their code, it might be more challenging. It might be harder for them to let their head rule their heart for whatever challenges life might pose for them.

Challenge or comfort zone, the call the Judgment card is asking us to heed is a simple one: Think.

Thank you all for reading and listening!

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Found Family

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today we talk about found family and stray cat royalty.

Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

I’m still exploring the Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund. Today’s card is the Queen of Strays.

My first early morning coffee deficient impulse response to the card was my inner three year old yelling KITTY!

But honestly, though, there are worse ways to start a Monday morning than a picture of a cat.

My Aunt used to have an orange tabby with a vibe a lot like the queen in the box on the card. I imagine that if Pumpkin had a human voice she would have sounded like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. Pumpkin was a rescue like all the other cats my aunt ever had. She was legendary for bringing home every stray around when she was a kid. To this day, she is the neighborhood cat whisperer.

If we humans have the capacity to form relationships with the strays of other species, then think about how much stronger the bonds between found humans can be.

In that respect, the internet is a glorious thing. I’ve had conversations with people who I never would have met otherwise in more places than I could ever afford to visit. I’ve had conversations in Esperanto with a Japanese doll designer and a German Reggae singer. I’ve built years-long friendships with an energy healer in Albuquerque, a writer and two Tarot readers in Canada plus a voice actor on the entire opposite side of the country (insert Nineth World Journal and Oz 9 fangirling here.)

I’ve done email Tarot readings that started wonderful conversations with lovely people on the entire opposite side of the planet in Australia, India, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

Meat space can be just as glorious as cyber space if we let it.

Have you ever been to a comic con or a concert for your favorite band? That is a glimpse of how like minds and found family can feel. For some of us that found family, that sense of tribe and community can be desperately important.

I’ve been lucky in negotiating these things. I’ve avoided the land mines that have exploded friend’s families over smaller religious and political differences. I’ve lived in the white evangelical subculture. I grew up in what we now call “MAGA” culture. It isn’t an exaggerated news media trope. The danger and emotional damage of rejection and homelessness and worse is very real especially for lgbtquia teens in the so-called red states and red counties.

We all have to do all we can to protect the vulnerable among us. Each of us must be the Queen or King of strays. Vote. Be kind. Advocate for equality and inclusion. Most of all be your true self when you can.

For we adults, it’s usually easy, safe and cheap. You never know when letting your true self show might make a younger found family member feel a little less alone. Letting your true light shine might throw a some encouragement into a dark corner where it is needed. A little kindness and a little authenticity can make you stray cat royalty.

That’s why I love this card today. Families of heart are just as real and valid as the genetic kind. They feed your soul. I’m old and lucky and privileged, but I still remember going to a U2 concert in the 80s and feeling like I found “my people.” I still remember the giddy joy of watching the Reason Rally in 2016 and seeing the Ron Reagan unabashed atheist commercial. It is one thing to intellectually know you are not alone, but it is another thing altogether to really feel and experience that there are others “like me.” I remember doing Tarot readings at a theater after party one time and feeling ridiculously happy in that diverse, accepting, loving group of people especially after getting a quick hello hug from a seven foot tall drag queen. It doesn’t matter how your stray-ness is defined, be it race, religion, gender identity, sexual preference, or what have you – strays of every type nurture and care for each other because we all know what it feels like to be the only one.

Thank you so much for listening. All very best wishes to all of you, my found Tarot Tribe. See you at the next sip!

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