Tag: recovering fundamentalist

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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Today’s Tarot: Raise Your Chalice

This is one of those times where the card feels, to me, to be way out of synch with today’s energy. It just doesn’t capture the momentum of the moment. Something’s off.

Sometimes when this happens I’ll just re-draw the card and take the “off” feeling as my cue that some other message is more urgent or pressing than the first card can convey.

Other times I’ll just let it stand in the hope that it helps some unknown someone somewhere out there in cyberspace. This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about the other day in the podcast:

BUT, as I go along, today’s card is turning out to be less about the card, less about a somebody-somewhere message and more about the Tarot reading process. This is a message for folks on my side of the reading table. Any card could potentially carry this energy thread, not just the three of cups.

The “I don’t know who needs to hear this but….” trope has always made me feel a little annoyed and agitated, but I never understood why until now. Not only is it overused and cliche, but strikes me as a little arrogant self-serving. It is as if the person writing it thinks they have some special, secret, better knowledge than everyone else. Maybe they do, but why not just say what’s on your mind without the “I don’t know who needs to hear this” part? It sounds like a power play over that unknown someone that you think you know better than. You were going to post the idea anyway. It serves no purpose to amp it up like you are some hero messenger from on high going out of your way to drop some wisdom on some poor wretch who doesn’t even know they need helped.

Of COURSE we don’t know who needs to hear it. We are pushing our ideas out into a public forum, not responding to a specific person. If we publish a reading about a particular person, then that flirts with violating their privacy (unless they give conscious consent for the reading to be used that way, which some people have…for which I am very grateful.)

OF COURSE we don’t know who “needs to hear this.” They never ASKED to hear it. That unknown someone out there might not WANT our almighty opinion. Who are we to say what anybody NEEDS to hear whether we know who they are or not? We are interpreters, neither judges of need nor arbiters of truth.

It’s a roundabout way to get there, but this mis-matched energy today is a good reminder of why I want to bring Reiki and medical ethics and professionalism to my Tarot work. In Reiki we don’t do energy work with someone without some level of consent. One of my Reiki teachers once told a story about a time where they saw breaking news on TV. Out of kindness and an impulse to help they sent energy to a person in the live news feed. The energy bounced back hard because it wasn’t requested or wanted. Since then, they use and teach the intent of sending energy unconditionally and without expectation, so the energy can be accepted OR rejected as the recipient sees fit – even in planned distance sessions. I’ve tried to adopt that same stance in Tarot blogging and social media. The Reiki in our teacher’s example was sent out of sincere compassion and a desire to help, not at all intended to be arrogant. The same is true of those “I don’t know who needs to hear this” posts online. But as the adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions – and tired social media tropes. There is such a thing as unintended consequences. We may not intend to be egoistic, but our work can still drift in that direction if we aren’t careful. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, maybe more than most.

Sometimes the lines between simple enthusiasm, a sincere desire to help, passionate evangelism and outright arrogance are very narrow. It is up to us to keep our ego in check. It is up to us to respect the universal life energy we read and the ones we read it for, both known and unknown.

That is exponentially true for those of us who have been raised in the American evangelical subculture. Our lives were so saturated with arrogant holier-than-thou pronouncements that it seems normal…but it’s not. Making holier-than-thou arrogant pronouncements is one of those things that a recovering fundamentalist has to be constantly on guard against. It really does have a certain kinship with the way that chemical dependency requires lifelong vigilance against triggers and relapses.

So no, I don’t know who needs to hear this unusual, convoluted energy message today. I won’t presume to think anyone does. I give it without expectation, for you to accept or reject as you see fit. Which is a very freeing, comforting thing on my side of the Tarot reading table. Being right all the time and the inerrant source of higher knowledge must be exhausting.

So let me raise a virtual chalice of thanks to all the many unknown someones out there. We mean well, but we also rely on your discretion and discernment. If we tell you something you needed to hear, great. We are happy to have helped. If not, then thank you for ignoring the BS and hanging in there with this until a useful message does come along. Here is to you, dear reader, for silently, energetically helping us online types to respect our audience.

Confession #5: I’m Proud of You

All are welcome here: A few June thoughts from an lgbtquia ally and recovering fundamentalist

New and improved podcast version of the post by the same name earlier this month.

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m a clairvoyant and I have a confession. I’m proud of you.

I’ve re-written this episode at least two dozen times. 

One version even started with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote. Something about doing what’s right because you are going to be criticized anyway. 

This sort of thing happens in Tarot. Working with your intuition WILL help you find a better understanding of things, but sometimes it will kick you out of your comfort zone in the process. This particular card reading has been pushing my buttons for days. 

Today’s podcast episode is based on a single card, daily meditation reading from the TaoCraft Tarot blog earlier this month. There is a link in the show notes if you want to read my original semi-unhinged rant.

When I drew the Four of Wands card, the words “quirk” and “celebrate” stepped forward immediately. Here, the word quirk carries a very positive energy and points toward anything that makes you unique or is a key part of your individuality. 

“Celebrate with pride” is still the top level energy message.

I’m recording this in June. You don’t have to be a psychic to connect “celebrate with pride” to Pride Month.

 But there was a secondary message underneath that one. The mental image that came with it reminded me of the ‘river of slime’ in Ghostbusters II. 

I recognized the energy immediately from being raised evangelical in the american south, but it’s really hard to describe the FEEL of it. It helps that there have been several reputable news reports about evangelicals because of their overwhelming support for a certain former president.

Based on my experience and what I’ve seen through my family, the news reports are fairly accurate. I searched for a few recent ones and put links in the show description [below] if you want a better sense of the energy. If it seems like I’m picking on Southern Baptists, I am. That’s my parents’ church. White evangelical baptists are what I know first hand. But never mind my background. REAL experts are saying hate crimes are on the rise. I think this part of the card message serves as a reminder to please stay safe and reach out to reasonable people for support if you need it.

Dogma about the word “pride” is one of about nine thousand ninety-nine hundred and eleventy-one reasons why I ran screaming from evangelical religion. They, and others, turn the simple word “pride” into something terrible.

I’m guessing the “pride” they talk about is something of a language artifact. Language shifts and evolves over time, even when some belief systems don’t. Bronze age manuscripts filtered through medieval translations and then bent to contemporary ends equates “pride” to unbridled ego. In a world before psychology, it makes sense that a mental state like that would be described with commonplace words. Words that WE are familiar with, like ego and narcissist didn’t exist back then. “pride goes before a fall” for example. Out of control narcissism can lead to poor choices and bad stuff happening. 

In any case, it’s a shame that newer, healthier connotations for the word pride are sometimes haunted by old, derogatory ones.

Looking at the card, I was reminded of being a kid and hearing all of the adults quietly supporting Anita Bryant, the loudly anti-gay peanutbutter lady from the 1970s. This part of the message reminded me of how evangelicals STILL feel about pride month and all of the bigotry, racism and overt homophobia that was the number one reason why I quit that religion so long ago.

Did you ever notice how evangelical preachers have a tendency to yell during their sermons? 

Imagine.

Imagine how it would feel as a teenager to hear them literally raise their voices against quote/unquote “the homosexuals.” It was heartbreaking for me to hear it when I had – and still have – good friends in the lgbtqia community.

Imagine.

Now, imagine what that experience would be like if you were young and IN the community.

The Four of Wands is about public cultural celebrations. The Four of Wands is about lifting each other up.

Authenticity is something to celebrate. People living their truest lives is a profoundly happy thing. 

A lack of self esteem can make us more prone to prejudice. Studies are starting to show that putting other people down really is a self esteem boost for some people. 

On the other hand, self acceptance is jet fuel for empathy. Self confidence makes compassion for other people so much easier. Compassion for other people supports their self esteem which in turn seeds more compassion and so on and so on. Pride not only ISN’T a sin, it arguably can make the world a better place.

Pride month is a lesson for all of us. It’s hard to hate other people when you make peace with your TRUE self first. 

Those of us with privilege are exponentially more responsible to protect and celebrate and uplift Pride Month. I used to think that my experience of leaving evangelical religion and coming out atheist gave me a tiny glimpse into what it is like for the lgbtqia community on both sides of the closet door.

But no. Just, no.

As an ally, pride month doesn’t have anything to do with me. For an ally, Pride Month is about being proud of other people. It’s about being proud OF people I care about.

Whatever your situation, if you are living a kind and authentic life – I’m proud of you.

Celebrate who you are. Celebrate everyone. Just be careful that the celebratory kind of pride doesn’t slip into the ego kind of pride. The supportive kind of pride is something for every month, not just corporate advertising during the month of June. 

I post rainbows and celebrate WITH you this month because I’m proud OF you and proud of who YOU are.

All are welcome here. 

This episode is dedicated to a still-quiet loved one and the memory of Roger Harmon, florist, businessman, and one of my first and best friends south of the mason dixon line.

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you on the print side and I’ll see you next time in the clairvoyant’s confessional.

Based on the wordpress blog: https://taocrafttarot.wordpress.com/2021/06/09/todays-tarot-im-proud-of-you/

Bibliography / Sources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/12/23/black-pastors-break-southern-baptist-critical-race-theory/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/racial-tensions-simmer-southern-baptists-hold-key-meeting-78220643

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/southern-baptists-divided-over-politics-race-lgbtq-policy-n1258492

https://www.hrc.org/resources/stances-of-faiths-on-lgbt-issues-southern-baptist-convention

Click to access 10.1.1.475.9865-23wmgsq.pdf

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/anti-transgender-hate-crimes-soared-20-percent-2019-n1248011

Today’s Tarot: I’m Proud of You

If you are serious about living an enriched life and being a better person, then stepping outside of your comfort zone – even for a moment – is inevitable. That happens a lot in Tarot. The cards will nudge you toward a better path even if that means kicking you entirely out of your comfort zone in the process. This post might be one of those moments. It is for me. Today’s card uncomfortably pokes at some old issues, but imma just say what intuition gives anyway.  This post is a little sweary and political. If you are not up for that, no worries, just skip it and come back for the next post. I’ll be back to my usual religion and politics avoidance policy by then.

Evangelical dogma and connotations around the word pride is reason nine thousand ninety-nine hundred and eleventy-one why I ran screaming from my family’s religion.

I was raised in the American evangelical subculture by the church deacon and Sunday school teacher who helped found the town’s first Southern Baptist affiliated church. (Yeah, THOSE Southern Baptists in the WaPo article) That kind of thinking turns the innocent word “pride” into something wrong and guilt-riddled. They turn pride into a sin (as do Catholics, so I’m told.)

If being happy with who I really am while proudly celebrating the authentic selves of the people I love is a sin, then hail Satan and pass the asbestos underwear! See you in hell, frens!

It’s a stretch, but I’m guessing the “pride” they are talking about is maybe a language artifact. Language shifts and evolves over time, even when fundamentalists don’t. Bronze age manuscripts filtered through medieval translations and bent to contemporary evangelical ends frames their version of “pride” as being unbridled ego. It makes sense that, in a world before psychology, a mental state like that would be attributed to a more common word like pride. If you define it in those terms “pride goes before a fall” isn’t wrong. Out of control narcissism leads to poor choices and risky behavior (like, for example, the former president who was supported by 80% of white evangelicals according to NPR)

Whatever the reason, it is still a shame that the newer, healthier connotations of the word pride is often haunted by these older, negative, derogatory undertones.

It’s June, so it’s not psychic or paranormal for my thoughts turn to Pride Month.

With the Four of Wands today, the words “quirk” and “celebrate” step forward. “Quirk” is the name for superpowers in the anime My Hero Academia that we’ve been watching lately. Superpower or not, socially acceptable or not, “quirk” here means anything that makes you unique and is a key part of your individual, authentic self. “Celebrate with pride” comes strongly to mind.

This is where it gets uncomfortable. I am reminded of reason number 1 why I ran screaming from the evangelicals: bigotry. Rampant, pervasive, intractable bigotry including overt homophobia. Not every single individual certainly, but the words that pour from those they collectively elevate to their pulpits speaks for everyone in a congregation. Loudly.

The ministers are literally in front of and above everyone else when they speak. Imagine the heartbreak as a teenager when they would nearly yell bigoted bullshit about “the homosexuals” when I had friends in the community who where some of the kindest most compassionate, open, inclusive loving people I’ve met to this day.

The Four of Wands is about community celebration. It is about lifting others up.

And it can be about embracing those who were rejected by their birth families because of who they authentically are. I love those “I’m your mom / dad now” memes supporting lgbtqia kids who are rejected by their own families. Anybody the evangelicals reject is prolly my kind kind of people.

The Four of Wands is about celebration. Authenticity is something to celebrate. People living their truest life is a profoundly happy thing. A lack of self esteem can make us more prone to bias or worse (a 2011 article on psychologialscience.org is one quick example) Confidence is fuel for compassion. Pride in ourselves breeds compassion for others which leads to pride in those around us which creates acceptance which seeds even more self esteem and so it goes. Pride not only isn’t a sin,  it arguably makes the world a better place.

Pride month is a lesson for all of us. It is hard to hate others when you are comfortable with yourself. Those of us with privilege are exponentially more responsible to protect and celebrate and uplift Pride Month.

I used to think that my experience of leaving evangelical religion and coming out as a tarot reading, science loving, Taoist, atheist and witch gave me a teeny tiny partial keyhole glimpse into what it is like for the lgbtqia+ community on both sides of the closet door.

If there is anything at all I’ve learned from Pride month about being a good ally, it’s that being an ally doesn’t have any fucking thing to do with me. Pride month for an ally is about being proud of other people – proud of the people we care about.

If you are living an authentic and kind life – I am proud of you.

Celebrate who you authentically are. Celebrate everyone else’s authentic self too. But don’t let the celebratory pride slip into the self-centered pride. Pride and a safe and welcoming place is something for every month, not just big business June advertising. Although I kinda like all the rainbow tshirts. And the one big burger place donating a portion of their chicken sandwich profits (including Sunday sales) to a lgbtqia+ organization to troll the anti-equality uber christians that run that other chicken place. I’m all the way down with that particular cororporate move.

I celebrate with you because I’m proud of you and who you really are.

All are welcome here.

Related: The Niggles: What’s In A Name

gif images via giphy.com, nope via bitmoji free app, Tarot card image from the public domain. Rainbow photo by the author.

Normal hours are back! Email readings are available to order 24/7 and Live phone/online meeting readings are available by appointment.

Elfcon – DONE!

PicsArt_08-04-12.31.48.jpg

The cure for holiday stress is to celebrate YOUR holiday, not other people’s.

Christmas cards – CHECK!

Gifts mailed to out of state family (which is everybody except the hubster and the padawan) – CHECK!

Cookies – batch one, devoured – CHECK!

More cookies coming? You betcha.

All that is left is a grocery store run for the big meal itself.

This has been the lowest key, biggest Zen, fewest fucks given Christmas ever. I probably forgot something really big and embarrassing. But then there is the part about fewest….well, you know.

Here we are over a year on, and I’m still niggled about the name change. I think the big niggles come from the big symbolism. Rebranding to the TaoCraft Tarot name is both a stage of life evolution and a giant step out of several self imposed closets. This year and this holiday season is filled with more authenticity than ever. TaoCraft is starting to feel lived-in and cozy.

It never fails to amaze me how there seems to be a Tarot card for everything…even the long slow process of sweeping Christmas out my psyche. It is one of the hardest things to let go, but still necessary to release. When it comes to tradition wrangling, the High Priest is just the thing. Or, from the opposite side of the same coin, rejecting the pope / hierophant is just the thing.

For a recovering fundamentalist, there can be a lot of mixed feelings and internal conflicts this time of year. Not only do you have to come to some sort of terms with  family relationships (or the lack of them for those who ‘come out’ and are rejected) but you also have to come to terms with your feelings about the extant holiday itself. What do you do about pleasant childhood memories or a desire for all of the things about Christmas that are, after all, truly enjoyable? How do you celebrate the good stuff while letting go of the toxic stuff? In spite of the feelings at the time, looking back, all the things I cherish most about ‘Christmas’ has zero to do with the religious parts of the holiday.  By letting go of christian christmas, I lose nothing.

My ethos has always been to make some pro forma gestures and try to keep the peace with religious family members. After all, evangelicals and fundamentalist respond well to sweeping things like that under the rug. With visions of the Ghost of Christmas Present dancing in my head, I’d remind myself that a simple little card was a small thing to do to reach out to my fellow humans, and honor whatever thread of relationship may persist. Still, it felt like *I* was putting a lot of time and effort and postage into *their* holiday. Right or wrong, that is a recipe for stress and resentment. We who have “left the faith” are thought to have left the holidays too. We have been so ‘othered’ that it takes a deliberate effort to find some sort of  common ground with Christmas much less see a new path through the holiday season. It is hard to see a current spiritual or secular path through all the haze of Christmases past. It is conflicting to want to engage with the larger, more spiritual symbolism of the season but not the narrow christian-only aspects.

This year, for once, feels different. By scaling everything way back, enough evangelical energy is drained away that I can finally claim this as a holiday of my own. Call it Yule. Call it Solstice. Call it Festivus. Yes, there will still be a tree (no star on top) cookies, egg nog, gingerbread, lights, that plastic garland that I love despite it’s vintage cheesiness, and the whole holly jolly thing. But this year it’s MY holly jolly secular pagan thing. It a small and happy thing to mail gifts and write cards and bake and do when it all done in celebration of MY holiday instead of as a conciliatory gesture toward theirs. If it has some surface appearances in common with *their* holiday, so be it. But Christmas is not me. Not anymore.

When you were raised in the evangelical fundamentalist sub-culture, it is easy to forget that acting FOR something is vastly different than acting in compliance WITH something. You have every right to YOUR holiday traditions even if they are shiny new self-created ones. You have every right to celebrate nothing at all.

The moment we stop celebrating other people’s holidays all of the seasonal stress vanishes.

I give no energy to Christmas. Pumpkin soup to roasted chestnuts, Thanksgiving to New Year,  I am celebrating Yule, Solstice, Festivus, all things cinnamon, cookies, egg nog and the light of the human spirit.

You may not be celebrating those things. Jesus may be the one and only reason for your season, which is just fine. But that is not why I send these wishes. From a place of holiday spirit, from a place of those things deeply meaningful to me….I wish you all a season of love, happiness, health, safety and prosperity.

Wishing you all the best throughout the holidays and the New Year

hollycandle

 

Speaking of the holidays…I’ll be available for email Tarot readings throughout the entire month of December. There may be some delays in delivery while I get the cookies out of the oven, watch Christmas Vacation for the third time or baste the ham, but be patient. I will get your reading to you. Email readings do not need an appointment, order HERE any time.

In-person and party tarot will be closed Dec 20, 2019 through Jan. 2, 2020.

But did I mention email Tarot is open? It’s my specialty, you know. 

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