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What Does The Deck Say? March 19, 2024

"As the Seven of Coins (Pentacles) is my personal Stop Card when it is the first card in a multiple card reading, no interpretation will be made of the other cards today. You’re on your own. Do something that makes you happy but be willing to accept the consequences of your actions."

The Dust II Onyx tarot deck is Courtney Alexander’s homage to her Black heritage and to the Black matriarchs and leaders of her communities. The deck is also a love offering to the LGBTQIA+ community and is presented as a tool for every person within the African diaspora to feel a connection to without prejudice. The Dust II Onyx, A Melanated Tarot Deck, is ©Courtney Alexander.

“What Does The Deck Say” is a weekday series of 3 card pulls from a cartomancy deck. No context or query is given to frame what the cards say as the posts are reading samples and not personal instruction. The result is sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, and usually surprising. All readers are invited to leave a comment about what they perceive in the random spread as each person will interact with the cards in their own way.

Personalized, direct, and private cartomancy readings are available via Ko-Fi: Noxporium.

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For various reasons, I'm celebrating the Equinox a day early! Even if it's not perfect astrological timing exactly, I'm very pleased with how this holidays has gone. Celebrating holidays is hard/ weird for me due to various religious upbringing reasons, and my last few years of internal work is paying off.

Today I fed myself breakfast, cleaned up the main living area, then cleaned myself. I used this new foldable standing screen I have to give my desk some privacy. It's not perfect but it is incredibly helpful!!! I can now do ritual in our main room without feeling self conscious because I have a corner, which is already my work space anyway, removed from view. My wife & meta can come and go to the kitchen or their bedrooms etc without interrupting me. And because it's just a standing screen, not a closed door, the cat doesn't go absolutely bananas trying to get in to see me while I'm mid-ritual. I did my ritual work (made the mobile above for the Blessing of the Air) and journaling, made myself lunch and then a batch of lemon poppy seed muffins!

And now, it's just time to relax until therapy, and then play the Stardew update! The day feels special but not stressful, full not too busy, sacred but not uptight. I think I really hit the balance here and I am so grateful.

Happiest of Springs to you 🌱

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Lighthouse illustration for a ttrpg book I'm working on.

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Take Notes Like Stag Part 2: Unrecorded Entity Note Taking Exercise

The early stages of developing a relationship with an unrecorded entity can be frustrating and confusing for many people.  The most commonly recommended first steps for getting to know a new entity are research and reading the entities myths and those don’t apply to a completely unrecorded entity and only help so far for an entity whose general type may be recorded in myth and folklore, but not them in specific.  My general advice for getting to know an unrecorded entity of any kind is to take it slow and get to know them the same way you would get to know a new person in your life.  Ask them about themselves every time you communicate with them, and keep track of each encounter using the format in part 1 - pay attention to themes, symbols, imagery, anything that you notice starts to repeat across multiple encounters.  Once you feel like something might be a defining feature or factor of the entity, something fixed that you’re sure of, make note of it and you can then run this exercise.  For this exercise you’ll need a few sheets of paper, a writing implement, the information you’ve been gathering, and a form of divination.  Yes/no forms of divination is fine for this, but something with more nuance is preferred and will give you more detailed answers in later steps. 

Review your existing notes on this entity and find a defining feature of the entity, this can be something that’s been repeated often enough in your notes on your earlier encounters to become a pattern, or something that’s happened less often but was experienced very strongly.  You’re the judge in this step of what is important enough to single out for this exercise, you can always do it again with something else if one iteration of it doesn’t prove fruitful.  

Get your paper and writing tool and write your feature in the center of the page.  Then create a brainstorming web of free associations with anything and everything that comes to mind springing from the starting point. Add as many spokes to the web and layers to each spoke as you can think of and fit.  

There are no wrong answers in this step - this isn’t you telling the entity they are associated with any of the things in the web, you’re making a list of things to ask them about.  

(If you’ve never made or heard of a brainstorming web before here’s a link to a template)

Then go through each item on the web with your divination tool for confirmation or denial from the entity of the association. -- Yes/No divination can give you a yay/nay on an association, “Yes, this is associated with me” or “No, this is not associated with me.”  But a more nuanced form of divination can unlock ones you didn’t think of with “no, but…” or “yes, and…” type answers.  For instance if you started with the center word of “harvest” because you had the indication that the entity was associated with the harvest and from there you branched out to “grain.” You used your tarot cards to confirm “grain” and you pull the Three of Cups, which is a very harvest-y card so you could take that as a yes, but the guide book for your deck specifically mentions fruits and vegetables instead of grains.  You can then follow up on fruits and vegetables vs grains to see if the entity strongly favors one over the other.

Record your results in your ongoing notes for this entity.  Remember:

An example: When I was working on Returning my pantheon of unrecorded entities, The Forgotten Ones, I would get to know an entity organically through divination conversation, dreams, Otherworldly visits, etc. for maybe a few months before I had enough fixed points of data that I thought it was was worth going through this exercise.  Then I would take an afternoon or an evening and run it multiple times for each data point I had, once through for a symbol that had appeared multiple times, once for a theme that the entity consistently used, once for an animal that they had shown a preference for, once for a flower they favored for offerings, etc.  I like to do this exercise in a trance, to add a little oomph to what is basically word association, but that’s not strictly necessary.  My goddess Brona, when I started working on her one of the few things I knew about her was that she was an entity that existed in the in betweens. Because she was so strongly liminal, so intrinsically neither here nor there I had trouble pin down more details on her even as I became very close to her.  So I ran this exercise on the word “liminal” before I had gathered much else for her.  Here is a sample of that map for her, that I just made for this post, so it’s all things that I know are associated with her - I can’t find my original, and at this point it’s hard to think of incorrect examples.

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The world is wearying, our collective imaginations are polluted by spammarketers and bodyhaters, attention has a pricetag and we run to keep the treadmills of capitalism churning. Do you have any practical techniques, incantations, remembrances or dreamsongs that will help fight this eternal poverty of my heart? I remember once knowing that there was a green spark or heartbeat of creativity: Brighid or Pan or wyldness but now, yrs of greyface has near but snuffed it out. How to rehear our story?

Greyface indeed, anon. I’m sure the irony of asking this question on social media doesn’t escape you. And yet you ask, the echo-of once-knowing is an ache that drives you.

This is a good thing, friend. We have been taught to smother aches, to banish pain so that we may continue our lives undisturbed - to get back ‘on track’ and let nothing stand in our way.

Forgive me if this answer lacks my usual fervour. I am extremely tired, and so the usual sharpness may in fact be hard to find amidst the loops and whorls, but I’ll try my best.

Because you see, I could try to think clearly, try to focus and recapture the moments of understanding without fuzziness, but that would not only be useless striving, but also a denial of the very thing you are asking me about.

I am sitting here, typing this. And as I type I muse on your question, I feel tired amidst my room of electric light and monitor-glow and music coming out of my speakers. Countless tabs adorn my browser, the refrigerator hums and the keys clack as I make words inside of my flat, which is merely one in a building of fifty or so. Hundreds of people surround me, and are above me, give or take.

This is possibly the least wild place to be answering this from. After all, my desk is a mess and the cat is snoozing less than three inches away.

See?:

Where lies the wildness then - surely it can’t be here. It must be outside somewhere, last remnants nested in some secret place, or perhaps it waitis to come upon us with an impending storm?

Except…well, now my cat is purring. He is snoozing and dreaming whatever it is he’s dreaming. Now the name I call him is Brandy, or more often Bastard Cat. But that’s not who he is, this indoor domestic cat. He’s meet and muscle and warmth and feline grace and neurosis, and so very much more beside. We’ve shared lives, this past eight years; he and I. He curls up against me at night for warmth.

Like I said, it’s very domestic. Very housey. Not wild at all.

But he doesn’t give a shit about social media. He doesn’t give a shit about the flickering images and noises from the screen. He doesn’t hate his body, or think I’m fat or thin, crippled or able-bodied. I’m just the Big Warm Thing With Face-Fur and Near-Constant Lap, y’know?

Look at him there and imagine you see him as I see him. He’s still, and yet he breathes, flanks gently moving with his breath. His body extracts oxygen, his nerves crackle, and his body burns calories which makes him give out more heat than I do. He’s busy Being Bastard Cat. None of the shit that bombards us affects him. It happens, yes, but it slides by, just like your body is aware you’re (probably) wearing clothes, but you’d not really noticed the fact until I brought it up. 

You knew you were wearing clothes, but you’d forgotten the actual sensation until I directed your attention to it.

Like you said, attention has a pricetag, but the only ones who need to know how much it costs are those who do not have it or might lose it. Attention, or so we’re told, is something that can be gained or lost. Awareness requires a transaction - one must pay attention, or so it seems.

Likewise, the wild cannot possibly exist amongst the social media and the advertising and the grasping theft of our senses, can it? Of course not, except…hold on a second:

Hold that thought for a second, consider it for it a bit, turn it over in your mind. Now, let me ask you; where did that thought come from?

Who told you where and what the wild, the endless dreaming song, was? Who pointed it out, and said: Beyond that line is where the Wild Things Are?

From whence came the notion of safety and terror? 

Once, you say, you remembered something. When, exactly, did you forget?

…The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep. - Spring Giddiness, Rumi

Read the whole poem, friend. Let it sit in your heart a while.

Then ask yourself, who is it that told you that all this noise was capable of shutting out the wildness? What authority made it jailer, what jury convicted it as the thief who stole your very soul?

Who told you that this was all there was? Who dared bind you and take your fierceness away?

Breathe, friend. Breathe and allow your awareness to unfold; let everything slide by like a river. Let the shrieks and the bells and the whistles ring out, loud as they like. Don’t even try to still your mind, just breathe and notice for a while. See how the endless stream reveals itself, how it flows over and through you.

And if you start to feel bored, then smile friend, for you are on the right track. If you feel the urge to move, then smile, for you are beginning the process of recall. Luxuriate in each moment of restlessness as a unique thing, a sensation that will come one moment and then be gone the next. Watch as it spirals, ebbs and flows; how your mind may chatter and sing and jabber.

Don’t judge - be like a child, like Alice in Wonderland: Curiouser and curiouser. Innocently explore and experience the processes of your existence as if you had never experienced them before.

Think of how you might try a new dish, roll it around your tongue; how you might explore the body a new lover, with trembling hands and breathless anticipation.

This is the choice, friend. Your choice The choice to wilfully engage with our heart, with all things, whether they be pain or joy. Be curious - entertain but do not accept,

The grey pavement, the featureless concrete only seems so because we have been told no green exists, and so we do not look, confident that we know what it is. But were we to decide to truly look for ourselves, indtead of relying on what we thought we knew, what we have been trained to take on faith, we might find that life finds a way in defiance of what we were told.

And what if we turn that gaze upon ourselves? What if we note our passions and our pulses, our sweats and aches and myriad hidden voices? What if we embrace the feral light of innocence - the crowned and conquering child who leads both lion and lamb? What if we decide to play, to embrace the Nevernever? What if we smile with sharp teeth and solemnly swear to never grow up, to join Peter Pan as Lost Boys and Girls?

(There is, after all, a reason young Peter’s surname is an ancient god, or had you forgotten?)

And there is no reason to listen to a man behind a computer screen, half a world away. Because I couldn’t possibly be a prophet, or a magician, could I?

Couldn’t take the ordinary and open the door.  I couldn’t possibly touch you from here and put my finger in your wound and then smile. I couldn’t possibly remind you that the door is round and open, could I?I couldn’t wink and say “It’s all green, dear heart. It’s all green, and it’s going to be OK. Time to come home.”

Because that would be silly wouldn’t it? It would be mad to tell you that each moment unfolds precisely as it must, It would be insane to grin and  show you the thing that lives in your shadow, the thing that knew you before you were born, and is just waiting for you to let your primordial nature loose again.

It would be crazy to say that you are already wakening even now, to the realisation that everything you are and have done springs from that bottomless well, and that you don’t even have to do anything at all, except allow it to occur perfectly naturally.

It would certainly be a wild suggestion, would it not?

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An acquaintance reached out yesterday and asked for an Ogham reading. That's a first for me, no one has ever asked me for that! It was a very beginner-for-beginner exchange, my chance to practice in exchange for their feedback sort of a deal. But being asked was flattering to begin with! I was pleasantly surprised at how I feel like I'm finally starting to be able to fit the symbols together and seeing the connections. I always feel like it takes several days of rumination to find everything there is to find, if it's anything more complex than a one stave pull. Very appreciative of the opportunity to give those muscles a workout, and looking forward to getting their notes back.

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2/26/24

I've been looking down the barrels of a few different projects for a while. While journalling this evening I checked in with myself; am I ready to take the next step? Well, I wasn't sure. My first reaction was to say no, I don't have the skills, my routines aren't perfectly in place. I caught the thought that I wasn't a "real" practitioner and turned that thought over. What makes me good enough, or not? In whose eyes and by what measure? What benchmark would be enough to make me believe that I knew what I was talking about, and that I was worthy to progress?

I'm always wary of overestimating myself and valuing my own skills too highly; arrogance is something I detest in others and do not want in myself. But at the same time, as the saying goes, "bigger idiots than you have done it!" I went to my staves about it, because hell, that's the generally accepted wisdom anyway: when you think you're ready to move on to a new stage in a magical path, do a divination about it.

So I did! And boy when I tell you that I laughed my ASS off when I saw I had pulled Beith, again! Beith is my buddy, my constant companion, my inspiration to always keep learning. She shows up constantly in my readings. Diagnosed with imposter syndrome by the staves. Got it. Great. Good.

I journalled all of this out for myself already but I thought I'd break down my reading here for kicks; maybe an outsider will see something I don't, or at the very least it's saved for the future.

With respect to the next steps that I have in mind for myself, I ask: - Where do I think I am? Beith; beginnings. I think that I need to clean up my act, and that I am only just getting started. I'm focused on the foundations. In this context I think it accurately reflects my desire for better self-discipline. - Where am I, truly? Ebad; the salmon. The promise of wisdom not yet realized, on the journey, at a crossroads. Full of potential and inspiration, but not yet realized. Cook me on a skewer and hand me to Fionn I guess. - What do I need to be ready? Nin; the letter/ the loom. My intended project actually does involve the Ogham themselves quite intimately, so I think this is telling me to attend to the letters up and wrap up this little preliminary project I'm partway through at the moment. Put together the pieces, lean on my community or on internal supports. Connect to new strengths and lean on old ones. In short, quit bellyaching about how you don't know anything; recognize the progress you've made and what you still want to achieve. You have the raw materials you need, so now go put it all together. Weave the fabric.

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Saving this for later. What a fantastic winter project.

Does anyone else like to make ice ornaments in the freezer when it gets this cold? Stole a few flowers from the house plants.

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Grief resurgence plus nasty weather has had me inside too much this week. I'm hoping to remedy that this afternoon. No big plans for Imbolc/ Brigid's Day; just continuing to work through O'Driscoll's Sacred Actions, doing garden planning for this year, and probably lighting a simple candle for Brigid. Maybe tidy up on the back deck garden and do some cold sowing of radishes and onions.

Holiday thought:

I don't do much with the cross quarter holidays as my practice isn't very closely tied to the current and not so current traditions around those days. As I deepen my relationship with the land I'm building my own seasonal holidays, building off the equinoxes and solstices and adding in my own astronomical/ agricultural/ ecological holidays as I go. So calling it "Imbolc" feels disingenuous because. Well. That's not really the holiday I'm celebrating!

However I have ancestors who would have honored Brigid's saint day (and before that possibly another version of her, who knows? not me). And I've felt her as a gentle, comforting, undemanding presence in my life in the last year. So Wheel or no Wheel or re-invented-not-really-a-wheel or otherwise, I want to show my thanks for that. But I'm keeping things simple on purpose.

Deity thoughts:

I'm still reconstructing what a healthy relationship to deity/ religious devotion looks like for me. So despite having interacted with... three? two and a half? individual entities in the last year, I don't have much of a religious or deity honoring practice at the moment. As much as I miss it, I still have too much to work to do to be normal about deities right now. I have frankly dangerous-to-myself amounts of devotion and love to give and we're all in agreement that I'm keeping my distance until I can be normal about devotions to deity. Turns out that the Christian Godhead demands a level of exaltation and self abasement that not all deities are comfortable with actually! Or at least that's been my takeaway from some interactions I've had.

So until I'm ready to date again, so to speak, all my deity interactions are just saying hi and thank you and buying them a coffee (metaphorically) now and then. Keeping in touch but not deepening any relationships until I'm ready. I feel that I need to truly believe my life can be complete without deity before I can find a new, healthier place for them in my life.

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“True myth may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero — really look — and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. ‘You must change your life,’ he said. When true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin (born October 21, 1929), “Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction”, PARABOLA, Vol. 1 No. 4: Rites of Passage, Fall 1976 (via devoutin)

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I'm starting to think that I need to acknowledge my menstrual cycle in my practice, because it sure does have an effect on my mental state. I imagine would feel less guilty about binging study when I feel great and becoming less active when I don't, if I just acknowledged that those weeks and moods are going to come anyway and just... made it intentional. To be clear there's nothing gendered in this, I think everyone deals with cycles of some kind or other. My cycle just happens to have very visceral milemarkers yknow.

Like okay, yes, there's a week each month where I crave comfort and am prone to dark, quiet moods. Where I'm tired and hungry and unsociable. Let's plan around that and do more meditation and reading poetry that week. Less divination and research. Then there's a week as I bounce back towards normal with ricocheting but improving moods, for taking stock of where I am and bringing my daily habits back to consistency. Then there's a week where I feel amazing and want to do ALL the ritual and ALL the study and ALL the divination and ALL the hiking, so... no reason not to ride that wave. And so on.

And so on and so on, back around and around for probably the next twenty years or more. I might as well get comfy with it, right? I just feel like there's something to be gained rather than lost to changing and cycling moods, if I approach it with the right perspective.

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Thanks for the welcome home, Mountain! Clocking out after more than 70 hours emergency work to enjoy being home. Before I passed out for a nap I took a walk and got this snapshot of the view from my favorite sit spot.

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Day three of working fourteen hour days getting the power back on begins. And the second storm comes in tomorrow to put us back at square one! But I still managed to pull off the new moon ritual and divination I had planned.

I'll take the victory. Also that 30 ounce thermos of black tea.

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It’s been difficult to get in the garden lately, after my grow rack calamity, but I went in the garden yesterday.

I think one of the things that is so spiritually healthful about gardening is that you engage with the future without trying.

You see a plant beginning to die and begin picking at it and thinking about what would be best to put there next season. You peek into your compost and your mind automatically begins guessing how long it will be before it will be ready. You see a bud and already you are anticipating fruit.

The garden does not require faith, it demands belief, it obliges you to hope and it requires you participation to get there. It is the blunt fact of change, that the future will come whether you prepare or not.

You can either move aside and let it go as it will, or cooperate and have something that benefits you both.

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your mistake is thinking healing will always feel good, and not often like molting while clung to dead tree bark

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>.> Do tell me more about this "land greeting ritual" if you are comfortable ????

Sure thing 💚

The bones of my land greeting ritual is AODA's Sphere of Protection (SoP). The AODA uses it as a template, not a strictly scripted ritual, and that's how I approach it as well. If you're familiar with the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram it's going to look marginally familiar. AODA started out as a Masonic group with Golden Dawn connections but has since moved on considerably from those roots... that's a topic for another time though.

I'm chosing to not share my specific language that I've crafted and am still refining, but I'll go over the broad strokes. I think that'll explain more than trying to explain the differences between the AODA's SoP and the LRP, or talking about all of the things one can do with the ritual, or anything like that. It's a very adaptable little ritual structure and I'm very fond of it for that reason.

I use no tools or ritual garb or anything like that; very "low church", to borrow a term. I have a couple versions of the ritual depending on how well I'm feeling. If I'm sick or depressed, or trying to do it subtly in public, I can do it sitting, just looking around the room and thinking through my script. (Advantage of a Protestant upbringing; I'm extremely good at silent prayer and visualization.) The full version involves standing in place for 5-7 minutes, or longer if I want to meditate right then. It involves some gesturing, and turning to face the four cardinal directions.

I start facing the east. I remind myself of where I am; a tiny dot on the face of a huge and ancient planet, hanging in an infinitely larger and older heaven, surrounded by the water and heat that make life possible. I hold my hands just out from my sides, palms up or out. The traditional version uses the shape of the cross and four elements, but that's not my jam. So I use the shape of the Awen symbol / | \ and the land / sea/ sky elemental triad instead.

Then I greet each direction in turn, starting with the east and facing each quarter in turn, ending in the north. Some versions greet the four classical elements in this way; for me the four element system is the least important correspondence at play here. For each direction, I trace the symbol for it in the air with my fingers, and greet the Gate of that direction with language that includes the color, plant, creature, and other symbolism I've developed or inherited for that quarter. I also greet by name the salient feature of the landscape literally in that direction from my home (three mountains and a lake!), as part of that greeting. I ask for the blessings of the spirits of the land in that direction and/ or do some energy work, and offer my thanks and respect to the same. This is the heart of the land greeting; I am acknowledging every part of the landscape around me in a systematic manner. I like doing this outside when I can. A few thoughts of note: AODA uses nonstandard symbols for air/east and earth/ north, I do not invoke any deities/ angels/ named spirits or anything like that in my personal version, and I don't generally do the traditional formal invoke and banish unless I'm in a formal setting as it's not really part of my personal paradigm.

Then I greet the three aspects of spirit in a very similar way: Spirit Above, Spirit Below, and once all six directions have been welcomed I invoke the Spirit Within (or Awen). My symbolism in this section parallels the elemental triad from the beginning. Finally, I conclude the ritual with a blessing on myself and the land around me. Traditionally, none of the aspects of Spirit are banished after being formally invoked.

When I do this outside I usually bring some kind of gift. If I do it on the deck I do it before watering my container garden; if I do it in the woods or at the overlook, I bring water, or a handful of oats, or nuts, or compost. Sometimes an apple or something else critter-appropriate.

Thanks for asking, I hope it was interesting!

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My daily routine is getting back on the rails, which is such a relief. It consistently is both an indicator of how my mental health is doing, as well a finger on the scale pushing my recovery.

Currently it consists of the daily land greeting ritual, and daily (or nearly daily) meditations. Once that bedrock is solid, divination is getting added back in. That's a big one for me, it's usually where the intrusive religious thoughts start getting really bad. But since my Solstice ritual went so well, with no self doubt intrusions, I'm hopeful that I might be past that now. Which would be lovely.

Once the daily routine is down then I can start making progress on my larger goals. Big steps made out of little steps and all of that!