Working magic in challenging times pt. 2

Another Weekly Tarot Forecast for February 28 - March 6

I’ve spent the last few days riveted. Riveted to the news, which I barely used to watch, and the twitter feeds of journalists in Ukraine. It reminds me of the early days of the pandemic when I dove back into social media, driven by the urge to somehow be a part of the masses, to witness history, and feel the strings of human connection vibrate from a momentous event. Now, writing this in Durham’s downtown, I can’t help but look around and see the comforting faces of people out and about, doing their business, and imagine them huddled in a subway, not knowing what was coming next. I’ve always struggled with the term empath, but like many drawn to tarot I find that I soak up whatever is riding in the current like a sponge. This isn’t always a problem, but it can sometimes stand in the way of action, participation, and living. Which is interesting considering that we have The Magician as the first card in our reading.

The Magician is a conduit. You can see them standing, confident, in the center of the card with one warm stretched upwards and the other pointing to the ground. What’s above? The realm of inspiration, ideas, feeling, emotion - the intangible and ineffable. These forces travel through The Magician, a character whose power lies in transformation. They take whatever strike of lightening comes their way and channel it into something tangible, flourishing, and impactful: the garden of flowers blooming in profusion around them. 

It’s not all flowers in The Magician’s world, however. There’s a table to their right with a series of tools, each a symbol of the four suits in the Minor Arcana - a cup, sword, wand, and pentacle. Here we have a beautiful intermingling of the everyday and the archetypal. The Magician earns their title by working with the tools available to all of us. Through practice they’ve become skilled and swift. When inspiration or necessity strikes, they act.

So, in these days when we’re watching the invasion of Ukraine (and, unfortunately, so much else unfolding in our societies at large), how can we act like The Magician? It’s easy to get lost, swept up in the emotional intensity and horror. It’s important to bear witness. But what can we do? 

We tend to see The Magician in a positive context, the creative upstart making something out of nothing rather than the scrappy survivalist who keeps showing up, undaunted. When I pulled this card for the week, I saw this other version of The Magician. In this reading we’re being urged to work with a lightening strike that’s frightening and destructive instead of inspiring and generative (just look at that Ten of Swords card lurking on the left). Still, we have the practice and tools to transform the moment from undistilled fear, anxiety, and nervousness into something real. It doesn’t have to be perfect (if anything, this card shows us how trying again and again can yield both experience and something surprisingly beautiful) but something does have to happen unless we want to suffer from an emotional build-up and a missed opportunity to contribute. So consider what you have to offer and what you can do: any gesture sets magic in motion and releases energy outwards where it can flower.

The rest of our reading points us towards the challenging and unavoidable reality we’re facing. We have the Ten of Swords, a card of suffering and grief, and the innocent Page of Cups. Loss an pain can leave us feeling as vulnerable as we did when we were children. But there’s also healing; meeting this call to our humanity with acceptance and resilience has us stepping into our places of power and back towards The Magician. I see this as a reminder that to live is to feel - how can we feel our way towards just action? The tenderness of The Page of Cups inspires us to value our open-heartedness and shared humanity. We see this in our reading with The Page of Cups turning towards the fish in their cup openly. How can we engage with our tender selves this week, seeing connection in emotion? Doing so at all levels of our lives, planting roses and lilies wherever we can, will keep us engaged, in motion, and in the process of healing ourselves and others.