Good morning, wyrdos.
Well, for me, it’s actually still Tuesday evening. I’m scrambling to write this week’s newsletter the night before it’s due. I’ve been too busy, too distracted, and too exhausted (in that exact order) to plan this one ahead. I could have published some material from the current course I am leading, and I almost did so just to save myself a bit of work. Alas, it just didn’t feel right, so here is a brief but hopefully potent newsletter on the alchemy of heartache.
Song of the week
I’ve been listening to it a lot this week. It’s a pretty heartbreaking song, especially considering that it’s autobiographical. The second verse speaks to the way love can sort of attack you—like the wasp that stings Stevens’ best friend on the shoulder before the two share an unexpected kiss. That it is a story of queer romance blossoming at a Christian summer camp adds some real emotional texture.
The lovers “fought, wrestled and raged,” until eventually their connection ends. Yet that dead love lives on in the song’s unambiguous refrain: “we were in love, we were in love.”
Taking into account the lyrics of this song, it’s practically the musical version of this week’s tarot card. The biblically themed choral lines remind me of the archangel Raphael, who consecrates the union of Adam and Eve on the Rider Waite Smith deck version of the card. And the painful choice Stevens’ friend makes to part ways reminds me that this card is as much about separations as it is about unions.
Love is often associated with chocolates, flowers, honey. Sweet things. But for me, just as often, love has been the sting of a wasp, a harmless kiss that ruins everything, a fight, a wrestle, a rage. Like most cosmic forces, it doesn’t give a shit about your agenda. It’s just here to make the wheel keep turning.
With that wheel, I turn. I separate. I unite. Solve et coagula, ad infinitum.
Tarot poem
The Lovers
Like fools, they gaze upon the roses.
Warn them not,
For blood is a singular teacher.
I want you to gut me.
It would be so much more comforting
than the alternative:
Your curled, unguarded body
Which demands the melting of mine.
Quote of the week
You can analyze the overlapping layers of trauma and beauty
in the Adonis myth forever. You can scoff at the ritual as a
waste of time, as some of the local philosophers of Athens
did. You can say ‘why plant something just to let it die.’
Or you could say... look. Something grew from what was broken.
- Josh Schrei, “On trauma and vegetation gods”
Reflections
Love is the sting of a wasp
That The Lovers card continues to find me during a time when I feel perhaps the most isolated I have ever felt is honestly very amusing. Let me explain:
I am not the only one who has endured a loneliness as primordial as stone, but the point of loneliness is that it is very good at making you think that you are not just the only one who ever has felt a thing, but the only one who ever will. I digress.
As stated above: The Lovers is as much a card of separation as it is of union. In fact, the Tarot de Marseille greatly emphasises that this card is about making decisions about who you are, what values you uphold, and what gives your life meaning. This version of the card shows a man positioned between a mature, modest woman and a younger, more sexually appealing one. The cultural context demands that he choose only one—and that he lose the other. But really, he’s being asked to choose himself.
What better way to lose people than to love yourself?
Forgive me. I know it sounds bleak. But not everyone you love will be there for you, will be right for you. And we need to be willing to lose in order to love in the first place. I can’t seem to love anyone or anything without thinking constantly about the day when that person or thing will no longer be by my side. It’s coming. Maybe not soon, but eventually. There is simply no love without grief.
There is simply no love without separation.
What the hell, Scout, weren’t you just talking about David Bohm and the unbroken whole of the universe?
Tell that to my Uncle Jeffrey, eight years ago, when his wife Marjory died.
Tell that to my pre-pandemic self, holding their rat Mugwort in their arms as she took her last shallow breath.
Tell that to my ex-partner, whom I had to break up with over the phone due to the unbridgeable distance between us.
The heart does not care what is “real.”
And in fact, it is the heart that benefits most from the experience of separation. What good is a heart that knows not how to pine? What good is a heart that has never ached? An unbroken heart is a useless heart, one that can neither know poetry nor ecstasy. I wouldn’t trade my shattered heart for the rarest glittering jewel.
So, as I am being called to contemplate this card and all of its strange contradictions, I will turn to the world and I will lie with it. I will lie with it like a beloved, I will turn to all its horrors with love and rage. I will let my heart, which has calcified more than I have realised, once again be penetrated.
And I will break open more fully than I ever have before.
Offerings
Eldritch Wonders: Ritual Becoming in the Age of Unreality (Nov 9, 10, 11)
Formerly “Foundations of A Ritual Art Practise,” Eldritch Wonders is a 3-day collaborative ritual endeavour exploring the tension, grief, and creative opportunity of the present moment.
Each day we will focus on a ritual practise, a temporal element, and concepts from contemporary philosophy to give us the strength and vitality to perform a post-apocalyptic world into being.
The best way to know if the course is right for you is to set up a 1:1 call with me, which you can do here. Be sure to read the curriculum via the post above first!
Personal tarot readings
I am once again available for personal tarot readings. I open my practise sparingly and sporadically, for self-care reasons. As such, if you’re looking to get a reading from me, you should reach out ASAP—I am usually not available for more than a few months out of the year for this kind of thing, and I don’t know when I’ll be doing this again or for how long.
Here’s what to expect if you choose to book a reading with me:
I have been studying tarot for roughly nine years. My divination style is unstructured and direct. I don’t use planned spreads and I sometimes include multiple decks and/or oracle cards. Whatever happens depends on a combination of what my intuition says and whatever you are comfortable with. I will always check in with you before making any decisions. You are welcome to bring any ritual artefacts or partake of any plant medicines that you feel are needed. All readings are done on a sliding-scale basis, starting at $60 for one half-hour.
If that feels resonant to you, go ahead and shoot me a message at wundersein@gmail.com to learn more about what’s available.
Ahhh. The gorgeous, dark beauty of this. Or is it because my phone has the dark mode on? Either way, thank you for having made me feel a lot less alone, just now. A feat I always admire, considering the medium.
Hi Scout! I found your message with the link to this post on the Mythic Body feed and I'm SO glad I saw it today. Thank for your words and for this reminder! Love and grief are a package deal - and that's the paradoxical beauty of life.