CARD TALK is a mini podcast featuring tarot basics and evergreen insights, supporting you from your very first reading to card-slinging with confidence. Whether you're a curious beginner or an experienced practitioner, CARD TALK is your new go-to tarot podcast for quick tips and practical tricks.
Hosted by 3am.tarot creator and Finding the Fool author Meg Jones Wall, a queer and non-binary tarot reader dedicated to creating accessible, inclusive tarot resources.
Today's episode is not really an episode, or rather, it's not the usual tarot lessons that I share here. I have tried to record a longer episode about a dozen times now, but the truth is that I don't really have it in me to record my planned episode about the minor arcana right now. Instead, I'd really like to just offer you a couple of gentle suggestions for things you can do right now, some things you can read, some things you can listen to, some things that might feel helpful for you right now, in the wake of the presidential election here in the United States. Now, I know that all of you don't necessarily live in the United States, and I know that, especially if you don't live here, you might be really, really tired of hearing about Trump and his administration full of Nazis. Trust that we're sick of hearing about it too, but I live in the United States and the majority of you do too, so it just feels weird to not acknowledge it and talk about it and give you some strategies for things that you can do right now to manage whatever heavy emotions you are trying to sift through. This is not going to be a long episode, but I did want to provide a couple of things that I hope can help you meet the moment and start to make some plans for how you can show up for yourself, your loved ones and your communities in the months and years to come.
Speaker 0:
First, I just want to acknowledge that emotions are heavy for so many of us right now. If you are drowning in grief, I really encourage you to give yourself the time and space to actually hold the grief, to acknowledge the grief and to be clear. Your grief might not necessarily look like sadness or mourning. Your grief might look like anger. Your grief might look like helplessness. Your grief might look like a desperate need to do something, to be productive, to get back to work, to focus on something that you can control. Grief takes a lot of different forms and all of them are valid and all of them can actually be really healthy and useful. But I really want to encourage you to take a little bit of time to ask your grief what it needs, to consider how your grief shows up in your daily life, and to start to meet your grief, to make a companion of your grief. You don't have to solve or fix your grief in order to take action and really start to make meaningful change in your communities, but you do have to acknowledge the fact that your grief is there. I also want to remind you that white supremacy culture has a number of characteristics, one of which is urgency this sense that we have to do something, that, even if the thing is not perfect, doing something is better than nothing, and in some cases, that's a great way to be. But when it comes to activism, when it comes to organizing, when it comes to social justice movements, urgency is rarely helpful. And if you are someone that really wants to start getting more involved in your community, that wants to take a bigger role in mutual aid organizations or community care, I really encourage you to move slowly and intentionally rather than acting as quickly as possible, just so you can say that you're doing something.
Speaker 0:
I recently read a really fantastic article that's been making the rounds on social media from organization Waging Nonviolence, and the article is called 10 Ways to Be Prep, prepared and grounded Now that Trump has won. It's by Daniel Hunter and it was published on November 4th 2024. And I am going to link to this, as well as a couple other pieces in the show notes, because I think it is just an incredibly powerful and practical read for anyone who's feeling some kind of way in the wake of the election results. But I especially want to highlight point number five in this 10 point list, which is find your path. I have done a number of different tarot spreads around the roles that you can fill in the revolution or the ways that you can show up for your community. I will also link to those in the show notes, but I've shared them on Instagram in the past. But I really like that this article groups these different ways of showing up or roles that can be taken in rethinking our world and rethinking our systems into four real categories. I think that when it comes to finding our path and thinking about how we can show up, considering the resources and skills that we have at our disposal, tarot can be incredibly useful as a tool for reflection and for self-awareness.
Speaker 0:
But whether you are focused on protecting people, on harm reduction and protecting more marginalized communities, whether you're focused on disruption and disobeying, like strategizing acts to support disobedience and protest policy, whether you want to focus on defending civic institutions and safeguarding democracy, protecting elections and voting, et cetera, or whether you're in the world of building alternatives, right Parallel institutions, alternative party platforms, healing cultural building, et cetera. The tarot can help support you, no matter what you're going to do. If you are in a space right now where all you want to do is be productive, take action, get plugged into local community and start building or contributing something, I really want to encourage you to use the cards and ask them how you can help, how you can show up and how you can take care of yourself through the process. I will offer some additional spreads that you can check out in the show notes, but I also highly encourage you to just think about how the cards can support you, journal through that and come up with your own questions to ask the cards. See what comes up when you have a conversation with the tarot and see how the tarot wants to encourage you to show up for your community.
Speaker 0:
No matter who you are, even if you're immunocompromised, even if you're disabled, even if you're chronically ill, even if you have an incredibly demanding job or a really busy family life, all of us have ways that we can show up and contribute and I really want to encourage you to use the tarot as part of this reflection. I wrote about this recently in a newsletter that I'll link, but using tactile tools like the tarot to help yourself slow down, control your breathing, check in with your body and really allow yourself to slow down and just practice some introspection and reflection literally has a soothing physical effect. It can literally help your nerves. It can literally help your blood pressure. It is literally actually good for you and calming you down, and so if you are vacillating more on the frantic panic kind of side of it, I highly encourage you to find ways of working with your cards of which I'm going to share some different podcast episodes where I've already offered some different strategies for this but ways that you can work with your cards. That's going to feel really calming and soothing, help you slow down and focus on what you can do, rather than panicking about all that you can't do.
Speaker 0:
No one can change all of this alone. These are giant destructive, harmful systems and it's going to take all of us to fix them, to change them, to tear them down and to build up new ones, and so I really want to encourage you to consider how you can show up with humility and energy, rather than feeling like you have to start something from scratch. Reinvent the wheel or lead in an area where you're still learning. Show up to organizations that already exist and figure out how you can plug yourself in and offer whatever resources are at your disposal. Think about what you're really good at and what you already have to offer, and find ways to put those things to use. Yes, there are going to be opportunities for all of us to learn new skills in the coming years, but you don't have to learn how to do everything. That is what community is for. That is how we lean on each other and grow together.
Speaker 0:
Now, I am not a professional activist or a professional organizer, so the last thing that I'm going to throw into the show notes are some folks who are some people that you can follow, people, particularly, who use spiritual tools in order to help with their organizing and activism. I also really want to call out specifically the episode I did on tarot books for collective liberation. All five of the books that I talk about in that episode will be incredibly helpful for anyone who wants to use tarot to support their activism, their community building or their social justice work. Tarot can be a really powerful tool for you right now and, even if you don't feel like pulling cards or asking questions, using the cards to journal, finding an archetype to work with that's going to feel really supportive and nourishing or energizing or inspiring right now can be a great way to keep integrating these kinds of small daily rituals into your life as a tool for grounding and nourishment. Please don't abandon the things that you know work for you right now, especially if you're feeling really stressed or really grief stricken.
Speaker 0:
Now. I will be back next week with a more standard episode. We're going to talk about the minor arcana pips. We're also going to talk about the minor arcana court cards. So these are all drafted and ready to go.
Speaker 0:
I just didn't really want to talk about that right now.
Speaker 0:
I really wanted to talk about some some general thoughts around activism and collective work and community care, and if you are looking for ways to work with the tarot, especially as a tool for navigating grief, or if you are starting to think about the end of 2024 and moving into 2025, and you want to work with community or journaling through the cards in order to explore that more deeply. I have a bunch of new resources and things available for you to help you along the way, so I'm also going to include all of those in the show notes. These are going to be huge show notes this time, but from a December card container on reflection to a January journaling series, as well as a couple of exciting new things that I haven't even gotten to announce yet, I would love to work with you right now. Thank you, as ever, for spending time with me today. I know this was a bit of an unconventional episode, but again, I hope it's been supportive for you and I will be back again soon with more card talk.
