circle beyond the ironwork encasing your human heart
a reflection using Clifton's diving poets oracle deck. Musings on death & it being a 9 year featuring medicine from the Tower card in tarot. Happy Scorpio Szn to all
I’ve written about how being Black and queer means, by birthrite, that we have an intimate relationship with death. It’s omnipresent in the lives of Black people, and I assert a required practice for us folk if we are to live and thrive in our fullness under empire.
Little deaths of egos, of expectations, of understandings happen on a daily, sometimes moment to moment. I’m sure my Aquarius stellium (sun, moon, mercury, saturn, uranus, neptune) keeps me in a constant state of reflection. Shadow work is literally written in the sky when I was born onto this plane, when spirit chose this body in this nowtime. Considering the season and it being a 9 year (year of the wood snake), the deaths have been consistent. 9 in numerology is all about endings but more precisely, completeness and spiritual growth. And on this plane, what better way to have access to spirit but through death? My year’s been one Tower card in slow motion. This card is actually one of my favorites in the deck in part due to its clarity — a big shift is to come, where foundations that cannot hold you up any longer will crumble but it’s necessary for your growth and transformation.
Music to my ears.
I want so much out of this lifetime, for my selves, internal and extended selves (my loved ones, my communities, my dreams yet to be actualized). Whatever needs to happen in order for me to be in my highest good, I welcome wholeheartedly, encased in iron or otherwise.
When I look beyond my heart among the rubble, I see the parts of me I made smaller in order for the Tower to remain standing. I notice my singed belongings I was holding on to only for sentimental value but possessing no function outside of occupying space. I see just how eroded the foundation was and how the Tower’s tumble was not only inevitable but timely. If God is change, the Tower is a divine omen. The flames ushering in fertile means for rebirth. What can be built anew and how grand it can be all depends on how I embrace change. How I move knowing my heart’s protected from the fallout, and having the discernment to know who in my life my heart needs protecting from, mainly past, unhealed version of my self. Versions that are buried under the destruction, versions of me that have live their lives and are meant to die.
Being Venus-ruled, I’m a lovergxrl by nature. Over the past decade, I’ve given out so many keys to the ironwork around my heart but going into this next year, starting back at 1, I’m changing the locks and giving out new keys. I’m being a choosey lover, and I’m excited for my ascension and what’s to be erected internally, interpersonally and for the collective with those that cherish me and much as I do my own selves.