Tarot Stories #41: 5 of Pentacles

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

Once there was a priest who was regularly at odds with their superiors in the order. The priest believed that the church’s highest mission was to help people, whatever their faith, while the higher-ups felt that the whole point was to give glory to their god through the rites enacted inside the church’s four walls.

 

Both sides were entrenched in their positions, enough so that the priest’s superiors finally made a rule: the priest was allowed to assist those who came to their church for aid, but could not publicize that fact. This was presented as a compromise, but as the particular church the priest served was a humble building with little in the way of decoration, the priest knew from experience that few if any passers-by who needed help would think to seek it out there. The priest was frustrated by this, and was beginning to feel that they would need to leave their post. They didn’t want to – the priest truly loved the work and their congregation and the faith – but there seemed to be an incompatibility that was beyond their power to resolve.

 

Now, the priest had a friend who was very bright, and also a little bit sneaky. This is a good sort of friend to have when you’re in a fix that you can’t see your way clear of, and if you don’t already have a friend like that I highly suggest finding one as soon as you possibly can. Over drinks one day, the priest told the whole story to their friend, who thought for a minute and then smiled in the way that the priest had not-so-secretly hoped they would.

 

“That church of yours is a bit plain, isn’t it?” the friend asked.

 

“Well, yes….” the priest replied, not really sure where this was going.

 

“Maybe you should have some stained glass put in. You know, brighten the place up,” the friend suggested with an I am very pleased with myself right now expression.

 

The priest started to object, thinking of the expense and the difficulty of such a project, then sat back for a moment. At length the priest, too, smiled. “Oh, we do need some stained glass,” they said. “And some candles inside, burning through the night, so there will always be some extra illumination.”

 

The priest’s friend nodded. “To…draw attention to the beauty of the piece, naturally. Your superiors cn’t argue with that, can they?”

 

They couldn’t, of course, even though they were rather surprised that the priest took to a project like this one with such gusto. Eventually the new window was unveiled, and it was quite lovely, full of images of the beauty and generosity that one might find in the world. And if that well-lit window served as something like a beacon for those who needed the aid the that the priest was allowed to provide but not to offer actively, well, that was a happy coincidence that the priest and their friend could chat about the next time they got together for a drink.

Tarot Stories #40: 10 of Swords

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

Now, most of the time you need only slay an enemy once, and that’s plenty, right? One enemy, one life, after all. In fact, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll remember that disabling an enemy is usually enough, and there’s no need to waste time with a killing blow.

 

Oh, you’ve heard that before, have you? Many times? Well, how nice for you.

 

As I said, all that is true most of the time. But sometimes – not often, mind – there’s an enemy that needs to be killed dead, as the saying ought to go. It’s rarely a person, this kind of enemy, but an idea. That’s the thing about ideas, see. They don’t die easy, and they live more than once. Worse than cats, that way. Worse than weeds, even.

 

So when those ideas are the enemy – and I think you know the kind of idea I mean well enough. I mean hateful, cruel ideas. Those people aren’t humans ideas. We’re putting ourselves above you ideas. Your kind doesn’t deserve to live ideas. When those ideas are your enemy, you don’t just wound them. You don’t just kill them once. You don’t bury them in the ground when they stop breathing for a minute, because those ideas have roots. You don’t put them in the dark because they take their sustenance in the dark.

 

No. No darkness for this enemy. No hiding it away or turning the page or placing it in the ground. You find an enemy like that? You fight it until it is dead and then you go to work on it. And once you finish the job, you put it out in the open, in the brightest lights you can find, and you tell your stories and you listen to others’ stories about that enemy and its ugliness and the damage it did and the people it killed.

 

And above all, don’t believe for a minute that the work is done. It’s never done. Not this work.

Halfway there

by Jason//Writing

There’s something about seeing the halfway mark of any undertaking that I find really satisfying. Whether it’s the 500 mile drive from where I live to where I grew up, or making it through half the sessions at an event that I’m working, or (more pertinent right now) hitting post #39 out of 78 tarot cards. Halfway through the deck! That’s not something I was expecting to do when I started noodling around with this project in May. In fact, it didn’t begin as a project so much as a thing to try once, in an effort to keep that sense of joy continuing at the end of an amazing storytelling workshop I had the good fortune to attend. Then one post turned into a couple more, and I realized that the process was fun and that I had something that I wanted to say (most of the time, anyway – a few of these are just about embracing some silliness).

 

So far, the project has been really good for me. I’ve written something every day, even if a post hasn’t gone up. I give myself 15-20 minutes to write, in most cases, and if something isn’t working I’m challenging myself to leave it alone until the next day. With one exception (a post that has been my least favorite so far), I’ve stuck to that rule. This is more about establishing habits that are good for me than it is about posting a story every day. Even so, I’m proud to have reached this point – 39 stories – in 51 days. I thought I’d take a break yesterday, since I was traveling for work and didn’t bring my deck with me, but I wound up writing the 40th story during my flight home.

 

I’m still not sure that I’ll actually get through the whole deck. I’m generally great at starting projects, and…rather less great at finishing them. But for now, I’m feeling good about what I’ve finished, and excited to see what’s up next.

Tarot Stories #39: 7 of Swords

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

A very, very long time ago, gods were only just being created. Unlike today, where we think of them as being mostly fixed and ancient beings, back then the gods tended to spring up from the prayers of people who didn’t know what they were praying to. The gods came from necessity and sincere requests, and they were often more than a little surprised when they sprang into existence.

 

Now, this was a time of war, and the defending army was greatly outnumbered by the invaders, who had grown so confident in their coming victory that they were moving slowly through the countryside, certain that no defending force could stop them. They took their time, spending more energy planning their celebrations than actually fighting battles. The defenders eventually sent their best scout into the invaders’ camp to see if there was any weakness they could exploit. They weren’t expecting much, but if the scout confirmed the enemy’s strength, then at least they might return to their ruler to counsel negotiation rather than continuing to fight in a lost cause.

 

So the scout sneaked into the camp and began looking carefully for any information they could use. It became apparent that the enemy strength was as great as they had feared, and while the scout was no grand strategist, they knew intuitively that there was no way for the defenders to prevail in anything like a fair fight. “Best not to make it a fair fight, then,” the scout thought, and continued their search.

 

If anything, things got worse as the scout gathered more information. The defenders were outnumbered, and the invading army’s weapons were of much higher quality. Not knowing what else to do, the scout began praying to any god they could think of, but none of these deities had power that seemed particularly applicable here (and also, because the scout didn’t believe that these gods would answer, they didn’t). Finally, the scout – who was very worried now, and very tired besides – began praying to a god that didn’t yet exist. The Swordsneak, they were called, and their entire congregation (all one of them) called out for aid in this time of trial. And perhaps because this scout was particularly convincing, or perhaps because the Universe is a strange place sometimes, the god appeared.

 

“What aid do you require, child?” the god asked.

 

“Oh! I didn’t really think that would…” the scout trailed off, realizing that telling a newly-formed god that you didn’t think they really existed wasn’t a great idea. “That is, do you think you could make off with some of those swords, my Lord? Just the sharpest ones, mind.”

 

The god thought for a moment, realizing that the request was pretty well aligned with their name, and nodded. “And in exchange for this boon, you will spread word of my beneficence and cleverness to your people?”

 

“Yes, of course!” the scout exclaimed, discarding their original plan of taking credit for the whole thing and nodding as piously as they were able.

 

“Consider it done,” Swordsneak said, and set off about its work.

 

The scout (who was also the newly minted high priest of the great and powerful Swordsneak) watched as the god disarmed the invaders, tiptoeing away with their best weapons, and wondered how, exactly, they would explain this development to their generals when they returned to their camp.

Tarot Stories #38: 10 of Wands

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

A long way from here, there stands a village full of people who pride themselves on working very, very hard. And among those people in the village, there is a wish they offer one another each night: “May there be work for you in the morning.” As it happens there is always work in the morning, because unbeknownst to them these people are – every one of them – powerful and skilled at magic. Where this magic came from I cannot say, but it is an absolute truth that each person in this village is an unwitting magician.

 

Now, the thing about unwitting magicians is that they don’t cast spells in the way that you probably do. No, for them it’s the power of their intention and will that creates the magical effects in question. In short, for these people, a sincere wish, backed up by a force of will, makes it so.

 

As a result, in this far off village where they pride themselves on working very hard, and they wish sincerely for more work each night…well, they manifest those wishes through the magic they don’t realize they have. Which makes one wonder, as I’m sure you already have wondered…what if they valued and wished for one another ease, instead? Or peace, or abundance, or joy? In short, what if they chose their values and their will-driven wishes more carefully?

 

What if we all did?

Tarot Stories #37: Temperance

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

Once there was a person who had grown up in a place where no one really understood them. They were different, and they knew they were different, and what’s more everyone else knew it too, and went out of their way to point it out every chance they got. As a result, the person felt pretty lonely, in spite of others being around all the time, and they felt very boxed in, even though there was a wide world around them. One day they decided that if they were going to be lonely anyway, they might as well do that someplace else where they weren’t made to feel badly about being different. So they loaded up their backpack, put on their best boots, and left the village. They walked the old path through the woods and over the mountain pass, down the foothills, over the grasslands, and to the waters where they could at least be alone in the quiet, peaceful world.

 

They were therefore quite surprised to find an angel there standing there at the shore, with a brow furrowed in concentration.

 

Now, the person had really been looking forward to a bit of solitude, and upon seeing the angel they let out one of those silent sighs that are probably a lot more obvious to onlookers than the person sighing would like to think. Still, they knew their manners, and greeted the angel. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” the person said. “I was just coming down here to enjoy a little quiet away from…well, everyone. I can move on, though, if I’m a bother.”

 

The angel looked up with a smile. “Oh, not at all!” the angel said. “You can help me with my magic trick.”

 

The person was taken by surprise (as most of us would be, when confronted by an angel who is apparently practicing stage magic), and said, “I don’t really know anything about magic, but I guess you can show me the trick, if you want.”

 

The angel quickly plucked two yellow flowers, which turned into gold chalices, scooped up some water with one of them, and poured it into the other. That last bit may not seem that impressive, but as the water was pouring up from the lower chalice into the higher, it impressed the person very much.

 

“That’s…really quite amazing!” they said, “but honestly, I’m not sure what help you could possibly need. I mean, that’s a miracle, isn’t it?”

 

The angel thought for a moment. “I suppose it is,” they said, “but it’s really quite simple.”

 

“You’re defying gravity,” the person pointed out reasonably, “so I wouldn’t say it’s simple. How does it work?”

 

“Water wants to be with water,” the angel said. “It seeks out other water, I suppose you could say. That’s why creeks flow to streams and streams to rivers, then to lakes or oceans…water seeks out other water.”

 

The person nodded, a very faint sense of understanding starting to kindle. “What if the water is alone?” they asked. “What if there is no other water about?”

 

“Then, I find, the water might do some pretty amazing things to find other water,” the angel said. “Cut through mountains, flow miles and miles over treacherous terrain, any number of things really, to find where it belongs and where it isn’t alone.”

 

The person looked back the direction they had come from. They saw the long trail, the endless grasslands, the rocky mountain peaks. And they knew, with a certainty, that they would never return there. “I suppose…people are the same way? That they seek other people like them?”

 

“Some do,” the angel said. “Brave ones, or restless ones, or ones who can imagine a place where they feel they belong even if they haven’t yet lived in such a place.” After a moment, the angel spread their wings, stretching them out like you or I might stretch before a bit of a run. “Well, I ought to be going,” they said. “If you follow the shoreline of this lake, I believe you’ll find what you’re looking for.” And with that, the angel launched up into the sky.

 

The person called out. “Wait! What about the bit with the flowers and the gold chalices?”

 

As they flew off, the angel laughed. “Oh, that? No, that part was magic!”

Tarot Stories #36: 2 of Swords

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

There is a land very far away from here that may be the wisest this storyteller has heard of. The people there live in a rich and fertile place, and worried for a long time that they would be the victims of theft or even invasion by those who wanted what they had. At the same time, they wanted to be generous, if they could. Finding that balance of living their values while remaining safe was perhaps the most important thing to them. So they prayed to their gods and worked their magics and used their own knowledge to determine how to best protect themselves, and they settled on this: They trained their finest warrior to act as a sentry, and using magic and prayer and knowledge imbued the sentry with such keen hearing that they could sense the greatest threat approaching the harbor. That way they would always know, if a ship approached, whether they would need to call out the rest of the militia or not.

 

The sentry was also blindfolded, because the people learned over time that even with that perfect hearing, it was too easy to be influenced by how people looked. If they were different, it was all too likely that they’d be deemed dangerous.

 

And so the sentry was granted these gifts, and given a simple charge: To face in the direction of the greatest threat to the land and its values. They had and were a balance of the gods and magic and human ability, and they were exceptional at this task. The people felt safe, knowing that the sentry would point out the greatest dangers to them, and they could respond as needed.

 

Now, all of this that I’ve described is very clever, because it ensured that the people who lived in this place would never be taken in or fooled by newcomers that were there to steal from them or harm them under the guise of friendship. This cleverness is very impressive, but more impressive was their wisdom.

 

Cleverness, you see, is often about imagination: about considering what may happen and acting accordingly. Wisdom, on the other hand, is about perception: about taking in what is happening and acting accordingly. Wisdom, then, is often revealed in how we respond to the outcome of our cleverness.

 

The outcome to this particular bout of cleverness was this. The sentry put on the blindfold, carefully blocking their sight, took a deep centering breath, and slowly turned in a circle, allowing their perfect hearing to guide them to face the greatest threat. When they came to rest, their back was to the harbor and they were facing inward. And as each visitor came, either with offers of trade or pleas for aid, the sentry remained perfectly still. Facing inward, toward the greatest threat to the land and its values.

 

Now, the wisdom I mentioned before came in two forms. First, it was the acceptance of what the sentry’s actions meant, and their realization that the greatest threat to what they most held dear was their own mistrust. Make no mistake – they were surprised by the result, but they acknowledged that their prayers and magic and skill had all contributed to what they had learned, and so they accepted both the discomfort and the truth. And the second expression of their wisdom was that eventually, someone fetched a seat for the sentry, so they could take a rest from time to time.

Tarot Stories #35: Ace of Wands

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

I suppose I was as confused as anyone, the day the Visitors finally came. They appeared in the skies, but they couldn’t talk – or at least they didn’t speak any language we understood. When we saw the impossibly large club they brought with them, we realized pretty quickly that they were trying to communicate with symbols. They’d been up there for a while, hovering beyond our reach, observing us. After all that time, it had to be a carefully-selected symbol to open communications with, right? So the fact that it was a weapon was a pretty clear signal of their intentions, and we responded in kind.

 

Oh, we were careful about it, of course – the Visitors came from gods knew where, across the heavens or further even than that, and they were clearly powerful enough that they felt comfortable saying straight out that they intended to do us harm. So we had to be clever and take them unawares. We invited them down, eventually, once we had prepared a proper welcome for the invading “guests.”

 

The first one that emerged from their craft was carrying one of those clubs, too, and our best warriors attacked without a moment’s hesitation. That’s the secret, or one of them, against a superior force – act decisively, without hesitation. The others must have been frightened by the ferocity of our attack, because they closed up their doors and flew off without even sticking their heads out for a second. After all that worry, they didn’t have the stomach for a good fight after all!

 

That was a while back, maybe 20, 30 years? We put the club right in the center of town, like a trophy, to remind ourselves of our bravery. It took some time to notice, but eventually someone realized that the ground around where the club was kept was…greener, somehow. More healthy and lush. Some folks started testing that, and they found that even taking one of the few leaves from the club and pressing it into a fallow field would have a similar effect. Nothing like a miracle, but everything there grew a bit better, the fruit tasted sweeter and the plants stood up to the weather more easily.

 

After that, well, we started thinking about how we could bring the Visitors back, what reparations we could offer and how we might explain our earlier mistake. Who knew what wonders they might have in addition to this! The leaders figure they have it all worked out now, and everyone knows their part when the Visitors return.

 

I don’t like to say this out loud, but I don’t believe they’re coming. I think they showed us who they were the first time we met, and I think we did the same.

Tarot Stories #34: 6 of Swords

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

There was a war, a long time back, that sent a family fleeing their homes and ultimately looking for safety in an unfamiliar place. They were afraid of doing so, because they’d heard that life was difficult and that people there were mistrustful of outsiders. Still, they couldn’t stay where they were – it was too dangerous, and they had already lost loved ones to the violence of their home.

 

The family couldn’t take much with them, but they packed up as best they could their dreams, and their hopes, and their fears, and their desire for peace, and set out. They finally made their way through a very long journey to an unfamiliar land, and faced many challenges along the way. An arduous trip over the mountains, nights of fearful nightmares and broken sleep, long lines waiting to explain their story to one bureaucrat or another, skeptical looks and invasive questions that had them wondering if they would receive any sort of welcome at all. In the end it took them almost a year to make the trip, but finally they arrived at the shore and saw the island that would hold their new home.

 

To their surprise, the family was met at the shore by a ferryman who said, “We’ve been waiting for you. Sit and rest, and I’ll take you over.” The family was a little confused – was this a trick, or another test? But they were very tired, and despite their nervousness they climbed aboard.

 

The ferryman talked while poling them across the river. “The house isn’t perfect, I’m afraid,” he said, raising his voice above the sound of the current. “But we did our best to set it up the way we thought you’d like it. You can move the furniture around however you like, of course, or let one of us know and we can come over to help.”

 

The family exchanged glances with one another. Were they in the right boat? Had some stranger really set up a house for them? They told the ferryman that they weren’t sure what was going on.

 

He looked abashed. “Gosh, I’m so sorry!” he said. “It’s just that we’ve been working on this since we heard you were coming, and I didn’t think…” his voice trailed off, and then he shook his head. “Let’s try this again. Some of us figured you would need some help when you got here, so we asked around and collected some things to get you started. The house, some furniture, clothes…nothing too fancy, but we hope you’ll like it well enough. We couldn’t fix how hard the journey was or the nonsense you had to face at the border, so we did what we could here.”

 

The family, not sure what else to do, murmured a quiet, “thank you,” and settled in for the rest of the journey. And their dreams and their hopes and their fears and their desire for peace with them enriched their new home and their new neighbors alike.

Tarot Stories #33: 4 of Cups

by Jason//Tarot, Writing

Once there was a magician who stubbornly refused to believe in magic. No matter what happened around them, the magician insisted that there was some other explanation – a strange coincidence, or a misunderstanding, or (most commonly) someone playing a trick on them. Because while the magician had powerful magic (though they wouldn’t admit it), they had an even more powerful fear of looking foolish. And so it was easier to believe that whatever was happening was the result of someone trying to pull a fast one. Even if they were wrong, at least they wouldn’t have been taken in by a trick.

This strategy served the magician very well. They never looked foolish, and so avoided their greatest fear. However, it also meant that they had to work increasingly hard to dismiss the things that happened around them. Strange changes to the weather, or animals that seemed to talk (albeit just for a few seconds – animals, as a rule don’t have a lot to say when humans are about), or the sense that there were delights awaiting the magician if only they would accept them.

You see, that’s the thing about magic. If it’s a part of you it doesn’t go away, it just gets more insistent. It tries to get your attention, to open up, to reach out for it. But you have to meet it partway. You have to risk being foolish enough to believe in impossible things.

The stubborn magician never did, I’m sorry to say. They redoubled their efforts to ignore the part of them that was incapable of such impossible power. In the end, I suppose, that was the one spell they ever worked – to create the illusion, in their mind, that their own magic didn’t exist at all.