Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 54.3 of Digestable, your thrice-weekly mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
Today’s news, fermented:
I’ve had a lot of tabs open all week, so I figured I’d share the weekend reading wealth around:
Return the National Parks to the Tribes. Return them! What an easy thing to do.
Pronounce people’s names correctly. I so often introduce myself only to have my name mispronounced back to me, and so many folks whose names live in other languages have it even worse. It feels bad!
To End Mass Incarceration, We Need to Bust the Myths That Prop It Up, particularly salient in the last few weeks, after every public official on the map talked about ‘police reform’ and nothing has changed.
That’s all from me this week. Be safe out there, and may your weekend be as long and luxurious as this very long rabbit.
~Caro's Tarot~
[a new column from the same brilliant Caro!]
Hello!
You might know me as Caro, from “Caro’s Advice Corner.” While I really enjoyed getting to hear y’alls questions, and felt honored to give thoughtful advice to so many of you (some I have never even met in person!), it slowly became apparent to me that one day I would have to retire “Caro’s Advice Corner.” Now I know my Virgo sun made me decently positioned to give advice to others (thank goodness it wasn’t the unsolicited kind, we know Virgos can also be a bit judg-y…), but in the past few weeks it felt like the right time to move on was on the horizon.
Now I had every intention of saying goodbye to my sweet little column, and transitioning into simply being a reader of Digestable. So I met up with Lena at the park for a Tarot reading sesh, fully ready to tell them that my departure from the column was drawing near. We talked about it, and agreed it was time to move on...but then...a thought!....an idea!!....the start of something new was in the air. The magical words were said, “Hey Caro, what if you did a weekly tarot reading for Digestable instead?”...DING DING DING, a small yet mighty energy efficient lightbulb lit in my head! A weekly Tarot reading...now that’s something I can get into.
So hello, my name is Caro, and I am here to ~tell you the fuuuuuture~ except not, because that’s the furthest from what I am going to do every Friday morning with you lovely humans. Now you might be wondering, what is Tarot?...Gosh so glad you asked. So Tarot cards are an ancient tool for story-telling, introspection, and for serious practitioners, divination. It is a tool for harnessing intuition, both for the reader and the seeker. I will do a mini deep dive into Tarot history in another Friday column, but for now, know that Tarot’s origins are...complicated to say the least. It’s an open practice, meaning practitioners of every background, not specifically those with cultural connections to Tarot, practice the reading of cards. We’ll also do a deep dive into this another day.
Ok so now that we got all of those intros out of the way, let’s pull our weekly card! But wait…if you’ve gotten your cards read by me, you know I have a spiel. So here it is...no Tarot cannot tell your future, it cannot make decisions for you, everything in Tarot is a direct reflection of the self. Tarot simply reflects what you already know back at you, it is merely a tool by which one can dig in deeper into the self. All that comes up in a reading is from a place of inner knowing and understanding. This is why they make great tools for introspection! I love to pull a daily card and journal, or do a much more complex and revealing spread when I am seeking guidance. Tarot readings are as one practitioner, Michelle Tea, puts it, “[Tarot] readings are an exchange of trusting energy between the reader and the seeker…”. This is arguably the most important part for me. I only read Tarot cards for close friends and loved ones becauseit is such a personal exchange of energy and knowledge. Finally, I want to note that the deck I will be using is the Neo Tarot deck by Jerico Mandybur with beautiful illustrations by Daiana Ruiz. You can find a copy of the deck here (please for the love of god do not buy these on Amazon). So without adding any more pomp and circumstances into this reading...let’s pick our first card!
The Wheel of Fortune:
Wow y’all, we got a Major Arcana on our first collective reading (I’ll explain what that means later, just know energetically, this is strong!)
According to Jerico’s interpretation of this card, the Wheel of Fortune tells us:
Just as what goes up must come down, what goes down must come up. Movement and change is the only cosmic constant. Staying in the calm centre of the present moment (and not on the wheel of life’s turbulent edges) means honouring the forces of nature. After all, we have no control over seasonal cycles and divine energy, but what we do have control over is our perspective on, and reaction to, the peaks and valleys of luck - a key part of the human experience. We’re all connected and part of something bigger.
Affirmation for the weekend: “I am peaceful and calm at the centre of life’s unending revolution”
Usually, I will go a little more into interpreting the card, but for the sake of space and time, I will leave us with this lesson, change is the one constant we can rely on. Whether this means a personal change, or a collective change, we are on the brink of something big, we are turning a corner.
Thank you for participating in this energetic exchange with me on this gloomy, Boston, Friday morning.
DJ M0RO’s low-key Music Show + *Hot Goss*
back next week :)