The Chariot

Ruled by Cancer, the Chariot card in the tarot represents a vehicle under control, one that is self-disciplined and firmly grounded on the physical plane. It is the end of line one of the tarot, the life line, which runs from the Magician all the way through to the Chariot. The beginning of our Fool’s journey is all about finding out who we are. Only then can we move onto the next great adventure that is our lives. It is all about exploring the ego, coming into the wholeness of who we are as a human being on this planet. Line one is the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar part of our lives, the one that will take us into the chrysalis before we burst open into the butterflies that we all desire to become.

If you have ever changed your name, your appearance, your gender, or anything of the sort you have experienced line one of the tarot. In its traditional sense it is from birth to around 18 years of age, when society deems you an adult. I personally have gone through numerous rounds of this in my life. In fact I am in one now, trying to figure out who I am without all the coverings, without all the people-pleasing tendencies that have me acting in accordance with other people’s values instead of my own.

Can’t nobody take my pride, can’t nobody hold me down, oh no

I got to keep on movin’

Mase & Sean Combs

The Chariot is the only card in the tarot that focuses on an object instead of a person. It’s the hard crab shell holding all of your softness inside. Even though this card is transporting us into a new plane, we also must take focused action on our goals. I think that’s the part most people misunderstand. Manifesting isn’t simply about wishing on a shooting star. It’s also about taking charge of your own life and making your own decisions based on your values, once you know what they are. Victory is in reach, but it is up to you to follow through. Plus the next card in the tarot is the Strength card, so we do have that to look forward to.

The Card of Love

The Two of Cups is our guide from June 21 to July 1, the first part of the Cancer season. It’s sort of the jelly to the peanut butter that is The Lovers, our tarot card for the year. It represents the flow of love between two people, and also the union of opposites felt in the self. The Two of Cups symbolizes “the harmony of the male and the female, interpreted in the largest sense. It is perfect and placid harmony, radiating an intensity of joy and ecstasy” (Book of Thoth). This card invites us to unconditionally embrace a part of ourselves that we actively don’t want, the part of ourselves that we hide away in the closet. What would it feel like to categorically love yourself?

I have come to realize that many people in this world spew hatred onto others mainly because they are trying to deflect from the fact that those are the exact things that they hate within themselves. It’s the priest who actively preaches against the LGBTQIA+ community, while also having sexual ideations of people who share his same gender. It’s the woman who calls other females sluts and whore for enjoying sex, when maybe they should be worried about their own intimate relations. And I don’t mean to point fingers, because we have all done this to some extent. We have all wished that parts of us were different. We think it would be easier to walk through this world in accordance with society’s bullshit standards, and maybe that’s partly true. But at what cost? All we end up doing is sacrificing ourselves, and becoming more disappointed in the trajectory of our lives.

If the ocean can calm itself, so can you.

Poet Nayyirah Waheed

We do this to ourselves because we are scared. We fear what others may think if they knew the person we truly are. We go into scarcity mode thinking that we couldn’t possibly be enough, so we try to be better, or what we deem is more worthy by our cultural understanding. We become jealous of those that can be themselves, secretly hating them and wishing they were just as miserable as us. What they don’t show you is their own struggles in finding their own identities. People don’t like to talk about the ugly parts, as they don’t make for very pretty Instagram posts. The Two of Cups is asking you, begging you to embrace and love what is right here, right now. This is a commitment to complete vulnerability with the world and your place in it. What part of yourself do you need most to embrace?

The Card of Abundance

The Three of Cups will run us from July 2 to July 12 and is the coven card of the tarot. Represented by three women, this is the ‘girl power’ card and with that is a sign of emotional intelligence. I’ve often wondered how we are supposed to love others until we first learn how to love ourselves, but sometimes we need another person to show us the way. Humans are meant to live in communities. We are biologically engineered that way, yet our Western capitalistic culture still values individuality. All this does is pit us against each other in our race to the top of them totem pole, further separating us in the process. I came across a podcast recently that stated it this way: Under the patriarchy you can either be connected or powerful. Which one would you choose?

Although I keep finding myself in positions of authority, I never actually wanted that power. I sort of just fell into the management positions that I’ve held, saying yes along the way because that’s what I was supposed to do. Right? I’m supposed to want to climb that success ladder, and at the same time I hated the person that I was becoming. It’s the same reason I quit being a lifeguard and the same reason I do not want children. I do not want to have responsibility over another person’s life. I can barely keep myself together. This is also the same social structure that keeps us women constantly pitted against each other. If we keep up with all this infighting, then we won’t have the strength to fight the real war.

It’s the friends you can call up at 4 AM that matters.

Marlene Dietrich

I have lost a lot of friends in my quest to the top, some needing to go and some I deeply miss. In this solitude I am learning how to be my own best friend, how to celebrate myself in the midst of it all. As a people-pleaser I often found solace in my time by myself, mainly because I wasn’t trying to contort myself into another’s favor. It is quite a lonely place to remain for too long. The Three of Cups is “the fulfillment of the Will of Love in abounding joy. It is the spiritual basis of fertility” (Book of Thoth). There is a balance between finding the willingness to receive from our own inner well-spring, while also being able to enjoy the fruits of nature with others. It’s the pulling back with the undercurrent of the ocean, while also pushing forward with the crashing wave. How can we just let it be nice, even in all of its ugliness?

The Card of Luxury

You are going to get overwhelmed in this life. You are going to fall, make a mistake, or fuck it all up. That is a fact that is universal to us all. The Four of Cups, which runs from July 13 to July 22, asks us to take a good hard look at our feelings. This is the card of emotional digestion, a time when we can take a step back from our daily activities so that we can draw some clearer conclusions as to what is going on in our lives. This is not a process that we should rush through. It’s actually a good thing to do, to cleanse the self of old emotions. It can prove extremely beneficial to ground yourself and do a little inward reflection every once in a while. It can assist you in seeing things from a different perspective, so that you can then open yourself up to new opportunities you may have missed. I do this daily with my morning pages practice. That has become a lifeline for me.

Many people fear sitting with their emotions. We are encouraged to ignore our pain. We hear it all the time in our culture with phrases such as walk it off, keep calm and carry on, don’t be such a pussy. We try to push away all the ‘bad’ emotions, and then wonder why we don’t feel better. The Four of Cups reminds us that we are okay here, even if we aren’t happy about it. Sometimes things need to die in order for other things to grow. This card implies “a certain weakness, an abandonment to desire” (Book of Thoth). It implores us not to abandon ourselves into the pleasure, lest we rage when it gets taken away.

At the root of every tantrum and power struggle are unmet needs.

Marshall B. Rosenburg

It’s one thing to grieve, and yet it is quite another to wallow. Is shutting down the best course of action? There is a balance that I still find myself struggling with here. There is the process of feeling your emotions, which is honestly a new concept for me as someone who likes to logic their way through everything. And then there is suffering, which often results from resisting the pains in this life. Something I have to keep reminding myself is that these big, scary emotions aren’t going to kill me. They are indicator lights telling me when I need to stop and rest, telling me to veer into a different direction, or telling me to just let that thing go. It’s suggesting that maybe you could trust your instincts, even if others don’t understand. You have your reasons.

Mad love, Jenna

deck credit: Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, drawn in 1909 by Pamela Colman Smith under direction of Arthur Edward Waite