Absence is not emptiness.
Hi, tarot friends. I’ve been quiet on my Don’t Fear the Death Card social media this fall, but my lack of presence here does not mean a lack of presence in my practice.
I've been hosting small group readings for clients, spending a ton of time helping two new book clients birth their literary babies into the world, raising my own two not-so-babies so they can launch into the world, and reflecting on all the changes this year has brought. A wedding, a family moon, a friendship loss, a broken foot, parenting joys and challenges, too many unexpected house expenditures to count.
As we enter this precious time of year, when American society — and many other cultures around the world — start to slow down ahead of the new year, many of us become reflective, if mournful, about what has been. As the days pass after the winter solstice and the days start getting longer, we often shift to thinking about what might be. It's a contraction and expansion that is shown in the tarot cards, again and again.
The Hermit is the 9th card in the major arcana, and all nines remind us of what happens when we can stop focusing so much on completion and bask in joy of (and perhaps even find peace in) anticipation and reflection and satisfaction.
As I was thinking about what I wanted to share with you all as we wrap up the year, I thought about the Tao Te Ching, the foundational text of Taoism, a copy of which someone gave me a few years ago. There are many translations of this book, so you'll find different ways of expressing the same concepts, but this one stuck with me: “It is the empty space which makes a bowl useful.”
Like a vase, a bowl has value because it is empty. Because it has the capacity to hold whatever we might want to put into it. As you close your proverbial laptop for the year, or put down your phone, or light a candle and sit in a dark room, feeling all the feels from whatever had happened this year, find that space between your breath. The hunger right before you eat. The presents wrapped and not yet opened. The ideas you have circling in your head that you don't have words to describe. The dreams whose whispers you recall when you turn off the music and podcasts streaming into your ears.
I struggle to do this as much as anyone, but that's why I'm writing these words. So I can remember the fullness that comes in the break that the Hermit takes. The empty page, the unscheduled days, the Do Not Disturb setting on my phone.
As you wind down your own year, I hope you can take some purposeful breaks from your routine. A total break is such a rare treat, I’m not sure how many of us actually get that, but the image of the Hermit closing her laptop in the Modern Witch tarot really spoke to me. And the mantra below — I make safe spaces — is something we can all hold dear over these next few weeks. As Tricia Hersey says, rest is sacred.
Rest is resistance.
Sending much love and rest to each of you.
Addie
