An Ever-Expanding Capacity (Messages of Divine Love)
July 8, 2024 / The Dungeons & Dragons Tarot Deck
These Messages of Divine Love are weekly intuitive card readings offered to share strength & hope for those building a heart-centered world. Sharing messages from our collective guides, Mother Earth, the ancients watching over us with a quick peek into what our future selves want us to know and how my protectress, Mother Mary, can add love to get us through the week. Each message includes chakra themes that help center our energy. I will post any extras on Patreon (paid): Temple of the Rose Gold Heart. Your subscription here is always FREE.
INTRO NOTES TO THE DECK & READING
For this week's reading, I chose a new-to-me deck, the Dungeons & Dragons™️ Tarot. It is a gorgeous deck with unexpected messages embedded within it. And much like D&D itself, this deck gives a "be your own hero" vibe that we need to hear after last week's debate - the cherry on top of the flaming trash fire that we've seen grow over several years.
It isn't that we can't remember the last time there was an outstanding year. It's that the worst of each year just keeps defying the lowered expectations created by the year before. For example, we now bitterly laugh at how naive we were before 2016. We've learned to eliminate "that could never happen" from our vocabulary because yes...it has happened and next time will be even more ridiculous and bombastic.
We have been waiting for a King Arthur or a wise Solomon to rise from the ashes to lead us all. We want someone to confirm that there is a real, live grown-up in the "room where it happens" so we can go about our daily lives...you know, the ones that contribute to global warming, deny genocide, and pump billions into companies that make their workers rely on food stamps. I mean...what a life, right? Just elect someone else to deal with it.
The world is a little wibbly-wobbly right now. But it isn't The Doctor who is gonna come rescue us. I've talked for weeks about how we've been asked to take on a calling...and during all the turmoil, it might sound wacky, but right now we've gotta stop waiting for the heroes of old to save us. The solutions that got us here won't be the ones that will liberate us. It will be us deciding on a new direction that will finally get us out of these grooves of dominance, decay and destruction.
We’ve always been the heroes worth waiting for…it’s just we have to actually realize and embody that now. Talk about intimidating!
Where We Are This Week
King of Swords
Throat Chakra
The past few weeks have stirred some deep emotions within us - fear, pride, anger, hatred, love, forgiveness, regret, shame. It's been hard to contain these emotions as we see structures shattering all around us - venting and letting it out helps. However, one of the larger lessons of Cancer season, especially when it comes to leadership is how to focus despite obsessively large emotions so we can channel ourselves into effective action. Focus on a figure like a water king, Poseidon, or even Aquaman for inspiration. For we must learn how to direct our emotional energy into the piercing clarity of words and thought that will support decisive action.
Messages from our Guides
High Priestess
Third Eye Chakra
We have reached a time in human history where the lessons of the High Priestess could not be ringing louder, brighter, deeper than ever before. Unlike what patriarchy would have us think our intuition isn't "feeling" in the same way that our emotions are. Emotions shift like water in a cup in our hands. If we're on a rocky boat in the middle of a storm those emotions would understandably spill out all over the place. But intuition is different. It’s the coordination of unconscious instinct (body), conscious reason (mind), and subconscious intuition (spirit) that keeps the cup in our hands, allows our joints to remain responsive enough to roll with the shift we feel in the seas, and strengthens our faith of heart to believe that calm will come once again. Trust the body, keep working on the distortions clouding our mind, but in the undercurrent, it’s time to unleash the spirit to do what it does best - to see/feel/hear/read what's coming so we can guide our communities through the storms to safer shores.
Messages from Lady Gaia/Mother Earth
Judgment
Solar Plexus Chakra
Imagine it...you've been summoned to an audience with the Lady of Earth herself, the Mother of all Beings. You genuflect upon arrival, head bowed, humbled, chastened, maybe even feeling a little undignified...unworthy of her gaze. She sits before you, enshrined in an ancient oak, both a throne and her rooted self. Luminous with every color found on the earth - she glows from the flowers, shells, grains of sand that make up her hair, teeth, and skin. She laughs ruefully at your posture, "Oh you didn’t know that you were the hero? How cute. Now come here and let me get a good look at you." You approach with reverence, but fear. Will you be judged worthy? Are you the hero the Earth needs right now? She circles you once, twice, forcing your head up into the light with a crab’s claw for a finger. With a flash of unmistakable compassion, she hisses at you playfully. "My child, you don't get to decide what I need from you. By answering the call at all, and by believing at all...you proved your worth by showing up for me today. But that was easy…now it's time to show the fuck up like you mean it. You don't need to wait to be ready...put on your damn cape and get out there already. "
Messages from the Ancients
Temperance
Root Chakra
Within us is the capacity for both the devil and the angel. This is the side of the angel who can contain his emotions, hold himself accountable, and add only what is missing without spoiling the sacred balance. He'll forgo the party in favor of moderation, returning to his value as a guiding force of self-discipline. Right now that is what our collected Ancients advise, especially when the world is already so genuinely confusing. The task, not to be undervalued, is to keep our shit contained long enough to discern the best path forward. (Note: that doesn't mean we can't feel or express anger, but do so intentionally - reserve the venting for those who have the expansive capacity to hold it…not the random stranger who triggers the devil in you.)
Messages from Our Future Selves
Two of Cups
Heart Chakra
Dungeons & Dragons is by its very nature a social game and so is this. No one is going to get through the darkest of these dungeons alone. The future will be built not from tough individualism, but from the bonds we create between us. Love is the glue that is going to bind our little party together. If we're having difficulty finding ourselves worthy of love, romance, sexual desire, or true partnerships, now is the time to address any of our underlying issues. Because friends, new love is coming (in all its beautiful forms, including platonic soulmates) and the sooner we make room for that person (or people for the multi-amorous of us) to sit comfortably in our lives, the better. Make ready the heart for new occupants.
Messages from Mother Mary
Page of Swords
Sacral Chakra
Who's ready to start making some real progress toward a better world? We're not going to get a leader with a perfect plan, so we're going to have to engineer some of our own solutions from scratch. Think of this card like a bright, young student who has a killer idea on how to save the world. They are gonna need some time, space, and support to tinker and experiment, to science and math the solution into reality. The key to this week is to channel our energy into our creative endeavors, the out-of-this-world wildest dreams. This is the energy of the inventor, the eternal student of innovation. Don't just think...start creating.
Undercurrent
The Magician (R)
Crown Chakra
So...if the magic isn't working, it's because disbelief and doubt are floating in the undercurrent, like debris from a storm blocking the gutters. For others the skepticism absorbs all the energy in the room, smothering the flames of inspiration like a wet blanket. The outcome is the same: it stops our magic before it even starts. Take off the clamps, remove the training wheels, and disengage the safety brakes - we have to be in the flow of the energy with our full hearts, bodies, and minds if it's going to connect. Either we're afraid of our power or we are still clinging to a world that says our particular gifts are shameful, wrong, or useless. Before we can prove them wrong, we've got to believe we can in the first place.
Final Advice
Six of Wands (R)
Solar Plexus Chakra
We are hanging onto some old victories that color how we judge our successes now. Just like the high school class football star reliving his glory days over a beer with friends after work pushing paper in the HR department, if we keep ourselves so tethered to the past glories, we'll be unable to recognize the more modest yet cumulative victories that are waiting for us today. No one is coming to carry us off the field in a parade of cheers because we won the big game...but we can’t let that deter us from recognizing the things we have done or the people we’ve impacted. Listening for triumphs like come in the whispers of lost souls saying ‘thank you’. Or the communities that are better because of our contributions. Also, caring for your family and friends during this time of crisis is nothing to be sneer at…keeping another human alive or ushering them toward a peaceful passing is noble work too. If you truly owned all your successes you'd see that you didn't peak in the past, but have climbed even greater if less recognized challenges. Own each of these. It matters.
PARTING WORDS FROM A GEEK EMPRESS
If we're going to survive this, we're gonna have to take a lesson from the TARDIS and learn how to get bigger on the inside...which is inevitable if you've been doing the hard work of clearing out all the cobwebs of trauma and the vines that started to bind us to crumbling structures.
It's been hard work, but the rewards are plenty. As I can attest - even though I've been through hardship and loss, those losses led to incredible, even miraculous wins. If I had still been hanging onto the pain of being outed, the trauma of my survivor history, and the distrust of those who have let me down (and who I also let down) then I wouldn't have had the room to receive all that I have. I wouldn't have found myself worthy of these new clients.
I already had pushed away every new relationship for the past five years excusing it as "I'm not ready to date yet"...when it really was that I didn't feel safe trusting myself yet. There came a point when I had to ask myself...if I'm not ready after wrestling with my wounds for as long as I have, digging through the trauma that I have...would I ever be ready? If there wasn't hope for someone like me, would there be hope for any of us? So that's when I leaned into that impossible yes and just decided to embrace the chaotic good that was coming my way. I took the Doctor's hand and was whisked away on adventures of the soul that are bearing rewards that surpass my old standards.
When you have your Tardis-enlightening moment of flying through your inner time & space you are forever changed…expanded…bigger on the inside. Once you've experienced the impossible...a dream or two coming true, a chance encounter that turns into so much more...it's impossible to view the world the same again. Suddenly all the impossibility becomes a matter of innovative possibilities that just haven't happened yet. Except now it's our hand extending to someone else, to show them the magic of time and space. To show the expansiveness to them too.
And that's when the real magic begins✨
No matter what this week brings know that I am with you, always, in love 💖
If you feel called to be part of this love movement, I encourage you to join me virtually on July 23rd to meet others in the growing Spark the Heart Network so we can offer support so you can meet humanity with compassion and intentionality in this moment.