I admit it: I’m a political junkie. I have a lifelong obsession with watching how politics play out in our country and around the world and it hasn’t diminished much as I’ve aged.
In part, that may be a generational thing. I grew up during a time when people had, “the daily paper,” delivered to their front porch every morning. When every family had subscriptions to magazines like Time and Newsweek, and we all gathered around the television to watch the nightly news. Even movies at theaters frequently started with a recap of the week’s news events. In many ways, we were FAR more plugged into political events than we are now, even with the advent of the internet.
And so I love it when I see an intersection of this passion – the Tarot – and that passion – politics. Put very simply, I love watching Tarot readers trying to figure out what in the HELL is going on with our crazy politics at any given time.
By far and away, my current favorite is Touched by Tarot and Beyond, which is a YouTube channel run by a woman named Afefe, who is a psychic reader and retired journalist. She posts online readings a couple of times a week and she’s amazingly accurate. Just for grins I kept track of her predictions over a period of a month and she was right on about 85 to 90% of the time.
And, yes, she is unapologetically political and progressively liberal and her readings are all over our insane political happenings.
SPIRITUALITY AND POLITICS
Now, I have several friends who are deeply into spirituality and turn up their noses at politics. There are a couple of reasons for that, as near as I can tell.
The first is that many folks who are on the spiritual path are empaths. As empaths, we tend to absorb whatever energies are coming our way and the energy of our current politics is SO toxic. For an empath, reading the morning news can be like drinking a cup of poison for breakfast. Sooner or later, it’s going to make them sick, so they try to avoid it.
The second reason that many New Agers avoid politics is that they have a sort of a more-spiritual-than-thou attitude. Politics are common and mundane and not at all like the high minded path that spiritual people are supposed to tread.
In that model, we’re supposed to rise above the mere physical – politics – and keep our noses pointed toward the Higher Powers. We meditate, do yoga, take sound baths, and chant. We do NOT indulge in the hatred and division that can come along with political discourse.
Of course, when an increasing number of our fellow humans are being arrested, tortured, and cut off from food and shelter, the question arises: where is your compassion? Where is your love? If you see someone suffering and do nothing to alleviate it, how spiritual ARE you, really?
And so, spirituality can become a good excuse for doing nothing and feeling comfortable about it. I completely understand people who simply can’t follow politics because it burns them out energetically. People who just feel that they’re somehow above it all, though? Not so much.
TRACKING THE CRAZINESS
One of the most fascinating things I see happening with political Tarot readings is the vastly increased difficulty in predicting what’s going to happen.
As I’ve said many times before, a Tarot reading is just a snapshot in time. It’s not written in stone. A Tarot reading gathers in all of the relevant factors from the past and the present and – based on those factors – makes a prediction about what the probable outcome will be.
Now, built in to that process is the idea that people are . . . well . . . predictable. By the time that we become adults, most of us have a pretty predictable set of behaviors. We have fairly firm political and religious beliefs. We tend to dress a certain way and behave a certain way. We react emotionally a certain way. We’re introverts or extroverts, Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives.
Unless we undergo a mental breakdown or a personal disaster, we’re very unlikely to deviate from those behaviors and so the outcome of a Tarot reading is easy to ascertain.
Normally, politics follow along those same lines. Cultures and societies actually change at a much slower pace than individuals do, and it’s fairly easy to predict what directions they’re heading in.
Until now.
Our culture and society are changing at such an incredibly rapid rate that it really is hard to predict which direction we’re going in next, even with a deck of Tarot cards.
THE CHAOS FACTOR
The reason for that is that we’re seeing deliberately induced chaos. Normal patterns of behavior are being disrupted to a point where our society is shaking apart.
One of the favorite expressions of the Silicon Valley techies is, “Move fast and break things.” In other words, don’t plan what you’re going to replace something with before you break it – just break it and let chaos fill in the void.
Another conservative aphorism is, “flood the zone.” That means introducing so many crazy changes so fast that a normal human attention span simply can’t keep up with them. Eventually, we give up and shut down.
Which is exactly what we see in the news every week. It jumps from the Epstein files to killing people in fishing boats to invading Iran to shooting demonstrators. It’s literally one crisis after another with no respite. Just when you think it can’t get any crazier, it does.
Chaos has always been a factor in human existence. Cultures have enshrined that principle in the idea of, “tricksters,” like Loki or Coyote’ or Satan, who basically just like to fuck things up and see what happens.
Scientists call it, “entropy.” The tendency of organized systems to fall apart.
We seldom, however, see political leaders deliberately inducing chaos as we do today. It makes rational prediction way more complicated.
RECLAIMING OUR GROUND
Of course, all of this is quite intentional. When we’re constantly frightened or angry – AKA fight or flight response – the parts of our brains that are logical and creative shut down. Brain scans show that we literally lose our ability to think rationally and judge what’s going on.
Margaret Lynch Raniere refers to this as being, “hijacked.” Our normal personalities are taken over by the fight-or-flight response, we’re flooded with cortisol and adrenaline, and we become . . . someone else. Someone who lives in fear and anger. Someone who has no compassion. Someone who is incapable of empathy.
This is where political Tarot readings can re-introduce a level of sanity by giving us perspective.
The Moon card may tell us that – no, it’s not just us – things really ARE crazy right now.
The Emperor reversed may tell us that the King is crazy as a loon and meaner than a constipated crocodile.
The Hierophant reversed may tell us that religion is being twisted and the land is full of false prophets.
The readings can’t change reality. They don’t magically make things better. But they do tell us what’s actually going on behind the smoke and mirrors. They give us the ground to stand on while it all unfurls, rather than simply being swept away by the tides of fear and anger.
Hunter Thompson once said, “Things never got crazy enough for me.” Perhaps if he’d lived a few years longer . . .
Just the Tarot 