I was planning on writing a standard column this week, one with questions about jobs or relationships for the new year, but then last Wednesday, I watched a group of terrorists climb walls and push through barricades around the Capitol building. I saw them breaking windows, pushing through doors, and then watched them enter the Senate chambers, curiously exploring and moving so casually I was reminded partly of opossums and partly of Columbine.
I had the TV on, then opened my computer, my fiancé’s computer, started streaming “PBS News Hour,” the New York Times and the Washington Post. And then I put on Gil Scott-Heron, then The Temptations, and then I poured myself a drink, and paced around my house, and then I lit incense, and then I pulled cards, and then I asked: What will become of America?
I pulled 12 cards for the next year, one for each month, placed them in a circle, then pulled one card for the whole year and put it in the middle.
These were the 12: Nine of Swords reversed; King of Wands, Knight of Wands; Four of Swords; Page of Cups; The Emperor; Ace of Pentacles reversed; Lovers/Eight of Wands reversed; Seven of Swords; The Magician; King of Swords and Knight of Cups.
The year’s card was Five of Swords.
Swords are air, a suit of mind and power. The Five of Swords is the conflict in the suit. It’s all ego. It’s competition, its resentment; it’s feeling that you’re right no matter what anyone says. This is the cloud over our heads for the year—this festering ego. We have to deal with it to move forward.
January will be an anxious time, with nightmares and worry and people losing sleep. It’s already been dark, and it’ll stay that way.
But then, we have the King of Cups in February. Cups are the story of relationships: romantic, familial, and diplomatic ones. With all his talk of diplomacy and healing divides, it’s easy to peg Biden as this King.
The spring looks like a honeymoon period, politically speaking. Knight of Wands follows, a fiery warrior for creation, for change, for determination. It’s a take-no-shit suit. Vice President-elect Harris has an Aries moon; my money is on this being her.
On this wave of happy warrior energy, we go to April with Four of Swords, ego removed. It might be when we officially rejoin the Paris accord or perhaps really get it together as a country to take on COVID-19. It’ll be us striking out from under the ego cloud of the year. And it’ll work for a while. May brings Page of Cups, another person who’ll bring diplomacy and relationships into the world, and in June, we have The Emperor.
In my deck, The Emperor has eagle legs and is crushing a small devil-bull with both his foot and his scepter. He rules by authority, not force. It’s hard as an American not to see a pair of authoritative eagle legs crushing a devil as a symbol for the U.S. Presidency, but I don’t know why this card comes in June.
It could be that it takes this long for Biden to be accepted as the president… but I worry about darker implications. The great conjunction happened a few weeks ago, on Dec. 21. Out of the eight U.S. presidents that died in office, seven died during the great conjunction. When it happened during Reagan’s term, he got shot. When it happened to W., someone threw a grenade at him, but it didn’t go off. I don’t know what will happen—this is by no means predicting the president’s death—but there will be something to solidify the authority of The President of The United States in June.
The honeymoon ends after that.
July is Ace of Pentacles reversed. Money isn’t flowing. The economy might not be bouncing back, or something else could be stopping work (like another COVID-19 lockdown.) That leads to August, a two-card month with the Lovers reversed falling on top of the Eight of Wands. The Lovers is the big gun card of unions and relationships, while the Eight of wands can be a bridge-burning “fuck it!”
Any love of healing we had as a country is on shaky ground. Then, in September, we see the Seven of Swords: the ego destroying itself with reckless abandon. This is us being our own bomb, us embracing that Five of Swords and living like spring breakers in hell. (That doesn’t bode well if we’re trying to crush a disease.)
But then October brings in the Magician, ruler over the elements, the powerhouse of unlimited potential. It’s big energy, and it’s going to deal with the fight that the last two cards will bring. November is King of Swords, the critical, power-hungry ego-driven Father, while December is the Knight of Cups, another warrior of diplomacy, relationships, and connections. King of Swords is “Us vs. Them” where Knight of Cups is just an all-encompassing “Us.”
Except for the single Knight of Wands, every suit card in this spread is a Cup or a Sword. As a country, it’s a fight between connection and diplomacy or ego and seizing of power. (But you didn’t need tarot cards to tell you that.)
The court cards in the suits—the Kings and Knights—are people. Real individuals. So we’ll decide whose banner to stand under this winter: Swords or Cups.
As a country, we have to decide. If we keep going with swords, it’ll be the end of the democratic republic. If we choose cups, we’re going to have to heal that ego divide.
I don’t know how to do that; I can’t give any practical tips because I’m a 30-year-old writer, a flawed human being with little experience in healing a divided nation. The obvious and elusive answer is love. It’s what the cups are known for. I can’t tell you what that looks like, practically or metaphorically, but I’m reminded of a quote from ”The Chaldean Oracles,” which says the divine: “sowed the bond of Love, heavy with fire, into all things.”
So maybe this fiery Love can help us move forward, help bring forth something new. Fire gave us the whole cosmos, after all. Let’s hope it can help create something good.
And let’s hope we don’t burn the house down, with all of us still inside.
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This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2021.