Day Four. October 18th. Four of Pentacles.

Definition: Waite says “holding tight to what one has, gift, legacy, inheritance”.

Detail: So, what is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?

This one feels so apparent to me. It’s the city from the Three of Pentacles, the living city that’s where you want to be, the city pulsing with the commodified life of coins…but you can’t afford it. It’s homelessness in the city. Unhoused-ness. But you can’t leave, because it’s where life is.

Day: I definitely feel this one. I lived in Michigan my whole life until 2018 and never felt connected to it. There’s no scene I felt connected to. No zine scene. No gaming scene. For a while there was a music scene surrounding the White Stripes, but that ended. Before that there was…the Motown music scene in…the 60s. I had creative friends for times, but always felt like I belonged somewhere else. Now I feel different in Denver. There are great arts scenes. Zine fests. Poets like Andrea Gibson in Boulder. But I’ve only barely managed to connect with any of it. It’s expensive to live in Denver. I did an online cost of living calculator before moving and it said 15% more expensive. But it’s not true. Houses are 400% more. Groceries are 40%-60% more than they were in Michigan before the pandemic. I have to spend carefully. Cooking is less expensive than take-out, so I cook probably 29 out of every 30 days. In the six years since moving I’ve never paid to see a live music performance. So I know what it’s like to live in a city like the one on the card. But I don’t want to live anywhere else.

Discovery: I feel like Waite has it right for what Pamela drew today. Hoarding of money. And the anxiety of it that separates you from the lives of others. Look how removed he is from the town behind him. What’s going on in the lives of those people that he’s not a part of because he’s consumed with minding and protecting his money? And he’s not someone who spends his money in ways that enliven him either. It’s a card of how money sets you apart from others.

And so is today’s from the Elsewhere Tarot, just from the opposite lens. Pamela’s figure is set apart from life by having a certain amount of money; whoever is living in the park on the Elsewhere card is set apart by not having it. I see lives like Pamela depicts in the wealthy mansions and neighborhoods just two blocks north of us. Young tech bros with perfect kids who never own toys or bikes that aren’t new. A garden-level apartment behind a bar isn’t the same as a tent in a park, but it’s similarly in the shadow of lives whose wealth gives them anxiety, fear, prejudice, and robs them of life and truer human connection.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #FourOfPentacles #Pentacles

Day Three. October 17th. Three of Pentacles.

Definition: Waite’s imposed meaning is tradecraft. Others say teamwork and collaboration.

Detail: So, what is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?

So, it's a monster dude with one large eye and two smaller ones, and three robed figures nested in its chest like Russian dolls. And it's surrounded by a shadow shaped like its own head, or maybe it's also nested in another incompletely seen figure that's just like itself? Hmm. From looking through the deck I know the same robed figures show up on other cards. But what do they represent? And the monster's central eye? I've always loved “third eye” imagery. Uncanny perception. This is a monster of uncanny perception. And the third eye is so large relative to the others. It doesn't just possess uncanny perception. It's defined by it. But the nested figures in it? Like priestesses? Internalized spiritual guides? I wrote a game once, twenty years ago, about “your three internal critics.”

Your 3 Internal Critics From childhood every one of us has three internal critics. They live inside our mental landscape—as role models we aspire to be like, as critics who comment on our desires and our actions. We first encounter them in our daily lives. We meet them, live with them, hang out with them, read about them, hear about them, and they affect us deeply enough that we install them into our mental landscape and try to live as they would. They are real people, long dead historical personages, or fictional characters. At times in our lives we install a new one, but we only ever have three, so when we choose a new internal critic we uninstall one of the prior three. Play this game with three people who don't know anything about your three internal critics. Tell each of them what they need to know to embody one of your internal critics. “You are my father, John. He was valedictorian of his high school class. He dropped out of seminary and became a pharmacist. When I was five he got a blood clot in his brain...” When you're done telling them what they need to know, have them discuss amongst themselves and then finally tell you who they want you to be and what they want you to be doing ten years from now. Continue with everyone taking a turn casting the others as their internal critics and hearing who and what they want for you.

The robed figures are its internalized spiritual guides.

But why a monster? We fear being seen within by others. We outcast them, criminalize them, for what they see and say. That's the shadow. It's our shadow as the viewer. We view the three-eyed being with fear, as something to be feared, but the shadow shows our true nature.

Day: So, how does this card inform where I'm at in my life today? Three is such a great number. There's so much hypocrisy in the contrived world. Trump accuses his enemies of all the things he does himself, decries monsters to distract from his own apparent monstrousness. Hmm. I've been an oracle and cartomancer in journaling games I've played. This card. Being guided by inner spiritual entities. Yes, that's it. The people I've met playing journaling games, Dee, Lindsley, Hecate, and others, are like the ones Jung met in his unconscious, Salome, Elijah, and others, true beings that enable true perception, the third eye, capable of true sight in the outer world not just the inner one. But the threat is the viewers in the world will characterize me unfavorably.

Discovery: Pamela's Three of Pentacles shows a builder or mason taking direction from two robed ecclesiastical figures who presumably employed him for the job. And again I think she's expressing something other than what Waite says. She's continuing her theme of money. This is contract work. Religious contract work. Pamela knew about religious contract work. It’s better than dancing for coins like on the Two. It’s more money. Caravaggio did it. Michelangelo did it. Brunelesschi did it. Rafael did it. But it’s still contract work. The dudes with the money are going to give you instructions. Those guys with the plans aren’t collaborators. They’re the bosses giving instructions. And there’s canon you have to adhere to. But sometimes if you’re clever you can work your own satisfaction into your work. If you’re horny you can paint Eve in Eden, or Salome dancing, or Lot being seduced by his daughter, and they’ll say you’re divinely inspired, not a pervert. It’s better than dancing for coins.

But the Elsewhere Tarot Three of Pentacles differs. It has its own robed figures, but it's about true work, done also in the temporal world, not directed by employers though, but with true spiritual guidance. The monster though is armless. It has no hands for its work. How does it do its work with no hands?

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #ThreeOfPentacles #Pentacles

Day Two. October 16th. Two of Pentacles.

Definition: Pamela isn't as hopeful with the Two of Pentacles as she was with the Ace. Two coins isn’t enough to live on. Dance for your coins. Your hands are infinitely tied to the work of collecting coins, unusable for whatever other purpose you might wish. And also we’re just ships passing each other on the waves in the sea.

Detail: So, what is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?

It's a billboard at night that says “One Night Only. Tonight Only. Don't Miss Out.” next to a long road leading to an illuminated city in the distance. The shadow behind the billboard suggests that I'm driving a vehicle down the road to the city, and seeing the billboard because of my headlights.

So...hmm. Clearly I'm driving to the city on my way to the thing on the billboard. I kind of like the way these Elsewhere Tarot cards are casting me as a viewpoint figure. In the Ace of Pentacles I was a work supervisor. In this I'm driving to the thing. An enlivening thing. Something I want in my life. But “Don't Miss Out”. Will I make it in time? That's anxiety. Fear of missing out. It feels like it might be a music event? If there were no implication of headlights then maybe I'm walking and won't make it, but my path is straight and I'm driving, so I think I'll make it. But can I afford it? Maybe I only have two coins. F🪙M🪙? I have to get to the city in time and I have to be able to afford it.

Day: So, how does this card inform where I'm at in my life today? I certainly do feel fear of missing out. I want to see my son grow up and have kids. I have game projects I'm eager to finish and publish. No one gets infinite time and life. We all ultimately miss out on many things. Or wait, what if I'm not going to some entertaining, enlivening performance. What if I'm the scheduled event? I'm late. I'm not where I need to be. I'm not where my audience is. I definitely feel that. I didn't sell many copies of The Sneeze. I didn't find my way to its audience. Look at the glow of that city. There are connections to be had there. I've traveled to dozens of realities playing journaling games. But I haven't found that city yet. It's Brigadoon. One night only. I have to get there.

Discovery: Pamela's Two of Pentacles shows a figure wearing a conical hat dancing in the street with a coin in each hand and a looping cord like an infinity symbol connecting his hands to each other. In the background are two ships passing each other at a distance on very turbulent waves. If the Elsewhere Tarot is a RWS inspired deck, and it is, then its Two of Pentacles should be thematically similar to Pamela's, or at least understand it and disagree. And...it does understand it. Waite calls it a card of “gaiety” and “recreation,” but no way. It was Pamela's idea to do illustrated minors and I'm convinced Waite only gave her minimal, maybe just numerological guidance and then later when he wrote about them he imposed descriptors that accorded with his occult thinking that don't reflect her mysticism and intent, which I think can be found by looking at the body language and expressions of her figures. I don't believe the farmer on the Eight of Pentacles is unequivocally happy with his bumper crop. I don't believe the worker on the Eight of Pentacles represents artful craftsmanship. And here on the Two of Pentacles I don't see gaiety and recreation. Pamela's dancer is tied into an unending cycle of eking out coins, never having enough, with life passing him by like ships passing at a distance. He's entertaining, but not enlivening, because the commodification of life as coins keeps him from a context of connection in which he would be enlivening.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #TwoOfPentacles #Pentacles

I’ve decided to do the #dropm78 tarot challenge again this year. It’s choosing a deck that’s new/unfamiliar to you and working through the cards one per day in a specific order to find your understanding of them, starting with pentacles. (The organizer’s intro video for this year is here.) I tried it last year with the Mary-El Tarot and only made it eight days, but I think I learned more the kind of deck I might connect with better for the whole thing.

So this year the deck I chose is the Elsewhere Tarot.

Day One. October 15th. Ace of Disks.

Definition: Waite says “In old tarot packs this suit used to be about money.” He wants them to be about earthly life. That’s always felt forced to me for Pamela’s cards. She had such frustrations with money in her life. She said that drawing the cards was a lot of work for not much money. I love her. It was her idea to do pictorial minors and I’ve never felt like Waite gave her as specific art direction on them as he did for the majors. So the minors are her understanding of the world, and for her the pentacles are about our human relationship with money. We live in a world made of it. It tells us who we are, and what our value is. It directs our actions in unwelcome ways. It corrupts us.

So the Ace of Pentacles? With money we have taken the mystery and metaphysics of life (the pentagram) and commodified it (by forming it into coins). Aces are beginnings. The Ace of Pentacles represents the flow of time and the temporal world making a starting investment in you. It is heritance and venture capital, as well as being given a path and obligations.

Detail: In the guidebook to the Mary-el Tarot Marie White refers to the Thoth Tarot as “occult” and the Rider Waite Smith Tarot as “mystical,” and it was then clear to me why I connect better with some decks than others, and why I didn't connect so well with the Mary-el, which is very beautiful but also very steeped in alchemy and the occult. A “mystical” deck is an expression of what its creator understands about the world from their own lived strivings in it. And as I've thought about it, maybe only the minors in the RWS deck are a “mystical” understanding of the world from Pamela's perceptions in her lived life, and the majors are Waite's more occult thinkings. So for the #dropm78 this year I was looking for a deck that's more fully mystical, the perceptions of its creator in contending with the turnings and challenges of the world, across all the minors and majors too. And I feel the Elsewhere Tarot may be this.

So...what is the creator presenting on the Ace of Pentacles?

A convoluted assembly line with a human figure turning half-dark objects into dark objects. The lightbulb above is on, meaning the assembly line is moving. A video monitor is watching the human figure, meaning we are subject to judgement and expectations when we participate in the engine of commodification of life.

Day: This is the new category the creator of the #dropm78 Esther Lisa Freinkel Tishman added this year. I'm supposed to find an understanding of how this Ace of Pentacles informs where I'm at in my life on this day, today. And...I don't know. Do I feel I'm on an assembly line? Am I feeling judged on my participation in the commodification of life? I don't know. I'm busy. I'm juggling multiple writing projects, as well as parenting my son. But that's all meaningful stuff to me. My assembly line is meaningful to me. My #JournalGaming and writings about it are acts of contending with the contrived world. I'm striving to connect with others. And maybe that's it. Though my work is meaningful most of my human connections are distant, and occasional, and through a computer monitor. The forces of the contrived world are strong and I have not escaped them. My work is still subject to their judgement, and my relationships are still made distant by them.

Discovery: I chose a side deck, a calibration deck. It’s this bootleg RWS deck with badly reproduced art and janky meanings printed on the cards that I bought at a thrift shop and that I love so much. I feel like Pamela is so present when I use it, annoyed at me. “Dammit Paul.” But I want her present. It's her view of the world I want. It's the same side deck I used last year.

And reading back, last year I wasn't feeling the Ace of Pentacles. I wrote that the coin from the air felt like a trust fund to me, but that was pretty much it. This year I understand better. A trust fund, a VC investment, a family lineage, inherited beauty, a parent successful in a material sphere, they get you started down a path, with possibility, but also not one you've fully chosen for yourself, and they come also with expectations from the world and obligations.

So, the Ace of Pentacles in the Elsewhere Tarot. I think the creator totally gets it, but theirs is...narrower and maybe bleaker in what it's saying than Pamela is with hers? You've been given a role, with obligations and scrutiny, in a contrived engine. But Pamela sees, I think that the Pentacles themselves are made from a worthy and metaphysical essence that we deserve and might be able to connect with. Other later RWS Pentacles feel pretty bleak to me, but not the Ace. Pamela sees that heritance and investment puts you on a path, but a world believing in you like the Ace does is still very enlivening and rich with potential for you.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #AceOfPentacles #Pentacles