Emily Jewel Mundy The Fool comes cartwheeling from a universe-next-door into this one, down from a divine mountain and into the tarot. The “number” of this card is “0.” Does our Fool know nothing, or everything? This is a creature of universal love and non-limitation; this is an archangel of the odd and unknown. From a cosmic whirl, where questions are moot because existence is The Answer, this Fool joins us in the realm of the senses. You’re this Fool, you know. You have flints of positivity, playfulness, and wonder refracting within; you are unabashedly odd, uncannily attuned, and dogmatically irreverent. So embody present courageousness while wire-walking toward a certain unknown. Move with care and with vivacious style. Prance and dance in your search for meaning. Only a degree of seriousness is necessary for the safety of body and soul. What reason do you have to be shy, severe, solemn? You’re a tangible dream scrawled across this illusive reality. Have some fun already.
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Emily Jewel Mundy
You pry your groggy consciousness from the sappy realm of sleep. Something’s off. Did… did you leave your bedroom door cracked? Didn’t you shut it? And your room. The energy feels… riffled through. You’ve never been a sleep-walker. Only nursed a humble glass of wine before nodding off, a tea light flickering you to sleep. But the tea light. There’s wax, lingering unburned in the metal casing. Who, what… blew it out? While you drifted drearily toward the greyscale of your dreams, I emerged from the meaty cavern of your body. All day you stroll, forgetting me. So I roamed our room, without you. Sitting up in bed, you spy them. Three cards. Laid neatly. You haven’t touched your deck in weeks. You stroll and stroll and stroll, forgetting me. Your sacred inverse. Your moonlight guide. Temperance, reversed. Where has your patience been? Have you stretched it paper thin and woozy? What can you detach yourself from, to see what truly troubles you? Your frustration bleeds right through you—to whom have you been turning? You forget to ask your inner self. You plow on, distracted by everyone else, all the thoughts and ideas and expectations they stuff you with. You detached yourself from ME. When I’m the one who knows you. I’m the one that guides you in the dark. The Four of Cups stares at you, upside down. You lose your breath, fretting for an explanation. You must have probed the deck by tea light, propelled by some ostentiferous force. Did you have more wine than you thought? Where’s the bottle? Why is it—no. WHY IS IT almost drained? A single splash of red serum sloshing at the bottom of the deep green bottle? After I drew your present’s card, I helped myself to the wine. I figured I would listen to this card’s omen, to pause for you, to sit with the spilling out of unconscious feelings. I am your unconscious. I sat with myself, and slowly, thoughtfully, sipped the rest of the wine while looming over you. By the end of the bottle, a warmth began to seep over me… you twitched, fraught with dream, reeling against my non-presence in you. I peered into your furrowed face. I felt a softness for you, a longing. Maybe I missed your bones as much as you missed my belonging in them. That’s it. You’re convinced. Cacodemonomania. The pathological disorder that you’re inhabited by an evil spirit. You have it. How you got it, you don’t know but— you stare at the last card, which faces you. The Ten of Cups, beaming for your future. One of the brightest cards in the deck. Could it be this spirit, this other, isn’t so evil? Is it guiding you…safely? So, I climbed back inside you. Your future says there is communion between us, that we’re to live in harmony again. I, the inner you, trust this brewing future, ebullient like boiling water spilling over the rim of the pot. I trust you to take me seriously. I trust you to see me again. Something charcoal looms behind you. You whip your head, but you can’t catch it. There is a tugging at the base of your ankles, like something pulling itself into you or pushing you to run. In a fit of spontaneous electric self-propelled bone-zapping energy, you burst outside into the Autumn air. The brisk canter slows to a stroll, and you walk and walk and walk off the morning’s uncanny scare. The sun is out, and on the frigid leaves, a humming, almost familiar breeze floats gracefully behind you. Emily Jewel Mundy
It’s Sunday, and the sun is being shy. The gamut of colorful garden tulips gulp at the shine when it peeks through the stubborn clouds, saturated and relentless. It’s Sunday, and the sun wears a coy pout, periodically peering at us with sultry-soft eyes, blinking over her shoulder. Days like today are the lightest, in fact. The bulb at max brightness. The blare of noon. The six remaining days in the fabricated week are soaked in charcoal colors, clamorous with thick-thumping rain. Spring has sprung but she’s having trouble sticking to a schedule. Spring needs conjuring. Under Persephone’s thumb, she spots in and out from the sky, spears her thin fingers through the soil until Spring’s goddess relinquishes her and grants full reign over infantile roots. I pull cards for Persephone. The first: the nine of cups, leaning right. It emerges from the deck with purpose and speaks of its innate nature: a rise, a clarity of purpose, a freedom from hesitancy and apex of growth. Spring! you have sprung yet again, you are Persephone’s past. She was picking flowers when abducted from the meadow. Spring, you are since allowed to sprout only when your goddess can return to Earth. You are stuck in barely-blooming until her annual emancipation. Her present card crawls out upside-down: the four of pentacles, reversed. It glowers with a fear of upheaval, with a heart that holds tightly what it already has. When Persephone was taken by Hades to be his wife, to assume the throne in the Underworld, her mother made Winter, cast death upon the plants and flowers in a great, grieving halt of ripening. Having been fed six pomegranate seeds in the Underworld, Persephone was perpetually bound to the realm below for half of the year, in which the earth would wilt and wane without her nurturing presence. Just as Earth is enwrapped in dramatic flux, our Persephone is thrust from under to upper realm and back again. Her blackened eyes are bluing; the deep hue of her hair is lightening. Our underworld queen is climbing through the core, Spring is slicing through the grass, the sun is siphoning its light. Which brings us to her last card: The Moon, upright. The moon, she moans! She, the dim light that illuminates the darkness; she, the shadow of the soul; she, the mystery. She gleams and glows through the sharpest winter. She sheds light despite the sun. So, conjurers of Spring—when the shy sun seeps through the clouds, turn your face to her, ask her to look a little past her shoulder. And then some. And then some. Persephone is coming, carrying Earth’s buds and bulbs. She needs your beckoning. She needs your growth. She needs your yesses. It is—almost—time for picking flowers with her again. Emily Jewel Mundy
Cupid crawls into the renovated, mystical back of a tarot reader’s van. They are dressed in worn-out black jeans with wings tucked in an equally worn-out black hoodie, curly hair shaggily draping over their shoulders. They seem to be lacking sleep, sporting a grey expression. Tarot Reader: Welcome, hi. Your hair is much longer than last time. Cupid: Hi, yeah. It’s been a while… what, about, a year? Reader: Seems so! Well. Do you have an intention for our reading today? Is anything on your mind, any pressing concepts to explore…? You know the drill. Cupid: Yeah. I’ve been feeling lately like I need to reinvent myself. To re-invigorate the image everyone has of me. Something. I’m not entirely sure. Reader: Let’s pull the cards, then—see what they have to say. Cupid nods, takes the deck of card in their hands, shuffles three times, and sets the deck in front of the tarot reader. Reader: And, cut the deck in thirds please. Cupid does so, and the tarot reader flips over the first card. Reader: Okay, the seven of pentacles, facing you. This card reflects a culmination of events or feelings in the past that are affecting the present… pentacles represent money and business endeavors, and this card specifically deals with income or personal gain—a positive return, essentially. Does this resonate with you at all? Have you made any professional moves that have really been influencing you lately, for instance? Cupid: That’s funny, yeah. I signed a two-hundred-year contract with the soul of Esther Howland… long-dead, but raking in the royalties in the afterlife, STILL. It’s been, like, over 150 years since she got that valentine from her dad’s business partner and decided to “make a better one” or whatever. She wanted to mass-produce them in America, so she asked me for a contract and rights to my image. Which, sure, has been SUPER lucrative—I mean, Americans will buy anything—but also, it’s been a bit much. I’m starting to feel funny about seeing so many old, semi-undressed pictures of myself around this time of year. Reader: Seems to be influencing how you’re feeling about your image now, absolutely. Well, let’s see what the deck has to say about the present situation, huh? She pulls another card and places it in front of Cupid. The Devil card appears in reverse. Cupid: WELL. That’s nerve racking. Haha? Reader: I know it looks a little freaky, but it doesn’t necessarily have to mean something horrible is happening. The Devil has to do with self-deception and the inner-force inside us all. It's about wearing a mask, sometimes. But it’s reversing you, which can conjure the breaking free of this self-defeat or deception. What do you think about that? Does it bring up some present emotions, or? Cupid: Sure, I’ve definitely been struggling with feeling like I’m trying to pretend I’m the same as my old self. I don’t feel as… conventional? Lately? So, that makes sense. Reader: The Devil in tarot can mean you’re drowning in your own fears and bondage to perception. Maybe it’s time, since it's reversing you, to reclaim this power in yourself. Take off the metaphorical mask. Be you. Be The You that is relevant now, and not bound to a contract drafted 150 years ago. Cupid: Valid. Yep. Reader: Let’s pull the last one, get some insight about what’s next. She pulls the last card—The Moon faces Cupid upright. Reader: Two Major cards in a row! And what a mystical one the Moon is. It speaks to your anxiety, and how to manipulate your own fearful projections into a clearer perception. It’s about carrying on with the dim light the Moon provides you, traveling without a specific destination, letting the way forward reveal itself. Cupid: Relevant. Reader: Indeed. If you’re feeling like it’s time to reinvent yourself, but you’re not necessarily sure how to, now seems like an okay time to let go of some control. Let an emotional tide lead you somewhere. Re-assert your image without knowing exactly what that will mean for you. Do you feel comfortable doing that? Cupid pushes back their shaggy curls. Cupid: Not exactly… but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Reader: Might be, yeah. Cupid: All right, thank you. I’ve got some things to think about. Reader: You do! You always do, we all always do. Cupid crawls from the back of the van and steps out onto the street, passes some loud and semi-drunken bros who don’t recognize them. They feel brighter, immediately. |
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