The Tarot Asks: Are you home (for the holidays or otherwise)?
Reading by Rahne Alexander
“How is it possible that this holiday is somehow both about joy and connection and generosity, while simultaneously being about secret paths and secret truths?”
You know that feeling when a song tells you something about yourself that you didn’t know before?
I remember first hearing Erasure’s song “She Won’t Be Home” at a pivotal age. I was in college and beginning to realize that I didn’t have to go back home again, not even for Christmas. In the song, the unnamed protagonist is in her feelings about not going home for Christmas, but holding her boundary nevertheless. In the background, Erasure’s music is both wistful and joyful — as are so many songs centered on the holiday — but this one seemed to speak directly to me: You can do this too. We are singing about you. The song gave me permission to set and hold a boundary.
In my experience, so much of transition is about making and maintaining boundaries, often without a map, and the vigilance required is exhausting. And then, of course, for many of us “the holidays” just hang out at the end of the year like some kind of final boss, and one of the most effective weapons that boss wields is “home.”
Of course, home is where and what you make it, but so many Christmas songs offer up meditations on yearning and returning after periods of separation. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, since the origin of the holiday is about a homeless family. And while the above-the-fold holiday messaging is about gratitude for the things we do have, it’s often hard to access gratitude when the promise of “home” fails.
The Seven of Swords
Every year, the tarot serves as a coping mechanism for the myriad emotional challenges of “the holidays.” I’ll typically do a pull at the start of the season to prepare for what I might expect to deal with in the coming weeks.
The card that describes this season most succinctly to me is the Seven of Swords — a time of deceit and strategy, and of negotiating with weapons of great consequence. It’s also about moving slowly through treacherous territory, and to me, the movement is the most important aspect of the Seven of Swords: don’t stop, keep going, and whatever you do, don’t count your money when you’re sitting at the table.
It strikes me this time that In the Rider Waite Smith deck the Seven of Swords is a figure sneaking along with a big bundle of swords, and I can’t help but think of the way jolly old St. Nick sneaks into the house each Christmas, armed with the knowledge of the good or evil you have done, leaving behind your accordant rewards. How is it possible that this holiday is somehow both about joy and connection and generosity, while simultaneously being about secret paths and secret truths?
“The heat and the energy emerging from these Wands bundled together is intense.”
Three on a Match
Setting the Seven aside, a curious thing happened when drawing cards for this season’s reading. I first pulled the Ace of Wands, which I initially rejected as relevant to the situation at hand. Then I pulled the Two, about which I also had misgivings, and then finally the Three of Wands. I can’t recall another time when I pulled a suit in sequence like this.
The heat and the energy emerging from these Wands bundled together is intense. The Ace is ignition, the Two about direction, and the Three about expansion. So often, I’ve been advised to “start new traditions” as a way to cope with holiday malaise, and while I think there are echoes of that advice at play in this three-card sequence, I feel like this is a call to use as much detritus as possible as kindling for a new fire.
When I was a young and fearful trans girl, with no connection to anyone else like me, I would write out my hopes and fears for a future and then destroy them — shredding them, burying them, and burning them to ashes. Over the years I’ve burned reams of my own writing. Most of it was pretty bad, so there’s no great literary loss. But I’d emerge from each burning session feeling a little lighter, having burned away something that was no longer necessary and tempering my tools for the future.
This three-card sequence suggests to me that this year I may wish to reconsider the role fire had played in my progression; less as a tool of destruction and isolation and more as a tool of clarification and connection. More of summoning from the goddesses of the hearth. After all, who doesn’t love warming themselves by the hearth before a well-constructed, lively fire?
Defining Home
This month’s Tarot Tunes is intended to push through my feelings of detachment and sorrow that underpin the holidays, the ways they have always reminded me of what I can never have. For those of us who have effectively functioned as orphans, I think it can be hard to find common ground with those whose parents are still living and engaged with them.
When you don’t feel at home in the world, you can have quite a difficult time (re-)defining home. I think it’s interesting to pull sequential Wands in the light of these questions about home because I often see aspects of construction when I pull Wands for others — the hows and the whys of the structures and shelters we create.
Redefinition of home and family structures requires a great deal of energy and passion — both key aspects of the Wands, and as much as I may not want to hear it, the 1-2-3 here is a reminder that I’m still in the early stages of creating structures that works for me, even as many others my age have settled. There is still so much work to do: the curse of the late bloomer.
I read the cards as telling me that when confronted with the familiar dark emotions that loom over me during this season, I might just want to stoke some home fires — to burn away all that is useless to me while basking in the warmth and light it gives off in the process.
If you want to come over, bring marshmallows.
Rahne Alexander is an intermedia artist and writer from Baltimore, Maryland. She holds an MFA in Intermedia + Digital Arts from UMBC. A tarot reader for more than 20 years, she can be reached for readings at rahne.com/tarot. Follow her on Instagram @the_tarot_asks.
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