For many, our home, our world, and our reality seemingly have dipped into a crazed morass over in the latter part of this year. We are closing in on the Winter Solstice, a time that welcomes the light, new beginnings, and hope. It is one of many celebrations as the year turns from deepest dark to whispers of light, from autumn into pure winter, and from the current year to the new year to come.
In recent times in the United States, we have had a government shutdown that ended without a clean or pure resolution and chaos at US airports. Unresolved health insurance premium woes remain for those with Obamacare and ultimately, for health insurance costs in general. Wars and military conflict remain in several parts of the world: Ukraine v. Russia, the aftermath of the conflict in Gaza, and now, the choice of the United States to use military forces to attack alleged drug running operations in the Caribbean by blowing up boats. These acts do not bring peace, and in my mind, constitute murder, regardless of the presumed, but not verified motives of the parties involved.
The World – NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
During the past 10 months, our nation has seen a clear deterioration of a normalcy which includes a clear separation of Church and State, the safety of US citizenship regardless of the color of your skin or the language you speak on the street or at home, or your profession, or where you live. We are slowly returning to a thinly veiled segregation with preferences given to acceptable cultural whiteness, perceived Protestant evangelical Christian values, disenfranchisement, and erasure of any non-white cultural and historical legacy items or individuals.
The irony is that woes of the early 20th century were attacked and seemingly resolved by the eventual judicial, cultural, and societal victories during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s-1960s. The famous case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) addressed racial inequity in education, a founding bedrock of gaining and maintaining a middle-class or higher lifestyle. Blacks and other cultural and racial minorities found a hand up through use of the Federal government in jobs that paid well and provided stability absent in other jobs available to these groups in the 1950s onward.
The case of Loving v. Virginia (1967) attempted to settle the legality of interracial marriage. Marriage between individuals should be a private and personal decision, not one decided by the state, especially as the legal union of marriage contains many benefits societally, legally, and economically which are not otherwise available without substantial financial cost.
The case of Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) further utilized the Fourteenth Amendment with the institute of marriage by establishing that marriage between same-sex couples should be valid. Personal choices of identity are important for all individuals.
For those living who have benefited from the fruit of these decisions, the clear totalitarian march backwards is hard to take.
The current influx of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations detentions has turned everyday life into a nightmare for so many who live peacefully going about their daily lives: working, attending school, caring for children, driving to the grocery store, appearing in court, or checking in as required for continued processing of their status as they await a green card or finalization of their goal to acquire citizenship.
The original promise to locate, detain, and deport undocumented criminal immigrants quickly turned into mass roundup and subsequent deportation of immigrants of color or those who appeared to speak a language other than English, primarily Spanish.
There is no logic to this project, only madness. The ironic use of the phrase, “Promise Made, Promise Kept, mocks its original Biblical context of how God honored and kept commitments made in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Instead, the current use in the plural, Promises Made, Promises Kept, refers to the border with Mexico and the plan to close the country as much as possible to immigrants. The original phrase implies a sense of trust between those making a promise and those who rely upon the giver to keep that promise. It is integrity.
However, if integrity is a concept that implies a strong sense of morality, then where are we now?
Actions normally do speak louder than words. The actions in the United States over the past ten months have gone from a zenith of hope for some that a new president would bring a sense of better economic times for those who felt prices were too high, and a stronger sense of stability, for those who felt that the country was headed in the wrong direction.
April and May brought the tariff game, as uncertainty loomed, and anxiety began to rise.
The summer months saw increases for so many goods and items that many cut back or had to make painful decisions when shopping for groceries, when buying a car, when finding housing, when raising children, and when trying to find another job because the first two aren’t enough to pay the bills.
The fall got worse, except the shutdown left a lot of people feeling helpless.
Now we are in winter, and we are struggling under a burden that we did not want, could not have fully anticipated at the start of the year 2025, and are not sure what to do.
(Whew!)
We have so much going on that in a month devoted in many religions to the culmination of the dark as we welcome the return of the light, we are struggling to find hope.
Yet… we must.
Two hands holding a burning candle – We hold each other in the light. [Pixabay]
Hope is the light we carry when we are not sure if we can make it another step.
Hope is a story about a seal because we need to see something that reminds us how when we care for one another, we truly have not hit rock bottom.
Hope is a story about someone who helped a veteran to actually retire.
We don’t want to be that eighty-eight year old still working full time with no money because the pension ran dry, and medical bills have taken over most of what was left.
In a wealthy country, this inequity can drive others to despair.
At this time, we must not succumb to the darkness of emotional and spiritual heartache.
We must have hope.
In the tarot, the Fool’s Journey, we have darkness, we have light, we have surprise, we have joy, we have sadness, and at the end we have completion.
With The World, we celebrate a live and a journey well-lived and the lessons we embrace from having the bravery to start in the first place.
The World as a tarot card reminds us that the true successful journey lies in how we balance our inner and our outer selves. Are we truly in alignment or are we drifting without purpose? Have we discovered how to balance the discord that occasionally rises within each of us so that it does not overwhelm us and prompt us to descend into a state of malaise or depression? Have we tempered joy so that it is not the sole focus of our being? Pleasure is wonderful and a gift from the Gods. Seeking only pleasure to the detriment of understanding reality is as much an escapist method as those who seek to escape through the negative including suicide.
When we accept the gift of life as we draw our first breaths, we do not know what lies ahead of us, nor do we know when the journey will truly end. We learn through life lessons what can help us, what can hinder our progress, and what we can do to help others.
Temperance is another card that addresses balance to achieve harmony. We learn to integrate disparate elements to craft a true equilibrium that works for us. It falls after Death (#13) and before the Devil (#15), two cards that have heavy meanings. Death as transition, perhaps an actual physical transition.
I wonder if we are in a time of The World reversed. Our daily encounters lack a full sense of completion. The success is delayed because we have not taken the proper care to complete the steps necessary to find the ultimate fulfillment for our journey.
When we have boundaries, we are more likely to find and to embrace the success that The World upright promises. We are in the lull before Winter Solstice, when we welcome that the darkness is ending and the light is beginning to come back. The longest and darkest night has many contexts.
The World (RWS) Pamela Colman Smith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
What is the light in our lives? Who brings joy and pleasure to our being? Despite the rash of sales for Thanksgiving, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday and the weeks many stores count on to complete the season in the black before Christmas, there is more to life than shopping.
At this times, we see what matters in our lives, and if one lives in the Northern Hemisphere, the cold reminds us that we need shelter, food, and warm clothing to combat the harshness of winter weather.
When snow, blizzards, winter advisories, delays impede the normal or expected pace of familiar holiday and family encounters, we remember to be grateful for what we do have.
We spend time during this month enjoying the beauty and the loved ones in our lives – if we have them. This is a sad time for memories of those we have lost in the course of time through a variety of causes. Grief hits hard during the dark half of the year, but most especially when the focus is on celebration and joy during the month of December.
The four fixed signs on the World remind us of the areas we cross during our journey as exemplified by Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius. It is interesting that the fixed signs and boundaries are what we can grasp as we transition from the start of the journey to its conclusion.
While the world around us might appear to be in chaos, let us use The World (Reversed) to seek what we are resisting. How are we looking at what our lives have emotionally and where can we ground and celebrate our center?
There is much to celebrate at the micro level, even if the macro level is horrible. Like the Wheel of Fortune, the World in imagery reminds us of change. May the change that is here and to come be better than it was yesterday. May our integration of what we have learned strengthen our purpose. We have gained wisdom through our experiences. May the Gods help us to use what we need, when we need it, to live our best lives and now drown in despair. At this time, let us find the growth, the light that shines in our lives, and discard what will only make things worse.
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