I’m not a horoscope person. I’m not into psychic readings or auras or crystals. I loathe dreams. (If you are into these things, all good!) I bring it up, because until very recently, I would say I wasn’t a tarot person.
That changed when I went to Ingrid’s wonderful guided forest immersion, and after, Ateqah asked me if I wanted to pull a card from her Dirt Gems oracle deck. I said okay, because why not? The deck is plant-inspired, and I am myself plant-inspired if not particularly mystical. The card I pulled was dogwood, and as Ateqah read me the interpretation, I realized it was exactly what I needed to hear. I almost wept.
Afterwards I wondered, Was this experience a coincidence, or was this actually a useful tool? While I don’t believe in prediction, oracles were also traditional sources of wisdom, and I craved that feeling again, of a gentle, loving pep talk. I found myself reading more about the deck online, taking in more of the interpretations, and I realized this might be useful for me as a kind of investigative tool for how I’m feeling. In my #sadgirl season, I found myself constantly looking for anything that might provide some relief, support, and/or recalibration. And while I generally avoid buying new things, I decided it was worth the experiment and I took the plunge.
What I appreciate about the deck, aside from the lovely art, is how it’s focused on getting to know and appreciate so many different plants. These aren’t abstract symbols, but living beings in the world around us, and the deck is helping me learn their ecological, medicinal, and symbolic offerings. As someone who is always scanning the plants I walk by, this brings them to life in a new way.
The plants in the deck are notably all referred to as “they,” which dispenses with gendered binaries, but, more than that also confers them with a sort of personhood. “It” is also gender neutral but resigns plants to a lesser category. Western science generally resists this sort of anthropomorphism, but it can confer a respect that is sorely lacking in many of our engagements with the more-than-human living world.
In recent years, many non-human entities like rivers and mountains have been granted legal personhood, which gives them inherent rights that can be defended in court. If courts of law the world over have given other living things personhood, why can’t we?
I’ve been relistening to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, which is both comfort and important recalibration, a reminder of wiser ways of seeing and being. In “Learning the Grammar of Animacy,” Kimmerer relates some of her observations from her attempts to learn Potawotami:
Imagine seeing your grandmother standing at the stove in her apron and then saying of her, “Look, it is making soup. It has gray hair.” We might snicker at such a mistake, but we also recoil from it. In English, we never refer to a member of our family, or indeed to any person, as it. That would be a profound act of disrespect. It robs a person of selfhood and kinship, reducing a person to a mere thing. So it is that in Potawatomi and most other Indigenous languages, we use the same words to address the living world as we use for our family. Because they are our family.
The cards do a good job, I think, at helping us get to know the gifts and the spirit of each of these family members and giving them some of that animacy. They become allies, beings you can turn to when you need support (and don’t we all?).
In Braiding Sweetgrass Kimmerer also writes, “In some Native languages, the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us,’” and listening to that as I walked the aisles of the grocery store, tenderness swelled in me. This world can be a hard place, and we aren’t meant to go it alone. Plants started taking care of me when I was just a cluster of cells in my mother, have taken care of me every day on this Earth since I took my first breath. They were caring for me long before I started to care for them.
Since I bought the deck, I’ve pulled a card every Monday as something to reflect on at the beginning of the week. Sometimes this felt meaningful, other times less so. But it wasn’t really about any single card, it was about making space for a check-in, for reflecting in a new way.
It’s only in retrospect that I’ve been able to see that the last few months have been a process of learning to trust myself again after a long, tumultuous journey with anxiety. Medication was a vital turning point, but these cards have been their own tool, a reminder not only to check in with myself, but of all the potential nourishment in the living world. The messages in the accompanying book were so often reassuring, speaking to connection, rest, resilience, renewal, balance. Above all, plants remind us that everything is cyclical — the ultimate measure of trust. This is especially important as we head into the dark season: this is part of the process; this will pass.
The day after my birthday this year, I did a full “root to seed” spread of cards, as prompted by the deck’s interpretive book. Interestingly, my seed card, which is about my next phase and what’s to come, was that very first card I’d picked with Ateqah: Dogwood, “The Loyal.” (And, incidentally, at a local parkette gathering the day before we had been giving away dogwoods.)
Here’s part of Dogwood’s message, in case you need it:
Dogwood builds core strength and resilience, bolstering our resolve by softening the jagged edges of our story of what is, what has been, and what it is come. We invite space to focus and create when we stop working so hard to steel ourselves against the inevitable pain and struggle in life. Dogwood rewires the nervous system when our fuses are blown. . . . If you have decided that you are a certain way and are incapable of change, Dogwood is a friend that says, You can be whoever you want to be. You can decide today I am new. Today I make different choices; today I am confident and assured. Today I am generous. Every day we decide our own story, we decide how we work with what we have, and we decide how we treat others and ourselves.
Where I started, where I’m headed: a long journey that rolls on. Good thing I have plants to help me along the way.
Otherwise this week, I’m . . .
Savouring: The skittering sound of leaves tumbling down streets; the starlings and robins eating the fruit of the wild grape plant that covers one side of my house. The arrival of the juncos, who bring some cheery variation to the local birdsong.
Tending: I divided and stored the dahlias, and it wasn’t so much of a slog as it can be. I dug a few of my perennials that are in terracotta pots into the ground temporarily in an effort to protect the pots from winter cracking. (This works most of the time, but it’s best just not to put your perennials in terracotta!) I’ve collected the neighbours’ leaves to cover the annual beds and for the year’s compost browns.
Planting: The amaryllis bulb I ordered is coming to life, so I’ve potted it up to enjoy those December blooms. I have one more I recharged in the garden over summer, and I’ll plant that up in a month or so, so I have a couple months of something still blooming indoors.
Harvesting: Native seeds. I’m still harvesting and processing a few native seeds. It’s not too late to throw some down. I’m also processing the last of the herbs I dried (a nice TV-watching activity, if you don’t mind a little thyme on your couch).
Making: My friend Joy gifted me some of her stunning Italian terracotta pots, which are the perfect size for houseplants, but unglazed, and I’m worried that water may seep out through the porous saucer. So, I bought a little Mod Podge, and I’m painting a matte glaze on the inside of the saucer. Presto! Watertight, but the beautiful patina unaffected.
Cross-pollination
“Praise Song,” by Barbara Crooker
Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
despair. Praise what little there’s left:
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn’t cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
