This morning, I appeared on a German podcast to talk about my upcoming book on Lenormand. I had set an alarm to wake me up early, but when it went off, I didn’t wake up right away, as I was in the middle of a dream I wanted to finish. As it happens, the dream was one I would loosely term a nightmare, and so, how fitting that today’s Tarot card is the 9 of Blades (Swords), commonly called the Nightmare Card. The RWS version portrays a person who looks to be female, but doesn’t have to be, sitting up in bed, face in hands, with nine swords precariously placed above her head. In Courtney Alexander’s Dust2Onyx Tarot, the card depicts a frightening little creature which is only vaguely humanoid, called Hili. If the creature is trapped, which it can be, if lured by blood and milk, then it can be destroyed by a shaman. The fat of the Hili can then be used as a repellent. As Alexander writes, “Similar to people setting a trap for the Hili, life lures our fears and anxieties out of the darkness so we can face them. What we gain is the wisdom to repel the same negative forces that would seek to disrupt our peace again.”
In my dream/nightmare, I was back at the school where I taught for 30 years. While I loved the students and my work, the workplace itself was racist, oppressive, and demeaning. By workplace, of course, I refer to the tone set by those who were in power, and who lorded their power over students and teachers alike. Some of these administrators had taught for only a few years, and some not at all, before they found themselves catapulted to lofty heights. Often the catapulting was a result of cronyism and nepotism, and so these higher-ups were mostly men, and always white. Here’s an example of what it was like there:
I have worn my hair loc’d for much of my adulthood. Other times, I have worn it cropped very close to the scalp. During one of the periods when I was loc’ing my hair, a principal came up to me and asked me why I was wearing my hair “like that.” I said, “Why do you have on a blue shirt?” He then said I was not permitted to wear my hair the way I had it, and that he would bring the issue in front of the Board of Education. I told him that would be fine with me, and that I would, in the meantime, consult with the NAACP and the ACLU as to what the rules were around how I wore my hair in a public school setting. I went home and made those calls, and both entities assured me I could wear my hair however I wished. I knew that already, but wanted to make sure.
The next day, the principal approached me again about my hair, and I asked him when the board meeting was, so that I could make plans to attend. He just stared at me, so I asked him whether he had put me on the agenda. I also informed him I would have representation at the meeting, whenever it was held, and that I had checked with the ACLU and NAACP already. He stared at me some more. Then he said, “I’ve got bigger fish to fry than to pursue this.” I told him, “I would certainly think so.” And that was that.
Every other day for 30 years, I did this kind of verbal jiu jitsu, on behalf of myself, my students, and my colleagues of color, because the harassment was unremitting. You might wonder why I stayed. Well, because…it was close to home, I had tenure there, the students benefited from what I gave them, my colleagues needed my voice. And, I suppose, because physics tells us that, just as a body in motion stays in motion, it is also the case that a body at rest stays at rest: I took the Booker T. Washington advice, I guess, to “cast down your bucket where you are,” which means to make the best of the situation in which you find yourself.
There is a cost to heeding such advice. It is not advice I would either give or take today. My nightmares tell me so. In last night’s dream, I was back in that place, and people were waging bets on whether my stock was up or down, which would let them know whether I could be of any use to them in fixing some bit of internal political shit that had been thrown their way. As I woke up, I was assuring these people that I was still agile enough to dodge any bullet; that my words were my weapon, and that I keep my weapon honed. But I woke fully before I’d managed to say all that.
In retrospect, I caught a nice case of PTSD from that place. The above vignette is minor compared to the tales I could tell, but then you might get PTSD just from reading them, so I’ll spare you. The Lenormand cards, which, as always, provide detail about my subject matter, which Tarot says is NIGHTMARE, are Fish, Tree, and Key. Fish are emotions, and mine are deeply-rooted (Tree) in that 30 year gulag experience. What, then, might the Key mean?
How may we wear the scars of our experience so that they become more honorable and less hurtful? If we can discover the Key to how to do this, then nothing we will have endured would be in vain.
The Adinkra card, Mpuannum is proof of how gently and firmly Spirit always holds my hand in the writing of these posts; and, too, with what a sense of humor. Mpuaanum literally means “Five Tufts of Hair.” It is a “traditional hairstyle of joy that was worn by priestesses.” Are my locs not a celebration of my Blackness? Mpuannum is “a symbol of priestly office, embodiment of lofty duty to a desired goal.” Did my 30 years in that place not come from a place of duty and obligation to my students’ and Black colleagues’ rights to be seen as the full human beings that we were?
I live differently now, than the way I lived back then. My words are the written kind, and never need to be weaponized, except in the eyes of those who prefer seeing them that way. My life is now full of ease and peace, of love and creativity. The 9 of Blades is simply a reminder that, “Darkness may spend the night, but JOY comes in the morning. Good Morning.
Amen and Ase
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