THREE OF CUPS
I hope that you can see something green and lush, like a houseplant, or a forest, as you read this. It’s a humid grey-green day here, one that makes me think of the melancholy of late summer rather than the freshness of spring. It’s a good day to learn a lesson from the Three of Cups about the sticky, gooey connectedness of all life, and to surrender into this season teeming with chaotic life.
Three of Cups
Three is a powerful number in many magical and esoteric traditions. It’s the number that represents the holy trinity in Christianity, and the Oedipal nuclear family in psychoanalysis, myth, and fairy tales. If you wish for something, you might repeat your incantation three times. If you're wise, you won’t repeat “Bloody Mary” three times while looking into a mirror.
Cups are associated with the element of water, as I wrote about a couple of weeks ago on the Page of Cups, but the liquid this week feels closer to the ooze of blood, than an oceanic dreamscape.
In the Modern Witch deck, we see three figures who might be friends, lovers, a coven, or a band ready to perform. There are tents set up and ready to offer rest: this could be a campsite, a music festival, or a magic ceremony. I miss feeling the communion of these events, particularly since becoming sober, but Three of Cups reminds us that the enmeshed stickiness of the world is always available to us. The three figures have different body shapes and skin tones, and their styles of dress are distinct: one is wearing a cute neon minidress and heels, one wears a mesh dress over white separates, another is dressed in mermaid scales with flowers in their hair. They hold pink chalices high, their arms crossed, touching but separate. Their clothes pick up the greens of the earth and sky, with the pink of the chalices reflected in their hair and jewellery. Their expressions are relaxed but unsmiling—a serious ritual is unfolding. All are needed, and no one is left out. The Three of Cups is a card of collaboration, friendship, and symbiosis; a joyful card that reminds us to ask others when we need help, and to accept help when they offer it.
As writers, are there places where you have found the relative solitude of the pandemic world comfortable in some ways, and feel unsure about the pressure to move into other modes of being? Are there places where you feel a deep connection with your own work, a tendency toward self-reliance, and an absorption that feels dangerous to let go? How might you overcome fears around sharing work and being vulnerable?
Fractals
I have been reading two books about shadow work this week, both influenced by Jung (by way of Freud). Debbie Ford's The Dark Side of the Light Chasers has expanded my understanding of what love and compassion might be. She suggests that we spend time meditating on the worst people, the ones who make us angry, sad, disgusted. That we find what it is in that person that we deeply dislike and look for that quality in ourselves, or even the possibility of that quality, from there we can practice radical compassion and communion with them. Carolyn Elliott's Existential Kink is an updated version of this, which begins with a provocation (what if you are turned on by your own disastrous behaviours) and takes it to an extreme. I was struck by an unusual interpretation of the myth of Hades and Persephone in Existential Kink that reinstates Persephone's autonomy by reading her decision to eat the six pomegranate seeds as a deliberate act: she wanted the chaos and darkness as well as the joy and light. There are critiques to be levelled at these books (victim-blaming, and a persistently weird case of fatphobia in Dark Side of the Light Chasers), but also some interesting work on duality, and on the joy, and yes, kinky pleasure of the dark side.
The fractal theory of the universe (something I first came across through reading Jurassic Park as a teenager, and have been a bit obsessed with ever since) suggests that every action is a microcosm of a larger pattern of actions, these patterns repeat over time in history, but they also repeat in physical space (cut a rock in half and the pattern is an echo of the larger mountain it is cut from). By applying this fractal theory to humanity, Ford and Elliot claim that we are already in profound communion with all other humans, and each one of us is capable of the same range of dark and light behaviours, it is a matter of circumstance and context that determines the outcomes.
What if we uncovered those feelings that had been banished by shame? What if it was okay to admit we want people to read our work, and to tell them that it exists so they can do that? It’s not narcissistic or arrogant to want to communicate through our words. We can’t do it alone.
Community
This week my writing has mostly been feedback to other writers. The Three of Cups has allowed me to pause and reflect on the meaning of this kind of writing: a form of communion and conversation and an opportunity to see work as it transforms: the alchemy of workshops. I have also taken a vicarious pleasure in two friends finishing books whose seeds were planted several years ago.
I'm nervous about re-entering the world, and I know that many of you who are immuno-compromised, neurodivergent, disabled, or have chronic illness might feel similarly. I'm also aware that for so many of you there hasn't been a break at all, and you've been unable to isolate, separate, or shield for work or other reasons beyond your control. This feels like a moment to ask the Three of Cups energy to help us be compassionate to ech other whatever our circumstances, and however we feel about this slow shift to a world with more physical connection. Being around others in a way that feels safe to our bodies and nervous systems allows for the process of co-regulation, an important tool in trauma repair. The Three of Cups asks us to learn how to be together again, to be vulnerable, to ask for and receive help with grace while honouring our boundaries.
I hope you all have access to writing community in your lives. Whether that is with one other person, or many, online or in person.
Writing Prompts
Who can you share your current work with? What feedback are you open to, and what would help you to move forward with your project? Could you be explicit about the most helpful feedback that you need, even if that feels a little scary?
Whether you're writing nonfiction, poetry, fiction, memoir, or anything else, can you find the smallest unit of the work and create an emotional graph for it? This could be a poem, a scene, a section etc. Take a blank notebook page and plot out the emotions in the work. If you have multiple characters, try using different colours for this, and se how they overlap. If there are lots of whiplash shifts, consider how this might be challenging in communicating to the reader, if there is a flatness, is there a way you can deepen the emotional charge?
Writing Rituals
Create an altar for your work. make space for your notebooks, pens, books that inspire you, your own books if you have them, images or moodboards that reflect the projects you're working on. You might also want to add objects that represent the four elements: a candle for air/fire; a dish of clean water; a vase of flowers for water; crystals, stones, or soil for earth. Spend at least ten minutes every day at your altar, allowing intuitive messages to come to you about your project. This is a space you can share your work, even when you are alone.
Write a spell, prayer, or incantation for daily use at your altar.
Channel the energy of the Three of Cups and go to a green space to do some forest bathing. If you can't get to a forest, it could be a garden, a park, or some woodland. Spend thirty minutes to an hour sitting in the green space, listening to all of the sounds, taking in the scents, the temperatures, and the colours. Don't be tempted to do anything else.
Tarot Spread or Journalling Prompts
Please use these questions however you find most supportive. You can as these questions of the tarot deck, or you can use them as prompts for journalling.
Where can I share my work? With a nourishing circle, or trusted friend? In an online community? On my altar? Submitting to a publication or website?
What would be possible if I shared this work?
Where will this sharing ask me to grow, evolve, or transform?
Have a sticky, luscious week.