In late 2020, I drew a card from the Dark Goddess Tarot as my card for the year ahead, 2021. This is a habit I acquired soon after I received this deck, many years ago, as I have found it to be a deck of potency, substance and power. I drew Scylla, Amazon of Water, and briefly wrote about it in a post on my Facebook page. In particular, the message accompanying this card made me feel somewhat apprehensive, given its warning: "Don't let the fears of others drag you down."
At the time, COVID had been around for the best part of the year, and we were fortunate to say that our lifestyle had hardly changed. In part this was due to luck, as our region in Queensland was not affected by lockdowns, and our work not reliant on those parts of the economy heavily impacted by restrictions, such as tourism.
But equally in part, it was due to circumstances of our own making. Over a decade before, around 2007 or so, I started to have an intuition of sorts, that challenging times would one day arrive. To be honest though, you don't need much intuition to understand that infinite economic growth on a finite planet sooner or later leads to catastrophe. Or that treating our waters, our sky, and our land as open sewers is not a sustainable practice long term. My perspective of life changed, and led me to to eventually quit my work, change careers, move countries, get out of consumer debt as soon as I could, and decide to take up the opportunity, together with my partner, to purchase and live on 5 acres, where we planted fruit trees, built a shade house, at times kept chickens, and generally lived what is considered by modern Western standards a rather modest lifestyle, yet one that only a hundred years ago would have been considered an exceptionally extravagant one.
All in all, even with the usual challenges of work, kids, bills, and wider cultural and societal pressures, we lived what I would call a rather bohemian, easy going and chilled vibe. The pandemic only reinforced this was the right decision. I was certain I would never leave.
Until one day when my husband brought up the idea of a potential opportunity for his work, one that would see us move almost 800 kilometres north, to the tropical city of Cairns. Immediately and categorically, I said No, and that was that as far as I was concerned (with a few choice words that are unrepeatable in public).
But the idea kept creeping back, and I started to examine the reasons at the root of my reaction. And the more I thought of it, the more I realised that they were based on security driven by fear.
And while some of those reasons were valid, I ultimately had to admit that I was making a decision out of fear, and I really did not like that. And furthermore, a lot of those fears were not my fears, they were the collective fears of many: health fears, lockdown fears, economic fears, security fears, Orwellian paranoid fears and so on. And of course, in the midst of these realisations, I recalled her wisdom, and opened up to the possibility of a move.
Besides, freedom and adventure sing a sweet song to my dear Sagittarian heart, and the thought of exploring all the goodness of tropical north Queensland left me feeling pretty excited, to say the least (and also in true Sagittarian style, the practical considerations of what it actually takes to pack a a whole household, were blissfully ignored).
And so, as I write this I find myself in a suburban setting, marvelling at the craziness of the past couple of months, and still incredulous of where I am. I have absolutely no idea of where this will all lead, where we will eventually settle for good, or any other plans for the future. It is all a bit nebulous and at times disconcerting*, yet I also recognise how refreshing it all is. If I am to be honest with myself, before our move my creativity had stalled and worse, I was giving my energy to projects that were not truly fulfilling. Leaving our place of safety, my sanctuary as I fondly called it, has allowed me to not only trim out some old deadwood, but to condense what it is that I really want to do and achieve. And most importantly, it has also reminded me that "trusting in the Universe" is far more easily said than done, yet nonetheless holds so true during times of change and chaos. At the next Full Moon, I shall raise a toast to Scylla, for her guidance when I needed it most.
Warm blessings,
Monica
*for the astrologers out there, I am in a midst of a Neptune transit squaring my natal Moon, currently doing a second pass as it retrogrades. Suffice to say, I will never underestimate the potency of a Neptune transit ever again.