Nonna Terra Tarot is a Gemini!

I offered readings under the name Nonna Terra for the first time on June 6, 2019. That makes Nonna Terra Tarot’'s lifetime number a 6, and our lifetime card is the Lovers. I wrote the following essay for my monthly e-newsletter back in January, 2022, a Lovers year.

VI The Lovers: Loving in 3D

In late May, 2019, I sat in meditation with The Lovers card. It was a gorgeous day here in Mni Sota Makoce, also known by the colonizer name Minneapolis, MN. The sky was bright, open, clear, and vast, full of light and warmth from the sun. The trees were green again, the birds were chirping, and city life was vibrant and moving all around the window I sat by to contemplate this card.

By contrast, I was a storm. I sat at my window, angry, depressed, and activated. I was about to launch Nonna Terra in June of that year, and I wanted to feel excited about it but I mostly just felt terrified. I remember trying to focus on The Lovers card, desperately working to clear away the disturbing thoughts and images intent on disrupting my peace, and feeling frustrated and confused, getting nothing clear, nothing substantial, nothing soothing, nothing at all.

I threw the card across the room, or I tried to, and even that was unsatisfying, falling flat at my feet instead of flying as I’d hoped it would. In a huff, I pulled on some shoes, grabbed my keys and headed outside for a walk.

At first, everything was terrible. My knees hurt, and my ankles, and my lower back. I felt a little light headed, too. Disoriented. I remember feeling worried that my neighbors would assume I was drunk based on how my body was moving. I took myself to a little park not too far from my apartment and sat down on a bench. I wanted to cry but everything was all stopped up. Stuck. Blocked.

I looked up at the sky and took a deep breath, and then something remarkable happened. I felt some awe, some wonder at the wide expanse of perfect, gorgeous blue high above my head. It really did take my breath from me, and I found myself gasping. Juxtaposed over the patch of sky my mind’s eye projected an image of a mirror, and immediately I knew what Prozia Rosmarina was trying to tell me: that the awe and wonder I just felt as I turned my attention to the gorgeous, glorious sky is how she and all loving Ancestors feel when they see me, when they see us.

And that is what did it – it broke up the blocks of ice and debris around my heart space and let me cry it all out. I felt quite literally moved, opened, cleared. In just one tiny pinhole moment, everything that had been stuck began to flow again. After crying for a little bit of time, letting the sky in, I felt softer, quieter, calmer. My nervous system began to settle.

In this way, Prozia taught me how to practice receiving love from the Divine, from the Sacred dimension, the dimension of Spirit and of the Ancestors. In this way, Prozia taught me something true and important about The Lovers message. I have had many experiences since, experimenting with The Lover’s advice, and I consistently return to this card when I am feeling stormy, prickly, and in those times when I feel incapable of compassion or empathy. In those times when it seems impossible to give grace to others, or to myself, I turn to The Lovers. In those times when it feels like the whole world is out to get me, I turn to The Lovers.

The classic Lovers image created by Pamela Coleman Smith looks very similar to the image on the much older Visconti-Sforza deck. Both include a kind of trinity. As I sift through the remnants of my Catholic upbringing for bits I might want to hold on to, the concept of “trinity” is one of those scraps I still find supportive. Not the way I was taught, though – not the father-son-holy spirit kind of trinity, but a kind of trinity that might be more like self-other-Sacred/Divine. The idea that one thing can actually be (at least) three different things feels very queer to me.

The idea that I can be something that isn’t “man” or “woman”, for example. The idea that I can be something that isn’t quite “straight” or “gay”. The idea that life is not actually about binaries or dichotomies at all, but is much more nuanced, always with at least a third way. The idea that when we are caught in the space between two options that are not quite right, we might not have to settle for one or the other, but can look for something in a third direction – all of this, to me, is what “trinity” is all about.

As an Air card, and one that coincides with Gemini energy and season, The Lovers card is also a reminder that we must choose love, that we must commit to a theory of love, a love ethic, as beloved, recent Ancestor bell hooks taught me via All About Love many years ago. (Love and gratitude to you, bell hooks.)

Gemini energy, associated with “twin” imagery, can sometimes lead us into a world of polarities (right/wrong, good/bad, worthy/unworthy, but also trans/cis, BIPOC/white, queer/hetero, poor/wealthy, etc.). Gemini energy can also motivate us to gather more information, to seek alternative options, to lean into a both/and philosophy. This can support us in finding a third possibility, a middle ground, a new direction where we might not have to choose between two distinct, rigid options. The trinity imagery on The Lovers card always reminds me of this truth: there is always at least a third option, another way of thinking about something, a reframe that can support us in deepening and strengthening our capacity for love.

On the personal level, we are invited to practice loving in at least two directions (receiving/inward & offering/outward) and at least three dimensions (self, one another, and the Divine/Sacred). We are capable of giving and receiving compassion, empathy, collaboration, respect, connection, trust, intimacy, vulnerability, connection, etc. in all three dimensions. The Lovers card is always a reminder that we are capable of choosing to live by these values over the ones held up by capitalism & empire (competition, individualism, isolation, protection, self-preservation at any cost, etc.). The Lovers card goes even further and teaches me that when we practice loving in any one of the three dimensions, we benefit in all three dimensions.

I tell this story often when reading Tarot and The Lovers card pops up, so some of you likely have heard it before. I have a little test I use to help me decide in which direction and which dimension I am most capable of choosing love and living by a love ethic. As a serious introvert with lots of embodied patterns that align with the values of white supremacy and other oppressive ideologies, and with a fierce commitment to changing those patterns and living by a love ethic, I find myself caught between my values of interdependence and community and my deep desire to pretty much always just be on my own, not needing any help from anyone, and keeping myself to myself. I tend to choose to be social anyway, even if I’m seriously irritable and cranky, and I do a ton of work to keep that to myself and just act happy so I can maintain this friendship/partnership/whatever. Even the impetus to fake it is a good sign I’m low on my capacity for choosing love, as ideally I could be with a friend AND be cranky, trusting that I can receive empathy and kindness from them instead of the punishment my body-mind expects.

I know that a lifetime of hiding my bad moods has taken its toll, and so I want to more often choose to allow myself to just be alone, to take the time I need to recharge, so that I can have more capacity for being present and available for my relationships, instead of feeling like I’m just going through the motions necessary to keep the relationship intact.

So, when a friend asks me to meet up and spend time together, I usually say yes and put it on my calendar. And then, when it comes time to get in my car and go to the meeting, I really pay attention to how it feels to be getting ready, to go, to drive there. If on my way over I can make it five blocks or so without flipping any of the other drivers the middle finger or screaming obscenities out the window at perfect strangers – if I can choose compassion and empathy for the driver who (probably accidentally) cut me off, if I can go to the assumption that this person is not actually trying to end my life right now, then yeah it’s a pretty good day for choosing love and I can keep my plans and trust I’ll be present and available for my friend and that relationship. This is me practicing loving in the direction of the other: choosing to interact when I have the capacity for empathy, and choosing to practice loving in a different direction if I find I am unable to do that.

If this happens, and I cancel my plans, I might choose to practice loving in the dimension of the self. I might come home, take a hot shower, watch something funny, or do something else that might soothe and comfort me, that might support me in loosening the tightness around my heart and bring me back to a place of being able to choose love, might help me make space to receive love. And usually, this works and is helpful and I feel better and can reschedule with my friend.

But sometimes, it does not.

Sometimes, the inner critic, the inner abuser, the inner oppressor is just too loud. Sometimes I can’t actually enjoy the silly tv show that usually makes me laugh, because of that voice inside telling me I’m being lazy, that I shouldn’t have cancelled with that friend, that soon I’ll have nobody who knows or cares about me, that I’m going to go completely broke if I’m not working hard on something right now, etc. When that happens, this is a good sign that I am unable to give or receive love for myself right now.

For most of my life, I have felt like a tennis ball bouncing from one of these hard places to the other – unable to bring love to myself, unable to bring love to others. Unable to receive love from myself, unable to receive love from others.

And then the Lovers card, and Prozia, and the Ancestors came together to teach me about loving in this third dimension, the dimension of the Sacred, the Divine. There is another way to practice loving, and if I practice loving in the Sacred dimension, if I practice offering and receiving love from the sky, the trees, the prairies, from art, from a yoga practice, a meditation, a prayer, in so doing I can slough off some of the crusty, old protections around my heart and allow some bottled up emotion to move through and make space for something different to be integrated.

For me, loving in the Sacred dimension is about that tiny little moment when I was able to see the sky and feel the wonder and awe rise up and soften me. When I felt and believed Prozia telling me that she is in wonder and awe over me, allowing myself to receive some Divine, Sacred love. This doesn’t happen every time I look at the sky, but honestly it does most times, now that I have brought some intention to it, through a ritual practice of sky gazing before entering an indoor space, and after leaving one. It also has happened through a walk along the river, a visit to an art gallery, through the process of making art myself, and many other instances.

2022 is a Lovers year. To me, this means we are likely, collectively and personally, to have many opportunities to practice choosing to give and receive love. The energy of The Lovers card supports us in doing so. It is my sincere hope that every single person reading these words can experience what it is to receive Sacred love. We receive this kind of love every moment of every day, but without the intentionality, without inviting it in, we might not notice how doing so supports us in loving ourselves and one another better and more deeply.