6.18.2025: Dispatch #?

"Tomorrow" is such a stretchy word . . .

Jun 19, 2025

Hello everyone.

Today is not the tomorrow I had in mind at the end of Dispatch #6—but it is in fact the day after yesterday. So does that make it a double tomorrow?

Only if counted from the day before yesterday, obviously. But I bring this up because “tomorrow” is one of those words that is fundamentally dependent on its relationship to some specific marker.

For example: The meaning of “tomorrow” is completely dependent on what day “today” is. If it’s Sunday, for example, Tuesday can’t be what was meant by tomorrow.

I’m thinking about this in connection with Tarot because there’s a similarly stretchy relationship between a card you draw and a whole context that surrounds it. The day, the time, the place, the intention, the deck, so on.

When you put several cards into a spread, each one (my view) then becomes altered or refined by its place in the layout, and by other cards in the spread.

That line of thought will take us back toward my ongoing exploration of “Tarot thinking” in general and “pattern recognition” in particular.

But not today!

Remember the orphan kittens? Well the two survivors have made it to nine weeks, and their only purpose in life is to prevent me from writing. It turns out that mother cats do a LOT more than we realize—including teaching kittens how to play together properly.

Anyway . . . I’m extra-behind today, and will have to be brief, so I don’t want to count this as the last day in my planned week of Dispatches. But I do want to share an idea that came to mind in response to ongoing political news.

To start out: Whenever I think about some aspect of Tarot in a big-picture way, I go back to the original images. Lots of significant things happened later—but insofar as we want to understand the essence of Tarot, the 15th century is (my view) our most valuable source of knowledge.

Now here’s my thought . . .

The Tarot is essentially DEI. It includes and treats equally figures from every class of society, and every inclination.

Outliers (Magician, Hanged Man)
Royalty (Emperor, Empress)
Seekers (Fool, Hermit)

And so on. Any one of these folks might end up next to their social opposites on the Wheel of Fortune, or find themselves struck down by the falling Tower. Every one of them may be subject to the rigors of Justice, and all of them will certainly meet Death.

Fast forward: While it’s true that the original models for these figures were all white Europeans, their essential types have been expanded over the centuries to encompass the full range of humanity. Which I suppose will be (another) rationale for some persons to think badly of Tarot.

But for our part, let’s enjoy knowing that Tarot is a document of equality, right back to its very origins.