On my YouTube channel, I was recently asked by a male viewer whether I would consider having more male guests for my Sunday Conversations. He reasoned that “people like to see themselves represented,” and that it would “better balance the energy.” I had not thought to recount this incident. Then I drew our cards for today’s article, and realized that Spirit knows how front of mind this viewer’s words have been for me in the last twenty-four hours. I don’t yet know what it is I am going to say, but I do know Spirit will give me the words. Let’s see what I am given:

Nyasha Williams’ Black Tarot World (XXI) was the first card I pulled. In the more traditional Smith-Waite deck, a naked woman holding two wands or batons, dances in the center of the card. Here she is:

She’s having fun, I think, given that she is celebrates one cycle ending and another beginning. I love that for her. But the Black Tarot, as usual takes the card for a different spin. Here’s a closeup:

A Black woman, whose hair is what I’ll call “loc goals” is dressed in green and stands against a green background as she waters and feeds a green planet. Even her locs stay theme-consistent, as our gardener understands that her very body and mind are the rich soil which feeds the branches that spring from her scalp. Everything about her is life-giving, life-affirming, life-sustaining. The existence of every person on earth is evidence of her fecundity and her healing wisdom. She is complete unto herself, the Alpha and Omega. In the Tarot, she follows the Judgement card, so she also understands herself as not at all or ever exempt from Ultimate Judgement. Ultimate Judgement, however, does not include any and all who would have their say about how and why and when she does what she does in the way that she does it.

That said, were she to have read my male viewer’s comment, she would have gently placed her watering can on the ground. She would have put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. She would have said with fierce firmness laced with a kindness that might not be recognized as such:

“Okay, here’s what we’re NOT gonna do…”

As “the ink, the author, the margin” of my space here and on YouTube, as George W. Bush would say “I am the Decider.”

If the World (XXI) speaks to the end of one cycle, then I want to end the one where Black women are expected to accommodate, cooperate, validate, step up, step down, or step aside; the one where we make ourselves small in service of the other’s desire to appear large, make ourselves large in service of the other’s desire not to be targeted. When Black women say we are drinking our water and minding our business, part of what we mean is that we are watering our own soil, tending our own gardens, plucking out and composting dry, dead leaves, old habits, old acquiescence to old expectations for how we can make ourselves more palatable to whoever it is thinks we are, in myriad ways….consumable.

I invite people to my space on YouTube whom I find interesting, articulate, adept at whatever their metier might be. Sometimes these are men; to date, more often they are women. I find no imbalance here that is in need of rectification or recalibration. Nor would I go to someone else’s platform and suggest they need to do anything other than what they have chosen to do. Are not most spaces of power and influence male-dominated? Are not those spaces increasingly inimical to the voices and influence of women? Is there not a concerted move afoot to keep women poor and pregnant, powerless and preyed upon? The only men I would consider having on my channel understand this to be so. I see no line of them at my door asking to come in and say so. Just saying.

So, if that is the cycle I am ending, what is the one I am ushering in, with my watering can and my aspirationally down-my-back locs? Lenormand gives us a hint with Mice, Letter, Scythe:

There’s a quote that made the rounds several years ago:

“Speak, even if your voice shakes.”

I love that. It is Lenormand’s lesson: Even in the midst of fear and anxiety and worry (Mice) about what people might say, tell (Letter) the truth. Decide (Scythe) in every moment to be the paver of your own path, whether that path is YouTube or Substack, or life itself.

Adinkra is the encourager, with Sesa Wo Suban, which is the symbol for “Change Your Attitude.” As we who drink our water and mind our business recalibrate our relationship to ourselves and the larger world, may we know ourselves to be the gardener in today’s Tarot card: life-affirming not only for others, but also and always for ourselves, no longer Black women whom Zora Neale Hurston recognized with breathtaking accuracy as “The Mules of the Earth.” May we know and exercise our right to curate our space, both in the world and in our own hearts. May the world acknowledge this as our birthright. Or else, may the world feel the sting that will come if they do not.

Amen and Ase,

Erika

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