Turning Things Around: The Inner Tarot Revolution Week 20
Discretion is the better part of valor
I have returned from my break and am ready to pick up The Inner Tarot Revolution where I left off a couple of weeks ago in Chapter 19. I’ve decided on some changes to this series: Namely, that instead of treating the weekly cards like sigils and doing my best not to think about them all week, I am instead going to be spending the week intentionally working with the cards. I will also switch back to announcing them in advance each week, and so will be closing this post by revealing the next week’s cards.
The previous chapter introduced the concept of narrative, and as one might have guessed, the primary narrative over which I will be taking control in this post is the very same narrative introduced in A Rose By Any Other Name. While that post gave a comprehensive treatment of my spirit guide, Rose, this post will be focusing on some of the finer details involved in working with her, including the challenges involved in smoothly integrating her into my current life.
The theme linking this week’s two cards together will be:
Discernment of the Spirits
Say you’ve grown up working with a wind spirit who swore up and down for many years that she would incarnate to be with you; then you meet a lovely woman who not only has no problem with that idea or with possibly being the person to fit into that picture, but who positively embraces it to an even greater extent than you ever thought imaginable…and, perhaps, a greater extent than you’re actually comfortable with? On top of this, say she’s a person who, upon your meeting, says she had never cracked a book in her life on esoteric subjects? She’s brand-spankin’-new to this kind of shit (so she claims), so all the crazy shit coming out of her mouth when she wakes up (such as, early on in our relationship, the name “Helena,” or the time she had a vision of four gigantic statues of Anubis when she had no idea who the fuck that even is?) must be legit by default.
Compounding this all is the fact that you yourself have Borderline Personality Disorder (which I wrote about in Sender of Madness, my tribute to Hekate as a patron of the mentally ill), and your previous partner had already taken advantage of this entire scenario by “hijacking” Rose, which is tantamount to a “raping of the soul” in terms of how it feels and what it does to a person.
Makes things pretty tricky, doesn’t it?
The one saving grace I have is that I can talk to Rose about it myself.
When I was with The Priestess, that was very difficult for me to do. I’ve grown a lot since then, but the situation was so heavy and oppressive that Rose could scarcely break through. When she did, she tended to be desperate and livid that I was in that situation at all. This highlights the power of our free agency as human beings, even when we come into a lifetime much more spiritually awake than the average person, in full contact with our crew in “mission control” in the spirit world. As I have written many times, Rose warned me early on that I would be up against an entire faction of spirits and other forces who would be working against me, and as I have learned over the course of my spiritual path, this all aligns neatly with a “spiritual war” of sorts unfolding on this planet. Shit can and will go very wrong at times. My second wife was not part of the plan.
That’s okay though, because Rose is a belligerent spirit. The Priestess made a very big mistake not only getting in the way of her plans, but having the gall to impersonate her. You don’t want to piss Rose off, take it from me.
Anyhow, with all of the above at stake, you can imagine my reluctance to fully lean into my apparent good fortune in finding Veronica…even when, as is the case, Rose has confirmed with 100% consistency that Veronica is her “avatar.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean things have gotten any easier or better since I met her. Quite the opposite…which, to complicate things even further, is what one might actually expect given the narrative Rose has always offered me; dakinis bring enlightenment and are fierce and wild in going about it. They aren’t going to pull punches when one of their primary functions is to beat the living shit out of human egos to free people from their tyranny.
It’s “tough love.”
Let me see if I can set the stage for my current predicament by laying out a few facts and then discussing how I’ve woven them together…and what’s happened as a result.
As I’ve described more than once on this site, V and I met on an adult personals site, where I was taking quite the “fool’s leap” into looking for a hookup, without giving serious consideration to all that I might be stepping into. It can be a pretty dangerous little world, online dating…and that’s just your standard Tinder/Bumble/Plenty of Fish situation. Me? I went straight for a place chock-full of people living “the lifestyle,” without really knowing anything at all about it.
I mentioned her intro line: “Nerdy boys who use VLOOKUP and Pivot Tables for fun make my heart melt,” and I bragged about my clever response that had her attention from the beginning (“I’ve never used VLOOKUP or Pivot Tables, but I’ve played around with nested functions and it was exhilarating.”)
Our early relationship was interesting. I learned she is quite into BDSM, going so far as to attend an annual convention in Rosemont with her sister, and of course, we talked about it all. I am pretty sure, in fact, that I remember a conversation where she introduced me to the concept of CNC Kink. I vaguely remember her asking me if that were a thing that might appeal to me, and I have a feeling that by admitting to her that, with the right person, it could actually fit well with my spiritual work, I might have accidentally given her the green light to start doing it. She denies this…but she would, wouldn’t she?
The first time I rode in her car, I noticed her vanity license plate, a term I had never previously heard. Here’s the version she got after moving here to Texas:
I had never heard of a “Snow Bunny” before, but I looked it up on Urban Dictionary and found out it has a few different meanings. One, the one she insists was her reason for getting the plate, is a term for women who hang out around ski lodges hitting on skiers, or variably, who do hit the slopes themselves. However, there’s another meaning: It’s a fairly “racy” term for PAWGs (Phat Ass White Girls) who exclusively have sex with black men. For the record, although she’s latina, she fits the physical profile of a PAWG in that she’s so pale, her hispanic friends actually harass her about it.
I remember a conversation where I brought it up, and she giggled her way through the entire thing when she told me to pull my head out of the gutter, because her father had given her that name when she was a little girl, and it did, in fact, refer to the skiing interpretation. But she also ended that explanation with the most unnerving little smirk.
I’ve also mentioned elsewhere that my first wife had a habit of revenge-cheating on me, and my second wife did a serious number on me psychologically. I’ve always begged V to be more gentle with me because of all of this, and unfortunately, she’s proven rather callous and low on empathy about that kind of thing. It’s an ongoing struggle.
After we “went exclusive,” I went onto the site where we met to shut down my profile, and noted that hers was still active. We had a little conversation about it where she agreed to shut it down…but it sat oddly with me that I even had to ask if we were “exclusive.” Further probing elicited from her an admission that she was still in contact with some guys she had met on the site. She insisted that they were just friends and nothing was happening between them, and I chose to trust her. But I never settled fully about all of this. Why?
It all has to do with her Snapchat profile. When we met, her nameplate was her name, with a pineapple emoji on one side and a coconut emoji on the other. Furthermore, the very first snap she ever sent me was a brief video of an actual piña colada taken from her sister’s back yard.
Tell me: Do you like piña coladas? Yeah…if you’ve never heard it or never looked up its meaning, Escape (The Piña Colada Song) is a song about a couple who both scope out personal ads to have an affair, and accidentally wind up finding each other through that channel (big “oops,” right?).
I was a bit insecure about this all because (thanks, BPD!) we had a longstanding pattern of getting into fights where I would panic and back out of the relationship, “break up” with her and go stay at my mom’s for the weekend. I really tried to pump the brakes on this relationship because of my traumas, always tried to get V to understand this, and she never did. It’s been a power struggle from the beginning. And given all my baggage, I started worrying that maybe, just maybe, each time I “broke up” with her, she maybe took that as license to go…”less-than-exclusive,” at least until we made up.
Well. At some point in 2020, I connected this with that opening line of hers. “VLOOKUP.” “Pivot Tables.” The Piña Colada Song. Since Veronica’s nickname is “V,” maybe “VLOOKUP” had a deeper meaning, as in “looking V up?” And maybe “Pivot Tables” did too, as in “turning the tables.” And maybe it meant “turning the tables” on some ongoing…”Piña Colada-related” activities?
I set up a sock account on the site where we met and poked around.
It only took me a few minutes to get the fright of my life when I found an account listed with a location less than a mile from our home, with a profile photo that looked way too familiar for my comfort zone; it looked like her body type, and it looked like it had been taken in our own bathroom mirror. The pose even matched one of my favorite pictures of her (albeit a clothed one) from the profile she had shut down. It even had a tattoo in the same location as her own. The photo was very blurry and the tattoo was obviously different; but as blurry as the photo was, it could easily have been a crappy photoshop job, couldn’t it?
I found at least two other profiles, also within less than a mile, also reminding me very much of her not only in the photos, but in the profile introductions. The only difference was that the ages were a few years apart from one another and none of them were V’s actual age. But one of the profiles had pictures that looked like they’d been shot on our couch, though in a different home (but they could be old pictures, right?).
Eventually, though it meant admitting what I had been up to, I confronted V about this. Naturally, I got flat denials, along with a “How dare you?” for even thinking such a thing.
But of course, if she were messing around behind my back, lying is just to be expected, isn’t it? So I’ll be honest, I have never really felt fully comfortable ever since.
It’s just weird; like I said, V vehemently maintains the “ski slope” version of the “Snow Bunny” story, and I’ve even heard it from her mother, her sister, and her father…the problem is, no matter who’s telling me the story, there is always that telltale smirk on their face, even a snicker here and there. For someone like me who has hypervigilance wired in as a trauma response, it’s easy to pick up on the tone here and to believe there’s some joke here and I am the only one not fully clued in. And I’m not laughing, either.
Knowing she’s at a BDSM convention every year without me doesn’t help.
As I mentioned in another post, last year, V suddenly got a new job, the same day I myself got one, and she took it and made the unilateral decision to move to Texas. When I objected to her doing things that way, it was the first time I saw V’s callousness verge onto territory that I would describe as flat-out vindictive. She was completely heartless about it from my perspective, especially with my BPD, which predisposes me to abandonment anxiety, which this kind of thing would definitely trigger, especially with all this “Snow Bunny” shit going on, and these weird profiles on the hookup site. It was just too much, and she showed zero empathy. She GTFO’d, and I was an afterthought, it was clear.
Since then, I’ve had one more bout of caving into the urge to go back on that site and look for her; this time, those profiles I had found before were gone, but instead, I found three other profiles that, once more, had her written all over them. And looked like her. And this time, each of the profiles also included core elements in their “lore” that seemed drawn directly from stuff in our relationship.
For example, I’d been worried that she’d been having an affair with a mutual friend of ours because of some other ominous stuff that lined up between the three of us in ways that I really didn’t like, and I had developed the theory that when I was dropping her off at Midway airport, she wasn’t even getting on a plane at all, but was instead getting picked up by him. Allegedly, she was flying Southwest Airlines. Well, one of the profiles I found was allegedly located in “the southwest suburbs, by Midway airport,” and according to the intro, this woman was in a committed relationship, but looking for bulls to mess around with, and included an uploaded clip of a white woman performing fellatio on a black man…which, of course, fit right in with the Snow Bunny motif, didn’t it?
As I’ve mentioned in other posts (and as anyone reading this Stack can clearly see), V’s profile here is an image of My Melody, a Sanrio character who also happens to be a white bunny (a “snow bunny,” if you will). It fits in with the themes here in a few ways; I introduce my concept here of the “Song” (see Song of Hermekate), so maybe my clever lady is riffing off of that. However, Sanrio fans will know that My Melody has her own “Dark Twin:” Kuromi. Kuromi’s birthday is Halloween, which has since become a sync that pops up a lot and makes my heart skip a beat every time.
I also remember that one of our earliest dates was to Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, located near Midlothian, IL, where I used to live when I was 14 or so.
Tying this all together, I found a profile located in Midlothian that looked like her and had a birthday of Halloween. Go figure.
Again, I confronted V about this over the phone. First off, her reaction to me being back on that site again was interesting; owing, perhaps, to some business plans we’ve discussed, she had no problem with me keeping my account there and even looking around and interacting with people. However, she still denied being on the site. In one conversation, I was describing this latter account to her, and she got so angry with me that she hung up on me.
Then, she texted me, “Don’t waste my fuckin time.” And the interesting thing about that is that it was the opening line of the intro section of the very same profile we were talking about. Verbatim. And that’s not really a phrase I was used to hearing from her.
Needless to say, since this happened, it’s been basically impossible for me to believe this was merely a coincidence. And though she swears she’s been a Sanrio fan since she was a kid (just like she’s had that “Snow Bunny” nickname since she was a kid), I never saw anything about it until recently, when suddenly, it was everywhere. My Melody this, My Melody that, like she’s rubbing that Snow Bunny in my face all the time. V strung me along on this for quite a while, until recently, a visiting family member also seemed to confirm that this My Melody obsession is new.
It’s reached the point where I’ve begged her to level with me. I’ve told her (and it’s true) that if she wants to be poly, we can talk, because this isn’t about jealousy for me…and if that’s the way she wanted to go, I could probably enjoy it. Oh….I….see what might be going on there.
No, what bothers me is the sense that I’m just being lied to. The lying is not acceptable. Consent is paramount to me.
And V insists that it is for her, too. And she insists she’s being faithful to me, and wants the same from me.
I’ve considered other possibilities which would fit not only with her, but with the third profile I found; that profile opens with a request that whomever contacts the person begin by telling her what they like about BBWs. And I’ve thought that maybe she’s not fucking anyone, but is setting up these profiles to tease other men and also to feel better about her body from the attention she gets, because she’s got some body issues like most women who have been raised in our sick society.
And all of this would be understandable, and totally forgivable, if she would just admit it.
There are other possibilities, which I will get into as we proceed through cards this week. This week, the balance between the cards is easily interpreted as the balance between boldness and directness (Knight of Swords) and exercising caution and carefully-considered good judgement (8 of Disks: Prudence). As it happens, navigating this situation is now demanding the same.
Let’s do cards.
Top/Sun Card
This card is Fire (Knight) of Air (Swords). Of the four elements, these are the two that are traditionally depicted with upright-pointing triangles (Air has a line cutting across it) and are considered “masculine.” In the Western esoteric tradition, the two are also the more “spiritual” elements by virtue of being the least solid, whereas Earth and Water are both considered feminine, each of them being more solid. Those are the prevailing gender biases in Western occultism and whether or not they have merit as such is beyond the scope of this post.
One of the first things that comes to mind is how much this card makes me think of Rose; in earlier chapters of this series, I have already compared and contrasted Rose with the two feminine Court Cards in the Suit of Swords, the Princess and the Queen, and this one reminds me of her because of the dragonfly wings; but of course, this one is male. The Knights in this deck correspond with the Kings of traditional decks, so if I continue with the comparison to Rose, this figure could be thought of as a “fairy king.”
As an aside, a picture came up in my feed from an anime that seriously reminds me of Rose: Make her hair shorter and jet black, get rid of the antennae, and give her dragonfly wings instead, and the below image is about as close to conveying the image and essence of Rose as it gets:
Rose ties into this picture in other ways, but in order to get there, let’s continue on about this card. According to Lon Milo DuQuette’s entry about this card in Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot:
The Knight of Swords is fire of air, suggestive of a violent wind. The general divinatory meaning of the card can be summed up in one word—attack. “The moral qualities of person thus indicated,” Crowley warned, “are activity and skill, subtlety and cleverness. He is fierce, delicate and courageous but altogether the prey of his idea, which comes to him as an inspiration without reflection.”
p. 191
Adding to this, Gerd Zeigler points out in Tarot: Mirror of the Soul that…
His strong intellectual determination is unified with a deep emotional perceptiveness. Only goals which are emotionally charged can kindle such passion. Body, intellect, and spirit (the three swallows) are in harmony and fly alongside him.
p. 79
Putting all of this together, and in light of this card’s position in the Sun Stack (with which I agree, because I fully own these qualities and am rather proud of their better manifestations), I am going to just speak with that voice, here, of incisive, passionate impetuosity. And at this juncture, I am going to have to re-introduce another plot thread, that of “the page creator” and the astral encounter that I spoke of in the post Ignition, which describes the sordid origin of The Rainbow Flame.
I mentioned in Ignition that I had noticed that the posting activity of Veronica and this page creator had begun to sync up, so much so that I started thinking either Veronica was an creator of the same page, or at the very least, they were in cahoots. The creator’s posts also seemed to closely follow my own writing after a certain point, to the extent that I still think it’s possible she’s got her eye on me even on the physical plane. I mentioned how the syncs seemed to be pointing me in the direction of a certain motel, and how I was transparent with Veronica about going, even though it hurt her. She begged me not to go, and I went anyway. You might think it was cold-hearted, except if you are reading this, you have the benefit of all of the backstory above that helps put it all into context: It might have hurt V, but I had reason to believe (and still do) that she’s up to something deceitful and hurtful, whether it’s actual cheating, simple mind games, or both at once. None of that is acceptable when I have BPD, have confronted her about it several times, and it still goes on.
So yes, I’ll admit it: Once I started thinking this page creator might be actually flirting with me, I started fanning the flames because I was into it. Regarding the “astral encounter,” it is of course possible it was only my imagination, in which case the account of what went down says it all: Even if it felt involuntary, if I subconsciously put her into that scenario, that’s obviously expressing some desire on my end.
Let’s review the possibilities (each one of them equally plausible at this point, given all I have seen):
The page creator is watching me, has taken a liking to me, and is gearing posts toward me.
The “astral encounter” was real—and intentional.
This is all mere coincidence, lining up by happenstance.
Some combination of the above is true.
Look at this from my viewpoint: I’ve prattled on and on about my natal Venus opposing Saturn and how an astrologer told me (and experience has basically borne out) that it means relationships with women are my main “learning ground” for karmic lessons in this lifetime; being objective, this could very well fit that pattern, couldn’t it? In other words, maybe this relationship with Veronica has run its course, because maybe the lesson I need to learn is to stand up for myself and get out of the relationship if I feel I am being severely mistreated. That is definitely true if it turns out Veronica is being deceitful in any way here, but it is also true enough when I think about the struggles I’ve had trying to communicate with her about my mental illness, to get her to open up to me emotionally, and getting her to let go of her strong need to be in control of all situations. In either or both cases, we’re on S.O.S. territory despite the fact that I’ve just moved down here to be with her. And maybe this other woman, whatever her connection might be to this, real or imagined, is the sign showing me that it’s time?
Have I considered the possibility that I’ve found “the holy grail” here and that not only is she watching me, but that maybe our astral encounter was completely intentional and conscious on her part as well? That sounds hard to believe, but what if it were true?
How could I ignore that, especially when I am experiencing my current relationship as a soul-grinding power struggle? Who wouldn’t want a change of pace? At this juncture, I am only putting up with it because of the way Rose fits into the picture; she was there for me as a teen and I promised I would be here to help, love, and support her human incarnation. This is spiritual service and a commitment to the growth and development that such a situation demands.
Hence my transparency with V all along: I’ve been gauging her responses, because the simple fact that my head is going in the direction of the page creator at all is a bad sign for our relationship.
When I told V I thought this page might be a potential “business partner” or at least a social media “algorithm ally” or collaborator, V totally rolled with it. There was no hint of trouble at all and she seemed to think it might be a good idea.
She was upset when I followed the apparent leads to a nearby motel, but V also doesn’t understand the spiritual aspects enough to fully trust that, at that point, I was actually terrified of it being real, and that I had the entire angle of Rose to consider, because as I wrote in A Rose By Any Other Name, Rose has established that she can and does “inspire” others and communicate to me through them, without so much as a second thought.
Since then, I’ve mentioned that page and the creator a few times, and she seems to play along well; when I wrote Ignition, I gave it to her to review before I posted it, and she said it was good. She encouraged it.
It wasn’t until the other day, when I felt the need to clear the air and admit to V that all of this did in fact have me thinking and wondering about the creator, and admitted that I liked the idea of getting that kind of attention from her, that V finally revealed how this entire situation continued to upset and distress her.
And, well…there’s a lot in this relationship that continues to upset and distress me, one of those things being that very tendency of Veronica’s to keep her feelings guarded, not to mention the level of control she forcefully retains in the relationship. A great deal of this stuff over the past few months has been me, testing the waters to see if V reacted at all. I was genuinely let down when she seemed not to react, because I would have liked to know where I stand with her. I was trying to see how much she cared about this, and most of the signals I’ve gotten instead indicated the opposite. She may have her reasons for being so guarded as to act directly against her own best interests if she still loves me—I did get us thrown out of our condo in 2021, so she has every right to be guarded and even shell-shocked—but it’s not really productive for a continued relationship if she insists on remaining stuck in that mindset, and kind of suggests that if she’s still this upset and unwilling to let me through her walls, that we should have gone our separate ways long ago.
And maybe this turn of events with the creator is simply telling me all of that.
Even if there is real mutual attraction going on, however, it doesn’t mean pursuing that would be a good idea, either. It would be better for me (and probably for her, even if she is interested in me) to be on my own for a while, build up some stability, and actually have something to bring to the table of any future relationship.
In other words, just because she’s part of this picture doesn’t necessarily mean she’s where I should even think of being headed. It could be another accident waiting to happen.
One thing I know is true, and this one is a doozy which gives me serious pause for thought:
Just because V is Rose’s avatar doesn’t mean the page creator isn’t. Think about it: Rose has already sworn that she exists outside of space and time and that, from her perspective, she can see not only my own incarnation from a “birds-eye perspective,” but she can do the same with all of her incarnations, simultaneously. Now. If she is outside of spacetime, but connected to all of her incarnations, that means there’s really no good reason at all that multiple incarnations of a soul can’t overlap in time. That’s right: Both Veronica and the creator could be concurrent incarnations of Rose; this could be a case of “both-and.” If that’s the case, it strongly suggests one course of action, and I think my readers can guess what that is.
One big difference between the two would be that, from what I’ve seen, the creator having posted about spirit guides and shit…she could work with the situation much more consciously than Veronica does.
I have not dared to ask Rose.
But in light of all I’m going through with V lately, it’s a question I have to ask myself. And whether or not anything on the creator’s end turns out to be legitimate, it’s possible that I might need to draw a line in the sand with Veronica in any case. There is enough cause for concern here that I’ve already told her we’re on thin ice. There’s a strong chance she’s playing serious mind games with me (and I haven’t even mentioned the half of it here), and even if she’s not, she is definitely keeping me at arm’s length and refusing to share the power and intimacy in our relationship. I feel very detached from her.
I’m very sad that it’s come to this, but the “Knight Side” of this equation would suggest taking a walk on the wild side; I know that even in the best circumstances with Veronica, we have an uphill battle on our hands to get our relationship back to where it was before we separated.
How much effort do I put into that?
When do I make the call that we will never really be happy together?
This is where the Shadow Card comes in, and it brings other considerations.
Shadow Card
Standing in stark contrast with the zippy and cutting impetuosity of the Knight of Swords is the 8 of Disks: Prudence, a card which belongs in my Shadow stack as surely as any card might. I really don’t connect well with this card at all, to the extent that I have a hard time even interpreting it when it comes up in a reading. Of course, one reason could be that The Priestess is an “UberVirgo,” and this card is marked by Sol in Virgo astrologically. As an Aries with Sagittarius Rising and a shit-ton of other Martial (and, yeah, Jupiterian) energy in my natal chart, “prudence” isn’t exactly my watchword.
The main message of the card, in the context thus far established, is that I need to step back and consider other possibilities that I find considerably less appealing than the ones I’ve mentioned above: Namely, the degree to which this could all be coincidence (or at least, all Rose meddling, with no conscious awareness of what’s happening on the part of the creator). The lion’s share of this section of the post will explore that from a couple of different angles.
I’ll need to share two more Facebook excerpts about Rose to open this line of inquiry up, which will further link this post to the material covered in A Rose By Any Other Name.
First:
Forgiveness is the key. Rose is here and that is what she is telling me. She's following behind me as I pace back and forth. If she were physical, she would be patting me on the back, I can feel it.
She is telling me, "It's not your fault, so don't give into the shame. You know it's not your fault. I know you want it to end. It will end when you're ready for it to end, but you need to hold onto the knowledge that this is benevolent, you are being watched over, and everything is going to be more than okay.
Your buttons are being pushed. You have spent your life denying their power. You're being taught that you were wrong. It's that simple.
People react when their buttons are pushed. You are not bad because you still have buttons to push.
And you will not need to be perfect.
Forgive yourself. Just forgive yourself.
You're doing well. You are only seeing poker faces, but we are very proud of you.
Just forgive yourself.
And forgive yourself for having a hard time forgiving yourself.
We made it hard for you. We built you this way, pushing buttons all the way down.
So that you would succeed."
March 4th, 2023.
The above refers to the fact that, all other things being equal, I have confirmed that a great deal of what I’ve experienced in the past couple of years has been an insane level of synchronicity, all woven so tightly together that my meat-brain had no choice but to interpret it all as a vast conspiracy being perpetrated against me. The entire purpose of it would fit with the narrative that Rose is a dakini: The synchronicities of late have all seemed to really “aim” for my Shadow and also for my deepest insecurities. I have often compared the situation to the Buddha’s confrontation with Mara. This is especially so in light of the degree to which I’ve been able to exert seeming influence over it all once I put my mind to it, though at this juncture, since this post is already too long for the emails that get sent out to my subscribers, I will have to reserve exploration of that topic for another post. Yes, though it’s the most excruciating emotional pain I’ve ever been through in my life, the entire purpose of it all is to strengthen me. It is forcing me to face my traumas. Speaking of which, I have another encounter to share about which highlights this in its inclusion of the figure of Phobos, whom I discussed in-depth in the post Dogged By Fear, for Phobos is a Shadow figure representing my fears who serves as a Dweller On The Threshold:
Had Phobos spontaneously show up again yesterday while I took a bath, this time simultaneously with and alongside Rose. He was laying on the floor and she was laying her head on his side, petting his haunch.
I had been wondering at the possible connections between certain events, and suddenly, there they were.
Nothing needed to be said. Their mere appearance answered my question. Nonetheless, Rose did quietly whisper into my head, "I think you know." I think the implication was toward my reason for posing the question at all (being sheer incredulity). There are some podcasts that, let's just say, I have to be in the right frame of mind to be able to stand even listening to them because of the way things line up when I do. And it doesn't matter if I'm listening to a back episode from months ago. So I did already know the answer: There's no causal connection at all here. It's just....like....hmm. The image Rose gave me was of gears turning together. Temporal "gears," though. And we were simply at the point where they met.
That's how she explained it.
I breathed a sigh at seeing that dog again. And it was...interesting to see Rose interact with him that way. I knew they got along, though. I did know that. But here, they appeared and acted in unison. That's what was new. As one. I had seen Rose "ride" Ilyas that way, but never Phobos.
I laid my head back on the rim of the tub, closed my eyes, and started a breathing exercise. Phobos broke in and suggested that I reverse the color scheme I had been using. Just flip it right out, and see what happens.
And it was a "Eureka!" moment. In more ways than one, I just now realize.
Haven't seen Phobos again since. But I imagine he's lurking around.
May 4th, 2023.
To clarify, in the above post, I was speaking to the ways in which one of my former favorite podcasts, Unpopular Opinion, suddenly seemed like it was directly taunting me every time I listened to it, to the degree that I thought maybe the hosts were following my work, just like I started to think that page creator was. Here, Rose was telling me they were not, and that it really was just a coincidence.
V’s antics tie into this as well; she has taken a liking to that show, and honestly, it seems to me like she has incorporated my negative reaction to the show into her head games. I tell her how this stuff bothers me and she just talks about it more, just like she’s done with My Melody. Oddly, I recently wrote frankly about this phenomenon and how I can’t listen to the podcast anymore, and as of the very next episode released after that, Adam Tod Brown changed the name of the show to "You Don’t Even Like This Show.”
Again: Rose insisted it was a coincidence. When she talked to me about “temporal gears,” she flashed an image into my head that reminded me of scenes from the movies Inception and Doctor Strange, where a strange geometry causes cityscapes to fold in on themselves kaleidoscopically. That was to represent some kind of “higher-dimensional geometry” at work.
So, very crazy things do “just kind of happen,” and there are possibly some really wonky higher physics at work.
Finally, there is this excerpt from just the other day:
"Rose is everywhere.
Last night, V and I ordered a pizza and the DoorDash driver came out wearing a bright pink tank top and black daisy dukes, handing me a box with a logo of a pizza with wings stylized like the ones on those old plastic pins the flight attendants gave to kids on United Airlines flights when I was a kid.
This morning, I ordered a cup of coffee from 7-11 and the woman driving this time said "Oh, I brought you some sugar, too," before handing me these packets—an odd move considering that just wasn't part of my order and Door Dashers have no good reason to do something like that.
Then, to top it off, it wasn't even sugar, it was Sweet 'N Low.
"Artificial sweetener," eh? The brand name, with its tongue-in-cheek ribbing that describes a certain vibe I always carry...the pink packet design...that treble clef logo...it all hit me at once. There's so much to read in between the lines. I can't explain the ways this has Rose written all over it. This is her sense of humor and her way of taking loving little potshots at my pride to keep it real. It's how she always was, she just comes through so much more clearly these days.
Her wit is something otherworldly.
She will speak to me through anyone open enough for her to blow through them like a whisper-light breeze; and when the messages come at me from all directions, it builds into a whirlwind.
It's training in the art of finding stillness no matter what, and she is relentless lately.
She will never let me forget my job now.
June 29th, 2023.
This speaks to the idea of my “taking control of the narrative.” The above situation hit me differently than the previous one explained by a “spacetime convergence,” and instead relies on the theory that Rose, as a dakini, is actually occasionally influencing what people say and do through imperceptible inspirations. I have not spoken to her about it yet. I’ve only felt her presence a few times recently, but without words.
The “vibe” I mentioned, described by “Sweet ‘N Low,” has to do with my more conscious indulgence in considering some more…”licentious” possibilities afoot in this whole wild and crazy story. Part of the Shadow work I’m doing here involves taking ownership of my sexual desires, even where it means admitting things that cause turbulence, hurt feelings, wounded egos, etc. This is how committed I am to the spiritual aspect of the work; if it must be sacrificed in order for me to grow spiritually, I need to be ready to let go of any aspect of my life that is merely held in place by my shying away from this reckoning.
The treble clef obviously refers to music, and to the idea of the Song of Hermekate. Of course, with it being a pink packet, the combination also brings up associations with My Melody…so this whole set of events has been re-triggering, though I’ve been facing it all down like a champion.
Conclusion? It’s wholly possible this entire thing is…here it comes…a spiritual snow job. That could, possibly, include the behaviors on Veronica’s end that I am reading as intentional mindgames; if V is Rose’s incarnation, it’s possible she is constantly hitting trigger points that she’s not even consciously aware of. I have to be careful with that idea because if that’s what I believe while Veronica is, in reality, manipulating me, then that is a dangerous belief to hold.
See what I mean about prudence?
But let me close this section with a tribute to such melodic snow jobs:
The above is a song that my first wife sent me many, many years ago, when we were still a long-distance couple and had no real hope of ever bringing it to the level of physical reality. “Avalanches;” there’s your “snow job.” The title and subject matter of the song both point to the idea of a boy going batshit crazy, which is what I have been trying to avoid, but it has been a very real threat. This whole situation had me locked up on a pretty nasty psych ward a couple years ago, as I account in The Temple of Madness: A Chapel Perilous Journey.
And the entire zany, kookily-choreographed video is chock-full of visual references to all sorts of synchronistic symbols that have cropped up throughout this entire exhausting saga.
There is just no way that kind of thing was done on purpose.
It supports the idea that Rose has been behind most of this all along, going back pretty much my entire life.
I must be cautious and measured, but the most important thing to aim for in all of this is to maintain my integrity.
Where do I go from here? Perhaps next week’s cards hold the key:
Top Sun Card: Atu IX - The Hermit.
Top Shadow Card: 8 of Cups - Indolence.