past}present}future: Calendula & The Sun

On negotiating what it means to be in relation while not making yourself small for things to be copacetic

This month’s Tarot Club is going to be thinking about Calendula and The Sun tarot card.

I usually break down the elements section by section but for these two, I want to focus on their relational dynamic and how it speaks to being in one’s best light and what it means to dim our lights so that we can maintain good relations with others.

In general, every relationship is a choice about how we need and want the other to perceive us and then we kind of hope for the best that it all works out. I am starting to feel that negotiating the degrees of that is all we are really doing.

The Sun represents the essential Self, the core of who we are- the gravitational center of the psyche- just as the Sun in our solar system is the gravitational center. And to keep on with some hyper generalization about all we are doing while we are being alive, is that I have personally been thinking, while we are just making all these relational choices, we’re still supposed to figure out who we are in the middle of all of that. No big deal. And the tricky thing about all this entanglement is the push and pull of how bright we are allowed to be. How bright we invite others to be in relation to our own sense of self.

The more our light is overshadowed, parts of ourselves can crack away, and this pairing is also in relationship to all the insanity in the planetary sky (all the Moons, Mercury Retrograde, Chiron Retrograde…etc) so this moment is really calling for an editorial process around whose energy we want around us or not and that is and will continue to for awhile.

To work through all this tension, the bright orange solar-shaped Calendula is almost as if a piece of the Sun broke off and fell to the Earth.

We can see Calendula being specific for people whose inner Sun is dim, covered by the clouds of doubt, uncertainty, and depression.

It is specific when people have lost hope and connection to the core of who they are, and in response, feel lost and out of touch with their vital essence.

I don’t think this is only meant to be interpreted as an intense form of individual lack- there is a spectrum - and also making me think about how retrogrades have a tendency to bring back people from the past and how being in relation to that can remind us how far we have become as well. Obviously, the collective attack on our sense of selves and safety is not making it easier to feel entirely ok and I think it is important to remember that this is being done on purpose.

There are also so many other ways to think about Calendula and the Sun, and we will be talking and doing tarot/oracle spreads around all of that on Tuesday, August 5 at 6pm EST at GOODWITCH studio in person and also virtual. Register here!