October 2021 “We Are Individuals in Communities” Divination

Obligatory context: In 2020, due to feeling a lot of social burnout, pessimism, and pain about our wider polytheistic communities, I started doing a divination reading every three months about the polytheistic communit[y/ies]. The point of this divination, like most divinations I do, is to highlight growth areas that we may be missing that prevent us from being our best. My hope is that those who have a hunger and need for this will serendipitously find it.

💛 I don’t have any credentials, so please take everything with a grain of salt. 💛

The question: What course of action should [people in] the Western polytheistic revival communities take over the next three months to improve ourselves?

I used the Girls Underground Oracle, and questions work best for this deck when they are phrased in ways that focus on the unfolding of a narrative or process, like a story. A single die comes with the deck, and this type of reading uses the die to set the number of cards to draw. This time, I was told six. I made sacrifices to Apollon and asked him this question. After using the Girls Underground Oracle, I did something new — a single draw of a Threads of Fate oracle card to ask for guidance about how to appropriately cultivate right relation towards one another.

Hail to the God whose harmony is at once obscured and vividly luminous, found in those moments we close our eyes and come to rest under your watchful, adept gaze. 🙌

Here are the cards:

1. She loses her way. (#17)
2. Time is running out (#30)
3. She stands apart. (#1)
4. She discovers who she is (#37)
5. She leaves home (#4)
6. She must solve a riddle or puzzle. (#29)

When I first looked at these cards on Monday afternoon, they seemed like a jumble, much like my Monday had been (for a variety of reasons). I trusted that these six cards would come into focus, and cohesion did happen as I sat at the shrine writing out thoughts while the incense burned down.

The first card is an opportunity. The companion book indicates it can mean that we need to refocus on what matters and stop straying from what is important, which bodes well for just starting out. It calls to mind determination and focus if read in that way. It could also be read as a literal losing of one’s way — perhaps, when read with the second card, it indicates a frantic, fruitless attempt in which we are aware of how much time we have left and how impossible it is to do all that must be done. The first step to stopping an unproductive loop is to know that the loop is happening. Are we focusing on the right things?

Regardless, the second card warns that we need to find the opportune moment and that this moment is fleeting. Perhaps we only have a brief amount of time to recalibrate before we have truly lost our way. Perhaps we need to avoid decision paralysis, over-commitment, and distraction. What if we fully commit to making a decision and seeing it through?

The third card reminded me of our situation as a whole. Many of us in revivalist polytheisms are isolated individuals, and we can forget that we need to confidently draw on our own resources and cultivate ourselves to discover the wellsprings of creative strength within — a common tendency is to seek validation from others due to this lack. Linked with the fourth card, which focuses on self-discovery, I see room for a journey to the roots of our identities — what is similar to others, what is different, what is us, and what is just accumulation. Sometimes division is necessary just so we can define who or what something is and bring it back into proper harmony again. I am optimistic about these cards.

The fifth card encourages us to push our comfort zones. Especially after the self-identity/discovery processes of the third and fourth cards — finding our home base again and anchoring ourselves in it — leaving home does not necessarily mean being disconnected from our roots. We order our interior world and then progress on to our exterior world.

Riddles and puzzles frequently come up when I draw cards from this deck. The sixth card asks us to bring these inner resources to bear on some kind of problem. The problems that matter in our lives (and in our religions in general) are usually very intricate ones, and shying away from them without even an attempt is not a good thing. Now may be a good time to put fresh eyes on a back burner project that you thought was a lost cause.

Threads of Fate is a newer deck for me, and I’ve been using it for some time as a personal divination check-in tool. It fit my need for a deck of cards that was oriented towards identifying constructive changes that should be made. To recap, I asked it for advice on how we come into right relation with one another, and it gave me The Shadow. This card invites us to investigate our blocks, subconscious habits, coping mechanisms, false limits/beliefs, shame, and the ways that these impact our lives in positive and negative ways. We have a lot going on below the surface that needs to be sorted through. This card underscored the dynamics in the main Girls Underground reading.

I hope that this was useful. I don’t know who will come across this page and what le will take away from the divination, so I encourage you to ponder the meanings of these cards and puzzle through what they mean to you. Feel free to take or leave my commentary, too!

The next divination will take place in early January.

🔮