Ronda Snow's Blog, page 7
January 22, 2017
Gift in a Big Gold Bow
More opinion….just so you know
When are we all going to learn?
Maybe this is why older people are less flexible in their opinions: we’ve been around this block. A bunch of times.
Personally I’ve had it, and I’m not willing to make another lap. I’ve listened to the right wing ad nauseam. I’ve tried every way I can muster to hear them and look at their view with fairness and compassion. Hell, I’m related to them. All of my blood relative are conservative christian right wing republicans….every. last. one. I have a real motivation to be careful, kind, and tolerant – in spite of their narrow, often bigoted, often racist, theocratic point of view.
The problem dealing with fundamentalist christians and other such conservatives is the way they are…to a person…utterly unable to separate themselves from abstract ideology. I’ve been around these people for over 50 years now. It isn’t just that one uncle at Thanksgiving. It’s all of my family, all of the time. Trust me, they think that if you disagree with their right wing politics, then you disagree with their total individual person. If you disagree with their religion, then you are a bad person whether they say it to your face or not. If you reject their views, then you reject them individually, as a person, and they take offense at that – no matter how kind and rational you state your different point of view. No matter how calm and rational you are, no matter how logical your argument may be, no matter how much you reassure them it isn’t personal, they go into some iteration of apeshit over anyone who doesn’t think like them no matter how kind or or calm or reasonable you may be.
I know. I’ve tried. For decades.
Lately, when it comes to national events, I try to fit what is being said into the biggest picture I can. Fitting all the pieces together helps me see when a fair point is being made, which I’m more than willing to acknowledge when it happens. Big pictures help us consider other perspectives a little easier than narrow views in my experience.
My big picture looks like this:
I’ve been watching American politics and political news (via a high school civics class) since the Carter administration, voting regularly since Reagan.
Donald Trump is the Republican wet dream. Donald Trump is every single Republican rooster rolled into one and coming home to roost. Donald Trump is the Republican’s gift to America wrapped up in a big gold bow.
There have been insidious threads of theocracy, of civil rights violations based on religious beliefs (anti-reproductive rights, anti-lgbtq rights, anti-science, anti-intellectul) ever since Jerry Falwell crawled out of the slime, maybe earlier.
Trump parrots all the (now proven to be baseless) claims against the Clintons and against Democrats that all the right wing Republicans spewed in the 1990s.
Trump explicitly and openly speaks all the racist, bigoted ideas that the Tea Party and their ilk implied in the 2008 race and since.
Remember the signs portraying President as an African “witch doctor”?
WV voted almost unanimously for Trump. Remember WV? They are the same good folks who voted for Clinton almost unanimously in 2008, with little old ladies railing against “the Hussein” who was “a Muslim” (I grew up in WV, and still visit family there frequently. I’m here to tell you the Daily Show with Jon Stewert captured the situation better than any of us would like to admit. The women in his clip could blend in to the family reunion un-notied. Hell, we could be related for all I know)
If one were to think of the Trump administration as being a mindless puppet of both Russia but more so of the far right, all the pieces still fit seamlessly together. Remember, it was Mitch McConnel who said their top political priority “should be to deny President Obama a second term” before leading that party to obstruct Congress from doing the people’s work for 8 years.
When are we going to learn? Time and time and time again there have been calls for bipartisan cooperation. Time and time and time again the Republicans have punched us in the face. Time and time and time again the right wing base has been nothing but obstructionist. Time and time and time again the Republicans have punched goodwill in the face.
How many bloody noses do we have to endure before we begin to protect ourselves from a skull fracture?
#WagePeace #FierceCompassion
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January 20, 2017
The Buck Stops at the Ballot Box
Mature Audiences only
What follows is an honest, unvarnished, curse filled, first amendment protected personal opinion. If it angers or offends you, GOOD.
Come back another day and we’ll get back to the usual topics. TODAY IS NOT NORMAL. Today is a day to speak for greater purposes. I hope you will do the same.
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Harry Truman was wrong.
The buck doesn’t stop in the oval office. In America the buck stops at the ballot box.
If you voted for Hillary Clinton, thank you. We are the raw majority of Americans who voted. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t let bullshit spin about the Electoral College distract you from the fact that the majority of people who cast a ballot voted for the most qualified candidate. I like to think that means most voting Americans are intelligent, decent people.
If you voted for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, nice try. I’m sure your heart was in the right place.
If you are eligible and able, yet still didn’t vote….fuck you, you lazy self-absorbed dumbass. How dare you leave the rest of us out here twisting in the wind while we do the one thing most people can do to keep the country sane for both of us? You should be ashamed. I want to say keep your pathetic mouth shut because you have no right to complain, but truth is we need you, even now. It’s never to late to speak up for peace and justice, even if your lazy ass didn’t vote.
If you voted for Donald Trump you are either deeply evil, profoundly gullible or both. I won’t “unite” with you or any other stupid, fascist, racist bigot. If you voted for him, you voted for all those things right along with whatever flimsy nonsense excuse you give for doing what you did.
No decent person would allow the things he said to exist in their brain long enough for the words to even cross their lips. This wasn’t a movie. He wasn’t pretending. The campaign was real life. He really said those vile things over and over and over and over and over again. He obviously meant them. The neurons fired in his so-called brain to make the words. And if you voted for him – you mean those things he said too.
Actions speak much louder than words. When you voted for Trump you deliberately, knowingly and of your own free will stood up to be counted right next to neo-Nazis, fascists, racists, religious bigots and people who don’t care that he sexually assaulted women. When you voted for Trump, you had their back. He’s a package deal. You can’t cherry pick this. You can’t un-ring the bell of what YOU DID. No one agrees 100% with any candidate, but we’re not talking about policy minutiae, we are talking basic human decency. Some things are too big, too important, too ingrained, too woven into to the fabric of the person to be teased out of a decision by some little economic perk or passing platitude. Trump, his cabinet picks and a large number of his supporters are all, at their core, a moral and ethical travesty. Mrs. Clinton was being kind in using the adjective deplorable.
And YOU stood up and ACTED in a definitive way to SUPPORT them. There is no excuse. There are no words that can minimize or justify or excuse what you DID. Your ACTION has put the rest of us at risk. You may not think you are a bad person…you may not be…but when you pushed the button for Trump you did a very bad thing.
You might be a good person, but if you were careless in traffic and killed a pedestrian, being a generally good person doesn’t change the fact of what happened. It doesn’t change what you DID. Voting isn’t an accident. It is something you CHOSE and made an effort to DO. Your vote didn’t just happen out of inattention or carelessness. You went out of your way to DO it. Even if voting means just chucking an envelope in the mail…you still made a deliberate choice.
It doesn’t matter that the election results were determined by the Electoral College and not the popular vote. If it weren’t for the people who voted for Trump at all, anywhere, the EC would have no choice but go to Clinton. The problem isn’t that a minority of voters voted Trump, the problem is ANY damn body voted for him AT ALL.
The surprise isn’t that the polls were wrong. The surprise is there are nearly 63 million gullible bigoted idiots living and voting in America. The biggest mistake we all made was believing in the basic goodness of most people. Anyone surprised by the election results were simply wrong about the number of gullible and/or evil people were really out there. Humans might not be as good at heart as we would all like to think. Whoever wrote the movie “Men in Black” was precisely correct: “A person is smart. People are dumb panicky animals and you know it.” Any one person may be good-willed. Collectively…you all fucked up bad.
Don’t think your voice is being heard? Then stop saying stupid shit and do something nice for people instead of voting for assholes.
It doesn’t matter that the DNC screwed up. It doesn’t matter that they had a thumb, four fingers and an asscheek on the scales against Bernie. That’s politics as usual. And it doesn’t change what you DID. It doesn’t change the fact that YOU VOTED for the most profoundly unqualified and unfit candidate in the history of the Republic.
It doesn’t matter what kind of computer Hillary has in her basement or whether or not she knows shit about email. You still voted for a racist, misogynistic pathological narcissist who will betray your economic needs faster than he can tweet about Saturday Night Live. Even if you believe the absolute worst about Mrs. Clinton, added up together nothing she has said or done is anywhere near as bad as what Trump said when he announced his candidacy. Nothing she has said or done is nearly as bad as what he has said and done. Yet you VOTED for him. YOU voted for him. You voted for HIM.
It doesn’t matter what propaganda Russia might have hacked and released. YOU fell for it. You were the one who allowed yourself to be tricked by shit nothing “fake news”. You weren’t coerced. Your family wasn’t held hostage. You weren’t acting under threat of jail. No one was going to kill you based on your vote. Vladimir Putin didn’t come galloping into the booth, grab your hand and force you to push the button for Trump. YOU did that. You DID that. All on your own. This is all your fault. Your. Goddamned. Fault.
Yes, all of this is exactly just that extreme. Yes, it really is life and death. YOU have put troops, citizens abroad, intelligence officers, people without health insurance, well meaning immigrants, people of color, the lgbt community, all sorts of our fellow citizens…real people…at real risks from real extremists (whether you are one or not.)
The shit that hits the fan today at noon is all your fault, Trump voter.
Your. Goddamned. Fault.
Sadly all of that is now officially water under the bridge. Now what? Unite?
HELL NO!
Now we have to clean up your goddamned mess, and people of love and compassion will, eventually do just that. But don’t expect me to be happy about it while we do.
#WagePeace #FierceCompassion
December 15, 2016
December 1, 2016
Reiki, Relaxation & I really did this
It’s here on a creative commons license, but the big one, so you can’t change it, you have to give me credit for writing it, and you can’t make money off of it.
It was written to meet the college’s specific criteria, so it is academic-y and boring as snot. I’m planning a more interesting general audience version after I finish some other Tarot projects. Stay tuned!
November 14, 2016
Where I stand
I wrote this for my Tarot website. It applies here too. I need you to know I am not a part of the darker forces that have crawled out of the shadows over the past year or so. I need you to know that hate and bigotry in any form is not welcome here…but you are.
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I need to talk to you.
Not in the usual me writing to the masses in a big old blog sort of way. I want to talk to you. Here goes….
We’ve had a difficult week here in the U.S. There is a lot of pain and exquisitely strong emotions out there. Tarot is one way to process the whole thing. Tarot’s strength comes from its ability to reach out to the whole of human experience, including the dark and disturbing parts.
I need you to know that any question is OK in a private Tarot session. If Tarot can’t help (predictions, medical questions) I’ll tell you. If something in a reading might be colored by my own bias, I’ll tell you. Whatever I see or hear from the realm of intuition, I’ll tell you…even if my logical mind disagrees. It’s always been that way. Nothing has changed now. I give what I get as I get it. It is up to you to decide if it the information is right for you or not.
I need to say, especially to those of you reading from outside the U.S., that I did not vote for Donald Trump (or any Republican) and that I utterly oppose the divisive politics espoused by those who did.
I am absolutely willing to work with any one of any race, any religion, any sexual preference, gender identity – or even any political affiliation. I want my work to reflect a joyful celebration of diversity and inclusion. As I see it, Tarot is about humanity, not ideology. As such, I need you to know that I’m not in any way part of the right-wing zeitgeist.
I need ModernOracleTarot.com to be a sanctuary. My usual secular approach to Tarot will continue. I’ve also decided to close the comments. That will protect us from any newly emboldened ‘trolls’ that might target non-mainstream spirituality such as this. More importantly, your ideas and feelings are too important to allow them to hide in the shadows of a comment thread. Please let your opinions be known! Please, by all means, react to what I write! More power to that! But please do it in a format that reaches the most people possible. Comment threads won’t do that for you. The world needs your voice now more than ever!
Being human, I also have very strong opinions, but this isn’t the place for spleen-venting. If you want to hear the ranting, you are very welcome to visit over on rondasnow.com. I’ve re-named the blog there “Lens” and opened it from natural health to include personal opinion and many other eclectic topics. Read THAT blog at your own peril.
July 10, 2016
Free e-book, Clean oceans and Kitties
To celebrate my one year deck-aversary with the Black Cat Tarot I got in Gettysburg last summer (my favorite for yes/no readings) all yes/no readings are discounted to $3 per question until 7/31/16. Send your name and question to ModernOracleTarot@gmail.com to take advantage of this special summer price
Anyone who orders a 7 card e-mail tarot between now and 7/16/16 will get a FREE digital copy of my how-to e-book “PeaceTarot”. Learn how to do DIY meditation Tarot readings, PLUS the proceeds from at least the first purchase will go toward the Umi Hashi Kickstarter project which uses ocean plastic to create unique, beautiful, food safe chopsticks. Not only does this preserve the wood that otherwise would have been used to make the chopsticks, it helps remove plastic from the ocean and keep it out of our food (sushi!) supply
We are “staycationing” this year so summer hours won’t change very much. In-person/phone/party appointments will be limited at times, but e-mail won’t change at all. E-mail readings are 24/7 no appointment needed. Please click HERE to order.
June 18, 2016
The Niggles: Ignistic Edition
Religion: a person getting into heaven
Spirituality: heaven getting into a person
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There might be some delay in e-mail Tarot reading deliveries, but they are open, 24/7 no appointment needed, same as always
In-person, phone, Skype and party Tarot are closed until July 6
Words
Dumbledore, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
They might not admit it, but atheists agree. Words matter. Words can be a sort of magic. Words add energy to the good … or to the bad … ideas that drive what we do.
I was watching David Silverman’s speech to the Reason Rally on June 4. He spoke of the importance of calling ourselves by the name atheist, even when we more strongly identify with lest controversial labels like Freethinker, Secular Humanist or Agnostic. It never really crossed my mind that it affects more than ourselves how we use words about ourselves, especially when those words also describe them. He made the point as long as we avoid calling ourselves atheist to avoid the stigma it carries, a stigma placed on the word by bigots, we perpetuate and empower that bigotry. In turn, that bigotry affects us all.
It is all well and good that we choose labels that are more accurate, and that better capture who we are as individuals. But there is harm to ourselves and our brethren when we diminish the larger umbrella term that encompasses both of us. It would be like Harry Potter proudly declaring himself of Gryffendor House but avoiding the word Wizard.
The part of Mr. Silverman’s speech that most moved me to agree with him was his analogy with Christianity. Everyone knows that Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists and so on are just different types of Christian. None of them would would hesitate for a second to be known by the larger umbrella term. Yet Freethinkers, agnostics, Secular Humanists and the like all tend to use those labels in place of the larger umbrella term. It is common knowledge that Hasidic is a kind of Judaism and Sunni is a kind of Islam, but no one seems to understand what in the world Humanist or Agnostic means. Again this dovetails nicely with J.K. Rowlings wisdom wrapped in literature…
“The fear of a name only increases the fear of the thing itself”
Atheism is a political “Voldemort” in a way. Not evil, but a name that makes people very uncomfortable – on both sides of the issues. Using the name Atheist works to remove the bigotry, fear and stigma. Avoiding the name serves no real purpose except to identify ourselves to ourselves. Two magic students might have a conversation among themselves whether they are Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, but all of them claim the name of wizard. We might have conversations among ourselves about agnostic vs secular, but we’d all do well to give full voice to the umbrella term atheist. Saying the name works a sort of magic, dissipating fear and stigma for those outside the term, increasing calm and comfort for those of us within it.
June 7, 2016
The Midnight Rant of Psychic McNearsighted
OK, imagine this. It’s Sunday night after 10 pm. Sunday is the one day of the week our schedules match up enough I can spend a quiet day with my family. At that time and day, when the e-mail ping hit my phone I figured it was, oh, friends or family. No. It was an email with the subject line “Please Respond!” from a local client that said only this:
I was just reading over the notes from that last reading we did. Nothing you said would happen has happened. Why is that?
Seriously?
I understand, really. I know a lot of hurting, lonely people turn to Tarot for comfort. I get it. I want to help. But there are limits. There is such a thing as healthy boundaries, and this is not what healthy boundaries look like. I’m a Tarot reader…legally classified as an entertainment only. I’m not the therapist on call, and certainly not the crises hotline.
There are times when I reserve the right to get a little snarky.
Q: None of the things you said would happen has happened. Why is that?
A: ______, the reason is simple and I’ve been saying it over and over since we first met: Tarot CANNOT predict the future. Never could. Never will. I never once said it would. We didn’t say anything about “what would happen.” We talked about your decision whether or not to _____, the best way to approach your relationship with ______, spirit guides, ADCs and strategies for clearing negative energies from your new apartment. But nothing at all about “what would happen.”
If you want someone to predict the future, and tell you exactly what will and will not happen, then I’m not the Tarot reader for you. If you just want predictions, you need to find someone else. If you want to talk about advice, spirit guides, or making choices again….then feel free to schedule a reading.
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Maya Angelo has been famously quoted as saying “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”
I really don’t believe predictions are possible on any practical level (you know what they say about lots of monkeys with typewriters…eventually one of them will accidentally type Hamlet). Even if it were possible for one person to predict another person’s future, I don’t think for a minute it would be beneficial. See archived posts “Zombie Cat” and “100% Accurate and a Big Cube of Jello“)
I really, honestly believe there is nothing magical or mysterious, deistic or divine about Tarot. We all evolved in this normal, natural brew of energies and dimensions, space and time. We all evolved with some degree of intuitive sensitivity. It makes sense to me that good intuition would be a survival advantage in a pre-historic world without technology. Especially for social creatures such as we.
Some of us might be able to see the subtle energy parts of normal nature a little easier and better than others…just like some people naturally have better distance eyesight than others. So I’ll tell you the subtle, spiritual things I see if you tell Psychic McNearsighted the score at the baseball game. Fair enough? I want the work that I do to show you how psychic and oracle work is all about probabilities, energies, choices, personal development, and navigating a human lifetime in an emotionally satisfying way.
But it wont tell you what is going to happen before it happens. So when I say I’m not predicting the future for you…believe it! If I say that Tarot can help difficult emotions, understanding difficult situations, making choices, out of the box problem solving…I hope you’ll believe that too.
Want a Tarot reading that doesn’t predict a damn thing but can give you some insight and understanding? You can get it HERE
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May 28, 2016
New Meditation Beads, Tarot Readings
New Meditation Beads and Tarot Readings now at Quirk & Flotssam.
Slide shows updated on the Welcome page and Shop page on the website.
Please stop by and browse!
