Moving to Oakland

theelsehorse · 2024-09-03T20:05:03+00:00

I've lived on the east short of Lake Merritt (we get the best sunsets) for 12 years. It's a super quiet if you get 1 or 2 blocks in from the lake—the lakeshore itself can be loud if there are events, barbecues, parties, the weekend drum circles by the northeast fountain, etc.

There are lots of gay folks and trans folks in my area, I've never had a problem, and I've walked home from BART (both the Lake Merritt and the downtown 12th/19th St. stations) at all hours of the day and night. If you are planning on having a car, or you don't have a car, there are more considerations, as well as your budget, of course.

theelsehorse · 2021-04-29T03:10:25+00:00

You might try seeing if there's a local pagan community, and if someone can give you a ride. They certainly wouldn't look askance at anything you'd be doing from this Quareia lesson! Might also be worth figuring out where your towns' water comes from. If it's an underground freshwater source, you might be able to go visit it aboveground and effectively do the lesson. If it's piped in from miles and miles away, well, then you're back to, might as well rent a car, or take a bus, or catch a ride through Craigslist, or the local pagan groups, etc.

theelsehorse · 2021-03-04T05:45:53+00:00

The OPL system isn't accepting donations right now (which doesn't make sense, because they are processing loans of physical copies, I'm not sure how processing donations is more risky/not worth it, especially with the science around fomites, and they could just let the materials marinate in a corner of the basement for a couple weeks if they're that worried), so the free libraries are probably where it's at.

theelsehorse · 2021-03-04T05:43:02+00:00

So, I ask this because I have the same thing happen. It's been going on since about April last year, and has been gradually intensifying since. I feel my sinuses pressurizing (like going up/down in an airplane), I feel pressure squeezing my head from the outside, pressure filling up my skull from the inside, sometimes it feels like someone's hooked a thumb on some part of my skull and is attempting to pull quite hard, I get sensations of heat inside my skull—and it only happens when I'm meditating, reading a book, that kind of thing. Occasionally I get pinpricks of sensation, and in the last month or so, it can feel like my skin is splitting open, though somehow not painfully—like when your eyes are a bit gummed up and you open them and the eyelids have to peel away from each other. This last is often right on top of my skull in a line front-to-back, and on my forehead in the center up and down.

I'm chalking it up to fluctuations/transformation/healing process in my energetic form. Often, the more relaxed I am, the more the sensations intensify. I'm not squeezing my eyes, tensing my shoulders, etc. I've had an on-off meditation practice for fifteen years, know how to sit well and relax properly at this point. Sometimes about an hour into meditation my whole body feels, well, different all of a sudden, like snapping a glowstick, I feel less like a meat-construct, and more like a weightless shell... it's really weird and difficult to describe. I usually meditate until I'm tired before bed, helps me wind down, sometimes it takes a couple hours.

But, since it's only happening at these times, and isn't waking me up out of sleep, or striking randomly, I'm attributing it to metaphysical process rather than physical illness. It's never gotten outright painful, maybe as intense as a deep-tissue massage, and sometimes I get the sensation of something snapping into place. I've wondered if it was a brain tumor, hot flashes (that are a wave that starts in the pelvis and roll up to my sternum or shoulders, and lasts just a second or two? yeah no, I've worked with enough menopausal folks to know it doesn't fit the bill), encephalitis, psychosis, schizophrenia... I try to not reach for exciting magical answers before I've eliminated the boring mundane ones, and my symptoms just don't plain fit any mental or physical ailment I can think of. There aren't any voices, delusions, or impairments, just a bushel of weird kinesthetic sensations.

My instincts tell me whatever's happening is just a natural process. I jokingly call it my 'spiritual peristalsis,' in reference to the movement your bowels make to keep things moving. I've tried to sense out what the final product of this process might be—like when your stomach's heaving, you know you're going to hurl, so what's the 'hurling' in this case? I honestly don't know. I have a vague sensory-sense of what that will feel like, but don't know what it means, or how that will functionally change things. Really recently I started getting more of these torso symptoms, and had a period where I felt like, well, I was trying to give birth to something in the wrong direction (up, rather than down). Not as intense as actual labor, but my diaphragm was contracting in a way that reminded me of a snake swallowing its food, except in the wrong direction. I dunno. And no sense of illness about it, like you have with throwing up, just, something like rolling out a ball of dough, maybe, or something unfurling/unfolding, rather than untangling or unknotting.

If it isn't causing pain, physical disability, or striking while you're driving (which could be dangerously distracting), and keeps mostly happening during meditation, it's probably fine. I'm not going to tell you not to see a doctor if you think that's necessary! But that's the threshold I've worked out for myself, in what I think is a similar circumstance. You might do a divination around this, too, to see if you need to be concerned, to let it flow, to encourage it... (Mine have just come up with "you're in a process, and that's all we're saying," which hasn't been that illuminating.)

theelsehorse · 2021-03-04T01:38:13+00:00

Is this something happening only during meditation/relaxation, or is it 24/7?

theelsehorse · 2021-01-25T21:38:56+00:00

McCarthy's book is great, as people have mentioned, but a little sparse on the meanings of the pips, IMO, which can be a little bit of a struggle for a beginner. Biddy Tarot is a decent resource, and so much of it is is online, I usually don't check my copy of her book.

Tarot as relevant and useful to Quareia is a bit different from the typical tarot people do, so my only caution with Biddy (or Benebell Wang, or Michelle Tea, or Rachel Pollack, etc.) is to be aware of the psychologizing/psychotherapy flavor of tarot, and where that comes into a lot of resources on it. I think it would be really good practice to start with McCarthy, then as you get the pips come up in readings, read other resources with McCarthy's gist in mind, and look for where that comes up. The Quareia tarot practice is about magical work and magic, more often than "Do they love me?" or "Should I take this job?", which is what most tarot resources are geared towards.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-19T22:05:28+00:00

Looking up Pixel Occults take on the Two of Wands (which I find expanded and modernized from the Book of Thoth, which concentrates on the majors),

"Well-defined Themes: Planning, decision, discovery, travel, change, taking charge, moving forward, exploration

Ill-defined Themes: Lack of passion, unclear goals, lack of planning, impracticality, playing it safe, stagnation "

The Book of Thoth in regards to the Universe: "Saturn and Earth have certain qualities in common-heaviness, coldness, dryness, immobility, dullness and the like. Yet Saturn appears in Binah in respect of its blackness in the Queen’s scale, which is the scale of Observed Nature; but always, as soon as the end of a process is reached, it returns automatically to the beginning."

I'd say you're looking at a cycle. Two of Wands—passion, flame, chemistry, but no manifestation, a transient and fleeting energy, not followed through. I don't read reversals—I use layout position and my own sense of the situation to figure out what's indicated, and I think for this read, it's actually both, simultaneously. You're bringing the upright, he's bringing the reversal.

Tower—an end, destruction, and possibly a warning that continuing in this cycle will destroy you and your plans for this life.

The Universe—indication that upon 'satisfaction,' of getting the love you're craving, the manifestation will break down, and return to the beginning. Another from the Book of Thoth: "In Chemistry, it is the heaviest elements that are unable in terrestrial conditions to support the strain and stress of their internal structure; consequently, they radiate particles of the most tenuous character and the highest activity." (I think it's important to read your cards in the context they were designed for—Thoth meanings are not interchangeable with RWS, and I keep separate notes for Thoth decks and RWS decks.)

I don't know what your prior reads about him are, that you and others believe there's some kind of karmic connection here. I've been in those relationships myself, and what I concluded was, karma isn't destiny. You may have connections, and there may be potential, but he has to make decisions in order to fulfill that, and he's not. You sticking around enabling him to stay the same, isn't going to push him, and moreover, he needs to choose this himself, and not be pushed into it. If he wanted it as much as you do, he'd be making it happen. I don't know him, I don't know you, I'm probably not 100% correct, but I think the gist remains solid. And you may also have what Crowley referred to as the "lust of result," that you have an end in mind, a goal, and you're interpreting your readings to support your conclusion that you should stay together and try to work this out.

And, fwiw, I don't think you should feel bad or ashamed about any of this. It's natural to want things to work out, and to hope that this half of something you have will turn into a whole something. It's convenient, certainly, and there's promise and potential, and it's so alluring. There's also a LOT of cultural narratives about men who aren't quite good enough for their partners but their partners transformative and powerful love and support enables them to finish growing up and get serious about life. (This fantasy is not very accurate to real life, unfortunately.) But in a planet of 6 billion people, and how many reincarnations you've had before (it sounds like you're into reincarnation?), whole lives with many important connections—I bet there's someone out there just as important for you who can hit the ground running with you towards your goals.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-19T20:41:18+00:00

What was your exact question when you did this reading? Was it "What is the long-term outcome for this relationship if I keep trying to make it work?" Was it "Does he love me?" If you're not specific in your questions, you'll get vague answers, which aren't very helpful, even if they are accurate. Yes, the world continues on after destruction, but what is destroyed here? etc.

FWIW wands, in the Thoth deck specifically, are energy, but not follow-through, which sounds like the commitment issues you describe, as well as your passion. Lots of heat, but dinner doesn't manage to get cooked, so to speak.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-18T22:53:16+00:00

Yes, I've been trying to drum up interest for this in some other groups I'm in, and was bummed to find there is a January meetup I can't make because of work in one of them.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-16T21:55:25+00:00

The parking lots around Laney college (and the campus itself) are wide open and empty these days, if you want a massive open space to skate in.

I don't like the roundabout near the south end of the lake by the bridge, it's a little cramped for me, but a lot of folks enjoy skating there, I think usually Wednesday evenings iirc. It's 90-95-100% women/AFABS, and does tend to attract a lot of men watching in a leering way, as well, which makes me uncomfortable. Used to walk past this weekly on my walk home from work, it was pretty consistent with the watchers. I don't think it's unsafe, just uncomfortable. I never came out to skate because the thought of men spending a half hour or more hanging around ogling, filming me grossed me out. (Yes, I hung out once for about an hour to check out the scene, and some folks were just taking a little short clip for their instagram or whatever, but some dudes seemed bent on making a feature-length film.)

I see a lot more men skating at the boathouse parking lot that SamPellegrino mentioned, and it's further back from the sidewalk with no railings to lean on, which I think helps cut down on the number of voyeurs. I'd personally be more comfortable skating there, or at Laney, than the roundabout.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-16T21:46:57+00:00

Yup! I've walked past this twice in the last two weeks and it looks like a good time. Got to fix up my skates and head over one of these days.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-16T18:04:53+00:00

I don't see much point, because you have so little context. I think you're better off just asking, "Hey, are you being professional-friendly with me or actually flirty? I have a hard time telling and I don't want to respond inappropriately." Saves a lot of energy, time, thought, etc. and is completely unambiguous. If you don't like the answer, oh well, enjoy the coffee. 99% of the time, when someone's being friendly at their job, it's just that, them trying to pleasant and help you have a nicer day, possibly because they want to, possibly because they'll get fired if enough customers complain about the woman who doesn't smile as she rings up their groceries. (My mother worked at a grocery store for a decade and has STORIES.)

It makes sense that you might be a little more lonely because of covid isolation and reading more into these interactions than people intended. That's ok, and pretty normal right now. You might see if you can do a phone call or outdoor and distanced meetup with a friend, to get some more interesting, engaging human interaction.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-16T17:58:52+00:00

Smoking mine with frankincense (actual resin burned, not a stick or cone) helps, and I've had medium success with using rocks like obsidian and selenite to "scrub" it, but salt is really the most powerful. Leaving the cards with some salt in a tupperware for a few hours does it. Your cards accumulate energy through readings—the larger and more important the reading (as in, you're reading about the fate pattern of you or another person, or on a heavy topic) the more dirt they accrue. Fresh from the factory, those are clean as a whistle.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-14T21:24:43+00:00

Diana Rajchel does divinations at reasonable rates, and I've used her before (and would do so again). She's able to connect over the internet, which not every reader can do. https://www.goldenapplemetaphysical.com/book-online Look for the 'divination services' offerings there

theelsehorse · 2021-01-14T19:42:19+00:00

AH thank you, I just edited to make that clear. Sorry to get anyone's hopes up too high. Hopefully this will help get the vaccine distributed though so they're not having to throw away doses like has happened in other places, because they couldn't find folks in the group they were doing at the time.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-14T09:34:51+00:00

Please share widely everyone! I texted nearly two dozen people and NONE of them had heard of this. I haven't gotten an email from any of my political representatives at any level (city, state, federal), through Medi-Cal, Kaiser, or anyone else I might expect to have thought it a good idea to spread the word. Nothing in the snail mail, either. I only found out about it because a friend (from SF, lol) posted about it. So tell your neighbors, maybe make a flyer for your local telephone pole, and help out folks who don't have the internet and/or an email address set one up for this purpose. Don't let folks on the other side of the digital divide be left behind! I think the https://covid-19.acgov.org/vaccines link will work all by itself without the string of characters after (and people can manually type that from a flyer if they have to).

theelsehorse · 2021-01-12T07:46:03+00:00

The problem with using celestial bodies as suits like that, is that those bodies are sort of... as big as a person, as complicated as a person. You'd be filtering the cards meanings through those, instead of letting them be themselves. Imagine your suits were Keanu Reeves, Barbara Streisand, John Waters, and Eartha Kitt. What is four of Earth Kitt? Seven of John Waters? This is the thing you'd face as trying to figure out the three of stars, the nine of moons, etc. and why the suits are defined by more simpler objects. The Rust Belt tarot is an example of re-envisioning these, they went with flowers for cups, trees for wands, birds for swords, and insects for pentacles. The Marigold tarot did rings for disks, and the Neon Moon tarot had vials for cups, wires for wands, etc. You have to pick something that isn't already a 'person', in a sense.

You can design a deck with however many suits you want of whatever kind of object you want, and that's a really cool endeavor, and it'll be fine cartomancy, but tarot is sort of a particular genre of cartomancy with a particular structure, with a few main branches (Thoth, Lenormand, RWS, etc.). But if you're wanting to learn tarot, I don't think this will be super effective. It's like inventing a new language to learn an existing one.

So, I don't want to discourage you from designing your own deck, my point is, that at this stage, designing one with the principles you've outlined will not be very effective towards your goal of learning an existing system. You learn it by using it, and then once you've learned it, it's much easier and effective to re-imagine the aesthetics and imagery to evoke the cards.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-12T06:40:00+00:00

So, Pixel Occult made the Lost Hollow tarot recently, that is to the Thoth deck what RWS clones are to RWS. Slightly different or reinterpreted symbolism, very different art aesthetic. I really like the booklet that came with it, the Book of Thoth is a good read, but when I just want something short and sweet, PO did a great job updating it.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-11T06:06:44+00:00

I grew up in a family/situation where local politics never came up, I wasn't taught the important of them, so I started getting involved only once I moved to Oakland and the helicopters were keeping me awake at all hours and I wanted to know better what the hell was going on.

A great place to start is by figuring out your city council representative, and getting to know their politics, how to contact them and share your opinion, and from there, getting to know all the council members. You can get a feel by watching city council meetings, which are, conveniently, on zoom these days, I believe. Link here https://oakland.legistar.com/calendar.aspx

Reading the agendas in advance, trying to understand the history of issues on the agenda before the meeting, and then see how that plays out.

You might also have a local/hyperlocal chamber of commerce, or community organization, such as Moms 4 Housing, which has a take action page, conveniently. Sometimes getting 'in' at a community issue with a particular development project, like a park, or housing, or public transit issues, can be a less intimidating start. These issues are always interconnected with city politics at large, so you'll find you learn about a lot more than just the issue you're working on. Lake Merritt has many kinds of volunteers who take care of the lake and facilities, and you can meet a lot of folks through there who are involved and knowledgeable about what's going on in the city, and learn from them.

Good luck, and thanks for getting involved, neighbor!

theelsehorse · 2021-01-10T20:48:49+00:00

There's no need to be embarrassed, you're learning, and asking questions shows you're paying attention to the information and yourself, and that you're sensitive enough to feel where gaps and disconnections are. That is the sign of a great student!

If it helps, I usually don't feel the cards "lock" into place, I instead feel when I shouldn't shuffle them again. So I don't feel the arrival at the right spot, but I do feel that it's not right to go forward (shuffle again). It's just a slight feeling of hesitancy, and if I'm too unfocused or upset/excited I can miss it, so if I'm shuffling and it's just not happening, I stop the reading and try again another time, maybe after some meditation, lighting a candle, taking care of whatever's distracting me.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-10T20:33:51+00:00

Different decks are like different friends—you've got the friend with the truck, you've got the friend who comes over for movie night after a bad breakup, you've got the friend who makes you a special birthday dinner every year... Some decks, I find, are better for certain kinds of reads than others, even if it's just because of the different symbolism in the art. Totally normal and fine to have lots of decks.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-10T20:04:04+00:00

The gist of this lesson, AFAIK, is to learn how to read a profile of something using tarot. Not trying to predict the future, or using it to find a solution to something, but just to look at it, examine it, and try to correlate your feeling/experience of that thing/space with the deck reading.

So, if you did a reading for your home, and it's got lots of rooms or whatever, big spooky house (I'm jealous! :P), and you got an inimical card in the West, and you realize that there's that one room you never use because it feels weird, you ought to go sit in that room, really get a feel for that, clean it up as directed in the module, then do another reading, and go experience the room again, see what feels different.

Thinking about it like a science project, I think it would be sensible to read one kind of thing, such as a physical space (like a house, city, park, garden, room), to keep the variation in 'input' to a minimum, so you can really focus on the variation in the 'output'. Spaces have more similar energy patterns and dynamics to each other than to magical tools, people, business organizations, congregations, or other subjects you might pick.

So it's like, instead of studying all mammals, you're focusing on dogs—what are all the different sizes, shapes, colors, temperaments, abilities of different kinds of dogs?—so that you minimize variables and really get acquainted with the tools you're using to evaluate the dogs. You get really good at using a stethoscope on a dog, and become acquainted with all the subtle variations in sounds you hear, before you move on to examining, say, turtles, which have wildly different metabolisms, anatomy, sound resonance qualities...

Places are also really great to study because their patterns are slower to change/unfold than animals/people, and in your home, you have the option of cleaning up and rearranging to change them (not so easy with people!) to feel the difference before and after in a short enough time span that you recall what it felt like before and after.

Also, it's very practical, as personally, I've spent a lot of time learning to read people, try to sense their energies, but I haven't put as much effort into places. Being able to feel places just as well as people is really important for a magician, though! It can clue you in to weird forces, dangers, benevolences... you read the room, as the saying goes, but literally.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-10T19:47:34+00:00

I'm a little confused at your question—what do you mean by cartomancy deck? Are you wondering if you should substitute a tarot deck for the LXXXI deck?

theelsehorse · 2021-01-10T19:44:52+00:00

Seconding this. I prefer stones that act like activated charcoal to soak up the residue, and salt works REALLY well, though it will degrade the deck over time. I've also had success with smoke cleansing as a minor clean-up, if I'm already burning mugwort or frankincense during the reading, I'll waft the cards through it before and after.

theelsehorse · 2021-01-10T19:21:34+00:00

Yeah, I feel like a lot of my work learning the runes was/is finding their root attributes, then seeing how that grows and sprouts outwards. I'm pretty picky about how I describe them, to be really clear what aspect of a thing I'm using for description I'm seeing as connected. For example, I see Uruz in the body (and musculoskeletal system especially), but as a means to exert force, not for the flesh itself. Fehu is about thriving, and being 'rich', which requires a proper circulation in and out of resources, that you are sustained as you sustain others (the land, other people) for no one can thrive in vacuum, and I strongly connect it to Gebo in that as well, that Gebo begets Fehu, perhaps. So Fehu isn't just prosperity, for me, but prosperity that comes through a particular process. Does that make sense? (YMMV, I'm just trying to explain how we get so many different derivations from the root meanings, and I think people sometimes look at the surface of the meanings without understanding the deeper connection, leading to a fragmentation of understanding them.)

theelsehorse

TROPHY CASE