Dreaming is a Revolutionary Act
Or, A Meditation on the 7 of Cups for a Pale Time
"Our bodies are ancient and the way to heal ourselves is ancient. Rest is ancient. This is a moment for deeper imagination work that will lead us into the deepest parts of ourselves. This is abolition. This is imagining a new way. This is dreamwork.”
Tricia Hersey, "Rest is Resistance"
I am writing this on November 21, 2022. Yesterday, the news broke that queer and trans people were murdered in a targeted attack on a queer space in Colorado Springs. Yesterday was the annual Trans Day of Remembrance, a day where we remember the trans people lost to anti-trans violence. Today, my social media feed is filled with information and reactions about this violence, and I am torn. At this point in our culture, we are inundated with information about how much people hate trans people. It comes from social media, from news outlets, from the seats of local, state, and federal government. It is inescapable. Our nervous systems are flooded again and again with adrenaline and cortisol, our entire bodies told to fight or flee again and again while we go about our day, sitting still, staring at screens.
Reading the words of Tricia Hersey this morning with my coffee was like a gentle balm on my aching soul. Hersey's work invites us to rest, to dream, and to do so against all odds, as an act of revolution and love. Her words soothe away the knee-jerk reactions of capitalism and trauma, the idea that we must solve everything now, that there is a list of seven easy ways to solve all the crises, that there is some person some where with enough expertise to do it, etc etc etc. There is no fast and easy solution. There is only returning to the ancient wisdom of resting, of dreaming, of turning toward ourselves and our communities and the earth that holds us with love.
Hersey's words permission me to ease myself into gentle dreams of a world without guns or bullets, a world where queer and trans people are safe in any space we choose to gather in, a world where our grief and pain is held sacred in gentle hands and hearts, processed, breathed out, recycled into the earth and the ocean, metabolized into the life cycle of all things.
***
When I first started reading tarot, I remember learning about the seven of cups. In general, this card is taught as "having a lot of options" or "the dangers of illusions." With respect, that never made sense to me at all. I remember, as I was in the early days of building my relationship to the cards, looking at the Rider-Waite-Smith version of the card, which includes a figure staring up at a series of 7 golden cups, each with its own contents. There are cups with treasure and cups with dragons, cups with snakes and cups with laurel wreaths.
I found it baffling.
It wasn't until some time later that I began to understand that cups suit more deeply, in part as a story of transition. While this theory began to grow and deepen in my heart, I came to a new appreciation of the depth and importance of the seven of cups. This card speaks directly to the power, the importance of dreaming. This card comes directly before the 8 of cups, in my opinion, the trans-est card in the tarot. The eight of cups speaks to a journey that we have been on, perhaps for quite some time. We have invested in that journey deeply, we have believed in that journey, we have walked that path. Yet, the 8 of cups tells us, we must take a new path now.
Leaving 8 entire cups behind is part of the 8 of cups medicine. This is not an easy transition or an easy choice. Not only are we leaving behind all that we have cultivated in our travels thus far, we are also going toward a path with an unknown destination. The road curves up ahead, and there is no knowing what comes next. It is an act of faith, in a way. If we stay on the known path, with the cups we've cultivated, we commit to stagnation.
This is why the 7 of cups is so vital. What gives us the strength, the determination, the willingness to leave our cups behind and try this new path? It is the power of the dreams we saw in the 7 of cups. The process depicted in the seven is not so simple as having a lot of options, or being subject to illusion. It is the profound, beautiful, and life-giving magic of imagination, of dreaming.
Adrienne maree brown says, "Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of ability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else's capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone' else's imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.”
When we do not engage our own imaginations, our own dreaming, we are constrained by capitalism, white supremacy, cisgenderism. I will not be constrained by the dreams of those who see my life as worthless. I will not be constrained by a society that uses my beautiful community as a political football to inflame and manipulate their base.
***
When you dream, what arises? Do you feel the hand that clenches around your throat, telling you that your dreams are impossible? That they simply can't be done? That you will fail before you even begin? That you don't have the resources, the knowledge, the connections to make them happen? Do you blot out your imagination with words of "that will never happen?"
The seven of cups invites us to imagine fearlessly. None of the worlds we imagine will happen exactly as we imagine them. This is not a negative thing. Imagine if the you of five years ago got a 15 second clip of your life today…so much of what they saw would make no sense, because that you doesn't have the context to understand what they are seeing. In much this same way, if you saw the you of five years in the future, it would be baffling to them. The fact that we can not see the exact future is a gift. It allow us to dream into the magic of the unknown, it allows us to connect with the magic of the void, and from that place, to create futures outside the realm of our current understanding.
I do not know how my dreams will come to fruition, nor what they will look like, exactly, when they do. But I know what my dreams are, and I know that they guide me as North Star as I muddle through this life. I have many dreams, some of which I share only with my closest and most intimate loves. But there are other dreams I will share with you now.
I dream that trans people are loved. I dream that trans people thrive. I dream of rest for trans people, of ease, of unbridled joy. I dream of the magic we create in community, and of that magic spreading wherever it is needed, creating a balm for the ways gender has been broken by colonization and white supremacy. I dream of spaces where trans people can gather with utter safety and relaxation, without anxiety or care. Then I dream of those spaces growing until all spaces are equally safe. I dream that we are cared for and fed, that our hearts and minds and bodies are held in the reverence befitting their divinity.
None of these dreams are impossible, and no constrained ideas of possibility will stop me from my dreaming.