What can the Fool and the Nine of Wands teach us about burn-out?

Welcome to January + The Year of Yearning

Jan 05, 2024

Welcome to the Year of Yearning!

What’s up, swimmers?! We’re here! Some of us are queer! And I hope that we’re all ready to buckle up and take a new ride together this year!

Through what? Who knows. Time, and the tarot, will tell. But after a full year of feeling held at the starting block, while also being repeatedly punched in the face by life, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s hoping for a gentler 2024. For more information on the numerological eight (8) year, check out my in-depth forecast.

Now, I have to be honest—I’m kinda feeling this year already. I don’t fully trust it, but I want to, because so far, magic has been tangible in many forms in my life. I’ve felt more playful and more hopeful than has felt accessible for a while. I’ve felt more spiritually connected than has felt safe since the summer. It’s been nice!

I’m really hoping the same blessings, or at least similar invitations into joy and awe, are showing up for you right now. If they’re not, if you’re sludging and trudging through a truly slow slog of a “new” year, wondering how one could even tell them apart when they’re all blurring together, I promise you that you’re in the right place at the right time, and the perfect place to read today’s lesson.

Numerology, which is simply the art and practice of decoding patterns and feeling into energetic rhythms, tells us that January of 2024 is a nine month (1+2+0+2+4 = 9)—the culmination, the wrap-up, the end. This year, it’s February 2024 (2+2+0+2+4 = 10) that will bring us actionable one energy to work with, which rules the start, the beginning, and the first steps towards the next.

But first, we’re going to pause and reflect on the soup we’re still swimming in.

ICYMI: We’re doing things differently around here this year at SITS!

The Year of Yearning will consist of twelve topics of study, one for each month of the year. Every Friday, you’ll receive a little lesson or a love letter. The first installment—which you’re reading now—will be sent to all subscribers, but the love letters and the second lesson will be for paid pals only.

These topics will be divined based on a three card spread: A Major Acana and a Minor Arcana from a 78-card tarot deck, and an Oracle card from either Postcards from the Liminal Space by Bakara Wintner, Christian Berry and Kaylee Christianson, or Morgan’s Tarot by Morgan Robbins.

I will be pulling the cards for each month on the New Moon and creating through the Full Moon, imbuing our lessons with lunar love and magic.

JANUARY 2024: Top Row - The Dreamer’s Tarot by Marcella Kroll. Bottom Row (left to right) - Postcards from the Liminal Space, The Morgan’s Tarot

Our cards for January 2024 are…

0 - THE FOOL with RESET
THE NINE OF WANDS with DON'T WORRY, YOU CAN DO NO WRONG

Looking at our spread, I immediately heard the question: “When is it foolish to keep going?” This made perfect sense to me based on the cards at play, but if you’re not familiar with the tarot, let’s break these bad boys down a bit:

0 - The Fool

Keywords: new beginnings, optimism, innocence, possibility, surprises, imagination, leaps of faith, naivete, spontaneity, endless potential, inexperience, excitement, risk, reckless, the unknown

Charlie Claire Burgess, author of Radical Tarot, positions the Fool as “the radical who dreams creation.” In the guidebook for Dali’s Universal Tarot, Johannes Fiebig writes that zero, and therefore the Fool, is a role model. For Ash + Chess, creators of The Queer Tarot, the Fool asks, “What does your soul ache for?”

The Fool ushers us into a trickster January—a first month that holds the energy of the ending. Still, it’s message is clear: Here, now, in the time before time, it’s time to RESET. Those who can follow this jester’s message will find themselves laughing all the way to the proverbial, or literal, bank. After all, it is an eight year.

THE FOOLS: Center - The Dreamer’s Tarot by Marcella Kroll. Clockwise (from top) - The Queer Tarot by Ash + Chess, The Fifth Spirit Tarot by Charlie Claire Burgess, The Universal Tarot by Salvador Dali, The Game of Thrones Tarot by Craig Cross and Liz Dean, That 90’s Tarot by Kristi Prokopiak.

When given a value, the Fool stands beside the void-like zero, yet all of the above depictions of the Fool have two figures on them. Whether it’s a second self, an inner desire, a travel buddy for the road, a clown-like duo of chicks, or a fire-breathing dragon, the Fool is never alone. Valentin Tomberg, who likely authored of the anonymously written Meditations on the Tarot, also acknowledges the Fool’s numerical paradox, saying that it is “the alchemical work of the union of human wisdom, which is folly in the yes of God, with divine wisdom, which is folly in the eyes of man, in such a way that the result is not a double folly but rather a single wisdom which understands both that which is above and that which is below.”

The Fool doesn’t need to see the bigger picture to jump off the edge of the cliff, but that doesn’t mean it can’t access a higher perspective. Oftentimes, due to its willingness to buck the status quo, not to mention its propensity for laughing in the face of authority or fear, the Fool might actually be the wisest in the room.

Keywords: resilience, strength, perseverance, attentiveness, persistence, last push, final obstacle, stubbornness, courage, grit, fatigue, giving up, weariness, close to success

Dali’s Universal Tarot notes that the Nine of Wands says to “let go of all old instincts and presumptions.” In the guidebook to The Dreamer’s Tarot, Marcella Kroll writes that the Nine of Wands asks questions like, What is still in need of acknowledgment? What still needs to be processed before you can proceed? Kristi Prokopiak, who made That 90s Tarot, says that the Nine of Wands represents the compromises needed to integrate creative fire and action.

At the start of a new year, we may want to push forward with the mindset that the past is in the past, and we’re living for the present and the future, bayybeee. But how can the Nine of the Wands, and the practice of sankofa, an Akan term that’s literal translation is “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind,” teach us the wisdom of the rear-view mirror?1 How can we learn the art of the strong finish when we’re not finished with whatever we’re still holding onto in our hearts, our bodies, and our energetic fields?

THE NINE OF WANDS: Left - The Game of Thrones Tarot by Craig Cross and Liz Dean. Right - The Fifth Spirit Tarot by Charlie Claire Burgess.

This month, the Nine of Wands comes carrying a banner that reads: DON’T WORRY, YOU CAN DO NO WRONG! This foolish message is exactly the permission slip needed to begin 2024, a year of triumphant possibility. It’s our humanness that tells us that we have to do things in a certain order, or believes in superstitions. But just as the Fool contains multitudes, the concepts of right and wrong may not be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

If you’re feeling daunted by this work, remember that the Nine of Wands tells us that we’re so close to the end, even if it doesn’t feel like it. The end of what? Who knows. In reality, it’s probably just the entrance point to a whole different spiral of experience. But still, there’s hope. There’s always gotta be hope! As Leia says in The Last Jedi, “Hope is like the sun. If you only believe it when you see it you'll never make it through the night.”

This January, we’re going to make it through the night.

JANUARY 2024: BURN (OUT) BABY, BURN (OUT) 🔥🚫

This may sound unhinged, but I am grieving the early days of the pandemic.

On top of the grief that still sits like a stone in my belly over the loss of life and lifestyle that so many of us have experienced over the last three years, there is also devastation over the destruction of the cocoon that held me so beautifully while we were all stuck inside. It gifted me freedom from being perceived and judged by others, freedom to relax in my body, freedom to go deep into my mind, and freedom to expand within the confines of my house. When there was nowhere to go, and nothing else to do, I really did feel some strange semblance of peace.

What wasn’t peaceful, however, was how the home that my wife and I shared suddenly needed to become an office space as well as a personal dwelling.

Perhaps you can relate?

According to the United States Census, the number of people who switched from working in a traditional workplace setting to working primarily from home tripled from 2019 to 2021.2 For nearly 28 million Americans, the COVID-19 pandemic turned their homes into a place to quarantine, an office, a school, a daycare center, and more. This, plus the fact that 74% of workers who switched to remote or at-home work during the pandemic have reported clocking in for more hours at home than in an office, has left more than 62% of employees feeling burned out. That’s more than half of workers in any given workplace!3

However, this trajectory isn’t new. In fact, the World Health Organization classified burn-out as an occupational phenomenon back in 2019.4

Now, three years into a global pandemic, with violent wars continuing around the world, and the cultural divide deepening here in the U.S., it is feeling more and more impossible to wake up day after day and put our best foot forward.

What is burn-out?

According to Merriam-Webster, burn-out is defined as, exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.

It’s not just feelings of depression, lethargy and cynicism that make the experience of being burned out so dangerous, but also “the mountain of mental and physical health problems that often come along with it, including headaches, fatigue, heartburn, and other gastrointestinal symptoms, as well as increased potential for alcohol, drug, or food misuse,” says Psychology Today.5

The 2023 Work in America Survey, conducted by the American Psychological Association, shows that 77% of workers have experienced work-related stress in the last month, and 57% of those stressed out workers have experienced labor-specific symptoms of burn-out as a result, including emotional exhaustion, not feeling motivated to do their very best, and a desire to quit.6

Even worse, burn-out is not just an individual experience. According to Benjamin Goss, MBA, a Fractional CSO and Sales Expert who has taken an interest in what he calls the “silent [employee] epidemic”:

Just one person’s burnout can lead to a staggering 15% drop in overall team productivity… When a coworker is struggling, we sense it. Their exhaustion, their lack of enthusiasm, their constant fatigue — it all becomes … felt. And before we know it, our own morale and energy levels start to plummet. It’s a tragic spiraling domino effect, with one person’s burnout triggering a chain reaction in others around them.7

Now, it’s important to note that by in large, what’s being studied and discussed here is workplace burnout. That’s because we live in a capitalist society that largely promotes profits over people, and views employees as the productive workhorses that keep industries trotting along without a hitch. But there are other types of burn-out that we’re contending with, the results of which I think can all be accounted for under the umbrella of spiritual burn-out.

red and yellow light on black background — Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Spiritual burn-out is the result of overall overwhelm. Either you’re completely exhausted by the day-to-day events of your jam-packed life, and therefore have no energy for connecting to whatever form of the divine you’re drawn to, or you’ve gone so far in the opposite direction that you’ve now consumed too much self-development or spiritual content, and are now completely maxed out and unable to make sense of any of it, let alone put it into action in your life.

This type of burn-out is perhaps the most insidious because it feeds into every other type. It keeps us from connecting to ourselves and others, as well as separates us from the Universe at-large, which means that we’re experiencing suffering without the opportunity to balance it with hope, joy, wonder, and awe.

How do we re-light our flames?

The bad news is that rest and time-off isn’t going to help us recover from the marrow-deep exhaustion and fatigue that we feel as a result of burn-out.8 Unlike stress, burn-out requires new and unique methods of recovery. The good news is that we’ll get into our options in the second little lesson towards the end of the month (January 19th).

But for now, I want to go back to my sweet COVID cocoon from 2020:

Sometime in the late summer of 2020, my wife and I decided to switch around the layout of our apartment, in hopes of creating a more peaceful environment. No one would be coming over any time soon, so the focus became what would work for us. This ended up being a major blessing in many ways, especially due to the needs of my new creative project, a digital art project called Divine Spark.

Divine Spark was originally devised by two friends of mine from college, Price Garrison and Jason Bellew, who were lovely enough to let me play in their sandbox once the pandemic changed their original plans for a live theatrical piece. What transpired once we took it online was an incredible amalgamation of writings, graphic design, inspired cocktail creations, paintings, photo projects, and more, all inspired by Gnostic creation myths and philosophies.

If you’re unfamiliar, Gnosticism refers to a heretical movement during the 2nd Century that believed that The Monad (The One, Source energy, The Creator, etc.) burst forth from the darkness into many different streams of light, all containing pieces of the big old puzzle of divine, creative energy.

One of these emanations, an aeon named Sophia, meaning wisdom, was so full of passion that she also produced an offspring, but as she was not The One, her creation was half-baked and more like her mirror: Yaldaboath, the demiurge, the embodiment of ignorance. Horrified at his beast-like form, Sophia banished him to a lower realm—the realm of Matter—where Yaldaboath created a place over which to establish dominion—the Earth—as well as human beings to worship him, and rulers called archons, who worked to keep the humans enslaved.

Yes, yes, Gnostics believed Yaldaboath to be the Biblical God, so you can see why they weren’t the most popular thinkers in the days of Early Christianity... But Gnostics also believed that human beings were not doomed to live in ignorance forever, but rather destined to embody what Mufasa asked of his son, Simba: Remember who you are! They believed in salvation through knowledge, or gnosis.

The Gnostics knew that within every single person, there is a fragment of The One, which they refer to as the divine spark.

There are plenty of bits of Gnosticism that I don’t vibe with—like the propping up of the spiritual soul at the expense of the material body—but overall, I think that if we have any chance of recovering from deep, spiritual burn-out, a good place to start is by reconnecting with our own divine sparks. Perhaps we simply need to know that it’s still there, burning within us, beaten and battered by life, but not blown out. For this flame can never be extinguished, not even in death.

Thank you for reading swimming in the soup. This post is public so feel free to share it.

MOMENT OF TRUTH: Are you rolling your eyes right now? Are you wondering how it could even be possible to cure such physical, horrible symptoms of a phenomenon that’s been validated by the World Health Organization with some spiritual or philosophical principles and practices? It’s okay if you are!

Just remember our cards for January—The Fool, Reset, The Nine of Wands, and Don’t Worry, You Can Do No Wrong.

To solve an unusual problem, we need unconventional methods and harebrained mindsets! Gone are the days of looking to what’s worked in the past. Now, we must venture forth into the great and mysterious unknown.

When I was in the thick of my strange and severe health issues in 2023, I opened up to a friend who suggested that I read two things: the Biblical book of Job, and When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön. To wrap things up for today, I want to share a particularly potent and absurdly relevant passage from the latter with you:

In Tibetan there’s an interesting word: ye tang che. The ye part means “totally, completely,” and the res of it means “exhausted.” Altogether, ye tang che means totally tired out. We might say “totally fed up.” It describes an experience of complete hopelessness, of completely giving up hope. This is an important point. This is the beginning of the beginning. Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.9

Can you let your present moment—your burned out, fucked up, hopeless present moment—be the beginning of the beginning? Can you love yourself here? Can you close your eyes and believe that your divine spark is still burning in your bones and belly? And can this tiny slice of foolish faith set you on the path towards the rest of your life? The rest of your day? Week? Month? Year?

I’m with you in this work. I love you as you are. I know that we will recover.