![A Photograph black trans gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson holding up a bedsheet that reads “Gay Love”. A Photograph black trans gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson holding up a bedsheet that reads “Gay Love”.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fda74368d-20f0-4eee-afc8-636d44efaa19_563x698.png)
It’s Pride and celebrations of self expression are popping off all over the world. Regardless of how you identify, Pride is a wonderful time to reflect: on your politics, personal power, and how your unique and beautiful self brings something special to the multi-hued collective.
Pride is something our card of the year, Strength, must often contend with, and this month I’ve been thinking a lot about the forms the word “pride” can take. Pride connects us to the people and things we love, sparking that internal glow of appreciation for ourselves and others. Pride can also keep us stuck in the same ideas or modes of being, which closes the door to change.
The capital P Pride, started as a clash turned protest between the opposing forces of this word. It was a group of proud LGBTQ+ people taking to the streets to celebrate the most contested parts of their identities one year after the Stonewall Uprising occurred on June 28th, 1969. This protest came in the face of a different form of pride—dominant society’s stubborn resistance to change. Those in power became too prideful, too steeped in fear of losing the social status quo to make space for the expanding horizon of humanity.
![A figure dressed in a white dress bends over a lion and pets its nose and chin as if to calm it. The figure has a flower garland around their waist and a flower crown on their head. Above their head floats the sign for infinity. A figure dressed in a white dress bends over a lion and pets its nose and chin as if to calm it. The figure has a flower garland around their waist and a flower crown on their head. Above their head floats the sign for infinity.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F680756e5-3e0f-45b1-8a43-56377456a7ae_350x600.png)
For me, this fearful form of pride can arise when I pull the Strength card. For so long, I've identified more with the lion than the figure in white. For starters, my hair definitely looks mane-ish in the AM (and post sweat, and in humidity), and as a self-identified “passionate person” I see the lion’s intensity, it’s penchant for growling at the things it doesn’t like and chasing after the things it does, as a sign of it’s name sake: strength. I’ve bristled at the idea that this fierceness is something to be tamed or challenged in any way. I’ve felt peeved (and if I’m being totally honest, a little nervous) when the card comes up for me in readings—it’s as if the tarot is telling me calm down, to be less of myself, to cull my individuality and messy “me-ness”. But when I take a beat and breathe into the emotional stickiness of that belief, I realize what I’m feeling is the shadowy side of pride. The aversion to change. The fear that I’ll lose some core part of myself if I do.
When we get too attached to facets of our lion selves, we sink into a particular variety of pride that becomes a little jacuzzi for our more slippery behaviors.
You know who your jacuzzi crew is. Maybe it’s anger, vanity, self-loathing, self-pity, nit-picking, choosing to see the worst, or choosing not to see at all. Maybe it’s something else. Regardless, consider: where is pride connecting you to others? Where is it cutting you off?
What’s in a name?
![n illustrated image of a male lion with a rainbow mane. The word pride is in all caps along the bottom. n illustrated image of a male lion with a rainbow mane. The word pride is in all caps along the bottom.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F48835532-e9ff-4f31-a33a-8ef0b744202c_794x794.png)
Now for a brief tangent in etymology 🤓
“Pride” is the name lions get when they hang out in packs of up to forty of their friends. A pride of lions works together to ensure safety, community, and food for all. But where did this phrase, “pride of lions”, come from?
Early sightings point to a 1486 publication called “The Book of Saint Albans”.
Naming groups of things or “noun-ifying” collectives based on shared attributes was somewhat of a literary trend in the 15th century. This book, penned by the baddass hawking expert and highly educated woman Juliana Berners, became a best seller and helped hunters of the day know how to properly talk about the groups of animals they were stalking.
![Juliana Berners in a nun's habit with a feather pen and book in hand. Various hunting gear like a bow and arrow and fishing pole hang from the walls. Juliana Berners in a nun's habit with a feather pen and book in hand. Various hunting gear like a bow and arrow and fishing pole hang from the walls.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0e074ac2-9d26-48a9-a7bf-f854e43f18bb_432x259.heic)
Back then, lions were symbols of the regal and the brave, traits regarded with much esteem, traits to be proud of possessing. Hence, some historians posit, the name “pride of lions” and the long-lasting link between lion imagery and the word.
What I want us to ponder is how collective nouns and the act of naming ignites its own form of pride. Us humans, especially those based in western cultures, have a hard time believing in something we can’t name. As such, empirical knowledge has reigned supreme over intuitive wisdom as the de facto way to understand the world and self. But what if naming is a practice that builds a bridge between those two worlds? Between the individually intuitive and the societally accepted experience?
![A wood house sits on an open prairie. A black plume of smoke rises from the chimney and opens up to reveal the mouths and noses of two women talking to each other. A wood house sits on an open prairie. A black plume of smoke rises from the chimney and opens up to reveal the mouths and noses of two women talking to each other.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F59f8b7a7-e26f-42e7-942a-20a102b1b975_563x797.png)
The film Women Talking speaks to the collective awaking that occurs when things are named. In the movie, a group of women come to the realization that they have been wronged by the menfolk in their society. This wrongdoing was intuitively known by the women, but unable to be fully understood without a name.
“So when something like this happened, there was no language for it. Without language for it there was a gaping silence. And in that gaping silence was the real horror.”
Then one day, empirical evidence arrives. The women finally have words for the generational terror held in their bodies. In naming their experience, they realize they can change it.
This is what the Strength card teaches us. That putting a name to our more challenging feelings, mindsets, and moods helps us move through the fearful pride of what those things might say about us and invite all our parts to dialog for self-expansion.
To sooth what makes our inner lion roar, we must name it.
To combat homophobia and transphobia, we must name it.
To celebrate love, we must name it.
To create space for the marginalized, we must name them.
Our 15th century predecessors understood: noun-ifying is a process of animating. Names bring things to life.
A gay by any other name…
Many marginalized and oppressed groups have a long history of reclaiming names. The LGBTQ+ community is part of this rich tradition, flipping names used to hurt us on their heads. It’s a little something I like to call “the name shame game.”
A name - shame + a twinkle of game = pride.
Queer
Dyke
Fag
Trans
These names, intended to breakdown and divide, have been composted by queer society and reincarnated as proud identifiers. The list evolves as our pride to be who we are, to reform names with reverence and love, becomes stronger.
While naming is important, we also live in a time where knowing someone’s named identity is an overprescribed shorthand leading us to assume who they are and what they believe.
How have the names or titles you’ve been called by another or yourself built you up, torn you down, made you believe you’d lose yourself if you didn’t have them, that you are who we are because of them? What names are you ready to shed? What names are you longing to claim?
Time to grab your deck and find out.
Queer and witchy bits and bobs
A free documentary about the Stonewall Uprising (’cuz Stonewall is the ultimate Tower moment)
An interactive website of the Stonewall Monument
My favorite Queer Tarot deck
A book about Queering the Tarot
Happy Pride my Qwitches.
XO
ALTARU TAROT