Scorpio III: Debauchery

If there's a tarot card that captures my state of mind since the start of the pandemic, it's the VII of Cups: escapism, illusion, and way too much drinking. I imagine that the figure in the foreground is wearing sweat pants. Although, who can say what pants they are wearing because they are pictured from the waist up, like every person on a Zoom call. Maybe the cups and clouds background is one of those conf call backdrops designed to hide the fact that you didn't make the bed this morning and there's piles of dirty clothes everywhere.

As a Pisces native, I feel a deep personal connection with the entire suit of cups. However, the IV and VII are like listening to your favorite song where you are certain the singer has experienced your exact pain and wrote the lyrics just for you.

Pamela Coleman Smith: YOU DON'T KNOW ME! (she totally knows me)

The VII of Cups is what happens when Venus crashes at Mars' house. Creativity, beauty, and debauchery. It's a card that invites us to make bad choices just to see what shakes out. It'll be beautiful at the time, and a disaster the next morning.

I'll admit that the dragonfly picnic is one of the less inspired AT cards, however, I still think it mostly does a good job of capturing the essence of debauchery at the heart of the VII. I'm sure there's some New Age garbage in the book about dragonflies being "totems" of illusion or some other nonsense, however, the use of dragonflies here has an interesting angle: dragonflies are voracious and skilled predators. They pursue their prey like a junky pursues their next fix. They are also short lived, with most species living a few weeks at most. Having spent years (in some cases) as an ugly underwater nymph, they have transformed into these beautiful creatures to eat, fuck, and die.