And then there was Stardew Valley

Gosh, friends! I know it's been forever and I desperately apologize to you for the infrequency of communiqués from my end. My moods, notoriously unstable, went far below my guidelines for wellness and I've had to sort of set up my own outpatient working hospital, where I still do my job and whatever chores are needed, but then I had all this aching time outside of doing those. The crawling time. Normally I would fill these hours with tarot study or spreads, witchcraft, bullet journaling, honoring and worshipping Aphrodite, those sorts of things.

But I could not muster the emotional fortitude to do any of those things. That's how it gets when the symptoms of my illness swell to tsunamic proportions. I have to fight the wave instead. And so after the recommendation of nearly everyone in my friend group, I tried Stardew Valley to fill the hours, which I'm sure is familiar to many of you. I needed some huge game with low stress and a lot - a LOT - of activities for my brain to focus on. During the stressful early days of the pandemic, that game for me was Animal Crossing.

I love that game, but I have done everything you can possibly imagine while playing it. So it was time for a new world, and that's where I've spent my July - in Stardew Valley, going around in kitty ears and a bomber jacket, marrying up all the single ladies thanks to a mod called Free Love. It's a great mod that lets you romance just about everyone except for a few characters. And the bed at night is just a pile of women and one very happy enby, thank you very much! 😉

I am now in year 3 at the end of Spring, and I am pleased with the quantity and quality of my farm produce and foraged plants, fish, and other weird and wonderful items you can find in this game. I have hatched Void Chickens and baby Dinosaurs (but no Golden Chickens yet, dang it). I have been to the bottom of the Mines and just past floor 800 in the Skull Cavern. (I have another mod that freezes time so that this is possible, and not stressful, for me.)

Now that I am feeling a touch better, I am in the process of completing a perfect game, so I'm focusing on fishing up weird fishies and shipping every item that can be farmed or collected, cooking all the dishes, all of those sorts of things. I've expanded into Ginger Island and have explored the wonders and puzzles there. Of course, this part might not make sense to you if you are not familiar with the game, so please just ignore these paragraphs!

It has helped me so much. To have such a chewy, crunchy, distracting piece of media for my brain to process has been nothing short of Olympus. Of course, nothing can quite help as much as human touch, when you're touch-starved, or love, when you're equally as hungry for that. Aphrodite has been teaching me many things and I've had many revelations while traveling this long sad stretch of road.

One such was that pity is not love. I posted about this on Instagram and found it was terribly difficult to channel and accept because I have always woven them together in a two-strand braid, thinking they are offshoots of each other, not wanting to believe that this person I think I love is actually someone I pity. Can they coexist? I don't know, the revelation did not go into that. I think this love I think I feel is actually tainted by pity. That makes my heart very, very sad, because I don't think they can coexist, personally. I can't fully, deeply, wholeheartedly love someone for whom I feel pity. That's putting two people in an unequal position, with power differentials that can go both ways.

The pitied person can have power because they frequently tug on the heartstrings of sensitive people, manipulating them into caring and doing and fixing what ultimately cannot be fixed, causing them to spin their wheels and spend their energy in a futile attempt to keep the pitied person afloat. The person who pities the other can have power because love can absolutely look like pity, and that love, that carpet, can be pulled out from under the feet of the pitied person at any time.

There is no security in a bond like that. There is no comforting, sacredly reciprocative love in a bond like that. It ends up being unhealthy, even if the relationship is stretched out far beyond its should-have-been expiration date. Maybe this is just my experience that is clouding my perceptions, but love should be love, not some pale milksop imitation of it. Love should be love, and that was the core essence of this transmission from Aphrodite.

I have had to lean on her quite a lot these past few weeks. Certain things happened which opened my mind to other revelations, more human than divine, and it's been difficult to observe and accept them, too. I am trying to explore the truth of this in a short poetry series, where I discover that my love has been misaligned for a very long time, and that to function properly as the Lover archetype that I am, I need that to be in alignment just as much as the other important attributes of my whole humanity.

It's a Tower situation, my dearest pals, and it's not going to be pretty as it plays out. To that end, I want to draw a card for us as we close out this issue of Transmissions from Aphrodite from the Gentle Tarot:

So this card is a balm, too, because it tells us to savor our self efficiency, to believe we are unstoppable. It is time to rejoice in how far we've come on our journeys. We make space to honor both our internal and external successes and accomplishments. We have to allow ourselves luxury - every human being needs it, no matter their station in life. For the figure on this card, luxury is expressed in being free and sweet in nature with bare feet and raised arms, resting against the comforting bulk of a tree.

When we recognize our accomplishments, we start to build trust with ourselves, which can be so difficult when we are in rough situations. We also get to increase our personal power because we can look back and exclaim: "hey! I did that!" Belief in ourselves is the first step. Fully grasping that we deserve abundance, that it is our birthright along with so many other things, is the next step. Can you really say that you believe you deserve abundance? My belief in that varies with my moods, so right now I believe I do not. But then I have better days where I'm like fuck yes! I do deserve all the abundance in the world!

We are supported in ways that go beyond what the eyes can see. Our spirit guides and exalted ancestors and pets and Deities and other such entities fight hard battles for us past the veil, even if we can't feel it at the time. We are not alone, even if it feels that way.

So make a list of what you can thank yourself for. Have you celebrated your accomplishments lately? How can you make more space for enjoying yourself? Are you experiencing richness and luxury, and what do those things mean to you? Make sure you make the time and space to savor the place you've reached after all your hard work and toiling and crying in frustration. Feel deserving of pleasure, of luxury, of sweetness, and more will be attracted to you. ❤

Thank you for reading. I love all of you so much.

With eternal warmth,

J
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jbulsara@gmail.com
Transmissions from Aphrodite