Tarot for Writing Day 2: Athena

Dear Writer,

The reason why the random is valuable is specifically because it’s random. It forces you to look at what’s in front of you from a different angle, allowing you to see different things. And incorporating those other angles into your writing will help you create a world that feels rich and full and complicated.

Today from The Goddess Tarot by Kris Waldherr, I pulled Athena. Traditional card map: Justice.

Waldherr writes:

Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, is associated with Justice. Justice often appears when there is a need to take a detached viewpoint of a troublesome situation. Imagine yourself as wise as Athena and look at it anew: is there a solution you may have overlooked? Alternately, Justice suggests frustration with bureaucracies, an impatience with snarled red tape. We all need to feel that the world is a fair place—the appearance of this card promises the exploration of this issue. If you are feeling besieged in any way, worry not. You will be able to defend yourself; justice will be done.

Wow. When you think about the fact that we look to our fiction to provide emotional justice, this makes sense. As Oscar Wilde said, “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” So how is your fiction dealing with the idea of justice? Some fiction doesn’t provide justice; the good suffer, and the bad get away with it all. That’s also a legit way to go, narratively speaking, and it forces us to deal with the discomfort of a lack of justice.

Of course, the world as it is already gives us loads of that discomfort, so going to fiction for justice may be the only justice we ever see.

Well, that was a bummer, but it’s something to think about with your story. Have fun!

Everything,

L