Letting Go

A Difficult But Liberating Experience

This is one of the hardest cards in tarot to get because it reveals a very harsh truth. The Eight of Cups represents Abandonment and Escapism but it also represents a clarity you’ve never had before. It comes in to clear up the fog and provide the means to move on, up and forward with that clarity and you realize that your part is done, like it or not.

This was a card that came up in my mind this morning. I have seen some stuff online that inspired yet another rant that I thought would be brilliant to write for my own Substack, The Raven’s Nest, however, it was while I was shaving that something told me to just do a few random searches on my own space and see if I hadn’t covered it.

Turns out, I had. That was the sign…time to let go. Let the others rant and rave and carry on. I don’t have to anymore. My points were made. I never got what I really wanted out of it…or did I?

This is the story that changed title. It went from “How Raven Lost A Valued Part of His Youth” to “How Raven Got Exactly What He Wanted Without The Name Attached To It.”

I’m talking about tabletop RPGs, of course. They’re one of my favorite things and it’s been my absolute favorite hobby since I was a teenager. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a library of games from which I can choose, ranging from the crunchy (complex systems with a lot of number crunching) to rules-lite (zine and pamphlet-form rule sets) and much in-between. Dungeons & Dragons, I fear, along with it’s official history is lost to us all, save for the people whom have done their due diligence to preserve it under different names.

In short, time to let go. I’ve written articles on why I am stopping at D&D’s 5th Edition core books and why Castles & Crusades, Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age, Old School Essentials and even Cairn as replacements. Same-ish game, different name and my player group still calls it D&D Night. My players still do point crawls, hex crawls and dungeon crawls. They take on dangers and yes, there will be monsters to slay and dragons to fight.

I realized, that was the essence of the game I used to love, the game I defended and the game I’ll only play in trusted circles these days due to expectations that have become baked into the game these days.

Letting go of something once loved isn’t easy. Now, many of you are probably facing similar situations. In today’s world, many older and celebrated works are being bastardized in the name of catering to “modern audiences.” There are difference between the games I play and the media everyone else consumes. You may not be able to make your own movies or TV shows and you may be having issues getting your comic book idea out there but anyone can make and publish one of the games I play thanks largely to print-on-demand services.

I have good news. When you’re faced with such things, you don’t have to go in that direction. It doesn’t have to be entertainment, it could be a job, a relationship, anything. If you just can’t stay on board, you step off. You can still enjoy the memories, what came before and share that with those of like mind but there’s nothing written in blood or stone that says that you must stay on board, especially when the thing of which you let go becomes antagonistic toward you.

I know there are people that will tell me “I can’t just leave” because the paycheck is too good or there’s a relationship of convenience. To those people, I have a question, are you happy? If not, would you rather be happy? That’s the real question. Let’s go a little more in-depth.

The Havamal, Stanza 5 - “The wise know that knowledge is a steady anchor, even in the roughest of waters. Those who wander without wisdom are destined to be tossed by the waves.”

We live in some turbulent times. It’s best that we have that knowledge of history, that we have the wisdom and the discernment to look at some of the attitudes that pervade our lives today so that we’re not constantly swept up in the next rounds of frenzy. I’m certainly guilty of it myself, however, keeping in mind that there is better out there if we’re willing to let go of that which isn’t serving us, making our lives better and turning to pulling the sleeves up the arms and getting to work to get that better that each of us does deserve isn’t easy. Nothing good ever came easy.

We’re being called upon today to let go of those things. Stop depending on others and use those past things to help you forge your own path ahead.

If you’re ever in doubt, all you have to do is look around.

This Tribe that we have wasn’t forged in a day. It’s taken a year to become recognized as a religious organization and now, we move forward. We’ve let go of groups that we couldn’t, in good conscience, stay with, those groups that wanted to alter us to their own ends. It wasn’t easy but here we are. It wasn’t without growing pains and won’t be. It wasn’t without certain defeats still being felt today but it also hasn’t been without wins. We didn’t let the setbacks keep us from having comebacks.

Too often, we tie our happiness to success without allowing ourselves to learn from failures. We hope there won’t be stumbles along the path we forge but we often forget that, in forging paths of our own, we have to make them ourselves. There are pits, holes, dips, inclines and terrain we have to clear before the path can be walked by others.

Our biggest success isn’t in the fact that we’re recognized now and can do so much for people, it’s in one thing. You. You’re our biggest success. Speaking as one of the Elders of the Tribe, I can honestly say that it’s you who bear with us. It’s you who understand that we won’t always get it right but we’ll always make the attempt. In fact, I wanted to share this with you all. This came from one of our members, Neon Foxxy and I quote…

“I'm really glad I was able to find you guys when I did. So many of the other bigger more established groups were unwelcoming for various reasons and this group really does feel like a real tribe. I hope it is able to keep that feeling and welcoming nature as it grows. I'd hate for all the recognition and success to change it into the very thing I left the other groups over. So far so good. If we can keep it up we can show the world that it is possible to grow and be successful and not be corrupted by the success. I'm excited to see where we go from here.”

To me, this makes all the trials and tribulations, the opposition and condemnations, the hard work and sacrifice worth it. This one quote is both humbling and exciting in equal measure. It’s a measuring stick that we can look at that tells us whether or not we’re getting too big for our britches in some ways. I hope we never do. The sentiment that Foxxy expresses should be something that those of us, especially those among us in the Eldership should always remember.

We have all had to let go of organizations before for different reasons before coming here. Each one of us comes with experiences both great and not so much. We’ve had our Eight of Cups moments where we have abandoned groups that urged and demanded that we be considerate when we weren’t even being considered. We’ve all wanted something different and we’re currently making that.

Isn’t it odd that we always seem to think that we can’t affect change in our lives but our Tribe proves to us each and every day that we have been, are now and always will be capable of such?

If you’re still having doubts, ask yourself one question. Do you feel more free to express your views and opinions with us than you did with other groups?

See? I told you it was liberating.