Tendai Golden Thread Collage

Golden Thread: Tendai Firnhaber | Divined January 2026

Cards: Seven of Knives, Nine of Wands (Black Tarot); Cumbersome, Change (Elemental Alchemist Oracle); Enjoy Music (Ancestor Spirit Oracle); Fish (Wild Unknown Animal Spirit Oracle); Satisfaction, Take Direction (Follow Your Heart Oracle); Fire Ancestor Fire Sun (Alchemy Elements - Shaman Derek); Baba Yaga (Goddesses Gods and Guardians Oracle); Spirit Fox (Angels and Ancestors Oracle); Ascension (Chalks of Kikongo); The Enslaved Prisoner, reversed (Tarot of the Orishas); Marie Laveau / High Priestess (New Orleans Voodoo Tarot).

Four young Black boys make music together at the center of the piece, barefoot and alive, playing from joy over survival, set against a misty water landscape of green and teal beneath an open sky. A full golden moon sits patient in the upper right corner. A horseshoe hangs above the band. Gold stars scatter across the water and sky. A blue bottle tree stands rooted on the left side of the composition, its glass catching light. The blue bottle tree is present to hold the African spiritual tradition of protection that crossed the Middle Passage and endured through every system that tried to sever it. A gold eight-pointed North Star explodes at the base of the piece. Music notes float freely through the air above the figures. Topographic lines layer beneath the landscape, suggesting depth and terrain that has been crossed before.

The reading relayed that there is weight being carried that is not entirely one's own, and that the exhaustion that comes from a lifetime of defending one's truth is real and present in this moment. The music, the moon, and the stillness have always been available to receive what needs to be laid down. Marie Laveau arrived as the High Priestess and Baba Yaga as a reminder to have patience with oneself and others. The fight that shaped him is behind him, and what is ahead is the song.