One month ago today, Atlantide, Bologna’s 17-year-old trans-feminist-queer-punk social space, was forcibly evicted by the police. It seems to have been years ago; it seems to have been yesterday.

Like the hundreds, even thousands, who have been and made a part of Atlantide, I have been trying to make sense out this event, this unthinkable reality. Among the many reasons I am struggling for sense is that I am in the early stages of writing my PhD dissertation, which is rooted in the space and in my own passage in one of its core collectives, Laboratorio Smaschieramenti. The name translates as The Laboratory for Un-masking/De-masculinizing; two gestures in the same name. A portmanteau for the everyday work of trans-feminist-queer self-determination and self-management (autogestione).

After a week of turning inward to make sense out of my own last journey around the sun, this week I finally turn to more fully thinking (and writing) my immersion in Atlantide and Demasculinizing. As ever, my first steps are overwhelming. How to write from this experience?

So, I started today like I always do: Drawing a guide card over morning coffee, something to help unfold the story of the day. I picked The Ten of Wands, Oppression. Never a welcome sight (Especially the day after I pulled the Three of Swords, Sorrow.) The Ten of Wands––the spirit/fire suit––is the essence of blockage; depicting eight burning wands barred by two diamond-strong, green-gray dorjes. With the Thoth Deck, I am draw more to color than I am to the symbolism of the objects themselves. Here, the hot red fire that suffuses the wands themselves in the Ace, Two (Dominion), Three (Virtue), Six (Victory), and Seven (Valour) diffuses into a lighter, cooler orange. It becomes the background, scorching the earth.

Fire (at least as an element of this Tarot) is not meant for the ground, where it consumes and ravages, it is meant to reach upward like the smoke from burning sage. The fire of the Ten is blocked, confined, forced to spread horizontally; it is not unlike the PDs (Partito Democratico) strategy in Bologna (and elsewhere) over the last weeks as they have moved from one eviction to the next, all but setting fire to thriving experiments and established spaces of self-management. This is electoral nihilism at its finest.

The astrological aspect of this card is Saturn in Sagittarius. Saturn is, of course, the discipliner (as anyone who has been through their return/s will know too well) and Sagittarius is the mutable fire sign of the zodiac. Sag is the archer: restless, curious, half human, half animal. As far as this card is concerned, Sagittarius is hitting Saturn’s disciplinary side hard; the Ten is Sag in the third decan i.e. the latter 10 degrees of the sign itself. So, for the card, we have undeniable difficulty. Third decan Saturn (via Darkstar) is telling us stories of people who are banished for their beliefs, whose inability to handle bullshit can get them into a lot of trouble, whose sensitivity can verge on paranoia, especially when it bumps up against limitations to the will for free expression by which Sagittarius itself is more generally defined.

Oddly enough, the actual planet Saturn recently moved into Sagittarius after two years in Scorpio (2012–2014, plus a not so brief retrograde between June 15 and September 17 2015). Saturn went fully into Sagittarius on September 18 and will remain there until December 20, 2017. Actual planet Saturn is presently drifting through in the first decan of Sagittarius, a movement that lasts through December 20. Looping it back to the Thoth, the card linked to the first decan of Sag is the Eight of Wands: Swiftness, Mercury in Sag. This is a magical, electric, fast-moving, rainbow-on-top-of-a-rainbow card. It is, as Mercury is, all about communication and fast moving cycles. It is all about the forceful productions that result from a violent situation and the immense creativity that can result. Though, this kind of creativity risks moving a bit too quickly.

Putting it all together, we come to the very constellation of Tarot cards that the Tens sit in: The Magician Constellation. Which, in addition to the Tens, contains all the Aces, The Sun (XIX), The Wheel of Fortune (X), and The Magician (I). Put them together in the form of a diamond, the same material that blocks the eight burning wands of Swiftness in the Oppression card, and you have a story about communicating, including communicating across cultures. This could include cultures linked to nation, cultures linked to different modes of doing politics, or cultures linked to different communities of practice. Like the diamond, the story is about clarity between action and work. Sitting at the crux of the diamond, on its squarish facing-you facet, is the Wheel of Fortune, which turns things around. It is flanked, on the left, by the Ten of Swords (Ruin, fear of) and our friend for the day the Ten of Wands. On the right we find the Ten of Cups (Satiety) and the Ten of Disks (Wealth). So, at last, to balance the blockage and all consuming fire of the Ten, the Magician reaches for the Ace of Wands, Clarity of Vision, the fire signs together (Leo, Aries, Sag). The Ace asks: Who are you? What negativities must you refuse to bear? How can you stop from abandoning yourself? How can you trust your intuition without hesitation?

Dearest Atlantideans, through the labyrinth of some old fashioned, pre-capitalist knowledges, I send up and out all power to you/to us today. We will find our way through this fast moving, ground-loving fire, flooding it with the depth of everything we are. #AtlantideOvunque!

Academics, researchers, and other knowledge workers: Please read and sign Atlantide Statement of Solidarity, available in English and French, here.

Everybody: Please read and sign the Public Inter-Natio(A)nal Transfeminist and Queer AnNOunCEMENT for Atlantide, available in English, Italian, and Spanish, here.