Shadows of Prognostication

I got a COVID vaccination and a flu vaccination this Friday. I timed it for ten in the morning so that the chills wouldn’t hit me until around midnight. My body must be getting used to the COVID vaccine, because the chills and fever response has been getting less extreme every time I get the shots. At least this time I wasn’t cold and shivering for what seemed like forever and wrung out with sweat afterward. This time it was just some minor random chills, no real fever (I never felt hot enough to take my temperature), and a desire to sleep through most of Saturday, with bouts of comfort reading old Mercedes Lackey novels (“…for Evil’s still lurking / and that’s the next book!”).

The act of sleeping while my body generated new antibodies seemed appropriate for Saturday’s new moon, and gave me an excuse to feel tired and like a not-very-creative, inactive lump. In sweatpants and my bathrobe. And a hot bath was in there, somewhere.

Coincidental with the new moon came the news that one of our friends has a serious health issue. I’m still processing it, and thoughts, feelings, and images — departed friends; memento mori; actuarial tables; appropriate rituals; the tension between wanting a long, healthy life and knowing that living beyond ninety means that one could be the last of one’s old friends left standing; the Six of Cups, the Eight of Swords, the Hanged Man, the Tower, and various other imagined tarot cards — have not settled down into static clarity. As our friend texted, “treatment is going to suck.” This is one of those things one does not want to Google. I’m not ashamed to say that I ran to my health app to double-check my records for various tests, and I guess I’m glad after all that my recently retired primary healthcare provider was old-school and lab-panel-happy.

I suspect tonight’s scrying ritual and meditation for the new moon will be interesting.