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Anyone that lives in Minnesota knows that it's less work—a lot less work—to shovel two inches of snow six times than it is to shovel 12 inches of snow once. 6 x 2 ≠ 12 x 1.

Call it Minnesota arithmetic.

It's our first big snow of the Winter. They're saying 8 to 12. Yikes.

All day, the city has been in battening mode, preparing. The grocery stores looked like the day before Thanksgiving, as everyone stocked up.

It's an annual ritual, and everyone's invited. For one brief moment, partisanship and denominationalism are laid aside; for now, we're all in this together, a Blizzard Fellowship. Neighbors help each other shovel out, and strangers push strangers out of snowbanks.

I go out to shovel the first two inches. It's really coming down hard. That's fine with me: call me crazy, but I actually enjoy shoveling snow. I'll take a good blizzard over your hurricane or lava flow any day of the lunar month, thanks very much. No wonder I live here.

I clear the driveway and front sidewalk, then the sidewalks of the neighbors on both sides, just for good measure. "Why do we live here again?" a woman asks, walking past. It's the traditional question.

I give her the ritual answer: "Because we're all clinically insane."

She laughs. "I keep forgetting," she says, trudging on into the wind.

Broom in hand, my neighbor stands looking mournfully at his snow-mounded car.

"Another lovely day in sunny Minneapolis," I deadpan.

(This is irony: we haven't seen the Sun for days.)

Steve shakes his head. "I just got home from ten days in Jamaica, and this is what I come back to."

"Welcome home," I say, wryly, then add: "More coming, I hear."

He begins to sweep the snow off of the car.

Skritch! Skritch! Skriiiiitch!

It's been a dry winter here in Paganistan, so it's almost with a sense of relief that I shoulder the snow shovel and go out to clear the walk.

Minnesota being the Land of Common Sense, there's a logic to shoveling snow. You want to get to it early, before the feet of passers-by tramp it down. The sooner you get to it, the easier the job will be.

On our block, Fatima two houses down is always first. No matter how early I go out to shovel, her walk will already be clear.

Then comes Nick across the street, who shovels snow as a hummingbird hovers: you know that it's happening, but it's too quick to see.

Me, I settle for third.

Minnesota being also the Land of Polite, there are thews (customs, laws) governing how you shovel.

(That you do shovel, of course, is an unstated premise. Not to shovel one's sidewalk is tantamount to a declaration of indifference, unneighborliness, if not of downright sociopathy.)

You always, for instance, shovel your own walk and a little bit of your neighbor's. To shovel only your own walk is regarded as stingy, niggardly. But of course, you've got to be careful. Shovel too much of your neighbor's walk and you're making, as it were, a territorial claim. All things in moderation.

Because of how we see the world, witches, of course, have added incentives for shoveling our walks. Some would call it paranoia, but to us it just seems like common sense.

Why?

Tarot--the highly-symbolic set of cards that serves divination, meditation, pathworking, inspiration, creativity and illumination--is a "fringe" practice that, to some extent, is becoming more mainstream...just like Paganism in all it's diverse, vibrant expressions.

And because both expressions are "fringe" (meaning we tend to be objects of ridicule, exclusion and/or marginalization), we need to support one another.