WEek 8: “how panicked should I be?”

Cards from Infinite Door by Pamela Love and Krys Maniecki

Morning, class. Before we get to this week’s message, two quick announcements. 

First, The Modern Fortune Teller’s Field Guide is finally out! If you haven’t yet, you can get your copy from Crossed Crow directly or order it from anywhere—including your local witchy shop, queer- or Black-owned business, etc. I’m doing a contest. If you post a review somewhere publicly and tag me or screencap and send it to me, you can win signed copies of all my books plus an hour-long session: tarot, tarot+reiki, coaching, general tarot bull session. The fact is, I’m so shy, that the hour with me is probably the most valuable!

Second, I have a new workshop/experience coming up! The Modern Fortune Teller’s Conclave. Part workshop, part divinatory experience, there are two sessions you can choose form. 10/31 at 4pm eastern, and 11/2 at 2 pm, eastern. Click the title for more info and to sign up. 

That said, on to this week’s survival tip. 

I recorded an episode of the Witch Wednesdays podcast recently and one of the things I mentioned is that, though I don’t read for myself much, I do from time to time, considering all the things, do a reading on the question, “How panicked should we be right now?” They’re actually usually pretty calming, so I figured I’d use this week to do one of those and post it, here. 

This week’s deck is the fascinating Infinite Door by Pamela Love, with art by Krys Maniecki. 

I did a double arc of three and in row one, we have Seven of Swords, The Sun, Ace of Cups. And in the second row, we find Ace of Pentacles, Queen of Pentacles, and the Eight of Cups.

Can I just mention that I love tarot? I so do. Not for any particular reason; I just feel really lucky to have it in my life. 

Anyhoo. 

The Sun in the middle is generally a good sign in readings, though it can signal the heat being turned up dramatically. The Ace of Cups doesn’t provide much relief. And the Seven of Swords can amp up the heat, given that it’s a higher number and the card sometimes indicates nefarious doings. The Sun being one of the higher-numbered majors also intensified the heat, and, as we already know, the Ace of Cups isn’t enough to tamp anything down. It’s a squirt gun at the conflagration. 

But each card is influenced by the one below it, and in this case I’m also intending to read that row together. 

The Seven of Wands, then, is influenced by the Ace of Pentacles; the Sun by the Queen of Pentacles; and, the Ace of Cups by the Eight of Cups. 

Let’s start with the last combo. The Ace of Cups partnered with the 8 adds more water to the equation, and while we’re not yet working with a fleet of firefighters yet, we are better-supplied. 

Eights represents work, effort. There’s always the sense of “moving on” with Waite-Smith inspired decks, but if we’re moving toward anything, it’s the Ace of Cups—which would be a bit of a new sensory experience. That’s promising, as many of us are feeling overly-sensitized at the moment. Of course, we need to be careful not to let ourselves become desensitized. But, a new sensory moment is promising. 

I’ve actually decided to add a third row, because I don’t feel like I have enough context at the moment to know how to get to our answer. The card that now appears below is the Hanged Man, which isn’t promising, but the energy of this column moves up. The Eight moves into the Ace, so we’re ascending from the Hanged Man, into the eight, and finally to the Ace. Promising. I drew another card to tell me what comes after the Ace and I got The Lovers. I typically interpret that card as lack of choice or partnership, and I think partnership, or union, works better here—especially as this depiction shows hands holding. We will move to a re-union. Bit of a journey, but that’s where we’re moving. 

A quick note on the “subject” or “querent” of this reading. The question was “How panicked do we need to be?” When I ask the question I expanded the wording: we, being “those who care about each other.” So this “we” is the subject of the reading. 

The Sun with the Queen of Pentacles is interesting. The queen grounds the Sun dramatically, and that’s not a bad thing. The Queen of Penties is almost acting like the ozone layer, for us. There is a major grounding force at work beneath the blazing light. There’s work happening actually in front of our eyes, but it’s too bright to see it. Something, something is going on. Whenever I do these readings, the suit of Pentacles typically suggests the business community, which I hate; but I think this suggests two things. First, boycotts and the like are working. The business community has only one goal: money. And when we deny the monster money, they panic. That’s good. 

The card that I pulled for this column’s third was the Six of Swords. Again, the positioning of the card suggests a movement up. We’re coming from the six, into the queen, and then the sun—the sun is coming out, if we keep working. Incidentally, this very watery swords card tamps down the Sun’s intensity, which is also a good thing. I hate to say this, but we have to keep our brains balanced (six), we have to keep working, and the sun will come out. 

The Seven of Swords is influenced by the Ace of Pentacles and the added third card became the Knight of Wands. More fire. I’m struggling a bit with this combo, because sevens are somewhat vague. They’re so internal, so introspective. And what that suggests to me is a fire in the belly, I mean a lot of energy is being used up on this experience. It makes me think of indigestion or heartburn, two things I’ve felt increasingly troubled by in the last year. The Ace of Pentacles grounds that, but the Knight of Wands brings it back to life. I drew another influencer for this column’s, the Nine of Cups. 

So, what we’re experiencing really is our systems are being attacked by worry, by “fire.” Reminds me of when I was a kid. Fire drills at school—even the threat of a fire drill—used to terrify me. Truly. If there was a fire drill planned, I would spend the day in terror. I don’t know why. Obviously the fire alarms scared me, but I don’t know, it really was a traumatic experience. Granted, I now know that I have ADHD-related emotional dysregulation, and that was probably it. I think that has a lot to do with it. But I was a generally terrified kid, and didn’t sleep for three years thanks to a particularly alarming Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown ad from the 80’s. (A wrote an essay about it for Hippocampus a bunch of years ago. You can find it here, if you’re somehow feeling deprived for my writing.)

We will come through the fire. 
The sun will come out. 
We will have a sensory refresh. 
But we have to keep the work up. 

Now, one thing that’s always difficult with tarot is timing. It’s hard to say when this will happen, and one thing that life teaches me daily is that things happen by inches. We rarely experience things suddenly, anymore, and even things that seem sudden have actually been moving in that direction for—well, generations. I mean I don’t for one second believe that we haven’t been on this path all along, and so the inevitability of this cycle shifting make sense. The problem, though, is that when cycles shift and we’re not feeling constantly under threat, we get lazy—particular about the wellbeing of others, who are still being impacted by shitty systems. We have to promise to ourselves that once we’re back in a space where our bodies can restore, our nervous systems reset, we won’t give up the good work of liberation. I think that’s actually the road to enlightenment. 

So, no, it’s not time to panic, yet. But it’s also not time to retire. ​