I thought, “What deck should I use this week?” Then, got up and went into the office and saw this one sitting wonkily atop a pile of others on my shelves. “OK,” I said, having forgotten I even had this deck, “You seem to want to chat.” I know I ordered it, but I can’t remember why and I don’t even think I’ve ever used it. It’s the Old English Tarot by Maggie Keen (USG). Because it’s “old” and “English,” I thought next, “Oh, I’ll do a Tudor Rose spread!” And I did find one or two online, but they sucked. So I went to research where it comes from and realized that it doesn’t have any really useful meaning, and sometimes we have to let go of an idea when it’s not yielding anything useful—something, in fact, that’s helpful for tarot readers to recall. If we have a spread or a deck that never gets us the results we want . . . let it go. It ain’t worth your sanity, trying to force something to work.

So I used this vague, rose-like shape—in this case, the cards represents the points/leafs of the Tudor Rose? Or something. I don’t know. 

Here’s what we got:
Four of Batons (2),  Judgement (3)
                     Ace of Cups (1)
Knight of Cups (4), Ace of Coins (5)
                 King of Batons (6)

A spread, to me, is less useful when it tells what specific issue a card is addressing, because I think it’s easier and clearer for everyone to focus each spread on one question. When you think about it, most spreads are really a series of one-card readings with different questions on a related topic. But if I want to really understand the situation, I want all the cards to answer the same question. When I use a shape other than my nine-card square, I first look to see what relationships the spread indicates. 

In this case, we have several-many sets of pairs—and that’s quite cool. To whit: 4/batons+Judgement; 4/batons+knight cups; Judgement + ace/coins; ace/cups+king/batons. We also have two chevrons, not unlike another reading I did recently where the cards above served as houses for those below, and vice versa. So that gives us 4/batons+ace/cups+Judgment and knight/cups+king/batons+ace/coins. Then there’s the way five of the cards (4/batons, knight/cups, king batons, ace/coins, Judgement) create a vessel that contains the only vessel in the reading—the Ace of Cups! 

The degree to which any or all of this matters to our final answer is yet-to-be-seen, as is the mix of cards. Two batons (four, king); two cups (ace, knight); one major (Judgement); one coin (ace). Fire and water are dominant, air is totally absent. No thinking, here! No talking, either, and potentially no learning. Good or bad? We will soon see. 

The Ace of Cups draws my attention no matter how I look at the spread, and it was also the first card I out down. It’s closest relative is the king, below it. This shades the card more than any other. That’s useful, because an ace alone frequently means very little to me. Yes, we know the cliches—a new beginning, inspiration, a seed. But what are we actually saying when we say that? The King of Batons reminds us that if we wanna be a daddy, we gotta sire the kid first. This is rather a coarse way of saying it, but however you get there, if a seed is going to become anything, it needs to be fertilized. The King of Wands is “daddy” in just about all ways, so it’s hard to escape—of course, the ace, then, becomes the thing being fertilized. I find procreational myths really annoying, but given the fact that I can’t escape the fact that I exist because of this reality I also can’t let it not play out at least in some readings. 

Fire and water have an evangelical nature when combined, assumed they’re evenly matched—and I’d say they are, here. True, aces can suggest a little bit of something—they frequently do, in fact. At the same time, aces can be high. When we place one with a king, they definitely get upskilled. Evangelism is a bad word, but stripped of its right-wing political poisoning, it’s the enthusiastic spreading of a message. Now, earlier I said there was no air in the reading. I said that means there’s no thinking or even talking. But I was wrong, you see, because this card combination’s evangelical nature—the spirit or air created when fire and water make steam—indicate that, in fact, the whole point of this spread is an airy topic: spreading the “good news.” (That term comes from my Christian upbringing, and though Catholics aren’t particularly evangelical--these days--the term “good news” makes me think always: “Good news! We’ve come to colonize you and destroy your sense of identity so that we can gaslight you into giving us your money and land.”) 

So, the reading begins by saying that if you want to spread your message, you first have to get the message fertilized. Fleshed out. You have to birth a message and understand what it really is. What are you really saying? So often, in “these times,” we dash off the message before we even know what we think. We fire off the missive, the social media post, we operate from passion and fury and we let that motivate fits of, yes, evangelizing. If we were to review all those missives, how often did we say what we intended to? I know I’ve fucked up—luckily not too badly—when in my missive-making mode. And of course if I were to go back through my missive history, I’d see someone who is far more a work in progress than he thought he was. Ah, well. The point is, sometimes--especially when it’s a message that really needs to get out there—spending time being sure what the message actually is would be a good start.

Let’s look at some other pairings. Next up, Four of Batons and Judgement. I have to be honest, the Judgement card’s not one I particularly like. I’ve worked out my issues with most of the majors, but I’m never excited to see this one. Crowley’s change from Judgement to Aeon always struck me as pretentious, but when I learned what it meant I actually found it more useful an idea than its predecessor. Not in the esoteric Crowley way, but in the practical Tom Benjamin way. An eon/aeon is . . . an era. Crowley’s era refers to the new age he felt would be dawning—the third of a triptych featuring Isis, Osiris, and Horus. But any old era works in a reading, because we’re rarely dealing with something as large as the Age of Horus, say. But . . . we did land on the word “evangelizing” a moment ago, which could indicate a certain “size” that does imply we’re dealing more with an “aeon” than an “era.” 

The Four of Cups is sustained fire, sustainable fire—although, sometimes it’s also a conservative state of being. Sustainable (good) can become conservative (reductive) if not tended carefully. (I love that there’s a peacock on this card!) The combo of the four + Judgement suggests that this is an era of sustained fire. Energy being directed in such a way as to keep up its motor, keep up its own juice. Like the alternator in a car, essentially recharging the battery by using the battery. Or, in my case, the brakes in my car (a hybrid) charge the battery—so when I’m braking, the energy created there is sustaining my engine. The act of doing the thing makes the thing doable! 

The Knight of Cups paired with the Ace of Coin makes me think of using this newfound evangelical fervor for the thing to, actually, make a little scratch. Hey, now. But what of this interesting seemingly-encouraged mix of spirituality and capitalism? Is there more to know? Well, yes, because we have a few more combos to consider. 

The Four of Batons + the Knight of Cups mirrors the central pairing (ace/cups, king/batons) in element and temperament. The knight’s journey is sustained by this fire, this fever, for what they do. The Judgement card paired with the Ace of Coins suggests that we’re waking up to new ways of surviving capitalism. (Surviving is not the word I thought I was going to type, but that’s what came out and it sure as fuck is more apt.)

The top trio/chevron (4/batons, ace/cups, Judgement) suggests that a slow burn (4) has been leading to this new (ace) great awakening (Judgement). The bottom trio/chevron (knight/cups, king/batons, ace/coins) suggests that the pursuit (knight) of this powerful spiritual work (fire+water) and the growth (knight < king) leads, in fact, to a new life/job/earth.

I wasn’t going to deal with diagonals, but why the fuck not? There are only two paired this way: 4/batons+ace/coins: sustainable effort yields new payouts/opportunities; knight/cups+Judgement: loving (cups) pursuit (knight) leads to revelation (Judgement). 

Here, friends, we have a rare case where every single card in this spread had something to say, all of the cards spoke at more or less equal volume, and every single combo I could think of proved to deepen the overall message! 

When I get somewhat evangelical about finding ways of reading that yield this much context, it’s only because I know from experience that more context = clearer readings. I know it can seem overwhelming to have so many card combos to work with, but it’s not—not if you remember that the theme that develops will begin constraining and shaping the possibilities for the other card combinations. The more you start to understand what the reading is about, the fewer possibilities exist for card interpretations—and that’s so helpful! Because often the very first combo will narrow down the scope of the reading so much that you won’t feel overwhelmed at all!

Anyway, I haven’t yet yielded a clear reading; in fact, I’ve really just shown you my notes. What does this mean in terms of a lesson about divination?

Well, a lot, actually. Personally, it has some really resonant messages for me that I’m not ready to parse with you, yet, but it is quite timely. But I think—I know—a reading exists on multiples levels at one time, and so in a more general and reader-friendly sense the reading talks about the reality behind a dangerous cliche. 

Dangerous cliche? After all that evangelism, above? All that spirituality? 

Yes. The dangerous cliche is, “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

That’s, to put it bluntly, fuckin’ nonsense. 

In fact, if you treat something you love that way, you will burn out. I guarantee it. When you take a vocation and turn it into a job—we often say “career,” but a career is just a job you sacrifice too much for—you change the dynamic. It’s not something you do because you want to; you do it, now, because you have to. And there will be times you dont want to have to, but you’ll have to. 

This is how people get burned out on spiritual work, trying to commoditize it, in a way, and to make it their career, their gig. And when that’s the ultimate objective, it’s risky. I won’t get into the whole thing about running a small business, here, because it’s out of scope and also it bores me. (If it bores you, too, let that be a sign.)

Now you might think, “well, gee, it’s easy for you to say don’t commoditize your work when you read for money and write books.” I don’t mean that you can’t capitalize on your spiritual work, divination or otherwise. I mean that you have to take the counsel of this reading if you do. 

I talked about the evangelical nature of the reading. I didn’t say to whom we were intending to spread that good news. And, in this case, it is a self-evangelizing that we’re after. Which I know sounds nuts, and I will admit that I’m just a touch tickled by THC right now, but it’s back to that metaphor of the car alternator. You have to find a way to inspire (evangelize) yourself to keep going, so that your progress as a reader—especially if you’re attempting to go pro—is sustainable and leads to awakenings and new eras (Judgement). The pursuit (knight) should be largely spiritual (cups), less so than on the coin (ace/coins)—though, of course, that is how we sustain part of our work. But this much be practical, activated (coins) spirituality (fire+water). Meaning, it must be useful and usable. There is a reciprocity, though, to this—that doing the work charges the battery so that the work can be done. 

And I guess that’s one way in which my own “professional” practice has been a success. I don’t really think about this much, and in fact hadn’t ever thought it right before this very moment, but the approach I took once I decided to make this something I’m compensated for is similar to what I described above. I never intended to make it a job, it’s just that a time arrived when requests for readings suggested that I start asking for compensation. “It’s just for my time,” I told myself and friends. “I enjoy doing this, but life is busy.” And that is the tac I’ve taken this whole time. And I don’t make a lot of money doing it, I remain in a corporate job. But I never dread reading people’s cards. I may procrastinate, but I never dread it. (Same with writing my books.) And I rarely procrastinate unless I’m exceptionally worn out, mostly because reading isn’t impossible but is significantly more work when I’m depleted. Same with the books and the classes. It would make sense for me to have a more regular teaching schedule (yes, some classes are coming!) and even have a plan of what the next five books might be. But that’s not a good way for me to work because when I’m forced to do things, I immediately resent them. And I love this work, so it has to be sustainable. I love doing fairs and markets and events and shops. I love reading for folks online. I love teaching. All of those things leave me feeling generally more energized at the end than I was at the start. And that’s how it should be. 

And that’s what I think the reading is saying. If you want to do this work, and if you want to capitalize in it, please find a way into it that is self sustaining and leads to your own progress and growth. Please, please avoid thinking of it as the dream-job, the ideal, the perfect solution to your employment frustrations or worries. Let the journey take you, in this case, and pay attention to when and where it takes you. This is will tell you a lot about the conditions under which you will thrive as a reader. In recent posts I’ve talked a lot about receptivity. More and more I think receptivity is the ideal state of being most of the time. It keeps us open to possibility and opportunity while not projecting any hard-and-fast expectations on a situation and also allows us to do a vibe check and say, “no, I don’t think that this option is for me right now.” I’ve talked before about how, in Big Magic, write Elizabeth Gilbert talked about genius not as something you are, but something that visits you. In order to receive genius—a temporary visit—you must be receptive to it. If you are aggressive to it, it stays away. 

Because I was raised Catholic, I was raised to be passive. “Let go and let God.” The underlying message, at least as I accepted it, was “you can’t do anything about what happens to you in life, so don’t get your hopes up.” When I found tarot in my late teens, what attracted me so much was that it made me feel for the first time like an active participant in my own life! I’d never felt that way before. And, of course, we know how much this “country” loves aggression. But receptivity isn’t passive. Not remotely. It is actively engaged in receiving, because it doesn’t let any old thing on in. It pays attention to what fits and what doesn’t. It listens to intuition, rather than imposing meaning. It encourages the ego to sleep—more and more I think it actively sedates it. And it’s actually quite a powerful state to live in. Because when the time comes for genius to visit—or whatever else happens in those modes—you’re ready, willing, and able to go on that journey! And they are fun journeys, I no know from experience. Both when doing readings, as well as many other things, including spell work and cooking!

So, to sum it up, this is a somewhat long and winding way of saying, “whatever you do, especially if you love it, make sure you develop a practice around it that is sustainable and gives back what you put into it. And if that changes, changes with it.” That’s the basic lesson. Receptivity. One of my new buzzwords, apparently. Add it to context.

A read of one’s own
Here’s a spread you can try to explore the message of this reading, but like I said above—I think that one question per reading is actually more useful. So you could also make this into four (or give, if you have a business) mini readings!

1. Where I might be pushing too hard in my practice
2. Where I’m being actively receptive
3. How I benefit from letting go of what I push too hard on
4. How I can enhance my overall receptive nature
5. (Optional) How can receptivity make my spiritual business—and my spirit—thrive

As always, wishing you a decent week!
Be good!

tb.

In the fountain pen world, a land I’ve dabbled in, pen fans talk about “grail pens.” These are the great pens of all time that are either rare, exceptionally expensive, and often both. My grail pen is a Visconti Homo Sapiens, or really any Visconti pen would do (the operas, in particular . . . drool)—but the Homo Sapiens is a material unlike any other. It’s made from lava rock. Visconti known for the elegance of their pen capping and their dreamy nibs. I will never, though, justify spending close to a thousand dollars on a pen when I rarely write by hand. 

I bring this up because this week we’re using one of my grail decks this week. There haven’t been many in my career. Robert M. Place’s Vampire Tarot (which I got), this one, and the University Press edition of the Waite-Smith (the one with the pink Ankh on the back that Rachel Pollack mentions being her first, which is why I wanted it—and I got that, too). I can’t think of many others that I lusted for but that were either rare or too spendy. I’m not drawn to many decks purely because they’re hard to get or expensive. In fact, the cost of a deck can frequently deter me because I’m a rough shuffler. 

I never thought I’d get my hands on this one, but after commenting on someone’s post about it (and how much I lusted for it), the OP said, “You know, it’s not getting any cheaper.” I’d just graduated from undergrad, too (I think—or I had some other reason to pretend I needed to treat myself), so that was all the encouragement I needed. I got it. I love it. It’s strange. It’s an aggressively esoteric Marseille-style deck, with nods to many systems I don’t practice and/or appreciate. It is entirely intended to be viewed through a hermetic lens. And, much like all such decks, I just don’t care. It has a character I cannot resist. Like my inevitable love affair with the Thoth deck. I don’t like what it “stands” for, but when we’re dancing together it “stands” in a whole other way. 

Anyway, gaydies and gentletheys, The Grand Tarot Belline, (1966, France Cartes/Grimaud). In the “US,” it seems only gettable on eBay, which is where I got it years ago. I don’t know if that’s changed. 

Anyway, to the cartes themselves, n’est-ce pas? 
Five of Coins (4), Wheel of Fortune (Le Sphinx) (2), Two of Cups (1), Six of Wands (3), Chariot (of Osiris) (5). 

The guidebook and the text on these cards—and there’s a lot of text on the cards—are all in French, and I have only tiny, tiny, tiny knowledge of French. But I actually quite love working with decks in languages I don’t speak as long as I know what cards I’m looking at. I love the look of descriptive text and handwriting on cards; I just don’t want to know what it is. Anyhoo. I do know, with my limited language skills, that the Chariot in this deck is also called “The Chariot of Osiris” as well as La Victoire--Victory. What is quite cool about the Chariot showing up, and why I allowed myself to go on that long diatribe about grail decks and pens, is because Crowley said that the Charioteer is holding the holy grail. That’s what the disk being held by the driver in the Thoth deck is. And so, a grail theme may in fact emerge from this reading! Who knows?

We do, after all, start with the two of cups! 

I know enough French to know that the descriptive text on this translates to “union of sympathetic hearts” — which is quite cute. But in many ways, isn’t that really the experience of doing a tarot reading for someone? In theory it is. For the duration of the reading, whether in person or not, you are in union together, in many ways speaking from heart to heart—or whatever chakra you’re working with that day. 

Back in my new hire training days, I used to tell my trainees that “customer engagement” should be taken literally. When we’re speaking to a customer, we should think about the common understanding of “engagement” as the intention to marry. For the duration of a customer contact, we are engaged to--or married to--the customer. They are the single most important thing in the world. These days, I’d get laughed out of the training room if I said that (and not just because I don’t work for that company anymore). This “country” has invested so much in its hateful individualism, getting a smile from someone ringing up your groceries is impossible. And why should they want to? They’re being treated like crap by the business. Being acknowledged by a person who stepped on your foot on the sidewalk is too much to hope for, now, let alone an apology. I’m not being nostalgic; I think this country is showing now who we always have been. But the myth of customer-centricity is being thrown down the toilet much the way the myth of this being the “land of free” is.

When we’re reading for someone, there is a union. But, and I think this is important to highlight, I don’t think it’s really between the client and the reader. I think the real union is between the message and the client. If we were to think about the two of cups through this lens, than the reader is the cups—the container holding the union, holding the reading. But, as I frequently say, we are merely a translator. I feel strongly that this is so partly—mostly—because my experience tells me this is so. But also because I think it reminds readers that we have to get our damn egos out of the equation. And that’s a thing I’ll harp on a lot, too. There’s that cliche that in meditation if you’re thinking about how mindful you’re being, you’re not being mindful. I think as a reader, if we’re thinking about how good or bad we’re reading, we’re not reading anymore. We’re patting ourselves on the back or beating ourselves up. These are two sides of the self-same coin. I think if we thought of ourselves as channels—and I’m certain there are readers who do—we would have a better time managing our own egos. 

It’s tough with tarot, or any physical divination (as opposed to, say, clairsentience) because that the reader does actively have to learn a system and has to actively interpret the cards. We’re not merely receiving, we’re receiving and translating. So we are part of the reading. We’re the ones “figuring out” what the reading “says.” But the more I work with divination, I think the more mature I get at doing it, the more I realize that so much of the process is simply getting out of the way and just . . . following our impulses. Because those impulses are, if we can get a bit metaphorical, the synapses that our guides fire in order for the correct words to come out. It’s like, they’re in our sphere aiming their little thought lasers at this part of the brain, then that one, and suddenly the word “union” comes out of our mouth. It feels like we “thought” of it, but really we were just manipulated in such a way that the word came out. 

That’s a far more spiritual way of thinking about it than you may be used to from me. But I don’t really think of it that way. I think that’s always how it worked, but what I’ve done over the years is understood that I’m actually not that important a piece of the puzzle. Not in a self-shame way, not in a negation of my gifts—I’m a very good reader—but in the way that I understand more and more that I’m a conduit for the oracle, not the oracle itself. I think I’m a good reader now because I’m much better at getting out of the way. I would have said in the past, and have said, that readings are simply pattern recognition. They are. But: I think the ability for us to recognize patterns exists in part because we’re being guided. In essence, we’re not entirely alone out here. But that would have been an unfathomable thought for me years ago. I wouldn’t have been able to understand it, enjoy it, and certainly not articulate it.

The 2/cups is flanked by the Wheel, a card I see a lot of lately, and the 6/wands. It’s almost as though the Wheel is chaos and the 6/wands is order. That’s not a keyword I typically assign to the Six of Wands, but the cards also typically doesn’t show such a neat arrangement of scepters. Sixes do have an association with beauty, and when we’re living in chaos, order can be quite a beautiful thing. (By the way: here’s an example of me getting out of the way . . . I didn’t tell these two cards what they meant together; I let them tell me. I glanced at them my and brain went—ORDER AND CHAOS—and boom, there was the interpretation. I got out of the way and the cards spoke.)

Actually, glancing at the whole spread, if I read it from left to right, I might say, The uncertainty of life (5/coins) is never-ending and unsettling (Wheel), but the uniting of client and message (2/cups) brings a stately order to their energy and their efforts (6/wands), so that they can keep chasing their grail (Chariot). (This is another example of me just getting out of the way. I happened to glance at the cards to reference while I was typing and this whole sentence formed in my mind because I was being receptive. I’m primed—now, after years—to receive more. I do impose, especially when I’m not “hearing” anything. But more and more and I have to do that less and less.)

In essence, it defines what divination is and why it’s helpful—especially now. Which is funny, because this morning I thought, “Oh, maybe I should ask ‘what is tarot?’ for this week’s blog” and then said, “No, that’s dumb.” But that’s essentially the answer I just got! Hilarious. 

If I return to what I had been doing, mirroring the flanking cards, I only hadn’t gotten to the 5/coins and the Chariot, which—when mirrored—say a similar thing, in context of the other cards. Moving on from and despite life’s uncertainty. 

It’s nice to be reminded that what we do matters. One of the things I attempted to do with The Modern Fortune Teller’s Field Guide (open for preorders now!) was make the case that fortune tellers matter. Not in like a defensive way, but in the sense that the world has always needed people who can decipher through chaos. The world also has needed people who can see what’s happening and what the patterns are and work with them. And, of course, to see the world as it actually is, and not as our desires or insecurities paint it. People want information, people want clarity. I don’t think divination systems of all kinds would keep having resurgences in history if they didn’t work. I know they work, because I see them work every day. I’m among the most cynical people you’ll ever encounter, I’m a skeptic in all ways . . . except that divination has proven to me that it works.

I’ve recently made the argument that skepticism is colonial. To retreat to a world of “logic” and of “science” that makes no room for magic or belief is, in essence, to commit the sin white liberals commit constantly: to buy into the idea that correctness and wisdom only come from “experts” who have passed certain tests of expertise set up by the privileged. That’s a convoluted way of saying “they got credentials from higher education, so we believe them.” And I want to be clear, I’m not anti-science. Or education. I’m quite pro-science. I benefit from it. But “science”—the gatekeeping kind—should have a “yes, and” attitude and instead it frequently has a “no moron” attitude. “Science” (I’m using the quotes here like I use “christianity”) doesn’t care about “what if . . .?” which is the main question of science. It’s attitude is, “That doesn’t seem reasonable to me, so it’s fake.” 

If you want to find out how or why something works, and even to change it—which, let’s not forget, is the very reason we have science--you have to be open to any possible answer. A science that isn’t, isn’t science. (Meanwhile, diviners are out here asking questions and being open all the damn time. Or we should be, anyway.)

It’s ego. Science and medicine are fields dominated by straight, white men—men who can afford advanced degrees in those fields. If the fields are more diverse than once they were, that doesn’t negate the fact that the culture, the lessons, the books, the ethos, everything, has been designed by those men in ways that make sense to those men—and anyone who doesn’t agree with those men are “uneducated” and “ignorant.” 

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 

Science can tell you why it feels like your heart is breaking when you think of your lover cheating on you. A diviner can tell you what’s causing the feeling, the reasons you are prone to that kind of mindset, and even things you can do to recover from it. 

Divination is the lovechild of science and magic. Science is magic, when it’s approached with openness. We don’t get cures to diseases when people say, “well, that disease isn’t real.” And we know that has happened and know it continues to! We know that certain group of people are entirely dismissed by their doctors because their doctors have bizarrely inhumane beliefs about them (studies—recent studies—show that med students actually think Black bodies have higher pain tolerances than non-Black bodies). 

This is real and it is verifiable. It is science. 

Knowing this, you’d think science (and medicine) would admit, “gee, we might have a fucking bias issue in our industry—and because it’s really hard to see bias, we might have it in way more areas than just whether or not we hold racist stereotypes about Black skin that we KNOW, because we’re scientists and we have the evidence, were placed into the collective mind deliberately by enslavers to justify their fucking crimes.”

Or something. You know. Just a suggestion.

And this rigidity, incidentally, has made it acceptable for every “American” to consider themselves both an expert and a scientist, and to feel completely comfortable pontificating on their “expertise” without concept of consequence or even the idea that maybe, just maybe, they’re fucking wrong about something. 

This is an influencer culture. People see guys like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye go on their anti-astrologer benders—discussing something they don’t know about because they don’t want to know about it because they don’t think like scientists —at least in this case--and so blow all their own cred out of the water—and speak with absolute conviction and authority about things that cannot be proven. Yet. And then we all go out there and ape them. I’m not immune. My social media persona has, for years, been incredibly “fuck you” to anyone who doesn’t agree with me. Granted, a lot of my opinions are things like, oh, trans kids deserve a happy childhood and the chance to be themselves and we should stop murdering Palestinian babies, so if you disagree with me you deserve my fuck-yous. But I also know, and have known, this attitude never changes minds. It’s never changed mine, that’s for damn sure. But we do this because it feels necessary, it feels correct, and it feels that way because we see people of influence doing the same thing.

I’m not saying we should tone police ourselves or anyone else. No. Frankly, social media is an emotion waste bin. In some ways that’s healthy. We dump our shit into the ether and then it’s been released and we can move on--usually. Unless we managed to hit someone’s nerve and we wind up in a battle. And I do think that anger matters. While I may not have changed minds with mine, I have had people tell me that they are glad to know they’re not alone in their anger, or that they feel less disgusted by the world knowing that there are people out there who are angry on their behalf. Anger, social media rage even, is, in a way, something we give to the people who already agree with us to sustain their energy. But changing minds, social change, requires a different voice—and that’s a reality. And it is sometimes hard to admit that because it feels so good talking like a so-called “expert,” which is to say acting like a know-it-all and getting praised for it.

I’m quite big right now on the the ideas of aggression and receptivity. Our society prizes aggression. That’s why we love a good, old-fashioned take-down on TV. “Watch Bill Nye Obliterate Astrologer” is a video title that isn’t hard to imagine, right? (I made that up.) This is how we talk. This is our culture. In fact, we’ve being trained to think and talk this way by the “experts” who know that we are more likely to click on videos with highly emotive terms like that. We’ve gotten more obsessed with aggression these days, which is saying something—because the world-as-influenced-by-the-US is an aggressive place.

Aggression is closed. Aggression is, “No, that’s not real, because I don’t like it and I don’t think it is.” 

Receptivity, on the other hand, is open. People think this is passive. Not at all. Passivity means anything can just come wandering on in. No. Receptivity allows for curation, but also for potential. It is a state-of-being that says, “approach before I decide . . . and when I decide, there are phases of deciding . . . every moment of our interaction will be a phase of deciding.” Actually, that’s a convoluted way of thinking about it. How about this? It’s like a date. OK? Two people are attracted to each other, they want to know more, they may even want to see each other naked, but they also don’t know whether that’s a risk worth taking. But the excitement of some co-created nakey time with an attractive person is worth the journey, so they stay open to each other.  Up until they feel or know they want to see the person naked, or don’t—or want to see them naked but that it’s just too much of a thing . . . That’s receptivity. 

Aggression is, “I’m gettin’ laid tonight!” Reception is, “I’m open to getting laid tonight if it’s worth my time and energy, but not otherwise, and either outcome is fine.” 

Sorta. 

Anyway! This is yet another weird journey, but I enjoy it. I like when cards take us unexpected places. And that’s, for me, the great joy of writing this. 

A read of one’s own

There’s so much going on in this week’s post I didn’t even know what to title it. But I think the main take-away, at least from an action oriented standpoint, is to consider aggression and receptivity.

I suggest three cards each to answer these questions:
“Where can my work be more aggressive?”
“Where can my work be more receptive?”

Another thing you might try a three- (or more) card reading on:
“Why are fortune tellers (or whatever term you choose) important right now?” Here’s a quick sample from me for that question. (Deck used, Shadowscapes—only because it’s closer to me right now than the one I used to wrote the post.) (See photo, below.)

Oh I love tarot so much. 🤣 Here’s what I got:

Wheel of Fortune (4), Eight of Pentacles (2), Temperance (1), Eight of Cups!(3), Ten of Wands (5)

There are moments when you lay out the cards and you don’t even need to interpret them to feel the delight of “knowing.” These cards—including the two eights—really couldn’t be more perfect!!! I felt my body sort of sigh with glee? is that a thing? when I saw these cards. (Doesn’t hurt this deck is a stunner.) Here’s how I’d interpret them:

Because we blend (Temperance) the practical work of life and the spiritual work of life—because we work in both the practical and spiritual realms of life always (8 penties/8 cups). Out potent energy (Ten of Wands) can actually influence the fates (Wheel) with our deep (water) connection to divinity (fire+water—8/cups+10/wands). This isn’t magic. It is the translation of the universal flux (Wheel) into the daily flux (8/penties). It is, however, ART (which is the title of Temperance in the Thoth deck, which I love about it). Our work generates steam (fire+water) that makes it possible to actually blend the universal and practical (wheel+8/cups)—which is really what divination does. Thus, we are artists who blend the universal into the daily, generating steam for our clients. With steam, they can power their own wheels of fortune—the mini ones that are basically the 8 coins in that card!

What a joy. 

Be good. 

Another new deck, this week, even though I have several I’m really in devotion with. I saw this on Instagram and fell in love. I justified it because I can only think of one or two other square decks I’ve had, and both are “mini.” This is the Bon Sequitur Tarot by Zephyr Pfotenhauer. It’s a total delight, shuffles great, and quite a useful size. Walkthrough here. 

I chose a 2x2 spread this week because it seemed apt for a square deck. For sides, for cards, four quads. And also I don’t think I’ve ever used a 2x2 before! New deck, new spread, new . . . baby? Dear god, no. (I remember my mom, when I was kid, saying to her friends, “New house, new job, new baby.” Annoyingly, I remember it so well I find myself saying it to my friends and irritating them as much as my mom did/does—I don’t know if she still says it.) 

The question for this blog is always, “What is lesson #?” (in this case, 41). Or it’s usually that, and it is this week (I’ve strayed from time to time for interest/impulse/intuition’s sake). What’s amusing to me is that I immediately dislike this spread layout because I typically always work with odd numbers, and generally begin in the middle and work my way out, around, and in rows, columns, etc. This even-numbered nonsense is workin’ my nerves. I don’t know where to start! I hate it! But, of course, I knew I would. That’s why I did it. I like to fuck myself up, if for no other reason than to discover my way out of it. (Another mom story: when she learned to drive, she used to get herself lost so she could find her way home. Wise. I’m also reminded that there’s apparently a serial killer loose in the state I live in right now, so . . . )

When there’s nowhere obvious to start, we go where the eye carries us and in this case, it’s the first card I put down—the 6/pentacles. This card was rather a star at the event I read at a few nights ago. Nearly every reading I did, using two different decks, contained either the 6/pentacles or 10/swords—often both. The 7/pentacles is a card that keeps showing up when I use this deck, which is amusing because I happened to share this card on Instagram and folks said it looks like me. I’m going to work with these two together for two reasons: first, same suit; second, working diagonally was my last instinct. I was going to explore the card in context of the two its touching, but because we’re doing opposite world today, it makes more sense to do the thing I wouldn’t do. Or something. 

Six and seven occupy a curious space in the continuum of minors. We could think of the pips as a two-act play: Act I ace-five; Act II six-ten. But when I think about these numbers from a story standpoint, they’re both fairly inactive. We might say they’ve receptive. It’s common to think in terms of odds/evens playing this way. Odds, like the black card suits, being aggressive (we might be used to saying “masculine,” but I’m done with that crap); evens, like red suits, receptive. That’s not untrue. But I also find that there’s a subtler relationship to aggressive and receptive than simply all odds are this, all fire is this, etc. Unlike many readers, I think of fire and water as the aggressive suits, not fire and air; that makes, then, air and earth the receptive suits. Fire and water are verb-y. They do. They aggress. Air and earth, well, they do, too—they’re just not as ostentatious about it. So, though odd numbers are typically aggressive and even receptive, there are shades within that. Ace, two, three, five, nine, eight, ten are super aggressive in my mind, even if they’re larger nature is receptive (two, eight). Four, six, and seven “feel” receptive. They’re each somewhat introspective—some might say vain, selfish, or navel gaze-y, but those would be judgments of receptivity. They aren’t passive, they’re still. Consider how much energy it takes to stand or sit still, especially if you’re an ADHD headcase, like me. Stillness is active, but it’s actively receptive (which is why I don’t use active/passive to replace masc/femme). In stillness, enlightenment occurs. I learned during my Reiki training that the energy of treatment takes the body from “fight or flight” to “rest and digest,” and one of the ways we know Reiki is working is when we hear the body making noises—gurgles, burpies, and toots—because the body can only do that when it’s resting. Healing occurs, but without the healer or healed doing anything beyond receiving Reiki’s electricity and (in the case of the “healer,” who actually isn’t healing—the electricity is) channeling it. 

I’ve said a lot already and nothing about the “meanings” of the six and seven of swords. But I sure as heck know a lot about what this reading is going to be about, now. It’s going to be about the act of activated stillness for the receiving of divination! Take that. And what else do I know about this reading before getting into card meanings? Welp, earth is our main element (receptive), and I have an Empress and a queen (receptive, at least stereotypically). This reading is all receptive. I fuckin’ love that! I also know that, though the Empress’s typical association is Venus (rather than an element) and Venus isn’t an “earthy” planet, the Empress is. In fact, we might say, in certain cases—like this one, where the element’s dominance makes it clear that all cards are functioning in an earthy way—that she is the earth. (As opposed to “the world.” By which I mean, she is the planet earth, our home. “The World,” as a card and concept, is less about the orb and more about the concept of being in the world—the collective, the everything. If that makes sense.)

Receptivity is necessary as diviners, and it is in many ways (I’m starting to think) the very heart of readings. I used to think, and to some degree I still believe this, that the reader was simply recognizing patterns. Nothing particularly “psychic” (I still hate that word) or “metaphysical” (that one, too) or “new age-y” or “woo” (I hate both of this, as well) was happening—and you can see that I really resist those concepts, because even the words make me cringe. (I was listening to a podcast this morning during which someone, whose work I admire, had the experience of a spiritual connection with Jesus. And just hearing a person say those words out loud made me feel so embarrassed for them . . . And, in fact, I, too, happened to have a spiritual conversation with rather a Jesus-y guide this morning, and so I know these kinds of things can happen . . . but I still also find talking about it really icky. And that may be partly because I do think giving some things language actually diminishes them and when that’s true, we probably shouldn’t talk about them—but rather savor the experience. I also think that people share too much of their spiritual practice on social media so that it becomes performative. On the other hand, if we don’t talk about things like this generously, we don’t get other people the chance to learn that their experiences are valid, real, and potentially powerful magic. So . . . I’m a mess,  I guess, is the point.) 

I really took the “divine” out of “divination,” and I think you can see evidence of that all over my first two books and really all of my videos. That said, I’ve really had to come face-to-face with the colonialism of cynical behavior and the reality of my own increasingly active spiritual path. Without putting too fine a point on it, I had to come to grips with the fact that I could no longer deny that divination involved divinity. And in particular receiving it. 

When you’re having a conversation with someone and a translator or interpreter is involved (sign language, spoken language), you have the conversation with the speaker, not the interpreter. This leans if you’re speaking with someone who has deafness, you look at and speak to them, not the interpreter. The interpreter is literally just that, an aid, a translator, a—to put it bluntly—non-entity in the conversation. That’s not entirely true, but for our purposes it helps in making my point. In the case of divination, the reader is the translator, the interpreter—not one of the speaker. Who are the speakers? The client and the divinity. The reader is a voice box for the divinity, who does not speak a language clear to the client (or who does, but the client wants to double check, which I find happens a lot). But the reader is not part of the conversation, in the same way an interpreter isn’t part of a conversation. In the sense of being a participant, of shaping the dialogue. The interpreter has to get out of the way. So does the reader. 

It’s not a perfect analogy, of course. The reader can’t and probably shouldn’t disappear. We actually do shape the reading, because divinity is quite subtle in approach. You sort of have to trust that simply by being a reader the act of translation is happening. But we’re not the aggressor, we’re the receiver.  (Which, interestingly, has similarity to giving Reiki, incidentally.)

And what I think this reading playfully highlights is that a reading is kind of like shaking the dice and then allowing intuition to show us how to read it. I say this because of the way the the 6/pentacles looks like people just tossing coins onto a table or game board, and the 7/pentacles looks like someone studying the aftermath of it. There are readers who learned to call doing readings “throwing” the cards. You could read this that way. Throw the cards and then “listen” to them. (Which is something I frequently say about readings.) 

Now, if this all sounds super heady and totally impossible to do—don’t freak. We just did it. Consider: I haven’t said anything about the “meaning” of either of these cards, nor have I said anything about what the numerology typically suggests. I have considered the receptivity of the element, but nothing much else about earth. And I for sure haven’t talked about pentacles as coins, money, or jobs. What have I done? I’ve experienced the cards. I’ve received them. I simply began with the card that drew my eye first (the six), then resisted the temptation to do what I always do and read on the diagonal instead, and then I just started noticing things about the interplay of the six and seven. And I already know a lot about what the lesson of this reading is. 

I think when people say they’re “intuitive readers,” this is what they think they’re doing. And there’s nothing saying they’re not doing it. But there is a slight difference, and what I’ll say is you can tell if someone is really an intuitive reader if they can read with any deck--particularly one that is different in style, tone, and/or system from their go-to. Here’s why. Someone who is reading the Waite-Smith images isn’t intuiting as much as they are using the images to construct keywords or phrases. Let’s consider a more typical illustration of the 6/pentacles: a moneyed person appears to be presenting destitute people with charity. A pittance. And so we might say, “charity,” or, “there’s an exchange of money,”  or “we have the resources but we feel improverished,” etc. All might be valid. But if you take that deck away and give them the Thoth, say, or the Wild Unknown, or even something that’s Waite-Smith-y—but much different, like this six, their “intuition” freezes, and/or, they go into the image they remember. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this, please know that. I’m not judging, especially because I—like just about everyone—begins this way. It is literally the learning process. And it is how we learn to use and understand intuition. But it’s not yet intuition. 

This is because they’re still relying on a “meaning.” It’s just that the meaning is coming from a familiar image. Change or remove the image, and the card no longer has anything to say. An intuitive reader is not stumped. The intuitive reader receives the card as it is and may well call on other card images and things read in books, but they don’t launch to that immediately. They simply notice what’s in front of them them. As they experience what’s in front of them, connections will begin occurring. “This looks like people throwing game tokens on to a table, and someone else studying the results.” “Six and seven both feel like receptive numbers.” “Earth is a receptive suit.” “Earth is the major suit in the spread.” “The Empress is earthy.” “Queens are typically considered receptive.” “Earthy, receptive, earthy receptive, earthy, receptive . . .” And then meaning takes shape. But the reader isn’t imposing anything on the cards; they’re not immediately looking at an image, assigning it a story, and then sticking with that story. That’s not intuition. That’s aggressive. It is putting meaning on to an image. If I were putting meanings onto the two cards in this spread, I’d say that the Six of Pentacles is about anteing in for a poker game, and the seven is about summer gardening. Because that’s what I “literally” see on the cards. There’s nothing on the images about receptivity, divination, “throwing cards,” any of it. That all came from experiencing the cards, not saying “OH WELL THIS GUY IS LOOKING AT HIS HARVEST, SO THIS SAYS YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW.” 

Maybe he is and maybe it does, and maybe it even says all of that in this very reading. But I don’t know until I let the cards tell me! 

And that’s intuitive reading. 

I’m going to begin wrapping this up, believe it or not, because the point’s been made and the other two cards underscore what I’m saying—but because you’re here to learn (I assume), let me quickly explain why: Queens, as we know, are typically considered receptive. I don’t think that’s always the case, and the same is true of the Empress. The fact is, they are people “of rank.” The queens are the most skillful cards in the deck, a trait often associated with kings. Not so. Why? A queen, when serving as head of state rather than royal baby maker, must navigate a world and political system designed simultaneously to rely on her and subjugate her. She isn’t trained to do the job, like a king would have been, and she is thought to be of lower intelligence. All that Elizabeth and The Crown stuff. This means that she has to be far craftier, far cleverer, far more agile—more skillful—than a king. What, then, are the kings? I frequently think of them as “enteritis” — the sorta retired sage. 

Anyway, the whole thing with whether or not the queens/Empress are receptive or aggressive depends on who they’re with. If someone out ranks them, they’re receptive; if not, they’re aggressive. In this case, no one outranks them—but there is no one else besides them (we’re looking at the diagonal). So they don’t need to be anything. They can just be. And that, then, is receptive. In fact, both cards look rather receptive in posture. The Empress even looks a bit bored, which means perhaps she’s not enjoying being receptive—which, for anyone with an ego (all of us), can be a reality. 

But the key to divination is this entirely receptive state—a ground receptivity, we have to remain connected to our task (earth) because we have a job (earth) to do. In this case, get an answer. What we’re doing, really, is keeping our feet on earth (Empress, literally has her feet on the ground) and our head in the clouds (Queen of Swords, literally in the clouds). We become a conduit. All thanks to this experience of active receptivity. 

I can and will end this reading here and I haven’t talked about any of the card meanings or numbers or associations or anything. Isn’t that wild? You take the info you need from the cards and I don’t need any of that. Could it help? Often. It might help deepen or even strengthen my message, but in this case I honestly don’t think there’s much else they could add that wouldn’t repeat what I’ve already said. The Queens are intuitive, which is the theme of this reading—and they’re intuition when they’re receptive. Sixes are beauty, and true beauty isn’t ego-driven it’s simply existing (receptive). The seven talks about looking within and discovering what’s really important in life (receptive). So, they’re all kinda giving me the same vibe. And when I have a lot of context, I don’t need all of it. I just need what helps me get a clear message, particularly when the question is as broad as this one is. 

So there ya go! I really enjoyed this one. See what happens when you force yourself not to do what you’ve always done?

A Read of One’s Own
Draw a 2x2 spread and explore experiencing the cards, noticing them, and try to fit that in the theme of how you can strengthen your intuitive reading (as I define it here). ​

There’s always so many things I want to do on a given day, and my energy and motivation rarely matches that. Every time I add a new practice/obsession into my suite of tools, I find myself hyperfocusing on that new thing to the detriment(?) of others . . . although, if those other things truly wanted to be done, they’d make themselves more alluring. Show a little leg. Come on, other things. You know that gets guys like me going, right?

Anyway, this is to say that I wanted to write this yesterday and never got around to it. And so I’m keeping it short, or attempting to, because I also have other things I need to do. (Note from future me: I did not “keep this short.”)

This week I’m using deck I mentioned very briefly in my simple v. complex deck video as a deck that I really love but don’t use much because I have a hard time seeing the card title on many, many of them. I hoped that this second edition would bump up, or even enlarge, the titles, but no. Despite better card stock (the OG was gloss) and a sexy copper metallic edge, the titles remain inscrutable for me in most light. Including the light I’m writing in now. But I also think that this deck is something other than a “normal” tarot. It think this deck is particularly well suited to scrying. Not that I’m tried that, I find scrying equally inscrutable—more, even—than the titles in this deck. But those who are given to a softer frame of mind might find this deck a wonderful one to use for scrying and even path working. The deck, of course, is Tyldwick Tarot by the late Neil Lovell (1971-2018). Pour one out for Neil, folx. 

I’ve drawn three cards, due to the moodiness of this deck, with the reserved plan of adding at least two more if needed. Today we pulled:
Five of Staves (2), Four of Coins (1), Seven of Coins (3).

These cards, incidentally, are three examples of why this deck is so difficult to work with—and though I sold the original edition to benefit an organization a few years ago, actually not long before this second edition came out, I’d tried all kinds of different things to make the titles stand out—including using washi tape to write the titles on and sticking to the card. Nothing worked. It’s just a feature of this deck. It does not want to be seen that easily. 

Sometimes readings are like that, incidentally. Some readings simply want to play hard-to-get, the way this deck does. That can be sexy. It’s not particularly sexy to me, because I’m too dense to understand when someone/thing is flirting with me, but for people with more confidence, I’m told that’s sexy. I think that the fear of a reading being difficult to do, though, is more often a cause of people getting stuck. They anticipate having difficulty and so when they do it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and they’re able to justify their feelings of worthlessness. I’m not saying that’s something I’ve felt, but . . . (It’s definitely something I’ve felt). 

The Four of Coins, our center card, actually indicates stasis—a rut. I’m quite mean to the fours, but I find them tedious. Conservative. The Four of Coins is often the most conservative of the lot, and its artistic depictions frequently indicate implied selfishness.

I like that this four is bounded on either side by odd number—five and seven. Five is the least stable number and seven the most self-reflective. 

The 5/staves suggests the frustration we experience from feeling stuck in life. Our energy gets enfuckified and we don’t know where to put it. Every option seems, somehow . . . , stupid. Like, “Yeah, I could put my energy into that, but . . . what’s the point?” This is how I feel when I get bored. It’s not enough that I’m bored; I’m also totally opposed to doing anything that is doable in that moment. All I want to do is something else. And that’s the 5/staves, here. We get antsy, edgy, cranky, and these are all very five-y words, particularly when in the suit of fire. 

The 7/coins says, “Well, then, what do you want life to look like? If you’re not getting what you want out of it, have you bothered to tell life what you do want?” I can’t recall where I’ve written about this before, and I don’t know if it’s from some of my tarot work or if it’s from an old play or draft of a story I’ve written—Oh! Actually, I do know. Hold, please. Allow me to share with you a peek at my former theatre life . . . 

This is actually a scene from the last play I wrote before giving up the ghost. It’s never had an airing of any kind. It’s kind of a riff on The Nutcracker, but if Clara grew up and realized that all the magic she learned as a child actually damaged her because now she’s always disappointed by life. This is the start of Act II, when the adult Clara, who has just been forced to kill the Rat King, meets the Sugar Plum Fairy—who, to quote the character description, is super butch—until they’re not. A masc-femme leather daddy in a tutu. 

Clara enters.

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Well, well, well. Step right up, little monster. I’m the Sugar Plum Fairy. I scratch my balls and I don’t make love. I fuck. Hard.

                    CLARA
And you have a big dick.

                  SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
 So you’re looking for a savior beneath these dirty sweets?

                    CLARA
For a good eclair, at least. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Well take a seat, kid, and I’ll show you my choux. 

                    CLARA
What’s it all about, Smitty?

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Flop sweat. 

                    CLARA
I don’t understand. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Hunger pangs.

                    CLARA
Sorry?

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Dental floss.

                    CLARA
This isn’t make any sense. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
That’s what it’s all about.
     You’re trying to escape the chaos. 

                    CLARA
Wouldn’t you?

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Never. 

                    CLARA
Why not?

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Chaos is all there is. Avoiding chaos means avoiding being, and I like being.

                    CLARA
I don’t. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Know why?

                    CLARA
No, but I’m for sure about to hear you say it’s because I’m avoiding chaos. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
No, because you’re not avoiding chaos; you’re trying to avoid chaos, which is not the same thing. 

                    CLARA
I thought I was going to like you more.

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
How many times a day to do say that to people, places, and things?

                Beat.

                    CLARA
Constantly. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Mmm hmm. 
     You thought you were going to like life more. 

                    CLARA
Bet your donut hole. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
And what, pray tell, did you think you were gonna get from it?

                     CLARA
Something . . . I thought I was gonna get something out of it . . . not this, this . . . relentlessly grim, and increasingly dim descent into . . . ouchiness. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
So you have no idea what you wanted, but you’re pissed as hell you didn’t get it?

                    CLARA
Yes. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
OK. 

                    CLARA
I refuse to accept that I’m miserable because I didn’t have a clearer idea of what I wanted out of life. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
How can life give you something you don’t even know you want?

                    CLARA
Because it gives me shit I sure as fuck know I don’t want every damn day. 

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Maybe it’s just tryin’a throw some shit down on the strip to see what the cat laps up.

                    CLARA
Excuse me?

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
If life keeps throwing shit at you you don’t want, maybe it’s trying to throw you a bunch of different options to see what you’re actually looking for. 

                    CLARA
Oh my God. Oh God. Ew. Ew.
Did you hear that? Even as you said that, did you hear how ew that was?
You heard that, right? That wasn’t just me?

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
(Cocks an eyebrow and a cranky pose.)

                    CLARA
That’s ew.

                    SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Life isn’t a mindreader. 


OK, did you catch it? How can life give you something you don’t even know you want? That’s a big question. And when I wrote that, I thought . . . Whoa . . . Because I didn’t expect to write that. Sometimes when you’re writing shit comes through you would never have found otherwise, which is one reason I do enjoy written readings. But in this case, I think I managed to connect to a truth I hadn’t detected before. If we don’t tell life what we want, how can we expect it to give it to us? Is life a mindreader? Are our guides, ancestors, angels, or whatever we call them? I mean, you’d think, but . . . evidence suggests they’re not. And I think most people will bear that out—those, anyway, who aren’t the product of nepotism and legacy admissions. 

Now, look. I just edited out a couple long paragraphs disproving the point I just made, at least when it comes to my life. I gave examples of things I very clearly told life I needed/wanted and that life said, “yeah, no bitch.” But that’s a different thing. There are times in life when we know what we want and life won’t give it to us. There are other times when we don’t know what we want and life will just throw anything at us to see if something is interesting. We can have both kinds of experience. This reading is talking about the second one. 

And so what is this actually saying?

Typically, I prefer the message come directly from the cards rather than an something inspired by the cards. For example, I prefer a reading to say, “yes, look for a new job” rather than, “Oh, gee, it looks like things at work are ickypoo . . . yuck.” The first one doesn’t involve me having to make any logical leaps. The cards tell you what’s up. The second one requires me—or, really, the client—to see and react. Now, the second one can be more helpful if you’ve got a client with the ability to see themselves clearly. Not all do. Which is why I feel safer when the reading just tells you what’s up. Because if the client does get it, then I have to make the journey for them. “If things are icky at work . . . and you’re not happy there . . . and this isn’t what you want to do . . . . . ? Thennnnnnn . . . . ? MaybeYouNeedANewJob, Right???” 

This is the second kind. And what’s it is saying to us is, “If divination isn’t giving you what it want, tell it what you want it to do.”

When I was coming back from my tarot burnout break, I was reading much better than I had beforehand—in the time I’d “rested,” I’d internalized a lot of what I’d never had time to absorb while I was greedily inhaling all the information I could about the cards. But I knew something wasn’t “right,” and around that time Lenormand started grabbing people’s attention in a major way. The conversation became very either/or. “Tarot can do this well, but lenormand does this other thing better.” Or, “tarot is so mushy and spiritual, and lenormand is DTF” — basically. And it’s like, I get why people felt that way . . . but also . . . no. If tarot isn’t doing what you want it to, ask it do something else. It’ll follow your lead. 

I only know this because I did it. Around the time lenny started getting big, and I recognized that I didn’t really gel with it, I started to despair. But then I thought, “Well, look: we asked tarot to be all this mushy shit. We told it to. Well, not us; our forebears. But they made it that way. It didn’t start that way. It wasn’t even meant for divination. It was a game. And if that’s true, than tarot can do anything that we ask it to. So I’ll ask it to do something else.” And I did. And it does. And that’s where Tarot on Earth came from. 

You can do it, too. What are you missing in your divination? Where do you feel stuck, stunted, or frustrated? Where are your energies being eaten up by things that don’t really matter do you? And why? If you don’t know, don’t worry—that’s what this week’s spread will be about. 

But before we get there, it is worth asking ourselves these questions without the cards to guide us. See what we think, and then see what the cards say. Are they in line? If not, — and this is the more exciting situation — where is the gap, and why does it exist? This is very cool, in my opinion, because when things don’t match, I think there’s so many interesting things that can happen in that tension. But also don’t worry too much if you can’t figure out why it’s different. Or do a reading reconciling the two. It’s possible both answers are two different symptoms of the same source ill. That’s a pretty sure bet, actually, and my guess is that the tarot reading will be the one that gets closer to real disease. It doesn’t have the same protective bias you do.

A final note: One thing I intended to do in this post and forgot was to change the way I read these three cards. Partly to show you that you can read them multiple ways, but partly because I assumed I’d be working more with these images. I never got there, but an area in which I might be at risk of getting stuck is the way I tend to ignore the artwork. I chose this deck precisely because of its art. So, here’s how I read the same spread differently: The 4/Coins shows a brick wall with this window filled with coins and mystical symbols (the Zodiac, among other things). It makes me think of how the commodification of spirituality makes it so that we are more likely to get suck (four); we need to “brand” ourselves so that our clients will “remember” us—and we need not to deviate from that brand or we’ll be forgotten about. The 5/wands, with its Greco-Roman shield showing boys leapfrogging—sorry, no, fighting—reminds me that the battle between commerce and spirituality (coins/earth contra wands/fire) has always been a “thing.” The solution is to ask yourself, “what do I really want out of LIFE?” (7/coins). Let what’s important to you be your guide. This may actually take a fare amount of deep study, given how this 7 seems to closed off. But closing off is also how we get stuck. We don’t expose ourselves to the world, which kinda poisons the well—or leaves the fountainhead in his image on just a trickle. To understand what’s really important means breakout out of that walled garden (more of a 9/coins energy, tbh), in order to compare what you have to what you could have. Which I take to mean, exposing yourself to all kinds of divinatory systems and methods and taking things that light you up.

A Read of One’s Own
This spread is a bit of a choose your own adventure. I recommend reading through the whole thing before trying. 

1. Shuffle with the intention that you’ll draw a set of three cards, face down, that will explore an area of your divination practice where you either are or are at risk of falling into a rut. 
2. Lay the three cards face down. Place your hand over the three and select the one that “calls” to you. This card is the main place where you might be in a rut or at risk. 
3. Choice #1: If this card makes sense and/or is an area that you would like to explore how to solve, repeat steps one and two with the intention this time that they explore ways of avoiding or getting out of this rut.
4. Place our hand over this new three and select the the that “calls” to you. This is the main tactic you can use. The other two cards support or expand on it. Turn them over—or not—as you need them. 
5. Choice #2: If the card you chose in step two doesn’t make sense, or if it’s something you’re simply not interested in changing right now, hold your hand over the remaining two cards and choose the one that “calls.” This represents another area you might address. Repeat steps three and four. 
6. Once you have all the cards read that are going to be read, take up the remaining face-down cards (if there are any). Shuffle these (if necessary) and lay out/turn over. This provides you general advice on your journey. 

Let me know how it goes!

LESSON 40:
I can tell already this post will be pretty discursive. But fun! Enjoy. (Note from future me: “Fun” may have been a bit of a mis judgement—but another f-word, fascinating, applies.)

This last weekend, I attended Reiki I and II training—something that, a year ago, would never have occurred to me. During the session, we got in the topic of AI. My teacher is an artist who actually likes AI for certain applications, like illustrating a slide deck. I remembered the deck I’m using this week, Lynae Ariadne Zebest’s Primordial Dreams Tarot--the only AI deck I have and use. I brought the deck out to bring to session II and enabled another buyer, one of my great special skills. (Did Reiki make me do it???) 

I’m not a fan of AI, but I’m not a fundy. I think that if we can countenance the environmental issues (and those are important), there are reasons to use it—including the creation of simulations for dangerous jobs, as well as accessibility for people with various disabilities. When I saw Lynae’s work at last year’s Reader’s Studio, I had a feeling it was AI—but I also kept coming back to look at it. In talking with Lynae, I learned they’re an artist (primarily sculpture) who wanted to explore the idea of using AI (MidJourney, in this case) as a divination tool. This is something that’s occurred to me, too, though I haven’t used it. They both used AI to divine the deck but also to create the imagery. When actual artists use AI, I find many of the ethical arguments that bother me less of an issue. For someone who isn’t an artist to make art with AI, there’s something one-sided about it. It’s taking art that trained the engine and not giving anything back. On the other hand, artists always give back in the form of creating and giving their work to the world—and, though AI has been trained on the stuff out there in the world, artists are always influenced by and influencing each other. 

But this isn’t a post about AI; it’s a reading. I just wanted to highlight why I accept this deck and not others. First, the artist is upfront about how and why they made the deck (for themself, not for release—the deck went to market after people began requesting copies); second, the exploration of AI is a spiritual/divinatory tool; third, and for me most important, the idea of using the world’s newest technology (AI) to simulate and recreate the world’s oldest technology (cave paintings). And that is what this deck is inspired by: ancient cave paintings. And I find the whole experience of this deck exceptionally cool. My only actual critique of this deck is that it’s difficult to know which cards you’re looking at unless you really study them. I’ve written the titles in tiny print in the corners so I can see them more quickly, but I’m told the creator is considering a second edition with the titles to make it easier to read. I support this. 

What we have this spread:
Ace of Earth (4), Seven of Earth (2), The Fool/O (1), Five of Earth (3), Eight of Water (5).
(If you’re new to this spread, the number following the card title indicates the order in which I drew and laid out the card. I work this spread from the middle out.)

This is an EARTHY reading—and I love that, because the cave paintings are the earthiest form of art: literally. They are made of inks and dyes that come from the earth, applied to the earth. And we start with The Fool! 

There are times divination amazes me and this is one. Because I’m using an AI deck—a thing many, many people are entirely against, even without context—some of you may think I’m a fool for supporting this one. (I’m not; it’s exceptionally good. It’s a special deck, you can feel it.) I think, however, that this is more about having zero expectations in the act of divination, and maybe even from the tools we use. 

I mentioned at the start I attended Reiki I and II this week and that if you asked me a year ago that would never have crossed my mind. If you asked me six months ago, it wouldn’t have. Suddenly, it announced itself as the “next thing” in my journey and before I knew it, I was registered and signed up for the sessions. I don’t even know if I “believe” in Reiki? Like, I know it exists and helps people . . . and I’ve had it . . . but I also feel like maybe I’m not capable of doing it? Or even benefitting from it? But at the same time, literally anyone who wants to and has access to a teacher who will give them training and placements/attunements can practice it. . . For some reason, during session II I had a great morning and then a crash midway through the second half that made me think the whole thing was all a big Ponzi scheme. This morning I didn’t know what to think, and then this afternoon I offered my sister a remote session—and based on her experience, it sounds like it worked. So who knows? (Note from future me: I have had some evidential experiences in the last day that have someone changed my mind, but I’m a cynic at heart.)

I chose Reiki precisely because it has become so democratic. In early days in the Western world, it could be difficult to both find and afford. These days, that’s changed. There are teachers out there who will attune you for very little, and really having the attunements is the only thing you need to have in order to practice—though some basic education would help. You cannot be a Reiki guru, because Reiki has nothing to do with you. The practitioner is a channel, a conduit through which the energy passes—not unlike tarot’s Magician. Reiki is not the practitioner’s energy; it’s its own. And the healing isn’t done by the conduit, it’s done by the recipient’s body. But by the same token, it’s in the “subtle energy” tradition and, boy, can it be subtle as fuck. 

One of the things we talked about in class was the ego, a topic dear to me, and how the practitioner really needs to remember that this isn’t about them. We have nothing to do with it, other than having had the attunements and serving in the role of facilitator. But the ego still wants to feel special, and I’ve been struggling with that. Because it’s not about me, I can’t be “good” or “bad” at it, which means there’s nothing to be praised or corrected for. There’s not sense of feedback, other than that clients typically will say, “wow, that was relaxing!” Nice. So is a boring story. The other thing is, the practitioner has no say on what the Reiki does inside the body of the client. We can intend that it address the client’s pain or concern, but it knows better than we do how to do that and where, so we’re really more of a squirt gun directing Reiki than we are a healer. This is as it should be, but it does make it somewhat . . . something. 

The thing about practicing Reiki, it seems to me (recall: I’m not an expert) is to have no expectations. That is difficult to do, but it’s actually key to reading, too. When we lay out the cards, especially for ourselves, we’re expecting something—obviously an answer, but many times we’re also expecting something else: joy or despair. “Yes, you well get the thing,” or “Yes, you are going to die soon,” or “No, you’re going to have to live a long-ass life, or “No, you’re not getting the thing.” Now, I’m not saying we’re expecting a particular outcome—only that there will be an outcome, and it will either be the best thing ever or the worst thing we’ll ever deal with. And, like the experience of Reiki, the reality is typically much subtler than that. Usually it winds up being, “You’ll kind of get the thing and then when you see it, you won’t care anymore.” Or, “No, you won’t get the thing, but you won’t be upset about that part—you’ll really be upset about the fact that you don’t feel seen or chosen.”

Every reading really should start with no expectations. The Fool has none, which is why they actually are sometimes in a risky position. See, one of the things that keeps us safe is the fear that something bad will happen if, say, we ride a motorcycle on the highway without protection. Fear actually protects us. Of course for many of us, it protects us from things that don’t exist and aren’t happening, and it becomes chronic. But the point of fear is to stop is doing things that are, like . . . , bad.

Flanked by two earth cards, the 7 and 5, we’re on unstable earth. That, then, suggests sands or even wetlands. Walking isn’t easy because the terrain isn’t just uneven, it is literally shifting beneath the Fool’s feet. The 7/earth reminds us that we’re in a moment of reflection, wondering what exactly it is we’re expecting and desiring from life; the 5/earth reminding is that it’s probably not what we thought it was. The goals we once had evolve and even if they remain similar, they’re different enough to not be the same at heart. In fact, we may even be afraid that our lives will end, that we will be shut out, if we stop caring about the things we used to care about and make it known that we now care about new things. 

But, see, that’s expectation, isn’t it? “If I stop caring about X or start caring about Y, then people will shun me . . .” Certainly that’s an expected outcome, these days, but it’s not fated. And I think this is a timely message, because the world is very different—outwardly—than it was a year ago. Six months ago, even. The quiet parts are not only being spoken out loud, they’re being shouted through the loudest microphones in the world—and the legislation that once covered marginalization with fancy, progressive-sounding language, is simply out-and-out discriminatory in ways we haven’t seen since the “US” Constitution got written by a red-headed human trafficker who played the violin. 

What the world needs from diviners is changing. 

This, in fact, happens to be why I decided to take Reiki I and II (and likely III, down the line) and why I’m separately working on a degree program in metaphysical studies. My clients have begun asking for things they used not to. I could say, “No, go elsewhere.” Or I could recognize that the job is changing and I can evolve with it. 

The “brand” or lineage of Reiki I was certified in this weekend is known as Usui/Holy Fire® III Reiki, received by International Center for Reiki Training founder William Lee Rand. This is an “evolved” practice, which announced itself to practitioners over time and has “upgraded” twice since then. This is what the “III” represents. It’s not level three reiki, it is the third iteration of Usui/Holy Fire® Reiki. (It’s required to use the “Registered” symbol when referencing the title in print, according to my manual. To be honest, I find that pretentious. It’s like putting the “Copyright” symbol every time you reference the title of a book or deck in print. The Primordial Dreams Tarot© would be fine once, but every time it’s clumsy and difficult on the eyes.) I bring this up not to comment on the name, because I actually feel quite lucky to have chosen the teacher I did who is trained to teach this version—the central core of learning to see ourselves with the same joy that “God” sees us is beautiful (that comes not from the course materials, but from a poem read to us at the end of each day by our teacher). I bring it up because it occurred to me this weekend that Reiki has really curated its own journey. From “arriving” to its founder (Mikao Usui, or Usui Senei), it evolved with its transition from Usui to one of its second-gen stewards, Chujiro Hayashi (from sitting to prone patients, for example), and further once Hayashi Sensei introduced it to its first “Western” steward, Mrs. Hawayo Takata—who “simplified” it for those not used to Japanese culture, thinking, faithways, and philosophy. After her death, the stewards she trained changed it further.

I say “changed,” but if you follow the logic, it wasn’t they that changed Reiki; rather, it was Reiki who announced that it was time for it to be changed and that this particular steward was the one to do it. Contrary to common Western thought, Usui Sensei’s methods have not been lost. After World War II, the US’s regulations forced energy practitioners to train and license as massage therapists, and so the Usui tradition went “underground” and private, a club, to avoid this. Reiki seems to evolve as it wants to when it wants to. Much like life. 

The life we all knew in 2024 is gone forever. I mean, that’s always the case; the life we know six weeks ago is gone, the life we knew yesterday is gone. But we’re in a uniquely unsettled time, as the current “president” of the so-called United States today promised the president of another nation that he’d be imprisoning “homegrowns” in that foreign land, so he better start building more prisons. This is where we are, and we have no evidence to suggest that’s bluster. We cannot pretend the world is as it was. 

This is underscored by the Ace of Earth on the left. When paired with its nearest neighbor, the 7, we understand that one reason we’re evaluating where we are is because we are in such an unsettled, such an unformed moment. The illusion that there is anyone at the wheel is gone, as is the illusion that anyone we ever thought had the wheel was steering in the ways we assumed and were told. So . . . In fact, I will venture the somewhat self-important assertion that divination is going to become increasingly more important, in increasingly real ways. (I’m also remembering a conversation in my class this weekend about how the HolyFire® [don’t forget the symbol!] energy is “upgrading” again [the quotes are because that’s not my word, it’s not one I’d reach for; it’s Rand’s] and in some ways the Earth [as a concept and energy] is, too. “Access” to spirit and divinity seems, according to this theory, to be growing more necessary—but also more accessible to more people.)

Now, we turn to the only other element in the spread: eight of water. And all I can think of is the phrase emotional labor. That’s one of the things I do enjoy about not working with the Waite-Smith images. In fact, I haven’t really used the images on any of these cards to interpret—which isn’t uncommon in my world—though the imagery does create an overall mood for me. Eights are labor, work; cups, clearly, emotion. But I want to take this further, because the theme develops. Not emotional, here, but spiritual. Spirituality isn’t necessarily implied by water, but it’s also not not implied by it. I’ve written about this in prior posts. Spiritual labor, spiritual work. Our work, and my experience is bearing this out, is also going to demand more spirituality. Both from us, and maybe from spirit. Why? Because of that ace. Life is currently so unformed, it is so unmoored, and so ungoverned that we’re—to borrow a tired phrase—out in the “wild wild west,” which weirdly does feel implied by this style of art. When there is no surety, no certainty, and—frankly—not much to believe in, spiritual work in going to become increasingly important. 

In essence, this reading is saying: “Calling all fortune tellers, freaks, witches, diviners, doctors (the pre-colonial kind), rooters, conjurers . . . because this is what you’ve been training for.” But it’s also saying, “Do not make this about you. Do not have expectations of what will happen, what you will be called on to do, what you will be seeing—anything. You must go in with total openness, because literally anything could happen in this most unstable of unstable times.”

AI imagery, particularly this sorta expressionistic style, typically feels cold and remote to me. There’s a distance, even in more representational and photorealistic images—maybe even especially in photorealism, thanks to the uncanny valley factor—in a lot of AI art. Not so, these cards. The beasts depicted all feel somehow mythical and earthly, surreal and real. And these animals, in particular—the boar-like beast on the 7/earth, the sorta cougar/bearlike boyo on the 5/earth, and the antlered animal on the 8/water—have a protective vibe to them. Which suggests to me that there is sanctuary and safety in the spirit, too, but it must activated spirituality—these cards do not feel static in in person—for it to truly be a refuge. 

This is not the lesson I imagined giving. In fact, I sensed at the start that it would be discursive (it was), but fun! I wouldn’t call this fun. Of course, my outlook is somewhat bleak of late—but I’m actually not in a particularly bad mood today. In fact, I wonder if the Reiki—which I began to doubt aggressively during the last half of my second workshop—is working. But I do think there’s something to be said about going both where the cards and life take us in some ways. After my first formal Reiki session with a practitioner, one I found relaxing but not particularly memorable, I began sensing I would get certified. After I picked up a book on the topic, curiosity drove me to booking a class. I needed to know what the attunements felt like, for example, and what the symbols that are both totally secret and simultaneously all over the internet did and how they were used. It is said that when Reiki calls you, you’re inevitably going to answer. But this all happened so quickly, I had no time to find any evidence that it did anything--aside from the really dramatic stories I’d heard about people’s experiences with it. Not second- or third-hand, either. Nearly everyone I know who had experienced it had had a pretty major, memorable moment with it. I had some lovely moments during my classes, and I’m not sure what it was that made me start going into cynical mode . . . well, I do: ego. But I’m not sure what tripped it. 

I woke up wondering why I’d spent the money and also feeling disappointed that it didn’t work and also sad that I wouldn’t need to take level III. But I also went looking for more books about it, kept reading the parts of the manual that I hadn’t yet, and began the day by giving myself an overall session and sending a practice distance session to my sister. So . . . I’m both completely certain that it doesn’t work and that it’s just a non-denominational cult without a leader, and that it surely does work and I’m seeing little evidences all over the place. This includes something I’d taken to mean that it was all nonsense: In the time since having my initial experience as a patient and signing up for the class, my mood, outlook, and health got worse. I felt like absolutely garbage for a little more than two weeks, getting increasingly angrier and despondent, right up until the day before my class—so much so that I really thought about not going and just eating the cost (which wasn’t crazy, but wasn’t nothing—especially “in this economy”). I’d read that a “healing crises” can occur as your body starts purging garbage you’ve built up over—in my case—a lifetime. And while I wondered if that might be happening, I was egotistical (and insecure) enough to understand that I’m always the exception to the rule in a bad way. Things might work amazingly--but not on/for me. 

But another of the students had basically the same experience I did, and I thought--huh.

I do that a lot, now. 

Trying not to have expectations is difficult.
Especially since, of late, the magic eight ball of logic says all signs point to DOOM.
Divination, oddly, has not been telling me the same things. 

The skeptic, one even more skeptical than I, would say: “What if it’s just giving you false hope?” 

To which I’d say, “sometimes that’s the only kind we can muster. Doesn’t mean it won’t keep the engine running a little longer.”

And this reading shows, too, that the reality isn’t being denied by divination—but that our expectations are not necessarily the projected outcome at this time. And given the complete and total surreal lack of logic going on in the world today, it’s logical to say that the logical outcome of an action is not what we should be expecting. We live in a world where two+two does not necessarily yield four. Truth is made malleable. So logic isn’t helpful. 

But divination . . . ? 

Maybe it’s time has really come. 

​A read of one’s own
I’d written out a whole spell for this week’s spread when Weebly crashed—I cannot tell you how much I regret hosting my website with them, and how much I really recommend that you avoid using them at all costs. While my frustration hasn’t boiled over as it usually would, I’m still fucking pissed. 

ANYWAY. 

Here’s a quicker version of what I’d written, which is now lost and gone forever. 

1. Fan out a deck face down and pass your hand over the cards to feel which 3 you want to select. If you use Reiki, go for it.

2. Take those three cards out without looking at them and put them aside, facedown. 

3. Shuffle the rest of the deck and set the intention that the cards you draw next will tell you how your divination skills will be leveling up to meet the moment. Cut and draw at least three, but as many as you’d like, to answer that intention. 

4. The three cards you took out earlier are the recipe for a spell to help you amp up to that new goal more quickly. They might be advice or instructions or even a energy that unlocks something unexpected. Let them guide you. Don’t tell them what they mean. Be quiet and they will tell you. Also, don’t go expecting thunder and lightning, here. Probably the easiest, first thing that springs to mind is the recipe. Just don’t harm yourself or someone who doesn’t deserve it. 

My history with lenormand is well-documented (in, like, my mind). In a nutshell, I hated it for years but I learned a lot about how to read tarot from it. When I eventually stopped listening to what people were telling me the cards meant and started listening to what the cards told me they meant, I got pretty good at it. These days, I really only use for the grand tableau, but I really do like that reading. I can’t necessarily explain why, but it’s fun to do and often leaves clients pleased with the results. I would wager, though, that it’s about as specific and can cover as much ground as a nine-card tarot reading can. So I’m not sure it’s any better; just different. 

This week, I stumbled across a lenormand deck I’ve never used. Literally stumbled. It must have been under a pile of clothes I had in the bedroom and over the however-long-it’s-been-there, it wheedled its way to the floor, where I tripped on it. I have no idea how long I’ve had it. It may have been a pre-order? Can’t recall. Anyway, it’s the Lustrous Lenormand, by Ciro Marchetti—noted tarot and oracle designer and skeptic—with a book by Toni Savory, of the World Divination Association. When I saw it there I thought, Well, I should look at that. And then I thought, What if I ask it for a lesson about the tarot for this week’s blog. And here we are. 

Using my double chevron of a few weeks ago, we get:
Mice (4), Rider (2), Snake (1), Bouquet (3), Heart (5)
Dice (9), Stork (7), Clover (6), Child (8), Man #2/Them (10).

You’ll note I have a card here, Dice, that’s not usually in lenny decks. There’s a handful of additional cards in the deck, including Time, Well, Bridge, Masks, Labyrinth, and Closer Look. When I do a GT, I typically remove any extra cards—but not when doing something like this. I like the variety. My favorite lenny deck, The Maybe Lenormand, has a whole slew of additional cards making it a fifty-two card deck, and I love it. The other thing is, you’ll note we have Man #2. This deck offers two men and two women cards, which shows in some ways that we’re progressing and in other ways that we still can’t conceive of things beyond the binary. When presented with the choice of significator cards in lenny decks, I typically leave the two men in or the two women—depending on who is hotter—and refer to them as you (the client) and them (the other). In this case, there’s a man with gray hair that was second in the deck when I looked through it, so he became Man #2. But you’ll note, above, I added “them” and that’s how I’ll refer to the card here. In this case, I take it to suggest the client or the subject of the reading, regardless of gender expression or identity. 

Let’s dive in.

The symbolism in lenny decks isn’t supposed to matter, and since the symbolism on tarot decks rarely matters to me . . . that’s a-OK! I did this same spread using a tarot a few weeks ago and suggests that the cards below act as houses for the cards above and the cards above act as houses for the cards below. (If you’re unfamiliar with lenormand, when I say “houses,” think of astrology. If you have the Sun in Leo, as I do, your sun expresses itself in a Leonine way—which in my case, is both hot-tempered but also hot-blooded (ahem). This combo takes place in the seventh house, the house of relationships and partnerships. And so my Sun in Leo expresses itself through relationships. And I will tell you, as long as I’ve known that placement it has never made sense—until not long ago when I realized how often I make the people in my life serve as defense attorneys against my insecurity and as validators for my talents. Go figure. That’s kind of what houses “do.”)

One thing it was hard for me to get used to was how the cards color each other, which is odd because that is something so integral to my tarot practice. But there are so many contexts with tarot and not much of any with lenormand, because, again, the images don’t “mean” anything. We’re not “supposed” to interpret them the way we interpret the art on a tarot card. Frankly, I think that’s hogwash. If you want to use the image, fuckin’ do it. Who’s stopping you? The lenormand police? Fuck them. On the other hand, I actually don’t pay any attention to the image other than where they’re facing. In this case, the snake “faces” down to the clover, which is both its house, and the house the clover sits in. We have a snake functioning in a clovery way; we have a clover functioning in a snakey way. Those are not the same, but both likely will matter!

What’s a clovery snake? Let’s start there. When interpreting lenny, or anything, I fold fast to something I learned from Camelia Elias: function over symbology. She didn’t phrase it that way, but it’s how I sum it up for myself. The function of a snake matters more to me than the cultural associations of a snake. Now, a snake doesn’t have any “function” other than “being a snake,” unlike the heart, which is a pump.  So when I think of the items in the deck that are living things in their own right (people, child, dog, stork, tree, fish, fox, birds, mice . . . think that’s it), I think instead of their behavior. What is the behavior of a snake? They’re windy, twisty, stealthy, speedy. We could say they’re poisonous, but that’s a judgment; snakes don’t exist to poison. Only poison does that. If the card were venom, that would be poisonous. Poisonous snakes poison when they’re in danger. The thing they do is defend, not poison. Make sense? Now, contextually, cards around the snake might suggest they’re in defense, in which case poison may be the likely outcome. But we don’t have any evidence for that, and in fact a quick glance at the cards suggests there isn’t any.

Here, I can feel lenormand readers screaming at me. “No! You’re making it mushy and tarot-y!” In fact, I’m not. This card is typically meant to suggest “the other woman.” There’s no contextual relevance for that because this is a reading about tarot, not about sex. If I clung to that, I’d already be fucked. Frankly. And that’s so often where I got stumped with this pack. I wasn’t “allowed” to take the card farther away from it’s “real meaning,” but the “real meaning” didn’t fucking make any sense! Know why? Because symbols don’t mean anything in a reading if they don’t mean anything to the reader. Divination uses the reader in the act of interpretation, and if “the other woman” is just not what makes sense to the reader—and if something else does—then the “real meaning” is nonsense. 

So far, the only thing contextualizing it is the clover. Let’s consider what a clover’s purpose or function is: it’s ground cover (and a much safer bet than the grass we love in the so-called US to pour chemicals on). Now, it’s well-known that clovers are lucky—and I don’t exclude that meaning from the card, because, in a way, the clover has so evolved to suggest “luck” in Europeanized places that it’s hard to resist (same for love and hearts, which is why, sometimes, the heart suggests that, too). Clovers are easy to miss, they’re low to the ground, they’re not valuable unless you’re looking for one, and if you’re not in need of luck you don’t care about them—so you don’t think about them. 

Actually, when you look at what we’re dealing with, here, we have a “snake in the grass.” There’s a loaded expression, that means someone is hiding something—but, again, when we look at what it’s literally saying, we’re seeing exactly where a snake is supposed to be. (Incidentally, we’re not talking about yard grass in that expression; we mean the tall, natural grasses that exist in natural habitats untainted by Scotts Turf Builder). So, we have someone/thing in its natural habitat. And, while that might seem like a threat to the outsider, it isn’t. It is, in fact, exactly where we’re supposed to be. 

What of the clover when we consider it in the house of the snake? What’s a snakey clover? Weirdly, I don’t think they change each other much when we flip them—which isn’t always the case. The snake is the thing at home; the grass, the home the thing is in place in. They’re so closely wed, they mean the same thing to matter what—but this tells me that the top row, when viewed out of context of the bottom row, will focus on the thing (the reader) and the bottom row will focus on the habitat, with special attention to the client, thanks to the Them card we already talked about. 

Let’s expand outward. (It’s hard to write out readings like this without making them seem overcomplicated. It’s not really; this typically happens quite fast. But to explore all the possibilities in writing takes words.)

The snake is flanked immediately by the rider (in the “house” of the stork) and the bouquet (in the “house” of the child). So we have a storky rider and childish bouquet. A storky rider, really, is one who returns. Storks are migratory. The rider is, too, but the storks ensure that “he’ll” come back. They turn him into a boomerang. The bouquet is small or undeveloped. Bouquets are typically associated with gifts, any that makes total sense: what else is a bouquet of flowers for? Sure, it can symbolize different things: love, grief, thanks, apology—but it is always, at essence, a gift. Even when purchased for the self and certainly when placed on a sacred space. We’ve got an undeveloped gift. That will always return. 

Interesting, interesting. 

I’m going to stay in the top row just for clarity’s sake. That takes us, then, to the mice (in the house of the dice—what a neat little poem, there) and the heart (in the house of “them”/man #2). When a card falls in one of the significator houses, we say that this expresses an aspect of that person. So the client, in this case, is heart-y. In theory, the people cards have no actual meaning other than representing people, but when they happen in contexts where that doesn’t make sense, I’ll think in terms of projective (“you,” in this case Man #1–not drawn) and receptive (“them,” in this case Man #2). Which means that the heart represents the client, but when we look at the heart in the house of the client or the “them,” we’re getting the “receptive” vibe—so the reader is giving to the an acceptor. Which sounds so convoluted, that, again, this can be difficult to write. Essentially, the heart represents something being given by the reader and accepted by others. Which make sense. 

I referenced the heart being a pump. In the case of an animal’s heart, it’s the pump giving us life. In this case, the client is the lifeblood of the reader’s world. The client keeps them going. Even though, we may feel nervous (mice) that this is all just a big gamble (dice).

Mice behave nervous. That’s a trait normally assigned to the birds. Because they, too, behave nervously. I tend to view the birds more to do with talking, noise, because they’re noisier than mice. Gossip, then, is something I’ll see with the birds. The mice are typically associated with diminishment or theft, because they eat away at things. But so does every living thing. And what I’d say to anyone reading this who thinks my correspondences are wrong: you have to find this stuff for yourself, the meanings have to come from you. If you don’t, you’re just reciting nonsense. Mice are more “skittery” and anxious than birds; birds are louder and talkier. Maybe they’re anxious, but “theft,” the common association for mice, isn’t helping me in this reading. (Also, birds steal as much as mice.)

This whole top row, then, seems to say to be: “Don’t get nervous (mice) that your gifts (bouquet) will abandon you—they will always come back (rider/house of stork). You may think your gift is small or underdeveloped (bouquet/house of the child), but your heart beats with your clients (heart/house of Them), so when you follow your heart (the heart follows the rider in the spread, and, in fact, could be his direction—he’s facing that way), the road may be windy, but your gifts will always give you what you need (the way the heart gives life to the body). Trust your gifts, then, they will always be there for you as long as your focus is the client.”

Turning our attention to the bottom row, we are safe and naturally in our element (clover/house of snake—yes, this sounds like “home,” and I almost used that word—but house would be more appropriate. But “in our element” makes sense with this combo), and our inner direction (stork as migratory animals with instincts/house of the rider). The gamble, though anxiety-making, is worth the effort—as long as we don’t let our ego (child/house of bouquet) interfere with our devotion to the client (Them/house of heart).


The purists may say that me bringing in ego is a big no-no, because I don’t have “evidence” to support that. But of course I do. Ever met a spoiled child? Too many gifts (bouquet)? They’re all ego. Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, say. We’ve seen them. Veruca Salt, right? That’s ego, baby, and incidentally adults look exactly like that when we do this. The child in the house of the bouquet can get spoiled. One may say that there needs to be cards right next to it to indicate that, but fuck it. 


One thing I don’t think I’ve ever talked about before is what I’m going to call implied context or need context. Here’s what I mean: A reading will sometimes take you in a direction that makes sense given the cards you’ve worked with, but not enough to answer the question fully. There are a few cards left to interpret, and they have to fit the narrative you’re telling—either proving it or disproving it, to whatever end that matters. This means that these remaining cards are forced by the reading into potentially unnatural but perfectly legitimate interpretations. Hence, the spoiled child situation. That didn’t occur to me in my initial interpretations, but the fact remains that I got to a point in the reading where I needed them to do a job and they had to step up to it. “Little gifts” made sense in the top row, but not in the bottom. Spoiled brat, as something to avoid, made sense given that we’re talking about having anxiety about losing our gifts. The combo says that the only thing that could do that is letting our ego take over, so don’t—pay attention to the last card in the reading, the client. Boom. 


Letting go of the fear of “doing it wrong” is so important no matter what you’re learning. I really loathe fundamentalism, and the only thing I hold to be fundamentally true is that you have to figure it out for yourself. All the books by the great authors are wonderful inspiration, but the time comes when you have to put them down and it’s just you and the cards—whatever system you’re working with—and you have to let them guide you. And to do that they’re going to call on the parts of you that are most likely to get the results needed. The cards don’t care what I, or Camelia Elias, or Regina George, or anyone things of them. They care what you think in that moment, because you are the one in the role of messenger. 


All the long discussions about which system is better for which kind of reading kind of wash up to something we all hate: gatekeeping. It’s not intentional, I mean gatekeeping rarely is, but it does it nonetheless. When we announce this is the correct way, we also announce anyone who doesn’t do this is wrong, and so valueless in my eyes. 


There is a right way to do most things: the way you do them. Open heart surgery? We wanna follow the guidebook. A psychic reading? Throw the guidebook away. As well as all the pedants who are so insecure in their method that they only feel confident when bullying others into doing it their way. It’s like Christianity for diviners. And it’s cringe. 


To start this reading, I asked what the lenormand could teach us about tarot. But I think it told us what we need to know about all forms of divination: namely, focus on the client, get out of your own way, trust your gifts. Regardless of the system. It’s about them, the client, and getting an answer is exponentially more important than pleasing someone else’s sense of “correctness.” Your job isn’t to satisfy someone else’s ego, not even your own—not even your client’s, to be honest. It’s to answer the question. As Camelia Elias says, it’s to read the damn cards. 


Seconded. Obviously, if your the client that doesn’t change. 


A Read of One’s Own
Pull a spread of any kind of card you like to answer the following:

1. How can I trust my gifts more?
2. How can I stay focused on the client, not on my ego?
3. How do I put aside worries about other people’s divinatory dogmas?

For my example, I’m sticking with lenny, cuz why not? I drew five cards for each (lenormand is a more-is-more situation for me), from left to right.

1. Bouquet, lilies, scythe, choice (usually crossroads or paths), heart. This gift (bouquet) is ancient (lilies) to you; it can only be severed (scythe) by choice (choice)—the choice to cut out your own heart. (Woof!)
2. Birds, bear, ship, masks (unusual to this deck), Them (man #2 again). I’m goin to take a big step away from lenormand, even in my own technique here. There are two birds cards in this deck and the one I drew has an owl on it. I’m seeing the owl, not the birds, because the idea of preying and also wisdom matter. “Your hunt for wisdom is strong, it carries you through the client’s (Them) acts (masks).” In essence, look for the truth so strongly—because you do that, anyway—that you can see past the things the client would rather not show. Give them the message they need, not that they want. 
3. Closer look (unusual to this deck), anchor, star, whip, fox. This one isn’t really much of an issue for me. I really don’t care about other people’s dogmas, divinatory or otherwise—not anymore, anyway. But, for the sake of it, let’s explore: “Look closer (obvi) at what stops you (anchor) from your purpose (stars) . . . it’s likely your repetitive distrust.” Lenormand is famous for having “good” and “bad” or “negative” and “positive” cards. Like, fine. But, no . . . cuz life ain’t that way. The anchor, yes, is good: in the context where that matters. It doesn’t matter here. Hope, stability: not useful. An anchor dragging us into static and keeping us from the direction (star, traditional meaning) we’re meant to go. The whip can be violent or controlling, and the fox can be sly. Here I kept the repetitive nature of the whip/broom—even though that’s not its purpose (its purpose is dominance), it’s its behavior. (That said, this suggests that I don’t trust other people because I’ve had my trust betrayed [fox] too much [repetition], which is true.) How much, though, is my own lack of trust holding me back? Probably a lot! 

There you have it, friends. Let me know what you think. And I’ll see you soon.


tb.

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This week’s decks: Divine Masculine Healing Oracle by Christabel Jessica, art by Cecilia G.F.
And The Queer Crow Death Magic Tarot by Frank Duffy Arts

By now, y’all know stasis, dogma, and ruts ain’t my thing. So, yesterday, as I lay in bed considering my day, I wondered whether I should head to Mystic, CT, for a little spiritual shopping. There’s a few witch-adjacent shops in the village, there. Rather than hemming and hawing, I asked my guide, who said, “Yeah, I left something for you, there.” There were a few things, actually, but one was an oracle deck I bought at the time mostly because I found myself alone in a shop chatting with the owner and felt sorta obligated to buy? Not because of her, but because I’m codependent? Anyway, I got to the car and pulled a card: Hermes (Mercury), who had some things to say about my love affair with not having difficult conversations with people in my life (which I sometimes do and sometimes do not), but also Mercury/Hermes is a divinity I have an affinity with, because he’s the ruler of divination and writing—my bread and butter. And after a pull this morning and for a friend last night, I quickly learned this was that rare winner of an oracle deck. 

Today, when deciding whether I wanted to skip this week (I have a busy week and not a lot of NRG), I got excited by the idea of pulling a card from that oracle deck to help shape this week’s lesson—and then I remembered I haven’t used the Queer Crow Death Magic Tarot, which I got recently and adore, in a minute, so I thought I’d use them both. I asked the oracle deck, “What do these dark daddies want to tell us about divination?” Krishna showed up to say “hello!” Let me pull a phrase from the guidebook, because as soon as I read it, I thought, OH YEAH: “A stark reality is many people don’t know how to feel. Instead of being taught emotional literacy, many grow up encouraged to shut it off. Now, we have a society of adults starting from scratch.”

Woof. Woof. I mean, the book is careful (and, I think, wise) to avoid (the now-cliched) “saying the quiet part out loud.” People don’t know how to feel. But in this deck related to the divine masculine, it cannot be missed—this is men. Men are broken. And that’s kind of what I love about this deck. While all the divinities and potentates depicted span the emotional spectrum, the author focuses on the lesson of their behavior, not on emulating who they are. Krishna is beloved, so that’s not a surprise, here; but the notable hunk and gym queen Adonis is discussed as learning to love your body, the body that you have now. Not the Adonis body. 

Krishna, is speaking to feeling the feeling we feel and processing them, rather than running away from them or avoiding them. And when I saw the sentence I shared above, I thought—well, of course this is men . . . but I also thought, “well, this is of course ‘America’ . . . and we export this stuff, so . . . it’s also a lot of colonial world.”

People don’t know how to feel and they don’t know how to process their emotions. We do so, today, by filling the gap with stuff. Dopamine hunting. I’m as guilty as anyone, hence my supposedly spiritual shopping trip yesterday (the little tidbits I found were quite good, though, and one of them was a gift for my partner). Even those of us who have had therapy and attempted to work on our damn selves still find the impact of the national global immaturity of grown-ass adults poisonous—so poisonous, in fact, that we, too, frequently get lost in our feelings and don’t know how to process them. 

The Krishna card suggests experiencing the experience without judgment, just as he had to do when he was shot by a hunter, Jara, in his heel. Krishna blesses and obsolves Jara before he dies and returns to immortality. Talk about emotional maturity. 

Where oracle cards frequently fall down for me is that the advice--process your emotions and grow the fuck up—is good, but . . . how the fuck does one do it? And this is where tarot comes into play. I don’t typically mix media, as it were, but I rarely use oracle cards alone. And this is a tarot blog, after all, so it made sense. I just drew three cards, partly to keep this short because I have a busy week. We’ll see how terse I can keep this. From the tarot I drew Page of Cups, Seven of Swords, Five of Swords.

While I drew the center card, the 7/swords, first and placed the others on either side, I’m going to begin on the left because this is a lovely tie in to the oracle card—not just because of Krishna’s rich, glorious blue. What I love so much about this deck, what makes my heart sing so much when working with it, is the images are glorious distillations of ideas. And this page/cups is such a one. Like Narcissus (another card in the oracle deck, incidentally—exploring self-love v. narcissism, of course) this page watches themself cry into their own tears. I think of a story Shirley MacLaine told about Liz Taylor, and how she could make a single tear drop fall from her eye and into, like, a glass of champagne or something. Killed me. So theatrical, no performative. But still, somehow, so satisfying?

Have you ever watched yourself cry in a mirror? I haven’t because I honestly, and I hate this, have some biological disposition not to cry. I can heave, but not cry. I haven’t cried in, oh, I think the last time was at the funeral of a friend’s mother in high school? And I think it was a lot to do with my poor friend’s experience of loss. (I’ve cried on stage, too, but that’s Liz Taylor-style; it’s not real. I can do that, or could, like a whiz. That supposedly made me a good actor.) 

Today, I think a lot of us walk through life imagining ourselves in closeup, just like Liz did. Partly because we consume so much television and partly because we consume so much social media, we’re weirdly always observing ourselves and performing for ourselves and others. I cannot tell you how much of my day at work I spend looking at myself in the Teams meetings. Why? I don’t know. I cannot stop doing it. It makes me super self-conscious, unless I happen to think I look cute that day, in which case I’ll get distracted by the rare moment of self-regard. 

What would happen, though, if we observed not ourselves and how we LOOK feeling things . . . and shifted, instead, to observing the thing felt and where it comes from.

Humans are naturally curious, like pages. We can also be super vain. And I think there’s a page-like quality to that. Pages are interested in everything, including themselves. (Have you ever observed yourself masturbating in a mirror? I have. In my teens. Curiosity.) So, there’s an inevitable kind of navel-gazing that will happen with the curious. And there’s nothing wrong with that, if we can have the perspective to see the correct thing.

And now we move away from emotion—cups—to two swords cards! Two odd-numbered swords cards, the seven and the five. And these are perfect for this reading! Let’s start with the seven: the sevens ask us to look (perceive, swords) within. Sevens are rather swordsy numbers in my book, because they are so much about perceiving our reality within the realm of the suit they cover and the reading they’re in. But the 7/swords is the swordsiest. (“Charlie Brown, of all the Charlie Browns in the world . . . you’re the Charlie Browniest!”) 

The card is telling us to look deeper. Look through the single tear rolling down our beautifully-lit cheek. Where does the tear come from? Why? 

And the Five of Swords says, “it’s probably gonna be because of some of the tough stuff. This is probably the kind of thing that you’d rather pretend isn’t there, which is why you want to avoid the emotions to begin with.”

The page invites us to be curious about emotions; the swords cards advise us to be ruthless and not settle just on the silver screen surface of things. And divination can help us do that. But it ain’t easy. Some of us can be ruthless with ourselves—sometimes much too much, in ways that aren’t curious and aren’t about study, but are about rehashing the work of our bullies. Other people, because—to the point of the author of the guidebook for the oracle deck—is that a lotta muthafuckas out here are emotionally immature. They can’t. They lack the ability to self-reflect!

So . . . . we need readers to do this for us. 

Yay!

When I began reading, the ability of a reader to be more objective than a client about their own lives was touted as one of the main values of the cards. (Since, of course, we weren’t “allowed” to be fortune tellers.) The ability to reflect the client back to themselves is something I haven’t thought much about int he last ten or so years, primarily because the journey I’ve been on has had a lot to do with de-psychological-izing tarot. Mostly in reaction to the heavily psychological bent it had when I began learning. I’ve said it before, I’m not a psychologist so I feel more comfortable reading fortunes than analyzing something. That said, I think one of the most helpful, most important things we can do for anyone--not just as diviners, as human beings—is reflect people’s behavior back to themselves. 

In the new book (The Modern Fortune Teller’s Field Guide, October 2025 from Crossed Crow Books. Available for pre-order now. Contact me if you pre-order from a Black or Queer-owned bookseller—or if you are a Black or queer-owned bookseller and want to stock it, I’ve got a thank you for you, too. Wink.), I talk a lot about why reflective readings—meaning readings that reflect the client back to themselves—are so fucking helpful. So I’m not gonna give you the whole story, here, but I will say this: People respond way better to seeing themselves than they do to almost anything else. Because when we look in that mirror and we see the big ol’ booger hangin’ outta our nose? We get a fucking tissue.

It is possible that this is the most important kind of reading you can do. 

Show people how they feel and why. 
Then they can figure out what to do, next. 

Maybe this is a good thing to do when someone doesn’t know what they want a reading about! Start with a reading about what they’re feeling and why, and then, if you need to, do an expansion. 

Thank you, Lord Krishna! Jai Shri Krishna!        

A read of one’s own
This is it, kids—just what we just said: Do a reading for yourself (or, better yet, trade): Reflect what I feel right now—and why. Then spend a good, long time journaling about it.

Happy week, friends. 
See you soon!
​
tb.