​ (My intent, when I started this week’s lesson, was to use a single card and explore how the symbols within it can be read much like I read a multi-card spread. I actually started doing that, and wrote a good four of five pages of nonsense—but I knew I was avoiding the topic I needed to discuss this week. I didn’t want to, partly because it’s fairly personal, and also partly because it really doesn’t showcase how I work with one card. That was yesterday. Last night, after mulling it over, I decided to backspace over all that specious crap and just talk about what this lesson is trying to say—which is really the point of reading cards. And I share this with you for two reasons: first, and simplest, sometimes we start taking a path with a reading and discover that it’s not taking us where we thought it would. Second, I was doing the thing I constantly say not to: I was trying to force a reading to do something I wanted it to and that it had no interest in. So it’s an opportunity to highlight my own willfulness. I think that’s good, because in the social media culture we’re all impacted by, it’s rare we see folks every talking about how they fucked up. So, there you go! I fucked up!

When I drew this card, I snorted. I’m going to provide some unusually personal context, here, because it’s relevant to the ultimate lesson this card presents. And, who knows, maybe it’s a bit of an exorcism for me, too. 

For most of my life, I’ve been involved in the theatre. In my youth, I dreamed of starring on Broadway. It was all I wanted. It didn’t matter that I was short, overweight, fairly femme, had zero self confidence, and couldn’t afford to live in New York. I wanted that. At some point in my 20s, I fell out of love with that dream. Mostly because I’d realized I really loved writing. And I’m a much better writer than I ever was an actor. I’m actually a pretty good playwright—more than that, if I’m being honest. I’m pretty exceptional, in fact. And I was happy with that evolution. I went to grad school and got my MFA in it, and for the most part I really enjoyed that process—even if the cost was insane and I regret endebting myself in that way, I also made some really close friends who I value a lot. 

But things were not as rosy as I wanted them to be, and once I finished my MFA it seemed to a certain degree that theatre was finished with me. That was all starting to cause me great anxiety up until the arrival of COVID, when theatres shut down and all of us were done with it for an undetermined length of time. In the space of theatrelessness, lots of revelations came out nationally and locally about the extent of predatory behavior that was both known and tolerated throughout professional and community landscapes. And this forced me to look at the times I’d experienced predatory crap as well as the times I’d witnessed it and said nothing. Then there were the times I justified bullying, verbal abuse, and other traumatic situations because “that’s just the way it is in the arts.” And I couldn’t sit with that anymore. I joined a few attempts to create accountability—and when those fizzled, I made attempts to influence to the limited degree that I could using social media and private conversation. Those failed, too. I’m not influential, particularly in the local theatre community, because theatre communities tend to be rather exclusive—and when I resigned from a residency (which I did because of shitty behavior from my “boss”), I knew I was essentially sealing my own coffin—at least locally. 

Since lockdown ended and theatre has returned, the way it has returned is . . . to exactly the way it was before. All the promises of “doing the work” were broken, all the DEI officers hired were ignored and eventually either quit or were budgeted out, and the revelations of bad behavior (often illegal behavior) were papered over and forgotten about. But not by me. And my tolerance for it has been shot all to hell (as I assumed would happen generally). 

Concurrent to that, I had a few of my own personal experiences that left me wasted. This includes a production of a piece I’d written by a nearby company who—after informing me (not asking me) that they’d be producing it, went on to do so all the while refusing to pay me royalties on my work. Playwrights earn royalties when their plays are performed. It’s how we make money. We don’t make much, but any time you produce a play that hasn’t fallen into the public domain, the authors must be paid. Unless, apparently, the writer is someone you think you’re “doing a favor” for. I’m sorry, fuck you. No. Not a favor. A theft. And so it took several arguments with the theatre’s board of directors—and threats of taking their behavior to the public forums and to the Dramatists Guild to get my what I was owed. 

That experience left me shaken, exhausted, furious, and sad. And it became clear to me at that point something wasn’t right. It’s one thing to be treated like crap by people you don’t know, but I had a relationship to this organization—in fact, many of my worst experiences, the times I was treated least well, were times where I knew the organization. Like, somehow their familiarity with me made it OK to disrespect me. But in fact it wasn’t only that experience, it was the thirty years of experiences leading up to it—and the industry’s collective refusal to face their (our) own garbage, their racism, anti-fatness, anti-femme-ness, their usury, their classism. All the things. And I slowly realized . . . there wasn’t space there for me, anymore. Because I cannot accept this behavior—when directed at anyone, not just at me. 

That takes me to this weekend, when a script submission I forgot about had come back with an acceptance letter. At least to the next phase of the selection process. And I had an absolute panic attack. The head of the program asked that those of us selected to move to the next phase write back with an acceptance or a decline. After talking it over with a couple friends who know me, I declined. But that wasn’t the end, because I had two more responses from that person and their partner trying to assure me that there wasn’t any risk to me (I’d shared a very high level of what I’d been going through), especially since there was at least once more phase and I might not be selected. 

It is a writer’s dream to be encouraged in this way, but each new attempt to relax me caused me more agony—more panic, and on top of that a whole host of other things: shame, depression, grief, anger, confusion, and above all self doubt. Was I just punishing myself for others’ behavior? Was I burning a bridge (we’re taught never to burn bridges in the theatre, as you never know who knows who and is going to impact your hiring down the line)? What if I changed my mind and wanted in down the line? Was I just acting from depression or trauma? I spent much of the last five days riddled with shame. This was a no-win for me. The idea of going back into a theatrical situation sent me into panic mode; the idea of giving up on myself and my work felt . . . well, actually, like ceding defeat. And the victors were everyone single piece of shit who dehumanized me in my career. How could I let them win? 

And now here I am, writing this to you—on a tarot blog. But it’s got a purpose. You’ll see, soon.

There’s in a line in Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s famous musical Company: “There’s a time to come to New York, and there’s a time to leave New York.” I guess, in my case, it’s time to (metaphorically) leave New York (meaning my theatre life). And that is really difficult because I hung my whole identity on that part of my life for my entire adulthood. It made me special, different, not part of the herd. It was especially important to me since I’ve never been able to make my living that way, instead having to sell my labor to corporations in order to make ends meet. Being this thing, this playwright, saved me from the oblivion of being a normie. Even though I’d gotten to a point where every encounter with the artform I’d worked so hard at left me feeling like shit about myself—even positive encounters, like this weekend. 

There’s a time to leave New York. 

And now we get to the lesson, or the beginning of it: There are times when, for whatever reason, something we’ve clung to, something we may have defined ourselves in terms of, suddenly stops serving us. Maybe it actually becomes painful. Maybe it becomes dangerous. This can be true of relationships, jobs, hobbies, anything. Sometimes the thing we wanted most turns out to be the thing that was slowly poisoning us. And when that happens, it’s easy to see how important it is to excise that thing—but also easy to see how incredibly difficult it is to do it. 

That is the tension of Death and the lesson for this week. Sometimes we have to leave things behind, even though we love then—even though we’re exceptionally good at them—in order to heal, to grow, or to save ourselves. (I should add that writing about this feels incredibly indulgent and shameful, not only because I hate showing my feelings but also because we’ve just had a major hurricane in the US and the world is falling apart and I’m here whining about the fact that I don’t get to be a playwright when I grow up. I mean go fuck myself, right?)

There was a time when this happened for me and tarot, in fact; though I didn’t really grieve it. I’d gotten sick of it and put it away, assuming it wasn’t going to matter anymore. I hadn’t tied my identity to it. That made it easier. Now that I’m in the process of being left by the theatre (I can’t seem to leave it on my own), I run the risk of defining myself in this realm—this tarot, Tom Benjamin realm. And I have to be very careful in the next few years that I do not start to believe that I “am” something “special” because of this work. In a way, that’s why I don’t use my real name in this part of my life (even though I’m constantly telling people to use it after they meet me). It’s like, there’s a version of myself that is Tom Benjamin and he does the tarot stuff—but “I”, whatever “I” is, isn’t that. But, if I’m honest, it’s not all that effective in managing my ego. It’s probably just another thing I tell myself to make myself less anxious. 

To stop yapping about my own whiney drama, let me take this back to divination—which, after all, is the whole point of this blog. It is true you may come to a time where tarot (or witchery, or anything else) may no longer serve you. You may discover one day that you’re in an abusive relationship with it. Or, more ideally, that you and it simply have irreconcilable differences. And if you’ve tied your identity to that, the death of that relationship will be painful. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to be important, but it will hurt more. Because it’s not the relationship that’s ending; it’s the part of you that you thought was the center, the ideal, the version of you everyone liked most or even that you knew people were a little jealous of (where my fire signs at?). So it’s helpful now to consider whether or not your ego is tied to something you do. Are you identifying your value, your personhood to something that is part of you but that isn’t you? And if so, what are the potential consequences of that?

Now, it’s entirely possible you’ll never reach such a breaking point with divination—or anything else. I hope you don’t. It fucking sucks. But life, especially as we get older, is often about letting go, so if this doesn’t some day apply to tarot, it will likely to apply to something else. But it also needn’t be as big as “I’m leaving the theatre forever!” or “I’ll never pick up a deck of tarot cards again!” Not all of you are big fucking drama queens, like me. I am incredibly defeatist and incredibly dramatic and I also suffer from something that a lot of neurodivergent folks do: rejection sensitive dysphoria (look it up—if you have it, your mind is about to be blown.)

This could easily be applied to a style, a technique, even a deck—something that you’ve grown to identify with, that “defines” you and your “style.” Obviously these cases aren’t going to be quite as cry-me-a-river as the example I’m sharing above, but these kinds of transitions can be difficult, too. They’re low-risk objectively, but that really doesn’t ease the ego—who views every threat to its safety in the same way as it reacts to an on-coming heard of bison or a train. Everything that threatens the ego ignites the fight, flight, or freeze systems and that means that we’re going to suffer a little (or a lot) when it’s time to let go. 

But let go we must. 

It is the clinging that makes us suffer so, and I think this is what the Buddhists are trying to tell us. We suffer because we cling to identities that keep us too rooted in the material. Now, I’m not someone who thinks the human race should be focused on the spiritual all the time. Most of us can’t be and even if we could it can be just as demoralizing as anything else, particularly when we feel like we’re not getting what we need from it. But I do see the point that we suffer by holding on to what’s already dead. 

We can’t grieve until we’ve accepted something is over. And we can’t even begin to do that until we let go. Like Kate Winslet, letting go of skeezy Leonardo DiCaprio’s hand, we have to let go. 

And fuck off if it isn’t difficult! (Cont’d below picture.)

​In my draft yesterday, I focused on various symbols that make up Frieda Harris’s illustration, and I focused for a while on the two figures that swirl between the skeleton’s legs (enlarged above). One, robust and hale, looks like they’re about to head into battle—ready to free themselves from the chaos. The other looks to be reaching, reaching, reaching until they become all arms—drifting slowly out of the equation, losing steam, and depleting. What’s the difference? I didn’t know yesterday, but having explored the card in this way I know it’s the reaching. The long-armed clinger (there’s a name) is trying to hold on to what is gone. The other figure isn’t interested in clinging to anything, only in breaking free. And we’d do well to emulate that figure, because they have a greater chance of survival. Because it ain’t over yet.

That’s the thing about the Death card in tarot. It’s not the final card. There’s more game left to be played, it’s just that this round is over. 

This week’s spread is inspired by these two figures. (More on that below.)

This particular depiction of Death is fascinating on many levels, and one reason I love Harris’s work so much. But in Michael Osiris Snuffin’s The Thoth Companion, he discusses how the webbing that features in the card seems to form a (ahem) cock-like (not his term) appendage emerging from the skeleton’s pelvis. This leads the eye up and out of the card, but also brings our attention to the bubbles that flank the, um, shaft. I can’t recall if Snuffin compares them to testicles, but now that I know there’s a cock in the card I can’t see anything else. Which is by way of saying that this is a life-giving card—and an important part of this conversation. 

This isn’t the last card in the tarot, or even the majors; it’s just the middle of the road (ish). And if we accept this image of death as spraying his seed all over the landscape (and there are more humanoid figures in those . . . balls . . .), we recognize that this death card isn’t reaping. He’s sowing. 

Another deck I used almost exclusively for a while (as I seem to be now with the Thoth) was the Wild Unknown. And that Death card taught me something about the idea, too. It shows a carrion bird, rotting on the ground. It’s not a pleasant image, but it is a reminder—a memento mori, so to speak—that what has come and gone is fertilizing the ground. It’s usually a metaphorical fertilization. What we’ve been through makes what we will go through possible, usually in better, healthier ways. (This is one reason why, though, I’m so anti-embalming when we die. We cannot fertilize anything if we’re riddled with cancer-causing agents designed to make us look . . . not dead . . .? Like . . . ? Embalming made sense during the US Civil War because families wanted to see their slain loved ones once before they were buried. Now? It’s insane. And awful for the embalmer, who is exposed to these chemicals all day. Anyway.) 

Death makes us think we’re losing something, but that’s mostly because we don’t yet know what we’re gaining. When it’s not a literal death, we’re almost always gaining something. Even if that something is just the self respect to not put ourselves in positions that might damage our mental health, say. 

And this takes us to this week’s spread.

A Read of One’s Own
I really only recommend doing this spread if you suspect there is something you’re clinging to—no matter how big or small. If you don’t have anything like that, this will frustrate you. And it’s why the example I share will be generic. If you don’t, hang on to it—use it with clients or friends . . . and maybe one day you’ll need it for you. 

Card/set one represents the thing that we are clinging to. This is what we’d benefit from letting go of. For many, many reasons I do believe that this should be three cards rather than one, but that’s up to you. Below, for brevity, I use one. 

Card/set two represents the reacher I talked about in describing Harris’s image. It’s the ways in which we’re clinging to the thing and/or (it can be both) how it’s depleting us. 

Card/set three represents the hale, hearty figure who seems ready to fight. This tells us a way out of the enstuckification we’re experiencing. 

Finally, card/set four represents what could come to life once we do let it go. What’s the thing waiting to be born that can’t be until we let go of what’s died. 

Quick example: (This is for an imaginary client and for brevity I’m just using one card.)
Card one — what my client is clinging to: The Hierophant. In this case, I think this would be a religious tradition or spiritual path that has stagnated, become too dogmatic, too limiting, too restrictive, probably to “old.” I think of those who are clinging to outmoded ideas about tarot or witchcraft—for example, someone who believed that witches can’t curse . . . but deep down thinks maybe they should. 

Card two—how we’re clinging to it/and or how it’s depleting us: Seven of Wands (Valour). Oh, we think this part of our path makes us virtuous and heroic! (I tend to use “we” in readings when I mean “you, client, are the problem”). Oh, if we stay the course and show how virtuous we are, everyone will be impressed . . . meanwhile you’re spending all your energy doing that, and literally no one cares. 

Card three—how to get out of the enstuckification: The Magus/Magician. Oo, not what I expected! But in this case, I think the key is to actually do the things you think you’re not supposed to. I also think there’s a certain amount of experimentation and willfulness, here. The card is associated with Mercury, so there’s a kind of playful cosmological promiscuity that I associate with that god. This is the magician not as con artist but as mad scientist. 

Card four—what could be born from letting go of this dead thing? Four of Cups (Luxury). Oo, a new sense of emotional stability and ease. A sense of contentment. The restlessness ends, and a stabler spiritual journey begins. Quite nice!

OK my friends. There you have it. Hope you have a great week!

LESSON 14: 
Cards drawn (arc of five): Ace of Wands (4), The Tower (2), King of Pentacles (1), Seven of Wands (3), Four of Pentacles (5). 
Deck: The Lubanko Tarot by E. Lubanko

A note about this deck: I think this is one of the truly essential tarots of the modern era. Alas, I only discovered it as it was about to be out of print (don’t fret for me; I had the foresight to buy two copies). I hope that it doesn’t remain so. It is queer and sexy and wonderfully unique. When I first got it in my hot little hands, I thought: “Oh, this is THE deck.” But when I started using it for clients, many says, “wow, these are INTENSE.” They are, but in the beset way. That said, I don’t use it in casual settings much anymore—alas—I want clients to remember the message, not necessarily the intensity of the images. Still, I think it’s in my top ten decks. 

The King of Pentacles (my astrological significator and usually one of my favorite cards) is said by some to contain the entire tarot because, when the deck is in order, he’s the final card. (Typically.) I often think of the pentacles as the suit of earth—but also all the other suits wrapped into one, the five points of the pentagram representing each of the elements (including spirit). (In fact, it’s worth noting that the reason the inverted pentagram/pentacle is considered “bad” is because with the top tip pointing downward, it represents a “triumph” of the physical over the spiritual. In this way, the reversed pentagram/pentacle is quite an avatar for modern life, especially for those of us who have to put the physical over the spiritual thanks to life’s demands.)

It can be scary for readers when a court sits in a prominent position, particularly when the reading isn’t about a person, as is the case here. If you face that reality, don’t start with it! Just because the card is in the center of the spread and likely a lynchpin of the reading doesn’t mean that it’s the card we have to start with—or even that it’s the most important card in the reading. Its position makes it look important, but it may not be. This is what I mean when I say we should gaze at a spread without jumping to conclusions. The King’s position (his role as a king or the card’s place in the spread) may be ironic, it may be imagined, it may be on the way out. In any case, it’s best to reserve judgment for a moment—and if the card that “seems” like the important one doesn’t make it easy to get into the reading, don’t start there. Instead of assuming you’re doing something wrong, assume instead that your guides (or whatever makes this work) are telling you not to start there. Let’s allow information like that to be intuitive rather than intrusive. 
    
In this case, I think I may want to start with that card—but let’s cast our eyes across the spread and record any first impressions: Pentacles is the dominant suit (Note from future me: No, it’s actually not—but see below), there are no cups cards, the only major is the Tower. The numerology isn’t necessarily singing out. Next, I consider anything that catches my eye. The Seven of Wands, in this deck giving the impression of a figure with horns, feels timely. If you read last week’s lesson, I’ve been reading about the Horned God and the devil (who is sometimes assumed to be “the” horned god)—so that’s interesting. Maybe that’s the card I need to start with because I’m so struck by that co-incidence. Before I get there, though, I want to explore the slight dominance of pentacles cards. That roots this reading in the earth and as such means that we’re focusing on any one of the following (probably): work, family, finance, money, banality, and anything else down to earth. Because this is a reading in particular about divination, I take this to suggest the reading will have an overall message about grounded or down-to-earth divination—which, if you know me, is rather on brand. 
    
OK. Now to the cards themselves. 
    
The King of Pentacles gazes at the Seven of Wands. His expression is difficult to read: rueful, wistful, longing, knowing, judgmental? A bit of an enigma and in such cases it’s probably all of that and more is on his mind. Nothing, as we say a lot around here, is all one thing. I think he knows that he’s reached a certain status in life and “can’t” engage with the world in the way that the Seven of Wands does. He can’t be outwardly combative, defensive, or partisan; he can’t take a side because he (as monarchs are supposedly “supposed” to) represents all his “subjects.” (Isn’t that a gross term? Subjects? I hate it. It makes me think of how writers have to “submit” our work. Fuck you.) I think the king longs for the ability to get into the fray—and I think the reason he can’t is because of the Four of Pentacles: the stability of his place. He cannot get all Seven of Swordsy anymore because he wants to maintain his position. 
    
Choices. 
    
OK, let’s look at what he’s looking away from: The Tower and the Ace of Wands (working backwards from the king). 
    
Ah! I was wrong! Pentacles isn’t the dominant suit—I just noticed that, the Ace of Wands makes this a tie between earth and fire! We have the very first card of the minors and the very last card of the minors-slash-the-entire-deck. How cool.  Anyway, not that relevant at the moment (and it may never be, but we have it stored in our memory bank if necessary). I see the Ace of Wands and the Tower as rather similar cards, in fact; the impulse of the ace turns into action in the Tower. This king was once a revolutionary, a fighter of the old order. Now he’s become the order. 
    
Whoa! Heavy, man. Psychedelic. 
    
Not, though, uncommon. There’s a reason the cliche that people get more conservative as they age has become so well accepted. It’s because the people for whom this is true have generally gotten comfortable and no longer feel the need to sacrifice anymore. Hey, look: life’s a crazy ride. I get wanting to be comfortable. But if revolution was always part of your makeup and you deny it, you’re going to wind up a lot like this particular spread.
    
Here’s a technique that often helps me, too: I was about to say that this: “the four implies that this cannot stay this way forever.” Where does that come from? Fours are stable and sometimes stuck. They are generally conservative. So how can that number of stability indicate that things will have to change? Because four is not the last number in any system. Five inevitably comes along and messes it up. It has to because nothing is permanent. So the technique is that sometimes a number can imply the numbers on either side of it. Right? A four implies both the three that formed it and the five that will destroy it. I tend to view odd numbers as destabilizing and even ones as stabilizing. This means that we’re always in a state of revamp or recovery. When we see an even number (here, four), we know at some point that five is going to come along—it has to. Even ten implies its own dissolution in its relationship to one (particularly because the minors move on paths from one to ten and back again). Think of this all like The Wheel of Fortune: wherever you are on that card when it shows up in a spread, you know you can’t stay there forever. 
    
So: lesson fourteen becomes this: Once there was a king who used to be a fiery (Ace of Wands) revolutionary, a destroyer of the status quo (ace and Tower). He secretly longs to be that again (Seven of Wands); to say what he thinks and mess with his enemies. But he’s resigned to a life free of that. After all, he must keep his place (Four of Pentacles) or wind up . . . unsettled. Even though that unsettling thing will come one way or another.
    
What the actual FUCK does that have to do with divination?
    
Great question! And I love that the reason has behaved this way because it’s a great example of something I’ve started saying a lot: sometimes readings are literal and sometimes they’re metaphors or myths. Many of the readings we’ve done in this blog have been fairly literal. Not this one. This is a myth. It is a story from which we must find meaning. I don’t love when readings do this, because I prefer precision and specificity—but whether I want them to happen or not, they do. It’s better for me if I get used to it, right? (I have.) And here’s the thing—maybe metaphor is the method most suited to that client at that time. Sometimes direct, clear answers will shut down a client because they’re not ready to hear the answer. A myth on the other hand may make the message easier to digest. And, in fact, if you’re in the position of delivering bad news, using myth may be a great way to make the message easier to hear. (Incidentally, explore that concept—and more!—in my new book, The Modern Fortune Teller’s Field Guide, coming from Crossed Crow in 2025. Can you believe I’ve made it this many weeks without plugging my book?) 
    
Here, we have a myth. It’s not unlike Persephone and Hades or Noah’s Ark—or Grimm’s fairy tales. It’s a story into which we must dig to find meaning. Here is the meaning I take from the myth: As readers, we might reach a level of “success” (define that how you will) where we feel like the most important thing is holding on to that success. In so doing, we shut down our more fiery, more exciting gifts. We want to be “presentable.” We want to be “safe for all timezones.” We don’t say what we really think, we don’t give the whole truth, we don’t pick sides. We shut down the partisan part of ourselves so that we can maintain the myth that this “success” will last forever. 
    
And yet. The reaper is coming for you—or for your success. How much do you want to look back on your life and say, “Oh, I wish I’d said that thing but I was too afraid people wouldn’t like me”? How much do you want to deny who you really are and what you really believe in order to make people who don’t know you and don’t care about you think you’re cool? We see this with people who “make it” in really any field—they suddenly change their personality to make themselves publicity ready and safe. And what feels like a good PR move winds up informing those paying attention that everything the person did to get where they are wasn’t genuine—that the person isn’t genuine, and that everything is for show. Whatever sells tickets, as it were. Great, you’ve achieved the fame lottery and now you have to pretend to be someone you’re not. (I remember Tiny Fey, whose work I’ve often liked [major 30 Rock fan]—but who is in some ways a really good example of this—telling Bowen Yang on his podcast, “You’re too famous to be genuine.” Meaning, “you can’t say what you want anymore because too many people know you and you’re going to piss people off. Better to say nothing.”) But is that what we’re here to do? Reach the point of getting a microphone passed to us and people who are listening—and then turn it the fuck off so that the things we think don’t get into the world? So that the things we believe in never come to fruition (or of they do, it’s despite us not because of us)? I don’t know about you, but to me that ain’t it, kids. 
    
This is all very macro and may seem totally irrelevant unless you’re a well-known person in your field (and my guess is that if you are, you’re not reading this and don’t give a flying fuck what I think). We can make it micro, though. When you read for others, you’re accepting a microphone and when you’re holding it what you say matters. If you’re really an iconoclast, a firebrand, a hell raiser, are you really serving anyone if you hold back during your readings? I’m not talking about being cruel, about bludgeoning people with truth. I’m saying that if you see in a reading that the client is actually the problem, are you going to tell them? Or are you more interested in being liked? Are you going to let your ego overcome the message? If your client has said something harmful, is it in your best interest to ignore it and hope they come back? Or is it in everyone’s best interest to explain why what they said is dangerous—to give them the opportunity to learn? If your client wants to know if their partner is cheating on them and you know you can answer that but avoid it because someone might think it’s “not a good look,” are you doing your job or are you bowing to peer pressure?
    
These are big, hairy, audacious questions (a term I’m borrowing from corporate America’s “big hairy audacious goal”—a term of art that has come to make my skin crawl . . . and yet here I am using it. Life is weird). I’m not saying I’ve got good answers to them. Sometimes I have held back info because I was worried how the client would react—and sometimes it was because I didn’t want to be disliked. That’s not the case much anymore because I seem to be less interested in getting people to like me, but it’s possible I’ll do it again. What I think: we should aim for delivering readings in alignment with what we authentically believe about divination. Oh, god, that’s a hairy sentence. There was a big and weird conversation about authenticity in the tarot tube landscape a handful of years ago—and as tended to happen a lot back then, it grew into a whole “thing.” The irony of it all being that authenticity is a valuable tool for a reader. It’s how people know we’re not full of shit. Yes, you need to be the reader that you are. And you shouldn’t change what you are in the hopes of making more people like you—because when the time comes that you’ll be forced to show who you really are, and that time will absolutely come, you’re going to feel worse. 
    
I guess another way to say this: don’t base your “brand” as a reader on what you think will make you successful; base it on what you do best. In short: do your best you as often as you can and fuck the haters. Because you’re going to have to reveal who you really are at some point, anyway. If it turns out that those who trust you don’t like the real version, that gets ugly. So the best bet is to do you. And that’s pretty good advice to me. I appreciate the permission to say “fuck it.” 
    
(I suppose it’s worth noting, if you know my history, that this lesson really did come from these cards—I had no intention of talking about this today. So if you think I’m speaking about or to something in particular, I am: you: the person reading this. That’s it. This isn’t “about” any one or any thing. It’s about what the cards told me. Take that for what it’s worth.)
    
One more thing before this week’s spread. I was finishing up this blog when my friend sent me this video: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/harvard-business-review_you-are-not-your-job-title-activity-7243981287152054274-eMG0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
It somehow says exactly what I think is core to those whole lesson. Synchronicity at its finest!

A read of one’s own
I haven’t done an actual spread design in a few weeks, partly because I’m bad at it and partly because I felt like the lessons wanted to explore something specific and that didn’t require a spread with set positions. This week, I think we might benefit from that. This spread is designed to help us discover where, if anywhere, we might be dimming our true voice in order to make ourselves more popular or palatable or just to sustain some perceived sense of success that may or may not be real. Note: Often, spreads like this can become frustrating in situations where we’re actually not exhibiting the problem we’re attempting to solve. For example, if we’re not actually dimming our shine, we’re going to read the cards as though we are—and they may not make sense. I’ve attempted to solve for that below.


Position one: Is there a part of my (reading) life where I’m denying myself in order to make people happy? Note: In this case, we’re looking first at the number assigned to the card. If it’s an even number, the answer is “yes”; if odd, “no.” If it’s a court card, page (or equivalent) and queen (or equivalent) are odd numbers—11 and 13; knights and kings (or equivalent) are even, 12 and 14. This has nothing to do with the meanings of the cards or any numerological energy we assign to the courts. Page is 11 because when the deck is ordered, it follows 10. That’s it. If you get an odd number, the answer is no and you don’t need to continue the reading. The card’s actual meaning can lend you advice on keeping yourself authentic. 

Position two: How am I dimming myself, in what ways am I doing this? (I recommend using at least three cards for this position.)

Position three: How can I reclaim my authenticity? (Again, I recommend 3+ cards.)

Position four: How do I handle any rejection that comes my way as I return to my true self? (3+ would be great here, too!)

A brief example: 
Position one, I drew Strength. This is an even number, so it says, “yes, you are dimming your authenticity in some way.” I’ll return to the card again to see if it can offer guidance once I pull the rest. 

Note: I didn’t draw the rest of the cards until I got a “yes.” 

Position two, answering “How am I dimming myself?” or “In what ways am I doing this?” For this I pulled The Fool, Temperance, and the Three of Wands. I’d initially intended only to pull one card for these additional positions for the sake of brevity, but one card wasn’t enough context. Ah well! In this spread, the fool walks away from Temperance and the Three of Wands—but Temperance is a unifier. It blends disparate things, so even though the Fool doesn’t know or want to be pulled back, it’s happening. Temperance, though frequently not considered a super active card, is trying to integrate a devil-may-care nonchalance about things they not only care deeply about (wands/fire) but that they’re increasingly getting more devoted to or passionate about (three=growth). It’s like there’s an escapist part of myself that wants to run from the stuff that really matters—or to present the idea that I don’t care about stuff that is important. (Now, I will say: that doesn’t sound anything like me, but these are hard readings to do because they’re often addressing something we don’t know we’re doing. And I can admit that I don’t like looking like I care about anything. That said, I’m pretty open about that fact, too, so . . . this may be showing me something I’m not capable of seeing yet.) Another way to read this is that I avoid showing my integrative work (temperance+three of swords) because I don’t want people thinking I’m an idiot (fool). Integrative work could mean my spirituality, say, or other parts of my life I don’t enjoy sharing. 

Position three, exploring how I can reclaim my authenticity. I’ve drawn: Ace of Pentacles, Queen of Swords, Page of Wands. Everyone’s favorite! A bunch of court cards! Let’s look at what we don’t see here, first: cups. The Ace of Pentacles literally shows someone with feet in the mud. The Queen of Swords asserts her wisdom and the Page of Wands does some crazy magic. It’s about showing the “dirty” work (the mess, not the sex), and trusting in one’s own wisdom and power and potency and ability to make magic. (Anyone notice how I just switched from personal pronouns to impersonal ones? I was saying “me” and “I” up until I wrote “trusting in one’s . . .” That’s a clue. I was just saying this morning I don’t like people thinking I think I’m smarter or better than I am, because I don’t want them thinking I’m arrogant. I took myself out of my own reading to avoid the directness of saying “trusting in my own . . .”)

Position four, addressing how to handle any rejection that comes my way as I show my more authentic self. Cards drawn: Three of Cups, Ten of Wands, Eight of Pentacles. Sometimes cards are pretty easy to read: “Focus on your real community while you keep doing the work that actually matters.” Boom! ​

lion is removing the mask. “Have the strength to show who you are behind the protective—Leonine—mask.” Well. That’s direct, eh? Something to work toward . . . This isn’t an easy reading for me, in many ways I’m not fully sure I’m understanding it—but I bet people who know me well would see exactly what it’s trying to say. So if you do this spread, think about doing it with a buddy! Get an outside POV. It can help really a lot.

​See you next week!

​

 The Devil has been at my doorstep all month and not in a bad way. I had a feeling he might show his face today. “Speak of the devil and he will appear,” goes the saying—and I have been, rather a lot lately, and reading about him. And thinking about him. And while I’m assigning him his typical gender of “he,” the fact remains that the devil is any one of us who stands on the margins, by choice or necessity. Since at least the dawn of Christianity, the devil has represented anyone or anything who falls outside the realm of acceptable (read: obedient, subservient) behavior to those in power. We still see it today. Anyone or anything Christians dislike is labeled Satanic. 
 
Good. I’m ready to be so-labeled. I’ve had it with the hypocrisy of morality. It’s always lies. The “moral majority” are a fatuous group of truth-free assholes who live lives of ill-repute in private while judging anyone they dislike in public. They are, to put a fine point on it, as far from the light as they could possibly. And, worse, it has always been that way. How is that the worst of humanity seems so often to rise to the heights of power? Well. That’s not the point of this blog, anyway, but it’s been on my mind. And with so many imps showing up, I had to start here. 
 
In fact, the chances of the “devil” showing up greatly increased when I reached for The Halloween Tarot, Kipling West’s delectable little divinatory confection (if you’re curious, my edition has these fabulous black boarders only because I did that myself with Sharpie. It took forever, but it was worth it). The whole suit of wands is called imps, not devils, but we see them depicted as little genderless devils, which I quite enjoy. And we have a lot of them! Three of the five cards! With the other two being bats or swords. 
 
Why did I choose this deck? It’s just getting to be that time of year and while I love it, I typically don’t use it with clients because the cute factor is a little too much for me when reading in public. Not that I don’t love it, but it can create cognitive dissonance for me when I’m looking at this kitschy cards and discussing, say, someone’s traumatic loss. The deck doesn’t dictate the messages I get, the client (and, when relevant, the question) does. Whatever comes up comes up, regardless of the cuteness level of the cards I’m using. So, it felt right. Also I spent most of the morning wandering the Halloween aisles of local big box stores, despite the 84 degrees I’m sitting with today. Also, yesterday was Friday the 13th. (Did you know 13 is typically considered a number representing women, which is why it is shit all over in pop culture?)
 
Anyway, to the cards: The Five of Imps/Wands at the center of our spread suggests turmoil, but as I always say I cannot jump to conclusions about whether this is good or bad. Being flanked on either side by two even numbers (eight and four) may tone down the five’s restless churning. It’s also above an eight, so the even numbers take the dominant position here. Odd numbers are giving big bottom energy right now. Because this is a blog about reading tarot, the Five of Wands/Imps suggests a shakeup in the status quo—in this case, the status quo of our fire. What’s that mean? Well, I have been known to say that fire can be evangelical (in a neutral way). Our passion for something is being shaken up. Or the way we preach the “good news” may be evolving. Never a bad thing, because this suggests growth and evolution. Divination benefits not from stasis. 
 
As noted, the Eight of Bats/Swords and the Four of Imps/Wands flank this card, providing a certain amount of sustainability. The eight suggests the mental effort that goes into rethinking what it is we’re devoted (evangelism) to. The four says “keep doing this” (because fours are stable) and it also says “enjoy it!” because the Four of Wands is often thought of as a party card. If I were to sum up this row in one sentence, I might say: Never stop working at your journey of evolving your perceptions (swords=perceptions). It’s a reminder to always be destabilizing. By which I mean, always work at shaking up your status quo. 
 
That can be scary (Nine of Swords/Bats). We get anxious about it. We worry that we’ll never be able to rest, to relax, to just let our laurels do the work. We may even find ourselves getting angry at the idea we’re not “good enough” or not “there yet.” Which of course is not at all what I’m suggesting. Well, I guess I kind of am—only in the sense that staying still isn’t going to help any of us get better. But it’s not about not being “good enough”; it’s about “what more can I learn?” 
 
We don’t want to question ourselves because our ego doesn’t like that. Any suggestion that we aren’t somehow supremely brilliant already ignites feelings of shame. And while that’s fair, I can tell you first-hand that it will not benefit you. Anyone who thinks they’re “done” is essentially announcing they’ve given up. They are conceding a readiness for the tomb. Boring. I hope never to reach that—though I do look back at times in my life when I for sure imagined myself as being fully baked. Even with tarot. Of course, the times where I felt that level of arrogance, which I was really doing was masking the deep knowledge that, in fact, I wasn’t anywhere near done learning. I envied those I viewed as having reached their apex. Arrogance always equals insecurity. Confidence doesn’t need to be proven because it is confident. Arrogance needs people to know because it’s papering over fear. 
 
When we reach the apex, friends, the only way forward is down. Best to keep climbing (unless we’re stopping for much needed rest . . . see prior posts). 
 
The Eight of Imps/Wands increases the eightiness of the spread and suggests, again, that the root of this reading is effort. We have to make the effort mentally and physically (air/fire) and even spiritually (air+fire) to keep doing this, and we must sustain that as long as we can (four). 
 
That’s not a bad lesson to take from the cards, except it’s also a message we’ve gotten before. Now, one of the things you might know about divination is that if you keep asking the same question, you’re going to keep getting the same answer—at least most of the time, when things haven’t changed. The question I always ask in this blog is “what is lesson #x?” (whatever this week’s number is). So it’s fair that we’d keep getting similar answers. Also, I’m always the reader, so it’s easy to see where you’d keep getting similar themes given my own worldview. The idea that constant learning is necessary also happens to be fundamental to my worldview. And, most of the time, getting the same answer multiple times is validating. It helps us understand that we’re reading “correctly.” That’s one reason I don’t think it’s a bad idea to read on the same topic multiple times. It can help you see different routes to the same answer. 
 
There are times, though, where repetitive answers aren’t helpful or necessary—and given the topic of this reading, might I suggest that everything I’ve said about these cards is incorrect in this example? Or, let’s say it this way: I’ve found the logical answer given my methods, but what if there’s a less logical answer? One thing we don’t talk much about in tarot, and I think there are good reasons for that, is being wrong. I often say that when a client doesn’t respond to an answer, there’s a strong possibility that they’re not reading to hear what the reading says. That’s true. But I also hold that sometimes readers aren’t in synch with the client or with the cards. It’s not always that the client isn’t ready or can’t hear the answer. Sometimes the reader does take the wrong path. When reading face-to-face this is easy to correct. We check in with the client and discover how resonant the answer is so far. It’s harder to know when we’re reading asynchronously. This is why I sometimes, not a lot but enough to mention, provide more than one interpretation of a card array—especially when I’m not sure I’ve hit the target. 
 
The phrase “devil’s advocate” seems relevant here, and it’s possible I just triggered a whole lot of my fellow lefties with its use. The term is frequently cited as an example of how folx in oppressor roles negate the experience and thoughts of people in oppressed roles. That’s valid and true. Still, and I’m going to include myself in this category, many lefties use this as an excuse to avoid facing our own shit (mostly, but not exclusively, white liberals). When someone presents a differing opinion, that’s not a negation—particularly if it can be validated with evidence of some kind. There are plenty of times in my journey I’ve thought I was on the right side of an issue and resisted any counter argument—up until someone made a counter argument that suddenly re-contextualized the issue for me. So, no, playing devil’s advocate is not always a negation of oppressed experiences, especially if the oppressed person is using it as a way to center what privilege they do have. Nothing is all one thing, including that phrase. (Still, all that said, there is a majorly problematic habit that oppressor groups have of doing this—so just because it’s more nuanced than good/bad, there’s a reason why we despise that phrase.)
 
Given that the devil represents marginalized people (we are, after all, the enemy of the church—at least from the church’s point of view . . . which means that, increasingly, we also view ourselves that way, which can be quite liberating), literally playing devil’s advocate means advocating for marginalized opinions. We might due well to reclaim the phrase, then, and say to those who want to play the game, “If you want to advocate for the devil, then you advocate for the unpopular opinion.” (In many ways, this has become my mission in life . . . and fuck if it doesn’t get me in trouble.) In fact, anyone who says they’re playing devil’s advocate by arguing for oppressive or status quo opinions isn’t playing devil’s advocate at all. We might say, instead, they’re playing “pope’s advocate.”
 
I’m going to play devil’s advocate now and rethink the entire reading I’ve just done. I tend not to shift my perspectives on cards much based on the deck. I read them more or less the same way regardless of which deck I’m using, though the occasional design choices might shade or color my interpretation. Sometimes a major change in a deck can open new insights, though, and so I should probably do a better job of noticing the choices artists make. In this case, the thing that I want to “notice” is that we’re not in the suit of wands; we’re in the suit of imps! Yes, fire, but a certain kind of fire that isn’t a wand. Imps are playful trickers and troublemakers. Sure they’re devils, but they’re more like devilettes. Mini devils. And they’re not evil so much as needling. They push buttons—but not ones that launch the nuclear apocalypse. The buttons they push are more daily. If we’re getting a little sexy, the button they’re looking for is the G-spot (or equivalent). And it makes sense to get sexy, because sex is one of the things the church finds satanic! (The very idea that anything supposedly created by god can be evil should highlight the fact that there is no such thing as the good/bad binary, but the church has been astoundingly good at selling it anyway. Throughout the bible, god is doing all kinds of mean shit. Like . . . how can anyone think “he” isn’t a complicated entity? The bible tells us that he hated his first draft and started over [the flood and Noah], so obviously he ain’t perfect.) 
 
If I focus on the impishness of the cards, here, I think the reading reminds us to play “devil’s advocate” with ourselves and our cards. Just as I’m doing to my own reading now. “What if that I think isn’t correct? What if I take an entirely new path?” I’m not suggesting second guessing (which is typically what I do when I re-read cards) but instead that we . . . think like the movie Clue. Right? If you don’t know it, I’m sad for you. The original theatrical release of this cult classic, which was not successful, showed only one ending to a theatre. But when the film was shown on TV and released on home video, we got several endings. And the brilliant way they were spliced together included title cards that read, That’s how it could have happened, but what about this? Variations on that theme preceded each new ending. They’re all a delight and I think are one of the main reasons why the film did better after it come to us on VHS and DVD. The various possible endings were the brilliance of the script, because each one is totally plausible and rewards the viewer for paying attention. One ending, meh—we’ve seen murder mysteries before. But three? Hells yes. 
 
Choosing to start all over again and re-interpret a reading isn’t bad. Both interpretations might be true and fascinating. Both might offer insight and answers that will help the client (or ourselves) see our situation more clearly. We tend to think that there’s only one right answer to any given question, only one solution to any problem, one path we should walk. I think that’s all nonsense. And re-interpreting the cards may show various outcomes and pathways, all of which might be useful for the client. It’s not about negating what we’ve already done, but impishly implying that there may be more layers to this particularly crispy croissant. 
 
Re-interpreting this spread in this way makes me see the Five of Imps in a more playful way—a more impish way. “Fuck shit up. Don’t settle for the first, or easiest. Keep digging, keep messing things up.” That re-contextualizes the flanking cards: The Eight of Bats suggests effortful thinking, which sounds bad but isn’t. It’s simply an effort to think differently about what we’ve already looked at. The Four of Imps doesn’t change much. It still says “keep doing this,” but focusing on the imps reminds us to keep doing this “devilishly,” which I take to mean “darkly, deviously playful.” Same, of course, for the Eight of Imps. 
 
The suit of bats in place of swords also offers insight: first, this may “drive you bats” (crazy), because you’ve already gotten the “right” answer. But it’s helpful to do this work (eight) even if it makes you anxious or mentally cranky (nine). It’s good to try a different route through a reading and see if it offers something else. In this case, then, the reading isn’t dramatically different in tone, but its specifics are more fun: don’t rest on what seems likely, feel free to dig deeper into what seems cool, weird, or strange in the reading. You’re not throwing out the answer; you’re adding to it, developing and deepening it. We could say we’re darkening in it, but not making it less clear—rather, richer. We’re taking it from pastels to jewel tones, which are much sexier in my opinion. (I am a slut for jewel tones.)
 
Bats are among the coolest animals on the planet, incidentally, and I don’t say that because of my Dracula fetish. They actually just amazing creatures and quite cute, in my humble opinion—which adds a playfulness to these cards, too. “Look,” they say, “you think this is going to be difficult, but that’s because you’re not approaching this playfully.” Just do it! 
 
There’s a self-seriousness to divination which is partly necessary. When we read for others, we’re taking their life situations into our care for the duration of the reading—and we’re for sure impacting that experience by giving the reading, which in a way means we’re inserting ourselves into their lives. But there are times when we (including the client) benefit from exploring the reading and interpretations more playfully, or, to borrow a phrase, in a more “left-handed” way. (I’ve always resented the use of left-handed as a sign of evil and toxicity because I’m left-handed. My mother, also a lefty, had her left hand tied behind her back by the nuns in school. These days, fuck it. I’m a left-handed redhead. If you think I’m of the devil, maybe I am. If you think the devil is dangerous, then maybe you should back away. I keep thinking about a maintenance person in my apartment who, upon discovering that my partner and I were a couple, fled from the apartment leaving his tools in the bathroom and the tub faucet unfixed—he couldn’t work with these queers (that’s not what he said; it’s what he showed us). Nobody ever followed up until I wrote to the landlord and expressed my feelings. The experience triggered mucho trauma and shame. Now, however, I think: Good. Be afraid. Now you know what I felt like my whole life. I’ve always had to hide from straight men because you’re dangerous! Yes, you should be afraid. I am coming for you. For your bigotry, your legislated hatred, and for the power you have to make me feel unsafe in my own home—to make me feel like a villain my own safe space. Yes, you better run little man. Because your time is over and mine is just beginning. Which I guess is a long-winded way of saying, if you think someone is the devil, you better treat him nicely. I no longer care what people think I “am.” And if what I am makes them fear me, I’m OK with that. Bout fuckin’ time, that’s how I feel about it. So maybe I am the Devil’s advocate. Maybe I am a witch. And maybe there are some folks who should be afraid of me.
 
A Read of One’s Own
Nothing is all one thing, which is something I find myself more and more certain of. Let’s explore this by drawing three cards that we will read in three ways. The first way (reading from left to right, as we read English) explores how playing devil’s advocate while interpreting can benefit our clients. The second way (reading from right to left) explores the way in which it might negate the experience. The third way (starting in the middle and working outward) provides a blended summary and food for thought. 
 
A brief example (pictured below): I’ve drawn Temperance, Page of Pumpkins (Pentacles), Ten of Ghosts (Cups). In the first read, I look from left to right as I listed the cards here. This is highlighting how playing “devil’s advocate” could help a reading. We blend (Temperance) the earthy (pentacles/pumpkins) and emotional (ghosts/cups). That’s one way to read it, but boy is it boring. Temperance is a card of uniting opposing forces into a new one-thing, and I think that highlights the way that reading a reading two ways does that. We are able to take only a few cards and blend them into various entities that are whole but also yield to the potential for other possibilities. We do this by being curious (page) about what we’re seeing (note how the page inspects the pumpkin in her hands) and really digging deep into our intuition, not just trusting the apparent. (In this case, I’m taking ten to suggest depth—something I’ve never done before, but it makes sense; I’m accepting water as intuition, here). 
 
Reversing the order, starting on the right, the Ten of Ghosts/Cups makes us feel (cups/ghosts) overwhelmed (ten) with possibility (water—mostly thinking back to the Seven of Cups and its sense of possibility). We have a hard time being curious when we’re overwhelmed, even the things we think we understand become less certain because our confidence has diminished (pages being the least confident, at least in this context). That leaves us feeling like we’re unable to blend (temperance)—so we doubt ourselves and our abilities, which can hurt the reading. 
 
Thirdly, we start with the page, who is very focused on her jack-o-lantern, but gets a visit from a ghost in her card—as though the ten has bled into her landscape. I love little visual rhymes like that. This unites the practical with the spiritual/intuitive, reminding us that this is stuff we already do. The page’s bias toward the Ten of Ghosts suggests that we’ve got the instincts (intuition) to handle even too much possibility (ten/water). She (the page) brings Temperance with her, the innate ability to blend and flow. This highlights the watery nature of the reading. Temperance isn’t a water card, but has watery vibes given its typical depictions. Readers are always blending; that’s the act of reading. So you can fret about whether or not playing devil’s advocate with the cards is good or bad, but because nothing is all one thing (which is a very “temperance” experience), we should remember a) that it’s neither good nor bad; and, b) you’re doing it anyway, because that’s “all” reading is—so why not just do it?
 
And there we have it, friends. Sympathy (ahem) for the devil. Until next week!​

​LESSON 12: 
Nine card Box:
Four of Wands, Ten of Swords, Ace of Wands
Ten of Coins, Nine of Cups*, King of Swords
Four of Coins, Three of Wands, Nine of Swords
Deck: The Gay Marseille by Charlie Claire Burgess 
*Indicates the card that I put down first and the first one I consider in the spread, paired with the top left. 

It seems strange, I’ve been doing this for twelve weeks now and I’ve yet to do the nine-bard box or work with a Marseille deck! These are the two things I’m known for (in the limited places where I’m known). The real reason I haven’t done the nine-card yet for this blog is because I tend to write in bed, and it’s easier to pull the three- or five-card arcs and four-card crosses and lay them out while I’m tummy down on the mattress writing like I’m some off-brand, bald Carrie Bradshaw (I hated Sex in the City, but I’m team Catrall). But today I’m at my work table in the office, partly because I’m uploading a client reading and the wifi is faster in here. So the time is right! 

In an effort to keep these blogs relatively short, I’ve set myself up a difficult task because you can see how much I write based on three or five cards. But it’s common for me to read this particular spread in arround 15 minutes. I think I can achieve brevity, or something close to it. With that, let’s get straight to the cards. We start with the Nine of Cups partnered with the Four of Swords. We find a bored mind and a tired heart, which is a sensation I’m familiar with lately, and I bet some of you are, too. There’s an overall weariness with the constant onslaught of relentless fuckery in the world and that is both infuriating and oddly desensitizing. 

While it’s not the best look politically, desensitization is something our bodies does to keep us safe. Our senses will deaden if we’re constantly assaulted by the difficult-to-process. Our brains stop working, our bodies stop sending chemical responses keeping us alert to danger, our emotions also begin to deaden. We may dissociate or experience long, deep bouts of depression. It’s odd to say, but the depression—a very real, very common, and very important health issue—is one way our body protects itself from the relentless onslaught of nonsense. It’s not a good way of protecting us, but it does stop us from finding ourselves constantly in fight-flight-freeze (henceforth, 3F). Depression isn’t a good protector because it actually causes all kinds of other issues, which is why it’s better if we can avoid reaching that level of enstuckification. Of course, we usually don’t know we’re headed in that direction until we wake up one day and can’t fathom getting out of bed. That’s the hard part. It’s one thing to say don’t let yourself get so injured by life that you stop feeling it, but it’s much harder to do—especially given how relentlessly awful things seem to be. 

Here I must pause and suggest that if you are experiencing feelings of depression, dissociation, or desensitization, you don’t have to go through that alone. There are professionals who can help you with that. I have lived with depression and anxiety my entire life and I’ve had to rely on the kindness of experts more often than I’d like to admit. (I also want to mention that if the health care providers you have access to aren’t listening to you, speak up for yourself if you can. In recent months the stories I’ve heard of shit treatment from healthcare professionals have reached epic levels. Of course, this is a sign that folks in that field are experiencing exactly what we’re talking about, but of course our capitalist machine doesn’t center their health or ours. The healthcare industry as it exists right now is designed purely to make money for hospital owners and drug companies. The rest of us can go fuck ourselves. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t help out there, and I can tell you first-hand that this help can be life-changing. (If you don’t have access to healthcare right now, many states and cities have advocacy groups that can help you. I recognize that in the so-called US, the idea of telling someone to get help from the medical industry is fraught with privilege, but the dialectic opposite side of that same coin is that we simply cannot “get better” from certain kinds of mental health struggles without some kind of outside help—and if there is spiritual help out there that works for you, that’s worth doing, too.)

As readers, we’re particularly susceptible to this kind of desensitizing. Folks who fall into this realm of divination tend to be people who are naturally empathic, naturally caring, naturally concerned about the plight of humanity and the planet, and also tend to suffer from the kinds of mental health struggles that seem almost tailor made to hurt sensitive souls like us. And if you do read for others, and do so with any regularity, that means you’re often putting yourself in front of people who are struggling and need help. You’re going to hear (sometimes shocking) stories of trauma and betrayal, of shitty behavior from bosses and employers, and even some fucked up things that the clients have done. I always say that people tend not to come for readings when things are going well. People want readings when something isn’t working, when they’re suffering, what they don’t know what to do. Sure, we get the curios seekers who want a sense of what’s going on. But when things are going OK, we tend not to pause and consider why and how. Maybe we should! It might make it easier to sustain those things. But we humans are really, really good at staying in the present moment. That might sound bizarre to anyone (like me) who struggles with mindfulness and meditation. But that’s not the kind of presence I’m talking about. We really struggle to understand or see the ways our actions today will impact us down the line, and even when we do we have a hard time letting that motivate us. 

Now, I realize I’m speaking as a person with ADHD—and a common theme for those of us with this neurological “abnormality” [I actually think it’s far more common than what we supposedly think is “neurotypical] is that we aren’t motivated by the future, because that doesn’t achieve the dopamine hits we need in order to get our asses in gear. More neurotypical people may not struggle as much. But the desire for immediate gratification is, from what I can see, common to the entire species, not just those of us blessed with dopamine deficits. From sex to food, we often let our wants trump our future happiness. Getting that dude in the sack or that pizza in our mouths is rarely going to be prevented by what we’ll feel like after—later tonight, tomorrow, or years from now. So we’re up against our biology, here. We are animals, after all. Food, sex, sleep, and shelter. That’s what we’re here to do. 

Anyway, the point is: as readers, we tend to encounter people during moments of struggle, and if we are particularly sensitive to the human condition, and if we do read for others with regularity, we can, if we’re not careful, because desensitized, depressed, and dissociative. This can also make us angry, short-tempered, and less empathetic than we usually are. You’ll know when you’re feeling this way. Friends, I have to tell you: I feel this way more days than not, of late. Luckily, I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing life, so I don’t take that out on my clients—in fact, the time I spend with clients, the days I spend reading at events, these are the times when I’m most invested, excited, and hopeful. I’m very, very lucky—because there isn’t much about life right now that leads me to these feelings. But that may not stay that way. And there have been times in my life where I have gotten to a level of — well, there isn’t a name for this experience, so I’m going to borrow from Truman Capote’s problematic-yet-silky book Breakfast at Tiffany’s (I’ve never seen the movie and likely won’t) and call this experience the mean reds. (If Capote had some kind of racist connotation associated with that phrase, I apologize. I did a little research to see if I could find anything, but I didn’t. You just never know with the “classics.”) 

Anyway, when we encounter the mean reds, we may struggle to do readings. The first row (Four of Swords, Ten of Swords, Ace of Wands) really summarizes the trajectory most of us experience when that happens: apathy and boredom leads to burnout (that word again—and it’s not quite right, here. What I really mean is the bone-deep exhaustion that comes not from doing things. It’s sort of the opposite of burnout, but it feels similar. We can become worn out by ruts, boredom, or desensitization). That sort of anti-burnout can only be “cured” when the right match (Ace of Wands) is struck. (This is a good time to point out the tension between high cards—the 10 of swords, 10 of coins, and the 9 of cups and swords—along with low cards, in this case the ace of wands, 4 of swords and coins and three of swords). 
The Ace of Wands, typically a good card, isn’t super helpful here because when we get into these deep ruts of desensitization, we literally have to wait and hope that something will come along soon to light our candle, as it were. The problem with that is twofold: First, we get impatient and we try to force “candles” to light that aren’t ready yet. We want to be done with the experience, we want to get back to our better selves, and so we push. That has the counter effect, because, as we’ve explored recently, fallow periods matter. We have to take them. Ideally we take them before we get to this point, but if we don’t there comes a moment where life will make us. And it takes however long it takes to get there. The second problem with this is that we simply don’t know when or from where the spark will come. It leaves us in a static position, which ironically may be exactly what got us in this mess to begin with. It is the stasis that is making us “sick” (for lack of a better word) with those mean old reds. 

Let us move to the second row: the Ten of Coins, Nine of Cups, and King of Swords. The immensity of the situation is highlighted here with the 9 and the 10 coming to play together. The dead branches tangling together on Charlie Claire Burgess’s 10 of Coins suggests the ways in which these mean red states (ha!) spread to various parts of our lives, reaching their dry, spindly tentacles into our relationships, jobs, and family (think of all the things associated with coins), as well as our emotions. The apathy, the depression, spreads. And this row also highlights the reality that there may be more leading to these states than simply our divinatory arts. This is going to be especially true if we don’t read for others—but that doesn’t mean people who aren’t experiencing this feeling elsewhere in their lives won’t feel less called to reading. When we get into these moods, it’s hard to want to do anything—including (especially?) things that could get us out of that situation. Like, the more possible something might help, the less likely we are to want to do it because of that damn ennui. This reminds me of a word that psychological circles have started using in public following a few years of lockdown: languishing. If you don’t know what it is, look it up. You might be in the throes of it now. 

The King of Swords looks away from these cards, toward the “future.” They remain (cautiously) optimistic that there can be a change. Their maturity and smarts suggests they understand that they will have to wait until the time is right. But I also see evidence, here, that they may hold the solution to this problem right in their hands. Guess what I’m talking about? The sword, literally held by the king. Sometimes, editing may be the key to resolving this state. By that I mean cutting out things that aren’t contributing to our well-being, things that are making us feel this languishy mean reddy thing. If a state of being has a cause, often removing that cause will lead to the possibility of a changed state of being. But that’s only possible when we know the cause and can edit it out. Where this gets tricky is that some things that cause our moods also happen to be things we can’t live without, at least not at the moment. If your job is making you feel this way, that’s real—but it’s also harder to do something about, because most of us lack the ability to up and quit without something to fall back on. And many of us are in a situation where we could change jobs, but that would just mean having the same experience in a different place. (That said, if the environment is the problem—and often that’s the case with jobs that drain us—moving to a new gig could solve at least that problem. Even if their culture is just as crap, you will have about six-to-nine months of honeymoon to recoup.)

One of the things about kings specifically is their laziness. They’re used to having things done for them, because that’s how they’ve been treated from birth. They sometimes forget they, to use an expression I frequently make fun of, “have the power inside them.” The King of Swords has power, unlike most of us, so they could act on it. But they think they can’t, because they’re used to waiting for other people to do their work for them. In this case, their perception of their abilities and their responsibilities is one of the things holding them back. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about agency in readings—who has it and who doesn’t. I tend to err toward clients lacking agency in situations where I don’t have any context to guide me otherwise. It’s important to me that I not suggest clients do things that their life conditions prevent. I’m not interested in telling someone to go back to school if they don’t have the money or time to do it, and I refuse to tell someone that they should think more positively if they’re experiencing actual obstacles to their goals. When we see kings in readings, though, there’s the indication of agency. In this spread, the only person card is a king. This would suggest to me that the client has more agency than they realize. In this case, the client is you, me, and anyone else reading this. So it suggests that we as readers have agency we don’t realize we do. Fair. Of course, how true that is will be different for everyone who encounters this. But, because we’re talking specifically about our divinatory life, we do have more control over that experience than we might our day jobs. 

Now, we turn to the bottom row which yields another four, the Four of Coins, the Three of Swords, and the Nine of Swords. The fact that the reading ends on the nine isn’t great for us, because we’re just a step back from where we were in the ten earlier. But there is a connection between the nine and the three that precedes it, and so—contextually—we might be able to read the nine much differently than its typically interpreted. 

I’m always tempted to look at the Four of Coins as negative. It’s a bias. But, as I always chant, cards aren’t good or bad. And I’m struck by the relationship between the Ten of Coins above it and this card. Now, typically I’m going to look at the columns after I do the rows—I tend to read in that order. But there are many times where a connection between cards in this spread makes me read them differently. When I say I let the cards or the reading guide me, this is what I’m talking about. When my eye catches something unique, I allow that connection to take over. Sometimes it doesn’t lead anywhere, but most of the time it does. In this case, I think about the prior row and I said that the king would benefit from editing. Well, they’ve done that in this row: we used to have ten coins, now we have four. That would be no bueno in a financial reading, but in this case it was the too-muchness of all the things that was causing the apathy we saw in the other four, the Four of Swords right above the ten. Here this says, “If you can edit out some stuff that isn’t serving you, your brain will start to feel expansive again (three being expansive, swords representing the mind)—in fact, the mind will feel so expansive, that you might even get a little drunk from it (the nine is three times three, so we get the expansiveness tripled). 

The solution, then, isn’t doing more; it’s not doing what makes us feel shitty. (Incidentally, it would be well within the realm of swords to relate to social media. Earlier today I found myself in a foul mood and I couldn’t figure out why. Yes, it’s Monday, but I can handle a Monday. So I stopped and asked myself what I’d been doing when I noticed I was feeling crappy, and what I’d been doing leading up to that. I remembered that I’d been on Instagram and saw something Trump is doing to invalidate the election before it happens. I realized that triggered the same old mean reds I’m talking about here: the despair, need to dissociate, and the fury all mixed into a ball of poison that makes it impossible to get through the day. So, if social media is the culprit, which in my case it often is, we know what we have to edit out.

I have an answer, so we could end here. But why not keep going? Let’s look at the columns, since we already started to with the two coins cards. That entire column begins with the four that started us down this mean red path, the Four of Swords. Here I think we can find confirmation for my thesis: If you’re weary and apathetic (4/swords) it’s because there’s a too-muchness happening in life (10/coins), so edit down what life demands of you (4/swords) to something stable and manageable. There are, I know, lots of other ways I could interpret this. I could say say the exact opposite: If you’re weary and apathetic it’s because there’s a too-muchness happening in life and whatever happens your life will be dull and frustrating (4/coins). That’s not super helpful, though, and it takes the reading in a suddenly different direction that says the opposite of what the reading seems to suggest: that it’s possible to work through these mean reds without waiting for life to catch up to us. So though it makes sense, by this point in the reading it’s not contextually relevant. 

If I’d started reading this column first, the whole reading would have a different tenor—and probably be about something else entirely. Remember it was the center card (the 9/cups) paired with the four that took me down the road I started describing. Because the column we’re looking at now doesn’t involve the 9/cups, it would say something totally different. So, given the context of what we’ve read so far, the most logical meaning for this column is the summary I have above. Sometimes as readers we start to doubt ourselves when we realize that we could be saying something “wrong.” We’re trained by life not to trust our instincts or go with our first impulse. And there are times when being impulsive isn’t wise. But this isn’t one of them. Our impulses in divination are helpful. In these situations, we can say with reasonable confidence that what pops into our minds during readings aren’t intrusive thoughts, but instead hits that have made it through to our brains before the logical mind shuts it down. Also, we can never be “sure” we’re correct. That’s why we have to trust ourselves, and friends: that is the most difficult thing for some of us to learn. I realize now that one reason I struggled for so long was lack of trust in my ability to read. I was so sure I’d be wrong that I constantly second guessed myself, sometimes right out of the reading making any sense. (For what it’s worth, I didn’t start charging money for readings until I’d at least started working on that—but it wouldn’t have been right to do so before then, because I didn’t believe in me. Which sounds so trite, but it was actually the issue.)

The second column, full of the Ten of Swords, Nine of Cups, and Three of Swords, could be summed up thus: “Thinking too much (10/swords) about how miserable (9/cups) you are? Think different (3/swords).” Borrowing from early Apple marketing wasn’t my intent, but as I’m writing this they’re doing their yearly phone launch—so it’s timely. (I’m a tech nerd, sorry. It’s a vice and terrible for the planet, but dear god do I love what they make. Anyway.) I’ve twisted the Three of Swords weirdly, innit? But let us be scandalous and center (again) the image: the two swords curving toward one another suggest a loop, a feedback look. The third comes along and hi-yahs that loop, Miss Piggy-like, and says, “Stop thinking that!” Easier said than done, yes—but: It’s not saying “stop thinking,” which is where many of us fall done entirely. Rather, it’s saying, “think different.” Think about something—anything—else, ideally something optimistic and with an eye toward (I know, but I have to say it:) a growth mindset. (Just because it’s a corporate cliche doesn’t mean we can’t make it work for us—and when we’re feeling the mean reds, we’re often focused on what’s not possible.) Literally just “changing our minds” (however we do that) is the key to unlocking progress. I would read this column then as “obsession is not going to help you.” Is it easy to stop obsessing? No, but it’s also not hard. We obsess partly because it feels good, like picking a scab or shoving our tongue into the space where a missing tooth used to be. It hurts, but it hurts in a kinky way. It’s stupid, but we keep doing it. If we disconnect the feeling from the thought, the thought from the action, then we can then simply think about something else. It’s also true that the brain can’t do multiple things at once, even if corporate America says multitasking is a prized skill. There is no such thing. So when you’re thinking about what to make for dinner, you can’t be thinking about depression. 

Obviously this isn’t a good longterm solution and it takes effort, but remember we’re not talking about anything more “serious” than divination, which is what this blog is about. So it’s not about not obsessing over lost love, unfair job practices, or anything else; we’re going to stop obsessing about our divinatory mean reds—and we’re going to do that simply but thinking about anything else. We might think about another divination method or another aspect of our magical practice or even the music of The English Beat. Whatever it is, it’s simply giving our brains something else to pick apart so that we don’t continue our downward spiral into languishing despair. 

The final columns features the Ace of Wands, the King of Swords, and the Nine of Swords. This is, in my view, the most complex and difficult set of cards in the spread, because really it ends on a major downer—that 9/swords, again. Here, we lack any three cards to push it into a more positive realm. But I really have to avoid jumping to conclusions, even at this late point in the reading, because if I do I could miss something. Yes, the cards tend to act in certain ways, but they’re heavily influenced by the cards around them, too. 

We might look at the King of Swords having a lightbulb moment, with the Ace of Wands above. “Ah-ha!” says the king, “I have an idea!” What idea? Probably the 9/swords. Ugh. It just doesn’t seem to want to play nice, here. Well, that’s life, kids. Charlie Claire Burgess’s 9 provides us with some visual cues that are one of the reasons this deck is perfect for folks who are learning to explore Marseille-style cards (and if this had been out when I wrote Tarot on Earth, I would have probably asked permission to include some of the cards from that deck there—although, to be honest, when you’re learning Marseille there is something helpful in starting with a deck that is very spare and offers very little in terms of visual cues. This is mostly because it will help you work toward a foundation that works with any deck). 

The 9/swords (which, incidentally, knights to the 10/swords—if you don’t know what that is, it’s a lenormand technique in which you move around the spread in the two-over/one-over pattern of a knight in chess. It’s an L-shape, so you can see that the 10 and 9 are knighted in that shape, here) takes a step back from the 10. “OK,” it says, “let’s not try to boil the ocean, let’s just take one step back.” Then we look at the little visual cues on our card: there is a curvy sword cutting through the scimitars we found in the 3, earlier. That makes it different. There are also little crescent moon-shaped needles and thread adorning the empty space where we’d often see flora. 

I’m not choosing to focus on these elements because they mean something right now. I don’t know how to interpret this card in this spread at the moment, so I’m grasping at straws. That’s OK. See, certain elements of a card can sometimes be more important to a reading than the card as a whole. Sometimes, yeah, it’s the total implication of the card that matters, but sometimes it’s just a part of it that catches your eye. We already read that nine in a more traditional way, anyway, so we’ve got that covered. What could sewing have to do with the 9/swords? I could go to the guidebook they created with the deck, but I’m not big on breaking my flow to go seek out reference material (though there’s no shame in that, honestly—astrologers have to do that a lot). Sewing connects things, unites them, mends them. Needles can be difficult to spot and difficult to thread (and these needles are threaded). Needles are tiny swords. Thread is thin, thin string. 

I’m just sort of announcing things I know about this element, now. I’m not attempting to make them mean anything. I’m just saying things in the hope that something will click, and something has, but before I tell you what it is, let’s keep going. The creator chose to put needles on this card, and I assume it’s a choice that isn’t as arbitrary has the fact that needles are little sharp things, like swords. It makes me think of “little thoughts,” rather than the big ones that can overwhelm us. Tiny steps, tiny things, even in this “big” number. The needles take the hugeness of the swords and break them up into bite-sized pieces, so to speak. So though there’s a lot here, it’s made more palatable. Getting stuck with a needle is rather a difference experience than getting stabbed or bludgeoned with a sword, no? So that’s telling, too. I could keep going, but I have a couple useful ideas at this point, so I can stop. 

The first thing that “hit” was the idea of mending. Darning socks or fixing a hem. That’s one thing we do with needles. Mending is repair. Actually, that’s a foreign idea in a lot of the christo-colonial places on the planet, because we’ve been trained in the last fifty years or so to accept even high-end purchases as disposable and subject to “planned obsolescence”—literally makers building degeneration into their products. Your car, your fridge, your phone, your computer—all of them designed to slowly break down so that you will be forced to buy a new one, as though the lure of advertising doesn’t already make it next to impossible not to want to replace our stuff with new stuff every year (which is why I recognize my Apple lust is problematic—and no, I don’t be getting a new phone this year). 

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’d prefer to replace myself rather than repair myself. Repair is effortful and lacks the dopamine hit of a shiny, new toy (even if those toys have begun looking identical from generation to generation, so you don’t even really get the fun of something new, because it’s just a slightly fresher version of something that was already just fine to begin with). Repair is effortful, but it needn’t be done in big doses. In fact, we can’t fix everything all at once, so we have to take things in bite-sized pieces. And so this card suggests that the king’s idea or revelation isn’t a shocking one; it’s simply the act of taking the healing process bit by bit, taking our time, and addressing smaller causes of the mean reds—probably one at a time. 

The curvy sword and thread also suggests to me that taking a circuitous path toward healing will benefit us. This means potentially doing the unexpected, the things we haven’t tried before, or the off-beat. The key to healing the divinatory mean reds may well be going down a winding path we’ve never tried before—very Robert Frost, very “that-made-all-the-difference.” 

I prefer to give really doable, really practical answers—and there are some in this reading. But sometimes the ultimate outcome is one that is hard to achieve (and healing is often that) and also it’s not as simple or as rip-off-the-band-aid as we’d like. I said at the beginning of the reading that getting out of these states means waiting until a match gets struck within and relights our fire. There are things we can do to speed that up, to make us ready sooner, but I think the reality of the 9/swords ending the reading is that things are simply going to take as long as they take, and that the path toward relief isn’t a straight line. It may require different techniques and maybe even a lot of experimentation. Also, inherent in the 9/swords is the concept of mental burnout, which reminds us that over thinking and trying too hard will have the opposite effect. Nines can be oppressive and though the nines in this reading worked in different ways, the fact that we have two nines (and two tens) in this spread means that this isn’t a “light” situation. It’s going to take time, because when we reach this level of dissociation or despair, we have gotten to a point where our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirit are going to dictate the speed of our treatment. Sure, there’s things we can do, but as we saw early in the reading, pushing too hard too soon will have the opposite impact. We can create an environment where we’ll have our spark lit, but the flame won’t catch until the fuel is ready. We cannot sustain fire when there’s nothing to burn. And though this is kind of the opposite of burnout, whatever we call it, we’ve reached a point where we’ve run out of fuel. Refueling our tanks takes as long as it takes, no matter how fast we want to go. Sometimes our fuel runs out because we’ve been going too fast for too long. When we don’t take care of ourselves, sometimes life does it for us. It’s annoying.

A Read of One’s Own
The most practical piece of advice in this lesson was that of editing out what contributes to our languishing mean reds. Let’s allow this reading to suggest the area we most benefit from editing out, lessening our chances of downward spiraling. Where can we do less in order to feel more (so to speak)? Pull as many cards as you’d like to explore that topic. 

A brief example: I’ve drawn Nine of Coins (2), Two of Swords (1), Ace of Cups (3). 
Sometimes the first card down will tell you so much. For context, my Thoth deck was closest (I am now writing this part in bed, because Cheshire cat realness), so it’s not a Marseille deck. But it’s piptastic, and the 2/s shows two crossed swords. I mean, that’s it right there. Conflict, particularly intellectual or verbal or written disagreements over things that aren’t ultimately that important (the lack of importance comes from the fact that this is a two, a low number, and we have an ace next to it). The Nine of Coins/Disks (“Gain”) connects to all the nines above. Heaviness. The heaviness of life. The card is called gain, but what you’ve gained is weight—and I don’t mean body weight, I mean life weight. Being worn out. Instead, take a shower, or do anything cleansing—anything that is refreshing and renewing (ace of cups). Don’t fight with people on social media, is likely what this is saying, and when you use social media don’t argue. So, there ya go. 

LESSON 10: PLATEAUING AND GROWING
Cards drawn: A cross of Hanged Man (1)
Three of Swords/Sorrow (2); Four of Swords (Truce) (3)
The Universe(*)(4)
Deck: Thoth Tarot

For various reasons, I haven’t had the occasion to pick up a deck in a couple weeks. When that happens, though it’s often quite good to take rests—intended or not—I often face the fear that I’ve lost the ability in the meantime. Somehow, between last touching tarot and now, the ability I’ve spent going on three decades cultivating has somehow dissolved. That’s not really related to the cards drawn above, but hopefully interesting nonetheless. The mind is a tricky thing. (Note from future me: that wound up being exactly what the reading was about!)

As always, I never ask a question for these blog posts. I simply shuffle with the intention What is Lesson #? In this case, lesson ten. Today I felt the urge to ask something different, like “what is tarot?” or “what makes a great divination?” I didn’t, though, because the whole point of this experiment is letting the cards tell us what they want to say about working with them, rather than restricting them to things I might be curious about at the moment. There’s nothing wrong with using the cards to address current curiosities; in fact, that’s what I spend most of my time doing with them—for myself and others. But that’s exactly why I decided not to impose any questions on this particular blog. It’s really letting the tarot talk about itself through my fingertips, as it were. 

Either way, I wasn’t particularly thrilled to see our pal the Hanged Man today. If for no other reason than that he’s made an appearance in this little journey several times. More than several. I think I’ve seen the card more writing these posts than I have reading for anyone the last three or four years. And ironically, I was just thinking, “you know what the cards will probably say, because they’ve been saying it over and over from week to week.” The lesson I keep getting is “combine the spiritual with the divine!” Great! I’m attempting to. I don’t think I need the message again! Granted, what we think as diviners or seekers typically isn’t the goal of the divinity that makes divination work. So. 

Let’s not think yet about Hanged Man, then. Let’s leave him (ahem) hanging. Let’s actually begin with the fourth card, The Universe, the one I styled with a parenthetical asterisk, above. I did that because, unusual for me, I didn’t really decide on a spread before drawing. I drew the first three, sighed because I wasn’t really in the mood for this combo, and then—on a whim—drew a fourth. I do that sometimes, even though I always say we should know what we’re going to do before we shuffle and draw. What can I say? I’m mercurial.

When I think of The Universe, or The World, I think of “everything.” That’s typically how I read it: everything. a lot. much. tons. I don’t assign it a positive or negative meaning, because the reading decides that for me. Sometimes everything is great! Sometimes everything is carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, not unlike Atlas who is often depicted hefting a globe on his shoulders—an image somehow porno-like to the Randian political right. Having “the whole world” on your shoulders is heavy. But sometimes we ask for that. Sometimes we tell people, “ah! please allow me to carry all your burdens for you. please allow me to sacrifice my own load so that I might take yours upon me. For, you see, I am insecure and need to feel loved. Not be loved, you see, because to me the perception of love is more important than any feeling you have for me.” 

Whoa! He went long there, eh? OK, I don’t think the reading is going that deep, but it sure speaks to a part of me that has motivated my actions a lot of my life—and I’m sure many of you recognize it, too. What’s the burden The Universe carries? The Hanged Man. He literally rests on The Universe’s shoulders. So what are we doing here?

Not what I expected, actually. When I started down the path of people who beg to take on other people’s burdens, I thought this lesson was going to be about how readers need to avoid that tendencies with clients or friends. But it’s not about that at all. No, it’s about the importance of plateaus. Oh boy, right? Ah, but this is a rather special topic to explore, reader, for you see the plateau is a blessing and a curse in the life-long development of the fortune teller—as well as most spiritual practitioners. (For what it’s worth, I seem to be settling on “spiritual” as a catch-all for what I typically referred to, somewhat ruefully, as “new age” “woo-hoo” or “witchy.” Spiritual, a word with nebulous meaning these days, never attracted me. It’s the very nebulousness that makes me prefer it, now. It’s neutral. It lacks the kind of sneer I typically reserve for this stuff, but it also avoids pretension—which is a thing that really turns me off. For what it’s worth.)

On our learning journeys, we will reach extended periods of time where what we thought was the peak of a mountain we’ve been laboriously climbing turns out to be an endless-seeming flat table of land, arid, treeless, no oases, no birds—not unlike the aridness we see in PCS’s Emperor card. Very that. Very deserted. Very demure; very mindful. (I couldn’t help myself—and allow me one more tiny digression: I love that meme, because it has enabled the trans person who said it to afford gender affirming care—and social media so often is so cruel to queer people, that this is a joy and I celebrate it.) Anyway. We arrive at these plateaus and, despite our inner devotion to the lifelong journey of learning and honing our art, we suddenly find ourselves in the same places for a long time. 

Perhaps we feel uninspired, apathetic, or like we’re going through the motions. The physical sensation of joy that came from doing divinatory work yields to a sameness that can eventually extend to much of life. This is the combination of The Hanged Man and The Universe in this reading, at this moment in time, in the mind and fingertips of this reader. Let us pull ourselves away from the act of divination for a moment and note that the earthiness of The Universe and the wateriness of the Hanged Man (it’s the major associated with the element of water) don’t matter here. Their combination somehow creates the exact opposite—dryness. Why? Cuz that’s how tarot works! Smiley face. 

Actually, this is influenced by the cards that form the crossbar: the three and four of swords. This is a reading about learning because our pal the suit of swords has arrived in force and reminds us that the crazy expansiveness of a mental growth spurt (learning and activating learning) gives way to . . . not that. That’s the feeling we feel when we have climbed the mountain only to discover we’ve reached not the peak but a plateau. That four-ish bleh-ness. That stupid, static lack of progress; that wandering without a map through an unchanging, unyielding, unpleasant landscape of blah. Feeling suddenly not special, not cool, not gifted, not good; feeling stalled, stuck, stale. We want to forge ahead, god dammit; we’ve just done so much, discovered so many new-to-us worlds! How fucking dare we not be constantly ignited with crackling, sparkling, glittering, gorgeous revelations at all times?

Because, and I’m about to drop one of those revelations on you right now, if that went on all the time, we’d go mad. 

In Amadeus, a movie I’m stupidly fond of, the petulant and arrogant little Mozart, huffs after the Emperor reviews his latest score as containing “too many notes.” Wolfgang is stunned! “There are just as many notes, sire, as I required. Neither more nor less.” But, and for perhaps the only time in the story, the Emperor has said something that makes sense: “There are only so many notes and ear can hear over the course of an evening.” Now, of course, that’s not literally true. The ear can hear as many notes as there are. It doesn’t stop after it has achieved its maximum melody intake. But we do get taxed when we stay in the same state for too long. In those days, an opera could be four or five hours long. Even in a world with no TV or smartphones, that’s an exceptionally long time to remain in a state of active listening. 

While the learning process isn’t quite as intense as five hours of opera (for all my love of musical theatre, I cannot really get behind opera—alas, because the opera world is scandalous!), we do reach points where our brain can only handle so much information. We reach a saturation point. Think of it this way. If you have some salt or sugar in your kitchen, take a glass of water and add a spoonful of either to the water and stir it until the grains dissolve. Repeat this. Eventually, the water will no longer be able to absorb the granules, because it will have reached its saturation point. Our brains are like that, too. This is especially true of those of us with ADHD and other neurodivergences. We are prone to hyperfocus, which—while exciting in the moment—can leave us spent because of the amount of energy this takes. But even neurotypical people will reach saturations points. It may take longer, but we all get there. 

This is the plateau. And it makes us feel like we’ve reached the top of the mountain only to discover it’s merely an endless mesa—with implied additional mountains beyond. 

This isn’t quite the same as burnout (my favorite topic—can’t go a week without using that term), because it’s not so much that you’ve spent all you have to spend. In this case, it’s that you’ve consumed all you can consume. You have cleaned out the buffet, so to speak, and you may be feeling a bit bloated—mentally. 

This is totally OK! Unlike burnout, this is easier to recover from. All that’s required is nothing. By which I mean, take a break! Go do literally anything else. It doesn’t mean you can’t do divinations, but stop reading about the tarot—or stop writing about the tarot (or whatever else you use). Go learn about, oh I don’t know, the school to prison pipeline or the process of designing oyster farms. Literally anything else so that your mind can digest all the delicious food you’ve forced fed it, like some poor goose in France about to be made into rich people food (rich people food? rich people food? rich people food? — food for people with too much wealth). Just take a break from cramming the old noggin with new divinatory details. Make like Elsa and let it go.

For how long? Y’aint gonna like this answer, pal-o-mine, but: as long as it takes. How will you know? Because, like hunger tells you it’s time to eat, curiosity will tell you it’s time to learn. It always happens. After the four comes the five, which says, “hey four, you lazy old conservative fart—I’ve come to fuck some shit up!” This is the journey of learning: feast, digest, get curious, feast again, lather, rinse, repeat. And it’s quite easy to do!

Except that it’s not. Because you are passionate and you want to know more, do more, learn more! Why shouldn’t you? There’s a ticking clock and you want to go pro before there’s no more pro to go (whatever that means). But, dear one: No. This is not so. There is no time limit. First, you are already good at this. No, I know you know you’re not the “best”; I know you feel imposter syndrome and you envy the people you admire who seem to be doing what you wish you could be doing; I know you want the validation that comes from having reached the mountaintop, just as those names that line your bookshelves and social media feeds. But here’s the tea, sis: none of them have reached the mountain top either. And any one who says they have is lying and should be avoided because they’re arrogant. Show me someone who has finished learning and I’ll show you a corpse. And learning does require downtime. It is part of the process, as much as letting bread dough rise, babies gestate, and not hurrying love. We can’t have skill without the internalization of information. Most of us internalize important info pretty quickly, but of course that gets harder as we age. But when we fill ourselves to rim the brim, we can overflow—over saturate—and the info doesn’t have the time to work itself way into our brains. Because that’s what learning does: it creates pathways in our brain. Grooves. That make recall possible. It can’t do that if we don’t give the information time. Just like we can’t rush most of life. It takes however long it takes. 

Which takes us to this week’s spread.

A Read of One’s Own
We may feel anxious when allowing ourselves a fallow time to let our learning proof. Here’s a spread designed to help you find more helpful ways to spend your time. 

Position 1: How much in need of a learning break am I in?
Position 2: How long will this break likely take?
Position 3: In the meantime, what can I focus on?
Position 4: What can I do when I get anxious that I’ll never be ready to start learning again?
Position 5: How will I know it’s time?
As always, I recommend using three cards per position. As I frequently do, for the sake of brevity, I’ll only use one for this example.

A quick example:
How much in need of a learning break am I in? Card drawn: Queen of Swords. 
(For context, like last week, this is for an imaginary client.) The queen suggests you’re pretty well in need of one, in fact. Of course swords pertain to the mind, and queens are mature—so this suggests a long time (maturity) learning (swords). The queen’s chopped off some dude’s head, so they’re a little cranky. Nap time. 

How long will this break likely take? Card drawn: The Hermit
Ah! How delightful! Although, as an answer, somewhat frustrating. I think here the Hermit says, “as long as it takes.” Which is, if you recall, exactly what I said above (thank you, validation1). “Oh, he’s just justifying his own answer!” Not at all, dear reader, for The Hermit is associated with Virgo—which is the sign of the harvest. You cannot harvest crops before they’re ready. So, ha! (This could also mean “Virgo season next year” or “the duration of Virgo season.” Given the timing of writing this (late August, on the cusp of Virgo season), that’s not a bad answer! 

In the meantime, what can I focus on? Card drawn: Death
Oh how wicked; how delicious! Can we talk about the connection between the harvest season above and death literally harvesting here? I love when this happens. The card also reminds me that this question or spread position isn’t well-worded. It’s not specific enough to be easily read. Were I re-doing this, I’d likely make it something more like, In the meantime, what can I dedicate my curiosity to? Or something like that. Feel free to change it yourself! Anyway, this is saying that you can focus on how wonderful things will be when you’re ready to harvest all your knowledge—by which I mean, put it to use. It may also be a reminder to enjoy the transformation. Don’t focus on anything else, just don’t cram more food in your brain. 

What can I do when I get anxious that I’ll never be ready to start learning again? Card drawn: Six of Swords. 
Unusual for me, I think this suggests that meditation on the process of intellectual growth (six = three + three, growth + growth!). To spend time feeling what you’ve learned working with in you and creating the neural pathways you’ve laid the foundation for. It may also mean to relax, the process is beautiful, just go with the flow and remember that you’ll get there soon. 

How will I know it’s time? Card drawn: Ace of Swords. 
All the passion will come rushing back in a massive boner of curiosity. It will, reader, be totally irresistible and unavoidable. ​

LESSON 9: YA BURNT
Cards drawn: An arc of five--Wheel of Fortune (4), Nine of Swords (2), Judgment (1), Two of Wands (3), Ace of Pentacles (5). 
Deck: Tarot of H’arts by Isabel Hayes (If you haven’t seen this new deck yet, check out my walkthrough on YouTube. It’s wonderful.)

I feel like a lot of folks struggle to read Judgment. What are we really dealing with? The christo-centric tarot we know today paints the last judgment as the end of days, the awakening of the dead to “new life.” In Lisa St. Croix’s Tarot de St. Croix, we see Maat here. The weighing of the heart after death in Egyptian tradition. Frequently there’s a posthumous nature to the card. But what’s it mean?

I typically read the card as an alarm clock. Time to get out of bed! But having spent the summer with Lady Frieda Harris’s paintings, I’ve also come to see this card as representing a new era. Crowley would have said that this was the new age, not unlike the Age of Aquarius we hear referred to that no one can seem to agree on. Crowley believed he ushered in the new era, the Age of Horus, when he received the Book of the Law. I tend to be somewhat snide about this. Did he really receive it, or was it just the ramblings of a man who might have been using intoxicants? But, and I hate to admit this, he did define the new era in such a way that a backward glance shows his prediction of a long period of upheaval, war, and distress seems true. Unfortunately for anyone reading this, if he was right, we’ve got more than another 400 years of that to go. 

But whether we’re talking about a wakeup, a new era, or anything else, what does it mean in a reading? This is the great question for many folks. Lots of readers see this card and think fuck. I know, because I’ve been one of those readers. But the good news is we don’t have to know yet. When we encounter a card in a spread that isn’t singing, we turn to the other cards. This is one of many, many, many, many, many, many reasons I dislike one-card draws for anyone—but particularly for folks just starting out. More cards = more context and context is everything. So, this is my typically long-winded way of saying, “don’t worry what Judgement means right now.” 

Judgment is flanked by the Nine of Swords and the Two of Wands—both of which are flanked, respectively, by the Wheel of Fortune and the Ace of Penties. (Did I just call “pentacles” “penties?” Yes. You’re welcome.) The Wheel and the Nine of Swords are a cute pairing, because everyone hates the nine, and The Wheel is another one folks often don’t know what to do with. The Wheel is simply turning. The Nine of Swords has to do with the mentality of swords and the exhaustion of nine. The paring says, “You’re burned out now, but you won’t always be,” and suddenly we see what Judgement means: coming out of that burnout. 

I use the term “burnout” a lot and I sometimes worry that will make it mean less. But one reason it shows up so often in my readings is because so many people are suffering it and don’t know. Any one of the nines can signal it, but the swords and wands—being the weapons—can be the most painful versions of this very real, very important experience. In the case of the Nine of Swords, the burnout is going to be mental. It’s mental exhaustion—being worn out, being tired, being stressed, having nothing left in the old noggin of any value. It’s, in essence, when we’ve spent our entire intellect and have to replenish. 

The Wheel does describe the experience of burnout, too; it suggests the ways that, in the middle of being burned out, we have some decent moments. Moments that make us think there’s nothing “wrong” with us and that it will all be OK. These moments can last for a few hours, days, or even a couple weeks. But the wheel will turn and the burnout will return. It’s inevitable. We often find ways to treat the symptoms—and most of modern medicine is obsessed with treating the symptoms—rather than curing the disease. 

So, how do we cure it? Burial. No, not burying our feelings. Rather, burying ourselves. By which I mean resting. Now, a few things: burnout is a real medical experience. Rest isn’t the only cure for it. You can rest and feel great and then return to the thing that burned out out and you’ll go right back to feeling like garbage. The problem with burnout is that you have to fix the situations that caused it, not ease just the symptoms. Honestly, having been through this more than once in my life, I can tell you it’s better to avoid burnout entirely if you can, because coming out of it is not easy. But Judgment does give us clues to non-medical support. It’s just important that if we’re experiencing burnout, we both get professional help as well as divinatory. They need not be exclusive and frequently work best together. (This is my way of saying, “I’m not a doctor and I’m not qualified to give medical advice, and you’d do well to consult a doctor.” OK, American Medical Association? Happy? Of course you’re not. Capitalism.)

My deep-dive into the esoteric has forced me to face my own concepts of “life’s” cycle, and though I’m fairly convinced that when we die, we become nothing more than fertilizer (one reason why I’m fundamentally opposed to embalming), I’m very much in the minority on that. Much of the world seems to believe that death isn’t the end, but rather a transition point. The burial of the body, or more generally the “disposal” of the body, is often part of the process journey from State-of-Being X to State-of-Being Y. What happens when what happens? We decompose. The things that make up everything we tend to think we are transform into pre-human matter (assuming we’re not pumped full of carcinogens during the burial process that are dangerous for the embalmer and the environment). One might draw a line between the decomposing human corpse and the transformation of the caterpillar into the butterfly. It ain’t a pretty sight. And yet. It is necessary. So is death. We have to die. I don’t know why, but we do. We have to go through the process of decomposing (or any variant on that, which does include cremation and water burial, along with concepts like sky burial), we have to go from the state we know ourselves to be into another state. 

I’ve long said, but never really believed, that we need fallow times in life. We need pauses, rests, intermissions; we need times when we’re not creating, not making, not producing, not acting, not moving. We need downtimes, pauses, and they often need to last a few months. I know this to be true, I just don’t believe it because I’m not good at doing that. (You probably aren’t, either.) And, in looking back on my life, some of the times I’ve experienced moments of high-level, clinical burnout, these were times where I couldn’t or wouldn’t pause. To borrow from Alanis Nadine Morisette, I equated stopping with death. When we do not take fallow periods, though, life will take them for us—and that may be one reason we experience burnout: because if we go on any longer, we truly will short circuit. The Earth itself demonstrates this necessity. The earth itself goes fallow for about half the year! Most of us can’t take that time. Capitalism has fucked our rhythms. I sometimes think seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is less a disorder and more a reaction to our body being forced to do shit it doesn’t want to do at a time of year when the rest of creation is resting. But what do I know?

Anyway, the point is that we need to undergo little burials in order to keep ourselves functioning well. This is what sleep is supposed to do, but for many of us sleep doesn’t cut it. Sleep, wonderful as it is, seems not to be a powerful enough force against the current culture of doing. And that is why (I think) so many people are experiencing such deep levels of burnout. We’re simply not getting enough fallow periods. 

Because we can’t take a three-month “rest cure,” the way wealthy British colonizers used to do, we have to find other ways to do it—and the final two cards in the spread speak to it. It’s important to note, first, that the remaining cards are quite low numbers: one and two. Compare to the rest of the cards in the reading: A ten, a nine, and a twenty! When we get burned out or reach a time when rest is necessary, the temptation is frequently to do the opposite—to push through until the exhaustion passes, the need dissolves, and the energy returns. It won’t, of course, we know that, but we also know we can’t stop—so what the hell else is there to do but hustle? (Have I mentioned that in addition to massive amounts of burnout, more people are self-medicating than ever? More people are experiencing high blood pressure and cholesterol? More people are sleeping worse? Literally everything about our current culture is poison, and we somehow believe that we can just push past it.) So what do we do?

A little bit.  That’s the main lesson of these two cards: their tininess. Just a little bit. A little bit of what? A little bit of fire and earth. What’s that mean? Often, and I know this from experience too, when we are feeling burnout, reconnecting with our joy, our spark is a great way to move through the pain. A quick story: the first time I experienced burnout was in my mid-twenties. I’d been in a job that I used to enjoy for about five or six years and I’d reached a point where I’d started hating it. Even more exciting, I had a lot of personal issues going on around my living situation. I had nothing left in my battery but I lived alone and had to keep pushing. I needed health insurance, I needed to pay rent, I needed heat and hot water (but I definitely went a winter without those during this time). So I couldn’t leave my job. And one of the things that happens in toxic jobs is that they slowly extract your self confidence from you, so you believe (much like in a toxic relationship) that you can’t do any better. I’ll spare you the gory details, but in addition to winding up in the ER, I nearly lost that job because—after years of great reviews, my boss suddenly decided to download every awful thing about me. Somehow I survived that termination, but not the feelings of despair that permeated my flesh and bones. 

How did I get through? Purpose. I was forced to attend a conference shortly after that terrible review and though I loathed my job and especially my bosses, I had no choice but to go. And what I discovered while there I discovered why I’d been so burned out and what to do about it—not from a medical expert, but from reconnecting to why I wanted the job to begin with. And I began learning new techniques to make myself better at my job, which in turn made me happier doing it and improved my overall wellbeing. It also improved my work performance, but I didn’t really give a flying fuck about that at that point. My bosses had already proven to me they were inept leaders who didn’t deserve my effort. But I deserved my effort, and so did my students (this was my early days of working in adult learning). I did it for me and I did it for anyone who would sit in my classes. And a year from that time, I won an employee of the year award. And I’m proud of that award not because it meant I’d changed peoples’ minds about me (although, in retrospect, it’s fucking amazing I did that), but because I saved myself and found great joy in doing it.

(One of the insidious things about burnout is that it’s often not your fault. It’s the machine you’re caught in. But that doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility to get help. No one else will do it for you. It’s fucked up but true.)

The Two of Wands and the Ace of Pentacles tell us to come back to our passions, to our attraction to the work we do (passion=fire; attraction=two). That we ground (Ace of Penties) ourselves in that love, that fire. But just enough (the smaller numbers), not so much that we just burn out all over again or in a new part of our life—no, that we take periods of gentle, active rest. The kind of rest that feels productive but that is also replenishing our batteries. What this is will be different for everyone, but so many times in my life (and I feel so lucky about this), that thing has been tarot. Just being able to spend time with my cards has frequently been a way to relight my fire. Whatever it is for you, do it--but don’t overdo it. A thing I love to harp on when talking to newer readers is that you can get burned out doing things you love doing just as much as things you have to do. I have gotten burned out with divination, too, and I had to take a few years away from it. I thought I’d honestly never come back to it. But it refused to stay dormant, which, when you think about it, is exactly what the Judgment card is doing! The Judgment card reminds us that when something is truly for us, we can leave it be for a while and it will come back. If you love something, let it go? I guess? But truly. I have had to give tarot a break and when I came back to it I was a better reader. The same thing happened when I was acting. I took a break in my twenties, not because I wanted to but in part because of that job that was burning me out, and when I returned to it finally I’d improved so much. 

It’s probably worth pointing out that, having typed the above, I realized that my burnout at work may have been in part because I was being forced to deny myself an activity that did replenish my battery. Because I had to work nights 90% of the time, I couldn’t audition for plays—or I could, but I couldn’t be in them—nor could I take acting classes, or, hell, even go see theatre. My nights belonged to my job and my days belonged to sleeping off the depression I felt from not being able to do the thing I thought I was meant to do.

The point of all of this is (and so much for my attempts to make these blogs terser) is that when you feel burned out, you might do well to return to the ignition point of your passion. That might mean coming back to basics, it might mean rediscovering old methods you dropped along the way, it might mean shaking things up and learning something new. Whatever it is, though, stay grounded and don’t let it take over your life. Otherwise, you’ll end up right back where you started—which, The Wheel warns us, is quite possible. And lets not ignore the visual resemblance between The Wheel and the Ace of Pentacles. We could easily end up back at the start if we’re not careful. As I always say, everything is its own other—including healing.

A read of one’s own
This spread is designed to detect areas where we might be on the verge of burnout and what we might do to prevent ourselves from spilling over into it. I have found that when I do example readings for myself on situations I’m not currently struggling with, the readings are kind of clumsy and not particularly useful. So, in this case, I’m going to pretend I am reading for someone else. This imaginary person, let’s call them Bo, has sought out a reading because they feel like something isn’t quite right. They want to know if burnout might be a culprit. 

The spread:

• Position one: An area of life where burnout might be developing.
• Position two: The potential root cause of this burnout. 
• Position three: How deep/serious the burnout may be.
• Position four: What to do about it immediately.
• Position five: What to do long term.

As always, I recommend using three cards per position. For the sake of brevity, I’ll use only one except for the first position—which I think needs much more context than the rest. Here goes. 

A brief sample:
Position one, an area where burnout might be developing. Cards drawn, Ten of Pentacles, Seven of Swords, King of Cups. This suggests the area is family and particularly care-taking. The Seven of Swords suggest that this is creating a lot of inner stress around their ability to do all the things that need doing, caring about all the things that need caring about. They might well be capable (king), but only for so long—and if the King of Cups isn’t getting some care, that’s not good. Being cared for is how they replenish their electrolytes. 

Position two, the potential root cause. The Lovers. I’d say this card suggests people pleasing tendencies (“Please love me!”)—they think that their ability to be loved has everything to do with how much they “love” (read: give themselves away to) everyone else. 

Position three, how deep/serious the burnout may be. The Nine of Wands. This is serious. This is already just about as bad as it can get and should be addressed immediately. The Nine of Wands is the burnout card. 

Position four, what to do about it immediately: Two of Pentacles. Oh, how tarot tickles me, even when we’re not doing a real reading. This is the “balancing all the things” card to a lot people. In this case I’d interpret this as “juggling only what is fully necessary.” Anything else needs to be put down, delegated, postponed. Grounding is probably necessary to. The only thing that will work immediately is to put all non-essential labor on hold for the time being. 

Position five, what to do long term: Seven of Wands. This is a restructuring of our role in life. This is actively defending ourselves against taking anything on that we do not have the energy for. This is deciding what is worth “fighting” for or clinging to and what isn’t. This is a re-assessment of what we deem worthy of our energy, worthy of our time, worthy of our spark. We’re going to have to commit to protecting ourselves from that which does not really require our attention. With fire, there’s also the quality of needing things that we’re passionate about, too; though I hate saying things like that to clients, because most folks don’t have the ability to spend more time doing what they’re passionate about—particularly folks who are on the edge of this level of burnout. Nonetheless, where we can find time to devote to what is truly important to us, we must. ​

LESSON EIGHT
Cards drawn
An arc of five: Six of Wands/Victory (4), Hermit (2), Adjustment/Justice (1), Ten of Wands/Oppression (3), Eight of Disks/Prudence (5)
Deck: Harris-Crowley Thoth Tarot

Justice has never been one of my favorite cards. Mostly because in the course of human events, it occurs so rarely. It’s also a fairly mythic topic. The only “justice” that exists, at least in this country, is when someone who has done something that the general population can agree is “wrong” (murder, say), and the accused person happens to be both guilty of the crime and found guilty of the crime. But to look back on the history of criminal “justice” in the US, you’ll know that things aren’t ever this simple. Sure, folks go to jail all the time for murder. And there are too many stories of innocent people sitting on death row, too many stories of planted evidence, too many stories of leads not followed because of institutional biases. Like, it’s almost insane that we trust anyone who would actually want to do the job of a cop to be a person who gets to mete out “justice.” Like, I suppose, politics: the people who would be best never run, so we get the narcissists who do. Same for judges. It’s all part of the same system. Justice isn’t real. It’s simply what the powerful decide is legal--and for whom it is legal. 

All of this is why I really appreciate the change made to the Justice card in this deck. You can read it in line with the older concepts, but in fact the concept of Adjustment is one that sums up the act of divination. Let’s do something uncommon for me: let’s consider the actual image of this card! (Whaaaat??) Typically, Justice sits in a throne, holding a sword, mimicking the statue of justice we know from outside courthouses. It is a completely passive thing, and so is the justice system. The justice system isn’t interested in finding guilty people and protecting innocent people; it’s interested in creating the perception that guilty parties have been found so that the population won’t bother them anymore. Adjustment, on the other hand, is a painting of a figure balancing on toe atop a sphere. Not only that, but from the figure’s crown balances the scales (containing Greek letters alpha and omega, known to Catholics as a way the Christ described himself—as the beginning and the end). Not only is the justice figure balancing, things are balancing off the figure. And while it looks like the card is completely still, in order to achieve that posture for more than a second, hundreds of muscle movements must be made every few seconds in order to rebalance and recenter. 

This is an incredibly active card, but in the way of human biology, it is an automatic activity. It’s like breathing or blinking—two things that become harder when attention is drawn to them. Supposing we are typically abled, we likely don’t have to think about either of those actions—but they’re actions nonetheless. The body knows what to do and does it and it only becomes flummoxed when we start thinking about it. And the same goes for the act of divination. Once we see the cards arrayed before us we are constantly making countless adjustments—in our interpretations, our understanding of the situation, our impression of the question and/or querent, in our own way of seeing the world. And, if we’re really in the zone, this is all happening automatically. You likely do this without thinking about it, but when you think about it it becomes difficult. We (or many of us, anyway) are built to do this kind of work. Our brains understand it. We simply have to let go and let it happen. 

Of course, that’s the hard part. The two cards flanking Adjustment illustrate it. On the one hand, we have what happens when we get into this fantastic state of being: The Hermit. The Hermit, tied to our pal Mercury thanks to his association with Virgo (ruled by Merc), demonstrates what happens when we can navigate based on our divinatory instincts. Mercury is associated with divination (as well as the underworld, which shows up in this card as the three-headed dog who marks the gates of the underworld). The Hermit isn’t worried about all that (this is Virgo in its best aspect—most Virgos I know are over-thinkers on the edge of control freaks). This Hermit keeps their eye squarely on the cosmic egg—which, in this context, we can take to mean the reading. The Hermit is doing their thang and not thinking too much about it.

On the other side of the equation, however, we have the Ten of Wands (Oppression). This is what happens when we try too hard. This is performance anxiety, this is putting too much pressure on the muscle, this is working too hard, getting too tense (too hot) to let go and let the reading arrive before our eyes. This is something I’ve struggled with so much in my reading life that I’m amazed I’ve managed to get over it. It was truly the biggest obstacle to my readings—particularly when reading live and face-to-face. And it wasn’t all that long ago I still faced it. We put so much ego (fire) into the equation that we forget what we’re actually here to do (read the cards) and instead focus on the wrong thing (being impressive). But because we’re focused on the wrong thing, we can’t be impressive because we’re actually blocking our own ability to read. We’re getting in our own way. Our desire (fire as passion) to be impressive (fire as ego) gets in the way of being able to do the thing. And it also means we will absolutely burn ourselves out. When we feel the fire starting to get too hot, in this case when we start getting cruel to our inabilities, we are not longer reading. We’re stressing. And we cannot do two things at once, no matter how much it seems we can. 

The cards that partner with these two (Six of Wands + Hermit; Ten of Wands + Eight of Disks) tells us how we can achieve the good (Hermit) and avoid the bad (ten). Let’s start with the more difficult one. The Eight of Disks (Prudence) reminds us of a few critical antidotes to the Ten of Wands’s oppression: First, get grounded. That’s what the earth element does. Get grounded. It’s like you’re repeatedly being struck by lightning in the ten. You’ve got to ground yourself. How? The number eight (work) tells us: stop obsessing (ten) and start working (eight). Just come back to the task at hand. Return to the work of reading. Get away from the ego. Because the downward spiral that tells us we’re not good enough? That’s the ego, too, as much as arrogance is. We can be egotistical and insecure as well as arrogant. Arrogance is frequently just a different manifestation of insecurity, anyway. (And by “frequently” I mean “always.”) You can’t be concerned with your ego when you’re concerned with reading the cards. It is impossible. Work is the answer. Reading the cards. 

Now, that’s not easy, either. But it’s really the only way. I know from personal experience. I’ll spare you the many, many, many, many, many, many times I crashed and burned as a reader because of this very tendency. The key is being able to get out of ourselves long enough to recognize that we’re self-flagellating, not divining, and what we need to focus on the job in front of us. We have to become aware. And so I think this calls back to the lesson where we talked about that sort of active noticing. The ability to just be aware of ourselves as we move through the reading, aware of our feelings and sensations, without letting them distract from the reading. The reason this matters is we need to be aware of when the signs of downward spiral start kicking in. It’s better to head it off if we can. It’s harder to pause in the throes of it to stop and re-ground. But I think the cards on the other side of the reading highlight something we can practice to avoid this. 

The Six of Wands (Victory) is, we could say, the Hermit’s real focus. Yes, it’s the egg—but what’s in the egg? In this case, the Six of Wands. And I’m about to say something I find totally out of character for me: You have to know you can do it going in. Ugh, but I hate that. It’s true, though. There’s a certain amount of “I will do this well” that must be internalized before spreading the cards—no matter who we’re reading for. We have to know that we will be “victorious” (the six’s keyword) at this reading, and the Hermit knows they will be. They know they’re “bringing the heat,” as it were. And because of that, they’re not going to get mired in the garbage presented by the Ten of Wands. And even better than that, they’re making their job easier because they’re not going to have to get out of a funk before they can finish the reading. They’re not going to be tempted to swipe all the cards off the table and into the trash. They just know, deep down, and without question that they will get the answer. And that’s so annoyingly the key to so many things. As a massively insecure person, I really don’t like that reality. But I can also say that as my confidence has grown as a reader, my readings have gotten better. 

This is the healthy side of fire, the good part of ego. This is when it becomes useful and instructive rather than destructive. When we know we’re going to get the thing done well, we’re not worried so it makes it easier to focus. And I can tell you first hand that sitting down and shuffling without fear that I will embarrass myself has been a life changing experience. Alas, I can’t tell you how I got there because I don’t know. I think in part it was writing my books. I think in part is was my YouTube work. And I think in part it’s that I have been pulled to this work against my better judgement and so at a certain point I think I just said, “OK, fuck it. I’m good at this.

But let’s dig deeper. Let’s do a spread about how we can really trust and believe in ourselves as diviners. 

A read of one’s own

1. Draw from one to three cards representing your insecurity. This is what keeps you doubting yourself as a reader. 
2. Draw from one to three cards representing your confidence. This should be the reason that you trust and believe in your skills. 
3. Draw one-three cards representing how to convince yourself that your insecurities are just phantoms ready to be disavowed. 
4. Draw one-three cards representing how to make yourself believe in your gifts. 

For the sake of brevity, I’ll use only one per position—but I encourage at least three!

For my first card, representing my insecurities, I got Death. The second, representing my confidence, The Fool. The third, how to convince myself my insecurities are phantoms, the Seven of Cups (Debauch). The fourth and final, how to make myself believe in my gifts, the Nine of Swords (Cruelty). 

Tarot never ceases to surprise me. For the first, representing my insecurities, we get Death. And of course this cuts right to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? My insecurities have a lot to do with the fact that I’ve got a limited time on this earth to make my mark. And this has truly been the core of my insecurities since childhood. I’ve said in prior posts that I’ve felt my whole life like I was working against the clock, and this card sums that up. It also sums up the fact that, ultimately, none of us is particularly special because we all come to the same end—however we get there. Humans, well, we’re not that unique. We like to think we are, but even in terms of our general appearance—how many times has someone told you that you look like so-and-so or that you have a doppelgänger? Our ideas aren’t that unique, our looks aren’t, our cosmologies aren’t. I am “just” another human. And the insecurity in my case is that I’m constantly trying to prove to myself and the world that I’m actually not mortal, that I’m not common. I’m special. But I’m not. Not any more than anyone else is, and if we’re all special, then none of us are. 

I’m a very late gen x-er. We were the generation everyone says got participation trophies. The boomers resent us because we didn’t make anything of ourselves and because we’re sardonically uninterested in their self-inflicted plights. Millennials basically assume we’re boomers. And anyone younger than that just thinks it’s The Breakfast Club, when they think of us at all (and, really, there’s no reason they should—because we’re in many ways the non-generation…we don’t really exist). But we were the group everyone said could do whatever we wanted. We could be president! We were supposed, somehow, to represent the promise of . . . America. But we were also the first ones to face insane college costs, decades of instability in the housing market, and the slow realization that this country—which we were told was exceptional, just like us—was in fact a scam perpetrated by the wealthy and nepo babies. So if you’re in that age group, you likely have felt much of what I just described with the Death card. 

The card representing my confidence is, in an almost too on-the-nose occurrence, The Fool. If you read my prior posts, you’ll see why this is perfect. It’s the ability to lay the cards out and approach them openly with no expectation. To simply see what’s there and experience it as though for the first time. To look with “innocence” on the deck every time. And, I guess I’d go a little further and say, to contain the entire deck within myself. To, in a way, be tarot. (Which is getting a little highfalutin for me.) To just trust the process. To trust the cards. To trust myself, which in a way is also not an entity, because it is part of the reading. 

The final two cards are about as wrong-seeming as their predecessors were right. The card reflecting the way to show myself that my insecurities are just phantoms is the Seven of Cups (Debauch). Although, having typed that—what card could better represent phantoms? Of course the Waite-Smith shows someone staring at phantoms in the cups. But in this deck, I often jokingly refer to it as the Absinthe card. First, because Crowley was known to imbibe in that (nasty) beverage (I hate anise-flavored things—but I’ve tried it); second because, though this is typically a really bad card in Crowley’s view (all the sevens are, in that system—annoyingly. Seven is my number), I don’t think of it that way. Debauchery can be good. But of course in this case it’s literally highlighting the mythology of insecurity. The fact that it is a vapor, a phantom, an intoxicant. And that may sound like an odd thing, to call insecurity an intoxicant, but it really, really is. It’s a kind of ego validation. Not a positive one, but it’s sometimes very satisfying for those of us with low self-esteem to wallow in our own worthlessness. It feels awful, but in a good way. It’s like picking at a scab or jabbing a soar tooth with your tongue repeatedly. It hurts so good. And this card said, “that’s just navel gazing.” It’s indulging in self-abuse (the mental kind, not the kind the church says will make you blind). It’s just a myth, though. The card actually is the most literal in the reading!

The final card, how to convince myself to believe in my gifts, is the Nine of Swords (Cruelty). Oh boy. Here’s what I think. I saw a meme the other day that said: Every shitty thing you reflexively tell yourself in day is the echo of a lie that was fed to you once upon a time by someone who was trying to control or hurt you. That’s what this card is saying. Convince yourself? You’ve been lied to about yourself. Show ‘em all what you got. 

And that, my friends, is pretty fucking powerful to me. Maybe one of the most surprisingly impactful readings I’ve ever given myself. Take that, me.

LESSON SEVEN
Three card arc
3 of water (2), 3 of fire (1), contemplation [hermit] (3)
The Awakening Tarot by Monica Bodirsky


Note: Monica Bodirsky’s two recent decks (this, and the Between the Worlds oracle) happen to be two of the most brilliant, creative, wonderfully experiential cartomancy decks ever. I cannot recommend either highly enough, and I highly recommend reading the attendant books. They’re excellent. 
    
In spending this summer with the Thoth deck and reading every book I can find about it and its offspring, I’ve discovered the Kabbalistic numerology is often very different from the system I’ve evolved into over the years. It’s one of the reasons why the keywords or titles on the Thoth decks drive me nuts so much. In my way of reading, three is expansive. If we think of one and two having sex, three is the baby. Because these two vibes (odd and even) have united, there’s a rapid growth. But in many ways, three is the first odd number. One is less of a number to me than an idea or a summary, at least in divination. It’s the potential for the thing, but not yet the thing. Two comes along and brings generative force (because two is an attractive number, everyone wants to get with it), and makes three. Three, then, being the first truly odd number. And because it’s so young and fresh and because it finds itself growing so rapidly, it is an intensely creative number. In many ways, three is the best you can get in each suit. It’s not feeling the latency of the ace, but it’s also not getting tired the way things begin to do as soon as four. 
    
Elementally, we’ve got fire and water (along with spirit, which is an element I don’t particularly find useful in readings—but, hey, who knows what we’ll find today?). The Three of Fire is a growing conflagration; the Three of Water, a growing flood. Ah, but when they’re together! That’s another story entirely. Fire and water are frequently considered adversarial or ill-dignified, and when I read using elemental dignities, I typically interpreted them that way. As I’ve evolved, I’ve begun thinking of the elements not in terms of their friendly or adversarial relationships to each other, but instead to the essential function of the element. This is something I learned from Camelia Elias in regards to lenormand. In essence, she explains that we’re not reading the “heart” as “love,” because that’s just what someone decided it “meant.” Instead, we think about what the heart does literally and that becomes a metaphor for the card that we then interpret in the context of a reading. For example, the heart is really a pump. Its function is generating blood flow throughout our body. Now, other cards around it may suggest that this is pumping love, I guess. But what I would think, instead, is that something is being pumped, generated, maybe even accelerated. That could be a feeling of some kind, and with the lilies or the flowers or the ring, it may be a feeling of “love.” But if paired with the whip, say, it may be purely sexual. “Pumping.” You get the idea. 

What is the function of fire and water? Obviously, they don’t have a function in the same way the human heart does. That said, they have things they do. Fire consumes. That’s its primary action. It eats fuel. Air and wood (earth), for example. Now, that might be good. If fire is eating air, it’s potentially burning energy rather than letting us stew in over thinking. If fire comes into contact with earth (wood), it might be good—we need fire to warm ourselves; it might be bad, we don’t want our houses burning down. If there isn’t enough air or earth in a spread, fire has nothing to feed on. It dies. Suffocates. One might say fire’s function is to warm, but that’s merely a consequence of fire’s actual purpose: feeding. Like yeast. From fire’s point of view, it doesn’t care that its hot. It just needs to sustain itself with new fuel. Yeast doesn’t know or care it’s burping gasses into a dough. It’s just eating. Those gases are beneficial. They give bread its flavor and texture. But the yeast isn’t doing that it’s doing so we can have bread; it’s doing what it’s doing because its hongry.

Water flows. That’s what it does. Its nature is flowy. Yes, it cleans; yes, it cools; yes, it floods; it nurtures and destroys. But from water’s point of view, its main aim is to flow, to fill.  It just wants to get where it’s going and fill up as much of its path as it can. Water isn’t bothered by obstacles; it finds a new path when its way is blocked. If there isn’t an “around,” it will find an “over.” Or an “under.” Sometimes even a “through.” Water doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything but flowing, but going everywhere it can possibly be. It doesn’t care about your basement or your roof; it doesn’t care about your street, town, or country; it doesn’t care if you’re desperate for it while its far away; it doesn’t care if you have too much of it and need a break. It does what it wants, which is to flow. 
    
These are selfish elements. But we can’t assign motive to them. They’re not good or bad, they just do what they’re here to do. That said, when partnered new things can happen. As this reading suggests. When fire and water encounter one another, there’s a bit of a West Side Story situation going on. They don’t like to be outmatched, because fire will evaporate water if it has the chance and water will suffocate fire if it is in charge. They work best when balanced. And when balanced, they create steam. Alchemists believed that air is the child of fire and water because of steam. I don’t believe any one element generates another—metaphorically or not. Steam isn’t air; it’s steam. Each element exists on its own, but it can’t exist without the others because the others define it. We can’t have earth if we don’t have fire, water, and air to compare it to. Without them, earth is just everything, which also means it’s nothing. 
    
This is fun, etherial thinking—and I suppose it’s apropos that the edible I took after work is kicking in—but how does any of this apply to life? Excellent question. Before we answer it, let’s consider the final card: Contemplation, typically the Hermit. The majors in this deck are entirely restyled, and it’s one of the exciting things about this great pack. Contemplation. What a word! Let’s do my favorite thing of checking the dictionary to see what the word literally means. “Thoughtful observation.” Ohmigah. I love that phrase. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, thoughtful observation of expansive fire and expansive water. Effortful, in its way, because Contemplation is nine, and nines are effortful. If three is effortless expansion, in order to sustain three times that, effort is required. (Six lubricates the works.) We must make an effort to thoughtfully observe fire and water in our readings.
    
Of course I don’t mean only fire and water, but what the elements here signify. In fact, what we’re really thoughtfully observing is steam (3 of fire + 3 of water). Here we get to play with poetry—because of course this isn’t recommending we study literal steam. (Though it might encourage us to enjoy some smoke or steam scrying.) What is steam, if we think poetically while also staying in the world of divination? I would say that steam suggests the sensational experiences of a reading, the shifting energies. This is a theme that seems to want exploration is this blog, the focus on the ephemeral (which, if you’ve read prior posts, you’ll know is not a strength of mine). But what I think I’m getting at is the act of stepping out of our role as reader even as we’re reading so that we can simultaneously experience what is morphing in and before us. Imagine that the act of reading creates a psycho-spiritual steam within and around us. And that steam is communicating things. This is a convoluted way of saying that we should pay attention to our physical and emotional experiences as we read, because we may find additional context in them. 
    
What’s important, though, is the Contemplation aspect of the reading. When I think of “thoughtful observation,” I think of my general idea of curiosity. Essentially, curiosity observes without judgment. It merely studies and absorbs. I think that’s important to call out, because this kind of self-reflection and self-study can quickly turn into navel gazing and self indulgence. I’m very anti readers centering themselves (unless they’re reading for themselves) and focusing too much on their “feelings.” It reminds me of an actor who needs to stop rehearsal to hijack the process to talk about his “motivation.” I don’t mean that we become self-obsessed; merely that we become aware to the physical and (I guess) psychical expressions that occur during a reading. This isn’t about getting distracted, but pausing occasionally to just “feel” the moment. 
    
These are the kinds of concepts most difficult to set into language. We don’t really have words for what it is I mean. I discarded phrases like “check in” and “scan.” They’re too active, too much about withdrawing from the moment and turning inward. It’s not that. And it’s not a long process. Maybe it’s a moment of mindfulness. Of noticing. “Here we are. This I detect X sensation in my body. I detect Y sensation in the air before me.” It may fully be, “Here we are, I detect zero sensation in my body or before me.” But it might be, “I detect a small anxiety in my chest. I feel blueness at the table.” We needn’t know what any of that means and shouldn’t remove ourselves from the engagement to study. At least I don’t think we should. What I think instead is that it could suddenly unlock something, much the way a detail in a card that you never or rarely notice might unlock an aspect of this reading in this moment.
  
 It’s easier to experience to describe. And so I’ll dedicate our spread to helping us understand and achieve this potential. And in the interest of making this blogs shorter (at least sometimes), let’s jump to that now!

A read of one’s own
In this case, there’s only one spread “position,” but you can use as many cards as you like to answer it. The spread is simply an answer to the question, “How do I ‘notice’ more in readings?” With the idea that the word notice suggests all I wrote above. And more! As always, I’m turning to a Thoth deck because of #thothgirlsummer. Any deck’ll do, though. In this case, I’m using MM Meleen’s Rosetta Tarot.

I’ve drawn: Prince (Knight) of Swords (2), Queen of Cups (1), Hanged Man (3)
    
Well well well, if it ain’t our old friend the Hanged Man showing up to give us an entirely different side of him from the last time we saw him (in lesson five). I adore that this has happened because it allows me to highlight the single most important aspect for reading tarot: context! Huzzah! But before we get there, we must reckon with some royalty first. 
    
The Queen of Cups is sort of the stereotypical “intuition” card, and both PCS and LFH show us a contemplative queen. MM Meleen’s queen diverges from Harris’s in an interesting way. This queen leans over the water and, like Narcissus, gazes into its depths. Now, unlike Narcissus, I don’t think this queen is gazing at herself. I think she’s actually scrying. But I haven’t had a chance to read The Book of Seshet yet, which is the guidebook for this deck, so I’m too curious not to see if she references Narcissus. Hold please. 
    
Nope! Well, good, because Narcissus isn’t contextually relevant. 
    
The Queen of Cups sums up exactly what the reading above said. It is a passive noticing. An awareness without full engagement. This is a practice, and I think that this image of the Queen (I’ll try to remember to put a picture of the card here when I post the blog, but Weebly has been shitty lately and posting images within text is one of several issues I’ve had. Hey Weebly can you see this? I’M FED UP WITH WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU SINCE SQUARE BOUGHT YOU—AND I’M STRONGLY CONSIDERING MOVING HOSTS) is practicing. (The photo is below. Weebly won’t allow me to put in inline text, because, I don’t know, it’s 1997.) That’s why I said she’s scrying. Scrying is a fascinating concept to me, probably mostly because it’s out of the realm of my abilities. I don’t think you can have ADHD and scry. At least I can’t. It is a patient passivity and waiting for something with the expectation of nothing. I don’t know why, but it makes me think of the phrase “their eyes were on the middle distance.” We know what that means, but when you think about it—it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s an entirely nebulous idea, and yet we (many of us) know precisely what novelists and screenwriters mean when they use this (admittedly cliched) term. 
    
I often describe doing a tarot reading like the Magic Eye posters of the early nineties. Those digitally-generated seemingly abstract images that, when gazed at softly, transformed into a three-dimensional shadow of an airplane or giraffe. This is sort of the experience of scrying (from what I gather) and very much the experience of divination generally. In a way, it’s experiencing our body’s sensations and allowing them to influence the flow of the reading. We don’t necessarily consider “bodies” as a particularly watery thing, but of course the human body is mostly water! What better suit to represent our corporeal selves, because if you read my descriptions of water above, you’ll see that humans have similar underlying goals. (Evidence our treatment of the planet and each other in our quest to flow our own way.) So we’re noticing our body in the moment of reading. Actually, we’re practicing noticing our body in the moment of reading without doing anything about it. It’s simply experiencing it. And then allowing it to do whatever it does. 
    
Dear god, this is a screamingly out of character reading for me to give, no? Insert all the laughy face emojis. 
    
The Prince of Swords, airy air, is the perfect compliment to this queen in several ways. If you’ve read prior posts, you’ll recall the ways water and air are so inseparable. In previous readings we’ve explored how the overabundance of air and water lead us to feeling unstable, messy, anxious, bitchy, generally fucked-the-hell-up. But this is a different situation, reader! This is contextually much different. Here, the Prince (Knight) isn’t the arrogant, smug, know-it-all that this card can sometimes represent. Rather, he is a scholar. He doesn’t care to show what he knows, he’s instead interested in learning everything he can. 
    
It’s not common to associate swords with sight, but increasingly I’m finding myself doing that. First, it’s something I don’t think we talk enough about in readings—how people “see” things. But also because our intellect perceives and that happens in our brain, same as thinking. In fact, an astonishing ballet occurs within our bodies that allows those of us with sight to see what we do. It’s almost impossibly magical, when you think about it, and certainly impacts how we experience the world. What we see impacts what we think. It also impacts what we feel. Some of us will see the treatment of people on this planet and grow desensitized and look away. Others will see it and want to act. Perception defines our reality. We see every day in the news how what is true so often doesn’t matter at all if someone perceives something a certain way. And the truth cannot change perception easily. Getting people to change their mind about something is a game of psychological manipulation designed to trick people into thinking they’ve “discovered” the truth for themselves. (I work in adult learning, and you can summarize training and adult education in exactly the same way.) So, anyway, this is my long-winded way of justifying the fact that swords can encompass sight and vision as much as intellect and communication. They’re all part of the same system and they are quite dependent on each other. 
    
The queen is passively noticing, the knight is actively perceiving. 
    
Oh, god, I hate when I write such grad school sounding sentences! But there you have it. What in actual fuck is “active perceiving.” What can I compare this to?
    
OK. You’re super pissed off about that thing they did. Like, you’re actually shaking with rage and you’re texting bae about it. You’re frantically smashing your thumbs into the screen with all your might as you channel your rage into the words that you need to express the sheer gall of that fucking motherfucker. Know what I mean? OK. So you’re actively texting. That’s the action you’re doing. At the same time, you’re perceiving the language you need to express the rage you feel. So you’re brain is translating your rage into words. You’re not describing how you feel, you’re explaining what happened. But in the word choices you’re selecting and the intensity you’re typing, your rage is clear. Because while you’re actively texting, you’re also actively perceiving your own ire. See what I mean? You can’t say your primary action is raging, even though you’re enraged, because what your energy is achieving is a text message. But you’re still actively aware of your rage and its informing what you’re saying and how you’re saying it—as well as the way you’re typing it, typos and all. 
    
That’s actively perceiving. 
    
Or something akin to it. And if we take that analogy and think of a reading, it’s not a difficult leap: we’re actively delivering a message. If you’re anything like me, your center of gravity in that moment is really in your brain. That’s the part of me that tingles most when I’m reading cards. (It’s probably different for everyone, but I’m very cerebral.) But at the same time there are other sensations occurring in my body. In the same way that the angry texter is engaged in texting and their brain is highly activated, the rest of the body is also experiencing high-level Hulk mode. It’s simply about the practice (queen) of becoming more aware (prince) of the other parts of us in a reading, without actually stopping the text—or in this case, the message of the cards. 
    
Now, the Hanged Man. He just says, “sustain that as long as you can.”
    
Nothin’ complicated, nothin’ bad, nothin’ surprising. “Try to do it as long as can.” That’s it. This is what I mean when I say how much context matters. Because the fact that it’s a “MAJOR ARCANA CARD” can make it seem so “BIG.” But it’s not. In this case, it’s just saying, “sustain.” It’s like the pedal on a piano, or something. Maybe not quite that, but it’s sustained. This is why I think we can learn so much about reading by reading about reading, because it’s going to show us so many magical context shifts. 
    
I love when this happens!
  
So that’s the method, I guess. Less down-to-earth than I’d like, but to practice this sort of active perception as long as possible to see what. Which is pretty much the way we learn to do anything, I guess, so there’s that. But what I love about this particular example is that it underscored and elaborated one elements from the lesson reading. And I find that quite validating!

​

LESSONS SIX:
An arc of five:
Three of Cups (5), Seven of Swords (3), The Sun (1), Ten of Cups (2), The Empress (4)
Deck: Sun and Moon Tarot by Vanessa Decort

This is very surely my favorite mass market deck. It always makes me happy and we’re presented with The Sun as the first card—which is a traditionally happy card. Here in the very early days of summer (I’m writing this on July 5, though based on the schedule I’ve set up for myself, you may not be reading this until much later), it’s easy to see the sun’s major influence. But of course the question is, “What does this have to do with divination?” And the answer has to do with shedding light on things. 

I’ve spent much of the spring and into summer deep-diving into the esoteric systems that built tarot’s modern foundation. Time and time again I come up against the inscrutable, oblique, and opaque. (Just thought I’d use some five dollar words to match the majesty of esotericism.) I’ve been uniquely smug in my distaste for esotericism. Until recently, that had more to do with my distaste for dogma and anything scented with Christianity (which was quite traumatic for me). These days, it’s got less to do with dogma (though I’m still anti-dogma) and everything to do with exclusivity. Let’s just spend some time on the Golden Dawn, since they were arguably the most notable influence on mass market tarot and magic in the English-speaking world, anyway. There is nothing wrong with having a spiritual goal, even one that centers the self. That said, the entire system is based on a cycle of rote memorization, examination, and recitation. Even the initiatory rituals require memorization (and if you want to initiate yourself, which is possible, then you have to play all the parts in the ceremonies, which means you have to memorize the whole rite—not only what you have to say, but what the gods and entities are saying to you). This implies not only a neurotypical brain (and I frequently make the argument what what we think of as “typical” is in fact the real divergence and what we think of a divergent is more typical—by which I mean I think most people are neurodivergent), but also the leisure time to devote to the pages and pages of material one has to not only memorize but make sense of. And making sense out of much of this isn’t easy, because it’s designed to be opaque. They are, after all, mystery traditions. So, you need an excess of time, a brain that enjoys focus and memorization, excellent recall, a head for arcane language, and the space to sit down with all of this and attempt to bring it to life. That’s to say nothing of the cost associated with fashioning the various tools, buying study materials, or joining orders. (And if you’re devoting all this time to the development of self, you’re really not paying attention to the world around you—which betrays the myth that this focus on the self, on the elevation and evolution of the self, will “trickle down” to the rest of humanity. It won’t. Trickle down spirituality is just as much a myth as trickle down economics. And in both cases, it is something created by the wealthy elite.)

It’s not so much what the GD believes, but rather the philosophy of scholarship that separates the human from the divine. I’m not particularly drawn to the teachings, but I don’t have any especial problem with them (I’ve already documented my feelings about the use of Kabbalah by non-Jewish practitioners—which is that, if you insist on it, you should do your best to understand where and how it emerged, the ways in which it was used against Jewish communities, and offer some kind of recompense for its use). What bugs me is that it is classist (you must be able to dedicate your life to this study and even making it past the neophyte level requires mastery of some really big concepts), it’s exclusionary, it’s pretentious (contact with the divine need not be that complicated), and it’s appropriative.

Now, look: Working with spiritual concepts outside of your culture of origin can be, I think, a good thing—if for no other reason than to understand the humanity and divinity of a people, and also because we never know where we might discover “god.” That’s an unpopular opinion and I understand why. That said, if the key to revelation lives in a practice and if that key can help the human race doff its hatred and bigotry, I welcome it. If done, this must be done respectfully. It is the practitioners job to understand the culture and, if at all possible, honor it—both politically and financially. As the saying goes, “rent is due.” If you want to practice, say, Hoodoo in America, then your political donations and actions best reflect an interest in the libration of traditionally excluded communities, especially (in this case) Black Americans, whose ancestors created the practices in the throes of enslavement, sexual assault, forced imprisonment, and forced conversion, while handling the displacement from home and an attempt to dissolve their pantheon.

On the other hand, too many people who find solace and magic in traditions outside their own (usually white people) cannot wait to capitalize off of it. The other thing that happens is historically marginalized groups are judged harshly for their spiritual traditions—until Becky comes along and discovers how “powerful” they are, and opens up a chain of studios exploring it. (We see this not just with spirituality, but music, fashion, etc.) It’s the combination of societal judgement and exclusion compounded with white people making money off things people of global majority don’t or won’t that makes this all so messy. (I also think that advertising the details of your spiritual practice, particularly if they’re “borrowed” from traditions outside your own, sets you up. No one can judge what they don’t know you’re doing, and if you’re doing your work sincerely there’s no reason to advertise it. Just a thought.)

Anyway, this is all to say that the diviner’s job isn’t exclusivity and mystery; it’s access and demystification. We are here to shed light on things. That’s the whole point. The Sun reminds us of our goal—to spotlight the answers, to make the unknown known. That sounds awfully lofty and in saying it I could easily be accused of the kind of pretense that I’m always criticizing in exclusively spiritual traditions. I don’t mean it to be lofty at all. In fact, it’s the base requirement—and, frankly, if you achieve no other goal as a diviner, I think you’re doing pretty well. Too many folks get stuck in the esoteric, in the arcane, and clarity never arises because it’s mired in so much stuff. Clarity is the goal. Of course, one hopes for accuracy—but I’ve also documented my feelings on that. (See my books for deeper explorations of that topic. For our purposes here, accuracy shouldn’t be the thing that readers are worried about at first. We should be focused on clarity. Accuracy comes with practice and cannot be gaged easily because life isn’t a straight line.) The sun tells us: make things clear, visible; make them easy to see; make them bright; bring the light. (Here I must comment on Lucifer’s role as “light bringer” and how he existed as an entity before he was transformed by the church into the devil.) 

How do we do that? The rest of the cards show us!

Let’s broaden out to the Seven of Swords (Futility) and the Ten of Cups (Satiety). The Seven of Swords offers us inner insight because we’re pausing to assess our mental state or how we’re thinking. The title of futility annoys me. It means “ineffective” or “unimportant.” Suppose we say in this case that too much inner reflection is futile, ineffective. For a cerebral over thinker (like me) that’s not easy to sit with, which is one reason I’m sitting with it. (It also happens to be a trend in this blog, which I think highlights how far away I am from it.) Now, let’s pause and consider the Ten of Cups (Satiety). Tens are the climax of their suit. You can think of them as abundant (each new number following the ace adding to the suit) or as drained (every new number from the ace depleting the suit). The word “satiety” suggests that we’ve had enough—which, good or bad, is the salient point here. We can have had enough because we’ve reached the amount that we can take (we’re full) or because we’re over it. In the case of the Ten of Cups, we’re full of water—which makes me think about having to pee. That’s not really relevant, but it just popped into my head. 

Combining the two, and remembering that we’re looking at advice on how to make our readings clearer and easier to “see” (read: understand), we’ve got the intellect (swords) and the senses (cups) working together. We’ve got the introspection of the seven and the totality of the cups. We’ve also got “futility” and “satiety.” The cards aren’t a natural blend in this context, but of course we need to make them work together. We could read this as: “It’s futile to ever think you can have enough.” But, as the kids say, that’s mid. We can reassess (seven) how we give voice to (swords) the many, many sensations (Ten of Cups) that arrive in a reading. That’s definitely getting closer to the topic for sure. But it’s not quite right. Sometimes in readings we have to keep digging. This is one of those times. Let’s pause with these two cards and broaden again. 

The final two cards are the Three of Cups (abundance—a word I used earlier) and The Empress. Threes are expansive, so abundance makes sense. And of course we know what cups are. The Empress is also an emotional being, but a driven one, a powerful one. She also happens to be a three. So we’ve got two threes! The senses (cups) expand (three) a lot (two threes) when we empower (Empress) them. This is a theme I keep finding in these blogs—that one has to let go of the logical and give way to the senses. The Seven of Swords, as the only “logical” card, suggests that it is futile to rely on that part of us. But I know that’s not the answer to the question because we need to communicate clearly. So the reading can’t be about how logic and language are futile. (This is one reason why people get so hung up on the keywords—they often don’t apply. Here I’m making myself apply it, but if this were a real reading for a client, at this point I’d probably recognize that it’s futile to incorporate the word futile in this reading.) Because of that, I’m returning to the seven for a moment. (When I’m reading for a client, this is all happening mentally—which is a swords-y experience.)

What are other associations with the Seven of Swords? Deception is one, when we think of the PCS image. But what she was really drawing was “Unstable Effort.” The futility in a way becomes about how futile it is to base divination in logic, in the sense that it is objectively an illogical thing to do. Or an “unstable effort.” The rational can only go so far and must be partnered with a major flood of intuition (cups/water). This is a trend I keep banging up against in these readings, and I don’t really believe it. It’s funny that I keep coming up with it. Actually, this card has been dogging me in a few ways in the last few weeks. I think it wants to show me something I can’t seem to see quite yet, but it keeps coming up. Is it futile trying to understand this? Or, is it futile to divorce our thoughts/words (swords) and feelings (cups)? I’m struggling here!

In the e-book I released recently, Thoth on Earth: The Harris-Crowley Deck for Modern Fortune Tellers, I call this card “the over-thinker over-thinking.” Which may be exactly what I’m doing right now. Laughy face emoji. But I also talk about how water and air are inseparable. Because air as we understand it here on earth (and divination tends to be somewhat geocentric) is oxygen, and oxygen is one of the things that makes up water, we can’t have water without it. Is it possible, then, that our thoughts and feelings aren’t different at all? I always say one reflects the other. We think and feel or feel and think. They dictate each other. Is that the point? Because of this, there is no difference and so the feelings we feel in a reading are also thoughts and ideas that need to be expressed. 

Which is a pretty deep concept, when you think(!) about it. 

Yoav Ben Doc, whose work I greatly admired, said in Tarot: The Open Reading that everything occurring during a reading means something. I frequently admonish folks that the reader isn’t the oracle, but I do say that the reader is part of the oracle. —Hold please. 

This is where I stopped last night because my DoorDash order arrived. Later, as I was reading in bed and finding the stuff I was reading inscrutable (related to esoteric tarot—well written, but I cannot make myself care about this stuff), I realize it was futile for me to jam my head with “scholarship,” when I always say that divination is about life. And while this is a spread of mostly cups cards (joined by The Empress, who is somewhat watery), what water does is flow. Like life. It actually reminded me why my style is so down and dirty, because the more you get lost in the intellectual murk, the harder it can be to read about life. We forget it. 

And that’s actually a really dangerous aspect of both cups and swords. We can literally float away. In fact, the lack of earth in this reading reminds me that it’s not so much about logic; it’s about literacy. By which I mean taking the intellectual and making it understandable to anyone. When air lacks any practicality, it does become somewhat useless because it’s indulging in its own kind of seven-y naval gazing. I’ve written about this a few times, recently—how the introspection of the seven is good sometimes and sometimes it’s naval gazing and self-absorption. Without grounding, air gets flighty, loopy, and in love with its own wit. Much the way a Waite or a Crowley or a Mathers did their own work. In fact, the Golden Dawn’s own insistence that the intellect is really the ego and must be overcome in order to reach the heights of divinity is rather amusing when you think about it. The creators of the Golden Dawn along with its two most famous acolytes were incredibly arrogant! The Golden Dawn splintered because of the egos of the men running it. (There were a few women’s egos, too, but they were nowhere near as destructive to the order.) Why, it’s almost as if . . . getting caught in all that arcana actually takes you away from divinity . . . . It’s almost as though an environment full of editorial cockblocking and pontificating somehow separates the self from what makes it spiritual. 

(Of course, we can’t blame the Golden Dawn for eating itself alive. First of all, the ouroboros is one of its favorite symbols. Yes, infinity; but also a snake eating its own ass. Further, the older I get, the more I realize that all power corrupts. I haven’t seen anyone who has been immune from this. Whether it’s formerly progressive politicos who, we soon discover, are taking in dough from super pacs to the arrogance of CEO’s, even people who are normally quite grounded can be poisoned by power.)

Point is, the futility of the Seven of Swords doesn’t have to do with logic; it has to do with un-tethered intellectualism and cold reason. When we look inside ourselves intellectually, we may do so with the kind of cold, clear-eyed “objectivity” of a scientist (the Six of Swords is called “science” in the Thoth decks—“earned success” in the GD traditions), and — wait for it — that’s not who we truly are. When we look at ourselves only through the lens of one of the suits, we’re going to find ourselves wanting because we’re made up of every suit. We can’t fully be the suit of swords because we (pardon the expression) contain multitudes. When we judge ourselves (or our work) purely though this lens, we aren’t looking at ourselves accurately, either; we’re looking at ourselves as though our goal should only be cold, clear-eyed, somewhat emotionless critique. 
 
If you’ve read my book Your Tarot Toolkit, you’ll have seen my self-reflection assessment. This is designed so that readers have an objective way to view their readings that doesn’t rely on the client’s feedback or our own biased judgments. The checklist comes from my theory that if you focus on giving a clear, logical, appropriate reading that both answers the question and makes sense given the cards drawn, you can rest assured the reading was good. And I still believe that. But thinking in terms of this Seven of Swords, which, frankly, is taking up undue space in this spread (and my life, currently), it also suggests that a barometer of how how well we read is the feeling we get about it. 

Honestly, I don’t agree with that. While clear-eyed objectivity can be cruel and (maybe even more important) nearly impossible (leading to grand frustration), relying on our “feelings,” too, is problematic, because our feelings are bias. Or, you could say, the come from our bias. Our reactions to things are formed through our bias for or against them (or our indifference). This is one reason I’m so emphatic that readers should have some foundational learning to support their readings. The purely (supposedly) “intuitive” reader (a reader with no actual foundational learning) can’t demonstrate that they’re not just reading from confirmation bias, say, or otherwise framing the cards in a way that reflects what they feel rather than what the reading is saying. Readers who rely only on their feelings wind up not being able to read when they don’t “feel” like it, which is difficult to deal with when you’re reading for others. We read when clients want us, not when we feel like it. (Of course, there’s no requirement anyone read for others.)

The Sun card makes steam of water, evaporating it, and converting it into “air” (in the esoteric sense). It is the combination of air and water (intellect and instinct) that makes good readings, and it’s futile to deny it. Because the seven and the Ten of Cups directly flank The Sun, it blends them—making steam. The Three of Cups and the Empress take that steam and make something cool out of it, something expansive, something creative. This makes me think of the way myth can take a banal idea (the change of seasons) and make it into an epic tale (Persephone’s story), illuminating it and poeticizing it, while also make it understandable for the “masses.” Fairy tales, after all, were written to teach children “morality”—what is “good” and “bad” and who to be afraid of (generally anyone “other”). (We still have these lessons impacting us today, which is why anyone who was obsessed with Disney Princesses since the release of The Little Mermaid likely has a fucked up relationship to relationships.) 

The myth takes the intellectual and transforms it into the emotional. And as an adult learning specialist, I can tell you that the best way to get people to remember dry (intellectual) information is to create a link to the emotional. In divination, we already have the benefit of the topic being important to the client—but it does make sense that we might want to try to blend the intellectual and emotional into a “myth” that is both clear (understandable) and felt (emotional). And, ultimately, that’s (I think) what this reading is telling us. Or me. As the Seven of Swords has been following me me for a few weeks, now. Hopefully I’ve released it from its spell. 

A read of one’s own
Whenever I get a message like the messy one above, I have a tendency to try to fundamentally alter my entire worldview. Like, somehow the reading tells me that I’ve been “doing it wrong.” And why shouldn’t I think that way? Most of what we see on Social Media is someone telling us we’re doing something wrong. It’s rather a litany of abasement. Let’s think, instead, of evolution. How do we evolve into a more integrated reader, one for whom the logical and emotional are united in service of a clear, impactful, resonant answers. 

1. Shuffle the cards and draw from 1-3 cards representing the best aspects of our logical/intellectual aspects. 
2. Draw from 1-3 cards representing the best of our emotional/instinctual aspects. 
3. Draw 1-3 cards representing how to integrate the two into exceptionally good readings. 

Note: If you’re anything like me, this overall concept can make you feel like you need to rethink your entire methodology. Try not to go to extremes. It’s not what we’re “wrong”; it’s that we want to evolve.  

A quick example: My first set of three, representing the best of my intellectual/logical aspect, are: Death, Four of Swords, Four of Wands. This is an easy one: I cut through staid thoughts and dullness (the four of wands is a fairly dull fire). The keywords on the two fours are “truce” (swords) and “completion” (wands). In fact, the Death card smacks both of those concepts: no, this isn’t a pause, and no you’re not done. My mentality makes it possible for me to get through “stuck” perceptions and ruts. 

My second set of three, representing the best of my emotional/instinctual self, are: Adjustment (Justice), Knight (King) of Wands, The Fool. (There’s a connection with two fire cards—that may mean something, but it may not. There’s also a lot of majors, now: Death, Adjustment, The Fool. Also maybe meaningful.) Let’s see: My instincts are, in fact, the opposite of staid (the fours above) while being quite stable. The Adjustment card (I’m using the Thoth again) has quickly become one of my favorites, because it represents the imperceptible-yet-constant movements happening to keep things on course. The Knight of Wands brings all the energy into the equation, and the complete lack of expectations in The Fool. (I often read The Fool as “foolish,” but here we’re looking for its best aspects.) The Fool is often thought of as curious. No. Curiosity implies expectations. That’s the realm of the pages. The Fool has no expectations and so can’t wonder about what’s going to happen. The Fool simply looks at things and sees them as they are without assigning motive, meaning, or intent. It sees things and looks at them as though for the first time. 

The energy of this trio, thanks to the Knight of Wands, carries us from right to left. The Knight fervently drags The Fool toward Adjustment. Adjustment synthesizes all these various impulses, kind of the way the brain does for us as we, say, navigate uneven terrain. The way our body responds to bumps in the road and divots and we can (generally) keep ourselves walking. It does that automatically. In fact, if you try to think of it you’ll likely notice that getting across this bumpy path is harder now. When we draw attention to it, it becomes labored, effortful, tiring; when you simply let your body do what it knows how to do, it generally makes it easier to navigate this uneven path. Adjustment reminds me that I’m always responding and reacting to the information and when I’m at my best, I approach the reading with energy but without any expectation. 

The final set of three suggests how to integrate those two elements. In this case, I pulled: Two of Pentacles (Change), Princess (Page) of Disks (Pentacles/Coins), Ace of Cups. Where a lot of advice readings fall down is the lack of action items that are actually doable. When we’re giving advice readings, and I hate to pull from my corporate life but there’s value here, we should be thinking in terms of legit goal setting. SMART goals. S = Specific; M = Measurable; A = Actionable; R = Reasonable; T = Timely or time-bound. We should be able to see the behavior and the results of the behavior; it should be doable in the amount of time we’ve set and within reason for our abilities. This is what advice readings should offer. So that’s what I’m attempting to achieve here. Luckily, we have two Disks/Pentacles cards, so we’re firmly rooted in the earth. In fact, here’s all the earth we didn’t find in our earlier reading. 

The Two of Disks (Change) is an integrative card, because twos draw things to it. But how do we do that? If we think of earth/disks, we’re talking about application. What do I mean by that? In the emotional realm, we simply feel; in the intellectual realm, we think. In earth, we do (frequently in fire/wands, too). This means that we have to apply what we’re attempting to do into the real world. This is one of those times it’s actually difficult to explain what I mean. But, OK: the things we do intellectually and emotionally just kind of happen without us noticing. Consider your mood at any given time. Likely it was arrived at without a lot of intent on your part. How are you feeling right now? You probably didn’t decide to feel that way. If your mind drifted while reading this, you didn’t ask it to; it just did that. With earth, now, we’re noticing. We drawing our attention (the two’s attractiveness) to what we’re doing. Which is a change (the keyword on the card) because we’re just learning to notice how we’re navigating a reading. This is intensified by the Princess of Disks, who (unlike The Fool) is curious. She pays attention because she expects something to happen. Now, she may not know what it is—probably she doesn’t. But she has an expectation that something will happen. So she’s on the lookout for it. Unlike the Knight/Prince, she isn’t going hunting; she’s just noticing. Consider the way Harris’s Princess gazes at the disk in her hand (or even the way PCS’s Page of Pentacles simply holds up and gazes at her Penty—a term I just coined [see what I did this?] to mean “pentacle”). 

What are we noticing? We’ll know it when we feel it. The Ace of Cups. We return to the senses, now, but we’re paying attention to them. Each little feeling (one/ace and water/cups) can tell us something. 

In the blog post, you’ll note that I started to talk about Yoav Ben Dov’s sense that nothing happening in a reading happens without reason or meaning. I got distracted from that, but what I was going to say is that the sensations we experience during a reading are worth paying attention to. If we start to feel antsy (“I can’t wait for this reading to be over!”), excited, cranky, defensive, pay attention to those things. What are they telling (implied swords) you about the reading? Let’s say that our emotions become signals during a reading. Our emotions are signals to us generally. They tell us when some part of us needs care. But in a reading, perhaps they tell us something more external. Perhaps they’re relevant. 

Something I didn’t mean to do in this reading but did was wind up with a nine card box—because I drew three cards for each question. So, let’s consider them as columns, too. Why not? My first column is made up of Death (the thinking row), Adjustment (the emo row), and Two of Disks (integration row). This whole fukkin column is about change, transformation. And it may mean that these changes, these evolutions, are inevitable (Death) once you become aware they’re necessary. In a way, Death is the most trustworthy card because it’s the only one we can count on. Trust, then, the process (Adjustment/Two of Disks). 

The middle column is: Four of Swords, Knight of Wands, Princess of Disks. Harris’s Knight of Wands rides up to the Death card, positionally, so there’s a connection between those two. It’s almost like he bypasses the Four of Swords and goes right for Death. (“Your little knifes aren’t good enough. Give me that big fukkin scythe!”) I hear this row saying, “You’ve got the brains (Four of Swords) to count on (fours are stable). You’ve got the experience (knights correspond with kings in this deck) and the curiosity (princess/page). Again, the influence of Death’s inevitability are important. “Don’t think too hard about it.” Fours sustain, so they can also suggest thinking a lot. It’s not the same as overthinking, which is more active. The four is more like “dwelling.” Recall that the “truce” is a break, a stoppage, a halting. Of what? War. Which is action. It’s pointing to the fact that the four is an inaction, and dwelling on things is kind of inactive thought. Don’t linger on the idea too long. Don’t overthink it. Be energized in approach (Knight of Wands) and elegantly open (Princess of Disks—admittedly a value judgement on my part, but the card is stunning).  

The final column consists of: Four of Wands, The Fool, Ace of Cups. The Four of Wands (Completion) is sustained, again. Sustained energy (fire) in this case. It’s another keyword I just don’t like, but I’m trying to reconcile with my way of reading. In this particular case, I don’t think it’s particularly relevant, but I may come back to it. This card represents, again, the thinky, logical aspects because it comes from the first row. Actually, OK: “your education is complete”: the Four of Wands in the realm of thinking—the stability of the four, the sustained effort of the fire, and the fact that I can obsess (which, if you think about it, takes the passive “dwelling on” of the Four of Swords and translates it into the fiery realm—actively dwelling) on trying to be something better, to learn more, to not settle. Just go in without expectations (Fool) and see what you feel (Ace of Cups). Again, it’s a way of noticing. And this reading seems so much to simply be about noticing, which—honestly—is a thing I’m not particularly good at. The thing about The Fool is that he’s present. He’s never anywhere other than where he is. 

We can’t work with our intuition if we don’t notice it. Notice more, think less. Experience, rather than interpret. Notice. Feel. Communicate. Don’t use the swords at their coldest, use them at their most generous. 
    
Which makes total sense to me. 
    
Aaaand scene. ​