 I didn’t post a blog last week, though I wrote one. It just stunk. I intended to post it anyway with commentary about why it was a crappy reading, but the week, as weeks do, got away from me and ultimately I didn’t feel like giving it that much attention. While I don’t like the idea of curating my posts so that you only see me at my most effective, I ultimately recognize that some experiments aren’t really that much of a learning opportunity. The bottom line is that I did a reading with a crappy question and wound up with an overlong reading that kept deepening an ever-crappier answer. To give you some intel, I’d decided to take a deviation from the blog’s normal theme and do a reading about the first 3-6 months of the trump admin. The idea being that it would be posted on inauguration day and many folks’ minds would probably be on that. I asked the uber generic question, “What can we expect in the next 3-6 months?” And while I got an interesting array of cards, I never really wound up with an interesting answer. I got the germs of interesting answers, but I never had enough context to know what to do because I asked such an unclear question. There are times when a vague or nebulous question can be quite helpful, particularly when we’re not entirely sure what it is what want to know. Sometimes we need to do a few readings to figure out what even the question actually is. Sometimes the question is just crappy because it’s lazy. As mine was. In my case, a better-written question would have been something like, “What can we expect from international relations during the first 3-6 months of the trump admin?” or “What can we expect for the queer community during the first 3-6 months of the trump admin?” Now, I’m not certain I’d have achieved great readings on either of those questions; I tend not to read on politics that well, particularly predictively. (While I predicted joe biden would not win, and I predicted he’d likely drop out. I also predicted that kamala’s energy and financial windfall would send her sailing to a victory. Either tarot or I neglected to see that the DNC had already decided they’d lost and that sticking to a pro-genocide ticket was the right thing for them to do.) But whether or not my reading would have been better, I would have set myself up for much more success. Questions matter. Specificity is often where we go wrong, and that was the case for me, simply because there are too many possible directions this world could go. The fucktonage of fuckery is unfuckwithable. Trying to imagine what this country will look like after 3-6 months is not an easy task. Consider, the last time we’re sitting where we are now—a week into a donald trump “presidency”—we had no idea that in three months, the entire world would grind to a halt. And how could we have seen that in the cards? It’s next to impossible to predict something like that until we’ve been through it, and once we’ve been through it it’s both impossible to imagine going through again and also oddly the only possible future we can imagine. It makes me think this way: “Just because you can, does that mean you should?” By which I mean read about or predict certain things. And I don’t have a particularly good answer for you, partly because I don’t like putting limits on what we can do with divination—and partly because I simply don’t know. Thinking backwards, what card combinations could possibly have suggested to me a global pandemic? I don’t think there are any. I don’t know that I could predict that eventuality now, having been through it. It’s not the cards that would show me, honestly; it’s the question. Only if I were reading about the threat of a global health crises could I see cards that would speak to that concept. This is because the reading then makes everything about that topic—it’s the thing I’m reading about. And this gets to the central difficulty of general readings: there are simply too many possibilities of things that could happen, it’s very difficult to know what “arena” a reading will take place within without context, and so whatever we say will have to be very broad. And at a certain point, does that broadness become so generalized that it’s not predicting anything? It’s possible. There are ways of course of narrowing the scope of a general readings, and I typically use the dominant suit to inform that. But there isn’t a “global health crises” suit. If I were to work backwards from what I know, I might say that I’d look for a certain combinations of Mercurial cards (The Fool, The Magician, and cards ruled by Mercury’s signs, Gemini and Virgo). I tend to consider the suit of swords generally Mercurial, too. Mercury has associations with health and wellness, thanks in part to some shared and similar symbolism. For global, I’d look to coins/pentacles for obvious reasons, and of course The World. For crises, I’d be especially interested in how many fives (including the Hierophant, Temperance (14 = 1+4 =5), and possibly for tens as they were higher “octaves” of five. But--and this is key—I’d probably only think to do that if I were actually looking for that potential. Otherwise, why would it occur to me? It’s an interesting thing, because as I said I don’t like to impose limits on what people can do with tarot—particularly me. I’m not interested in being told “you can’t.” And yet: just because I can do something, should I? My question for last week’s blog wasn’t only poorly-worded, it was also poorly-intended. Meaning that I was both trying to ask a question I didn’t want the answer to and also keeping purposefully nebulous so that I couldn’t see anything I didn’t want to see. And this is all to say that sometimes it’s not that we can’t ask a good question; it’s that we purposefully don’t so that we won’t get the answer we’re reading. We protect ourselves from information, which is only something we can do when we’re reading for ourselves. Generally, other readers aren’t interested in shielding us from that. In fact, they’re not really doing their jobs if they are. And this is why we ask readers either no question at all or a carefully-worded question about what we really want to know. As much as I use the “are they cheating?” question as an example, I have never been asked it. It’s too specific! People rarely ask that kind of question because they know if they get the answer they’re going to have to live with it. Instead, they’ll sit at your table, think about how they want to know if their partner is cheating, and then tell you, “no, no question,” or “I guess I’m curious about my love life?” And the context ends there. They’re protecting themselves. Which is an oddly validating thing for divination, because if we didn’t think it actually worked, we wouldn’t worry about protecting ourselves. When we really want to know something, we work out the question. We just do. Anyone who crafts spell work knows the importance of stating a clear intention or making a specific petition. Most of us may not be particularly tenacious about writing our intentions or petitions, but we understand that the clearer and more specific the better. When we have a problem with the vacuum cleaner or the stove, when our car starts making a weird sound, what do we do? We go to the internet and we ask questions. And if we can’t find what we want, we ask different versions of the same question. We change the wording, we refine our search criteria, and we keep looking until we find at least close to the thing we’re working toward. We do not do this with tarot. Or anyway, I don’t and nobody I know does. And I don’t think it’s because we’re not tenacious. When we really want to know something, many of us read for it multiple times. We’ll ask the same question multiple ways. People don’t like to admit that because for some reason the tarot community decided there’s shame in doing that. Nonsense. When I’m working with a pendulum I ask the same question multiples times in multiple ways on purpose. Why wouldn’t I? The wording impacts the answer we get and so to get a series of supporting answers that validate the original reading, we simply get more confident that our answer is correct. And if we don’t get a consistent answer, we know something is either wrong with the question, the situation, or the divination tool. So we try something else or try again later when the energy is more certain. Like, when we want to know then we will find fucking out. But what we know we don’t want to know, or aren’t sure we want to know, we ask lazy questions. Another thing happened, and it was the reason I wanted to share that now-trashed post, which is that the cards drawn seemed to indicate a much calmer reality over the next 3-6 months than I believe is possible. So I was either misreading the cards, I was letting my bias into the equation, or things will be calmer than I think—all of which are possible, though some more likely than others. And the thing that stopped me from even getting too deep in providing the commentary on the original post was that I was seeing the flurry of executive orders, designed mostly to exhaust and hurt, and I felt, “well, there’s no way this reading was giving me useful info—and I’m just bad a political readings.” Which could be true, but could also be chalked up to the fact that I asked a vague question and was lazy about trying to get a better answer. Or even asking a clearer question and trying again. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with abandoning a reading you’re realizing is not about the right thing. When our guides try to give us messages about things they don’t fully understand, the message will be muddy. A reading that isn’t making sense probably has more to do with the question or lack thereof than about the cards and the interpretive ability of the reader. I think I thought this post was going to include a reading. I think I thought I was going to ask, “What should I have done differently in last week’s lesson?” But I know what I should have done differently: either asked a better question or sat with the wreckage caused by my shitty question and suffered the consequences. But I realized as I was writing this that there is a third way. And that is to read the same spread on multiple topics. Last week I used the nine-card box and that’s not a great spread for this blog. I’m already longwinded and while it’s an easy spread to read, it’s a pain in the ass to write about. For a client question, we love all the context; for a blog post, it’s a bit too much. But what I could have done (and will demonstrate below) is reading the same spread about several different but related concepts. Very few things in life are entirely discreet. In fact, in this “country” we tend to think of our individualism above all else, but everything is interconnected. We know it, because we can see the impact we have on each other all over the place—from our social media friends and enemies, to the impact of our actions on the climate, to the ways in which we attempt to legislate away people’s humanity and reality. Nothing is separate. It’s what Thích Nhâť Hanh called interbeing. “We inter-are,” he would say. And because of this, and it’s rare for me to think too much about Buddhism and fortune telling because in many ways the seem to be rather at odds, one spread of cards can of course cover multiple related topics. Rather than guessing what topic the reading is covering, read it from several and see how the interbeing of events plays out. To demonstrate this, I’m going to ask the same lousy question I asked last week with just a three-card reading. But I’ll give an overall summary of the three and then explore what they suggest through different political lenses. For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to over explain (shocking, I know), but where there are takes that seem incongruent to typical card meanings, I’ll add my thoughts. For this reading I’m using the same one I attempted last week, the Tarot Nuages by Gniedmann. It’s a somewhat pippish, somewhat Waite-Smith-y, somewhat eerie fantasy deck. It was an impulse buy, but I do like a spooky fantasy moment. This might remind you a bit of the Deviant Moon, a deck I don’t vibe with, though I do enjoy Patrick Valenza’s other decks. Anyway, I’m not certain this will become a go-to, but I do like it a lot and it’s nice to see a release from US Games without a fucking copyright brand marring the front or back. I’ve drawn 10 of Swords, 5 of Swords, Hierophant Rx. (I typically don’t read reversed cards, but because of that—and because this card showed up reversed on top of being one of the main players in the reading I did last week—I’m taking special note of that.) General reading: A major flurry of combative writs (10/s) that slows to a slower but more upsetting sprinkle (5/s)—that bumps up against sudden immovable object. The unexpected influence of someone powerful and disruptive, an old power, an intense one, and one that might actually be MORE potent than this administration inserts itself into the equation. This Hiero card had the SAME weird feeling last week, it is not playing nice with the admin. I suggested last week that it could literally be the pope, but I doubt it would be that specific. But it someone/thing with that level of power, import, and institutional power. The formerly active and cocky combatants are cow-towed. I don’t see this is a hopeful change, though; the house wins. It’s just whose house goes from something chaotic to something more institutional. I felt like getting more context, so I added another card to the Hiero—the Knight of Swords. And because it was yet another swords card, I tacked on a fifth just to give me more color. This yielded the Four of Coins. The institutional power is energetic and focused on stabilizing things. (See photos below. Weebly no longer allows inline photos in blog posts.) There’s a bit of an invader quality with knights—especially the weaponized Knight of Swords. I don’t know what this is, but it is a shift. I don’t know that it’s fully fleshed out which is why we can’t see what it is, yet. The knight’s helmet has a winged rat-like dragony thingy on top. Makes me think of Ratatouille. They may be working on behalf of someone else. I’m talking about this like a person, but it may not be. It could be the “wind” of something—swords are air—so, like, a cultural shift influenced by an unexpected moment (that rat-bat-dragon thingy). But it has the effect of stabilizing things a bit. OK, not a bad reading. This is actually not that far off from what I wrote last week, though shorter and with more swords—more wind. More gasbaggery, if you will. If I want to, though, I can read this through adjacent lenses. Economy: An avalanche of cuts, death by a thousand paper cuts, that lead to some really hard choices, conversations. There’s a downsizing influence. If we had an ace in the reading, I think that would have been bad news. I think we teeter on the edge for a dangerous moment, and then the old money comes in. There’s probably foreign influence, with a focus on the global stability of the economy. Civil rights: A major blast of cold air, lots of words—again, death by a thousand paper cuts. These attacks focus in a few weeks, aiming with specificity and meanness. A line is crossed. Again, a more mature influence asserts itself. As with all of these, we’re not necessarily talking about person or people. It could be. I drew an additional card to support the Hiero to see if I could get a sense of who/what—and of course I got another sword. The 9. I would say the “faithful” (Hiero) just get fed up (9). “This isn’t what we actually care about. We’ve got this other shit to deal with.” Maybe? The two mirrored hands are catching me, but I can’t necessarily ID why. They weirdly remind me of an oyster shell, with the spooky figure in the center as the oyster. But what could an oyster symbolize? They’re really filters; they’re incredibly good for the ocean, because they make the water healthier. They’re healthy foods for humans, too. So though they’re ugly and slimy on the surface, especially if you don’t know what they’re for and how good they taste, they’re actually wonderful and useful in multiple ways. They also tend (if I remember correctly) to be good harbingers of the ocean’s health. So there’s almost an oracular quality to them, too. So whatever this Hiero thing is, it “looks” ugly and isn’t. It looks like the same old thing, but it’s not. It only appears to be unappetizing. Go figure. Again, the Knight and the 4/coins suggest a stabilizing influence. International relations: Fighting continues apace (10/s) and with fierce (if less frequent) harm (5/s). There is little faith. But there is again an outsized institutional influence. Because I keep using added cards to recontextualize the Hiero for me, I gave it another go and this time added the Queen of Coins—who also came up reversed and happened to be the center card in last week’s spread. I realize now that I put the cards in that spread back into the deck reversed, but that doesn’t mean the reversal (for someone who never uses them) doesn’t have import. Nothing that happens in a reading is an accent. The Queen of Coins is a financial negotiator—either literally or figuratively. They know—I can’t believe I’m about to say this—the art of the deal (vomit sounds). I think the reversal, and the reversal of the Hiero, along with that bat-rat-dragony thingy on the knight’s helmet signal a covert operation. Someones/things with major influence is working behind the scenes. There is a show, a performance, and what is seen is not as it seems to be. The shift seems to switch both the focus and tenor of the administration. In the reading I did last week, I said there comes a point where the parties are going on too long and certain egos realize the parties were never actually for them to begin with. That feels relevant here, too; though that’s only a gut feeling. I don’t have the cards to justify it as I did last week, but these seem to point in the same direction. There’s a moment of shift or drift and who is doing what changes. The “rhythm” of the reading kind of stays the same, but it doesn’t have to. I didn’t need to read the cards in the same order every time; I could easily have let them guide me as to which one was the most “important” or influential during the particular re-reading of the question. In this case, and this makes sense because three is really the minimum I ever use, pulling additional cards to keep adding to and re-contextualizing that Hiero was a version of doing that. I gave myself new info while using primarily the original cards I drew. You get to do that if you want to, particularly when you do it with intent. Either way, the rhythm of the reading makes sense if its similar because these are all interrelated things and not at all as separable as the pundits like to make it sound. Political steams tend to push all topics in the same direction. Generally, if a nation is having financial trouble, they’re probably also having civil rights issues. Granted, when we hear about financial issues most of the time, what we’re really hearing about is how comfortable rich people feel with their unimaginable wealth. But whatever. It’s temping to do another reading for what will happen in the 3-6 months following this. There’s no reason not to and I nearly did, except this is now my second reading on this topic and though I add more cards and try to deepen the context, I have a strong sense that the Hierophant here is not fully formed and also likely to be heavily influential. So I don’t think there’s much we can glean beyond this timeframe. It doesn’t seem like there’s “enough” to work with yet. Which is one reason I tend to limit readings to 3-6 months rather than a year. That said, I’m not universal in that practice so do what works for you. A Read of One’s Own Rather than design a whole spread, what I think is most valuable here is to experiment with reading the same spread multiple ways. Pull a general spread of any length and use it to read about your job, your relationships, your health, your finances, whatever you’d like (certainly not anything you don’t want to know about). Feel free to practice this on others, too. How do they react to having one set of cards speak to several areas of their lives? Do you find that it’s too similar? Or do you find that the things going on in their lives are actually shockingly similar and we tend to repeat patterns all over the place? Let me know how it goes!
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 Today’s query is a good one. It’s something a lot of folx struggle with, particular when reading for ourselves. It goes a little something like this . . . : How can I check my biases or be aware of them? What are questions I can ask or approaches I can take to try and see the reading as “objectively” as possible? How can I be aware of blind spots? This reader specific reading for themselves, but it’s a thing all readers face at some point. So let’s explore it both from a self-reading and client reading POV.
I’m using a line of five, here, similar to the arc I typically use (less visually arresting). This particular method of reading comes from JM David’s brilliant Reading the Marseille Tarot. It’s a HUGE book, but it’s one of the absolute best out there. I think it flies under the radar because it’s independently published and isn’t done through Amazon, which is wise for the creator but makes it harder to find. The link above will take you to JM’s webpage where you can find it. (I bought the PDF and had it printed and spiral bound at Staples, which wound up being just as expensive as buying the book—but either way, get your hands on it. It’s excellent.) This line of five is read in progressing sets of three, a little something like this. First pass: 1, 2, 3 Second pass: 2, 3, 4 Third pass: 3, 4, 5 For this reason, I draw the cards in the order that you see them on. I didn’t start with the middle and work out as I typically do with an arc. The deck I’m using today is also an underrated one. The Radiant Tarot by Alexandra Eldridge and Tony Barnstone is a pip-style deck, with blends of animal and people—and animal/people hybrids—and reminds me a lot of the popular but long out of print Stella’s Tarot (another of my great loves). I recommend highly. Sometimes when I read at events I’ll bring a couple decks with me and allow the client to choose which they’re drawn to. When I bring this one, 95% or more of the people select this. First pass: 1. Six of Cups, 2. Six of Pentacles, 3. Queen of Swords I love that we start with two sixes and that they are the receptive suits. To my way of thinking, we also have an active suit and a passive one. This is something I haven’t talked about that much, but you’ll likely hear me talking about it more. Water is active, based purely on its behavior. It flows. It cannot stand still and in fact when it does stand still, that’s typically where disease festers. This is why I don’t gender the elements. Water is both receptive (you can get into it) and active (it moves). Earth, on the other hand, is receptive and passive. I mean if we want to get really technical, none of the elements are totally passive (nor, truly, is anything). The Earth moves and grows, too, but to our human eyes—our largely impatient eyes—we don’t see it, so we assume nothing is happening. Fire is projective and active. It consumes, it cannot generally be resisted (and this is a good chance to wish my friends on CA well . . . the images of the fires there are devastating and it is another signal of this country’s great sins that our leaders’ greed, ineptitude, and pandering puts all of us at risk of losing life and/or limb far too often). Air is projective and passive. It’s not necessarily that air imposes itself in the way fire does, which is what it’s “passive,” but it’s everywhere and we are literally desperate for it, so it is projective. There’s a little gift of a lesson for you! OK, two sixes and then the q/swords. I love this for us and for this question. Here’s how I would read this: Bias cannot be avoided, it is inevitable because it is built into who we are. It is innate (that’s not the cards talking right now, that’s science). Bias is actually part of our survival mechanism. It is how our brain decides whether we’re safe or not. The problem is that society takes advantage of these biases and teaches us that certain groups are safe and others aren’t based on bigotry. And society usually has it backwards. Society tells us that cops are safe and immigrants aren’t. But I think a quick glance around at . . . all this . . . demonstrates that we’ve learned the wrong lesson. So it’s not necessarily that our biases are the issues as much as the fact that our innate tendency toward biases has been exploited by powerful people to control us and marginalize groups that have been identified as “not our kind.” But I’m prompted to write about this by the cards, even if this isn’t in the meanings. Here’s why: sixes are beauty. That’s a typical meaning for the number. But in this context, for some reason I’m thinking of beauty in part as a filter. Why? The q/swords, actually. More on that in a sec. The two sixes feel good. Right? If we can extrapolate “beauty” into a feeling, which we want to because we have cups here, we can say “feeling beautiful” or “beautiful feelings” — and that leads us to “feeling good.” We get the same vibe from the 6/penties, but of course in the realm of earth. I might distill this card as “good life.” Inherent in six is desire. Why? Because we all want beauty, whatever that means to us. It nourishes us, as do food and water. We want to feel “beautiful,” we want our life to be “beautiful.” And when we’re reading for ourselves we smack up against the reality that life doesn’t always look good and we don’t always feel good. And when we lay out the cards, we worry that our bias will either make the reading be too happy or too unhappy, but either way that we won’t be getting the “real” reading because we’re not objective enough. The Queen of Swords is about as objective a character as the tarot has. She’s been through it and she’s highly experienced/educated (probably a combo of life and formal schooling, but take that as a metaphor for anyone who is “experienced” in good and wise ways). But she knows that she can’t escape the fact that no one is entirely objective about anything. She’s smart (swords) enough to understand that reality. Because she’s a queen and queens are typically associated with water (aggressive-receptive), she knows that we’re going to be at the mercy of our wants and feelings (water/cups) and that we want the best for our lives (6/penties). But she also recognizes that for all our bias, we’re also smart enough to know when we’re blowing smoke up our own asses. Because we have enough self awareness (a very q/swords thing—that sharp, clear mentality means that the court of swords “knows” itself and sees itself much more clearly than the others) to know we’re full of crap. “Don’t worry about your biases,” she says, “because your desire for a good life, to feel loved, to feel safe, is not going to get in the way of your reading. In fact, the reading will account for it.” (Note from future me: Here I want to point out we’re talking about you’re biases when reading for yourself. If you’re reading for others you have a responsibility to understand your biases about others and to face them. I’ve written about that elsewhere, but this is NOT a reading justifying your societal disengagement and anti-colonial lassitude. Wink.) How does she know the reading will account for it? Because she understands how divination works. She’s got enough of an understanding of how she believes that a reading functions to now that her biases will become part of the reading, not something that needs to be run from. More on that in a moment, too. Second pass: 2. Six of Pentacles, Queen of Swords, The Tower When things are going well (6/penties), we know (q/swords) things will eventually go to shit (Tower). Now, here’s where the queen’s “knowing,” her wisdom, is flawed. Because it’s being influenced by the imagination. Sixes and Sevens are numbers that I typically associate with the imagination, sixes fantasy and sevens intimate —but both in the imaginal realm. Sixes have a romantic worldview. And while “romance” usually is perceived as positive, romantic thinking can be negative, too. Ask anyone who fantasizes about breaking up with their lovers or about having fights with people they care about. Anyone prone to disaster thinking understand that romance isn’t just good stuff, it’s epic stuff in the literary sense. Anything “romantic” is usually over the top in the way that the romance movement was in both literature and art. Sure, we’re not entirely in the realm of romance—we’ve got a practical, earthy angle, here—but because the earth represents our lives, we’re not entirely in the logical mode. Our lives are important to us and the idea that they might be riddled with disaster is scary—romantic, too, in the sense that we imagine ourselves in a movie closeup with a single tear streaming down our cheek, lit beautifully—and that’s what this trio reminds us. We tend to expect the worst, especially when life is pretty good (6/swords). Even though the q/swords knows better, she’s still not immune from her tendency to expect the worst. Third pass: 3. Queen of Swords, 4. Tower, 5. Page of Swords Here, the tower is bracketed by two swords cards—both courts. We’ve already talked about the queen and the Tower, but each pass re-contextualizes the cards as it adds one and leaves another behind. This spread is really like doing three three-card readings, but you only use five cards instead of nine. The Tower flanked in this way reminds us that the concept of “disaster” is really contextualized by our perception (swords) of it. What’s that mean? The bigness (queen) or smallness (page) of an event (Tower) corresponds to the way we perceive it, regardless of it’s real bigness or smallness. What I’m saying is, shit will feel bigger or smaller based on how you’re receiving it. You might get a flat tire on a day when you were in a good mood, and it might be a giant hassle, and it may ruin your good mood, but it’s a thing that happens and you deal with it. Or, you might get the same flat tire on a day when you’re already cooking and this is the last fucking straw and you just fucking cannot. It’s the same event, same cost to fix, takes the same amount of time to resolve, etc., but your reception of it depends on the context. Not unlike the cards in a reading. And so what the fuck does this have to do with our inability to be objective in tarot readings? Glad you asked. Say you do a reading and it predicts a flat tire. Objectively craptastic, but not, like, life altering (context-dependent—if this flips your car or makes you let for a dream job interview, maybe it does . . . but we’re being super general here). When that event comes to be, whether or not it is annoying or devastating will depends on what else is going on that day. And this is the case for, like, everything. Say you’re thumbing through Amazon while watching TV and you see the thing that you’ve been missing that you must have or you simply won’t be able to go on. It’s a little pricier than you want and you’re a little broker than you’d prefer, but, fuck it. You deserve a little treat. This is the fucking thing you’ve been waiting for and it is the single solution to all your problems. FUCK YEAH! BUY NOW, BABY! You’re flooded with dopamine and you spend the next day fantasizing about it, checking the delivery status, watching the driver on the map. And you get it and you tear into the package and . . . it’s fine. We’re so afraid of predicting bad things, especially for ourselves, especially when we’re new and/or or especially if we’re given to disaster thinking. We know bad things will happen to us and we know they’re just around the corner. Most of the time for most people in most contexts, even if the reading portends something “bad” or disappointing, the probability is that it’s not going to be THAT bad in the scheme of things--and the degree of badness won’t depend entirely on the thing, but on the context of the thing. Meaning, a flat tire is a flat tire—but whether it’s just a fucking pain in the ass or literally the worst thing that has ever happened on the day will depend on so many more things than just the event. And we also fail to consider that good things, the things we desperately need and want and must have oh my god or we’ll simply DIE are also sometimes contextually . . . meh. That may sound flip, given what a fuckton of despair is happening in the world right now. But when we’re in the throes of that kind of despair, chances are we’re not breaking out our tarot cards and checking in on the progress of our spiritual journey. We’re literally surviving. We tend not to read for ourselves in moments when we’re in the midst of catastrophe. And because of that, we don’t have to worry quite as much about bias as we think we do. Let me step out of the reading for a moment and add a little sidebar, here. This question of course stems from the anxiety that we’re not going to be able to read for ourselves and get a good answer—and from the tendency humans have to either over-catastrophize or completely under-catastrophize. And we worry, say, that we might do a reading and see something like what is happening with the wildfires in California as I write this. What if we miss this in a reading and could have done something? Or, what if we see it in a reading and it turns out not to be true. Here’s where my experience kicks in and takes over from this reading a bit. When you’re worried about seeing or missing good or bad things in a spread, when you’re worried about whether your interpretation is slanted either by desire or fear, you don’t need to rely only on the cards. Remember, there are contexts at play in a reading beyond the cards that we’re seeing—and that a reading does its best to reflect likelihoods based on current conditions and energies and behaviors. So, let’s say you’re looking at a spread and you’ve asked the questions, “What if anything should I be prepared for in coming month?” Let’s say you lay out cards and you see The Sun and a metric fuckton of wands. Fire! “There’s going to be a major wildfire,” you think. And because it’s in the news, you’re particularly sensitive to this and it’s a great phobia of yours. Fair. And you could do another reading to see whether your interpretation is correct—in this case, maybe a yes/no based on the question “is my interpretation of that reading accurate.” But another thing you could do is pause and consider your world. Are you in an area prone to wildfires? Are you in a season where wildfires are common? Are you experiencing drought? As you answer yes or no to these questions, you immediately begin to understand whether the likelihood is high or not. If you’re presently living in a humid, wet, rainy location where wildfires have never happened, that certainly doesn’t mean that they can’t happen—but the likelihood is slim, and so it might be wise to consider another interpretation. If you’ve predicted something, it’s worth considering how likely it is even the existing conditions. If it’s extremely unlikely, probably you’ve let your anxieties guide you and it’s wise to return to zero and start again. And I think that’s a decent summation, too, of these three cards (to remind you, the q/words, Tower, p/swords). Perception and insight are both swordsy realities. “I perceive this as terrible, what insight do I have to validate whether that danger is real?” There’s a logic to swords that applies here and says, “Is this disaster or is it an inconvenience?” Swords have an investigative nature, don’t they? Another thing we don’t talk about, but if we think about the world of investigative reporting, it’s very airy—tenacious, oblique, intellectual, even somewhat cold, as investigative reporters aren’t known for their empathy when trying to get a juicy story. All very swordsy to me. Investigate the evidence you’ve got to see if it fits, if it makes sense. Swords are sensible, at least in theory; anyway, the “get” the idea of being sensible, and in this spread, I think that’s the gift they bring: clarity, logic, investigation, sense. “No, it does not make sense that I would face a wildfire next month given the current conditions. Let me retry this interpretation.” A fourth pass - mirroring: Have read the three sets of three, I feel compelled to explore whether mirroring the cards (paring cards on oppo sides of the reading) offers any additional context or insight. This matches the Six of Cups with the Page of Swords, and that is quite a useful pairing. The Page of Swords is curious and unsentimental. The Six of Swords is quite sentimental, moony, dreamy. The page comes along to this dream and attempts to pop the bubbles. “Is this too good to be true?” They see something good, but they don’t take it a face value. Like the example above, “how likely is this to be true?” And because they’re fairly ruthless in their ability to question what they think they see, they’ll tease out that likelihood. And page’s curiosity allows them to approach without judgement. Meaning they don’t “care” whether or not the answer is what they want. And this reminds us to be a little ruthless. If we get a positive answer, is there any way to poke holes and see whether or not that’s truly likely? By the same token, this implies doing the same with negative answers. If you get a big fat terrible answer that you hate, do the same. How likely is this to be the reality? Poke holes in it. Pairing the next two, the Six of Pentacles marries The Tower. This reminds us that life happens, to borrow a phrase. How many annoying, bad, shitty, and/or crappy things did you put up with last week, things that totally ruined your day—and then you forgot about completely? How many things that seemed totally devastating to you on one day wound up being completely non-issues days later? Bad shit happens to us all the time. We tend to think that if a bad thing shows up in a reading, then it must be a really bad thing. Why? Tarot doesn’t judge the size of what happens to us; it answers the question. “Will I get into grad school?” “No.” For you, perhaps the worst thing that ever happened. But the cards don’t judge that. You asked a question, you got an answer. (I guess this is a reminder, too, not to ask about things you don’t want the answer to.) The Queen of Swords sits in the middle, resolutely holding up her sword. Trust yourself, she says. You know when you’re bullshitting you and when you’re not. You know when you’re being dramatic and when you’re not. You know when you’re overthinking it. Yoav Ben Dov, whose work I greatly admire, said in Tarot: The Open Reading that, in essence, everything that happens during a reading is part of the reading. It all means something, from the little hungry belly noises you make all of a sudden, to the client’s stoic face, to the way a sentence forms itself in your mind. Does that mean we stop and interpret everything around us? Of course not. But it does say that if you’re worried about your biases impacting the reading, then that is part of the reading. Again, I want to veer away from the spread for a second, but this is inspired by the spread; particular, the queen there in the center. Divination is an act of trust. And while we may trust our guides, the cards, even our technique, it all means nothing until we trust ourselves. And that is fucking hard for a fucking lot of us. We have been taught not to trust ourselves. We have been taught not to listen to our instincts. Jesus, sometimes I wonder if over-thinking and anxiety actually aren’t innate mental states, but come from a lifetime of being told to ignore what’s right in front of you. We hear constantly that critical thinking is essential in life, and it is—but that’s not what the structures we serve mean when they say that. They mean to do the exact opposite. Let them (the structures) do the critical thinking, and you . . . you just be a good boy and obey. The so-called American education system is actually designed to stop you from critical thinking. You don’t experience the need for it until college, which is one reason that the right wing wants to make college as inaccessible as possible. Primary and high school are designed to make you follow instructions, which is helpful for a country whose economy is built on manufacturing. Does it matter that the wealthy owners of factories realized they could make more money by moving manufacturing to other places and then not replacing those jobs with anything? Nope. Because obeying and following rules is still helpful for that class. So is not thinking critically. Problem is, we are critical thinkers by nature. Because we’re told not to listen to that instinct, because we’re told to believe what we’re told not what we see, we start to doubt ourselves. In fact, self-doubt is another valuable tool for the oligarchs, because you will see what they’re doing and hear that their words don’t match and you might be tempted to ask, “Wait—but you just said—” That would be bad for them. So you’re taught to doubt yourself. And then you lay out a divination and you doubt what you see and your lifelong conditioning to not follow your gut kicks in and it becomes really complicated. I cannot tell you how to do this, friends, but you must do it: Believe in your reading abilities. Don’t get cocky and arrogant about them. But believe them. Believe in your ability to read. Believe what you see in a reading. Not every reading speaks in literalisms. Sometimes readings yield a message that requires further parsing. But assume that every reading you do is correct and if the answer doesn’t make sense, it’s only that the answer doesn’t make sense yet. There’s more to do to discover it. I used to be pretty uptight about answers in readings coming completely from the cards. I think I push that agenda pretty hard in Your Tarot Toolkit, which I didn’t write that long ago. And I still think that. Like, I don’t think we should start espousing our personal viewpoints or philosophies to clients unless it’s contextually relevant or we’re asked. I also think we need to be able to point to the reading and justify whatever we say as the “final answer.” But I’ve also realized, especially after putting myself in reading situations where I’m 99.9% certain to get 99.9% percent general readings, that there are times where a readings answer will offer an allegory, poetry, or myth that needs to be further clarified before it makes for a relevant answer. In Tarot Toolkit, I use the Celtic Cross as an example of how a reader is forced to answer a question obliquely, telling a story about a relationship and then making value judgments about that relationship. It’s actually a good example! If I remember right, the example in that book is a reading about a relationship. The “reader” interprets the cards in such a way that they “realize” that the relationship is toxic and the client should breakup with her partner. Now, this is a bad answer for a few reasons: it’s telling the client what to do with no evidence, and that’s super gross. But it’s also putting the reader in the position of judging the health of a relationship they’ve only done a single reading on. The reader could say, “I see a huge amount of conflict in this relationship. Like it seems to thrive on disagreement. Am I misreading that?” But saying, “this is a toxic relationship and you need to get out” would be bad. Why? The first invites additional context; the second makes a huge value judgement based on a card reading. A good way not to let bias impact your readings, particularly for others, is not to judge the situation but to describe it. The client gets to decide what’s toxic or not. You say “I see a lot of combat.” They say, “Ah yes, this is toxic.” They may also say, “Yes, we role play as soldiers when we fuck.” Anyway, I’m digressing a bit. If you have reached the end of a card interpretation and you lack clarity, then interpret your interpretation. Maybe you’re simply not done that. That’s OK! Some readings are more complicated than others, and that’s particularly true when reading for yourself. I’ve written about this elsewhere in this blog, but sometimes the reading tells you a story and that story is a myth that yields the answer. Sometimes the reading says “dump him” (rarely), and sometimes it says “there once was a man from Nantucket . . .” And then we have to figure out what the story of that dude means in relation to our life. The Oracle at Delphi was known for being inscrutable. You might have to figure it out on your own. But you, my friend, you: are a fucking READER. And readers read til we get the answer . . . unless the reading us just for ourselves and we’re being lazy. OK, I actually really have digressed here. But not unhelpful digressions, if I do say so. What I was getting at is that we have to trust ourselves in our readings. Because tarot works. Trusting yourself, if you’ve never done that, can be a radical act, friends. Bigly. If you can’t trust yourself, for some reason, if you just cannot afford to grant yourself that grace, think of it this way. (This is a SHOCKINGLY spiritual answer from me, by the way, so . . . gird your loins.) Let’s assume for a second that tarot is a tool our guides use to give us messages. The guides understand who we are and what we’re going through, they know more about us than we do, and so they account for all our weird tendencies. They know we’re going to have biases because they’ve experienced them. And they’re going to do their best to select the correct cards to get you closest to reality. They’re going to account for your wonky humanity. And so when you’re trusting yourself, what you’re really doing is trusting your guides. And that means when you’re doubting yourself . . . well, you’re really doubting your guides. And do you want to be the one to tell them you don’t believe them? I don’t. A final thought. I could go on. And in fact I haven’t really summarized the reading yet, but before I do that I have one more thing to add. It, annoyingly, also falls a bit into the spiritual category. If you truly do not trust yourself—and if you truly believe that your readings are incorrect or not helpful more than they’re correct or helpful . . . it might not be that you’re inept and can’t do this. Maybe you first need to build a relationship with your guides. I know! That’s such a fucked up thing for me to say — and actually not just because I don’t really discuss this stuff. It’s worse because I have been so insanely lucky that my guide knew far better than I did what I was heading toward—and I’m fairly certain managed to subjugate his own ego for most of my life while I came to terms with the fact that between the obliterating fuckupery of Catholicism and the depressing nihilism of atheism, there is something else and that I’m part of it. But. Who knows? It may be that you’re not a “bad” reader. It may be that you benefit from developing the relationship first and understanding how you can talk more fluently together. Summing up: Shit happens in life. Most of the time, the shittiness of that shit has as much to do with what else is going on and our general mood and whether we had lunch as it does with the actual shittiness of the thing. This is born out by the amount of shitty shit that happens on any given day, week, or month that we erupt over and then forget about in minutes, hours, days. Few of us over-estimate our luck, but if tend to image the best for ourselves more often than is possible, we also should remember that even getting stuff we desperately “need” can still leave us feeling cold. “Good” or “bad” in a reading is a matter of perspective and context, and because we tend not to read for ourselves near or in the throes of horrible events, most readings probably won’t take us to the graveyard. Even if it does, we have context clues—our actual life conditions—that can tell us whether this disasterous interpretation is likely or not and/or whether we might benefit from going back to square one. Scrutinize all answers for likelihood and “plot holes” — try to pop the bubbles, as the Page of Swords does — and then trust yourself. If the news is bad, what can be done to prevent it? If it can’t be prevented, what can be done to endure and learn from it? If it’s good, is it really good or merely the hit of dopamine needed to make it through another Sunday night. Remember that sometimes the cards offer a myth that needs to be interpreted in the same way the cards were. If an answer doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong; it’s probably just that the reading isn’t over yet. Finally, trust yourself and your guides—and built a relationship if you find that your readings lack clarity or accuracy. This was a long one! Pardon if I beg off on creating a spread and an example. If you do want to do a reading, choose one of the points in the summary and use the cards to see whether or not you might benefit from digging into and experimenting with that topic. Until next time! Happy reading!  Deck: Dalí Tarot
Layout: Arc of Five Knight of Wands (4), Temperance (2), Nine of Wands (1), Nine of Swords (3), Ten of Swords (5). Update: I thought it would be cool to bring you all into the puzzle this year. So rather than every post being a reading where I ask the cards what the divinatory lesson for the week is, I asked my social media pals to tell me questions they have about divination that I could ask the cards. So in the next handful of weeks, that’s what we’ll look at! For the sake of privacy, I won’t reveal who asked me what—but if you want to ID yourself in the comments, please do! Here’s the question we’re working with today: How do you help people understand the more “negative” cards? Like, if someone gets the devil or the 10 of swords and isn’t swayed by your initial explanation, how do you help them integrate the lesson? This was the first question someone sent so it’s the first I’m going with, but it also happens to be a topic I love talking about! Granted, I’m not going to tell you what I think; I’m going to tell you what the reading says. Let’s see if I’m “right.” I’m doing just a simple arc of five. It’s been pointed out that I haven’t talked about how to read this spread, and that’s partly because there isn’t really a way I read it. I just let it guide me. I start where the eye takes me, often the middle, but I’m usually going to use various card combos—including cards that “mirror” each other, meaning those that are in the same place on opposite sides of the spread. As always, the number following the card name is the order in which I drew and placed it down. We’ve got two swords cards, two wands cards, two nine cards, one major and one court; we’ve got no cups or penties. And I think in the lack of these two suits, we can remind ourselves—it’s not our job to feel the clients’ feelings (cups) or live their lives (penties). Good advice! But let’s jump in to the cards we do have. When reading a line or an arc like this (to me the shape is immaterial), I let the cards tell me where they want me to start. When there’s nothing demanding my attention, as here, I start in the middle since that’s typically the card I put down first. In Waite-Smith decks, I can never remember which is the nine and which is the ten, the one standing wounded with the wands or the one carrying the tonnage of them—and that’s partly because I find them so over the top. That’s wands! They perform. It’s hard to see many of the wands cards and not see histrionic actors hamming it up in a bad play. The Nine of Wands gives somewhat performative defensiveness (compare with the seven, which is more actual defensiveness). I think with the 9/wands, we’re saying, “no, don’t come near me because look how battle scarred I am. I will fuck you up! I am a survivor!” But, like, it’s clearly we’ve already shot our wad. It’s showing off. “Look how much I’ve been through, oh me . . .” And I recognize that sounds incredibly judgmental, but remember I’m talking about the card not the client and not you. The 9/wands is bolstered by the suit’s knight, which is to its left. Knights, I ain’t gonna lie, can be somewhat performative, too; they’re partly doing what they do to get attention. Right? Knights aren’t always the Arthurian ideal—in fact, they’re not even that in Arthurian legends (what I recall of them, anyway). They’re out there trying to get some action. They’re players. “Tom, what the hell does this have to do with the question?” We’ll get there! Right now, we’re just getting an overall “feel” of the reading. What am I as the reader feeling, right now? What are the cards making me see? Neither of the interpretations above are ones I typically jump at when looking at these two cards, but the fact that I am reading them that way now means something. Right? These cards have triggered that reaction, which is part of the reading. I’m not immune participation. OK, I have a “sense” of these two cards. Before doing more with them, let me look at the other three—starting with the two swords cards. The Nine and Ten of Swords are equally no one’s favorite, and have a similarly histrionic sense about them. Like, it’s not just bad; it’s the worst thing that’s never happend! (But, like, also it’s probably just a hang nail? That kinda vibe?) Nines in swords function similarly to wands, but obviously the realm of language, communication, intellect, learning, and suchlike. Nines, as I frequently say, can suggest burnout (“I’ll never get to this fucking finish line!”) but they can also suggest major expansiveness (3x3). Tens are full—or empty. They are complete—or depleted. All depending on context. They two cards make up the entire right side of the spread, so they’re working really closely and they appear in numeric order. They provide the perception of drama. But if wands are the actors in the bad play, swords are the actual bad play itself. It’s the “writing” So we’ve got this bad play, full of sturm und drang--very German—and it’s being performed by these melodramatic actors who are just dying to show everyone how hard they’re working. What of Temperance, then? Well, in just about all ways it is the complete and total opposite of all we’ve just described. So what the fuck is it doing here? Ah! Excellent question. In my early days, this would cause me so much anxiety. Incongruent cards can make you doubt your whole sense of ability as a reader. But they shouldn’t. In fact, they should make you quite excited! It is in the tension between the expected and the unexpected, between the congruent and incongruent, where the real magic of reading happens. Why? Because we’re frequently trying to anticipate and solve problems with readings and what are problems but unresolved tensions? And even when we’re not necessarily dealing with a problem, we’re usually trying to reconcile the tension between the known and the unknown. And so when cards create tension by not making “sense,” we get to experience the magic of that! Of course, there are times when the card never comes together and we just can’t make it work—but those are really rare. There are also times when a card isn’t saying much in a reading, behaving in much the same way that vowel sounds do in English-language words, but you usually only notice that once you’ve gotten an answer and realize you didn’t spend much time with a particular card. That sort of glossing over a card usually happens when you looked at the spread and the answer just kind of fell on you. Temperance is a card of moderation and it is a card of integration. It provides a container, it mitigates flow, and it also can bring parts of different things—often incongruent things!—together. Crowley and Harris’s transformation of Temperance into Art shows us an alchemical process of disparate parts becoming whole. Temperance as a card is likely going to serve a similar function in this reading. OK, I’ve given myself a sense of the impressions I’ve gotten from all the cards and a basic sense of the overall mood of the reading. We don’t talk about this much, at least I don’t, but a reading’s “mood” is important. It’s influenced of course by the reader’s mood as well as the clients’ and anyone else in the situation and even in the room, but it’s also going to be influenced by the deck, the environment, the lighting—everything. In this case, this is a deck whose mood I’m not sure I’ve figured out. This is literally the second reading I’ve done with it. My mood is . . . fine. But you can see from my instant reaction to the cards that I definitely have a feeling about these cards that is super specific—bad actors in a bad play, right? Mitigated somewhat by Temperance. Before we get into finding the answer to the question, it’s always OK to look back and see if we’re noticing anything we haven’t before. For example, I haven’t said anything about the fact that the Knight of Wands and Temperance are both facing the 9/wands (the rest of the reading, really). But that’s not necessarily giving me any hits yet. Nothing else particularly strikes me. So that’s my glance. This is more or less what I do with every reading, every spread I encounter. And thought it took me a while to write it and likely for you to read it, this all happens really in the first thirty seconds to minute of the reading. I’m just letting the cards tell me what’s up. I’m not imposing anything on them; I’m letting them give me a vibe. Now, there have been times when not a single one of those initial impressions helped me solve the reading. There have been times where I started down a wrong track and discovered I had to start again. By that I mean, I start interpreting the cards all over again, as though they’re new, but with different context. it’s rare that I would redraw an entire spread. Though, frankly friends, I have absolutely done that. Why not? Because someone said not to? If the difference between getting an answer and not is redoing the damn spread, then redo the damn spread. The goal of readers is to get an answer, not to show off and torture ourselves. The point of not redrawing a spreadsheet is to is to not let yourself off the hook. And if you find yourself redrawing the damn spread every time, that’s probably a sign you’re not being tenacious enough, you’re letting yourself get distracted by imposed meanings, your question isn’t that well-worded, or you’re me and you’re lazy. Sometimes readings describe situations literally (“you are going to have a fight with your boss over the budget, and you will lose your temper and that’s going to get you in trouble—again”) and sometimes they’re mythological (“this looks like a bunch of bad actors in a bad play”). And here my twinkly little brain finds delight, for it is with mythological answers that we can sometimes deliver bad news—help the client hear and integrate it! And to share this little tidbit of advice, I don’t need to read the cards any further. I don’t have to think of elemental dignities or anything, or of who is facing what, etc. I just have tell you that I actually have a completely relevant theory about handling difficult cards and bad news in readings that is connected to the mythology of bad actors in a bad play. Because the point of a reading is to get a relevant answer triggered in your mind, not to follow dogmatic approaches to card reading. So, here’s the first answer to the question inspired by the cards: When you’re faced with difficult cards or a difficult answer, use myth. Pretend the situation is a bad play peopled with over-emotive actors. For example, one may do a little something like this (given an imaginary card draw of Death, The Tower and the Five of Cups): I see a man (Death) who relentlessly pursues his goal. Doesn’t matter what’s in his way, he’s going to trample over whatever is in his path. Sometimes that’s what needs to be done; sometimes it’s needlessly trampling over people we care about. Can you think of anyone in your life/in this situation/at work (whatever the context is) that resembles this? (We allow the client to answer.) OK, great. So your ex-husband Conrad is like that. From the vibe of this card draw, I feel pretty certain that this has actually been problematic for him. What do you think? (Let’s say the client tells us that it hasn’t been problematic for Conrad, but it has been problematic for the client—let’s call them Ted.) Ah, got it. So I’m hearing Conrad is the bull-in-a-China-shop type. (“Very.”) Heard. Well, he’s headed for a blowup. A big old, ring-the-curtain-down, Titanic “My Heart Will Go On” style POW situation. And he’s riding right into it, like he knows he can see it coming but he doesn’t think it’s actually going to happen. But it’s going to happen. I could keep going, but that would make this even longer and no one wants that! Point is, you can see how I’m using an oblique story-telling technique to explore these more difficult cards. I’m not using the word “you” and until the client confirms for me that the Death card represents his ex, I’m not using names or implying any card represents anyone. I’m just telling a story, in many ways describing what’s happening on the card—and I could continue in that vein through the 5/cups and to the answer. This is inspired by Susan Tompkins’s book, The Contemporary Astrologer’s Handbook, which I recommend highly. It explores a similar method of talking about difficult parts of a chart or progression. And it’s got two benefits: It lets you off the hook and it puts the client in the driver’s seat. It allows them to come to the conclusions the reading suggests and likely it will lead to them giving themselves the bad news. Crises averted and you even did a collaborative reading! The downside with this approach is that telling these kinds of stories takes practice and can be somewhat difficult on the spur of the moment. You really have to take your time, slow down, and think about what you’re going to say before you say it. Allow pauses. The other downside is that some people are so fucking dense they just won’t get it. But that’s another issue. OK, that’s one method of dealing with this. Myth! But let’s keep reading, cuz why not? If we take the cards as I began interpreting them above, we remain with a story of bad actors overdoing it in a bad play. And, to put it bluntly, so is life. Life is bad actors in a bad play. And that’s just the way it goes. Sometimes we have to tell clients, “I’m sorry, but you’re just stuck in a really shitty drama right now and unfortunately you’re the star.” Why? Because that’s life. He says only somewhat sarcastically. I mean it is. To talk about difficult cards and situations we got three difficult cards—the nines of swords and wands and the ten of swords. Tarot reflects reality and when something is difficult, tarot is going to reflect it. Here’s where I’m maybe going to start adding my own methods into the sauce—but I do think they’re prompted by the cards. Look, the nine and ten of swords could easily suggest “difficult conversations.” Right? The heft and difficulty of the numbers paired with the communication inherent in swords. Think about times in your life where you’ve known a difficult conversation was necessary and you avoided it—whether because, like most folx, you’re conflict-avoidant, or because you didn’t think it was that important, or you were too shy to deal with it, or you felt like it would eventually fix itself. How often did it just go away? Not often. How often did it get worse? Often. Imagine you’re my boss at Acme Tarot Publishing (not a real company). You brought me on as a line editor and I turned in my first manuscript late, but I was meticulous about it so you assumed I was just trying to be hyper-prepared since it was my first gig. But all five of my following projects were late and none of them were as well-proofed as the first one. Your bosses are pissed and you’re like, “OK, I thought he was gonna be better.” But you never ask me what the fuck. And I just keep fucking off, turning in half-assed shit whenever I feel like it, you and your bosses roll their eyes and say, “gee, that turned out to be a crappy hire.” And that goes on for years until I finally fuck up so big you can’t ignore it anymore and you fire me. To me, this is completely out of the blue and I’m stunned—and I file a wrongful termination suit against ATP (not a real company—and anyway soon it’ll probably be impossible to sue corporations for anything). I’m going to win. Because you never gave me the feedback and you never documented a damn thing. You never coached me, you never set the expectation, you never had the difficult conversation. So I got fired and your company loses a lawsuit because you avoided the difficult conversation until it was too late. Part of the point of reading is to give bad news, odd as that might be to say. And we just have to get comfortable with that. Ya know? No one wants to get bad news a reading and no reader wants to give it. This is what we’re worried about when we turn down certain topics--what if I get it wrong and I give them bad news and I ruin their marriage? Better not to tell them! Except if the marriage was perfectly fine, the client probably wouldn’t be asking about it. Of course there are exceptions, right, but when something is on people’s minds and they bring it up in a reading, there’s a pretty sure bet that it’s dogging them because something isn’t working or something is causing them anxiety about it. The other thing that swords suggests is perception, and in this case I mean the perception of the reader. When we look at the cards and say “oh fuck, that seems bad,” we’re actually judging the situation on behalf of the client. We don’t actually get to decide what cards are good or bad in a reading, the client does. It’s their reading! If we’re reading for a client who is not a friend, we likely don’t have even half of the context of the situation—and even with friends, we know they ain’t always telling us the whole tea. No one does. We may have a client ask whether they’re getting into grad school and the reading says “no sir!” and we feel bad—but the client only applied to grad school to make their mother happy, and now they don’t have to go! Whoopee! We have to be careful as readers not to project or perceive (swords) drama (the two nines and the ten) where it may not be. Dalí’s cards are wonderfully open to interpretation—which, given much of his famous art, is quite something. And there are so many ways that these images could be interpreted. We don’t get to decide for the client. And they may not even know how the hell they feel about something until they get the reading. (BOOK/MOVIE SPOILER AHEAD:) There’s a moment in the book Conclave (you don’t see it in the movie) where the Stanley Tucci character, who spends the whole first third of the novel saying he doesn’t want to be pope, realizes that he’s not going to be elected pope. And he really, really thought he would be. So did everyone else—including most of the media. And though he didn’t want it, the shock of not getting it—of being told you were a shoo-in only to discover that your peers don’t want you—is a devastating (in theory) as getting it would have been. But the character would have no way of knowing that until they experienced it. And had he been elected, he’d likely go the rest of his life thinking “Dear God, I would have been so much happier had they passed on me.” It’s a beautifully nuanced moment of character writing by Robert Harris, and having both read the book and listened to the audiobook, you can really see the character’s reaction in the moment he realizes it ain’t gonna be him. Such good writing. (I actually really enjoyed both the book and the movie, for what it’s worth. Though I revile the Catholic church, I’m a former Catholic and despite myself, I can’t help but enjoy Vatican palace intrigue. And, no, I don’t think the “twist” was tacked on or forced; Harris laid the groundwork well (the screenplay less so). Humans are fuckin’ weird, folks. The thing you thought could have been the best news ever may turn around and make your client weep with grief. We just do not know. And so it is helpful to guard our perception—to temper our perception, as it were. And here I can return to the cards to justify my thesis: the 9/swords mirrors temperance—so the card of anxiety and despair (for many W-S readers) is mirrored by the card of moderation and integration. It’s saying, to quote Edwina Monsoon, “Cheer up world, it might not bloody happen!” In other words, “hey reader, your might be perceiving this as more dramatic than it is.” And the 10/swords mirrors the Knight of Wands, who—though I gave him a kind of shallow makeover earlier—is nothing if not brave enough to rush into the mire and burn shit down. Which means that the client may actually need--may actually WANT--to get in the dirt and fuck shit up! And who are we to deny them that? Shit may need to get fucked up! Let them do it. Tell them the truth. The Knight of Wands matched with Temperance actually says the same thing: “OK, hothead, let’s not rush into this reading projecting doom and gloom. Let’s, like, practice a little restraint.” Temperance looks at the rest of the cards in the spread and in fact protects them from the knight. Ah! Do you see what she’s doing? She’s tempering them. “No, 9/wands, you are not as dramatic as you appear; no, 9 and 10/swords, you are not, either. Life tends to be far more banal than you expect it to be, so even though this news isn’t good--it’s also, in the scheme of things, not life or death.” The knight/wands otherwise would rush in with allllll the community theatre drama you can handle—and more—and will be the, OH MY GOD GURL DID YOU HEAR???? But that’s not you, dear reader, because you are a diviner. And you temper such impulsive reactions with gentleness. Because you: are cool. Tell the clients the truth, pals. They asked for the reading. That’s not the cards talking now, that’s me—after Camelia Elias. They asked for the reading, you owe it to them to tell them the truth. It’s what they asked you for. You’re not their mommy or daddy, you’re (likely) not their shrink, you’re not their lover or pal—even if you’re actually those things IRL. Right now, you are their fortune teller, their card reader, and you have vowed to them to say what that cards are telling you. Do it. The only exception to this, and again this is me not the cards talking, is when I’m certain the answer will poison their well. What do I mean? Suppose I saw in a reading that the second the person stepped out of their home tomorrow morning, an asteroid would fall and crush them to death. Were I to share that, I would likely ruin whatever time they had left. And there is nothing they can do about it—I guess other than not be home? So I wouldn’t say, “you’re going to die tomorrow morning.” I might say, “Have you thought about spending the night a hotel? Just for fun?” Other than that, I feel like I owe my clients the truth. Finally, I’ll add that when scary-looking cards go down you can easily just lower the temperature in a couple ways. “Don’t worry about that,” I’ve been known to say, “it’s not a bad card, there are not bad cards.” Or, let’s say I’ve just got the grimmest-looking spread—like we got all the daddies of drauma, honey, Okrrr? I have been known to say, with a big old genuine laugh, “OK, we’re going through some shit right now, aren’t we?” And the client will inevitably laugh and say, “YUP!” Because they almost always already know the answer, anyway. So let yourself off the hook. Tell them the truth. They asked for it. And these cards agree! A Read of One’s Own There are lots of reasons we may resist giving bad news or addressing funky cards. Sometimes, we want to protect our clients from the world; sometimes, we want to protect ourselves. Sometimes we’re afraid they’ll take it out on us and sometimes we just think we’re not good enough, so we’re not going to be “right.” We may even be attempting to live the clients’ lives for them (something more common than you might think). Of course when I say “client,” I mean anyone we’re reading for, paying or not. Not to over corporate-ize the reading process, but I think of every reading as an agreement. This reading is meant to help you see whether you’re avoiding telling the client the truth, why, and what you might do about it. As always, take this with a grain of salt if you don’t think you do that. The first card is a yes/no (“Do I do this?”). I recommend letting all odd-numbered cards mean “no,” all even-numbered cards as “yes,” and any court card as “kinda.” The meaning of the card can tell you more about what’s behind that answer. Position 1. Do I tend to avoid giving my clients the full truth? (Obviously if the answer is “no,” you don’t have to do the rest of the spread.) Position 2. What’s the root cause of this? Position 3. What’s one thing I can do immediately to correct that? Position 4. How can I measure my progress? Brief example. For position one, I chose the King of Wands. That’s a court, so I’ll read it as “kinda.” Which is fair, I concur. I think there’s a somewhat overdramatic (fire) tendency to read the worst, but also a somewhat smug (king/fire) tendency to think, “Oh, maybe they’re not ready to hear this!” or even the occasional, “I don’t want them taking this out on me”—which is something very kingly. For position two, why, I chose the Page of Wands! I didn’t select that card until after I got my “kinda,” so I was pleasantly surprised to consider the page. I’m actually going to give myself three cards here, because I just really hate reading one. 🤣 So I also got the Chariot and Nine of Penties. There’s a somewhat passionately naive (page/fire) tendency to carry (chariot—more on that presently) the client who is just going through their life (9/penties). Why am I reading the Chariot as “carry”? Because it’s the major typically associated with Cancer (for some reason, Dalí assigns it Sagittarius—but since my moon is in Cancer, I’ve gotten used to that connection . . . even though I actually don’t think it makes much sense, and actually I think I agree with Sal) and chariots also carry. So it is a caring carry, as it were. The Cancerian protector/nurturer can make the Chariot into a whambulance. So to speak. For position three, I chose the Queen of Wands, Three of Cups, and the King of Cups! Lots of Cups. Whoa! “You, Queen,” it says to me (there is a deck I have that associates this card with Leo, which I’ve never seen anywhere else but it always sticks with me—and I’m a Leo sun), “are in spiritual collaboration with the client (3/cups). But you are not the boss of them (the two courts). The client has the enthusiasm and wisdom (queen/wands) and the ability to protect themselves (king/cups) and the responsibility (two courts) to manage their relationships (3/cups). They are the monarchs of their particular glens, they have or need their own community, and the “mommy and daddy” (two courts) attitude toward your clients is patronizing (the 3/cups in consort with the two courts, creating kind of an “aren’t you precious” vibe). Position 4, I chose the Six of Swords. When you’re communicating (swords) the reading (swords) in an even (six) way; when you’re telling all sides (six) of the story (swords). And when the client, not you, is piloting their boat (image). And there you have it! Let me know how it goes! |
AboutEach post is a tarot reading about the tarot, a lesson about the cards from the cards. Each ends with a brand new spread you can use to explore the main concepts of the reading. Archives
February 2025
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