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.