lesson 15: letting go of what you love(d)

Full disclosure. I had a shitty weekend and I’m writing this on a Sunday before a Monday I don’t have the energy for . . . so this may not be the most uplifting entry I’ve ever written, but who knows, right? What the heck. I hope y’all metal health is in good shape!

This week I’m forcing myself to work with only one card, something I never do. Why not risk making myself feel crapp​y about this, too? Winky face. 


Card drawn: Death. (Oh how ironic.)
Deck: Thoth, Lady Frieda Harris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s a time to leave New York. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

But let go we must. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this takes us to this week’s spread.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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