Nine-card box:
Popess (2), Five of Swords, Two of Batons
Pope, Queen of Batons (1), King of Coins
Three of Cups, Seven of Cups, Seven of Coins
Deck: Tarocchi ‘23, Gergely Bagaméry, Midnight Tarot

Couple notes: The link to the deck above takes you to Tarot Midnight’s Etsy shop, but it’s currently empty. Just FYI, at the time I’m posting this. But Gergely’s decks are wonderful, so when the chance comes up, get one one! Second, this is an even more discursive reading than usual and I did had have to pause about 2/3 of the way through, so you can sorta feel the moment where I have to work to recall what I was saying and the last third of the reading gets short shrift. But there are some good nuggies in here, so I present it to you—flaws and all.

Readings take as long as they take, it doesn’t matter what kind of reading it is or even how large the spread. If you’ve read this blog before, you know I can write hundreds of words on one card—so the theory would go that then it would take me thousands and thousands to read a spread this large. And that’s sound logic, to be sure. But what you may not know is that this is the spread I use for about 99% of readings I do, including the 15-minute-or-less ones I offer at fairs and festivals. When reading live, talking through the reading, this spread typically takes me from 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the topic, the deck, and the client. How can this be?

Writing a reading is so, so difference from speaking one. I’m of the opinion both use completely different parts of the brain. It’s an entirely different skill. I mean, OK, that’s a little over the top—it’s obviously still reading. But the way the brain navigates the reading is different. If you don’t believe me, think about the fact that you’re typically not typing while you’re speaking through a reading. Typing, if you do it comfortably, is a near-automatic event—but not so automatic that your brain isn’t engaging different muscles and neurons and shit in order to make that happen. Further, the thoughts you’re experiencing are being expressed in a different physical way: through your fingertips rather than your throat. The mind needs to keep a completely different pace when typing than when speaking—and, in fact, needs to keep a different pace from typing and handwriting. All of these are dramatically different, though clearly interconnected, phenomena! 

I’m far less likely to pontificate in readings when I speak them. Which is good, because pontification is exhausting. I’m less likely to digress. That’s partly an active choice. If I take a digressive path in speaking a reading, I’ll likely lose my way and forget the original path. This happens to me a lot if I’m not careful. “What was I saying?” Because my brain went on a jag I wasn’t ready for. This is less the case when writing because I can go back and look at what I was already saying—and because of that, I’m able to connect the dots better. That’s one reason I let these posts get so discursive. Tangents are fun! And they shed light on things, detail interpretations in ways that you typically don’t get to experience when you’re trying to stay on message. 

Anyhoo. This is all to say that readings take as long as they take, no matter the size of the spread—but much will depend on the way you’re delivering it. And as a person who is fascinated by the brain, I find this delightful. 

Anyway, we have reading to do. Stop distracting me. 

I haven’t used a Marseille-style deck in a bit and I typically don’t use the box spread for this blog—so I thought, why not do both? When I read this spread, the first card that goes down is the center (in this case, Queen of Batons), after that comes the top left. Then the rest go down completing the remaining lines. I don’t know why I do this, but I do and it works pretty well for me. I start by pairing the first two cards to get a base level, theme, or confirmation—then read the rows and columns, often but not always using lenormand techniques such as mirroring and knighting. 

This puts us into a reading where our first two cards are the Queen of Batons and the Popess. It’s worth pointing out that all of the people cards look to the right (which I typically think of as “the future,” for what that’s worth), except for the Popess, who looks to the left—away, to the past. There’s a tension here, right at the start, and we love tension in readings! We have two opposing entities: first, the fiery, enthusiastic, somewhat egotistical teacher and mentor—she’s spicy, she’s “known,” she’s got energy. And in this corner, we’ve got more or less the exact opposite of that: the Popess, who is secretive, aloof, stand-offish, with a tendency toward defensiveness. 

Defensiveness may not be a concept you associate with this card, and of course I have more negative associations for it than post readers. But allow: Popesses don’t exist. They’re not real.  Historically, in real life, it is an impossibility thanks to the conditions of the institution the pope leads. There are fictions, myths, and rumors—but no actual female popes. And yet, here she is in the deck!! WHAT’S SHE DOING HERE? HOW CAN SHE BE HERE IF SHE DOESN’T EXIST? “I don’t believe in female popes!” “Well there’s one right behind you!” The Popess is constantly having to prove she exists, and that makes her defensive. The second she encounters another person, she knows she’s going to be asked who she is, and she knows she’s going to have to tell them, and she knows she’s going to be told, “There’s no such thing!” So pardon her if she gets a little pissed. 

What are these two oppo figures up to and how do they set a theme for the reading? This is a deck with very little visual detail—one of the things I love about it is its immediate, bold, and clear images. I know exactly what I’m looking at right away and I get that pow of interaction. But that means I need to fill in the blanks, as it were. Here, I call upon what I know of these two cards. I’ve already given you a bit of a deep dive into the Popess and highlighted the main themes that strike me in this reading—in Marseille decks, generally, because it is in these decks where we have the most clear Pope Joan realness, and that’s when I’m reminded of it. Additionally, I associate this card both with gatekeeping, access, exclusivity, but also wisdom, protection, and safekeeping. 

I did a little number about the Queen of Batons above, but her Marie Antoinette-ish-ness in this image makes me think of her a bit as a dilettante. Which isn’t fair. I’m certainly not a royal apologist, but a lot of the nastier things said about Marie come from rampant misogyny, not only anti-royalism. The vitriol against her started well before the revolution. I’m not saying she was a saint, only that she was no more or less vile than any other entitled royal of the time and a lot of the criticism about her wasn’t about royalism, it was about the audacity of having been born with a vagina. And so, we might detect defensiveness here, too. And now we have two defensive queens (insert gay joke here), but who are defensive for different reasons and who manifest their defensiveness is very different ways. One, by cloaking herself in mystery and institutionalism and another with attention-seeking, creativity, and sex. And in this way, we’ve just discovered the main psychosis of all teens who grow up gay and Christian! 

Because this blog is about tarot reading, this “person” we’re describing—this bifurcated Betty—is us, the reader, the fortune teller. Torn between a fidelity to and an almost fetishy obsession with tradition and “correctness” (assuming the Popess wants to rule what popes rule, then what she’s ruling is a conservative institution) and a Lady Godiva-was-a-freedom-rider mentality, ready to throw off the constraints and expectations and gossip and judgment and just be the that bitch you think I am . . . kind of thing. Which I think is something that diviners face at certain points in our lives. The tug-o-war between tradition, doing things “right,” and the desire to break out and fuck around and find out. Even I, the most fuck-around-and-find-out fucker you’ll ever fuck with, has felt that. And sometimes I will use an old technique I’d long left behind, something “correct,” and wonder if all my fuckery has fucked things up and I should just doing it the right fucking way. 

Meaning: sometimes we (me included) find ourselves torn between tradition and iconoclasm. And this, I think, is a good thing. 

Let us expand our focus, though, and discover how the remaining cards fit into and shape this particular equation—shall we? In the top row, the Popess turns away from the Five of Swords and the Two of Batons. Ah! How very Popess-y. The Five of Swords is the ultimate pisser-offer of conservatism. It represents the entire revolution of thought process. The reason it seems to show conflict is because we find ourselves remarkably uncomfortable and even rather unhappy when we discover we’re in the throes of a major perception shift. And we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel—which, in this case, comes in the form of the Two of Batons. What? Because batons are fire and fire is light, that’s why. Through the cage created by the Five of Swords comes a pair of torches showing us the way through. And the cage of the five isn’t even that cagey. You can get on through if you wanna. But you don’t wanna. Why? That two also creates an X—saying HALT! And reminding you that you cannot carry this mopey dopey Eeyore bullshit with you. Eeyore? Yes, my friends. The Popess, in this case, is Eeyore. Look at those Bette Davis eyes, baby. Look how she clutches her book and her key/scepter combo. “No!” she says. “Mine!” Pouty baby. (This isn’t always this card, but she’s giving tantrum here.) 

She rests atop her big daddy, the Pope. Is that why she’s so resistant to discovering something new? Probably. Do you know that friend who you just know would benefit so fucking much from going to therapy—and they won’t for some dumb reason, like they think their shrink will make them break up with their partner? And you’re like . . . “why would she tell you that unless . . . unless you thought you needed to break up with your partner?” That’s what she’s giving, here. If she knows, if she finds out, if she experiences the perception shift she’s avoiding . . . she’s going to learn the truth. And she’s worried (five of swords = worry, also) she’ll find out she doesn’t (the X of the two) exist (X-ist—little wordplay, there, leading to that—quite cool!) It’s a valid fear. I’ve found out I don’t exist before, metaphorically, and it’s . . . not fun. 

The middle row, where our center card—and the Popess’s nemesis (say that five x fast)—lives finds her flanked by two old fuckers: the Pope and the King of Coins. Well, well; if it ain’t the ever-lovin’ patriarchy come to wield their . . . scepters. And now we potentially begin understanding something new about the Queen of Batons, who I felt had so much freedom and fire earlier. She’s got ‘em, that’s for sure; can she use ‘em? No, because she’s hemmed in by the literal definition of patriarchy, and the tarot’s grampa (as the last card in the deck—who I’m normally not this mean to . . . it’s my significator, after all!) on either side. The Pope is like the neighbor who shows up and starts feeding your husband all that republican garbage that you have to deprogram from him from. He drags the King of Coins down into the conservative muck with him. 

Or does he? They are all looking forward, unlike the Popess . . . Actually, now that I look at the trio I’m aware of how the first two cards (pope, queen) are both holding weapons—seemingly to bludgeon the following card. The Pope holds two weapons! So what the fuck is going on here?

There are times when seemingly competing interpretations and/or metaphors can show up, making it hard to know which to read. I say, why choose? Read both. Two things can be true. We can feel like we’re in one situation while really being in another — that’s one possibility. We can be simultaneously experiencing the same event from two minds. Why limit yourself to one being true? What if they both can contribute?

On the one hand, this row suggests a fiery marginalized person being hemmed in by patriarchy; on the other, an old order showing up to murder the next—all three preventing any progress from being made and almost time-machining each other and the steps they made out of existence. Chaotic metaphor there, but hopefully it tracks. Here we have a situation where someone (us) may feel as though we’re just this bad ass progressive trying to break through all this old shit that’s holding us back—meanwhile we’re being hemmed in by these fogies, man, these squares. At the same time, we might be part of the chain of stuck-in-the-mud-ism in our own way, trying to bop-on-the-head anyone who might be experiencing things in a very different way than we are (coins vs. batons, in this case). Like, the desire to be one’s own “thing” is also somehow stopping someone else from doing their thing—at least without your super critical eye.

The “you” in this reading isn’t you as in the sense that you reading this are this kind of person and I know because I did this card spread. It’s you in the sense of an imagined “you”—an us, really—that is both you and not you . . . or me. Ahem. 

A third way to look at this is as a progression, not unlike the Triumphs that were meant to be in the alleged parade that was supposedly but isn’t the original of the tarot trumps. This happens, then this happens, then this happens; there’s the Snoopy balloon, there’s yet another marching band (sorry), and look it’s the Santa Float Sponsored by Whoever the Fuck Finally Bought Santa. The Pope happens, then the queen, then the king. In this progression, we go from institutional and dogmatic, to fiery and free and iconoclastic, to down-to-earth and grounded—perhaps, one might say, integrated  or engaged. . . as though the King of Coins transforms from, emerges out of, the queen—just as the Queen of Batons emerges out of the Pope. Again, weird visual, but there you go. And all of these things can be true at the same time because we contain multitudes! We can be progressing and holding ourselves back at the same time, we can be trying to bludgeon anyone who disagrees with us or makes us feel small, while at the same time understand that growing at something is merely the path of integrating all the things we learn into something we can use every day (coins). When we experience these kinds of dialectics in readings it can be frustrating. Which one is right? Try this: let them all be “right”! That’s not always the case, but sometimes more than one version of reality exists and you can see it in the reading. That’s not a limitation, it’s the ability to peel back the onion. (You can also let the client guide, too—though they don’t always know all the layers, which is why they needed the reading.) The point, rather, is that we see that these are all concurrent energies and really any one of them could take over. Knowing that we’re capable of (in this case) all three helps us then say, “ah, how do I make sure I’m feeding the one that yields the best outcome for me?” Which, again, is kind of the point of divination.

The bottom row, the first featuring cups, offers us a three (growth), a seven (introspection and/or luck) and then the seven of coins—offering similar qualities as the prior seven, but in the realm of earth. Growth is good, this is what we’re after. We’re talking spiritual growth, emotional growth, even divinatory growth—as the suit of cups could easily be the suit of divination (clarity) (though I would typically pair it with swords [vision]—so that we get “clear vision,” so to speak. But that’s just a little factoid I felt like sharing), here the cups offer enough context for divination—given that this is a blog about divination.  When we know (seven—the introspection) that we are really connected to what is truly important (seven again) to us in order for these growth to happen--but, and this is a place where order really can impact meaning, the fact the growth (the three) comes first reminds us that we’re already doing this. The necessary self reflection is going to happen because it’s been set up by the entire reading—meaning all the cards we’ve already talked about set the stage for those two sevens. If you were to lay out all the other cards in a row, using the order we laid these out in, the two sevens would be the final two cards and it would be maybe easier to think that way . . . but even so, that’s what this suggests to me. 


I normally don’t consider the nine-card box through that lens, but there’s no reason not to—especially because the shape is somewhat arbitrary. I mean, it’s not, it’s the shape I chose; but it easily could have been any other shape I use here, because this is also very impulse driven, anyway. 


So what this bottom row suggests to me is that everything that comes before, all the sorta self-flagellation and tugging-o-wars is fine . . . except you’re just doing what you’re supposed to be doing, which is moving through life and learning and divination by being where you are, evaluating what that means, and growing from it. In essence, this reading suggests that even when you feel like you’re at war with yourself and/or the rest of the divination landscape (or community, if you prefer to use that word — I can’t stand it sometimes), you’re really still right where you need to be and all the shit you’re going through is just part of the process of growing. We can feel at war even with ourselves when we’re learning because new information keeps coming in that should make us change our point of view. Like, that’s both the point of divination and learning! 


Looking at the columns quickly, the first (Popess, Pope, 3/cups), suggests that it is actually the marriage of our institutional and marginal selves, points of view, etc., that lead to our spiritual growth. And so it is by both learning and following the rules (pope) and trying to create some new system that we achieve divinatory/spiritual growth. In this trio, note how the Popess is taking on a very different tone than she did in the earlier conversation. The fact that she is now recontextualized with two different cards changes her, and thought she represented conservatism before, that isn’t the case here. The Pope, the most trad of all the traddies—just by existing—negates the Popesses reality, which makes her marginalized and now much more like the Queen of Wands from earlier. 


The middle column (5/swords, Queen of Batons, 7/cups) reminds is that our perception shifts are frequently achieved by following passions that really, really, really connect with who we are and what we’re most passionate about—the combo of swords, fire, and water can create an evangelical nature—but in this case, we don’t take that to mean fundamentalism; merely a deep, deep connection to spiritual depth. The 7/cups reminds of how important it is to be true to our values. 


The final column (2/batons, King of Coins, 7/coins) grounds us. Following cool shit that attracts us (2, attraction; batons, fire) is both imminently practical (king/coins) and necessary (7/coins, as important to our lives because sevens asks us to reflect on this.)


Clearly I’m doing the columns much more quickly than I did the rows, and I find with this spread that isn’t unusual. In this case it’s mostly to keep the wordcount down, but by this point in the reading the central message has typically been received and the remaining combos add nuance, shading, and advice. And if we already got the answer, why keep going? Well, no reason, really—other than that we’ve got the cards and the time, so why not? I’ve never gone deeper into a reading and found it made things worse. A worst, it just tells me what I already know; but at best, it inevitably increases my confidence in the overall message and explore it in a more layered way. What’s not to love?


A Read of One’s Own
Here’s a spread about exploring the tension, living there, and benefitting from it. 

Position 1: Where you currently are as a diviner. 
Position 3: Where you’re going as a diviner. 
Position 2 (between 1 and 3): The tension between them and how to benefit.

Super quick example: 
I chose Seven of Coins (again!) for position 1, The Lovers for position 3, and The Star for position 2. As always, I recommend three cards per position—but I’m being brief. Or trying to. It’s funny, though, whenever I use one card where I really know I should be using three, I can feel myself getting annoyed. One card is not enough context, dammit! 

The Seven of Coins suggests a divination that is focused both on the practical and the financial—readings that are interesting to and connect with the populace, as a way of winning the over. In essence, the introspection I typically see in the sevens moves outward . . . to, I guess, extrospection. Why am I getting that vibe? Intuition, mostly. It seemed sensible. There’s also the way of reading this where my readings are more focused on what’s important to me—but I know that’s not really true. There is the potential, though, for it to suggest my own world (earth) view being dominant, and that’s fair—because most of us do that. 

The Lovers almost suggests a more you centric approach — where my focus becomes less on the needs of me as a reader and my worldview, and more on the needs of the client. While Cupid, here, is of course blindfolded—this particular lovers card shows only two figures, and the arrow has already been shot. It hasn’t hit anyone. But what we do have are two people focused on each other. (See photo below.) The lover is focused on the partner, and so the focus may be shifting from me as a reader to the client in a new, deeper way. Again, I don’t think I’m a particularly self-centered reader; I work hard to make it all about the client, but what I think is a movement from the practicality of the coins to the more ephemeral nature indicated by the Lovers and the majors generally. 

Another major in the spread links the two, The Star. This is my direction card, so it’s fun to see it in the position of direction. In many ways, this card suggests example what the reading above—the lesson—did. You’re always moving in the direction you’re going on, so don’t worry so much about it .Tension is sexy and anyway you’re going where you’re going whether you want to or not, so go for the ride and don’t kick yourself around too much. 

Works for me! 

Have a great week. 

Line of three: Ace of Wands (2), The Fool (1), Nine of Wands (3)
Deck: Folk Magic Tarot, Ibiza Tarot
 
It’s been a minute since I’ve done a three-card pull, and because I forgot to write this this weekend and I’m posting it tomorrow, I thought this was a good chance for simplicity. This is a lovely deck that I’d seen on Instagram and I’m so, so attracted to Eastern European sort of folk art that I had to pick it up. It’s really lovely. 
 
I don’t think we’ve seen The Fool much if at all on this blog. And to be honest, I rarely see Fools in readings. I wonder whether this has to do how care-full people are right now. Note the dash. Not a typo. Care-full as in full of care, not cautious. I think The Fool is a card we see during care-free moments, care-less moments; moments of innocence and moments of almost preternatural openness to whatever may come. I don’t know anyone who has had moments like that recently, not of any consequences anyway. Though there’s something fleeting about The Fool, too. We can only retain their state of innocence and lack of expectation for so long. We aren’t naturally suited to the state The Fool has come to represent in the cultural world of tarot. It’s a hard card to get hold of, and in a way maybe that’s apt; this card can’t sit still for long. It’s wily, slippery, evasive, quicksilver. Quicksilver is another name for Mercury and this reminds us that while the astrological association of the card is air, it’s not not also the card that follows: Magician/Mercury, who is also airy. There are esoteric theories that connect the two cards, almost suggesting that they’re the different emanations of the same thing. (If I’m not mistaken, this comes up on Fortune’s Wheelhouse.)
 
I’ve never felt particularly inspired by “the fool’s journey”—this blog’s title, notwithstanding. The idea of it made theoretical sense, but not divinatory sense. First of all, the journey of the fool isn’t the cards that follow it because the deck doesn’t spend much time in order. Second, there’s something sort of negating about the entire tarot somehow being the journey fools take because it is also a card in the deck and has meaning and associations of its own. They aren’t a non-playing character, so to speak; they aren’t not impacting the game’s outcome. And this is true (I think) of the game the cards were made for. 
 
All that said, I’ve always loved this card and I’m sure I’ve shared how I used to wear it as a pendant when I began my tarot journey. I envied the freedom. But, as I’m sure I’ve always said, had I followed my “dreams” at that point, it would have been a fool’s errand in more ways than one. Frankly, there’s a good possibility that if I’d moved to New York and tried to make it in the theatre, I’d be dead by now. I know that sounds dramatic, but I had no idea how sheltered I’d been, how naive I was, how unprepared for the world—particularly the art world—I was. I operated from the very earnest but very dangerous desire to be approved of and loved. My dating experience of the time is, I think, a good way to imagine what my theatre career would have been: I was so desperate to be loved by a man that I went on dates with dudes I had no attraction to, allowed myself to be intimate with guys I wasn’t attracted to and didn’t trust, and twisted myself into a pretzel to make myself right for guys I didn’t really like because I was desperate. Now, apply those tendencies to a career where you’re constantly begging potential bosses and coworkers to live you. Apply them, too, to the fact that the theatre is a world of predators, grifters, and con artists. I mean that’s not the--well . . . I was going to say that’s not the basis of the industry, it’s just a problematic branch. But . . . That’s not entirely true. At any rate, I was easy pickings. A crush on the wrong director, an audition in a strange location  and I could easily have wound up getting offed. I think so much about Venus Xtravaganza, queer/trans icon and known now from the documentary Paris is Burning. She disappeared and was found slain during the production of that film. And we know her name because she happened to be making that doc. There are so many other missing and murdered persons—queer, indigenous, women, etc.—whose names we don’t know. And had I followed my Fool-ish desire, there’s nothing saying I wouldn’t have gotten into a car with a man I thought would love me only to wind up stuffed in the trunk. 
 
I didn’t mean for this to get grim, and clearly that didn’t happen to me—but the point is what that we want is not always what’s best for us. 
 
I feel this acutely today and so it’s timely. I was reminded today that, though I still long for and miss my theatre life, every encounter I have with the theatre these days leaves me feeling shitty about myself. It doesn’t matter that I’m an incredible playwright. (I’ve got a gift, I don’t know why—but I can write a beautiful, hilarious play.) I want so much for it to work because I’m good at it! But truth be told, I haven’t enjoyed the process in years—well before the panny—and I really have had to accept the most garbage behavior from people in that world. Not from everyone, not by a long shot. Just from the people who have the most influence on my ability to get produced. 
 
This maudlin exploration may have turned you off. But I want to highlight that this is all part of this card. 
 
Listen, choices are great, freedom is great, making bold moves and damning the torpedos—all great. Except when it’s not. What we tend not to talk about with this card is consequences. The imagery in the deck and the esoteric associations have elevated this card to a kind of idealistic and totally imaginary non-reality that most of us, unless we’re extremely moneyed and free of any kind of burden (including self-doubt), will never ever experience in any kind of meaty way. Most of this people on this planet cannot experience the kind of thing readers typically say about this card.  We interpret this card through wishful thinking. But it’s not necessarily helpful. Particularly in readings. And, frankly, even in pathworking or intention-setting. If you’re doing spellwork around The Fool and you are not setting careful fucking parameters, then you’re setting yourself for getting exactly what you want—and every single consequence that comes with it. 
 
Boy, he’s such a scold today, isn’t he? 🤣
 
I don’t mean to be. But a thing we have done with tarot—the collective “we” of . . . all this—is that we take the cards and make them into icons. Those icons become ideals and then those ideals become the gap between giving a reading and reciting a wishlist. 
 
Readers, particularly those who read for ourselves, want to know how we can tell that our readings aren’t being overly influenced by confirmation bias. I think one way to tell is if your readings tend only to highlight the best aspects of your favorite cards. If you’re never able to see this or any card through a darker lens, if you’re not able to detect the consequences of answered prayers, then you’re likely giving yourself too biased a reading. Of course, the other part of that is true. If you never get a good reading, probably you’re looking only at the dark side of the card. (This reminds me that one reason I don’t work with reversals anymore is that cards would show up reversed, but it doesn’t seem to make sense for the reading—the reversal felt haphazard or meaningless rather than nuancing the meaning. But, the benefit of reversals is that it stops us from being too hard or too easy on cards. And so if you find yourself giving readings that seem to be always too + or too -, try using reversals and see if that helps!)
 
It’s worth pointing out that one reason people struggle with the court cards is that we will really like one particular card or rank or suit and use that to sum up our own personality—which makes it difficult to then use it to describe other people, or to see it in ways that reflect lives beyond our own. On top that, we can ID the other cards with people we don’t like, and then it becomes hard to interpret the better aspects of that card. The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Hanged Man, The Devil, and The Tower are often given over to this negativity bias. The Emperor and The Hierophant are understandable. We hate those guys. But of course there are times when The Emperor can represent just, like, a good dad. And there are plenty of times where The Hierophant can simply indicate faith or tradition. Every card has layers and shadows and highlights and nuances—whether we use reversals or not. And the cards as a set will influence each other so that we understand how each is behaving. 
 
Thanks for attending maudlin meditations with Tommy Bee. 
 
Anyhoo—let’s talk about context for a moment. The Fool stands not alone, here, but flanked by the Ace of Wands and the Nine of Wands. I had a similar spread this weekend while leading the Re-Learning Tarot course I’m doing. Our topic was Questions We Should Never Ask Tarot and to explore that topic I made everyone in the class read on the question “When am I going to die?” DON’T FREAK OUT. They didn’t read that for themselves, they read for a man we made up. And I didn’t tell anyone that this is a good question and that we should ask it. Instead, I asked the class to do the reading for a fake dude to see for themselves whether there was any benefit. What better way to know than to try? And doing readings for fake people is the safest way you can do that. But the point of that story isn’t the question as much as the spread I got, which involved the Ace of Gardens/Earth/Coins (I used the Japaridze for that), Strength, and the Ten of Gardens. And I explored with the group how there are two ways to read that: 1. They have the strength to sustain the entire journey of life, they will live a long one and die when there’s nothing left. (Strength carrying the ace—birth—through the “entirety” of a life well-lived, the ten.) 2. The client’s constant output of energy (Strength) will mean that go from 0 (ace) to sixty (ten) super fast—spending all their energy and dying young. (In this case, Strength as an entity using up their life force faster.) Which one is correct? Honestly, to know for sure I’d pull more cards. But because the first one—long life—was my first and strongest hit, that’s what I’d decide is true. 
 
Here, we could say that the Fool carries the ace through to the nine—the near-end, but not the end. What does that suggest, given everything we’ve discussed so far?
 
We haven’t talked about the wands, yet. I don’t think wands has been a particularly heavy presence in this blog to date, either. Again, that feels apt: I have no fucking energy, anymore. Going back to my misspent youth, and the fact that I’m a Leo sun, I have major fiery tendencies and wands is the suit I associated with all my theatrical dreams. Luckily, and I don’t know how I managed this, I didn’t pin all my hopes and dreams on that suit. I just got happy when I got readings with lots of wands. “I’m going to be a star!” (As though there’s such a thing as a playwright who is a “star!”) Being young, though, I tended to sum the suit up purely as our meant-to-dos. In essence, I looked at this suit as our raison d’être. Our purpose. Because that’s what I needed it to be, what I wanted it to be, and that’s what I assumed everyone else needed it to be. 
 
I found myself quite limited by that, as time went on, as my skill grew . . . it was like my understanding of the deck improved, but my understanding of wands remained arrested. And I’m not saying that this happens to everyone, but I do know as a person who works with adult learners that when we assign too much import to things they can become impossible to work through or understand. We somehow psyche ourselves out, preventing us from making progress. And it’s usually because we can’t let go of something—a perception, a bias, a cosmology—that has moved from facilitator to barrier. That does happen. Things that helped once can hurt, as anyone who (like me) has in the past experienced difficult with over-indulging in alcohol (hi, lockdown!). Over-identification with things makes people very difficult to move or train. Look at so-called American “identity” politics: men who think everyone is always obsessed with race and gender have such fragile concepts of their own masculinity, they can’t see that by getting so foaming-at-the-mouth angry about other people’s bodies (for example) that they are the ones actually obsessed with race and gender—and they’re suffering for no reason over shit that has nothing to do with them.
 
Not the most elegant metaphor, but you ideally get the point: the more intensely we feel something, the harder it is for us to see it clearly. In my teens and twenties, when I fell for someone I fell hard. I both saw none of their faults and became totally enthralled to the point of losing my identity, and desperately seeking their attention and approval. I was so profoundly insecure, so mooney, so dreamy, so romantic, that I would go to run and errand and find myself taking a route that took me past their houses so that I might “bump into” these various hims. It’s mortifying to think of, now; I hate that and revealing it ain’t much fun, either. But I was lonely. I say all the time I’m so thankful we didn’t have social media when I was that age—AOL instant messenger and later gay-dot-com chat rooms did enough damage to my psyche. But I can only imagine the kind of desperate shit I would have pulled on these apps back then. I shudder to think of it. Literally. 
 
Anyway, feeling too much of something can make it hard to see it clearly. And because of that I had a hard time really understanding this suit. But oddly, that experience I just described—feeling too much of something can make it hard to see it clearly—is a facet of this suit! And I only really just made that connection right now. But that’s a totally fiery tendency. Fire consumes. When we are at fire’s mercy, we may become consumed or consumptive (there’s a word with lots of layers). I had a tendency to become consumptive. And now that I think about it, my learning often takes this journey. I think about my reading habits. I will fully devour every fucking book on a topic that I’m suddenly interested in. I’ve done it with the arts, I’ve done it with tarot, I’ve done it with Hoodoo and Witchery, I’ve done it with the Thoth deck, I’ve done it with just about anything that strikes my fancy. And in these cases, these kinds of concentrated learning immersions, we can see the benefit of this kind of tendency. Becoming consumed by something healthy (a kind of intense hyperfocus, for my ND guys, guys, and nonbinary pals) is the same thing as the unhealthy tendency I had to, like, commit some mild compulsive . . . attention seeking. It’s just . . . good for you. Of course, too much of a good thing can make you cranky—we can get oversaturated, something I also have a tendency to do. But when it comes to learning, you just move on to something else. With people, that’s harder. 
 
Here, the Fool carries the ace to the nine, as we said. We could say, then, that they’re actually not starting from zero—they have a little experience (the ace) that they’re bringing on this heavy path (the nine of wands often shows us someone pretty bruised, and nines are “heavy” generally; they suggest a lot of something). If we want to bring that into our divinatory world, we might say to students that you’re never starting from square one, you’re never free of experience you can use, and when you think that way the path doesn’t seem as daunting. You’ll have more energy (nine wands) to carry you along. 
 
Which is true and quite lovely. 
 
We might say, too, that it is The Fools desire (ace) that sustains (nine) their journey. 
 
There’s lots of ways to interpret this and I think all of them are valid and true. But since I took you on that fucking sob story of my former life, it’s well for me to bring that into the puzzle, here, too. I misquote Yoav Ben Dov a lot and say, “nothing that happens in a reading is an accident.” That’s not really what he said, but it’s what I remember. He was saying, in essence, that everything that happens during a reading is part of the reading—from the time reader and client greet each other to the time the part, everything is part of the reading. The fact that these cards prompted/triggered me to share those stories is part of the reading. Sure, they were meant to illustrate aspects of The Fool that don’t usually get highlighted, but they were prompted by this trio, this spread, and the open question I ask at the start of every post: “What is lesson #?”
 
We may start on a path (the ace) knowing and trust and believing (fool) that it will take us where we want to go (nine) . . . and after taking that long (nine) road (fool), we start to wonder . . . is this really where I wanted to go? The closer we get to our goal (nine), the more we realize . . . it’s too hot (fire) for me here. There isn’t enough air, water, or earth for me here. What I felt I wanted (ace) turns out to be a burden (a typical image on the ten, but that is well set up by the typical nine). The closer I’m able to see what I wanted (that implied ten + the nine), the more I start to recognize that this ain’t it. And only a Fool keeps going somewhere they don’t want to be. 
 
A reminder I really needed today. I cannot tell you how often I feel like the choice I made to give up on theatre has made me feel like a quitter. Like I couldn’t hack it. And when you’re starting out, the “pros” are always like, “If you can do anything else, do it. This isn’t for you. This is a hard industry. Not everyone can do it.” And, really, that’s true. But it also feels like pretentious gatekeeping. And I realize now that, like . . . I couldn’t hack it. I mean, I can handle the writing and the reviews and the actors’ egos and all that . . . but I can’t handle the industry. Not even the corporate bullshit. I’ve dealt with that my entire adult life. I can’t deal with an industry that accepts cruelty, predatory behavior, bullying, fat-shaming, femme-shaming, unpaid internships, the Ivy League-centricity, the racism, all the things . . . an industry in which that’s not only the norm, but just the cost of doing business. Totally fine. Totally acceptable. That’s what I can’t hack. And, for all the shit that corporate america rightfully deserves, I have been treated with more humanity and kindness there than I have in some theatre spaces. 
 
I want it, but I want the ideal (ace) and not the reality (nine). And to keep hoping that reality will bend to my will . . . is foolish. 
 
That’s not really a lesson about divination — but it is a lesson in letting go. And sometimes we as readers need to do that. Sometimes that means taking a little break, sometimes it means recognize that we’re burned out and need a long break, sometimes it means recognizing that the reality of being a diviner isn’t what we hoped it would be and we need to rethink our relationship to it. 
 
My example is extreme. I don’t want you to think you’re going to have to give up tarot the way I gave up theatre. And who the fuck knows if I won’t cave in to my ego and some point and go back? What I mean, though, is more like the experience I had when I “gave up” on tarot years ago: What I really needed to do was go back to “square one” (the ace) and start again. 
 
Because, and this is I think to the key to this spread, the Fool lacks ego.  
 
Despite being surrounded by fiery cards, The Fool doesn’t give a fuck if they have to start again, because they never were that married to any idea. “OK,” they say. “That happened.” Then they go back to one. Not the zero, but one. Because, though it didn’t yield the longed-for results, it generated experience. The Fool can never go back to zero again. In may case, that meant asking myself, “What do I really want from tarot and divination?” The answer to that became Tarot on Earth. And so there’s an example of how restarting a journey already begin can actually yield amazing things! (And this is something I’ve learned in my writing life, too. Often I’ll start a draft thinking I know what it’s going to be, and about a third of the way through I’ll realize that I’m actually writing something else. I’ll throw out everything and start again, but those “lost” pages aren’t for naught—they taught me what I was trying to do.)
 
When I saw the Death card in the Wild Unknown Tarot, I realized that the card is about fertilizer. Everything we go through fertilizes everything we will become. Which reminds me how the astrologer Sue Thompkins (author of The Contemporary Astrologer’s Handbook) explains our sun sign as not so much who we are, but who we’re becoming. 
 
We could think of this three cards as saying something similar. Start again if you have to, or if you want to; what you’ve done so far wasn’t time wasted, it was lessons learned and experienced gained. 
 
That, incidentally, is a reminder I needed today, too. 
 
A read of one’s own
 Here’s a little spread to explore something you may benefit from starting over or “going back to one” as they say on movie sets. 

Position 1 - Something you’re working on that would benefit from a re-start. 

Position 2 - Why/how you’ll benefit

Position 3 - How to deal with the ego hit

Position 4 - Advice on how to restart

​

Loop of 8.  Starting top center and going clockwise, Eight of Coins (1), Two of Cups (2), Five of Coins (4), Nine of Staves (7), The Hermit (8), Nine of Cups (6), Ten of Swords (5), Justice (3). (As always, the numbers following the card name indicates the order in which the card was laid down on the table. In this case, like most when using a line, arc, or loop, I alternate left and right. For the sake of ease, I listed them clockwise. Either, both, or neither may prove worthwhile in interpreting the spread. 

Deck: Sirena by Mr. Friborg. 

Typically I use a loop like this when drawing an arc of five or seven cards and deciding a few more cards would benefit the spread. You can see an earlier post on how I have no issue drawing additional cards in a reading, usually when reading for myself. Today, though, I felt like mixing things up, so I started with the loop.

Here’s a case where it feels like a lot of cards, even though my typical spread is actually nine—one card more than here. When I make spreads, shape doesn’t mean much to me—but I think it’s worth pointing out that shape can make a spread seem larger (or smaller) than it is. And often, especially for new readers, it’s not so much the number of cards in a reading that becomes daunting; rather, it’s the impression that there’s too much info. Fair. Especially for those of us who fall easily to overwhelm. I’m often among those folks. And so I think it’s worth saying that if you lay out a spread and you look at it and you just think “oh fuck” when faced with interpreting it, it may not be the cards that are triggering that reaction, but the arrangement you chose. And I do think that if you can find a new or adjusted shape that preserves the interrelationship between the cards, there’s no reason not to move them around. By this I mean that the way the cards interact with one another, their relative position to each other, should be preserved because that is part of the reading now. But if you can even, say, close the gap between the middle top and bottom cards, it may make the spread feel less daunting—without shifting the card relationships too much. 

Anyway, I don’t feel particularly cowed by this spread yet—I just wanted to point that out. And it occurred to me that this felt like “a lot” of cards at first glance, even though I typically work with nine. Size may not matter, but shape does. 

Anyhoo. Here we are, lesson twenty-four. This a new deck, one I backed on Kickstarter, by a creator whose work I really admire. And one of my favorite decks of 2023 was Mr. Friborg’s Tarrochi, which I took with me to New Orleans. So, though I’m not well-versed in mermaid lore, I needed to back this and I’m glad I did because it’s quite striking—and quite dark, compared to my other mermaid deck (another one I love, Dame Darcy’s). In fact, it’s the darkness of Friborg’s decks that I am so drawn to. The Tarrochi, which features all skeletons, manages to somehow achieve a certain kind of left-handed, memento mori kind of sexiness that this weirdo appreciates. 

When we have a large spread, particularly one that could begin and end anywhere and can be read in multiple ways, the reader has basically two choices: start with the most “logical” spot to them (in this case, the first card I put down would make sense—the Eight of Coins), or the card that seems most relevant to the situation we’re reading about (where we know a theme) or that calls most strongly to the reader (where we’re unsure what the reading will cover). In this case, both cards are the same—that eight. Reason being, this is a blog about the craft of reading cards, and this is a card that is also typically about craft. 

This is an a unique depiction of the card. We have a land man doing some work on land while some merpeople frolic. And this immediately makes me think of the insecurity I sometimes feel as a reader because I’m “not magical.” This is what I tell myself in the moments when I’ve over-consumed media (books, videos) from people with skills I lack. For example, I spent a lot of time reading about mediumship for some research recently, and because I’m not one I started to find myself feeling less-than. Not unlike this mortal normie doing the hard work while the magical creatures in the world go off and play. In my better moments, I recognize this as insecurity—and to a degree the direct result of choosing to eliminate spiritual practice from my divination for so long (a necessity, in my case, and I don’t regret it). But there are times when I just feel “not cool enough” for the divcom (a term I just made up for “divination community”). I know that might sound nuts for someone who has such a big fucking mouth and such a strong opinion about everything, but my innate understanding of myself in the world is that I’m always the least cool, least interesting, least attractive fucker in the room. One reason I don’t whine about that more is because I recognize that I’m not, you know, totally pointless and because there are plenty of folx who would give their eye teeth for my YouTube subscriber count. But we tend to see ourselves not in terms of what we have, but what we lack. And as someone who has been making YouTube content since about 2012, I can’t help but notice how many people who started well after me who have twice or even three times the subscribers I do. This is of course why we shouldn’t compare our selves, but I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel shitty sometimes that for the last two years my count has hung in the same place and I still can’t break 10,000. 

Luxury problem, of course. And yet, this is how the brain works. 

And it doesn’t help us, because—and now we return to a favorite topic of mine—that’s all ego.

Here’s another example, for you. I recently read at an event and I was the last reader to be approached for a reading and I wasn’t really particularly busy most of the night—unlike the other readers, who were. Sometimes that happens, and it easily could have been that I chose a table toward the back of the small area we inhabited. It also happened to be a long event (for me, anyway) and I worried whether I’d have enough energy to read all night. But none of that mattered. For the first twenty or thirty minutes, while I sat trying to look adorable and unbothered, I internally regretted applying to read and chalked it up to yet more evidence of my worthlessness. This is a lifelong journey, folks, and I have to tell you I’m fucking sick of it lately. Especially because the world keeps finding new ways to make us not like ourselves, and while the ensuing armageddon that Trump and Israel and Putin and others are rapidly pushing us toward (much to the delight of the mentally fucked up “Christian” right, who fetishizes this shit) reminds us that our self esteem may not be the most important thing—it’s also not going to get any better, because for those of us in typically excluded communities, we’re once again going to find ourselves the object of ad hominem attacks from the people running the world. This is as it’s always been, of course, and those of us in the so-called US have been unfairly spared a lot of the worst that the world can offer, so my nihilism is fairly privileged—but I’m also fairly convinced we are in a sea change moment and while it’s probably necessary, I do not believe it will be pretty or inspiring. Love and light, I guess I’m saying, need not apply. 

What got me out of that doldrum was a mantra I occasionally return to: “This is about them, not you.” By this I mean, that I’m going to these events—asking to go to these events—to read for clients, not to validate my own ego. To put it another way, and I’m fairly sure I’ve written about this before, I remember a quote from my acting days from the noted teacher Stanislavsky (founder of the famously misunderstood, misused, “method”—which is one of the foundational fuckeries of theatrical training and one reason why the theatre industry is so toxic . . . not that what Stanislavsky taught was so bad, though it’s often inscrutable; no, it’s the Americanization of it that turned too many heterosexual men into Brando wannabes who treated their coworkers like shit in the name of “realism”—and still do). He said (allegedly), “love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.” It’s the same thing. A play isn’t about the actors, the writer, or the director; it’s about the audience. A reading isn’t about the reader; it’s about the client. 

When I get in my head about my relative coolness (or lack thereof), I’m not focused on my mission as reader: to give real, practical readings to clients. Instead, it’s focused on validation. It’s self-centered rather than client-centered, and if you know Your Tarot Toolkit, you know how evangelical I am about client-centric reading. 

But of course our progress isn’t a straight line (which now makes me happy I used this loopy spread), and even though I know that I sometimes have to work at reminding myself of it. And I think this iteration of the Eight of Coins really sums that up for me. 

The card is flanked by Justice and the Two of Cups. I take this as a reminder that the “right” thing to do is focus on the giving (not taking) nature of divination. When faced with Justice, I often overreach with clients. When it shows up early in a spread, I frequently ask clients if they’re involved in social justice work—and ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, they are not. And so frequently I just read it as “correct” or “right,” not in the legal or common sense, but in the moral sense. In this case, not the morality of a society controlled by wealth, but actual morality. If John Valjean, prisoner 24601, got a reading from me asking, “Should I steal this bread to feed my family?”, the Justice card would say “yes.” The moral thing is to feed the hungry. But does it mean there won’t be consequences? Not at all. There often are—and certainly, the story of Les Miserables, which I’m referencing here, is set off by that act and the conflict between the “law” (Javert, the cop whose black-and-white, Christo-colonial vision of justice causes him to devote his entire life to destroying Jean Valjean—ultimately (spoiler) leading to his own demise) and morality. These are not new conflicts. The Justice card is “right” thing or the “correct” thing; not the legal or socially acceptable thing. (Of course, there are also times when the card represents the exact opposite, contextually—the power of the elite and the oppression of the marginalized. How do I know which is which? You guessed it! Context!) In other cases, though, it needs to be read without this grandiosity. Sometimes, it simply means “the correct thing to do.” And in this reading, that’s what it is saying. Paired with the Two of Cups, it reminds us that the way out of that feeling of missing out (in the eight) is to focus on giving, rather than taking—focus on the client rather than feeling validated. 

That’s not bad advice, of course. It’s not easy, but it’s true. These two cards are flanked by the Ten of Swords and the Five of Coins. Ruh-roh, Rhaggy! These are no bueno. If we’re focusing on the client, why then do we have these doom and gloom around us?

Well, kids, I think it’s partly because that’s the gig. Like, deciding to become a reader who offers services to clients (paid or not), we are essentially going out into the chaos and saying, “yes, please dump your traumas at me.” That sounds glib and I don’t mean it to. But it’s the reality. Particularly when we’re reading in public or at events that have a fairly steady flow of customers. You’re simply going to be encountering person after person who is in some kind of a state. Sure, many folks are simply curious, but that doesn’t mean darker topics won’t come up in the reading. And many others are carrying something that they’re struggling with and that’s why they want the reading. 

This underscores, really, the necessity of de-centering the reader. If we’re doing readings to feel good about ourselves, we’re not reading for clients. That’s it. Pure and simple. (You can feel good about what you do—you should! But if your brain energy is focused on you and how you’re feeling, that’s a sign you’re not focused on the client.) And I wonder whether the times where I struggled reading for clients was because I was centering myself. Maybe divinity said, “well, Tommy, if you can’t focus on the client, we’re not helping you get an answer.” (I actually think it’s purely that our brain can only focus on one thing, and if we’re focusing on our valuelessness then we can’t focus on interpreting cards. But there’s nothing saying I’m right, and as someone who has seen first-hand the impact of bad-but-earnest readings on clients, I’d like to think there’s some safety net in place where my guided might stop me before I give a crap-ass reading. But I guess I won’t know until I know, ya know?)

Anyway, these two cards—the ten and the five—bookend the spread. We can think of them as parenthesis, containing the whole thing. And together they’re saying, “People often want readings because their brains and lives are in states of fuckery, and they want clarity—so you need to get your own fuckery out of the equation, because it’s not the point of doing this. It’s not about you; it’s about them.”

When we remember our mission, why we do what we do, we have an easier time forgetting to care about our ego validation. What’s your mission as a reader? Mine is clarity. I want to give clear, precise answers that make sense based on the client’s life. That’s it. I have tangential missions (cost accessibility, for example; I tend to believe that divination is spiritual work for the masses, not the elite), but ultimately I want to give clients clear, honest, true answers. That’s it. That’s my mission. C’est ça. What’s yours? If you don’t know it, no worries—the spread at the end of today’s post will be all about that. Regardless, focusing on your mission is a good way to get out of your head and move away from the “nobody loves me, I think I’ll eat some worms” mentality that so many of us have been taught to dance. 

We have three more cards to look at! Yeegad! By this time we have a pretty good answer, is there any point in going on? Of course, but that doesn’t mean that these three cards will add anything new. Or, what I really should say is that they don’t have to. But—and this is where things get crazy!—they certainly could. 
Could I stop here? Yeah, I can do anything I want. Would that be “bad”? No. We got an answer. There’s no fucking law saying that if you don’t interpret every card in a reading that you’re going to hell. Do whatever you want. But since we drew them, why not use them? 

We have two nines, and that’s always fun—when we have repetitions. Nines are numbers I associate with tiredness, with burnout (as you probably know by now). Cups/water and wands/fire are the two suits most prone to overwork, overextension. So of course that’s what they’re saying here, right?

I don’t know. 

Actually, at the moment, I’m more drawn by The Hermit who sits directly between those two and directly below the Eight of Coins. The Hermit is, one might say, a “higher octave” of this eight. Not all Eights of Coins, but this one, in this reading, with this image that produced this interpretation. The Hermit recognizes that he’s something other than a mermaid (in this deck, he’s part crab—a clever joke) and does his business. In fact, the very act of being what he is kind of demands that he stay somewhat apart. Of course that’s the nature of the Hermit, right? But in this context, he’s not a “hermit”; he’s us, he’s a fortune teller, a reader. He understands that doing this work, at least doing it well, requires a certain protection from the normal world (see his shell) and/or from the common way of doing and seeing things. 

I’ve said before that divining changes you, but I can’t remember where I said that so I don’t know if you’ve read that yet or you will read it when my book comes out (Did I mention I have a—never mind.) Dedicating yourself to the art and craft of divination will change you. It will change your outlook, it will change your politics (or it should), and it will change your cosmology. If you’re not prone to cynicism, you might discover that you find yourself having moments of it that you aren’t used to. If you are a cynic, it can get worse. But on the other side of that self-same coin, if you’re a non-believer (as I am/was/am), you’re going to find yourself marveling at things you can’t explain. If you’re a hopeless fuck (as I am/am/am), you’re going to—against your better judgement—feel like we’re not entirely alone out here and that there may be someone(s) or something(s) dancing with us, guiding us, helping us, loving us. If you’re a believer already, your understanding of what you believe in and how it make sense to you will change. Devoting yourself to anything has that effect, and because divination is such a communal practice—it requires engagement with someone/thing other than us, even when just reading for ourselves—it’s going to demand that we look at the world differently. 

For those of us allergic to “love and light,” we’ll find times where we’re giving the most amazing news—over and over again; and for those who are “good vibes only,” if you’re doing it well, you’ll eventually start to find stretches of bad news that will make you question your commitment to optimism. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve said to clients, “Against all my better judgment, I have good news—yes, he’s coming back and yes he has changed” or similar. “Yeah, you’re going to get the job.” I once said to a guy, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yes: quitting your job to focus on your music is a good idea.” I WOULD NEVER SAY THAT TO SOMEONE OUTSIDE OF A READING! I’m the most overcautious fucker you’ll ever encounter. I’m terrified of everything. But the cards said, “this is right for him.” 

I have to turn off my pessimism. “I can’t believe how much good news I’m giving,” I said at one event shortly after the election. “I expected to see nothing but gloom tonight and everyone I read for seems on the edge of totally thriving.” 

And then I have to turn off my jealousy. Woof. We never think of that, do we? Or I don’t, anyway. But after giving a bunch of randos good news all night, I started to feel fairly shitty about my own lot—given what I’ve been going through the last couple years, including a handful of things I haven’t told anyone about. (Believe it or not, there are dramas in my life that I don’t use as examples or whine about on the socials.) There’s another self-centered thing, feeling like crap because you’re giving too many people good news you know you’re not going to get. Woof, indeed. That’s something nobody prepared me for. I don’t think I’d have believed it if someone told me when I was starting out that I’d one day have to come face-to-face with my own bitchy jealousy at my own clients’ good fortune. Granted, I also wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that I’d be reading cards for money in public where anyone could see me doing it. I’d never have believed this would become so central to my life. And, really, that part is one of the things I personally have to recall when I do start to feel crappy (because my stupid clients are all happier than me) (I’m kidding, I love my clients): I have to remember that tarot has come into my life in a way I wasn’t expecting and it’s been able to do that because the thing I thought I was here for didn’t work out. Anyway. this really isn’t meant to be all about me, but I am such a good example. Wink. 

While my interpretation of the nines is generally fairly negative, the tarot influenced by Waite-Smith does not agree. The Nine of Cups is “the wish card.” The Nine of Coins/Penties, not in this reading, is somewhat nebulous—but its often among the most stunning paintings in a deck, so it often gets interpreted positively. It’s really only the other two nines that are “bad.” But even though I’m fairly mean to nines, that doesn’t mean they’re actually bad. Or that they’re even only nines. Nines are made up of other numbers, in this case three threes. And Mr. Friborg’s Nine of Cups actually looks a lot like many Three of Cups in the W-S trad. I think this reminds us of the expansive nature of the card, particularly in this case where burnout isn’t quite the interpretation that feels contextually relevant. In fact, I start to think of water, suddenly, in its rolling, wavy way—the way that water (and our emotional state) can come in big waves, ebb, be relatively still for a bit, and then return with maybe another large wave or a trio of smaller ones. I’m thinking about how our feelings aren’t straight lines, either, and that the way the nine breaks down into threes, here, makes me feel like the PULSE of feeling--I’m feeling THIS WAY NOW and then its gone AND THEN I’M FEELING SOMETHING ELSE and it’s gone and maybe a little bit of this, this and this, AND THEN A REALLY BIG ONE—and it takes a while to—OH GOD THERE’S ANOTHER ONE. . . . and then it’s gone. Like the ocean. That’s how this Nine of Cups feels to me. 

So what of the Nine of Wands? It takes on a similar quality, but in this case it’s giving martyr. And that makes me laugh because of the somewhat pretentious way I described the diviner as having to stand outside life, a little. We have to see life clearly, but we’re not always allowed to do life the same way “mere mortals” are (to get super pretentious). I think that’s true, but it’s easy to get a complex about it—either a delusion of grandeur or of martyrdom, which both feels strongly wandsy. Here, I think it’s both in part because the martyr clearly has delusions of grandeur, too; it’s the single thing that would allow someone to sacrifice themselves for a cause. It is working against every natural instinct humans have. We are built to avoid danger. The martyr not only welcomes danger, they give themselves to it knowing, or being pretty certain anyway, that they will die. It’s operatic, really. Quite dramatic. 

The Hermit needs to be careful about this grandiosity—but I don’t think we (we, us, fortune tellers, readers) need to avoid it. Like my video on the ego recently (and the concept of “ego death”), I don’t think we can or should necessarily turn off the part of our brains that say, “OMG, you’re such a saint for doing this work. You’re just so good.” I mean, not in the way that that fucking annoying dame in that racist-ass Gone With the Wind movie does. What’s her name? Mel? In a film full of issues, she weirdly irks me the most. (I never liked the actress. I preferred her sister, and they hated each other. The sister, Joan Fontaine, was in Rebecca with Laurence Olivier, and she’s excellent in it. Olivia de Havilland, who played Mel in Wind, is the proto Becky [in my humble opinion]). Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, I don’t think we need to deny ourselves some indulgence in the sainthood we canonize ourselves with. That might sound objectively insane, but listen . . . 

Back when I believed in government and wanted to be White House press secretary (a la CJ Craig), I used to say of politicians whose dicks got mashed into the news cycle, “To believe that you can fix this country implies a certain kind of hero complex and narcissism that probably only exists in the kind of men who also feel like everyone wants to see their disembodied richard.” (This is what I call dick pics, incidentally: disembodied richards.) There’s a certain kind of egotism necessary to think, “I am someone who can resist the super PACs, the lobbyists, the obstacles, the opposition and really fix this country—with all its deep, deep fuckeduppery. I can do that, because I am a stud.” Ya know I mean? I mean, that’s very hypermasculine, and it’s not at all what I’m suggesting we emulate, but to get the gumption to do it at all requires a certain amount of belief in the self. Jesus, can you imagine if you had to beg voters for your job? I can’t even ask my doctor for a prescription refill he makes me take because I don’t want to bother him. And to lose in public? (OK, well, as a writer, I do have some experience with that one—and I also have some narcissistic tendencies, due being born with my sun in Leo and my moon in Cancer.) 

For readers, we weirdly do need to see ourselves—sometimes, and just a little—as a sainted being, doing “the lord’s work.” And I really mean just a little. Like, please. I cannot with smuggeries who think they’re god’s gift. Fuck you. I mean, really, you’re gross. But—and this does tie into the confidence/humility discussion from my recent video--you gotta believe you can do it in order to do it well. Because insecurity will distract you. And you also need to believe that you can do the impossible, because, if you think about it, divination is kind of a miracle. If you subscribe to such words. (I do not.) But, you know, by the definition of miracle (from Dictionary.com, a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency) we’re getting pretty literal here. Ain’t nothin’ about divinaysh that doesn’t fit that description. Saux . . . . Ya know. We gotta know, deep down, that we (in very tiny, tiny text and a mumbly voice) make miracles. 
But just a little bit. OK? For fuck’s sake, diva. 

I wasn’t going to do this because this is already too long, but: I just noticed that pairing the cards above the two nines creates an interesting counterplay. The Justice card with the Nine of Cups sorta brings playful sainthood to the table, if we think of Justice as being the martyr in the other card—and because many people who engage in justice work also have a tendency to think of themselves as saints, and again that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Listen, if you don’t believe in your nads that you can hit a baseball thousands of feet out of a major league ballpark, you cannot do it. That’s probably why so many athletes are such pricks (although I don’t actually think it’s that; I think it’s that we elevate atheletes in this country to a status of value that they don’t deserve—so the ego and entitlement majorly kicks in). When we pair the Nine of Staves with the card above it, the Two of Cups, we sorta bring the lovey dovey hippy vibes into the martyr card, again sorta softening the edges and making it a little more playful. The cups cards both, in this case, soften their mirrors—even if that’s not always the case. Sometimes water can be quite destructive, as we know; but here, it’s simply eroding sharp edges and softening things to make them gentler. In a good way.  

These final three cards were almost another reading, and that’s OK. It added to what we’d already discussing, reminding us that we can indulge in self-centeredness sometimes—and that there’s a certain amount of self-regard required to read the cards—but that it’s not the only thing, that we have to focus on the client, and though we’re sometimes saintly we are not saints.

What a fun reading. I enjoyed this, even if I didn’t have any idea where it was going to take us. I think it’s exciting to not only let the cards guide us (something I didn’t used to enjoy) and also allow the clues in a unique deck to guide the tone of the reading, too; particularly in cards we often “think” we “know.” 

A read of one’s own
This week’s spread is about our mission— mission, purpose, whatever word you want to use; mission is definitely loaded—as readers. And it’s simply drawing cards to answer the question, “What is my mission as a tarot reader?” or “What is my mission as a fortune teller?” However you’d like to phrase it. 

Initially I thought this makes sense only if you don’t know, but if you do know there’s something quite cool about validating that with a reading. First, you might discover that what you thought was your mission really isn’t; the reading reminds you that there’s something else going on. Or, it might tell you what you already know, but it gives you the opportunity to show how the answer appears in cards—a good opportunity to explore how your tarot communicators work with you. 

I think there’s something quite cool about reading a question you already know the answer to, even if only to work backwards from the answer and “make” the cards give you what you already know is true. I’ve mentioned this before, but my early YouTube videos were all inspired by Tarot Tells the Tale by James Ricklef. I did readings for characters from books and movies. I always got a totally—amazingly—appropriate spread that described the story in incredible ways. This stuff works and doing that is another way you can see how the cards communicate with you. And if you do the same question with several decks, you can see how different decks communicate the same answer. Again, quite cool!

A quick demo: 
I pulled three cards to answer the question and wound up with Art/Temperance (2), Knight(King) of Swords (1), and Queen of Wands (3). (Thoth Tarot)

I always smile when the sorta weirdly “right” cards show up, and what made me smile in this case was Art. I’ve said it before, but I do give Crowley a wee bit of credit for two of the main changes he made to the majors. Art/Temperance—though I don’t really read it as he intended, I love that adjustment. And the other one I love is Adjustment/Justice. I like it in this case because I do believe art is an art. 

Anyway, let’s see . . . The Knight (King) of Swords is probably the card I’d choose if I were picking a significator (sometimes it’s the queen of the same suit). He’s not my significator, though; not in the esoterica sense. The King of Pentacles is. I was born in the third decan of Leo, which he rules. The Knight of Swords is very “me” though in that I’m quite speedy as a reader. (The knight in the Thoth carries the normal knight’s energy—a thing I typically don’t associate with Waite/Marseille kings. Because the Princes in the Thoth deck have the “regal” aspect, they get the kings’ laziness—in my way of doing things.) I want readings to be sharp, clear, precise, and not go on so long we forget what we’re doing. But I want them to be beautiful, artistic, poetic (Art). I want them to be integrated, by which I mean I want the client to be able do something with or about the reading (also Art in the way Crowley intended, as the integration of parts of something). Finally, I want (most of) my clients to feel like bad-asses—and, frankly, I would like to feel that way, too (Queen of Wands). That’s pretty in line with what I said before! Yay me. But also, it’s not always easy to read on these kinds of questions—so if you don’t find an answer as easily as I did, know in part that I am a speedy reader and also that I was absolutely distracted while doing things—which sometimes, I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes can help with a self-reading because we don’t have the time to get in our heads about what things are “supposed” to be. Try it. You may find it really useful!

Until next week!

​

Cards drawn, a line of five:
Ten of Wands (4), Ace of Coins (2), Queen of Wands (1), The Devil (3), The Tower of Babel (5)
Deck: La Corte dei Tarrochi by Maria D’Onofrio (published by Il Meneghello)

You can divine with anything if you want to. For example, does it mean anything that I dilly-dallied all day in writing this, then when I finally got up to do it I went into the office and opted not to use either of the decks I’d planned on? Both are decks I haven’t yet had a chance to shuffle. And I’ve been craving new decks lately, mostly out of boredom. I keep going to bookstores hoping to see something worth taking home, but not much of interest has crossed my path. Still, when I selected today’s deck, I looked at my chaotic shelves and thought, You know: You should pick a deck you love and haven’t looked at in ages. Of the three I considered (The Hoi Polloi, the World Spirit, and this), the one I chose is the one I’ve forgotten to look at the longest. I sorta “knew” it was the deck as soon as my eye fell on it. 

And so what of this choice? If I were to describe this deck, might it say something about me or my life at present, or the season I’m entering? This indie deck is unique in so many ways and remains potentially my absolute favorite tarot ever made. Its shape is long and thin, not unlike a bookmark; it’s not like shaped any other deck I have. And he’s a thicc boi. The stock is also unlike any other: rigid, deeply textured, flecked with pulp. It feels handmade, though it must have some machining because it’s also tightly woven and quite strong. Its sharp corners give it “bite.” It’s stocky, it’s solid, it’s experiential—visceral. I love shuffling these cards, though I can only overhand them. That’s something of a paradox because I typically loathe when I can’t riffle-and-bridge. I’m rough with my decks. I like them to obey my rules. This one doesn’t do that. I have to bend my will to it. 

Artistically, it’s charming, oddball, very European, and I think very Italian specifically. It’s a pip deck, but not Marseille—not like any other pip deck. Happily, its pips are hand drawn and each is unique, even if the decoration doesn’t necessarily aid in interpretation, it’s quite nice that the artist really made the cards. I so resent pip decks with lazy-ass pips. The deck itself is modern, from the last thirty years or so—definitely within my lifetime—but it harkens back to Marseille and even Visconti imagery, with simple figures, odd faces, delightfully contorted postures, and the maybe more of an Imperial/Romey vibe than I’m typically into. But it works. I wouldn’t change anything—except for maybe bumping up the saturation a little. 

It’s a deck of anomalies. And I think that this suggests a certain amount of dichotomy in my own life. I for sure could stand to let someone else take charge for a little while, that’s for sure; I’m always interested in things with bite; and, given that it’s rapidly heading toward the winter solstice, I also crave the familiar and the cozy—even though my version of familiar and cozy is somewhat oddball, somewhat contorted, somewhat out of character. And that all sounds about right. 

We can read anything. This came up in our session of Re-Learning the Tarot, the four-week workshop I’m hosting right now. Everything and anything can be used for divination once you start seeing the world like a diviner. That’s a term I mentioned in my most recent videos about the art and science of interpretation and the blend of confidence and humility needed to be a good reader. Seeing the world like a diviner also happens to be a large chapter in my forthcoming book, The Modern Fortune Teller’s Field Guide--have I mentioned that recently? (Spoiler: yes. Coming autumn, 2025 . . . if there is a autumn 2025). And I thought it might be cool to focus the reading around that concept today. Although I also broke my own rule. I only decided to do that after I’d already shuffled and drawn on my usual question, “What is Lesson #?” But I’m all about iconoclasm, and if I can’t break my own fucking rules, than what kind of rebel am I? Maybe even the feel of the deck itself, as described above, will have something to add to this chaotic equation!

In the draw, the Queen of Wands sits flanked by, on the left, the Ten of Wands (her own suit) and the Ace of Coins, and, on the right, by The Devil and The Tower. I love this. This suite of cards is spicy, aromatic, resinous, luminous, and kinky. And that, dear reader, is the revolutionary costume for the day, children, OK? Tongue pop. (I can’t actually do that.) If we take this array to explore the concept of how we might see the world as diviners, we find ourselves sitting right at the center of a crossroads—a place Mr. Diavolo quite likes. 

The Ace of Coins reminds us that our divinatory gaze must be practical and down to earth. We are talking about life; we are talking about today and tomorrow, not some eventual nevertime or some once-upon-a-when; we are exploring what being human on this planet at this moment involves; we are spilling tea, we are prying through NDAs, we are saying what needs to be said—the things the clients (us) need, not necessarily what they (we) hope for or want, but what they (we) need. And these things are big! That’s what the Ten of Wands is doing here. Reminding us that these daily things, these tiny things, these trips-to-the-pharmacy things, these is-he-cheating-on-me things, these will-she-come-back things, these are the things that people really care about. We have to be rooted in reality—particularly if we offer our divinatory services to others, regardless of whether or not we charge. I am so, so, so, so evangelical in my belief in this, and it actually came up on Instagram this morning, so I’m also very present with it. Someone posted something I have said before--something I have not been immune from feeling: that tarot can explore all the great mysteries of the universe, but most people want to know if their ex is coming back. 

Dear ones: this is a triggering statement to me, precisely because I once felt that way. I felt that way just before I was about to give up tarot for good! I’ve written about this elsewhere; I’ll spare you all those gory details. And if you’ve followed me for any time you know I’m good at giving things up forever that don’t always seem to have given me up. Hashtag my toxic trait. I felt that way because I was burned out on tarot and because I had absorbed a huge amount of snobbery about divination. I’m not saying the person who posted that is a snob. I might be saying they could be burned out. But that’s not my job, here; my job to say, NO! 

Friends, for the person in pain, “Will my ex come back?” is one of the great mysteries of the universe! We don’t get to decide what our clients, friends, loved ones think is a mystery worthy of divination. Everything is important enough to be divined if the person asking about it really cares and really wants to know. 

I say all the time, you get to draw the lines wherever you want them. You get to decide what you read about. Absolutely. I would never tell a reader otherwise. And there are many reasons for not reading about a variety of topics. But I feel in my core that just because we won’t read about something, or just because we don’t enjoy reading about something, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth reading about. The things that people care about, the things that rile their minds, those are the things that matter. When we say “great mysteries,” we seem to be indicating that there is something more important than life we should be focusing on. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. I’ve come to believe that the daily is sacred. But either way, we can’t focus on the great mysteries if we’re depressed and lonely and wondering why the person who we thought proved our value to us decided to ruin everything by leaving? If you’ve never felt that way, I’m jealous. If you have, maybe it feels like the person thinking this way needs therapy, like you got. But they’re not there yet. What matters and what is important to an individual is important to them--and so it is important to the reader--regardless of whether or not it is objectively “worthy” of exploration. 

This is one of my major issues with standard issue esotericism. The focus of our lives can’t be solely on escaping from them. Otherwise what’s the point? And if we’re offering readings to others, we are required to have an understanding of life on the ground. Those are the lives our clients are living. 

We are in the service industry. I believe that strongly. I don’t think the customer is always right, but I think the customer’s question is always more important than anything I could possibly come up with. Does it need clarification? Maybe. Could it be worded better? Often. Will it break an ethical boundary? If it does, I must decline. But is it unimportant? Never. Our clients, paying or not, know what they need to know more than we do. And it is an honor to be able to help them achieve intel. It’s the whole gig, really. 

Bit soap boxy, innit? And I’m not throwing shade; I’m not grilling beef. (I just made that up. You’re welcome.) I’m sharing a deeply-held part of my cosmology and mission as a diviner in language designed to show how strongly I feel about this and how important it is to me. There is no mystery greater than the one dogging the client. Full stop.

And scene. 

Anyhoo. Point is: the banal things people care about are really important to them, so they’re important to us. 

On the other side of the spread we discover The Devil and The Tower of Babel. In this case, D’Onofrio titles the card specifically; that’s not me interpreting the image. I frequently ignore a lot of what artists do on their cards, but not because I don’t love artists. Because I’m . . . me. But being me, sometimes a small change to a card can be quite revelatory. As I recall it, the story of the Tower of Babel involves humanity wanting to climb into heavens to come close to divinity. God, being constantly surprised by the things “he” made doing things “he” doesn’t like, decides that humans must be punished for this act of hubris. He destroys the growing tower, sending the people climbing/building it plummeting all over the earth, landing in new locations and suddenly speaking different languages. Prior to this, evidently, there was only one race and we all spoke the same langy (short for “language” . . . made that up, too. you can use it, but I get credit). Cool! This is the version of my childhood Catholic school religion classes, anyway; I imagine it has more nuanced, probably darker versions. But it’s the way my educators (indoctrinators?) explained why we all speak different languages. (Did it explain why we worship a god who does shit like that? No. Did it explain Christianity’s lengthy history of racism? Also no. Weird.)

We learn the tower as a tale of hubris, or my classmates and I did anyway. Dumb humanity, always fucking shit up. Fuck around and find out, silly mortals. Trix are for kids! And yet . . . it really is a story of curiosity. Humans want to understand god, that’s the whole point of esotericism and, really, like . . . most world religions. Congress, communion with divinity. People understand divinity to be located in the sky, and in this story they seem to be on to something, otherwise diva—I mean divinity--wouldn’t have gotten so P.O.’ed. They were curious, they started building a tower, they thought “hey—why not?” I mean, metaphorically, it’s sorta what Kabbala is about (at least in my very limited understanding of it): climbing the ladder of enlightenment to achieve congress with G*d. So, either our human desire to understand the divine better is wrong and we shouldn’t be doing that, or . . . . : it’s not divinity that doesn’t want us coming closer to it . . . it’s that religion doesn’t want us coming closer to divinity, because then we won’t need religion—organized ones, at any rate. Which is of course the reality. Religion, and by this time we can accept that we’re talking specifically, or at least originally, about “Christianity,” doesn’t want us to be curious. Religion wants us to be obedient and to pay for the intercession on our behalf that the priests somehow only have access to . . . even though we’re, like, also told to pray at lot . . . , so who knows . . . ?

Anyway, I say it’s just another biblical example of gatekept knowledge—which the foundational texts of the Abrahamic faithways are full of. “Do not ask questions, do not seek knowledge, obey the teachers, obey the leaders, obey obey obey.” 

Meanwhile, the bible is all riddled with divination. 

Divination is an act of curiosity, and so it is the antithesis of obedience. It is also the antithesis of the Tower of Babel story. Divination IS the tower of babel. The esotericists love to say what the tarot “is” — it’s a language of symbols, it’s the book of Thoth, it’s the royal road, it’s this, it’s that. It’s none of those—and all of them. And so it is (and isn’t) the Tower of Babel. It is an attempt to get close to the divine, to shake hands with sky daddy, to talk to the gawds, henny.

Except, like, the point of that story is that the divine doesn’t want us ringing the damn doorbell . . . ? Apparently . . . ?

What kind of divinity does want us to bother him in the middle of the night?
Oh, right. The antithesis of a god who hates curiosity. 
The god of curiosity: Diavolo.  That stud who keep showing up around here lately, giving us the lusty gift of his presence once more. Hey, big boy! 

In the OG story of punishment-for-knowledge, he shows up, too. Actually, he doesn’t. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is never specifically ID’d as the devil, because the devil as we know him today (small-d devil, not Big Daddy Devil) didn’t exist that. The Devil, weirdly, is the creation of Christianity designed to hurt those of us who refuse conformity . . . and somehow they managed to create an icon that shows us how to transcend their limitations. Odd. Anyway, the devil is not who tempts Eve in the bible, but like the tower of babel, it is a myth of control. And anyone with even the tiniest rebellious brain is asking why knowledge is such a bad thing by the time they’re making first communion. And we could get into all the theological shit about translations and what’s really happening and what the original versions of the myth really are—but that’s not the point. The point is that the devil—or the implication of him—shows up wherever Abrahamic allegories present the human with a choice. Whenever someone is asked to choose between knowing and not knowing, they devil tempts to them know. The ideal, somehow, is to choose not knowing; to defy the essential nature of being a person on this planet—a nature presumably built into us by the god who supposedly doesn’t want us asking questions? This god would simply prefer that we accept ignorance to suit the ego of this loving god who . . . I’m sorry, wait. Doesn’t it sound like these stories have it backwards? In this corner, we have “God,” sky daddy, who, like, gave you curiosity but doesn’t want you to ever use it. And in this corner, we have the “evil one,” who didn’t make you and didn’t give you curiosity but has the ability to help slake that need in such a way that navigating life is, like . . . , easier? What’s going on here? Who do we choose?The egotistical prince of ignorance? Or the one who gets it and wants the answers, too? Which of these is really the villain and which the hero?

Point belabored, point made. 

Point is: The Devil is the god of curiosity. He wants to know and he wants us to know. And so what the hell are these two cards saying? “You don’t need to climb to impossible heights in order to get the answers you seek. That way lies ruin. No, you stay down here on earth, and you ask the divinities that will tell you.” Knowledge is power. Too many of us are powerless. So we turn to the entities willing to give us what we need: guidance, guideposts, atlases, compasses, the whole nine. But I think there lies a warning, here, too. We can, if we get too addicted (a word regrettably saddled onto the Devil) to knowledge, or to getting readings, or to knowing, or even to being a provider of answers, we can wind up climbing that tower and getting stuck there—and then pushed from its heights. I think there’s a warning about ego here (don’t get too big for your britches, bitches) and also a reminder that not everything requires divination—and/or that not everything requires a diviner. Which is another way of saying the britches thing, but has to do more with kind of a collective sense of import. We can’t take ourselves too seriously, even if what we do is good and divine and maybe even sacred. We’re just fools at the end of the day all moving in the same direction, whether we like it or not. Be curious, but don’t, like, get crazy about it, y’know? That’s what it’s saying. You don’t need a reading on what to make for dinner—though most days it sure fucking feels like it. 

I think the pair also reinforces what’s on the left side of the spread: chaos is chaos, even if it doesn’t feel that way to the outside observer. The Tower and the Ten of Wands mirror each other and in doing they reinforce each others’ intensity. What’s big in a client’s life is big, even if it doesn’t feel that way to us. What’s mysterious is mysterious, even if we’re not personally interested in solving that one. The mirrored pairing of the Ace of Coins and the Devil is fun, because they’re appropriately earthy and in their way rather well-suited. I think it reminds us that life can be burdensome, even when only perceived that way. And here I’m thinking about the Devil as a misunderstood entity. Even today, tarots create him in a Christian way despite the reality that as diviners, we’re doing the “devil’s work” in the sense that we’re embodying a task that Christianity reviles. Anything Christianity hates is Satanic. They say it themselves! The reputation burdens the card, even though it’s only a perception of it—in the same way that clients can perceive something as more important, more burdensome, than it is. And the reading may help them see that. Which is A-OK, because it means they can move on and start healing and eventually focus on other things. 

I’ve said before and I’ve no doubt I’ll say it again: maybe one of the main gifts we offer as readers is the ability to help people make sense of things they don’t understand so that they can ultimately focus on the “important” stuff, too. That runs the risk of sounding loftier than I mean it to, but really it’s . . . if we can help them sweat the small stuff, they can find space for the “great mysteries” we’re all supposedly so in need of exploring. That’s snark, not shade. I’m being silly. (Mostly.) 

I said at the start of the interpretation that I could call on the deck choice to see whether it added anything to the reading. In this case, absolutely: the choice of the tower’s title changed everything about this interpretation. Its cardstock and quality I don’t think says much but the way I interpreted the choice of the deck above is also reinforced when a reading confirms something I already think. Smiley face. But I really enjoyed this reading and the little exploration of how the deck describes my current needs was fun. I encourage you to do the same next time you’re called to use a deck you haven’t in a while. There’s great coolness to be found in divinatory experimentations like that. 

Now, on to your spread:

A Read of One’s Own
I struggled developing a spread for this lesson, because the lesson is somewhat simple: don’t judge clients’ questions, including your own. Don’t be a snob about import. What matters to someone really matters to them, whether or not it seems to your view as pointless. How do you read about that?

But here we’re presented with the topic of bias, which is really what this amounts to. Bias against a particular kind of divinatory need. And we’ve all got biases. It’s helpful to remember that, particularly if—like me—you enjoy getting on your justice high horse. We’ve all got biases. And it’s not easy to detect them because they’re so ingrained in us. 

What I propose for this weeks spread is a three-card pull exploring the question, “What is a divinatory bias that I’m not aware of but that is making my readings less effective?” 

Full disclosure, this will not be an easy one to read on for the simply fact that if we knew what the bias was, we’d do something about it. Biases are really hard to see, and when we’re reading cards we tend to rely on little links between what we know about a situation and what we see in the cards. That means that we’re looking for evidence of something in the cards what we can’t actually see—yet. It’s not easy to do. It requires a certain kind of ruthless self-reflection many of us will find challenging. But give it a go. See what you can come up with. And if you’re really struggling, recognize that this is hard and trade readings with someone else. That’s probably the easiest way to go about this, honestly. But it still requires self reflection. Ew. ​