lesson 22: this is what you’ve been training for (and non-trad tarots)

Arc of 5.
Cards drawn: Emotions (XIX, 21); 4 of water; 5 of earth; 9 of fire; 9 of air
Deck: Dream of Gaia Tarot by Ravynne Phelan

I’d intended to use a different deck today, but I saw this one sitting out on my table as it has been for ages now. I rarely use it but I quite like it. It’s barely a tarot, I call it a “taroracle,” but it’s also an exciting thing sometimes to break with the familiar. In fact, it’s an excellent way to keep our brains sharp, active, and experimenting. 

The main reason I didn’t use this deck for ages after getting it and liking it is that it is so far from tarot. The minors are “situational” but not Waite-Smith or Thoth. They’re their own thing. And the majors are entirely remade. Then at a certain point last year I thought, “Well, you know, you’ve managed to read all kinds non-tarot of systems, now; why not return to this deck and see what you can do with it?” And I did, and I have had some good readings. Weirdly, using non-traditional tarots seems to be particularly effective when reading for myself because it forces me to not be lazy. I can’t rest on my own tired knowledge; I have to dig and actually divine, rather than reciting. I never phone it in for clients but I typically do when reading for myself. 

But what’s this reading have to say?

Starting with the central card, the one that went down first, we find the Five of Earth. This deck uses the elements in place of suit objects, not a big departure. The numerology that Phelan uses is completely different from mine, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use it—that doesn’t mean I can’t unite her images with my system. And in some ways, that’s maybe the first lesson of this particular entry: how to read with non-trad tarots without throwing everything you’ve learned out the window. 

Fives are unstable numbers. Perhaps the most unstable. They reject the status quo, a particularly Aquarian tendency in my opinion. Earth, of course, represents money, day to day life, and that which grounds us. This is a time where the earth for many of us is particularly unstable, particularly . . . swampy. It’s quicksand. In this case, Phelan’s image offers a host of potentials. The card seems to suggest trickery, con artistry, and the loss that comes from it. See the sobbing, ghostly image in the background and the devlish figure in the fore—a particularly queer being, if you ask me. I can’t guess the author’s intent, but this feels very much to me a non-binary person. The eyebrows, the jawline, the shape of the eyes—these all suggest AMAB facial structure; the hands, the ears, the lips, the hair, the posture suggest AFAB tendencies. Then there’s the rash of red we see at the hairline and on the hands, along with the horns and the sharp finger nails. These suggest to me an animal or otherworldly entity. So not only does this person defy gender, they defy species. In that way, one might hold them as a sibling of Baphomet, who is similarly non-binary. 

My first thought when seeing this card was our old pal, Donald J. Trump and his con-artistry taking over the planet. I rejected that out of pocket, though, mostly because I don’t feel like giving him any fucking credit and also because that’s not really contextually relevant in a blog about divination. Yes, his hucksterism may well cause us losses—that’s pretty certain, in fact. On the other hand, I refuse to let this queer image represent such a revoltingly straight entity. In fact, I think this foreground figure represents us, dear ones: fortune teller, diviners, readers, witches, and anyone vilified for our lack of “acceptable” tendencies. The figure turning away isn’t the victim, no no; this figure is white bread, cis het trad wife society that makes itself the victim any time anyone takes it upon themselves to say, “Fuck your norms, I am fucking magic.”

For folks who step out of the cis het paradigm of acceptability, everything is unstable—everything is very five. In fact, we are the destabilizing force that earth needs at the moment, because the status quo isn’t going to save us. The so-called “US” has made it very clear that we can collectively go fuck ourselves so that ugly, boring, mean, entitled straight white men and their equally ugly, boring, mean, and entitled handmaidens can feel safe in their incredibly ugly, boring, mean, dull, entitled lives. But their victories don’t mean we’re less interesting; it means that we’ve got to hold on to our destabilizing vibes harder. (For what it’s worth, I do not think the other electoral outcome wouldn’t have done much but play out the same way the last four years have—which was also unsustainable. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have preferred something less scary, but I’m also not saying I’m not furious about the DNC’s staggering ineptitude. I have left that particular cult for good. I have zero hope in politics, anymore. Thank god I didn’t major in poly sci, as I intended to. I’ve already got an MFA in an industry I can’t stomach anymore.)

It’s fun that I’ve been reading so much about the Devil in modern trad craft because this card shows up as the central image and displays some devilishness. And this is yet another reason why I decided the “victim” isn’t white tears Becky in the background, but the non-binary being in the front. “Ouch,” the lady in the background cries, “Your cards are hurting me. Did you steal those jewels? I’m calling the cops! Waahhhh Rickyyyyyy.” So many moments over the last few weeks have left me saying to myself, “This is what you’ve been training for.” All of us in the divination spaces are this foreground figure, being fucking magic despite constant admonitions not to. (I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before, but as a young Catholic boy, I was a red-headed, left-handed fembot; it’s odd to me that it took me so long to see, despite even what people told me growing up, that I am “of the devil.”)

Let’s expanded our scope for a moment. The Five of Earth is flanked by the Four of Water and the Nine of Fire. Fours are not unstable; fours are conservative as fuck. That’s one thing that makes the fives so relentless. They are fed up with being held back, with being restrained. The Four of Water suggests “emotional stability.” Nines, like fives, are also unstable (all odd numbers are). Nines of Fire in pretty all version of tarot can suggest burnout. You’ve likely heard me talk about that before. It’s “too much” fire. But in this case, I think it’s creating an antidote to the four. Before I get into why, let’s actually look at the two cards to the left of the center (ironic—or not?—that the conservative card shows up “left of center,” eh?)

The Emotions card has no cognate in trad tarot. As I mentioned, all the majors in this deck have been remade. But there were times we didn’t know what the “normal” majors meant as well, so this is no issue for us. I tend to take the majors more-or-less at face value more or less most of the time. Except for when I don’t. Which also happens more or less most of the time. By which I mean, I don’t really know how often I do that—but I do. Anyway. What are emotions? If you look up the word in a dictionary, you can see lexicographers have a hard time defining it. In order to tell us what an emotion is, they name emotions. But they can’t tell us what they are. They’re “sensations” of “feeling.” But they can’t really say what that means. It’s like attempting to define a color. What is “red”? What is “blue”? And how do I know that what you see as red is the same as what I see? We don’t know; we have no way of knowing. Which means that emotion, like color, is something we think we understand—something we get conceptually, philosophically, but not something that we’re able to truly “get.”

I might make the argument (though I’m not sure I’d defend it that hard) that emotions are simply the names we give for our current state of being, sort of our base level mood at any given time. I’d also argue (though, again, not that forcefully) that emotions are a way our body warns us about our present state of danger or safety. When we feel “love” or “happiness” or even “boredom,” our body recognizes that it is safe. When we feel “angry” or “sad” or “anxious,” our body recognize that we are not safe. It doesn’t know for sure, it’s doing its best to suss out our environment and use its natural receptors to do this. For those of us who live with anxiety and depression, our body is somehow more prone to telling us that we’re unsafe. Usually we’re not, not these days, but there are definitely times when we’re in danger. But our bodies can’t really tell the difference between a real trigger--an actual danger—and an imagined one. If, like me, you also have some form of neurodivergence, you’re also more prone to over reacting to things. Everything is magnified. So that an objectively small trigger might yield a major meltdown. This happens to me when I feel rejected, for example. Also when I fuck something up, even something unimportant, like dropping a fork while doing dishes. 

Anyway, a slight digression—perhaps. But the thing that I take away from the Emotions card partnered with the Four of Water is, in some ways, we’ve (not everyone, many of us) been in a bit of a day dream. Now, the images on the Emotions card aren’t really yielding much. But they’re intended, I think, to depict the gamut. The Four of Water could be said to “rhyme” with the Five of Earth, thanks to the ghostly hue of the female-presenting figures thereon. You might even detect that the Four of Water figure holds a necklace not totally unlike the foreground figure in the five. What I see is someone who has been lulled into a false sense of security suddenly waking up and facing a reality. That “someone” can both be the Becky I saw in the five prior, but also the figure in the front. “We” (us, reader) are also being awoken as the four transforms into the five. “You’ve been led into a lull, but that will not help you. Be sad about it if you want, but it’s time to let the Devil out.”

Everything solidifies. Like a spiritual erection. A sentence I never imagined writing, but there you have it. We are forced into reality, forced into facing things as they are, and recognizing that we may be about to face some Becky tears, too. Not our own, but we will probably be accused of being indifferent to the “pain” of the privileged. (I don’t doubt that privileged people have pain. I just think they don’t really know what their pain actually is. I keep thinking about that meme of the white lady with a sticker of a bull’s eye taped to her forehead. Her caption reading, “What it feels like to be a conservative woman in America today.” But the best part is the response from someone else, who says, “I actually love this post, because that’s a fake bull’s eye and you put it there yourself.” Like, if privileged people could pause and recognize that the very fact they make themselves into victims is a sign of how massively psychologically fucked up they truly are, they’d spend less time worrying about trans boys playing baseball and more about the fact that they’re teaching their children to be callous fucking assholes. But whatever.)

Anyway, let’s return to the Nine of Fire. The reason I wanted to come back to this is because I recognized that the two cards to the right of the five are both nines. So we have the projective suits (fire, air) and the weight of nine. Nine is an interesting number because while it can be “too much” of something it can also be thought of as rapid expansion (3+3+3). Major expansion of energy, of fire; major expansion of intellect, learning, of air. One might, if one were of a mind, say that the combo of fire and air creates magic. The spiritual energy of fire meeting the conductive energy of air. What do I mean by “conductive”? Air “conducts” things in the sense of pushing them in certain directions. It also conducts whatever the temperature is. When it’s hot out, the air is hot. It may vary from spot to spot, but when it’s hot, it’s hot all around us. So it “conducts” heat. Which basically means it puts it into action. Bit of a stretch, but who cares? It makes sense. 

I think this suggests that it’s time to start making some big, bold, energetic, conductive shifts to the stasis we’ve experienced. And I think we can think about this from a divinatory viewpoint in a few ways: first, likely we’re going to have take this attitude toward our divantory work. People are going to need different things as they experience bigger, more dramatic (more projective) emotions and states of being (the Emotions card mirrors the Nine of Air, and air is closely connected to emotion because our mind often dictates what we’re feeling—or attempts to make sense of it). This means that our usual ways of doing things won’t work, or at least may have to be adjusted, expanded, and/or recalibrated. Another way to look at this is in a more broadly spiritual way: we may need to expand the work we do. I think about the potential threats of the incoming administration (and based on my own readings, I feel pretty strongly we haven’t seen the end of drama around this election—but I don’t know anymore), education and healthcare could become dramatically more difficult to come by. There’s also nothing saying more “spirituality” won’t be forced on us, because of course the “American” right wing loves to pretend it gives a flying fuck about Jesus but shoving laws in our faces Jesus wouldn’t have given a flying fuck about. People may need spiritual alternatives, and diviners may be able to provide that. In many ways, diviners may be called upon to do things that we’re not used to because the world needs that. This sounds awfully self-aggrandizing, but I don’t mean it that way. I simply mean, what clients (and when we read for ourselves, we’ve clients) need will change and we would do well to adapt to those needs. 

The presence of the two nines, though, does remind us that we can also become easily burned out, spiritually and mentally, if we’re not careful. Of course you know that theme is a trend in this blog, but it is inevitable that when we feel like we’re at war, we’re going to fight all the time. That doesn’t leave us any rest and recuperation, and we can make ourselves sick. Given that healthcare may be impacted, that’s not great—so we need to make sure that we’re measuring our sense of energy, our output, etc., so that we’re getting back what we put out. 

This may all sound somewhat dystopian. Well, I’m not an optimist by nature. We easily could be in for some massively dystopian stuff quite soon. But I also think that the devil figure, that horned being in the Five of Earth, reminds us: this is what you’ve been training for.

(Quick context observation: Note that I didn’t even consider the images on the two nines. That’s not to say they don’t matter, only that they weren’t the first thing I needed in this context. The number and elements really gave me the intel I needed. If I wanted to, I could keep going and use the images to deepen the reading—but I don’t need to, and I’m trying to keep this relatively brief. Also please note that if I had blue eyes and long hair, I’d bear a strange resemblance to the figure on the Nine of Fire.) 

A Read of One’s Own
I regret that the week got away from me and I didn’t have time to create a new spread and write a demo of it. But I think the content of this post warrants a spread, so I’m going to create one now. Though I won’t provide an example, I’m confident you’ll figure it out.

Position 1: In what ways may my divinatory practice need to evolve over the next few years?
Position 2: What things might my clients/querents/self need out of readings that I’m not currently versed in?
Position 3: In what ways have I already been preparing myself for this?
Position 4: Where in my practice should I start thinking about exploring aspects of my art that I don’t currently use—or, what blind spots do I need to be aware of as I’m evolving?
Position 5: How can I check my progress?
=
As always, I recommend using at least three cards per position, but this is of course up to you! 

Have a good week, friends. See next time.