lesson 23: a foot in two worlds

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. ​