lesson 34: youification

I loved last week’s post so much, I wanted to continue on the theme of immersive, “spectacular” divination experiences. Except I don’t entirely know what I’m after. So I thought it would be fun to go and do something I never do anymore! A spread with assigned positions! Not only that, but after working with a great reader a couple weeks ago on their experience with the this spread, I thought—eh, it’s such an annoying spread, but why not give it yet another go! So I’m giving you the full Celtic Cross this week, baby, on the theme of creating more “theatrical” divination experiences. 

If you don’t know me, or if you’re new to my work: Hi. I’m Tom Benjamin and I fucking hate this spread. I think it’s one of the main reasons beginners throw in the towel. I think it was made without a lot of forethought and I’m certain it was invented by someone who really couldn’t care less about divination. But I don’t actually know where it comes from. (I believe the first play we actually see it is in the PTK, Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A.E. Waite, but I could be wrong.) I have my own version of it, which you can find here. But for our purposes today, we’re going with the OG. Now, all that said, many many many readers have great results with this spread. But I think it is unnecessarily difficult and unfocused.

But let’s dive in, shall we? I typically summarize the cards I pulled, but with this many I recommend looking at the photo caption. This is the Zodiac Tarot by Cecilia Lattari (writer) and Ana Chávez (artist). It’s been printed by USG on some really unfortunate card stock—shuffling is a workout. And that’s too bad, really, because I think this deck would be far more popular if they had gone with their usual, workmanlike and yet effective, stock. 

Overall, the spread is pretty balanced—but there are no majors. Interesting!

To make the nonsense of this spread easy to remember, here’s how I define the spots:

The situation + what crosses the situation
Above you, intellect; below you, body. This is the cards above and below the situation and cross. “Intellect” and “body” are metaphorical, here; I don’t mean literally. You might say “the head” and the “heart.”
Behind you (yesterday), before you (tomorrow). These are the cards to the left and right of the situation.
The column, from the bottom up: 
What you’re contributing.
What your environment is contributing.
Hopes and fears.
The future.

That’s not entirely on brand for the spread, but it’s just a little easier to remember than Waite’s specious writing.

The Situation + Cross: 7 of Wands crossed by Knight of Cups.
Sevens typically get to a point of self-reflection and re-evaluation. The Seven of Wands, then, is going to be a re-evaluation of our fire: our creativity, our passions, our desires, our goals, the things that keep us motivated. The things in which we fervently believe. Our evangelisms, so to speak. I think in this case we can take all of this to suggest tarot, because, if you’re here, that’s probably a passion point of you—and it is, after all, the theme of this blog. This is a moment to re-evaluate our sense of who we are as diviners, what’s important to us, what motivates us, what we want to be—and how we want to be seen. (The Seven of Wands is associated with the Mars decan of Leo. Leos love to be seen—aggressively, as Mars ain’t shy. This is rather a performer’s card when we think of it astrologically. A real actor needs Mars’s potency, tenacity, and drive to achieve their goals. This is an energized card! Mars gets a bad rap, but none of the signs are “bad”—no different than there are no “bad” tarot cards. Mars has Martial qualities, that’s all; sometimes those matter. 

We’re crossed by an elemental—in this deck, fire of water. The Knight of Cups. We often think of fire and water as adversarial, but if you’ve read prior posts you know that I do not. Especially when there’s a balance, as there really is in this overall spread. That said, I think in this context there is a little struggle between fire and water—between performance (fire) and spirituality (water). There’s an anxiety: “If I get too performative, will I lose the depth?” Fair question, and, in fact, it is one of my main concerns coming off of last week’s post. I love the idea of a more romantically theatrical reading experience for my clients, but not at the cost of real, deep meaning. But the Knight of Cups is a believer, truly; they all are, really, and this knight—which tends to be seen as a bit of a cad in romance readings—can actually be considered a sustainable knight in his best iterations, because he is such a blend of supposed “opposites” (fire and water). So he doesn’t need to worry about it too much; he’s got the editor inside that will prevent him from doing something too theatrical without any depth. Still, that’s not likely to ease his tension; he’s going to feel that because it’s part of his nature. (Boy, do I understand that!)

Above/“The Intellect”: Four of Pentacles
The 4 of penties is such a fascinating card in this case. And here we find one reason I dislike this spread so much. One card is simply not enough context! For me, anyway. Greedy, greedy deck pig that I am. And this card is the sun’s decan of Capricorn, a sign I honestly don’t know much about—other than that it’s the goat (I love goats!) and it’s the sign that kicks off winter. There’s a romance to Capricorn in that goats are relentless, and they are at home in strange places. Think of mountain goats. Look at the goats climbing up the Italian damn in this NatGeo piece. They can do things in strange ways. The sun, which is Leo’s home, also appears here. We might think of the card in this way: There is a way to perform (sun) that is both theatrical (the theme of the reading) that is radically practical—simply by making what is easy for you (the goats) and showing it to the world (again, the sun in cap). Here, I’ve really discarded much of the card’s typical meaning! But it’s quite exciting to do that and also think about the four as being a number of sustainability. The sustainable thing is to do what you’re already doing but recognize that it is impressive to the person who can’t—the way a mountain goats climbing an aqueduct is both impressive and totally at home. 

Below/“The Body”: Knight of Wands
I can’t help but see this card as saying, “what you do is spectacular simply because what you do is spectacular”—which is something I would never say about myself, but is a very Leonine quality.  (Although talk to any Leo I know, and none of us think about ourselves that way. Though many of us think about our pals that way.) Just do more of what you do, dive deeper into your own coolness. This is fire of fire and as a result, kind of a radiant card. “You radiate magic,” it says, “you radiate spectacle.” OK. Again, not something I’d ever say about myself, but I can say it to y’all!!! I can also say that you are aggressively (knight) magical. Take that!

Yesterday: Two of Wands
Mars in back, now in his home sign: Aries. Springtime!! Of course, what we’re looking at here is the “colonial” card. Somehow, what the Golden Dawn took from this astrological decan was the wanderlust of stealing land—of looking at the entire globe as our domain. And I take this to mean that, in the past, we—readers—have relied a lot on traditions that have, to a large degree, been appropriated. I mean, there’s very little in “white” culture that hasn’t been, because when Christianity invented Colonialism is a mass-market spiritual tool for making scads of money, they destroyed the cultures that belonged to white communities around the globe—and then went about doing that to people of global majority. This is almost to say that, Yesterday, you relied on traditions that didn’t have much to do with you. You thought about magic as a lot to do with what you could take from others, what you could beg, borrow, and steal—and, in the context of this reading, we’re talking about the way we read, how we interpret, etc., the things we did were in many ways things that belonged to others. This, of course, implies something about the today card we’ll look at next—but it also suggests that we used to be less mature. Obviously twos are low numbers, and so of course not particularly “grown.” But in addition, Mars in Aries is the beginning of spring, and so we get the very early development of the year—the western astrological year, anyway. So there’s implied immaturity there. And I don’t mean that word as a pejorative. It’s absolutely a thing we all have to experience in different parts of our lives. Immaturity is only a problem when we refuse to grow!

Tomorrow: 8 of Swords
This is not a card we necessarily want to see in the future position, is it? At least when we think in terms of Golden Dawnery. But Jupiter and Gemini are both expansive concepts. Jupiter is simply huge; Gemini is insatiably curious. Combine the two and we have a massive hunger for exploration. If we return to the typical Waite-Smith image and Crowey’s title (interference), we seem somehow constricted—which is a much more Saturnine quality. Why are we so constricted, why are we blindfolded, why are we experiencing “interference.” In fact, we’re not; in fact, this card is asking us to shift our focus. It is saying, “put a blindfold on and bind your body, lock yourself away—and in this state, let inner space (rather than outer space) guide you. Remember, we think of swords as words and communication—intellect. That all feels very external, but I think swords also suggest imagination. They have do. Where the fuck else does writing, story, communication come from? Anyone verbal can use  language, but our imaginations take the language and make it ours. Turns of phrase, etc., come not from grammar books, but from the poetry we both experience and internalize—and that which lives within us already. And I don’t think swords get enough credit for their imaginal ability. 

In fact, I now believe that the imagination is the key to so much of spirituality—and that we’ve found the imaginal devalued precisely for that reason. If we can make the imagined seemed silly, pointless, even unsound and “crazy,” then we cut off a major onramp to our guides. It is through imagination that we discover who our guides are, how they communicate with us, and even how powerful something imagined can physically become when we are deep into the moment.

The “binding” experienced by the candidate in this card isn’t the prison we assume; it is, rather, a forced stillness meant to achieve a transcendent meditative state. Jesus Christ, what a fucking sentence! What is wrong with me? 🤣 Anyway, yes.

Earlier I said that the 2/wands (yesterday) said something about this card. It does. Instead of looking without for your divinatory spectacle, instead of taking other people’s methods, rather we force ourselves to go deep within our own imaginal realm to discover what “theatricality” lives there. What does your imagination—which, after all, is the greatest audience for theatre and spectacle—have to say about what can make your readings more immersive? That is the key. 

We’ve completed the cross in the middle without too much drama! Yay us! Let us now turn our attention to the column, which moves from the bottom up. 

What you’re contributing: 2 of Pentacles
Another two and another pentacles card, this one Jupiter’s decan of Cap. We’re back with mountain goats and we’re back with expansiveness, with biggery (so to speak). If we consider the “colonial” nature of the 2/wands, which we explored earlier, perhaps we can detect a similar “outwardness” here—a similar sense of . . . “well, I could use what’s mine, but . . . then there’s this other thing that other people seem to like better . . .” It takes the spiritual two and transforms it into a life two. In this case, there’s a bit of a tug-o-war happening between earthy practicality (pentacles, Capricorn) and expansiveness (Jupiter). And twos are naturally tug-o-warish because they have magnetic qualities: they draw and they repel. 

This card, I think, offers us a bit of a down-to-earth sense of critical reacting. I wanted to say “critical thinking,” but it’s not; that might be the Two of Swords. This is reacting, because the earthiness of the card is embodied in ways that the intelligence of the swords isn’t. There are times our minds can feel divorced from our bodies. There are times when we don’t even notice our minds. This is the second. It’s like we’re able to encounter an experience and decide relatively quickly whether it feels like “ours” or not. I also think it’s interesting to consider that, as the final suit in the deck—and with the pentacle as its object, which represents all the elements—contains the rest of the deck. So it’s earth and everything else in tarot, because the earth is made up of loads of things, too. And because we have been exposed to so much in the suit of earth, we’ve been through the rest of the deck, we have a good editing eye. “This is for me, this is not for me.” So, this is a long-winded way of saying, You bring a lot of experience which makes it possible for you to experience something and decide quickly whether it’s useful for you or not. What you bring to your divination is a critical eye that allows you to avoid doing things that are out-of-step with your values. (Coins/Pentacles=value). 

What your environment is contributing: Queen of Swords
This particular queen can be a little gate-keepy, and I think about this card not unlike the “Judgment” card, in the sense of feeling judged. In this case, though, I feel this isn’t the reality—or if it is, it’s not that important. What matters more is your perception of feeling judged, rather than whether or not you actually are being judged. So you think you’re somewhat threatened or harshly viewed by your contemporaries. Whether or not you are, though, is irrelevant. The prior cards demonstrate that. You’re no longer looking for other people’s approval of your style; you’re allowing your style to emerge from you and your experience. 

Hopes and Fears: Nine of Cups
Jupiter in Pisces. I always think of Pisces as the “believer” sign. I think it’s a sign often associated with noted religious leaders, and even though the church says that Jesus was born on 12/25, it’s long been known this is simply a date borrowed from prior traditions where the sun god dies and is reborn. “Historians” say Jesus was likely born in spring, and others have said that he had to have been born a Pisces. That’s all to say, that I think of this as the sign of a true believer. Not a performative one, like much of modern spirituality, but a real deal, bone-deep believer in the thing. And this is interesting because, as we saw last week, this is the “wish card.” So it’s like being someone who really believes in wishes, who wishes to believe, and who ultimately feels compelled to give themselves over to the fullness of this belief . . . fully. Ahem. This is both a hope and a fear, because we worry we’ll lose our identity if we give into this as fully as the card suggests—much the way people worry they’ll lose themselves in relationships if they’re not careful (and/or like those of us who have actually done that and lived to regret it!). What I sense, here, is the desire (cups) to give into the spirituality of divination fully—but the fear that in so doing, one loses oneself in it and cannot do the other thing anymore. The other thing being more practical work. We worry that if we go off the “deep end” of magic, we’ll never come back. Which, frankly, fair. I can attest—it’s seductive. But the final card in the reading will stop us from doing that. 

The future: Five of Pentacles
Mercury’s decan of Taurus is sometimes a struggle because pentacles like to stay still and so does Taurus; Mercury does not. So this is a card that no one wants to see in the “outcome” position, which is what this is typically called. But fives shake up and pentacles are banal, so this is a shakeup of the banal. Listen, as someone who is fairy “fixed” I am similar to Taurus, although it’s not prominent in my chart. I think of Taurus in many ways as the most fixed sign. But stagnation is no good. Mercury (who has been implied here when we saw Gemini) shakes up that stasis. Mercury is very five-like. And, yes, there’s going to be tension between the desire to sit still and the desire to move, but no matter how hard we try to remain still life keeps going. So this isn’t a bad card, or it’s only a bad card if you’re trying to avoid growing. This card is growing. We can experience growing pains, but we’re still going to grow and growing is worth it. The earth sometimes gets depicted as too banal (by me), but the earth is not inert. And being “grounded” doesn’t mean being “stuck.” 

What this suggests to me, really, is that pedantry is always something worth outgrowing. By this I mean, whenever we decide “tarot is for this!” we should immediately turn around and do the exact opposite with it, just to remind us that it’s both everything and nothing; anything and everything; and always something other than the thing it is, while totally being that thing, too. 

The outcome, then, is that no matter what, our divinatory practice is going to grow—no matter whether we want it to or not. And hopefully we want it to, because the alternative is kinda sad. We can’t help but grow. And that’s good! So, ultimately, it’s not worth worrying about too much. No matter what we’re doing, we’re on the journey we’re journeying on, and so we’re moving and growing regardless. Which is good news!

Summing it up
Welp. Am I Celtic Cross covert now? 

No. I still don’t like it and I don’t particularly think it’s a good spread. I think that I could have gotten a better, clearer answer by using a different spread. But I also believe in doing things we don’t like sometimes in the service of keeping ourselves from getting stale—and also because we have to remind ourselves why we don’t like the things we don’t like, partly to see if we still don’t like them. I think it’s important to know why you don’t like the things you don’t like. It makes it harder to protect yourself from growing. 

Ultimately, I think this reading suggests that the way to make tarot more theatrical, more immersive, is to make it more yours. Whoever you are, turn within and find the magic of tarot that belongs specifically to you. When you do this, when you’re reading like you and unlike any other reader, you can’t help but radiate spectacular vibes because you’re doing what you’re doing in the way only you can do it. And there’s something wonderfully empowering about that. I always say, I don’t want the people who take my classes or read my books to read like me. We already have me. We need you to read like you. That’s the goal. And when you do that, growth and impressiveness and coolness and “theatre” will simply happen. It’s part of the nature of what we do. 

A read of one’s own. 
This week, let’s allow the spread to help us examine our reading style—and where we might benefit from being more “ourselves” in the process. 

Position 1 - One technique or area in which case you may be unduly influenced by others and could benefit from some youification. 
Position 2 - One way you might bring more “you” to that part of your reading practice.
Position 3 - One benefit for you of doing this. 
Position 4 (optional) - One benefit for your clients of doing this. 

I really, truly recommend doing at least two cards for each of these. I just don’t think one gives enough context. As always, three is wonderful!

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