lesson 45 (whoopsie): activated spirituality

(Note: I skipped 45 and made last week 46, so this is now 45. You’re welcome!)

I rarely read with the straight-up Waite-Smith, these days. Every once in a while I get a hankering for it, usually after a nostalgic moment thinking back on my early days, but those come increasingly less often. I have so many good decks that avoid all the things I can’t stand about this one. Even the Harris-Crowley Thoth is a constant companion in a way I never imagined--but that the W-S could never be. And yet, as I say in my forthcoming book (The Modern Fortune Teller’s Field Guide, Crossed Crow, October 2025–click the title to pro-order—you’re welcome), this deck, for many people, is tarot. And I do have a soft spot for certain editions, including this one. This would be the “pink ankh” University Press edition, which I long lusted for partly because I love that back, but mostly because it’s the one Rachel Pollack mentions using in the intro to Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom — and so, somehow, and from a very early time in my reading (I found that book the very summer I found tarot), it became sort of the ne plus ultra of W-S decks to me. 

Honestly . . . it’s fine. 🤣 I do love the back. And the electric boogaloo color pallet, odd as it is, tickles me. My copy retains a pretty radiant richness, despite its age—and I do think this printing is from the seventies, as the box doesn’t reference University Press, but Carol Publishing Group. Anyhoo. Having selected this deck, I now need to work with it and it is funny to see it arrayed out before me. I feel zero nostalgia for it. In fact, looking at it now I find it quite fusty. Quite . . . well, Waite. But, I do believe a reader should be able to read with any deck—even ones we’ve outgrown. (Let me say that by “outgrown,” I don’t mean that I’m now “better” than this deck; merely that my affair with it—and we had a torrid one—is over. I do not believe there are “pro” decks or “beginner” decks or anything similar. If a deck works for you, it’s a good deck. Though I do take issue with shit like the “Garbage Pail Kids Tarot” and the “Godfather Tarot,” but really more from a capitalist standpoint—if they were glorious testaments to the thing they “honor,” wonderful. But also they’re just crappy money grabs.)

This is my typical cross, which I haven’t used in ages, but I’ve added sort of a “cross” card to each branch of the cross—not unlike the cross card in the center of the Celtic cross. I simply applied the idea to four of the branches, rather than the central card. These cards aren’t part of the reading in the same way, because I said so. They offer additional context to the cards they complement, but they don’t interact with any others. They might support their parent card to offer a big “but” (and I cannot lie), either way they are context not the main event. 

But let’s start in the middle with the four of coins. 

Speaking of fusty! This is such a fusty card and it’s one I really have never liked. There are many popular decks where the image on this one veers shockingly close to old anti-Jewish tropes in Europe—which should not surprise you, because Europe was and often is still rather anti-everything. 

I always say, the image on the card isn’t the card; it’s a value judgement of the card. The way that Smith depicts this image, we experience miserliness. This is all well and good, but what we’re protecting is very little. Fours are early on in the process. We expect this kind of behavior from a nine or a ten, not a four. But four is the first time in the sequence of the ten numbers that make up the pips where we find fustiness. This is the moment where we see, “Oh, we’ve gotten we think want! I better stop now and protect it at all costs!” Four is a super anxious number. It is terrified to let go because it doesn’t believe that it can keep anything for good. And of course it can’t. The five inevitably comes along and destroys it. But because the four held on so tight, they experience far more trauma than they would have had they taken a more Zen approach: “This is already broken, and every moment I have with it is special.” 

As I pan out and look at the four cards that surround the four (clockwise, King of Swords, The World, The Hierophant, Eight of Cups), I’m drawn by the aggressive, dominating vibe that sits above and below it. The combination of the King of Swords with the Hierophant makes me think of Bible thumpers who pummel the world with their “religion.” (Lemme tell you something, kids: if finding Jesus turned you into an entitled, arrogant prick who thinks they get to tell other people what to do, guess what . . . you haven’t found shit.) There’s a defensiveness to this kind of behavior. I always say that people who are sure of their faith don’t need to convert anyone.  They know what they know and they get what they need. Only insecure people, people who truly do not believe, and in fact fear that deep down it’s all a lie, need to go out and proselytize. Because the only evidence they can find of their faith is when their bullying finally wears someone down into “salvation.” You know who else does that? Schoolyard assholes. Donald Trump. Colonizers. Know who never did that? Christ. Just for the record. 

Proselytizing is as big a sign of insecurity as a guy walking around talking about how high his body count is. When it’s real, it speaks for itself. (I guess?)

Luckily, I added more cards for context. The King of Swords is contextualized by the Knight of Pentacles and the Hierophant by the Seven of Pentacles. Two more pentacles cards. Of course, they don’t interact with each other—only the cards they touch; but the fact that there are two cards, underscoring the central one, is quite cool. (For the record, I would count the additional “cross” cards in the elemental makeup of the reading, which puts this one decidedly in the Pentacles category.) 

This is already getting too long, sigh, so let me begin to summarize what happens by each of these being contextualized by penties: First, it suggests the meeting of spirituality and commerce, or spirituality and life. We might say that these cards (this central column) regard the idea of spiritual businesses. For example, the new diviner who believes deeply that they must set up shop and make this their business right away. But we might also step away from that depth of literalism and say, too, that it’s about the diviner who believes that the spiritual and the banal are the same thing--and the potential toxicity of the combo of the kng/swords—hiero is merely just a much more down to earth (pentacles) fervency. They really believe this.

I do. Increasingly. In fact, I’ve said in this very blog that I have realized my issue with esotericism is its escapism—it’s deep desire to run from humanity. But, no: we are embodied here, like it or not, and we then have a responsibility to each other because of that. True enlightenment is finding spirit in that, as basically all ancient and indigenous cultures seem to have believed, rather than escaping from the dross of being on this planet. The goal, I think, is to leave it better than you found it, somehow; not to run away from it entirely. And there are going to be spiritual people who fervently disagree with me. They will talk about Buddhism and other paths that seem to indicate a transcendence of human being. But that, the more I read about the world, seems to be a gross misinterpretation of Buddhism, based largely on white European misunderstanding of the Asian cultures from which Buddhism emerged and then came to us. There’s a saying in Japanese Buddhism (and, I’m sure, in others) that I love: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Being enlightened doesn’t give us license to escape life. It means that we have access to higher knowing that can help us ease the suffering of others. (It’s not lost on me that I’m writing this in the throes of my post-Reiki I+II honeymoon. Mikao Ussui, recipient of the Reiki we know today, did exactly that after his enlightenment experience.)

Spirituality that is disengaged is a vacation. It is not truly connected to spirit. And I ain’t saying we don’t need vacations. But the goal of enlightenment isn’t a permanent vacation. It’s, again, to leave the world somehow better than we found it. To set ourselves on the path to being a good ancestor. That’s enlightenment. All the other shit you can find just as easily getting well and truly stoned, to be honest. 

Once we “get” our spirituality, we want to “keep” our spirituality. We want to hold it, as the 4/coins does, because it feels good and because—and this seems to be rather a modern thing—we then want to identify with it, so we can tell everyone this is who I am. 

This is why everyone and their brother ID’s as a witch on social media these days, whether or not they have any concept of what they’re actually saying about themselves. A witch is someone pushed to the margins who discovers the power there, not someone who is looking for a persecution narrative of their very own, but who doesn’t identify with “Christianity.” This should be a gut-check for all of us, by the way. When we feel excited to share our spiritual path publicly, it’s wise to pause first and ask ourselves whether we want to share the “good news” (a phrase I’m stealing from evangelicals, but that’s what it feels like—and when you do feel like something you’ve tried has helped, you want to--and should want to--spread the word . . . to people who are interested in hearing it only) or whether we want attention. There are times when we’re purely identity-signaling. Or even wealth-signaling, given how consumer-driven the witch market is getting. 

I’m not immune from it. I don’t share that much about my path on socials, but what I do share is shared partly to signal a certain kind of “look, I’m in the club, too!” vibe. Where I’m most guilty of this is in my sharing of lust-worthy tarot decks! That’s where my insecurity really shows! I mean, listen: I love watching a good lust-worthy deck video, but I also know that when you’ve got one of “those decks,” the thirst comments on the deck feel almost as good as actual thirst comments, so . . . sure, there’s a thing going on there. I mean, fuck! I just did it at the start of this post, didn’t I, talking about my amazing vintage find! So . . . ya know. None of us are immune from it. 

I guess where I’m going with this is that the advertising of our practice (versus the sharing, which is something we do when we’re too excited not to) is distracting us from our practice—so it’s not actually practice, anymore. For example, I was setting myself up to do a sound bath this afternoon and just as I’d gotten ready, I thought, Oh should I live stream this?? And then I—thankfully—thought, No, idiot—you can do things just for yourself. And I did. (And it’s a good thing I didn’t live stream, because I was embarrassingly dripping sweat the whole time because I’m not used to using a meditation stool on the floor--which I only do because I want to keep my crystal singing bowls close to the ground because they’re fragile and I’m a klutz.)

Where is this reading going? Glad you asked. Focus. 

The Eight of Cups (contextualized by the 9/swords) and The World (contextualized by Strength) remind us that this path is a particularly spiritual one, and yes moving forward — moving at all — can be scary (8/cups+9/swords), there is vastly more exciting potential to find our ideals and ideal selves when we recognize the whole world is our oyster—as long as we don’t sit inside on a sunny day (world/strength), so to speak. 

Which I did not expect to write, but which is a thing I’ve been feeling myself rather deeply. 

I’m a boy who really feels compelled to sit inside on sunny days, these days--any days, honestly. I have zero social battery, and even seeing my lovely friends is sometimes quite difficult. And when I woke this morning and remembered I needed to write this today, I thought, “Oh, you know, perhaps I should do a reading on why I’m self-isolating so much and then use that as the blog.” But I didn’t do that, because I forgot by the time I sat down to write it. 

In a way, the spiritual journey—the exploration of spirituality—can be so exciting that we do want to four-of-coins our way through life: sit on a sunny days and read about all the things. But spirituality is also something that needs to be found and experienced in the world around us. It cannot be merely theoretical. It has to be put into practice. Particularly for witches who understand the power of the margins, because we also should understand that the power of the margins means that we can effect social change with our spirituality. 

Activated spirituality is the goal, then, and that’s what I think this reading is about. 

We can study all we want, but if we don’t put it into practice it’s worth nothing. (And it’s funny because this last week I was quite lazy about my Reiki self practice and this morning I finally made myself to do it and instantly felt better—so clearly this is about me.)

So, our spread this week will be about activating our spirituality. 


A Read of One’s Own

1. Where am I on my spiritual path?
2. Where am I sinking too far into protective stasis?
3. Where can/should I activate what I’ve learned about my spirituality?
4. What is one thing I can do right now to make this happen?