lesson 46: your internal “body language” during readings

Sometimes I don’t know what deck to use, sometimes they all want to come to the party. Such was the case this week, which wasn’t helped by impulse-buying another deck yesterday and wanting to show you that. But, I’d weirdly already felt compelled to use this one—and, also, happened to send it to my sister for her birthday—so I decided to stick to that plan, even though I’m always hot2go with new stuff. 

This is Tarot of the Magic Forest, one folx might be surprised to see me using. I’ve said I don’t really “do” whimsy. It’s true, at least with tarot. But there are some “cute” decks that I really like that that have a vibe that belies their cuteness. This is one. (Dame Darcy’s Mermaid and the Silver Acorn are two others, off the top of my head.) This week, I’ve drawn: 

Eight of Cups (4), Moon (2), Fool (1), Seven of Cups (3), King of Swords (5)

This deck really wanted a workout! I kept shuffling and shuffling and it wasn’t ready to relax yet. Sometimes decks are like that. If I were a deck, I imagine I would love the fuck out of getting shuffled. I hope it feels good. It seems like it would be a really sexy experience. I’m slightly stoned, right now, but not enough to take that any further. (I write these on Sunday.) (It’s also worth noting that, as mentioned, I sent this to my sister for her birthday. [Her first deck, how do ya like that?] It arrived shortly before my settling down to compose this, and she did her first spread. The Fool was her first card, too! Synchronicities!) 

WHERE ARE WE GOING? That is the question. 

The enlightened ones frequently counsel us mere mortals to “be as the beginner” or a child; to reach for “beginner mind,” a state I haven’t experienced much of. I imagine it as a combination of total curiosity with zero expectation. The idea that anything and everything coming our way is A-OK, because that’s simply the state of things. I can’t speak for the enlightened ones, but this is how I interpret it. And I’ve often said in this very blog that this is the state we should aim for when we sit down to do readings. But the cards flanking the Fool in this spread remind me of another truth: even when we do that, sometimes we still don’t know what the fuck it is we’re looking at. And y’all? Been there. More than I can count. I mean, I think after a few years reading at events I’ve probably changed this ratio, but I would say there was a good chunk of my reading life where as many readings didn’t make sense to me or never came to fruition as actually did. Maybe I’m over estimating that, but I’ve had some struggles, y’all. And I truly, truly don’t know how I came out the other side, sometimes. 

I mean, I know how: tenacity. I made it my mission to do it. But that is profoundly unlike me, dear ones. Profoundly unlike me. 

The Moon and the 7/cups remind us that the goal of beginner’s mind can be easier to achieve than we’d like it to be, sometimes—particularly when there’s a human being sitting on the other side of the cards waiting for an answer. What happens when that happens? What happens when our open state of curiosity and zero expectation turns into the shocking realization that we have zero expectations because what we see on the table in front of us doesn’t look like anything that could ever communicate!

These two cards themselves hold clues, but before I explore them (assuming I remember to), let’s widen our lens and consider the remaining cards: 8/cups, king/swords. 

When we face failure in a spread of cards, we either want to move away and forget it or get defensive and pout. That’s how these two cards read, here. We go from openness, to panic, to defeat. It’s a cycle I think a lot of readers dance and I know I definitely have. And it might be tempting in a reading that describes our occasional divinatory falterings, to add more cards to see what can we do about it. But, in this case, I think the cards that describe the situation are their own antidotes. Consider:

The 7/cups does suggest confusion and an inability to interpret (if we think of cups/water as divination, which is within its realm for sure—then those cups in the sky are the spread—and the gawp-eyed gaze of the rabbit in the corner is our inability to make sense of what we see). But that’s not the totality of the card. Sevens, considering the number alone for a second, are introspective. They turn within for reflection and evaluation. They come after the halfway point, which is a perfect chance to pause and ask ourselves where we are—and, in the case of the Seven of Cups, how we feel about things. Even what we believe about things. (The “belief” aspect is heightened by the fact that this card neighbors a sword, the thing, and so there is an elemental influence that skirts cups into the realm of spirituality.) 

When we are doing a reading and we can’t see anything—and in this case, we can’t; the sun did not shine, it was too wet to play . . . and so we sat in the house, all that cold, cold, wet day (ahem)—when we’re doing a reading and can see, we’d do well to close our eyes (metaphorically) and feel the reading. Because, and here’s the magic of the combination of Moon and water, sensation and intuition become heightened in this environment. 

Tarot is primarily a visual medium, but not exclusively. I have no doubt a person with blindness could read, as long as they had a system of knowing that the cards on the table are. We have number, we have element, we have associations and sense memories and keywords and archetypes. When we’re calling on parts of the card that aren’t the image, tarot moves from a visual medium to something else. The cards are prompts, but the artwork isn’t the thing that “matters” in this case. We begin using what I call “math” to work our way through in these cases. (Element + number = meaning, for example.) But we can also feel our way through the spread by paying attention to the physical and emotional impulses we experience while waiting for meaning to come. 

What if--stay with me, here--what if . . . the fact that you got stuck with these cards was actually part of the message? What if one of the clues to reading the cards is that you got blocked when you laid them out. Here are some possible ways that might play out:

• A general reading with a client/friend who is afraid of the answer to the question they’re asking presents you with the blocked feeling when you lay out the cards. 
• A client (I use that for all querents, paid or not) asks about love or job and when you put the cards on the table, the feeling of not having an answer tells you the client either doesn’t know what they want or is standing in their own way.
• Someone has asked for a reading to “test” your skill and the question they’ve asked is fake and has no purpose other than to troll you. Perhaps you feel the block because there’s actually nothing to see in a situation that doesn’t exist. (Note, this is different from a practice reading. Those always work, even when they’re for fictional people, and it’s because there is a purpose: honing your skill.)

This is not to say that you should accuse your client of being the reason you can’t read. Only that the experience of being blocked may be a part of the overall message of the reading. “I’m feeling a major block of energy right now. Is there something I should know about that? It could just be me, but it’s powerful and distracting.” This is somewhat craven of me to say, but some clients do love things like that. It’s very b-movie. It’s the kind of thing people expect readers and psychics to say, but of course there is likely a reason readers and psychics say it—they’re feeling it. 

I misquote Yoav Ben Dov, who said that everything that happens in a reading is meaningful (or something similar—it’s been so long now, I keep re-writing it my way). I agree. And though many of us don’t necessarily pay attention to the physical/emotional sensations that hit us during a reading, when we’re stuck or stumped we might do well to pay attention to them. I might go so far as to say we should consider what we feel beyond stuck. Is there a kind of stuck that we’re feeling? This is a cruder way of explaining this than I’d prefer, honestly, but is it a constipated stuck? Or is it a bottleneck stuck? Where in your body do you feel it? I often feel it, annoyingly, in my sacrum—the very bottom of my spine, at the top of my ass. An intense restlessness hits me there, sometimes, and I cannot make it go away. And when I feel that way in a reading, there may be something to the client being in a similar boat. 

Panning out again, the 8/cups and king/swords almost say “pan out” — the 8’s movement and the king’s eagle-eyes. But I think this simply moves us to step two of the process: applying the intellect to the sensations. In the prior step we felt our way through the cards, or started to. In this step, we apply reason: “OK, does that sensation or feeling make sense in this context? What evidence do I have for this?” That last part, I think, helps a lot—at least if we’re learning to trust this kind of ability. It gives us bounding box. If I can’t find evidence for it in the reading (the whole experience, not necessarily the cards), then I should put it on the back burner, at least for a bit.

For example, let’s say that I experienced a stuck feeling that I realized occurs right between my eyes. That’s where I’m feeling it most intensely, because when I try to force myself to see something in the cards I can feel my third eye tingle in an unpleasant way, or I feel it getting disagreeably warm. I consider whether or not this has any connection to the question or contexts I’m working with. Say this is a reading for someone who just wanted a general spread. There is no question or theme, and I already know the cards didn’t really guide me to one, either. As I try to make sense of this, I feel this tension between my eyes and I glance up and see that the client is looking down with their eyebrows furrowed. I take note of the fact that their face indicates they’re feeling something in the area between their eyes. That could indicate something to me. That’s the “witch eye” or (more commonly) the third eye or pineal gland. If someone is experiencing a blockage there, they might be struggling with their spirituality, their self-perception, or their view of the world. If any one—or all—of those connects to one or more of the cards on the table, great! Run with it! But if you don’t see any evidence, it may not be “there” yet. You could ask, “I feel like you’re potentially experiencing a struggle in the area of your worldview or spirituality. Is that something that feels true?” 

The thing about asking that question is the client may not know. If they did, they likely wouldn’t require a reading. So you might have to take their answer with a grain of salt. “I’m not sure . . .” is a likely answer and may simply mean, “No, but I’m afraid to tell you.”

As I say a lot, too, perhaps the experience is a metaphor. If the tension between your eyes isn’t literal—like a struggle with someone’s pineal gland—what could it mean to have tension between the eyes? What if it means they’re got a target on them at work? Like the site on a rifle. And suddenly all those coins cards make sense . . . target practice. Or, what if it means they’re not using their intuition in a situation where they should be seeing things clearly. If the reading isn’t making sense to them, it’s possible they’re blocking their own ability to see the reality. 

Would I say that to a client? Probably not. What good what it do? And can I be sure I’m correct? No. But, if nothing else, it can soothe me if I feel tempted to downward spiral.

Reading our body during a reading isn’t a tactic I’ve talked about much before this year. Of course, things have put me on a course of energy work lately and so the idea of the body is more present on my mind. Typically I prefer to forget I have one. That gets more difficult the older I get. For example, my right shoulder is screaming at me to, please, for the love of god, learn how to sit at a desk and writer rather than plop up on some pillows chest-down on the bed like a teen. And yet it is the only way I can write! At least when I’m not at work! Anyway, the point is—we are part of the reading and our intuition is more than “merely” our thoughts—which is one reason why this reading has so little air in it. (Telling that it lacks fire, too, eh? And I think that’s key. I think it reminds us that we can’t go off and start thinking all energetic experience are useful in a reading. We need restraint, and this reading has it.)

But I think it’s quite an exciting thing to think about, paying closer attention to what our bodies are telling us during readings. And in this week’s spread, we’ll explore how to do that more regularly. 

A read of one’s own
Here’s a spread to explore where we might listen to our bodies more during readings:

1. One way I should pay attention to my body when reading (or, what clues can I most-often expect from my body)?
2. What’s one way I can improve my awareness of this?
3. What’s is one way I can incorporate this into my readings?
4. What’s is one way I can make sure I’m not over-doing this, or relying too much on my physical experience?