A three-card draw:
Seven of Cups (2), Temperance (1), The Hanged Man (3) Deck: Smoke, Ash, & Embers by Three Trees created by Stephanie Burrows, Illustrated by Adam Oehlers Temperance makes its second appearance in one of our lessons, and that isn’t surprising; it’s a thing I’m particularly bad at. I’ve never been a moderate or temperate person and I have the emotional and occasionally physical scars to prove it. Peep my social media and you know I don’t excel at moderation. I also have that tendency when I eat. I eat fast and if I’m not careful I can eat a lot, thanks to the idea that there may not be enough if I don’t get it now. I’ve always operated under the strong feeling that the clock is and always has been rapidly ticking down for me. The threat of extinction, so to speak, has always given me a sense of urgency that isn’t always (in fact, rarely is) healthy. If I don’t make the point now, I may never make it (this is why I used to be awful about interrupting people); if I don’t solve the problem now, my opportunity will have passed; if I’m not successful to my standards of success—well, in that regard, I often feel as though I’ve run out the clock on that one. Success is a young people’s game, and while I’m not old, I definitely ain’t young anymore. Temperance is not the card you hear people name when you ask what their favorite card might be. (Note from future me: Having said that, I was listening to the Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast yesterday, and both MM Meleen and T. Susan Chang talked about how much they love this card—so, there ya go. I’m wrong as often as I’m right.) I think a lot of readers, myself included, have found the card difficult to read because what, after all, is it really saying? I mean, that’s a loaded question. What it’s really saying is literally temperance. The word itself literally means self-restraint. It is frequently considered a more-or-less perfect synonym of moderation. That’s a word we understand. If you’re like me, you’re not particularly capable of it, but you know what it means. To give you an example of my fundamentally immoderate nature, I have in the last few weeks purchased several new decks—not because I didn’t have them, but I wondered if I might prefer them better in a different size or whether another printing of it might be more attractive. Like, I really don’t hold myself back unless I’m absolutely forced to. But moderation is an idea that I grasp. It is a goal. Temperance has a whole other weight, though; it’s not quite as simple as moderation, maybe partly because it comes to us in tarot. Everything gets seemingly elevated by becoming a tarot card—especially when it joins the major arcana. That’s a pretty tough club to get into. Most who have tried don’t make it. The trumps have been relatively solid for the last couple hundred years. It also doesn’t help that the Golden Dawn went and Golden-Dawnified everything, so that a concept as simple as “moderation” becomes something lofty, like Temperance. I’m actually in the middle of exploring more of the GD’s doctrine right now because of my challenge to myself to deep dive into the Crowley/Harris Thoth deck. (One thing I’ll grant them, those esotericists, is that nothing was left to creative impulse. Everything in those cards—the Waite-Smith, too—is there for a reason, and in the case of the Thoth deck, the color choices are deliberate, too. The printing technology of the early 1900’s limited what Waite and Smith could do with color, and we’ve all seen their deck in pretty disgusting print runs.) The fact that the card retains the title Temperance after all these years says something. Both Waite and Crowley changed things they didn’t like. For the esotericists, Temperance had nothing to do with moderation; it didn’t connect to consumption. It was a representation of an alchemical process, the unifying of seemingly opposite forces. Crowley turned this card into “Art,” and Harris depicts the results of this blending—a non-binary entity (they would use the cringe term androgyne, but the fact that they acknowledged the existence of the non-binary, elevating the concept, is a moderately progressive point I guess they can have—or not). But I’m not an esotericist. Even if I found the Golden Dawn’s teachings inspiring and worth my pursuing, it is the esotericism itself that bugs me. Access to divine shouldn’t be limited to the chosen few—particularly those privileged enough to afford dues into secret societies and with the leisure time to study the mysteries and the disposable income to spend on masks and cloaks. If you have divine knowledge that can save people or this planet, it is a crime to keep it secret. (On the other hand, I loathe proselytizing, too, so it’s a fine line. I don’t want to deal with latter-day missionaries. And we know they’re out there, at the moment pulling the strings on the US “judiciary.”) What is “Temperance” today? What line can be drawn between the alchemical unification of divine opposites forming a perfected whole and being a (for-the-love-of-god) fortune teller? Perhaps the other cards can help. (I’m going to pick on Fortune’s Wheelhouse for just a second, not because I don’t love that podcast—I adore it. But in this episode, Mel and Susie were at pains to say that “Temperance isn’t moderation.” I don’t have a problem with people having their own conclusions about the cards, but I also want to add that of course temperance is moderation, that’s literally what it means. And what is moderation? Yes, it’s not overeating, say, which is how we think of it. But it’s also facilitating. Someone who moderates is moderating, or practicing moderation. My point is, discover what the cards are for yourself. When I get smugly dismissive of esotericism, it’s because it’s often absolutism. Again, I’m a fortune teller--a thing loathed by [much of] esotericism. I read about life. I just read this morning that Crowley was adamant his cards never be made available to used by fortune tellers. Typically him. But, also? For someone like me? Even more incentive to do exactly that to his precious work. I guess what I mean to say is, don’t let anyone tell you what to do. Anyway, to conclude this digression on a positive note, I totally agree with their connection of this card to tempering--the metal-working and culinary process of hardening/strengthening something [both steel and chocolate need to be tempered] or moderating the temperature of something so that it can be mixed [hot liquid into eggs for a custard and egg whites into a thick batter are both things tempered.] This is part of the card, too!) The Hanged Man and the Seven of Cups. Let’s spend some time with our boy, The Hanged Man. He’s another dude who gets a major tarot glow-up: from the traitor, the criminal, to this transcendent image we’re familiar with today. I frequently read the card simply as consequences. Whatever is happening is happening as a consequence of something else, in the same way that the traitor hangs from the tree as a consequence of being accused and convicted of a crime. He doesn’t want to be there. Note that I said “accused and convicted.” That doesn’t mean he’s guilty. Of course not. In fact, there’s some small evidence the hanging of a criminals by their feet was, in fact, an antisemitic sentence reserved only for Jewish people (particularly in Germany)—but I’ve only seen that on Wikipedia, so take that as you will. We know that societal minorities don’t and never have gotten a fair shake in the courts of the oppressive governors of wherever people happened to be “in charge.” We see it today in the United States. The Hanged Man might easily represent the injustice of our world, where the system favors the wealthy, male, and white over literally everyone else. What we think of as “justice” is a myth taught by the ruling class. Justice is only what the law says is right or wrong. That’s why I can suddenly have my THC gummies from my stylish, Starbucksian “dispensary” while people still sit in jail for selling the same substance without the imprimatur of the state. It’s why fucking baby formula is kept under lock and key but guns are as easy as pie to get ahold of. Justice isn’t just, so neither is the Hanged Man’s punishment—not necessarily. Sometimes guilty people do get caught. This is, to my way of thinking, a much more relevant way of looking at the card. How often are you going through initiations that require ego death and the prolonged discomfort described by acolytes of many traditions? My guess is, not many. (Though many of us could benefit from some casual ego death.) This is one reason why, while I find the esoteric stuff interesting, I don’t find it particularly useful. But, of course, I try not to be a fundamentalist, and I know the esoteric concepts behind the cards, or at least I know the ones that didn’t make me roll my eyes hard enough that they got knocked from my brain. The question for all readers is, which version do we use and when? And in fact, that’s exactly what I think this reading is about! Let’s turn to the Seven of Cups. This card unlocks the reading. The Seven of Cups is a moment of emotional introspection. A self-check, in which we look at where we are and think about how we feel. This once again underscores the connection between water and air. We think about how we feel. Thinking and feeling are so closely linked, most of the time many of us can’t tell the difference! Because we think, we feel; because we feel, we think. It is a crazy, crazy cycle that has driven a lot of us (not enough, sadly) to therapy. Sometimes even (in my case) to medication. The Seven of Cups actually is doing exactly what the esoteric Hanged Man is doing: spending a serious amount of time reflecting on where we are and how we got there—at least in a manner of thinking. If the Hanged Man is undergoing an initiation, which is going to require the death of the ego, then he’s going to have to do a lot of soul searching. All the famous divinities who existed in human form do this. Buddha did it, so did Jesus. Shamans and medicine people and witches and hoodoos have done it, and continue to. Zora Neale Hurston, in one of the best first-person tales of magical arts in the US, “Hoodoo in America,” shares several initiatory experiences with various practitioners of Hoodoo and Voodoo in the South. And her experiences are consistent with the kind of extreme self-denial required of seers and holy people around the globe for, it seems, the entirety of the planet being peopled. The Hanged Man is undergoing a self-reflection so deep that it will leave him fundamentally different at the end of it. If he’s doing it correctly, he will transcend his own ego and die to the life he used to know. This is the esoteric reason why Death follows this card. (The exoteric reason is because criminals who get hanged die—another consequence. This is actually one reason I don’t mind Waite’s change of Justice and Strength. It makes a tidy little trio of sentencing, sentence, and sentence served.) This is a deep, inner process. Reports from those who have undergone this kind of bone-deep, soul deep self discovery or self release say that initiates begin to think they’re going mad. Nobody would endure this unless they have to. This isn’t winning Survivor. This is dying to the self as we know it and emerging as something totally connected to the collective. Transcendent though the Hanged Man may look, it’s an ugly experience. In a class, one of the participants once brought up that the process of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly is disgusting and painful. It is ugly and maybe even cruel. We like the outcome, we’d all like to think of ourselves as having become a butterfly in our own way, but to truly become a butterfly is to literally dissolve into a glutenous goo that no longer resembles a living thing; it means being completely re-formed (re-shaped, not reformed as in “fixed”) from the inside out and feeling every second of it; it means going through all that and still wanting to come out on the other side, rather than simply be put out of all this misery. That’s what the esotericists were really saying about this card. So, it sure makes it sound cringe when Becky or Chad (or their NB counterpart with a name-to-be-determined) gets on the socials that this card is about manifesting. Ahem. I got a little smug, there. Whoops. Clearly I haven’t experienced an ego death. Anyway. The Seven of Cups takes this into the real world, into daily life. It’s not the same thing, but it’s akin to it. It’s the more possible, more reasonable, more common experience of looking within the self and reacting to what we see there. But, in fact, it doesn’t actually matter what either card is doing, not in this reading. In this case, it matters more the realm. Which is a word I’m not used to using—can’t believe I did that, there. Point is, the major card (at least in this case) speaks of the diviner’s work in the spiritual, internal, magical realm—for lack of a better term, we’ll call it the divine plane. (I was tempted to use “astral plane,” but I didn’t want to get the haters cranky at me for misusing it.) It is the major arcana in the realm most of us learn it, putting the divine in divination. On the other side of the coin is the minor card doing the same thing, but in the material plane. Temperance takes the two and combines them. Which is the act of divination, when you think about it. Taking the divine—the message—and making it hearable to the recipient. This is, incidentally, another way we are like pages: we deliver messages. It’s also another reason why we have to make sure to give Mercury some love, because that was his job, too, and he “governs” that part of life. So, something I said earlier is that it’s hard to know which “version” of a card we’re supposed to be using in a reading. Do we go with the esoteric/spiritual? Do we go with the banal? Obviously, context dictates that to a big degree, but this reading is saying something else: always do both. Which, I have to admit, is amusing—because if you know my work, you know that I’m very down to earth in my style. I rarely if ever consider the spiritual consequences of a situation unless I’ve been asked to. While I do recognize that some physical problems (not only health issues) can have spiritual causes, I’ve never considered myself really capable of—talking about spiritual remediation for any problem. And yet. I have said before and will say again, the separation of divination from the spiritual is a relatively recent and mostly American-European (colonial) thing. And even within those two culture’s spheres of influence, there are many, many people who do practical spiritual remediation as part of their practice because it’s always been there. The sort of pop divination I’ve been a proponent of is really new and comes in part from the fact that I’m not a priest or a doctor; I lack the ordinance (so to speak) to explore spiritual or medical causes for problems. The only thing I feel “qualified” to do is read from the point of view of daily life. I feel as though I don’t have any “right” to offer anything else, because I’m not called to serve any spirits or even ancestors; I haven’t been asked by any entity to do what I do. I just . . . kinda do it and always have done. I’m not sort of gifted by the divine to do what I do in the way so many other folks are—I guess the folks I would say are actually psychics or mediums? Anyway, it feels that way. Maybe I totally have been called and I just don’t know it. Maybe I’m obeying orders I can’t hear. Who knows? And to be clear: I’m not saying that’s good, it’s just my reality. Frankly, having the spiritual abilities would likely make me feel less like an imposter when that old feeling kicks in. The point, though, is that this reading seems to suggest that every reading should be read through both lenses. For example, I tend to let the cards guide me to whether we’re thinking about something that’s more banal or more “elevated.” This reading is saying, “give both a spin.” Which, to be fair, is good advice—and not what I was expecting when I laid these cards out. In fact, I thought these cards were really saying I didn’t shuffle well enough, because all three of these showed up in the last reading I did with this deck. But I did shuffle, and they sure have an interesting journey to take. I did this not long ago. When I was at the Readers Studio in New York, I was lucky enough to be given the chance to offer a study group at the event—and as part of that, I got to be a reader for the “psychic fair” afterwards (I’m really uncomfortable with that word, can you tell?). One client had such an interesting situation, I decided that we should do the same reading two ways: what was going on physically, and what was going on spiritually. It was fascinating, and there seemed to be a combination of both at play. The difficulty was, the solutions weren’t going to be easy to come by. In essence, it was going to be an expensive problem—at least here in the material plane. But the idea of reading the same cards from two points of view hadn’t occurred to me before. Actually, now that I think of it I did a few things that night I’d never done before (as a reader, don’t be gross)—including asking a client to get up and switch places with me so that he could see the cards as I was seeing them. I think I did that twice, actually. No idea why I chose to then. I was feeling the “spirit,” I guess? That’s what I mean when I say that as readers we should be open. When things like that occur to us, we should see where they take us! Why not? Same with this new approach. Why not make every reading into two readings? Read the cards through the material lens and then again through the spiritual, or vice versa. What can we learn about the question, about the outcome, about the client if we take both tracks? There’s no reason not to. And you could be reading this and be thinking, “uh, no shit; I do this every time I read!” But I don’t! I am spiritual-avoidant a lot of the time. It freaks me out, in some ways. I don’t like to admit that I have a need for spirituality, in part because I was so hurt by it in my youth. Actually, not my youth; the spirituality of my early childhood was happy because I didn’t understand that God hated me. That came when I was going through puberty. That’s where the real trauma started. But because I’d grown to love it so much, the betrayal was huge. (Shades of me sitting in the back of a friend’s car in total turmoil because I was having an existential crises about the fact that God didn’t exist. At seventeen. Dear Lord, what a mess). So maybe you can see why I resist it so much. I also hate the fact that I’m getting older and there’s a cliche that as people age, they get more spiritual. I never want to be a cliche (even though, yes, I’m a cliche in many ways). But — and here’s the thing, my readings aren’t about me. They’re about my clients. I mean, if I read for myself they’re about me, but I don’t do it much. So this reading reminds me that just because I don’t need the spiritual doesn’t mean my clients don’t. Offering both points of view can provide them something that I haven’t been. Now, I’m not going to get down on myself. I’ve been a good reader and most of my clients have been happy with my work. I wouldn’t say I’m doing anything “wrong,” but I would say that this reminds me there’s an opportunity to at least consider the metaphysical as much as the physical in a reading about, well, anything. And that’s helpful for me to think about. Again, we cannot get stagnant as readers; we have to challenge ourselves. This reading definitely challenges me, because even talking about spiritual stuff makes me uncomfortable because the language always sounds . . . silly. And clearly I need to work on that, because I think this reading offers a point worth taking. For many of you, you may find yourself in the opposite boat: you’ve got the spiritual and may struggle with the material. If so, I just happen to have written two (with a third in the works) books on this topic. I’d be happy to guide you through it! It’s actually easier than you think. And for anyone who, like me, has swung in the entire different direction, there’s something to be said for practicing finding words that don’t get caught in our throat when talking about the spiritual. It’s worth coming back to the fact that the Seven of Cups and the Hanged Man actually do have meanings of their own, and while I said earlier it doesn’t really matter what those are, that’s not to say there’s nothing gained from exploring that a little more deeply. In fact, I gave you the practical answer: read practically and spiritually. What’s the spiritual aspect? The Seven of Cups and the Hanged Man for sure fit the spiritual landscape. The Seven of Cups typically depicts silhouetted figure staring up at a dazzling array of cups. This is one of the times where the Waite-Smith imagery lines up nicely with my own numerological thinking. That doesn’t happen much. But we can see a moment of self-reflection in the seven if we choose to. The esotericists called this card The Lord of Illusionary Success or the Lord of Debauch. The illusional success is easy enough to make sense of, we know enough people who have this particular delusion IRL (as the kids say). Debauch? What is that? There’s two meanings: indulgence, especially over indulgence. Indulgence edging gluttony. The other meaning is corruption. To corrupt the “pure” (a term I hate). Well then. Because I consider the suits and the element and well as the number (the esotericists didn’t; they used the astrology and Kabbalistic associations), if we’re taking the esoteric title, then that title is operating in the realm of cups/water, which is emotional and sensational. Emotional debauchery! Take that! Actually, one of the things I admire about Pamela Colman Smith was the way she could take a concept like this and make it into an image. And while it’s more likely she knew the Illusionary Success title, I can fully see emotional debauchery, as each cup contains a different feeling or sensation worth experiencing—even the scary one with the skull in the cup (the cards I’m working with don’t have that detail, but it’s hard to forget). Sometimes we don’t know there’s an experience we don’t want to have until we have it. And so the Seven of Cups can suggest exposing ourselves to different experiences to see how they feel. Interestingly, that’s exactly what I am trying to get at when I talk about being open as a reader: letting the reading wash over us and allowing us to experience different “hits,” different responses, different “feelings” about the cards and what they might mean in this reading. If you think about it, the Waite-Smith image of this card is much like that of doing a reading. Staring at all the possibilities, wondering which one works. This card gives you the answer: you’ll know it when you feel it. But you won’t know what might be possible unless you allow each “experience” to occur. In this case, to let every possibility make itself available to you and “feel” which ones are “right.” A thing I’ve “learned” about dealing with the esoteric titles—and really everything they did—is that you have to consider it a highfalutin metaphor for something that’s actually not difficult to understand. It’s like, they had to dress the concepts up in fancy language to make it seem important, but they really were just simple ideas anyone could grasp. And, frankly, everyone should be able to grasp them. Enlightenment shouldn’t only be for the moneyed and bored. When we see “debauch” or “illusionary success,” what we’re looking at is a myth. It isn’t literal debauchery; it’s debauchery in terms of a specific experience in life. Now, for many of the esotericists, they weren’t about doing divination, doing readings, so they probably wouldn’t endorse what I’m saying. But when we look at the Ten of Swords and it says “Lord of Ruin,” this is a math equation we have to figure out. What is ruin when we’re in the suit of swords and it’s relating to this particular reading? Believe it or not, it’s the same math we do when we look at the image. If we are “ruined” in the realm of air/swords, what does that look like? What would ruined thoughts be? What would ruined communication be? What even is ruin? It’s disintegration, decay—the process of that happening, or the thing it’s happening to. Ruins can be in ruin. As it were. This, then, suggests the decay of communication or the decay of thoughts--or it suggests thinking or communication about decay. This card could easily represent archeology. But because the suit of swords is its home, it’s more likely mental archeology or writing about archeology. But it could be literal. Context. If the question is about, “What should I study in grad school?” the answer is either going to be psychological or communicative archeology. A psychological archeologist is, essentially, a therapist. A communicative archeologist may write about long-lost or long-forgotten things, or may be a scholar of anything that involves “digging” into “ruins.” Art history, literary criticism, theatrical dramaturgy. It’s sort of a process of taking a literal thing (ruin), turning it into a metaphor (decay, disintegration) in the world of its suit (air/mentality/communication) and then turning it into a metaphor again. “Go be an intellectual archeologist” becomes “go be a therapist.” Of course, there are many others ways to think in terms of ruins, but hopefully you get the drift. Don’t take anything the esotericists said at face value. Take it apart and look at it through the lens of lived experience, and, hell, even through the lens of the damn dictionary. That’s what I’ve done with each of these terms while writing this lesson. It is incredible what can happen just by finding out the literal definition of a word we know well. What does it actually mean? This isn’t to say we don’t know, but we learn most language by listening and contextualizing—much like we read cards. We hear a word in a context a few times and we understand what it means contextually. But everyone uses words in slightly different ways because this is how we learn language (our native language, anyway). This is also why we may grow up pronouncing a word “wrong.” It’s not wrong, it’s just been picked up from people reading it and sounding it out and other people hearing it and saying it that way. In Connecticut, there’s a town called Versailles. Having taken French class and having heard the term in the context of France, I pronounced it “Vair-SIGH.” That’s not how locals say it. It’s “ver-SAILES.” We navigate most of communication this way. And I don’t think we should be stopping in the middle of conversations—or even readings—to look up the literal definition of words. But I do think that when we’re studying and playing with the cards, we say, “Well what does this literally mean? How does the dictionary define ‘Death’?” If we explore “death” as a literal concept, we get (according to dictionary.com), “the cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.” Merriam-Webster offers something so similar, my guess is that dictionary.com is just pointing to the same text. And the OED, well, the OED is behind a paywall, because capitalism reserves information for the elite. So, as we say around here, fuck the OED. Anyway, the point is, what happens if I operate in a reading from this literal definition as a metaphor, rather than a metaphor as a metaphor? Stay with me. I always say the cards, the majors in particular, are metaphors of experience. When we see the Death card in a reading, we’re not necessarily looking at the end of a life (another definition of the term), but the experience of deathiness. Obviously, “cessation of all vital functions of an organism” isn’t really a sexy metaphor. Still, let’s go further. What is a cessation? It’s “a temporary or complete stopping; discontinuance.” And ending right? Not quite. First of all, the arrival of the word temporary here is an intriguing and mostly accidental connection, but I know lexicographers aren’t haphazard about the words chosen to define another. But that’s not even the main thing. A discontinuance. Something that has been continued so far is being stopped. What are things that stop something continuing? A dam discontinues a river. A store discontinues the sales of an item. A network may discontinue (cancel) a series. Cancel. There’s a word we know and love in modern life. What do we mean when we cancel something (or someone)? Well, obviously it takes is right back to discontinuance, but of course words take on new lives—and cancel for sure has. To cancel, today, is to collectively and publicly shame an individual into submission and even retirement thanks to some real or perceived offense. And, in this way, Death becomes the cancel culture card. What’s interesting about all these words is that they imply choice. I frequently tend to read Death as inevitable--something that has to happen. I’m sure I still will. But playing this game of exploring the literal definition of the cards and journeying into the parts of its definition, into its evolution as a concept, and even into the pop culture zeitgeist, we get new shades. There is an aspect to this card, now, that is chosen. We choose to cancel, to discontinue. A series of potential outcomes has been ranked, risks have been assessed, tastes and trends considered, and a choice made. Something has become non-viable or not worthy of the risks. In essence, we choose to give up on it. A switch is flipped. The machine unplugged. We frequently tell ourselves we have no choice, but that is of course nonsense. We see it in the entertainment industry all the time, now, as shows are cancelled by one service and picked up by another, often going on to have the same amount of success. If we want something to continue, we can almost always make that happen. Bad relationships drag on for decades, jobs we’ve outgrown or that have used us up still keep us entrapped—hell, TV shows that have long decided jumped the shark still lumber across our screens in the vague hope its former spark will return. Sometimes it does. This is all to say that the experience of the card can be majorly opened up by exploring the concepts depicted, emblazoned, or associated with them in new contexts or in different “realms.” To return to the Seven of Cups (and the Hanged Man), as well as the concept of debauchery, there’s a warning in these cards, too: don’t get too obsessed with naval-gazing your divinatory work. What’s that mean? Good question. We’ll answer that and other questions next time on—No, kidding. What I mean is that sevens, being introspective, can become self-obsessed—and likely none more than the one in the suit of cups. The Hanged Man offers a similar risk, because he’s literally stuck there; he can’t move. The two cards, again, offer mirroring experiences—one on earth and one in the ether: don’t get too impressed with yourself, don’t get too obsessed with your gifts (all those cups, or whatever we’re debauching in), don’t start making the experience about how you feel, rather than what the client needs. The best analogy I can give for this is the actor who sucks all the air out of a rehearsal because he isn’t “feeling” it and needs to explore what his motivations are and needs the other actors to “give me more.” Good actors know that the way to give the best performance is to forget about yourself for the most part, and make the scene about the other person. Most scenes are about characters trying to get what they want. The way they do that is by manipulating the other players. When actors think about themselves, they’re focusing on the wrong thing. They should be focusing on what the character wants and, in essence, becoming the advocate who will get it from their parter. When they focus on their parter, the work comes to life. When they focus on themselves and how they “feel,” they’re getting self-indulgent. In the same way, when readers make the readings about us and how we feel doing it, we’re de-centering the client—who is the whole reason the reading is happening at all. Basically, it’s ego. And the seven can ignite the ego because it is so concerned with self-reflection and self-evaluation. When having a conversation with person who is deaf or hearing impaired and working with a sign language interpreter, you don’t look at the interpreter, you look at the person you’re speaking to. It’s rude to speak to the interpreter. They’re a facilitator. You’re there to engage with the other person. As readers, we’re interpreters. It’s not about us. It seems like it us because we’re doing most of the work, but that’s the job we asked for. The real conversation is between the divine and the client. When we make it about ourselves, we’re running the risk of our ego getting in the way. New readers sometimes ask how they know they’re reading the cards and not just letting their own biases guide them. That’s a good question. One way to check yourself is to see if you’re always getting the answers you expect from cards. If you’re never surprised by the answers, you may be operating from personal bias. It’s not a perfect method, most reading will likely yield at least something expected—but if they all do, if you’re never surprised, it could be worth considering whether you’re really letting the cards guide you or if you’re imposing yourself on the reading. Because the Hanged Man sustains whatever is happening, he, too, can get egotistical—even if he can’t literally gaze at his navel. Acting teacher Konstantin Stanislavksi (he of the oft-misunderstood “method”) once said, “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.” This sums it up: love the gift you’ve given, celebrate the gift. Don’t fall in love with yourself because you have it. Or, I guess, don’t believe your own press. In sum: read from a spiritual and banal standpoint any time—or every time—and don’t fall in love with your divination, too much. Don’t make it about you. And don’t fall so in love with the “mysteries” that the client doesn’t wind up with any clues. Make it about the client. All really good advice, I think. Tarot always amazes. A read of one’s own This reading is designed to explore the integration (and, in a way, the dis-integration) of the spiritual and banal.
A quick example: I used the Thoth deck for this. The first card, representing an area of my life where spiritual and banal could benefit from integration: The-for-love-of-fuck-Hierophant. Always cracks me up, tarot does. Where do I need to integrate the spiritual and banal? In my spiritual space. Now, I’m among those who typically look at the good ol’ Hierophant negatively, but as I always say everything is its own other, and it makes sense. I definitely compartmentalize parts of my life and when I do, it becomes restrictive. When I allow parts of my life to blend, they generally help both parts. And since this whole lesson seems to be about me integrating the spiritual and banal, this is the perfect card to show up. The cards that represent the two parts that need integrating are Strength/Lust and the Two of Disks (Change). I read recently that the Thoth tarot is (or was) banned in prisons, because it’s considered pornographic—in part because of this card. Crowley being Crowley, he has to go for the vulgar. But what he seems to have meant by choosing this word over strength is that it’s not just about fortitude or effort, but life force, zest, energy, particularly creative energy. It’s not just about the physical ideal, but about a whole, sort of radiant force. The card is associated with Leo, my sun sign. And I know this card must represent the spiritual part of the equation because its partner, the Two of Disks, is earth—that’s the banal part. Which banal part? Good question. Twos are magnetic. The draw (and repel), and in this case what we’re drawing is earth—in this case life. It’s what we’re drawn to in life and what is drawn to us. What this combination suggests is that bringing a strong, powerful, zesty, lusty spiritual energy to the things I care most about (and that seem to care most about me) would benefit me. It is, in a way, the pervading of the the things I care most about with a divine purpose. Which sounds tiring—although the Lust/Strength card is a good reminder that I’ve got the energy. (Note that I’ve more or less ignored the Thoth title for the Two of Disks. Change. It contextually doesn’t offer much. Do I draw change to me? Everyone does. Life is change. What it might offer to the reading is the sense of shifting interests in life. The things I care about and what I need to endow with divinity are varied and shift frequently. Although I don’t think of even numbers are particularly fast, so probably not that frequently. In this case, I think it offers a better shade to the reading if we read change as evolution. That creates a greater interplay between the spiritual and the divine, because of course the two evolve as we grow. It’s also a nice connection because of the prominent ouroboros/lemniscate on the Thoth card—sort of endless, eternal evolution.) The final card, representing a method of achieving this integration, is the Eight of Swords (Interference). Sometimes when I work with this deck, I start to doubt myself as a reader because these titles/keywords are so often impediments. They’re so total. Words offer so much less elasticity than images do. Why am I using the damn thing, then? Compulsion, actually. I’m emphatically drawn to it this summer. Shrug. Let’s start with the thing I hate the most: the keyword. Interference. Assuming I have nothing to work with but this annoying word, that is somehow supposed to be a method of integrating, that is the opposite of it. It is interfering with integration. Or is it? The image is (as the kids say) giving interference—this a blockade. A cage. It is interfering with something. What? Well, it’s the suit of swords. The intellect. Esotericists believe the intellect is the great enemy. Actually, that’s common in many traditions. As a writer, I find that rude. As an over-thinker, I fully understand why. The mind is cruel. Logic is cruel. The card is telling me not to let logic get in the way of this spiritual integration. So even though it’s telling me not to do something, it’s telling me what not to do. “Don’t let the mind get in the way of this process.” Or, said another way, “Interfere with your mind’s attempts to over think this.” So, OK, then; the keyword isn’t that bad. What else about the card might enlighten me further? Eights are work. This is going to take some effort. Connect it to Strength/Lust, and it’s doable, but it’s effort. (The nine would suggest it’s maybe too hard to do.) This card is Jupiter in Gemini—expansive intellect. If we’re going to allow the intellect into this integrative process, we need to do it in the most Jupiter-y way possible. Not so much logic as curiosity. Gemini is very curious. It gathers. I’ve heard it said that Gemini researches and Virgo (the other sign ruled by Mercury) edits. If you have to think, think big.
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AboutEach post is a tarot reading about the tarot, a lesson about the cards from the cards. Each ends with a brand new spread you can use to explore the main concepts of the reading. Archives
February 2025
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