Lesson 7: noticing our reactions while reading

LESSON SEVEN
Three card arc
3 of water (2), 3 of fire (1), contemplation [hermit] (3)
The Awakening Tarot by Monica Bodirsky


Note: Monica Bodirsky’s two recent decks (this, and the Between the Worlds oracle) happen to be two of the most brilliant, creative, wonderfully experiential cartomancy decks ever. I cannot recommend either highly enough, and I highly recommend reading the attendant books. They’re excellent. 
    
In spending this summer with the Thoth deck and reading every book I can find about it and its offspring, I’ve discovered the Kabbalistic numerology is often very different from the system I’ve evolved into over the years. It’s one of the reasons why the keywords or titles on the Thoth decks drive me nuts so much. In my way of reading, three is expansive. If we think of one and two having sex, three is the baby. Because these two vibes (odd and even) have united, there’s a rapid growth. But in many ways, three is the first odd number. One is less of a number to me than an idea or a summary, at least in divination. It’s the potential for the thing, but not yet the thing. Two comes along and brings generative force (because two is an attractive number, everyone wants to get with it), and makes three. Three, then, being the first truly odd number. And because it’s so young and fresh and because it finds itself growing so rapidly, it is an intensely creative number. In many ways, three is the best you can get in each suit. It’s not feeling the latency of the ace, but it’s also not getting tired the way things begin to do as soon as four. 
    
Elementally, we’ve got fire and water (along with spirit, which is an element I don’t particularly find useful in readings—but, hey, who knows what we’ll find today?). The Three of Fire is a growing conflagration; the Three of Water, a growing flood. Ah, but when they’re together! That’s another story entirely. Fire and water are frequently considered adversarial or ill-dignified, and when I read using elemental dignities, I typically interpreted them that way. As I’ve evolved, I’ve begun thinking of the elements not in terms of their friendly or adversarial relationships to each other, but instead to the essential function of the element. This is something I learned from Camelia Elias in regards to lenormand. In essence, she explains that we’re not reading the “heart” as “love,” because that’s just what someone decided it “meant.” Instead, we think about what the heart does literally and that becomes a metaphor for the card that we then interpret in the context of a reading. For example, the heart is really a pump. Its function is generating blood flow throughout our body. Now, other cards around it may suggest that this is pumping love, I guess. But what I would think, instead, is that something is being pumped, generated, maybe even accelerated. That could be a feeling of some kind, and with the lilies or the flowers or the ring, it may be a feeling of “love.” But if paired with the whip, say, it may be purely sexual. “Pumping.” You get the idea. 

What is the function of fire and water? Obviously, they don’t have a function in the same way the human heart does. That said, they have things they do. Fire consumes. That’s its primary action. It eats fuel. Air and wood (earth), for example. Now, that might be good. If fire is eating air, it’s potentially burning energy rather than letting us stew in over thinking. If fire comes into contact with earth (wood), it might be good—we need fire to warm ourselves; it might be bad, we don’t want our houses burning down. If there isn’t enough air or earth in a spread, fire has nothing to feed on. It dies. Suffocates. One might say fire’s function is to warm, but that’s merely a consequence of fire’s actual purpose: feeding. Like yeast. From fire’s point of view, it doesn’t care that its hot. It just needs to sustain itself with new fuel. Yeast doesn’t know or care it’s burping gasses into a dough. It’s just eating. Those gases are beneficial. They give bread its flavor and texture. But the yeast isn’t doing that it’s doing so we can have bread; it’s doing what it’s doing because its hongry.

Water flows. That’s what it does. Its nature is flowy. Yes, it cleans; yes, it cools; yes, it floods; it nurtures and destroys. But from water’s point of view, its main aim is to flow, to fill.  It just wants to get where it’s going and fill up as much of its path as it can. Water isn’t bothered by obstacles; it finds a new path when its way is blocked. If there isn’t an “around,” it will find an “over.” Or an “under.” Sometimes even a “through.” Water doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything but flowing, but going everywhere it can possibly be. It doesn’t care about your basement or your roof; it doesn’t care about your street, town, or country; it doesn’t care if you’re desperate for it while its far away; it doesn’t care if you have too much of it and need a break. It does what it wants, which is to flow. 
    
These are selfish elements. But we can’t assign motive to them. They’re not good or bad, they just do what they’re here to do. That said, when partnered new things can happen. As this reading suggests. When fire and water encounter one another, there’s a bit of a West Side Story situation going on. They don’t like to be outmatched, because fire will evaporate water if it has the chance and water will suffocate fire if it is in charge. They work best when balanced. And when balanced, they create steam. Alchemists believed that air is the child of fire and water because of steam. I don’t believe any one element generates another—metaphorically or not. Steam isn’t air; it’s steam. Each element exists on its own, but it can’t exist without the others because the others define it. We can’t have earth if we don’t have fire, water, and air to compare it to. Without them, earth is just everything, which also means it’s nothing. 
    
This is fun, etherial thinking—and I suppose it’s apropos that the edible I took after work is kicking in—but how does any of this apply to life? Excellent question. Before we answer it, let’s consider the final card: Contemplation, typically the Hermit. The majors in this deck are entirely restyled, and it’s one of the exciting things about this great pack. Contemplation. What a word! Let’s do my favorite thing of checking the dictionary to see what the word literally means. “Thoughtful observation.” Ohmigah. I love that phrase. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, thoughtful observation of expansive fire and expansive water. Effortful, in its way, because Contemplation is nine, and nines are effortful. If three is effortless expansion, in order to sustain three times that, effort is required. (Six lubricates the works.) We must make an effort to thoughtfully observe fire and water in our readings.
    
Of course I don’t mean only fire and water, but what the elements here signify. In fact, what we’re really thoughtfully observing is steam (3 of fire + 3 of water). Here we get to play with poetry—because of course this isn’t recommending we study literal steam. (Though it might encourage us to enjoy some smoke or steam scrying.) What is steam, if we think poetically while also staying in the world of divination? I would say that steam suggests the sensational experiences of a reading, the shifting energies. This is a theme that seems to want exploration is this blog, the focus on the ephemeral (which, if you’ve read prior posts, you’ll know is not a strength of mine). But what I think I’m getting at is the act of stepping out of our role as reader even as we’re reading so that we can simultaneously experience what is morphing in and before us. Imagine that the act of reading creates a psycho-spiritual steam within and around us. And that steam is communicating things. This is a convoluted way of saying that we should pay attention to our physical and emotional experiences as we read, because we may find additional context in them. 
    
What’s important, though, is the Contemplation aspect of the reading. When I think of “thoughtful observation,” I think of my general idea of curiosity. Essentially, curiosity observes without judgment. It merely studies and absorbs. I think that’s important to call out, because this kind of self-reflection and self-study can quickly turn into navel gazing and self indulgence. I’m very anti readers centering themselves (unless they’re reading for themselves) and focusing too much on their “feelings.” It reminds me of an actor who needs to stop rehearsal to hijack the process to talk about his “motivation.” I don’t mean that we become self-obsessed; merely that we become aware to the physical and (I guess) psychical expressions that occur during a reading. This isn’t about getting distracted, but pausing occasionally to just “feel” the moment. 
    
These are the kinds of concepts most difficult to set into language. We don’t really have words for what it is I mean. I discarded phrases like “check in” and “scan.” They’re too active, too much about withdrawing from the moment and turning inward. It’s not that. And it’s not a long process. Maybe it’s a moment of mindfulness. Of noticing. “Here we are. This I detect X sensation in my body. I detect Y sensation in the air before me.” It may fully be, “Here we are, I detect zero sensation in my body or before me.” But it might be, “I detect a small anxiety in my chest. I feel blueness at the table.” We needn’t know what any of that means and shouldn’t remove ourselves from the engagement to study. At least I don’t think we should. What I think instead is that it could suddenly unlock something, much the way a detail in a card that you never or rarely notice might unlock an aspect of this reading in this moment.
  
 It’s easier to experience to describe. And so I’ll dedicate our spread to helping us understand and achieve this potential. And in the interest of making this blogs shorter (at least sometimes), let’s jump to that now!

A read of one’s own
In this case, there’s only one spread “position,” but you can use as many cards as you like to answer it. The spread is simply an answer to the question, “How do I ‘notice’ more in readings?” With the idea that the word notice suggests all I wrote above. And more! As always, I’m turning to a Thoth deck because of #thothgirlsummer. Any deck’ll do, though. In this case, I’m using MM Meleen’s Rosetta Tarot.

I’ve drawn: Prince (Knight) of Swords (2), Queen of Cups (1), Hanged Man (3)
    
Well well well, if it ain’t our old friend the Hanged Man showing up to give us an entirely different side of him from the last time we saw him (in lesson five). I adore that this has happened because it allows me to highlight the single most important aspect for reading tarot: context! Huzzah! But before we get there, we must reckon with some royalty first. 
    
The Queen of Cups is sort of the stereotypical “intuition” card, and both PCS and LFH show us a contemplative queen. MM Meleen’s queen diverges from Harris’s in an interesting way. This queen leans over the water and, like Narcissus, gazes into its depths. Now, unlike Narcissus, I don’t think this queen is gazing at herself. I think she’s actually scrying. But I haven’t had a chance to read The Book of Seshet yet, which is the guidebook for this deck, so I’m too curious not to see if she references Narcissus. Hold please. 
    
Nope! Well, good, because Narcissus isn’t contextually relevant. 
    
The Queen of Cups sums up exactly what the reading above said. It is a passive noticing. An awareness without full engagement. This is a practice, and I think that this image of the Queen (I’ll try to remember to put a picture of the card here when I post the blog, but Weebly has been shitty lately and posting images within text is one of several issues I’ve had. Hey Weebly can you see this? I’M FED UP WITH WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU SINCE SQUARE BOUGHT YOU—AND I’M STRONGLY CONSIDERING MOVING HOSTS) is practicing. (The photo is below. Weebly won’t allow me to put in inline text, because, I don’t know, it’s 1997.) That’s why I said she’s scrying. Scrying is a fascinating concept to me, probably mostly because it’s out of the realm of my abilities. I don’t think you can have ADHD and scry. At least I can’t. It is a patient passivity and waiting for something with the expectation of nothing. I don’t know why, but it makes me think of the phrase “their eyes were on the middle distance.” We know what that means, but when you think about it—it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s an entirely nebulous idea, and yet we (many of us) know precisely what novelists and screenwriters mean when they use this (admittedly cliched) term. 
    
I often describe doing a tarot reading like the Magic Eye posters of the early nineties. Those digitally-generated seemingly abstract images that, when gazed at softly, transformed into a three-dimensional shadow of an airplane or giraffe. This is sort of the experience of scrying (from what I gather) and very much the experience of divination generally. In a way, it’s experiencing our body’s sensations and allowing them to influence the flow of the reading. We don’t necessarily consider “bodies” as a particularly watery thing, but of course the human body is mostly water! What better suit to represent our corporeal selves, because if you read my descriptions of water above, you’ll see that humans have similar underlying goals. (Evidence our treatment of the planet and each other in our quest to flow our own way.) So we’re noticing our body in the moment of reading. Actually, we’re practicing noticing our body in the moment of reading without doing anything about it. It’s simply experiencing it. And then allowing it to do whatever it does. 
    
Dear god, this is a screamingly out of character reading for me to give, no? Insert all the laughy face emojis. 
    
The Prince of Swords, airy air, is the perfect compliment to this queen in several ways. If you’ve read prior posts, you’ll recall the ways water and air are so inseparable. In previous readings we’ve explored how the overabundance of air and water lead us to feeling unstable, messy, anxious, bitchy, generally fucked-the-hell-up. But this is a different situation, reader! This is contextually much different. Here, the Prince (Knight) isn’t the arrogant, smug, know-it-all that this card can sometimes represent. Rather, he is a scholar. He doesn’t care to show what he knows, he’s instead interested in learning everything he can. 
    
It’s not common to associate swords with sight, but increasingly I’m finding myself doing that. First, it’s something I don’t think we talk enough about in readings—how people “see” things. But also because our intellect perceives and that happens in our brain, same as thinking. In fact, an astonishing ballet occurs within our bodies that allows those of us with sight to see what we do. It’s almost impossibly magical, when you think about it, and certainly impacts how we experience the world. What we see impacts what we think. It also impacts what we feel. Some of us will see the treatment of people on this planet and grow desensitized and look away. Others will see it and want to act. Perception defines our reality. We see every day in the news how what is true so often doesn’t matter at all if someone perceives something a certain way. And the truth cannot change perception easily. Getting people to change their mind about something is a game of psychological manipulation designed to trick people into thinking they’ve “discovered” the truth for themselves. (I work in adult learning, and you can summarize training and adult education in exactly the same way.) So, anyway, this is my long-winded way of justifying the fact that swords can encompass sight and vision as much as intellect and communication. They’re all part of the same system and they are quite dependent on each other. 
    
The queen is passively noticing, the knight is actively perceiving. 
    
Oh, god, I hate when I write such grad school sounding sentences! But there you have it. What in actual fuck is “active perceiving.” What can I compare this to?
    
OK. You’re super pissed off about that thing they did. Like, you’re actually shaking with rage and you’re texting bae about it. You’re frantically smashing your thumbs into the screen with all your might as you channel your rage into the words that you need to express the sheer gall of that fucking motherfucker. Know what I mean? OK. So you’re actively texting. That’s the action you’re doing. At the same time, you’re perceiving the language you need to express the rage you feel. So you’re brain is translating your rage into words. You’re not describing how you feel, you’re explaining what happened. But in the word choices you’re selecting and the intensity you’re typing, your rage is clear. Because while you’re actively texting, you’re also actively perceiving your own ire. See what I mean? You can’t say your primary action is raging, even though you’re enraged, because what your energy is achieving is a text message. But you’re still actively aware of your rage and its informing what you’re saying and how you’re saying it—as well as the way you’re typing it, typos and all. 
    
That’s actively perceiving. 
    
Or something akin to it. And if we take that analogy and think of a reading, it’s not a difficult leap: we’re actively delivering a message. If you’re anything like me, your center of gravity in that moment is really in your brain. That’s the part of me that tingles most when I’m reading cards. (It’s probably different for everyone, but I’m very cerebral.) But at the same time there are other sensations occurring in my body. In the same way that the angry texter is engaged in texting and their brain is highly activated, the rest of the body is also experiencing high-level Hulk mode. It’s simply about the practice (queen) of becoming more aware (prince) of the other parts of us in a reading, without actually stopping the text—or in this case, the message of the cards. 
    
Now, the Hanged Man. He just says, “sustain that as long as you can.”
    
Nothin’ complicated, nothin’ bad, nothin’ surprising. “Try to do it as long as can.” That’s it. This is what I mean when I say how much context matters. Because the fact that it’s a “MAJOR ARCANA CARD” can make it seem so “BIG.” But it’s not. In this case, it’s just saying, “sustain.” It’s like the pedal on a piano, or something. Maybe not quite that, but it’s sustained. This is why I think we can learn so much about reading by reading about reading, because it’s going to show us so many magical context shifts. 
    
I love when this happens!
  
So that’s the method, I guess. Less down-to-earth than I’d like, but to practice this sort of active perception as long as possible to see what. Which is pretty much the way we learn to do anything, I guess, so there’s that. But what I love about this particular example is that it underscored and elaborated one elements from the lesson reading. And I find that quite validating!

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