Lesson 8: getting over blocks

LESSON EIGHT
Cards drawn
An arc of five: Six of Wands/Victory (4), Hermit (2), Adjustment/Justice (1), Ten of Wands/Oppression (3), Eight of Disks/Prudence (5)
Deck: Harris-Crowley Thoth Tarot

Justice has never been one of my favorite cards. Mostly because in the course of human events, it occurs so rarely. It’s also a fairly mythic topic. The only “justice” that exists, at least in this country, is when someone who has done something that the general population can agree is “wrong” (murder, say), and the accused person happens to be both guilty of the crime and found guilty of the crime. But to look back on the history of criminal “justice” in the US, you’ll know that things aren’t ever this simple. Sure, folks go to jail all the time for murder. And there are too many stories of innocent people sitting on death row, too many stories of planted evidence, too many stories of leads not followed because of institutional biases. Like, it’s almost insane that we trust anyone who would actually want to do the job of a cop to be a person who gets to mete out “justice.” Like, I suppose, politics: the people who would be best never run, so we get the narcissists who do. Same for judges. It’s all part of the same system. Justice isn’t real. It’s simply what the powerful decide is legal--and for whom it is legal. 

All of this is why I really appreciate the change made to the Justice card in this deck. You can read it in line with the older concepts, but in fact the concept of Adjustment is one that sums up the act of divination. Let’s do something uncommon for me: let’s consider the actual image of this card! (Whaaaat??) Typically, Justice sits in a throne, holding a sword, mimicking the statue of justice we know from outside courthouses. It is a completely passive thing, and so is the justice system. The justice system isn’t interested in finding guilty people and protecting innocent people; it’s interested in creating the perception that guilty parties have been found so that the population won’t bother them anymore. Adjustment, on the other hand, is a painting of a figure balancing on toe atop a sphere. Not only that, but from the figure’s crown balances the scales (containing Greek letters alpha and omega, known to Catholics as a way the Christ described himself—as the beginning and the end). Not only is the justice figure balancing, things are balancing off the figure. And while it looks like the card is completely still, in order to achieve that posture for more than a second, hundreds of muscle movements must be made every few seconds in order to rebalance and recenter. 

This is an incredibly active card, but in the way of human biology, it is an automatic activity. It’s like breathing or blinking—two things that become harder when attention is drawn to them. Supposing we are typically abled, we likely don’t have to think about either of those actions—but they’re actions nonetheless. The body knows what to do and does it and it only becomes flummoxed when we start thinking about it. And the same goes for the act of divination. Once we see the cards arrayed before us we are constantly making countless adjustments—in our interpretations, our understanding of the situation, our impression of the question and/or querent, in our own way of seeing the world. And, if we’re really in the zone, this is all happening automatically. You likely do this without thinking about it, but when you think about it it becomes difficult. We (or many of us, anyway) are built to do this kind of work. Our brains understand it. We simply have to let go and let it happen. 

Of course, that’s the hard part. The two cards flanking Adjustment illustrate it. On the one hand, we have what happens when we get into this fantastic state of being: The Hermit. The Hermit, tied to our pal Mercury thanks to his association with Virgo (ruled by Merc), demonstrates what happens when we can navigate based on our divinatory instincts. Mercury is associated with divination (as well as the underworld, which shows up in this card as the three-headed dog who marks the gates of the underworld). The Hermit isn’t worried about all that (this is Virgo in its best aspect—most Virgos I know are over-thinkers on the edge of control freaks). This Hermit keeps their eye squarely on the cosmic egg—which, in this context, we can take to mean the reading. The Hermit is doing their thang and not thinking too much about it.

On the other side of the equation, however, we have the Ten of Wands (Oppression). This is what happens when we try too hard. This is performance anxiety, this is putting too much pressure on the muscle, this is working too hard, getting too tense (too hot) to let go and let the reading arrive before our eyes. This is something I’ve struggled with so much in my reading life that I’m amazed I’ve managed to get over it. It was truly the biggest obstacle to my readings—particularly when reading live and face-to-face. And it wasn’t all that long ago I still faced it. We put so much ego (fire) into the equation that we forget what we’re actually here to do (read the cards) and instead focus on the wrong thing (being impressive). But because we’re focused on the wrong thing, we can’t be impressive because we’re actually blocking our own ability to read. We’re getting in our own way. Our desire (fire as passion) to be impressive (fire as ego) gets in the way of being able to do the thing. And it also means we will absolutely burn ourselves out. When we feel the fire starting to get too hot, in this case when we start getting cruel to our inabilities, we are not longer reading. We’re stressing. And we cannot do two things at once, no matter how much it seems we can. 

The cards that partner with these two (Six of Wands + Hermit; Ten of Wands + Eight of Disks) tells us how we can achieve the good (Hermit) and avoid the bad (ten). Let’s start with the more difficult one. The Eight of Disks (Prudence) reminds us of a few critical antidotes to the Ten of Wands’s oppression: First, get grounded. That’s what the earth element does. Get grounded. It’s like you’re repeatedly being struck by lightning in the ten. You’ve got to ground yourself. How? The number eight (work) tells us: stop obsessing (ten) and start working (eight). Just come back to the task at hand. Return to the work of reading. Get away from the ego. Because the downward spiral that tells us we’re not good enough? That’s the ego, too, as much as arrogance is. We can be egotistical and insecure as well as arrogant. Arrogance is frequently just a different manifestation of insecurity, anyway. (And by “frequently” I mean “always.”) You can’t be concerned with your ego when you’re concerned with reading the cards. It is impossible. Work is the answer. Reading the cards. 

Now, that’s not easy, either. But it’s really the only way. I know from personal experience. I’ll spare you the many, many, many, many, many, many times I crashed and burned as a reader because of this very tendency. The key is being able to get out of ourselves long enough to recognize that we’re self-flagellating, not divining, and what we need to focus on the job in front of us. We have to become aware. And so I think this calls back to the lesson where we talked about that sort of active noticing. The ability to just be aware of ourselves as we move through the reading, aware of our feelings and sensations, without letting them distract from the reading. The reason this matters is we need to be aware of when the signs of downward spiral start kicking in. It’s better to head it off if we can. It’s harder to pause in the throes of it to stop and re-ground. But I think the cards on the other side of the reading highlight something we can practice to avoid this. 

The Six of Wands (Victory) is, we could say, the Hermit’s real focus. Yes, it’s the egg—but what’s in the egg? In this case, the Six of Wands. And I’m about to say something I find totally out of character for me: You have to know you can do it going in. Ugh, but I hate that. It’s true, though. There’s a certain amount of “I will do this well” that must be internalized before spreading the cards—no matter who we’re reading for. We have to know that we will be “victorious” (the six’s keyword) at this reading, and the Hermit knows they will be. They know they’re “bringing the heat,” as it were. And because of that, they’re not going to get mired in the garbage presented by the Ten of Wands. And even better than that, they’re making their job easier because they’re not going to have to get out of a funk before they can finish the reading. They’re not going to be tempted to swipe all the cards off the table and into the trash. They just know, deep down, and without question that they will get the answer. And that’s so annoyingly the key to so many things. As a massively insecure person, I really don’t like that reality. But I can also say that as my confidence has grown as a reader, my readings have gotten better. 

This is the healthy side of fire, the good part of ego. This is when it becomes useful and instructive rather than destructive. When we know we’re going to get the thing done well, we’re not worried so it makes it easier to focus. And I can tell you first hand that sitting down and shuffling without fear that I will embarrass myself has been a life changing experience. Alas, I can’t tell you how I got there because I don’t know. I think in part it was writing my books. I think in part is was my YouTube work. And I think in part it’s that I have been pulled to this work against my better judgement and so at a certain point I think I just said, “OK, fuck it. I’m good at this.

But let’s dig deeper. Let’s do a spread about how we can really trust and believe in ourselves as diviners. 

A read of one’s own

1. Draw from one to three cards representing your insecurity. This is what keeps you doubting yourself as a reader. 
2. Draw from one to three cards representing your confidence. This should be the reason that you trust and believe in your skills. 
3. Draw one-three cards representing how to convince yourself that your insecurities are just phantoms ready to be disavowed. 
4. Draw one-three cards representing how to make yourself believe in your gifts. 

For the sake of brevity, I’ll use only one per position—but I encourage at least three!

For my first card, representing my insecurities, I got Death. The second, representing my confidence, The Fool. The third, how to convince myself my insecurities are phantoms, the Seven of Cups (Debauch). The fourth and final, how to make myself believe in my gifts, the Nine of Swords (Cruelty). 

Tarot never ceases to surprise me. For the first, representing my insecurities, we get Death. And of course this cuts right to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? My insecurities have a lot to do with the fact that I’ve got a limited time on this earth to make my mark. And this has truly been the core of my insecurities since childhood. I’ve said in prior posts that I’ve felt my whole life like I was working against the clock, and this card sums that up. It also sums up the fact that, ultimately, none of us is particularly special because we all come to the same end—however we get there. Humans, well, we’re not that unique. We like to think we are, but even in terms of our general appearance—how many times has someone told you that you look like so-and-so or that you have a doppelgänger? Our ideas aren’t that unique, our looks aren’t, our cosmologies aren’t. I am “just” another human. And the insecurity in my case is that I’m constantly trying to prove to myself and the world that I’m actually not mortal, that I’m not common. I’m special. But I’m not. Not any more than anyone else is, and if we’re all special, then none of us are. 

I’m a very late gen x-er. We were the generation everyone says got participation trophies. The boomers resent us because we didn’t make anything of ourselves and because we’re sardonically uninterested in their self-inflicted plights. Millennials basically assume we’re boomers. And anyone younger than that just thinks it’s The Breakfast Club, when they think of us at all (and, really, there’s no reason they should—because we’re in many ways the non-generation…we don’t really exist). But we were the group everyone said could do whatever we wanted. We could be president! We were supposed, somehow, to represent the promise of . . . America. But we were also the first ones to face insane college costs, decades of instability in the housing market, and the slow realization that this country—which we were told was exceptional, just like us—was in fact a scam perpetrated by the wealthy and nepo babies. So if you’re in that age group, you likely have felt much of what I just described with the Death card. 

The card representing my confidence is, in an almost too on-the-nose occurrence, The Fool. If you read my prior posts, you’ll see why this is perfect. It’s the ability to lay the cards out and approach them openly with no expectation. To simply see what’s there and experience it as though for the first time. To look with “innocence” on the deck every time. And, I guess I’d go a little further and say, to contain the entire deck within myself. To, in a way, be tarot. (Which is getting a little highfalutin for me.) To just trust the process. To trust the cards. To trust myself, which in a way is also not an entity, because it is part of the reading. 

The final two cards are about as wrong-seeming as their predecessors were right. The card reflecting the way to show myself that my insecurities are just phantoms is the Seven of Cups (Debauch). Although, having typed that—what card could better represent phantoms? Of course the Waite-Smith shows someone staring at phantoms in the cups. But in this deck, I often jokingly refer to it as the Absinthe card. First, because Crowley was known to imbibe in that (nasty) beverage (I hate anise-flavored things—but I’ve tried it); second because, though this is typically a really bad card in Crowley’s view (all the sevens are, in that system—annoyingly. Seven is my number), I don’t think of it that way. Debauchery can be good. But of course in this case it’s literally highlighting the mythology of insecurity. The fact that it is a vapor, a phantom, an intoxicant. And that may sound like an odd thing, to call insecurity an intoxicant, but it really, really is. It’s a kind of ego validation. Not a positive one, but it’s sometimes very satisfying for those of us with low self-esteem to wallow in our own worthlessness. It feels awful, but in a good way. It’s like picking at a scab or jabbing a soar tooth with your tongue repeatedly. It hurts so good. And this card said, “that’s just navel gazing.” It’s indulging in self-abuse (the mental kind, not the kind the church says will make you blind). It’s just a myth, though. The card actually is the most literal in the reading!

The final card, how to convince myself to believe in my gifts, is the Nine of Swords (Cruelty). Oh boy. Here’s what I think. I saw a meme the other day that said: Every shitty thing you reflexively tell yourself in day is the echo of a lie that was fed to you once upon a time by someone who was trying to control or hurt you. That’s what this card is saying. Convince yourself? You’ve been lied to about yourself. Show ‘em all what you got. 

And that, my friends, is pretty fucking powerful to me. Maybe one of the most surprisingly impactful readings I’ve ever given myself. Take that, me.