Line of three: Ace of Wands (2), The Fool (1), Nine of Wands (3)
Deck: Folk Magic Tarot, Ibiza Tarot
 
It’s been a minute since I’ve done a three-card pull, and because I forgot to write this this weekend and I’m posting it tomorrow, I thought this was a good chance for simplicity. This is a lovely deck that I’d seen on Instagram and I’m so, so attracted to Eastern European sort of folk art that I had to pick it up. It’s really lovely. 
 
I don’t think we’ve seen The Fool much if at all on this blog. And to be honest, I rarely see Fools in readings. I wonder whether this has to do how care-full people are right now. Note the dash. Not a typo. Care-full as in full of care, not cautious. I think The Fool is a card we see during care-free moments, care-less moments; moments of innocence and moments of almost preternatural openness to whatever may come. I don’t know anyone who has had moments like that recently, not of any consequences anyway. Though there’s something fleeting about The Fool, too. We can only retain their state of innocence and lack of expectation for so long. We aren’t naturally suited to the state The Fool has come to represent in the cultural world of tarot. It’s a hard card to get hold of, and in a way maybe that’s apt; this card can’t sit still for long. It’s wily, slippery, evasive, quicksilver. Quicksilver is another name for Mercury and this reminds us that while the astrological association of the card is air, it’s not not also the card that follows: Magician/Mercury, who is also airy. There are esoteric theories that connect the two cards, almost suggesting that they’re the different emanations of the same thing. (If I’m not mistaken, this comes up on Fortune’s Wheelhouse.)
 
I’ve never felt particularly inspired by “the fool’s journey”—this blog’s title, notwithstanding. The idea of it made theoretical sense, but not divinatory sense. First of all, the journey of the fool isn’t the cards that follow it because the deck doesn’t spend much time in order. Second, there’s something sort of negating about the entire tarot somehow being the journey fools take because it is also a card in the deck and has meaning and associations of its own. They aren’t a non-playing character, so to speak; they aren’t not impacting the game’s outcome. And this is true (I think) of the game the cards were made for. 
 
All that said, I’ve always loved this card and I’m sure I’ve shared how I used to wear it as a pendant when I began my tarot journey. I envied the freedom. But, as I’m sure I’ve always said, had I followed my “dreams” at that point, it would have been a fool’s errand in more ways than one. Frankly, there’s a good possibility that if I’d moved to New York and tried to make it in the theatre, I’d be dead by now. I know that sounds dramatic, but I had no idea how sheltered I’d been, how naive I was, how unprepared for the world—particularly the art world—I was. I operated from the very earnest but very dangerous desire to be approved of and loved. My dating experience of the time is, I think, a good way to imagine what my theatre career would have been: I was so desperate to be loved by a man that I went on dates with dudes I had no attraction to, allowed myself to be intimate with guys I wasn’t attracted to and didn’t trust, and twisted myself into a pretzel to make myself right for guys I didn’t really like because I was desperate. Now, apply those tendencies to a career where you’re constantly begging potential bosses and coworkers to live you. Apply them, too, to the fact that the theatre is a world of predators, grifters, and con artists. I mean that’s not the--well . . . I was going to say that’s not the basis of the industry, it’s just a problematic branch. But . . . That’s not entirely true. At any rate, I was easy pickings. A crush on the wrong director, an audition in a strange location  and I could easily have wound up getting offed. I think so much about Venus Xtravaganza, queer/trans icon and known now from the documentary Paris is Burning. She disappeared and was found slain during the production of that film. And we know her name because she happened to be making that doc. There are so many other missing and murdered persons—queer, indigenous, women, etc.—whose names we don’t know. And had I followed my Fool-ish desire, there’s nothing saying I wouldn’t have gotten into a car with a man I thought would love me only to wind up stuffed in the trunk. 
 
I didn’t mean for this to get grim, and clearly that didn’t happen to me—but the point is what that we want is not always what’s best for us. 
 
I feel this acutely today and so it’s timely. I was reminded today that, though I still long for and miss my theatre life, every encounter I have with the theatre these days leaves me feeling shitty about myself. It doesn’t matter that I’m an incredible playwright. (I’ve got a gift, I don’t know why—but I can write a beautiful, hilarious play.) I want so much for it to work because I’m good at it! But truth be told, I haven’t enjoyed the process in years—well before the panny—and I really have had to accept the most garbage behavior from people in that world. Not from everyone, not by a long shot. Just from the people who have the most influence on my ability to get produced. 
 
This maudlin exploration may have turned you off. But I want to highlight that this is all part of this card. 
 
Listen, choices are great, freedom is great, making bold moves and damning the torpedos—all great. Except when it’s not. What we tend not to talk about with this card is consequences. The imagery in the deck and the esoteric associations have elevated this card to a kind of idealistic and totally imaginary non-reality that most of us, unless we’re extremely moneyed and free of any kind of burden (including self-doubt), will never ever experience in any kind of meaty way. Most of this people on this planet cannot experience the kind of thing readers typically say about this card.  We interpret this card through wishful thinking. But it’s not necessarily helpful. Particularly in readings. And, frankly, even in pathworking or intention-setting. If you’re doing spellwork around The Fool and you are not setting careful fucking parameters, then you’re setting yourself for getting exactly what you want—and every single consequence that comes with it. 
 
Boy, he’s such a scold today, isn’t he? 🤣
 
I don’t mean to be. But a thing we have done with tarot—the collective “we” of . . . all this—is that we take the cards and make them into icons. Those icons become ideals and then those ideals become the gap between giving a reading and reciting a wishlist. 
 
Readers, particularly those who read for ourselves, want to know how we can tell that our readings aren’t being overly influenced by confirmation bias. I think one way to tell is if your readings tend only to highlight the best aspects of your favorite cards. If you’re never able to see this or any card through a darker lens, if you’re not able to detect the consequences of answered prayers, then you’re likely giving yourself too biased a reading. Of course, the other part of that is true. If you never get a good reading, probably you’re looking only at the dark side of the card. (This reminds me that one reason I don’t work with reversals anymore is that cards would show up reversed, but it doesn’t seem to make sense for the reading—the reversal felt haphazard or meaningless rather than nuancing the meaning. But, the benefit of reversals is that it stops us from being too hard or too easy on cards. And so if you find yourself giving readings that seem to be always too + or too -, try using reversals and see if that helps!)
 
It’s worth pointing out that one reason people struggle with the court cards is that we will really like one particular card or rank or suit and use that to sum up our own personality—which makes it difficult to then use it to describe other people, or to see it in ways that reflect lives beyond our own. On top that, we can ID the other cards with people we don’t like, and then it becomes hard to interpret the better aspects of that card. The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Hanged Man, The Devil, and The Tower are often given over to this negativity bias. The Emperor and The Hierophant are understandable. We hate those guys. But of course there are times when The Emperor can represent just, like, a good dad. And there are plenty of times where The Hierophant can simply indicate faith or tradition. Every card has layers and shadows and highlights and nuances—whether we use reversals or not. And the cards as a set will influence each other so that we understand how each is behaving. 
 
Thanks for attending maudlin meditations with Tommy Bee. 
 
Anyhoo—let’s talk about context for a moment. The Fool stands not alone, here, but flanked by the Ace of Wands and the Nine of Wands. I had a similar spread this weekend while leading the Re-Learning Tarot course I’m doing. Our topic was Questions We Should Never Ask Tarot and to explore that topic I made everyone in the class read on the question “When am I going to die?” DON’T FREAK OUT. They didn’t read that for themselves, they read for a man we made up. And I didn’t tell anyone that this is a good question and that we should ask it. Instead, I asked the class to do the reading for a fake dude to see for themselves whether there was any benefit. What better way to know than to try? And doing readings for fake people is the safest way you can do that. But the point of that story isn’t the question as much as the spread I got, which involved the Ace of Gardens/Earth/Coins (I used the Japaridze for that), Strength, and the Ten of Gardens. And I explored with the group how there are two ways to read that: 1. They have the strength to sustain the entire journey of life, they will live a long one and die when there’s nothing left. (Strength carrying the ace—birth—through the “entirety” of a life well-lived, the ten.) 2. The client’s constant output of energy (Strength) will mean that go from 0 (ace) to sixty (ten) super fast—spending all their energy and dying young. (In this case, Strength as an entity using up their life force faster.) Which one is correct? Honestly, to know for sure I’d pull more cards. But because the first one—long life—was my first and strongest hit, that’s what I’d decide is true. 
 
Here, we could say that the Fool carries the ace through to the nine—the near-end, but not the end. What does that suggest, given everything we’ve discussed so far?
 
We haven’t talked about the wands, yet. I don’t think wands has been a particularly heavy presence in this blog to date, either. Again, that feels apt: I have no fucking energy, anymore. Going back to my misspent youth, and the fact that I’m a Leo sun, I have major fiery tendencies and wands is the suit I associated with all my theatrical dreams. Luckily, and I don’t know how I managed this, I didn’t pin all my hopes and dreams on that suit. I just got happy when I got readings with lots of wands. “I’m going to be a star!” (As though there’s such a thing as a playwright who is a “star!”) Being young, though, I tended to sum the suit up purely as our meant-to-dos. In essence, I looked at this suit as our raison d’être. Our purpose. Because that’s what I needed it to be, what I wanted it to be, and that’s what I assumed everyone else needed it to be. 
 
I found myself quite limited by that, as time went on, as my skill grew . . . it was like my understanding of the deck improved, but my understanding of wands remained arrested. And I’m not saying that this happens to everyone, but I do know as a person who works with adult learners that when we assign too much import to things they can become impossible to work through or understand. We somehow psyche ourselves out, preventing us from making progress. And it’s usually because we can’t let go of something—a perception, a bias, a cosmology—that has moved from facilitator to barrier. That does happen. Things that helped once can hurt, as anyone who (like me) has in the past experienced difficult with over-indulging in alcohol (hi, lockdown!). Over-identification with things makes people very difficult to move or train. Look at so-called American “identity” politics: men who think everyone is always obsessed with race and gender have such fragile concepts of their own masculinity, they can’t see that by getting so foaming-at-the-mouth angry about other people’s bodies (for example) that they are the ones actually obsessed with race and gender—and they’re suffering for no reason over shit that has nothing to do with them.
 
Not the most elegant metaphor, but you ideally get the point: the more intensely we feel something, the harder it is for us to see it clearly. In my teens and twenties, when I fell for someone I fell hard. I both saw none of their faults and became totally enthralled to the point of losing my identity, and desperately seeking their attention and approval. I was so profoundly insecure, so mooney, so dreamy, so romantic, that I would go to run and errand and find myself taking a route that took me past their houses so that I might “bump into” these various hims. It’s mortifying to think of, now; I hate that and revealing it ain’t much fun, either. But I was lonely. I say all the time I’m so thankful we didn’t have social media when I was that age—AOL instant messenger and later gay-dot-com chat rooms did enough damage to my psyche. But I can only imagine the kind of desperate shit I would have pulled on these apps back then. I shudder to think of it. Literally. 
 
Anyway, feeling too much of something can make it hard to see it clearly. And because of that I had a hard time really understanding this suit. But oddly, that experience I just described—feeling too much of something can make it hard to see it clearly—is a facet of this suit! And I only really just made that connection right now. But that’s a totally fiery tendency. Fire consumes. When we are at fire’s mercy, we may become consumed or consumptive (there’s a word with lots of layers). I had a tendency to become consumptive. And now that I think about it, my learning often takes this journey. I think about my reading habits. I will fully devour every fucking book on a topic that I’m suddenly interested in. I’ve done it with the arts, I’ve done it with tarot, I’ve done it with Hoodoo and Witchery, I’ve done it with the Thoth deck, I’ve done it with just about anything that strikes my fancy. And in these cases, these kinds of concentrated learning immersions, we can see the benefit of this kind of tendency. Becoming consumed by something healthy (a kind of intense hyperfocus, for my ND guys, guys, and nonbinary pals) is the same thing as the unhealthy tendency I had to, like, commit some mild compulsive . . . attention seeking. It’s just . . . good for you. Of course, too much of a good thing can make you cranky—we can get oversaturated, something I also have a tendency to do. But when it comes to learning, you just move on to something else. With people, that’s harder. 
 
Here, the Fool carries the ace to the nine, as we said. We could say, then, that they’re actually not starting from zero—they have a little experience (the ace) that they’re bringing on this heavy path (the nine of wands often shows us someone pretty bruised, and nines are “heavy” generally; they suggest a lot of something). If we want to bring that into our divinatory world, we might say to students that you’re never starting from square one, you’re never free of experience you can use, and when you think that way the path doesn’t seem as daunting. You’ll have more energy (nine wands) to carry you along. 
 
Which is true and quite lovely. 
 
We might say, too, that it is The Fools desire (ace) that sustains (nine) their journey. 
 
There’s lots of ways to interpret this and I think all of them are valid and true. But since I took you on that fucking sob story of my former life, it’s well for me to bring that into the puzzle, here, too. I misquote Yoav Ben Dov a lot and say, “nothing that happens in a reading is an accident.” That’s not really what he said, but it’s what I remember. He was saying, in essence, that everything that happens during a reading is part of the reading—from the time reader and client greet each other to the time the part, everything is part of the reading. The fact that these cards prompted/triggered me to share those stories is part of the reading. Sure, they were meant to illustrate aspects of The Fool that don’t usually get highlighted, but they were prompted by this trio, this spread, and the open question I ask at the start of every post: “What is lesson #?”
 
We may start on a path (the ace) knowing and trust and believing (fool) that it will take us where we want to go (nine) . . . and after taking that long (nine) road (fool), we start to wonder . . . is this really where I wanted to go? The closer we get to our goal (nine), the more we realize . . . it’s too hot (fire) for me here. There isn’t enough air, water, or earth for me here. What I felt I wanted (ace) turns out to be a burden (a typical image on the ten, but that is well set up by the typical nine). The closer I’m able to see what I wanted (that implied ten + the nine), the more I start to recognize that this ain’t it. And only a Fool keeps going somewhere they don’t want to be. 
 
A reminder I really needed today. I cannot tell you how often I feel like the choice I made to give up on theatre has made me feel like a quitter. Like I couldn’t hack it. And when you’re starting out, the “pros” are always like, “If you can do anything else, do it. This isn’t for you. This is a hard industry. Not everyone can do it.” And, really, that’s true. But it also feels like pretentious gatekeeping. And I realize now that, like . . . I couldn’t hack it. I mean, I can handle the writing and the reviews and the actors’ egos and all that . . . but I can’t handle the industry. Not even the corporate bullshit. I’ve dealt with that my entire adult life. I can’t deal with an industry that accepts cruelty, predatory behavior, bullying, fat-shaming, femme-shaming, unpaid internships, the Ivy League-centricity, the racism, all the things . . . an industry in which that’s not only the norm, but just the cost of doing business. Totally fine. Totally acceptable. That’s what I can’t hack. And, for all the shit that corporate america rightfully deserves, I have been treated with more humanity and kindness there than I have in some theatre spaces. 
 
I want it, but I want the ideal (ace) and not the reality (nine). And to keep hoping that reality will bend to my will . . . is foolish. 
 
That’s not really a lesson about divination — but it is a lesson in letting go. And sometimes we as readers need to do that. Sometimes that means taking a little break, sometimes it means recognize that we’re burned out and need a long break, sometimes it means recognizing that the reality of being a diviner isn’t what we hoped it would be and we need to rethink our relationship to it. 
 
My example is extreme. I don’t want you to think you’re going to have to give up tarot the way I gave up theatre. And who the fuck knows if I won’t cave in to my ego and some point and go back? What I mean, though, is more like the experience I had when I “gave up” on tarot years ago: What I really needed to do was go back to “square one” (the ace) and start again. 
 
Because, and this is I think to the key to this spread, the Fool lacks ego.  
 
Despite being surrounded by fiery cards, The Fool doesn’t give a fuck if they have to start again, because they never were that married to any idea. “OK,” they say. “That happened.” Then they go back to one. Not the zero, but one. Because, though it didn’t yield the longed-for results, it generated experience. The Fool can never go back to zero again. In may case, that meant asking myself, “What do I really want from tarot and divination?” The answer to that became Tarot on Earth. And so there’s an example of how restarting a journey already begin can actually yield amazing things! (And this is something I’ve learned in my writing life, too. Often I’ll start a draft thinking I know what it’s going to be, and about a third of the way through I’ll realize that I’m actually writing something else. I’ll throw out everything and start again, but those “lost” pages aren’t for naught—they taught me what I was trying to do.)
 
When I saw the Death card in the Wild Unknown Tarot, I realized that the card is about fertilizer. Everything we go through fertilizes everything we will become. Which reminds me how the astrologer Sue Thompkins (author of The Contemporary Astrologer’s Handbook) explains our sun sign as not so much who we are, but who we’re becoming. 
 
We could think of this three cards as saying something similar. Start again if you have to, or if you want to; what you’ve done so far wasn’t time wasted, it was lessons learned and experienced gained. 
 
That, incidentally, is a reminder I needed today, too. 
 
A read of one’s own
 Here’s a little spread to explore something you may benefit from starting over or “going back to one” as they say on movie sets. 

Position 1 - Something you’re working on that would benefit from a re-start. 

Position 2 - Why/how you’ll benefit

Position 3 - How to deal with the ego hit

Position 4 - Advice on how to restart

​

Loop of 8.  Starting top center and going clockwise, Eight of Coins (1), Two of Cups (2), Five of Coins (4), Nine of Staves (7), The Hermit (8), Nine of Cups (6), Ten of Swords (5), Justice (3). (As always, the numbers following the card name indicates the order in which the card was laid down on the table. In this case, like most when using a line, arc, or loop, I alternate left and right. For the sake of ease, I listed them clockwise. Either, both, or neither may prove worthwhile in interpreting the spread. 

Deck: Sirena by Mr. Friborg. 

Typically I use a loop like this when drawing an arc of five or seven cards and deciding a few more cards would benefit the spread. You can see an earlier post on how I have no issue drawing additional cards in a reading, usually when reading for myself. Today, though, I felt like mixing things up, so I started with the loop.

Here’s a case where it feels like a lot of cards, even though my typical spread is actually nine—one card more than here. When I make spreads, shape doesn’t mean much to me—but I think it’s worth pointing out that shape can make a spread seem larger (or smaller) than it is. And often, especially for new readers, it’s not so much the number of cards in a reading that becomes daunting; rather, it’s the impression that there’s too much info. Fair. Especially for those of us who fall easily to overwhelm. I’m often among those folks. And so I think it’s worth saying that if you lay out a spread and you look at it and you just think “oh fuck” when faced with interpreting it, it may not be the cards that are triggering that reaction, but the arrangement you chose. And I do think that if you can find a new or adjusted shape that preserves the interrelationship between the cards, there’s no reason not to move them around. By this I mean that the way the cards interact with one another, their relative position to each other, should be preserved because that is part of the reading now. But if you can even, say, close the gap between the middle top and bottom cards, it may make the spread feel less daunting—without shifting the card relationships too much. 

Anyway, I don’t feel particularly cowed by this spread yet—I just wanted to point that out. And it occurred to me that this felt like “a lot” of cards at first glance, even though I typically work with nine. Size may not matter, but shape does. 

Anyhoo. Here we are, lesson twenty-four. This a new deck, one I backed on Kickstarter, by a creator whose work I really admire. And one of my favorite decks of 2023 was Mr. Friborg’s Tarrochi, which I took with me to New Orleans. So, though I’m not well-versed in mermaid lore, I needed to back this and I’m glad I did because it’s quite striking—and quite dark, compared to my other mermaid deck (another one I love, Dame Darcy’s). In fact, it’s the darkness of Friborg’s decks that I am so drawn to. The Tarrochi, which features all skeletons, manages to somehow achieve a certain kind of left-handed, memento mori kind of sexiness that this weirdo appreciates. 

When we have a large spread, particularly one that could begin and end anywhere and can be read in multiple ways, the reader has basically two choices: start with the most “logical” spot to them (in this case, the first card I put down would make sense—the Eight of Coins), or the card that seems most relevant to the situation we’re reading about (where we know a theme) or that calls most strongly to the reader (where we’re unsure what the reading will cover). In this case, both cards are the same—that eight. Reason being, this is a blog about the craft of reading cards, and this is a card that is also typically about craft. 

This is an a unique depiction of the card. We have a land man doing some work on land while some merpeople frolic. And this immediately makes me think of the insecurity I sometimes feel as a reader because I’m “not magical.” This is what I tell myself in the moments when I’ve over-consumed media (books, videos) from people with skills I lack. For example, I spent a lot of time reading about mediumship for some research recently, and because I’m not one I started to find myself feeling less-than. Not unlike this mortal normie doing the hard work while the magical creatures in the world go off and play. In my better moments, I recognize this as insecurity—and to a degree the direct result of choosing to eliminate spiritual practice from my divination for so long (a necessity, in my case, and I don’t regret it). But there are times when I just feel “not cool enough” for the divcom (a term I just made up for “divination community”). I know that might sound nuts for someone who has such a big fucking mouth and such a strong opinion about everything, but my innate understanding of myself in the world is that I’m always the least cool, least interesting, least attractive fucker in the room. One reason I don’t whine about that more is because I recognize that I’m not, you know, totally pointless and because there are plenty of folx who would give their eye teeth for my YouTube subscriber count. But we tend to see ourselves not in terms of what we have, but what we lack. And as someone who has been making YouTube content since about 2012, I can’t help but notice how many people who started well after me who have twice or even three times the subscribers I do. This is of course why we shouldn’t compare our selves, but I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel shitty sometimes that for the last two years my count has hung in the same place and I still can’t break 10,000. 

Luxury problem, of course. And yet, this is how the brain works. 

And it doesn’t help us, because—and now we return to a favorite topic of mine—that’s all ego.

Here’s another example, for you. I recently read at an event and I was the last reader to be approached for a reading and I wasn’t really particularly busy most of the night—unlike the other readers, who were. Sometimes that happens, and it easily could have been that I chose a table toward the back of the small area we inhabited. It also happened to be a long event (for me, anyway) and I worried whether I’d have enough energy to read all night. But none of that mattered. For the first twenty or thirty minutes, while I sat trying to look adorable and unbothered, I internally regretted applying to read and chalked it up to yet more evidence of my worthlessness. This is a lifelong journey, folks, and I have to tell you I’m fucking sick of it lately. Especially because the world keeps finding new ways to make us not like ourselves, and while the ensuing armageddon that Trump and Israel and Putin and others are rapidly pushing us toward (much to the delight of the mentally fucked up “Christian” right, who fetishizes this shit) reminds us that our self esteem may not be the most important thing—it’s also not going to get any better, because for those of us in typically excluded communities, we’re once again going to find ourselves the object of ad hominem attacks from the people running the world. This is as it’s always been, of course, and those of us in the so-called US have been unfairly spared a lot of the worst that the world can offer, so my nihilism is fairly privileged—but I’m also fairly convinced we are in a sea change moment and while it’s probably necessary, I do not believe it will be pretty or inspiring. Love and light, I guess I’m saying, need not apply. 

What got me out of that doldrum was a mantra I occasionally return to: “This is about them, not you.” By this I mean, that I’m going to these events—asking to go to these events—to read for clients, not to validate my own ego. To put it another way, and I’m fairly sure I’ve written about this before, I remember a quote from my acting days from the noted teacher Stanislavsky (founder of the famously misunderstood, misused, “method”—which is one of the foundational fuckeries of theatrical training and one reason why the theatre industry is so toxic . . . not that what Stanislavsky taught was so bad, though it’s often inscrutable; no, it’s the Americanization of it that turned too many heterosexual men into Brando wannabes who treated their coworkers like shit in the name of “realism”—and still do). He said (allegedly), “love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.” It’s the same thing. A play isn’t about the actors, the writer, or the director; it’s about the audience. A reading isn’t about the reader; it’s about the client. 

When I get in my head about my relative coolness (or lack thereof), I’m not focused on my mission as reader: to give real, practical readings to clients. Instead, it’s focused on validation. It’s self-centered rather than client-centered, and if you know Your Tarot Toolkit, you know how evangelical I am about client-centric reading. 

But of course our progress isn’t a straight line (which now makes me happy I used this loopy spread), and even though I know that I sometimes have to work at reminding myself of it. And I think this iteration of the Eight of Coins really sums that up for me. 

The card is flanked by Justice and the Two of Cups. I take this as a reminder that the “right” thing to do is focus on the giving (not taking) nature of divination. When faced with Justice, I often overreach with clients. When it shows up early in a spread, I frequently ask clients if they’re involved in social justice work—and ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, they are not. And so frequently I just read it as “correct” or “right,” not in the legal or common sense, but in the moral sense. In this case, not the morality of a society controlled by wealth, but actual morality. If John Valjean, prisoner 24601, got a reading from me asking, “Should I steal this bread to feed my family?”, the Justice card would say “yes.” The moral thing is to feed the hungry. But does it mean there won’t be consequences? Not at all. There often are—and certainly, the story of Les Miserables, which I’m referencing here, is set off by that act and the conflict between the “law” (Javert, the cop whose black-and-white, Christo-colonial vision of justice causes him to devote his entire life to destroying Jean Valjean—ultimately (spoiler) leading to his own demise) and morality. These are not new conflicts. The Justice card is “right” thing or the “correct” thing; not the legal or socially acceptable thing. (Of course, there are also times when the card represents the exact opposite, contextually—the power of the elite and the oppression of the marginalized. How do I know which is which? You guessed it! Context!) In other cases, though, it needs to be read without this grandiosity. Sometimes, it simply means “the correct thing to do.” And in this reading, that’s what it is saying. Paired with the Two of Cups, it reminds us that the way out of that feeling of missing out (in the eight) is to focus on giving, rather than taking—focus on the client rather than feeling validated. 

That’s not bad advice, of course. It’s not easy, but it’s true. These two cards are flanked by the Ten of Swords and the Five of Coins. Ruh-roh, Rhaggy! These are no bueno. If we’re focusing on the client, why then do we have these doom and gloom around us?

Well, kids, I think it’s partly because that’s the gig. Like, deciding to become a reader who offers services to clients (paid or not), we are essentially going out into the chaos and saying, “yes, please dump your traumas at me.” That sounds glib and I don’t mean it to. But it’s the reality. Particularly when we’re reading in public or at events that have a fairly steady flow of customers. You’re simply going to be encountering person after person who is in some kind of a state. Sure, many folks are simply curious, but that doesn’t mean darker topics won’t come up in the reading. And many others are carrying something that they’re struggling with and that’s why they want the reading. 

This underscores, really, the necessity of de-centering the reader. If we’re doing readings to feel good about ourselves, we’re not reading for clients. That’s it. Pure and simple. (You can feel good about what you do—you should! But if your brain energy is focused on you and how you’re feeling, that’s a sign you’re not focused on the client.) And I wonder whether the times where I struggled reading for clients was because I was centering myself. Maybe divinity said, “well, Tommy, if you can’t focus on the client, we’re not helping you get an answer.” (I actually think it’s purely that our brain can only focus on one thing, and if we’re focusing on our valuelessness then we can’t focus on interpreting cards. But there’s nothing saying I’m right, and as someone who has seen first-hand the impact of bad-but-earnest readings on clients, I’d like to think there’s some safety net in place where my guided might stop me before I give a crap-ass reading. But I guess I won’t know until I know, ya know?)

Anyway, these two cards—the ten and the five—bookend the spread. We can think of them as parenthesis, containing the whole thing. And together they’re saying, “People often want readings because their brains and lives are in states of fuckery, and they want clarity—so you need to get your own fuckery out of the equation, because it’s not the point of doing this. It’s not about you; it’s about them.”

When we remember our mission, why we do what we do, we have an easier time forgetting to care about our ego validation. What’s your mission as a reader? Mine is clarity. I want to give clear, precise answers that make sense based on the client’s life. That’s it. I have tangential missions (cost accessibility, for example; I tend to believe that divination is spiritual work for the masses, not the elite), but ultimately I want to give clients clear, honest, true answers. That’s it. That’s my mission. C’est ça. What’s yours? If you don’t know it, no worries—the spread at the end of today’s post will be all about that. Regardless, focusing on your mission is a good way to get out of your head and move away from the “nobody loves me, I think I’ll eat some worms” mentality that so many of us have been taught to dance. 

We have three more cards to look at! Yeegad! By this time we have a pretty good answer, is there any point in going on? Of course, but that doesn’t mean that these three cards will add anything new. Or, what I really should say is that they don’t have to. But—and this is where things get crazy!—they certainly could. 
Could I stop here? Yeah, I can do anything I want. Would that be “bad”? No. We got an answer. There’s no fucking law saying that if you don’t interpret every card in a reading that you’re going to hell. Do whatever you want. But since we drew them, why not use them? 

We have two nines, and that’s always fun—when we have repetitions. Nines are numbers I associate with tiredness, with burnout (as you probably know by now). Cups/water and wands/fire are the two suits most prone to overwork, overextension. So of course that’s what they’re saying here, right?

I don’t know. 

Actually, at the moment, I’m more drawn by The Hermit who sits directly between those two and directly below the Eight of Coins. The Hermit is, one might say, a “higher octave” of this eight. Not all Eights of Coins, but this one, in this reading, with this image that produced this interpretation. The Hermit recognizes that he’s something other than a mermaid (in this deck, he’s part crab—a clever joke) and does his business. In fact, the very act of being what he is kind of demands that he stay somewhat apart. Of course that’s the nature of the Hermit, right? But in this context, he’s not a “hermit”; he’s us, he’s a fortune teller, a reader. He understands that doing this work, at least doing it well, requires a certain protection from the normal world (see his shell) and/or from the common way of doing and seeing things. 

I’ve said before that divining changes you, but I can’t remember where I said that so I don’t know if you’ve read that yet or you will read it when my book comes out (Did I mention I have a—never mind.) Dedicating yourself to the art and craft of divination will change you. It will change your outlook, it will change your politics (or it should), and it will change your cosmology. If you’re not prone to cynicism, you might discover that you find yourself having moments of it that you aren’t used to. If you are a cynic, it can get worse. But on the other side of that self-same coin, if you’re a non-believer (as I am/was/am), you’re going to find yourself marveling at things you can’t explain. If you’re a hopeless fuck (as I am/am/am), you’re going to—against your better judgement—feel like we’re not entirely alone out here and that there may be someone(s) or something(s) dancing with us, guiding us, helping us, loving us. If you’re a believer already, your understanding of what you believe in and how it make sense to you will change. Devoting yourself to anything has that effect, and because divination is such a communal practice—it requires engagement with someone/thing other than us, even when just reading for ourselves—it’s going to demand that we look at the world differently. 

For those of us allergic to “love and light,” we’ll find times where we’re giving the most amazing news—over and over again; and for those who are “good vibes only,” if you’re doing it well, you’ll eventually start to find stretches of bad news that will make you question your commitment to optimism. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve said to clients, “Against all my better judgment, I have good news—yes, he’s coming back and yes he has changed” or similar. “Yeah, you’re going to get the job.” I once said to a guy, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yes: quitting your job to focus on your music is a good idea.” I WOULD NEVER SAY THAT TO SOMEONE OUTSIDE OF A READING! I’m the most overcautious fucker you’ll ever encounter. I’m terrified of everything. But the cards said, “this is right for him.” 

I have to turn off my pessimism. “I can’t believe how much good news I’m giving,” I said at one event shortly after the election. “I expected to see nothing but gloom tonight and everyone I read for seems on the edge of totally thriving.” 

And then I have to turn off my jealousy. Woof. We never think of that, do we? Or I don’t, anyway. But after giving a bunch of randos good news all night, I started to feel fairly shitty about my own lot—given what I’ve been going through the last couple years, including a handful of things I haven’t told anyone about. (Believe it or not, there are dramas in my life that I don’t use as examples or whine about on the socials.) There’s another self-centered thing, feeling like crap because you’re giving too many people good news you know you’re not going to get. Woof, indeed. That’s something nobody prepared me for. I don’t think I’d have believed it if someone told me when I was starting out that I’d one day have to come face-to-face with my own bitchy jealousy at my own clients’ good fortune. Granted, I also wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that I’d be reading cards for money in public where anyone could see me doing it. I’d never have believed this would become so central to my life. And, really, that part is one of the things I personally have to recall when I do start to feel crappy (because my stupid clients are all happier than me) (I’m kidding, I love my clients): I have to remember that tarot has come into my life in a way I wasn’t expecting and it’s been able to do that because the thing I thought I was here for didn’t work out. Anyway. this really isn’t meant to be all about me, but I am such a good example. Wink. 

While my interpretation of the nines is generally fairly negative, the tarot influenced by Waite-Smith does not agree. The Nine of Cups is “the wish card.” The Nine of Coins/Penties, not in this reading, is somewhat nebulous—but its often among the most stunning paintings in a deck, so it often gets interpreted positively. It’s really only the other two nines that are “bad.” But even though I’m fairly mean to nines, that doesn’t mean they’re actually bad. Or that they’re even only nines. Nines are made up of other numbers, in this case three threes. And Mr. Friborg’s Nine of Cups actually looks a lot like many Three of Cups in the W-S trad. I think this reminds us of the expansive nature of the card, particularly in this case where burnout isn’t quite the interpretation that feels contextually relevant. In fact, I start to think of water, suddenly, in its rolling, wavy way—the way that water (and our emotional state) can come in big waves, ebb, be relatively still for a bit, and then return with maybe another large wave or a trio of smaller ones. I’m thinking about how our feelings aren’t straight lines, either, and that the way the nine breaks down into threes, here, makes me feel like the PULSE of feeling--I’m feeling THIS WAY NOW and then its gone AND THEN I’M FEELING SOMETHING ELSE and it’s gone and maybe a little bit of this, this and this, AND THEN A REALLY BIG ONE—and it takes a while to—OH GOD THERE’S ANOTHER ONE. . . . and then it’s gone. Like the ocean. That’s how this Nine of Cups feels to me. 

So what of the Nine of Wands? It takes on a similar quality, but in this case it’s giving martyr. And that makes me laugh because of the somewhat pretentious way I described the diviner as having to stand outside life, a little. We have to see life clearly, but we’re not always allowed to do life the same way “mere mortals” are (to get super pretentious). I think that’s true, but it’s easy to get a complex about it—either a delusion of grandeur or of martyrdom, which both feels strongly wandsy. Here, I think it’s both in part because the martyr clearly has delusions of grandeur, too; it’s the single thing that would allow someone to sacrifice themselves for a cause. It is working against every natural instinct humans have. We are built to avoid danger. The martyr not only welcomes danger, they give themselves to it knowing, or being pretty certain anyway, that they will die. It’s operatic, really. Quite dramatic. 

The Hermit needs to be careful about this grandiosity—but I don’t think we (we, us, fortune tellers, readers) need to avoid it. Like my video on the ego recently (and the concept of “ego death”), I don’t think we can or should necessarily turn off the part of our brains that say, “OMG, you’re such a saint for doing this work. You’re just so good.” I mean, not in the way that that fucking annoying dame in that racist-ass Gone With the Wind movie does. What’s her name? Mel? In a film full of issues, she weirdly irks me the most. (I never liked the actress. I preferred her sister, and they hated each other. The sister, Joan Fontaine, was in Rebecca with Laurence Olivier, and she’s excellent in it. Olivia de Havilland, who played Mel in Wind, is the proto Becky [in my humble opinion]). Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, I don’t think we need to deny ourselves some indulgence in the sainthood we canonize ourselves with. That might sound objectively insane, but listen . . . 

Back when I believed in government and wanted to be White House press secretary (a la CJ Craig), I used to say of politicians whose dicks got mashed into the news cycle, “To believe that you can fix this country implies a certain kind of hero complex and narcissism that probably only exists in the kind of men who also feel like everyone wants to see their disembodied richard.” (This is what I call dick pics, incidentally: disembodied richards.) There’s a certain kind of egotism necessary to think, “I am someone who can resist the super PACs, the lobbyists, the obstacles, the opposition and really fix this country—with all its deep, deep fuckeduppery. I can do that, because I am a stud.” Ya know I mean? I mean, that’s very hypermasculine, and it’s not at all what I’m suggesting we emulate, but to get the gumption to do it at all requires a certain amount of belief in the self. Jesus, can you imagine if you had to beg voters for your job? I can’t even ask my doctor for a prescription refill he makes me take because I don’t want to bother him. And to lose in public? (OK, well, as a writer, I do have some experience with that one—and I also have some narcissistic tendencies, due being born with my sun in Leo and my moon in Cancer.) 

For readers, we weirdly do need to see ourselves—sometimes, and just a little—as a sainted being, doing “the lord’s work.” And I really mean just a little. Like, please. I cannot with smuggeries who think they’re god’s gift. Fuck you. I mean, really, you’re gross. But—and this does tie into the confidence/humility discussion from my recent video--you gotta believe you can do it in order to do it well. Because insecurity will distract you. And you also need to believe that you can do the impossible, because, if you think about it, divination is kind of a miracle. If you subscribe to such words. (I do not.) But, you know, by the definition of miracle (from Dictionary.com, a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency) we’re getting pretty literal here. Ain’t nothin’ about divinaysh that doesn’t fit that description. Saux . . . . Ya know. We gotta know, deep down, that we (in very tiny, tiny text and a mumbly voice) make miracles. 
But just a little bit. OK? For fuck’s sake, diva. 

I wasn’t going to do this because this is already too long, but: I just noticed that pairing the cards above the two nines creates an interesting counterplay. The Justice card with the Nine of Cups sorta brings playful sainthood to the table, if we think of Justice as being the martyr in the other card—and because many people who engage in justice work also have a tendency to think of themselves as saints, and again that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Listen, if you don’t believe in your nads that you can hit a baseball thousands of feet out of a major league ballpark, you cannot do it. That’s probably why so many athletes are such pricks (although I don’t actually think it’s that; I think it’s that we elevate atheletes in this country to a status of value that they don’t deserve—so the ego and entitlement majorly kicks in). When we pair the Nine of Staves with the card above it, the Two of Cups, we sorta bring the lovey dovey hippy vibes into the martyr card, again sorta softening the edges and making it a little more playful. The cups cards both, in this case, soften their mirrors—even if that’s not always the case. Sometimes water can be quite destructive, as we know; but here, it’s simply eroding sharp edges and softening things to make them gentler. In a good way.  

These final three cards were almost another reading, and that’s OK. It added to what we’d already discussing, reminding us that we can indulge in self-centeredness sometimes—and that there’s a certain amount of self-regard required to read the cards—but that it’s not the only thing, that we have to focus on the client, and though we’re sometimes saintly we are not saints.

What a fun reading. I enjoyed this, even if I didn’t have any idea where it was going to take us. I think it’s exciting to not only let the cards guide us (something I didn’t used to enjoy) and also allow the clues in a unique deck to guide the tone of the reading, too; particularly in cards we often “think” we “know.” 

A read of one’s own
This week’s spread is about our mission— mission, purpose, whatever word you want to use; mission is definitely loaded—as readers. And it’s simply drawing cards to answer the question, “What is my mission as a tarot reader?” or “What is my mission as a fortune teller?” However you’d like to phrase it. 

Initially I thought this makes sense only if you don’t know, but if you do know there’s something quite cool about validating that with a reading. First, you might discover that what you thought was your mission really isn’t; the reading reminds you that there’s something else going on. Or, it might tell you what you already know, but it gives you the opportunity to show how the answer appears in cards—a good opportunity to explore how your tarot communicators work with you. 

I think there’s something quite cool about reading a question you already know the answer to, even if only to work backwards from the answer and “make” the cards give you what you already know is true. I’ve mentioned this before, but my early YouTube videos were all inspired by Tarot Tells the Tale by James Ricklef. I did readings for characters from books and movies. I always got a totally—amazingly—appropriate spread that described the story in incredible ways. This stuff works and doing that is another way you can see how the cards communicate with you. And if you do the same question with several decks, you can see how different decks communicate the same answer. Again, quite cool!

A quick demo: 
I pulled three cards to answer the question and wound up with Art/Temperance (2), Knight(King) of Swords (1), and Queen of Wands (3). (Thoth Tarot)

I always smile when the sorta weirdly “right” cards show up, and what made me smile in this case was Art. I’ve said it before, but I do give Crowley a wee bit of credit for two of the main changes he made to the majors. Art/Temperance—though I don’t really read it as he intended, I love that adjustment. And the other one I love is Adjustment/Justice. I like it in this case because I do believe art is an art. 

Anyway, let’s see . . . The Knight (King) of Swords is probably the card I’d choose if I were picking a significator (sometimes it’s the queen of the same suit). He’s not my significator, though; not in the esoterica sense. The King of Pentacles is. I was born in the third decan of Leo, which he rules. The Knight of Swords is very “me” though in that I’m quite speedy as a reader. (The knight in the Thoth carries the normal knight’s energy—a thing I typically don’t associate with Waite/Marseille kings. Because the Princes in the Thoth deck have the “regal” aspect, they get the kings’ laziness—in my way of doing things.) I want readings to be sharp, clear, precise, and not go on so long we forget what we’re doing. But I want them to be beautiful, artistic, poetic (Art). I want them to be integrated, by which I mean I want the client to be able do something with or about the reading (also Art in the way Crowley intended, as the integration of parts of something). Finally, I want (most of) my clients to feel like bad-asses—and, frankly, I would like to feel that way, too (Queen of Wands). That’s pretty in line with what I said before! Yay me. But also, it’s not always easy to read on these kinds of questions—so if you don’t find an answer as easily as I did, know in part that I am a speedy reader and also that I was absolutely distracted while doing things—which sometimes, I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes can help with a self-reading because we don’t have the time to get in our heads about what things are “supposed” to be. Try it. You may find it really useful!

Until next week!

​

Cards drawn, a line of five:
Ten of Wands (4), Ace of Coins (2), Queen of Wands (1), The Devil (3), The Tower of Babel (5)
Deck: La Corte dei Tarrochi by Maria D’Onofrio (published by Il Meneghello)

You can divine with anything if you want to. For example, does it mean anything that I dilly-dallied all day in writing this, then when I finally got up to do it I went into the office and opted not to use either of the decks I’d planned on? Both are decks I haven’t yet had a chance to shuffle. And I’ve been craving new decks lately, mostly out of boredom. I keep going to bookstores hoping to see something worth taking home, but not much of interest has crossed my path. Still, when I selected today’s deck, I looked at my chaotic shelves and thought, You know: You should pick a deck you love and haven’t looked at in ages. Of the three I considered (The Hoi Polloi, the World Spirit, and this), the one I chose is the one I’ve forgotten to look at the longest. I sorta “knew” it was the deck as soon as my eye fell on it. 

And so what of this choice? If I were to describe this deck, might it say something about me or my life at present, or the season I’m entering? This indie deck is unique in so many ways and remains potentially my absolute favorite tarot ever made. Its shape is long and thin, not unlike a bookmark; it’s not like shaped any other deck I have. And he’s a thicc boi. The stock is also unlike any other: rigid, deeply textured, flecked with pulp. It feels handmade, though it must have some machining because it’s also tightly woven and quite strong. Its sharp corners give it “bite.” It’s stocky, it’s solid, it’s experiential—visceral. I love shuffling these cards, though I can only overhand them. That’s something of a paradox because I typically loathe when I can’t riffle-and-bridge. I’m rough with my decks. I like them to obey my rules. This one doesn’t do that. I have to bend my will to it. 

Artistically, it’s charming, oddball, very European, and I think very Italian specifically. It’s a pip deck, but not Marseille—not like any other pip deck. Happily, its pips are hand drawn and each is unique, even if the decoration doesn’t necessarily aid in interpretation, it’s quite nice that the artist really made the cards. I so resent pip decks with lazy-ass pips. The deck itself is modern, from the last thirty years or so—definitely within my lifetime—but it harkens back to Marseille and even Visconti imagery, with simple figures, odd faces, delightfully contorted postures, and the maybe more of an Imperial/Romey vibe than I’m typically into. But it works. I wouldn’t change anything—except for maybe bumping up the saturation a little. 

It’s a deck of anomalies. And I think that this suggests a certain amount of dichotomy in my own life. I for sure could stand to let someone else take charge for a little while, that’s for sure; I’m always interested in things with bite; and, given that it’s rapidly heading toward the winter solstice, I also crave the familiar and the cozy—even though my version of familiar and cozy is somewhat oddball, somewhat contorted, somewhat out of character. And that all sounds about right. 

We can read anything. This came up in our session of Re-Learning the Tarot, the four-week workshop I’m hosting right now. Everything and anything can be used for divination once you start seeing the world like a diviner. That’s a term I mentioned in my most recent videos about the art and science of interpretation and the blend of confidence and humility needed to be a good reader. Seeing the world like a diviner also happens to be a large chapter in my forthcoming book, The Modern Fortune Teller’s Field Guide--have I mentioned that recently? (Spoiler: yes. Coming autumn, 2025 . . . if there is a autumn 2025). And I thought it might be cool to focus the reading around that concept today. Although I also broke my own rule. I only decided to do that after I’d already shuffled and drawn on my usual question, “What is Lesson #?” But I’m all about iconoclasm, and if I can’t break my own fucking rules, than what kind of rebel am I? Maybe even the feel of the deck itself, as described above, will have something to add to this chaotic equation!

In the draw, the Queen of Wands sits flanked by, on the left, the Ten of Wands (her own suit) and the Ace of Coins, and, on the right, by The Devil and The Tower. I love this. This suite of cards is spicy, aromatic, resinous, luminous, and kinky. And that, dear reader, is the revolutionary costume for the day, children, OK? Tongue pop. (I can’t actually do that.) If we take this array to explore the concept of how we might see the world as diviners, we find ourselves sitting right at the center of a crossroads—a place Mr. Diavolo quite likes. 

The Ace of Coins reminds us that our divinatory gaze must be practical and down to earth. We are talking about life; we are talking about today and tomorrow, not some eventual nevertime or some once-upon-a-when; we are exploring what being human on this planet at this moment involves; we are spilling tea, we are prying through NDAs, we are saying what needs to be said—the things the clients (us) need, not necessarily what they (we) hope for or want, but what they (we) need. And these things are big! That’s what the Ten of Wands is doing here. Reminding us that these daily things, these tiny things, these trips-to-the-pharmacy things, these is-he-cheating-on-me things, these will-she-come-back things, these are the things that people really care about. We have to be rooted in reality—particularly if we offer our divinatory services to others, regardless of whether or not we charge. I am so, so, so, so evangelical in my belief in this, and it actually came up on Instagram this morning, so I’m also very present with it. Someone posted something I have said before--something I have not been immune from feeling: that tarot can explore all the great mysteries of the universe, but most people want to know if their ex is coming back. 

Dear ones: this is a triggering statement to me, precisely because I once felt that way. I felt that way just before I was about to give up tarot for good! I’ve written about this elsewhere; I’ll spare you all those gory details. And if you’ve followed me for any time you know I’m good at giving things up forever that don’t always seem to have given me up. Hashtag my toxic trait. I felt that way because I was burned out on tarot and because I had absorbed a huge amount of snobbery about divination. I’m not saying the person who posted that is a snob. I might be saying they could be burned out. But that’s not my job, here; my job to say, NO! 

Friends, for the person in pain, “Will my ex come back?” is one of the great mysteries of the universe! We don’t get to decide what our clients, friends, loved ones think is a mystery worthy of divination. Everything is important enough to be divined if the person asking about it really cares and really wants to know. 

I say all the time, you get to draw the lines wherever you want them. You get to decide what you read about. Absolutely. I would never tell a reader otherwise. And there are many reasons for not reading about a variety of topics. But I feel in my core that just because we won’t read about something, or just because we don’t enjoy reading about something, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth reading about. The things that people care about, the things that rile their minds, those are the things that matter. When we say “great mysteries,” we seem to be indicating that there is something more important than life we should be focusing on. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. I’ve come to believe that the daily is sacred. But either way, we can’t focus on the great mysteries if we’re depressed and lonely and wondering why the person who we thought proved our value to us decided to ruin everything by leaving? If you’ve never felt that way, I’m jealous. If you have, maybe it feels like the person thinking this way needs therapy, like you got. But they’re not there yet. What matters and what is important to an individual is important to them--and so it is important to the reader--regardless of whether or not it is objectively “worthy” of exploration. 

This is one of my major issues with standard issue esotericism. The focus of our lives can’t be solely on escaping from them. Otherwise what’s the point? And if we’re offering readings to others, we are required to have an understanding of life on the ground. Those are the lives our clients are living. 

We are in the service industry. I believe that strongly. I don’t think the customer is always right, but I think the customer’s question is always more important than anything I could possibly come up with. Does it need clarification? Maybe. Could it be worded better? Often. Will it break an ethical boundary? If it does, I must decline. But is it unimportant? Never. Our clients, paying or not, know what they need to know more than we do. And it is an honor to be able to help them achieve intel. It’s the whole gig, really. 

Bit soap boxy, innit? And I’m not throwing shade; I’m not grilling beef. (I just made that up. You’re welcome.) I’m sharing a deeply-held part of my cosmology and mission as a diviner in language designed to show how strongly I feel about this and how important it is to me. There is no mystery greater than the one dogging the client. Full stop.

And scene. 

Anyhoo. Point is: the banal things people care about are really important to them, so they’re important to us. 

On the other side of the spread we discover The Devil and The Tower of Babel. In this case, D’Onofrio titles the card specifically; that’s not me interpreting the image. I frequently ignore a lot of what artists do on their cards, but not because I don’t love artists. Because I’m . . . me. But being me, sometimes a small change to a card can be quite revelatory. As I recall it, the story of the Tower of Babel involves humanity wanting to climb into heavens to come close to divinity. God, being constantly surprised by the things “he” made doing things “he” doesn’t like, decides that humans must be punished for this act of hubris. He destroys the growing tower, sending the people climbing/building it plummeting all over the earth, landing in new locations and suddenly speaking different languages. Prior to this, evidently, there was only one race and we all spoke the same langy (short for “language” . . . made that up, too. you can use it, but I get credit). Cool! This is the version of my childhood Catholic school religion classes, anyway; I imagine it has more nuanced, probably darker versions. But it’s the way my educators (indoctrinators?) explained why we all speak different languages. (Did it explain why we worship a god who does shit like that? No. Did it explain Christianity’s lengthy history of racism? Also no. Weird.)

We learn the tower as a tale of hubris, or my classmates and I did anyway. Dumb humanity, always fucking shit up. Fuck around and find out, silly mortals. Trix are for kids! And yet . . . it really is a story of curiosity. Humans want to understand god, that’s the whole point of esotericism and, really, like . . . most world religions. Congress, communion with divinity. People understand divinity to be located in the sky, and in this story they seem to be on to something, otherwise diva—I mean divinity--wouldn’t have gotten so P.O.’ed. They were curious, they started building a tower, they thought “hey—why not?” I mean, metaphorically, it’s sorta what Kabbala is about (at least in my very limited understanding of it): climbing the ladder of enlightenment to achieve congress with G*d. So, either our human desire to understand the divine better is wrong and we shouldn’t be doing that, or . . . . : it’s not divinity that doesn’t want us coming closer to it . . . it’s that religion doesn’t want us coming closer to divinity, because then we won’t need religion—organized ones, at any rate. Which is of course the reality. Religion, and by this time we can accept that we’re talking specifically, or at least originally, about “Christianity,” doesn’t want us to be curious. Religion wants us to be obedient and to pay for the intercession on our behalf that the priests somehow only have access to . . . even though we’re, like, also told to pray at lot . . . , so who knows . . . ?

Anyway, I say it’s just another biblical example of gatekept knowledge—which the foundational texts of the Abrahamic faithways are full of. “Do not ask questions, do not seek knowledge, obey the teachers, obey the leaders, obey obey obey.” 

Meanwhile, the bible is all riddled with divination. 

Divination is an act of curiosity, and so it is the antithesis of obedience. It is also the antithesis of the Tower of Babel story. Divination IS the tower of babel. The esotericists love to say what the tarot “is” — it’s a language of symbols, it’s the book of Thoth, it’s the royal road, it’s this, it’s that. It’s none of those—and all of them. And so it is (and isn’t) the Tower of Babel. It is an attempt to get close to the divine, to shake hands with sky daddy, to talk to the gawds, henny.

Except, like, the point of that story is that the divine doesn’t want us ringing the damn doorbell . . . ? Apparently . . . ?

What kind of divinity does want us to bother him in the middle of the night?
Oh, right. The antithesis of a god who hates curiosity. 
The god of curiosity: Diavolo.  That stud who keep showing up around here lately, giving us the lusty gift of his presence once more. Hey, big boy! 

In the OG story of punishment-for-knowledge, he shows up, too. Actually, he doesn’t. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is never specifically ID’d as the devil, because the devil as we know him today (small-d devil, not Big Daddy Devil) didn’t exist that. The Devil, weirdly, is the creation of Christianity designed to hurt those of us who refuse conformity . . . and somehow they managed to create an icon that shows us how to transcend their limitations. Odd. Anyway, the devil is not who tempts Eve in the bible, but like the tower of babel, it is a myth of control. And anyone with even the tiniest rebellious brain is asking why knowledge is such a bad thing by the time they’re making first communion. And we could get into all the theological shit about translations and what’s really happening and what the original versions of the myth really are—but that’s not the point. The point is that the devil—or the implication of him—shows up wherever Abrahamic allegories present the human with a choice. Whenever someone is asked to choose between knowing and not knowing, they devil tempts to them know. The ideal, somehow, is to choose not knowing; to defy the essential nature of being a person on this planet—a nature presumably built into us by the god who supposedly doesn’t want us asking questions? This god would simply prefer that we accept ignorance to suit the ego of this loving god who . . . I’m sorry, wait. Doesn’t it sound like these stories have it backwards? In this corner, we have “God,” sky daddy, who, like, gave you curiosity but doesn’t want you to ever use it. And in this corner, we have the “evil one,” who didn’t make you and didn’t give you curiosity but has the ability to help slake that need in such a way that navigating life is, like . . . , easier? What’s going on here? Who do we choose?The egotistical prince of ignorance? Or the one who gets it and wants the answers, too? Which of these is really the villain and which the hero?

Point belabored, point made. 

Point is: The Devil is the god of curiosity. He wants to know and he wants us to know. And so what the hell are these two cards saying? “You don’t need to climb to impossible heights in order to get the answers you seek. That way lies ruin. No, you stay down here on earth, and you ask the divinities that will tell you.” Knowledge is power. Too many of us are powerless. So we turn to the entities willing to give us what we need: guidance, guideposts, atlases, compasses, the whole nine. But I think there lies a warning, here, too. We can, if we get too addicted (a word regrettably saddled onto the Devil) to knowledge, or to getting readings, or to knowing, or even to being a provider of answers, we can wind up climbing that tower and getting stuck there—and then pushed from its heights. I think there’s a warning about ego here (don’t get too big for your britches, bitches) and also a reminder that not everything requires divination—and/or that not everything requires a diviner. Which is another way of saying the britches thing, but has to do more with kind of a collective sense of import. We can’t take ourselves too seriously, even if what we do is good and divine and maybe even sacred. We’re just fools at the end of the day all moving in the same direction, whether we like it or not. Be curious, but don’t, like, get crazy about it, y’know? That’s what it’s saying. You don’t need a reading on what to make for dinner—though most days it sure fucking feels like it. 

I think the pair also reinforces what’s on the left side of the spread: chaos is chaos, even if it doesn’t feel that way to the outside observer. The Tower and the Ten of Wands mirror each other and in doing they reinforce each others’ intensity. What’s big in a client’s life is big, even if it doesn’t feel that way to us. What’s mysterious is mysterious, even if we’re not personally interested in solving that one. The mirrored pairing of the Ace of Coins and the Devil is fun, because they’re appropriately earthy and in their way rather well-suited. I think it reminds us that life can be burdensome, even when only perceived that way. And here I’m thinking about the Devil as a misunderstood entity. Even today, tarots create him in a Christian way despite the reality that as diviners, we’re doing the “devil’s work” in the sense that we’re embodying a task that Christianity reviles. Anything Christianity hates is Satanic. They say it themselves! The reputation burdens the card, even though it’s only a perception of it—in the same way that clients can perceive something as more important, more burdensome, than it is. And the reading may help them see that. Which is A-OK, because it means they can move on and start healing and eventually focus on other things. 

I’ve said before and I’ve no doubt I’ll say it again: maybe one of the main gifts we offer as readers is the ability to help people make sense of things they don’t understand so that they can ultimately focus on the “important” stuff, too. That runs the risk of sounding loftier than I mean it to, but really it’s . . . if we can help them sweat the small stuff, they can find space for the “great mysteries” we’re all supposedly so in need of exploring. That’s snark, not shade. I’m being silly. (Mostly.) 

I said at the start of the interpretation that I could call on the deck choice to see whether it added anything to the reading. In this case, absolutely: the choice of the tower’s title changed everything about this interpretation. Its cardstock and quality I don’t think says much but the way I interpreted the choice of the deck above is also reinforced when a reading confirms something I already think. Smiley face. But I really enjoyed this reading and the little exploration of how the deck describes my current needs was fun. I encourage you to do the same next time you’re called to use a deck you haven’t in a while. There’s great coolness to be found in divinatory experimentations like that. 

Now, on to your spread:

A Read of One’s Own
I struggled developing a spread for this lesson, because the lesson is somewhat simple: don’t judge clients’ questions, including your own. Don’t be a snob about import. What matters to someone really matters to them, whether or not it seems to your view as pointless. How do you read about that?

But here we’re presented with the topic of bias, which is really what this amounts to. Bias against a particular kind of divinatory need. And we’ve all got biases. It’s helpful to remember that, particularly if—like me—you enjoy getting on your justice high horse. We’ve all got biases. And it’s not easy to detect them because they’re so ingrained in us. 

What I propose for this weeks spread is a three-card pull exploring the question, “What is a divinatory bias that I’m not aware of but that is making my readings less effective?” 

Full disclosure, this will not be an easy one to read on for the simply fact that if we knew what the bias was, we’d do something about it. Biases are really hard to see, and when we’re reading cards we tend to rely on little links between what we know about a situation and what we see in the cards. That means that we’re looking for evidence of something in the cards what we can’t actually see—yet. It’s not easy to do. It requires a certain kind of ruthless self-reflection many of us will find challenging. But give it a go. See what you can come up with. And if you’re really struggling, recognize that this is hard and trade readings with someone else. That’s probably the easiest way to go about this, honestly. But it still requires self reflection. Ew. ​

Arc of 5.
Cards drawn: Emotions (XIX, 21); 4 of water; 5 of earth; 9 of fire; 9 of air
Deck: Dream of Gaia Tarot by Ravynne Phelan

I’d intended to use a different deck today, but I saw this one sitting out on my table as it has been for ages now. I rarely use it but I quite like it. It’s barely a tarot, I call it a “taroracle,” but it’s also an exciting thing sometimes to break with the familiar. In fact, it’s an excellent way to keep our brains sharp, active, and experimenting. 

The main reason I didn’t use this deck for ages after getting it and liking it is that it is so far from tarot. The minors are “situational” but not Waite-Smith or Thoth. They’re their own thing. And the majors are entirely remade. Then at a certain point last year I thought, “Well, you know, you’ve managed to read all kinds non-tarot of systems, now; why not return to this deck and see what you can do with it?” And I did, and I have had some good readings. Weirdly, using non-traditional tarots seems to be particularly effective when reading for myself because it forces me to not be lazy. I can’t rest on my own tired knowledge; I have to dig and actually divine, rather than reciting. I never phone it in for clients but I typically do when reading for myself. 

But what’s this reading have to say?

Starting with the central card, the one that went down first, we find the Five of Earth. This deck uses the elements in place of suit objects, not a big departure. The numerology that Phelan uses is completely different from mine, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use it—that doesn’t mean I can’t unite her images with my system. And in some ways, that’s maybe the first lesson of this particular entry: how to read with non-trad tarots without throwing everything you’ve learned out the window. 

Fives are unstable numbers. Perhaps the most unstable. They reject the status quo, a particularly Aquarian tendency in my opinion. Earth, of course, represents money, day to day life, and that which grounds us. This is a time where the earth for many of us is particularly unstable, particularly . . . swampy. It’s quicksand. In this case, Phelan’s image offers a host of potentials. The card seems to suggest trickery, con artistry, and the loss that comes from it. See the sobbing, ghostly image in the background and the devlish figure in the fore—a particularly queer being, if you ask me. I can’t guess the author’s intent, but this feels very much to me a non-binary person. The eyebrows, the jawline, the shape of the eyes—these all suggest AMAB facial structure; the hands, the ears, the lips, the hair, the posture suggest AFAB tendencies. Then there’s the rash of red we see at the hairline and on the hands, along with the horns and the sharp finger nails. These suggest to me an animal or otherworldly entity. So not only does this person defy gender, they defy species. In that way, one might hold them as a sibling of Baphomet, who is similarly non-binary. 

My first thought when seeing this card was our old pal, Donald J. Trump and his con-artistry taking over the planet. I rejected that out of pocket, though, mostly because I don’t feel like giving him any fucking credit and also because that’s not really contextually relevant in a blog about divination. Yes, his hucksterism may well cause us losses—that’s pretty certain, in fact. On the other hand, I refuse to let this queer image represent such a revoltingly straight entity. In fact, I think this foreground figure represents us, dear ones: fortune teller, diviners, readers, witches, and anyone vilified for our lack of “acceptable” tendencies. The figure turning away isn’t the victim, no no; this figure is white bread, cis het trad wife society that makes itself the victim any time anyone takes it upon themselves to say, “Fuck your norms, I am fucking magic.”

For folks who step out of the cis het paradigm of acceptability, everything is unstable—everything is very five. In fact, we are the destabilizing force that earth needs at the moment, because the status quo isn’t going to save us. The so-called “US” has made it very clear that we can collectively go fuck ourselves so that ugly, boring, mean, entitled straight white men and their equally ugly, boring, mean, and entitled handmaidens can feel safe in their incredibly ugly, boring, mean, dull, entitled lives. But their victories don’t mean we’re less interesting; it means that we’ve got to hold on to our destabilizing vibes harder. (For what it’s worth, I do not think the other electoral outcome wouldn’t have done much but play out the same way the last four years have—which was also unsustainable. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have preferred something less scary, but I’m also not saying I’m not furious about the DNC’s staggering ineptitude. I have left that particular cult for good. I have zero hope in politics, anymore. Thank god I didn’t major in poly sci, as I intended to. I’ve already got an MFA in an industry I can’t stomach anymore.)

It’s fun that I’ve been reading so much about the Devil in modern trad craft because this card shows up as the central image and displays some devilishness. And this is yet another reason why I decided the “victim” isn’t white tears Becky in the background, but the non-binary being in the front. “Ouch,” the lady in the background cries, “Your cards are hurting me. Did you steal those jewels? I’m calling the cops! Waahhhh Rickyyyyyy.” So many moments over the last few weeks have left me saying to myself, “This is what you’ve been training for.” All of us in the divination spaces are this foreground figure, being fucking magic despite constant admonitions not to. (I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before, but as a young Catholic boy, I was a red-headed, left-handed fembot; it’s odd to me that it took me so long to see, despite even what people told me growing up, that I am “of the devil.”)

Let’s expanded our scope for a moment. The Five of Earth is flanked by the Four of Water and the Nine of Fire. Fours are not unstable; fours are conservative as fuck. That’s one thing that makes the fives so relentless. They are fed up with being held back, with being restrained. The Four of Water suggests “emotional stability.” Nines, like fives, are also unstable (all odd numbers are). Nines of Fire in pretty all version of tarot can suggest burnout. You’ve likely heard me talk about that before. It’s “too much” fire. But in this case, I think it’s creating an antidote to the four. Before I get into why, let’s actually look at the two cards to the left of the center (ironic—or not?—that the conservative card shows up “left of center,” eh?)

The Emotions card has no cognate in trad tarot. As I mentioned, all the majors in this deck have been remade. But there were times we didn’t know what the “normal” majors meant as well, so this is no issue for us. I tend to take the majors more-or-less at face value more or less most of the time. Except for when I don’t. Which also happens more or less most of the time. By which I mean, I don’t really know how often I do that—but I do. Anyway. What are emotions? If you look up the word in a dictionary, you can see lexicographers have a hard time defining it. In order to tell us what an emotion is, they name emotions. But they can’t tell us what they are. They’re “sensations” of “feeling.” But they can’t really say what that means. It’s like attempting to define a color. What is “red”? What is “blue”? And how do I know that what you see as red is the same as what I see? We don’t know; we have no way of knowing. Which means that emotion, like color, is something we think we understand—something we get conceptually, philosophically, but not something that we’re able to truly “get.”

I might make the argument (though I’m not sure I’d defend it that hard) that emotions are simply the names we give for our current state of being, sort of our base level mood at any given time. I’d also argue (though, again, not that forcefully) that emotions are a way our body warns us about our present state of danger or safety. When we feel “love” or “happiness” or even “boredom,” our body recognizes that it is safe. When we feel “angry” or “sad” or “anxious,” our body recognize that we are not safe. It doesn’t know for sure, it’s doing its best to suss out our environment and use its natural receptors to do this. For those of us who live with anxiety and depression, our body is somehow more prone to telling us that we’re unsafe. Usually we’re not, not these days, but there are definitely times when we’re in danger. But our bodies can’t really tell the difference between a real trigger--an actual danger—and an imagined one. If, like me, you also have some form of neurodivergence, you’re also more prone to over reacting to things. Everything is magnified. So that an objectively small trigger might yield a major meltdown. This happens to me when I feel rejected, for example. Also when I fuck something up, even something unimportant, like dropping a fork while doing dishes. 

Anyway, a slight digression—perhaps. But the thing that I take away from the Emotions card partnered with the Four of Water is, in some ways, we’ve (not everyone, many of us) been in a bit of a day dream. Now, the images on the Emotions card aren’t really yielding much. But they’re intended, I think, to depict the gamut. The Four of Water could be said to “rhyme” with the Five of Earth, thanks to the ghostly hue of the female-presenting figures thereon. You might even detect that the Four of Water figure holds a necklace not totally unlike the foreground figure in the five. What I see is someone who has been lulled into a false sense of security suddenly waking up and facing a reality. That “someone” can both be the Becky I saw in the five prior, but also the figure in the front. “We” (us, reader) are also being awoken as the four transforms into the five. “You’ve been led into a lull, but that will not help you. Be sad about it if you want, but it’s time to let the Devil out.”

Everything solidifies. Like a spiritual erection. A sentence I never imagined writing, but there you have it. We are forced into reality, forced into facing things as they are, and recognizing that we may be about to face some Becky tears, too. Not our own, but we will probably be accused of being indifferent to the “pain” of the privileged. (I don’t doubt that privileged people have pain. I just think they don’t really know what their pain actually is. I keep thinking about that meme of the white lady with a sticker of a bull’s eye taped to her forehead. Her caption reading, “What it feels like to be a conservative woman in America today.” But the best part is the response from someone else, who says, “I actually love this post, because that’s a fake bull’s eye and you put it there yourself.” Like, if privileged people could pause and recognize that the very fact they make themselves into victims is a sign of how massively psychologically fucked up they truly are, they’d spend less time worrying about trans boys playing baseball and more about the fact that they’re teaching their children to be callous fucking assholes. But whatever.)

Anyway, let’s return to the Nine of Fire. The reason I wanted to come back to this is because I recognized that the two cards to the right of the five are both nines. So we have the projective suits (fire, air) and the weight of nine. Nine is an interesting number because while it can be “too much” of something it can also be thought of as rapid expansion (3+3+3). Major expansion of energy, of fire; major expansion of intellect, learning, of air. One might, if one were of a mind, say that the combo of fire and air creates magic. The spiritual energy of fire meeting the conductive energy of air. What do I mean by “conductive”? Air “conducts” things in the sense of pushing them in certain directions. It also conducts whatever the temperature is. When it’s hot out, the air is hot. It may vary from spot to spot, but when it’s hot, it’s hot all around us. So it “conducts” heat. Which basically means it puts it into action. Bit of a stretch, but who cares? It makes sense. 

I think this suggests that it’s time to start making some big, bold, energetic, conductive shifts to the stasis we’ve experienced. And I think we can think about this from a divinatory viewpoint in a few ways: first, likely we’re going to have take this attitude toward our divantory work. People are going to need different things as they experience bigger, more dramatic (more projective) emotions and states of being (the Emotions card mirrors the Nine of Air, and air is closely connected to emotion because our mind often dictates what we’re feeling—or attempts to make sense of it). This means that our usual ways of doing things won’t work, or at least may have to be adjusted, expanded, and/or recalibrated. Another way to look at this is in a more broadly spiritual way: we may need to expand the work we do. I think about the potential threats of the incoming administration (and based on my own readings, I feel pretty strongly we haven’t seen the end of drama around this election—but I don’t know anymore), education and healthcare could become dramatically more difficult to come by. There’s also nothing saying more “spirituality” won’t be forced on us, because of course the “American” right wing loves to pretend it gives a flying fuck about Jesus but shoving laws in our faces Jesus wouldn’t have given a flying fuck about. People may need spiritual alternatives, and diviners may be able to provide that. In many ways, diviners may be called upon to do things that we’re not used to because the world needs that. This sounds awfully self-aggrandizing, but I don’t mean it that way. I simply mean, what clients (and when we read for ourselves, we’ve clients) need will change and we would do well to adapt to those needs. 

The presence of the two nines, though, does remind us that we can also become easily burned out, spiritually and mentally, if we’re not careful. Of course you know that theme is a trend in this blog, but it is inevitable that when we feel like we’re at war, we’re going to fight all the time. That doesn’t leave us any rest and recuperation, and we can make ourselves sick. Given that healthcare may be impacted, that’s not great—so we need to make sure that we’re measuring our sense of energy, our output, etc., so that we’re getting back what we put out. 

This may all sound somewhat dystopian. Well, I’m not an optimist by nature. We easily could be in for some massively dystopian stuff quite soon. But I also think that the devil figure, that horned being in the Five of Earth, reminds us: this is what you’ve been training for.

(Quick context observation: Note that I didn’t even consider the images on the two nines. That’s not to say they don’t matter, only that they weren’t the first thing I needed in this context. The number and elements really gave me the intel I needed. If I wanted to, I could keep going and use the images to deepen the reading—but I don’t need to, and I’m trying to keep this relatively brief. Also please note that if I had blue eyes and long hair, I’d bear a strange resemblance to the figure on the Nine of Fire.) 

A Read of One’s Own
I regret that the week got away from me and I didn’t have time to create a new spread and write a demo of it. But I think the content of this post warrants a spread, so I’m going to create one now. Though I won’t provide an example, I’m confident you’ll figure it out.

Position 1: In what ways may my divinatory practice need to evolve over the next few years?
Position 2: What things might my clients/querents/self need out of readings that I’m not currently versed in?
Position 3: In what ways have I already been preparing myself for this?
Position 4: Where in my practice should I start thinking about exploring aspects of my art that I don’t currently use—or, what blind spots do I need to be aware of as I’m evolving?
Position 5: How can I check my progress?
=
As always, I recommend using at least three cards per position, but this is of course up to you! 

Have a good week, friends. See next time. 

​I hate the term “stalker card,” but I also hate that I’m the kind of person who can’t let idiomatic phrases go without focusing on their problematic implications. It’s a tight rope walk between accepting that not every fucking thing we say needs to be scrutinized for the failure of our allyship and recognizing that we say a lot of fucked up shit that deserves some editing. And, let’s be honest: “stalker card” has a similar vibe to it. There’s violence inherent in it. We don’t call them “stan cards” or “nosy neighbor cards” or “mansplainer cards.” We choose the term “stalker cards.” But the nature of communicating is also to reach for the most precise terms in order to make ourselves understood. In so doing, we often reach for major concepts and use them as metaphors. When we say “stalker card,” no one wonders what we means; they know immediately.  When someone refers to wearing a “wife beater,” we not only know how they’re dressed, we also have an implication of the kind of person they might be . . . and it isn’t a compliment. 

I posted something recently and used the term “totem poll” as a metaphor. I can’t quite recall what context I used it in, but it was in the neighborhood of the innocuous “run it up the totem poll.” When I mentioned to a friend that I regretted using that term and hoped nobody was hurt by it, she said, “The English language is full of landmines and it’s difficult to avoid stepping on one.” She meant that the language, but really our idioms, is so full of problematic terms, phrases, and concepts, that it’s next to impossible to go through a conversation without using one—even when we’re relatively in touch with the fuckery of micro aggressions and racist cliches. She wasn’t dismissing my concern or saying I shouldn’t care about hurting people with my word choice; she meant that the English language is riddled with issues and no matter how carefully we might tread, we’re probably going to stumble on a phrase that has a fucked up origin. It’s everywhere. I cannot tell you how often I hear people in the DEI world of all different backgrounds use the g-word for Romany people—and who have no idea it’s offensive. 

Our language changes rapidly and it should and we are in a moment of revising and refining English in ways that revises out shitty expressions and replaces them with less shitty ones—but that are sometimes more awkward or difficult to wrap our mouths around. (Kinky.) And this is a very good thing, even when lazy-ass white folx (hi, I am one so if you’re one too then fucking unclench) throw our hands up in despair and say “Well I don’t know what to call people anymore.” (By their names would be a good start, incidentally.)

Anyway — the Hanged Man might be the “devoted-but-not-violent, yet-maybe-a-little-too-excited fanboy” of this blog. (Does that work to replace “stalker card”?) Because it’s shown up in the initial draws for at least five of the twenty entries here, and might be the most repeated card so far. So I’m prompted to meditate a bit on why. Why this card that, in reality, I don’t see too often in readings? 

I typically read this card to mean “consequences.” The result of something, usually something not too bright, that comes to bite us on the ass. Before the esotericists showed up this card was often called The Traitor. There are, in early decks, blobs falling out of his pockets thought to represent the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas for his betrayal of Jesus. And I’ve had an interesting relationship with Judas since childhood. I think my earliest doubts about Christianity came from the treatment of Judas in the gospel. Obviously he’s the villain of Christianity for having betrayed Christ. But, and this might be because I’m a writer by nature, it occurred to me from young age that if Judas didn’t “betray” Jesus, than the whole “miracle” of Christianity doesn’t happen. Jesus in the Bible tells Judas it would have been better for Judas not to have been born. Well, no shit. Except that if Judas hadn’t sold out his pal, Jesus wouldn’t have been caught, killed, resurrected, and deified. So why doesn’t Judas get more fucking credit? He’s the inciting incident, the “reason for the season” (if you will). He is the lynchpin of the Christ myth. He literally makes the whole thing happen. And yet we find him Dante’s inferno after having done himself self-harm. This has led to a bizarre pop culture presence for the “evil” disciple, including the odd plot point Wes Craven chose for Dracula 2000 (a really terrible movie that somehow yielded several sequels—but perhaps the only movie I could stand to watch Gerard Butler in—men with fangs look hotter than without them, so there’s that) in which Dracula becomes a vampire (the vampire, in seems) upon his hanging. (Let’s acknowledge for a moment that some of the the likely parents of vampires are Lilith and Hades—not together, but each is “giving” vampire in their own way. Judas . . . not so much.)

Why doesn’t Judas get a divine reprieve? Why is he cursed to hell (and to be played by a vapid actor with very little charm)? Shouldn’t Christ have forgiven him? What kind of pal lets his friend go to hell for doing the exact thing that friend needed him to do in order to reach the apex of his story? “Thanks for helping me move, buddy. Now rot in hell, asshole.” I mean . . . it makes very little sense. 

Probably as little sense as this lesson is making so far. 

Well, the first lesson—particularly when reading the cards without a client sitting before you—is that you sometimes need to go on a little discursive joint in order to access a reading. This is particularly true when you’re not entirely sure what you’re reading about and the most prominent card in the spread seems to have said all that it can say of late. Because in the story of Judas, we get another tale of the mortal wronged by divinity simply for doing exactly what he was placed on earth by that divinity to do. His siblings include Pandora and Sisyphus, Job, even Lucifer/Satan (to whom he is often compared). These are (mostly) mortals who followed the path laid out for them only to be condemned for it—as though their lives don’t matter. 

Of course, we don’t know for sure what divinity has to say about Judas anymore than Pandora, because the stories we know about them are recorded for us by other humans—humans with an agenda. We don’t know what the Christian god thinks about Judas; we just know what we humans think about him, and that’s pretty well depicted in early representations of The Hanged Man—he’s a criminal deserving a violent death. 

The Hanged Man implies judgment. Something had to happen for him to get up there; in this case, he didn’t do it himself. 

I think it’s helpful to think for a moment about that. While the esoteric traditions paint the card as an initiatory journey—an ego death—and preparation for the elevation of the spirit, that’s because they couldn’t stomach any of the baser implications of cards that were not created as esoteric tools. (At least as the history indicates to date.) But The Hanged Man can be a stand-in for the times in our lives where we lack autonomy and where we’re forced to suffer the consequences of others’ actions. 

Sound familiar? 

The Hanged Man can, in certain contexts, imply our powerlessness over certain situations. And while that can lead to all kinds of things, it usually doesn’t because we don’t like that in modern life. See, the perception shifts associated with the card are only possible once we accept that we’re not in charge. That, in itself, is partly the perception shift the card indicates: no matter how much we want to be, there are times when we’re at the mercy of other entities or energies. We decide to make the best of it because that’s all we really can do. Other than despair. Which, honestly, is a much more accurate read for this card: despair. The Hanged Man is not getting out of this alive. He’s going to die. The next card is death. This is the end. The silly face we see on old cards isn’t clowning; it’s the ugliness of a hanged person dying. His tongue lolls out; his limbs dangle at awkward angles; his blood rushes to his head—and when his body begins losing control, he’s going to end up voiding all over himself. Ideally, he’ll be unconscious when that happens. 

I said earlier that most men are sexier with fangs. Well, kids, so is tarot. The defanging of divination is an issue that too often takes the possibility of really learning something and castrates it. Sorry for the violent image, but that’s what it does. How many fucking times in life have you had the kind of transcendental experience that the Hanged Man supposedly shows? How many times have you gotten absolutely fucked because of someone else’s actions?  Which one happens more often?

Unless you’re a shockingly spiritual entity who manages to transcend the banality of everyday life, chances are you’re going to experience the latter exponentially more than the former. 

And so why do we allow ourselves to read cards almost exclusively in a way that reflects an incredibly rare experience?

I wish I had a snarky answer for you, but I don’t: it’s because we’re afraid. 
Which is a very, very human thing to be. 
We don’t want to feel what the Hanged Man is feeling and so we try to find substitutions for his lot that make us feel better about ours. 
But sometimes everything is the worst.

Sometimes we are stuck in a limbo not of our making. Sometimes we are playing the part that we’ve been assigned, doing everything by the script we’ve been handed, and we still get fucked. Sometimes we’ve done everything right and we still get shit on. Sometimes, sometimes we are simply stuck in the shit and there’s nothing we can do about it until life changes and we can. And sometimes—well, once—we will face a thing we cannot escape no matter what we do. Death. 

I’m coming to the conclusion that the other cards in this reading aren’t going to have space to say much, but that’s OK. Hopefully you’re into this deep dive into the card that seems to have wanted our attention most in this bloggy-poo. 

There are times when we do not have control.
There are times when we are not at the wheel.
There are times when we are the victims of circumstance. 
There are times when the good guy goes to jail.
There are times when justice is not served.
And there are also times when we fuck up and deserve it, but that doesn’t seem to be the vibe today.

If your mind hasn’t leapt to where mine has, then what’s on my mind most right now is the recent election in the “US.” We are all, regardless of where we landed in the voting booth (if we even went), at the mercy of politics right now. In very scary ways. And while that may not seem like it has much to do with divination, it does. For two reasons: one, it’s going to impact our general mood a lot; two: it’s going to impact our clients’ lives (including ours, if we read for ourselves). 

We are a world, in many ways, embodied by The Hanged Man. And it’s difficult sometimes to wonder if we’re not, like the apparent progenitor of the card (Judas), simply playing our role, doing what we think we’re supposed to be doing, while simultaneously setting ourselves up for drama (to put it mildly). Are we simply playthings of divinity? And if we are, is divination then just a clever ploy to distract us from the game and make us think we have power while we obey the rules outlined for us on a game board with movements far more complicated than chess? 

Or . . . is divination the cheat code?

OK, not gonna lie, that thought just blue my fuckin’ mind. 

I’m not a gamer, so I’m not even sure if that’s, like, the real phrase, but I think it is. 

Let us open our scope a bit and notice the way this particular Lovers card—with this deliciously seventies pornstar vibe (I would lick the chest hair off that dude given the chance) and the massively prominent presence of Cupid/Eros (or his gloved hands, anyway) pointing the arrow downward—both through the brain of the poor dame in the middle, but also into the Hanged Man’s crotch (based on the cards’ positions). This kind of implies the powerlessness of everything below it in the spread (the entire reading, in this case). This is a good chance for me to remind people that The Lovers isn’t about choice because once that arrow hits, whoever it hits is going to obey its power. Like the lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, they are at the mercy of the magic thrown at them. 

But, though we’re “at the mercy” of some things, we’re not entirely on our own. We’re not entirely without agency or without guidance. We’ve got divination. Even if we lack autonomy, we can find out what is actually going on. We don’t have to navigate in the dark, we don’t have to shove our heads in the sand (and you could argue the Hanged man has ostrichy aspects, thanks mostly to his posture). We can ask questions and use divination and get answers. And we can find out how much agency we have—because rarely is everything out of our hands. Life, annoyingly, tends to be a combo of fate and free will. We have free will within the constraints of “fate.” In this case, take fate to mean simply conditions out of our control. 

Let’s consider the central column of this spread: The Lovers, the Hanged Man, the Six of Wands. Dropping through the sequence, the six is arguably a card of movement—if not necessarily autonomous movement. Six are “good” because they suggest beauty (sometimes vanity, which can also be relevant in this context—we tend to think we’re more powerful than we are . . . or we tend to think we’re absolved of responsibility because we can’t control fate . . . the reality being much more nuanced and requiring more energy than either of those assumptions suggests). Fire is good, too, because in this case it suggests the first bursts of energy we get in the Hanged Man’s existence. 

The Six of Wands is giving knight-in-shining-armor, coming in and burning the Hanged Man’s ropes and carrying him off into the sunset. But wait—so, too, does the Page of Swords, casually striking at the Hanged Man’s tethers. And then what the fuck with the Ten of Cups—these little twinks celebrating(?) together. I had to call that out so I don’t forget, but let’s return to that shortly. In the meantime, the central column continues: “Yes,” it seems to say, “you’re powerless right now. But there’s a beautiful fire burning that will change things.” Or, it might say, “Yes, I’m fucking with you—but if you expend some energy (think of the movement of the six as expending energy—fire being the energy), you’ll be able to make some progress.”

In this case, the energy I’m thinking about is divinatory energy. Why? Well, mostly because that’s supposed to be the point of this blog. But I also can’t get the phrase “divine fire” out of my head. It keeps repeating. The divine fire, in this case, suggesting the reality and effectiveness of divination. In religious terms, ecstasy is potent union with divinity. In sexual terms, obviously, it’s a mind-bending orgasm. Both of those can be poetic metaphors for divination. Union with divinity escalating into the climax of an answer. We literally fuck the cards into meaning while we’re working with them—not a sentence I ever thought I would type, but there it is. And we’re not literally doing that; that’s literary hyperbole. We are metaphorically fucking the cards into meaning, but in a literal way. Wink. 

I’m also noting, now, my comments about the porn star Joy of Sex vibe in The Lovers and giggling at how apt that metaphor really is. The Lovers represents both our powerlessness in the face of divinity, but also our ability to commune with divinity in the act of divination. It is metaphysical congress with the release of intel. And you don’t have to think of that in the annoyingly patriarchal terms of male orgasm. A real divination session frequently reveals lots of little truths (orgasms) throughout, which is far more exciting and far more like non-penile orgasm (from what I’m told, alas). And if you don’t believe me, this whole reading is an example of that. Lots of little revelations and truths. 

Returning to the crossbar and to the page and the ten: I’m drawn to the Page of Swords’ preternatural curiosity. Of the pages, the one governing the suit of swords is going to be the most inquisitive, the most interested, the most curious; she’s the most likely to ask “why?” to the point of annoying her parents, or of hyperfocusing on a certain topic until she knows about all there is about it (an experience I know all too well). Her sword points up to The Lovers, to the divine, not unlike a lightning rod. “Hit me,” she says. She’s brave enough to ask when others aren’t. She says, “Well, OK, maybe I am fucking stuck, but I’m sure as fuck not going to know until I do some damn research. What if I only think the gods are fucking me with?” 

The Ancient Greeks were awfully obsessed with hubris (for example see, like, all their myths)—but isn’t it equally hubristic to think the gods give a flying fuck about us? Like the idea that the gods are even aware of us or care what we’re doing or have any interest in the day-to-day doings of what are surely (to them) a little ant colony of probably very little consequence is kind of smug. I’m not saying it’s wrong, just that the idea that we matter is hubris—and so in the telling of the myths, the writers were displaying hubris by suggesting human hubris annoys the gods because that means the gods care about what we do. Again, I’m not saying the gods do or don’t—or even that there “are” gods in the sense that Ancient Greeks understood them. I’m just saying that there’s a fascinating paradox that I had to call out because why the fuck not. Anyway, the Page of Swords is unconcerned with implications of hubris. She can’t know the answers until she asks, and because she’s not worried about what the gods will think of her, she asks. 

And in so doing, she cuts the ropes of stasis and reaches the apex of the suit of cups—the apex of love and spirituality, one could say. 

“Ask,” the page says, “because the worst and best that you could wind up with is enlightenment.”

Maybe “enlightenment” isn’t a traditional keyword for the Ten of Cups, but could any card conceptually indicate it better? OK, yes, I know for some of you many cards could indicate it better—but that’s not the point. The point is that it makes sense for that card in this reading if we consider cups as spirituality (and because it is the suit associated with the clergy historically, we can make that connection easily—no matter our feelings on the clergy), and ten as “fullness,” than we have spiritual fullness. 

Thus the entire reading says this: even when—and maybe especially when—we feel the most powerless, divination is the key to progress and enlightenment. 

Which is a far, far loftier fucking thing than I’d normally allow myself to say, but I’m feeling annoyingly expansive right now. I have spent so much of my life diminishing my own magic, and as someone who will likely be negatively impacted by the impending political landscape, I am in a mood right now where I’m undergoing the kind of Hanged Man experience that I dismissed early in his reading. I am undergoing a transformation. And as part of that I’m coming to the conclusion that divination is a powerful fucking act. I mean I’ve always felt it was a political act—it’s transgressive and marginal and frequently criminal—but to think of it was something that matters is new for me. After spending much of my adulthood bringing tarot “down to earth,” I’m in the process of (maybe?) allowing tarot to hoist me off the ground. I don’t even know what I mean by that, other than maybe to celebrate the gift of having this art form in my life. And of accepting that maybe it’s more than just the simple logic tool that I painted it as in my first book. I do think it’s a logic tool; I think intuition is shockingly logical. But I’m also willing to concede, perhaps, there is some magic—some divinity--at work, too. 

Do I think divination is the answer to all our problems or the only tool we need to fight the power? No. But do I think it’s an ingredient? Yes. More and more I’m coming to understand that there is . . . import to divination, there’s magic and power and even liberation in it. The very act of doing it is a middle finger to stuffy, christo-colonial convention. And while it isn’t a panacea, maybe it’s still a powerful and healing elixir. And that maybe--just maybe--my ability to do it well is potentially something more than just the ability to (as I frequently say) recognize patterns. Or maybe I just need to feel that potential because I do feel so fucking powerless right now. 

I’ve been listening to The Haunted Objects Podcast Greg and Dana Newkirk’s delicious, hilarious, and refreshingly respectful and humble exploration of metaphysical topics centered on objects from their paranormal museum. Spiritualism comes up a lot because of course it’s a formative moment in modern spirituality and because it is the lodestar of the skeptics who love to point to the major debunking of just about all the famous spiritualist mediums who, they say, duped the people they were trying to help. I don’t doubt that the con artists were con artists. I don’t doubt that there are a lot of assholes out there duping people. I do, though, have the sneaking suspicion that the issue wasn’t spiritualism as much as capitalism. It isn’t the spiritualism that made people into con artists; it was that it was an incredibly easy way to make a dime. Con artists look for ways to take advantage of belief. It might be belief in a product, a person, or a divinity; it might be belief in a nation or a lie or a job. Whatever it is, they find places where people’s credulity make them vulnerable--and they pounce. But they’re not spiritualists, anymore than most of the people murdered as witches were practicing witchcraft; they were con artists playing spiritualists. 

This doesn’t mean spiritualism is real—or that it’s not. But the issue wasn’t the idea of spiritualism or mediumship; it was using those concepts as a cover for grift. And I don’t doubt that some of the con artists started as earnest practitioners who, either to serve their ego, stay in the game, or due to the influence of an unscrupulous manager, allowed themselves to be turned into circus acts. I don’t doubt this in the same way I don’t doubt that most priests go into the seminary because of their deep love for god before they’re turned into soldiers in the predatory colonial army of the Vatican. We start out wanting to do good. (To quote Dear Evan Hansen, a musical I can’t stand with a song I love, “We start with stars in our eyes. We start believing that we belong.”) But capitalism forces us to make choices: survive or die. And sometimes survival looks like the theft of a loaf of bread and sometimes it looks like an earnest spiritual medium turning into a sleight of hand magician.

The point that I wanted to get to, though, (or really, the paradox of that)  is that people were helped—even by the crooks, at least in some cases. They got messages they needed and closure they wanted.  Which is the strangest part of it. The spiritualist con artists wouldn’t have had a anyone to con if they weren’t drawing people in with the hope of union with dead loved ones, and giving them some semblance of that connection. And, I have to ask . . . if it helped . . . was it ALL bad? And what if the messages that the consumers received weren’t simply the result of conmen? What if divinity used those frauds to communicate with the grieving? And what if the grieving healed because of it? This is the kind of ethical loop that I typically avoid--and let me be clear: I am 100% opposed to con artists. But it does beg the question we started with: how much are we really in the hands of divinity and how much are we in control . . . ? I don’t know. 

My own spiritual development is recent. But I’ve been a good reader much longer than that. I didn’t have a relationship with any form of divinity when I started my YouTube channel or wrote my first two books. But the divinations I did worked. I still don’t do any spiritual preparation before readings. I don’t have special sprays or tools or crystals. I don’t consecrate my decks. But my divination still works. In fact, one reason I even allowed myself to deep dive into tarot in the way that landed me where I am is because I didn’t need any of that stuff. Today, though, I wonder (just a little) if that was all “part of the plan.” The gateway drug (another problematic idiom) to embracing my path and practice. I don’t know. That makes me uncomfortable to admit, but it does connect with the overall theme of today’s entry. Perhaps, like Judas, I was on this path all along and didn’t know it; perhaps the divine has been pushing me in a direction and allowing me to think I was in control. Or perhaps that hubris and, like Judas and all other pawns, I will have to suffer the consequences of believing I’m special. 

Sometimes I wonder, too, if I’m just a con artist. Is divination even real? In fact, one reason my “down to earth” approach was so important to me is because it divorced tarot from spirituality—and, that was important because there’s a part of me that thinks spirituality is grift. I mean that sounds terrible, and I’m loathe to admit it, but it’s true. I grew up Catholic, how could I not? If divination is more than something logical, how do I know I’m serving the right entities? How do I know I’m translating correctly? How do I know that I’m not misleading people? I mean, I’d like to think the feedback I get from clients belies that anxiety, but I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t hit me sometimes. Am I merely a spiritualist pawn? 

These days, literally anything is possible. 
So thank gods we’ve got the cards!

A read of one’s own
Despite the discursiveness of this blog, it is in many ways my favorite so far. And the idea that divination is something to hold tight to as a superpower over the next few years isn’t an unattractive one, even if—well, I doubt that’s actually true. But let’s assume divination is the cheat code, particularly in times of distress and powerlessness. And let’s call this spread, The Cheat Code!

Shuffle and draw cards as follows:

1. Card one goes in the center (where the Hanged Man fell, above) and represents the area in life where we are most powerless currently. 
2. Card two goes above it (where The Lovers appeared) and represents the major outside influence. This could be divinity, but it could also be systems of power or even middling little asshole managers who need to get bent. 
3. Card three goes below the first card and represents the way divination can help most during this time of powerlessness. 
4. Card four goes to the left of the first card and represents the ways in which you can defy “the gods” (the powers that be, in this case).
5. Card five goes to the right of the first card and represents either:
   1. The eventual outcome of this situation, or
   2. The ways in which working with the powers (though not for them) can help you. (For example, if we say that the major outside influence is something divine, what can you can by working with divinity rather than against it?)

I typically say it’s wise to decide what each position in a spread means before shuffling and drawing, but in this case I give you permission not to decide on five’s true meaning until you see the card that falls there. I encourage you to read it both ways. (Also, I encourage you to use three cards per position—but for the sake of quickness I use only one here.)

A quick example:
Center card, where in my life I’m particularly powerless: King of Swords. I really didn’t expect to see a court card here! Don’t know why. This king’s head is in some very dark clouds. I take this to mean my own self-image, which is a thing I’ve been struggling with a lot lately and which, despite my best efforts, seems to hit me unexpectedly and deeply. The King of Swords knows better, but can’t seem to believe himself. 

Top card, the major external influence: Queen of Wands. “Oh, well that’s my ego,” I said when I saw this card. Why this particular card associated with ego? Because in one deck of my earliest decks (I can’t recall which), the courts were given astrological signs not names. And this queen was simply titled “Leo.” I just always remember that. And I know the card isn’t associated with that sign in any other places, at least as far as I know, but I always remember it. We might also say that this card represents aspects of people who want to be inspirational (fire) but can’t seem to shake their ego (fire again). Why is the queen given this nasty reading? Only because she’s sitting in a “problem” position: this is the influence taking away my power. So I have to read her as a problem. And let’s not pretend that my love affair with writing and teaching and reading for tarot is entirely about teaching; I get off on the praise, too. So that tracks. There’s a reason that ego death is so central to so many faith ways. 

Bottom card, representing how divination can be the cheat code to this situation. Two of Cups. (Incidentally, this is one of my favorite cards in this deck. So I’ll put a pic below.) This is one of those times where the obvious answer (“Use it help you fall in love with yourself”) makes me eyes roll with arrogant indifference. Yet, even if I try to interpret the card in other ways—twos are magnets and cups are feelings and sensations. We see this card when we’re drawn toward something without being able to resist. It might mean using divination in ways that helps me attract myself; it might also mean falling into my relationship with divination and my divinatory work to become attracted to myself. A convoluted phrase that really means, “look at what you can do with this art form and let that be impressive to you.” Ironic given the ego above, but it comes down to a quote from the acting teacher Stanislavsky (famous for the much misunderstood “method”—it is not what young white male cis het actors think it is): “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.” 

Left card, representing one way to defy the “gods” (major powerful influence). Four of Wands. Fours sustain, wands burn—passionate, potent, energetic. “Keep doing your shit despite how much you don’t like yourself, sometimes.”

Right card, representing either the eventual outcome and/or the way to work with the “gods.” Knight of Wands. I love this card, too; he looks to me like noted crush Pedro Pascal. I didn’t even notice how most these cards are courts. Woof. See, that’s a sign of progress for those of you reading this (is anyone reading this?) and just starting out. There will come a time for you when a spread made up almost entirely of courts won’t stump or shock you! Anyway, Pedro reminds me, too, that three of the cards are wands. The ego suit, the leonine suit. I think the Knight of Wands is chatty: “Run into the fire,” (he runs into the middle of the reading, not away from it) is one suggestion, and that’s not unlike working with the “gods.” It’s like saying, OK, let’s see how much you think you can take, ego. You’re not as strong as you think you are. Which might read creepy, but I think what I’m getting at is, like, dare the ego to try to fuck you up. I know that might sound bizarre and maybe even scary, but it’s not. It’s like facing the bully and forcing them to back down. Another thing he says is, “You’re a cowboy. Stop pretending to be a pilot.” And that, again, may sound insane—but it means, “be what you are.” He looks like a cowboy. He’s not a pilot. “Be entirely yourself. Like I am.” And you know, when I think of our collective boyfriend Pedro Pascal, he is quite a good example of it. I mean I have no idea whether his persona is an act, but he’s very, very comfortable in his own skin—which I think is one reason why we all think he’s a daddy. He belongs to himself in a way most people don’t. And that’s sexy. Why does the knight get all this juicy goodness and the queen got the crud? Because I’m a misogynist. No. Because this is a “solution” position. We’re looking to this spot for advice (partly), so I have to read the card differently. 

Actually, you could easily switch the queen and the knight in this spread and get more or less the same reading. There would be subtle differences, mostly in terms of metaphor (the queen does not look like a cowboy). They’re very similar, of course because they’re the same person in different moments of their life. But this blog is already too lengthy to explain more. 

The knights aren’t static, so the final thing the card says is: “you’re going to move on eventually. Probably quicker than you think.” The speed, of course, coming from the fiery nature of this knight. (Actually, the semi-final thing he reminds me of is that the ego [fire] is part of my nature, too, so I actually have to work with it whether I want to or not. Fuckery, I tell you. Fuckery.)

And there you have it! Let me know if you do this spread and what you think. 
See you next week. 

​Cards drawn
Arc of five:
Hanged Man (4), Page of Swords (2), Ten of Wands (1), Ten of Cups (3), Knight of Wands (5)
Deck: The Scarab and Dahlia Tarot by Johanna Callahan Waldo

Initial observations: only suit represented more than once—wands; we have two tens (wands, cups) and two courts (Page of Swords, Knight of Wands); we have one major; we have no pentacles. We’ve got a lot of fire and a fair amount of water (two tens). The floor, so to speak, is lava—or at any rate, gives that impression at first glance. 

When I don’t know how to start interpreting a spread of cards, I typically begin in this way. By noticing. Not interpreting, not assigning meaning. Noticing. Experiencing. What I notice depends on a lot of things, including the deck I’m using and my general mood at the time. Mercurial (read: moody) as I am, I may hit on the more negative aspects of cards early; sometimes the more positive. I strive for neutral noticing, but when I achieve it I often experience a beep of panic: “Will I be able to do it this time, or have I finally lost it? Will I finally have come to the end of the road?”

The end of the road is apt, here, thanks to the arrival of two tens. They are the ends of their particular roads—something we’ve talked about before. Tens represent the finale of their suit and can suggest either abundance or depletion. Sometimes both—as in an abundance of depletion. If you’re anything like me, you’re feeling rather depleted lately. It’s not lost on me that this will be posted on Tuesday, 11/5 — election day in the so-called “United” States. If you’re anything like me, you’d rather have an intense, botched lobotomy than endure whatever follows. If you’re anything like me, even though you’re notoriously moody, your mood swings of late trend toward the glum, dismal, and despairing. And that’s without having to go about the business of living, as though this is all supposed to be normal and it’s what we’re here to experience during our time on this planet. It’s . . . a mind fuck. To say the least. 

Fire and water are traditionally considered adversarial. This is because modern divination is riddled with the same binaries that Contantinianity (what I call “Christianity” these days) foisted on us all. (I know there were binaries prior to the dawn of the christo-colonial, but in my estimation this particularly aggressive and war-mongering faithway weaponized it in a way no one ever had before and we retain the consequences today). I’m sure it’ll shock you to know that I don’t view the fire/water relationship as binary or adversarial. They both depend on oxygen for existence and they both have the same powerful vibes. Typical binary thinking asserts that wands and swords (fire, air) are the “active” or “aggressive” or “projective” suits. Projective maybe, wands and swords both thrust; not, though, active or aggressive. Water is far more active than air and its typical passive associations come from this male/female, masc/femme binary. Fire and water are only adverse when context forces them to function in that way. The context of a house fire, for example, when the fire hoses arrive. But fire and water paired needn’t be this way. Ask any steam engine. A steam engine is a violent little piece of machinery, but it is also an incredibly powerful one. Like most things, its inherent “goodness” is immaterial; its use is what determines its consequences. A steam engine can be quite good—unless its handled badly or made badly or poorly kept up. That’s when they explode. 

How are they working together in this spread and what does that say about this week’s lesson? Excellent question. I don’t know. All I know is that they’re evenly matched—though water does face a potential threat from the Knight of Wands. 

Let’s look to the non-tens and non-fire/water cards for more intel. We’ve got the Page of Swords and the Hanged Man. The uniqueness of these two cards make them more important to me than the others in some ways, despite the fact that they lack the dominance of high numbers or appearing more than once. 

The Hanged Man often suggests a state of arrested development (the experience, not the TV show). The Page of Swords is the antidote to the Hanged Man’s stasis. Let’s imagine the wedding of these two cards. We stay in a state of familiarity, of uncomfortable comfort. With this card, I tend to see situations where we’ve gotten used to a certain unfortunate reality to the point where any alternatives scare us—even if the reality we’re sustaining, to put it bluntly, sucks. This typically shows its ugly face in relationships and careers, but can exist in any part of our life. It’s a rut that doesn’t feel like a rut because its known nature protects us. 

The comes the Page of Swords. The ultimate curiosity card, this page takes all the pages’ curiosity to the next level. The card asks “what if?” and “why?” just like a toddler driving their parents insane with seemingly inane questions. They seem that way to the parent because the toddler wants to understand things long understood (or so they think) by the parents. The parents take everything for granted, but the pages—particularly the Page of Swords—do not. Annoying, but necessary. And if we take the page’s lead, we discover that there’s more to see in the world. If parents really paused and thought about the annoying questions their toddler asks, they might realize that, in fact, they have no idea “why” or “what if.” If we diviners paused and did that, we’d experience something similar. “Why do we do that?” “What do we hold this to be true?” “What if we tried something else?” “What happens if I don’t follow the rules?” “What if I put this here and that there, rather than the other way around?”

One of my great fears is divinatory stasis. In fact, my writings and workshops are all geared toward avoiding that both in my own practice and in those who manage to put up with me long enough to get to whatever nuggets of truth may fall out. The Page of Swords is similar. His mortal enemy, you could say, is the Hanged Man. The Hanged Man is “fine.” The page isn’t. The Hanged Man thinks he’ll get there eventually, as though standing still is motion (in some ways it is); the page, youthful and ignorant though they may be, knows that nothing can be gained without action and investigation. 

Contextualized this way, we understand something new about the spread. The only way out of such ruts is curiosity. Asking the annoying questions repeatedly until we get a satisfactory answer. This isn’t a common trend in modern life, in fact as we’ve said several times in this blog, kids are discouraged from curiosity. We kill it in youth and lack it in adulthood and this is one of the ways in which we begin to accept the status quo. Shocking, eh? Why would the American Experience be so devoted to squelching the curiosity of children? Because people who ask questions discover that “because I said so” is not only a bad answer, it’s an incredibly fucked up one. 

Returning to the tens, then, what can we glean? The Page of Swords isn’t looking at those cards; he’s looking out at us. “Oh,” he seems to be saying, “you thought I had the answer? No, no; I have only questions. You’re the grownup. You’re supposed to know the answers.” He’s lying, of course; he does know the answers. He also knows if he gives it to us, we won’t remember it. 

Luckily, I know the secret the page won’t tell us: the Ten of Wands represents TNT. Divinatory TNT, anyway. It is a pack of Acme Dynamite(TM). It’s getting ready to blow up the Hanged Man. Will it do it? Will the ten succeed? The Ten of Cups isn’t so sure. You can’t light dynamite if the wicks are wet. So we’ve got a load of soggy dynamite. We can’t blow anything up no matter how much we want to. The two cards, in essence, cancel each other out—except that they both appear in the reading, so what they really do is highlight the ways in which these two parts of our lives cancel each other out. The desire to light the spiritual dynamite of divination is hemmed in by the emotional wetness of everything going on right now. There’s simply too much feeling for a solution that winds up in total destruction. 

Let’s return for a moment to the page. When we are young, when we encounter something new, the impulse to compare ourselves inevitably creeps in (for most of us, or so I think). We want to get from zero to sixty. In the case of the Page of Swords, we want to go from neophyte to expert right away. The problem is: what’s an expert? We’re too green to know. Or, maybe a better way to say it in this context is that we’re too intellectually limited to know. That sounds cruel, but it’s simply a state of ignorance born from lack of exposure. Anyone who presents in certain ways that we associate with expertise becomes an expert (to us) by the pure imbalance born of our lack of knowledge. And they may know more than we do, but knowing more is not the hallmark of an expert. Knowing what to do with what we know is what truly makes someone an expert. (Maybe? I just wrote that so I don’t know if it’s true; I’ve never had that thought before, but it sounds right.) Working for more than twenty years in corporate training, I’ve said to bosses, clients, and trainers more times than I can count: “People aren’t hired for what they know; they’re hired for what they do.” Of course, my job is to prepare people to sell their labor, so what the fuck do I know? But judging by that standard, it’s true. You can know all the shit in the world, but if it just stays up in your noggin, it’s not expertise. If that knowledge changes how you act in the world, what you do with your time and energy, and if you manage to combine your knowledge with actions that yield positive results (by what standard is up to you), then you’re probably an expert. The page doesn’t understand that; they think that looking like an expert means being an expert.

Pages also tend to be resentful. They’re servants, after all; they’re not autonomous. So they both need and admire the “expert”—it is from experts that we learn—but they also resent the expert, because the ego doesn’t like the fact that someone is “better” than we are. 

The idea that anyone is “better” than we are is not unlike the interplay of fire and water. It is helpful for our humility to recall that we’re not the apex of anything we do. We should remain curious, open, humble, interested, willing to learn and grow. We need some semblance of “innocence” or “paginess” in order to stop ourselves from turning into giant egotistical gasbags—especially because, like methane, ego gas is bad for the planet. On the other side of the coin, we need to recall that anyone we view as an “expert” is just another human being who is equal to you in fuckeduppery. They may have a talent or technique you don’t, a background you lack, a way of saying or doing things you admire and/or envy. But they are, at the end of the day, nothing more than another meatsack sparked to life every day by the same electrical currents as you. 

So often we tend to view expertise as an abundance of confidence (fire) or even zealotry (fire+water). In divinatory spaces, likely it’s both. If you can play the role of a confident and zealot practitioner of whatever it is you do, people will think you’re an expert in it. Doesn’t matter whether you actually are. If we as the page detects that this is the key to expertise, it bad news: it [might] inspire us (or the page) to imitate the act of expertise, like a stage play, without having any actual expertise of our own. We become obsessed with how we look rather than what we do--or, to put it clearly given the topic of this blog, what we’re able to offer our clients and/or students. 

The Page of Swords is both most immune to and most susceptible to this tendency. Perception can very much be a reality to the pages, particularly the one associated with the suit of perceptions: swords. (I’ve done a number on this before, but for those who aren’t familiar: our perceptions of the world are formed in our mind, what we see and how our brains make sense of that sight. All of this happens in the mind, which is the realm of air/swords—so the suit of perceptions is swords.) What the Page of Swords sees, they can sometimes take at face value and assume it is correct. Their “youth” makes them think they’re chronically unworthy. But the Page of Swords is likely also the most critical of norms, and so the other side of that coin is that this page sees through bullshit more than the others do (particular the pages of wands and cups, who are so much at the mercy of impulse). This means that we can simultaneously be star struck and deeply critical. 

And that’s actually a good thing. 

I say this as someone who used to be constantly starstruck and has turned into someone who is constantly critical. I never seem to have found the balance between the two. I’m a great example of what the Page of Swords shouldn’t be. I skipped the good part where I get to both believe and be skeptical simultaneously. Now, I just jump to the worst conclusion or assumption. And that’s particularly true of people presented to me as experts! I’ll spare you the details of how I got there, but needless to say it came as a result of meeting people I presumed to be experts and discovering they’re not—and meeting people who perceived me as one, who discover that I’m just a piece of shit, too. 

Skeptical belief is quite a brilliant thing. If you can find it, I think you’ve got the golden ticket in many ways. 

To contextualize this lengthy exploration for you, reading is reminding us that comparing ourselves to those we admire may seem like the solution, but it’s not. Not only will it not get us out of the Hanged Man’s comfortable stasis, it will also teach us the wrong lessons about what “expertise” really is. Further, we’d do well to view those we admire with a dose of skepticism. Not to the point of bitchy suspicion (as I do), but to the point of recognizing the fallibility of everyone—regardless of whether or not they’ve done, said, or written things we wish we’d done, said, or thought of. When we don’t maintain skeptical belief, we run the risk of joining a cult. Many of us are members of cults we don’t know we’re part of and didn’t sign up to be in, purely thanks to the parasocial reality of the world today. 

There’s an evangelical quality to the combo of fire and spirit, too. These are the elements that have often been associated with divinity—and also pop cultural understandings of experiencing divinity. The cliche “baptism by fire” makes sense to a lot of people, even those who didn’t grow up in a faithway that uses baptism. Water cleanses, cleans, sanctifies. So does fire. The flood of spirit, the fire of evangelism, the potency of these two elements in the religio-spiritual (they’re not the same) realm is huge. And so the Page of Swords stands on the edge of a precipice, not unlike The Fool: do they join the cult or not? (Unlike The Fool, the Page of Swords has experience to guide them.)

We’ve talked about four of the give cards, but not the final one: the Knight of Wands. Fire again. This knight carries a torch through a bi-atmospheric landscape of hot (fire) and cool (water). (The knight actually isn’t carrying a torch; he carries a staff or spear, but the flames from the volcano give the impression of a torch—that’s what I saw at first, so I’m going with it. The impression sometimes matters more than what is really depicted.) The Knight uses his own light to forge a path forward. He leaves behind the comparisons, the evangelism, the assumption of expertise. He’s not immune to his own ego (fire), but also not interested in passive stasis. Being the farthest from the Hanged Man, while also mirroring the card, there’s a fascinating interrelationship. During the HM’s stasis, they gained a deep fire that will allow them to leave behind the crap that could block the page. In essence, the Page of Swords “goes through” the experience of the two tens and then comes out ready to forge their own path. (Forging is a swordsy concept, but done with fire—so it is there that we find a connection between the two court cards, here. We cannot forge the page’s sword without the knight’s fire.)

There’s two ways to read this, then, depending on where you are in your journey. If you’re starting out, like the page, then you’d probably do well to enjoy the fullness of evangelical wisdom (here I’m talking about divination advice from people we admire, not the right-wing Constantinianity inherent in the word “evangelical”), without accepting it as dogma or racing to join the cult. Skeptical belief in everything you encounter in your learning journey will give you the light you need to forge your own path without being restrained by dogmatic thinking—either required by culty “experts” or assumed by our innate feeling of unworthiness. 

The second way is if you’ve been subject to self comparison and/or find yourself with a tendency to join the cult a little too quickly or too often. In this case, the reading says that this dedication to something other than your own path is sustaining the Hanged Man’s static vibe, despite the page’s knowing look reminding us that we know better. Just because we’ve decided someone or some group or anything is the “real” expert to whom we must pledge our commitment or base our path on doesn’t mean we can’t light the torch we already carry and start finding our own footing. 

Both of these are easier said than done and even doing a reading about it is somewhat idealistic because the answers will likely be either totally clear and totally difficult to enact, or the answers will be blisteringly opaque and likely to infuriate our egos. Maybe the readings will be all of the above. That said, these difficult topics are the ones we tend to learn the most from--if we can make ourselves sit with the cards long enough to find the intel we need. These are the kinds of readings it’s helpful to trade with others. Their objectivity may unlock something we would otherwise have protected ourselves from. (Which reminds me, sometimes the readings that make the least sense to us as clients could be the ones with the most to say—we’re just not ready yet. Of course, there are also just crappy readings. So it’s hard to know for sure.)

A read of one’s own
Let’s base this reading on the two extreme cards in the arc, above: the Hanged Man and Knight of Wands. 

Shuffle the deck and find these two cards. Take the two cards that show up before and after them in the deck when you stop shuffling. You do not need the Hanged Man or knight, but I tend to forget which cards were associated with each card when I do readings like this—so you can take the cards our and keep them with the ones that flanked them just to remind you. The HM and knight don’t “add” to the interpretation, though, because in this case they’re significators. 

Let’s allow the two cards connected with the HM to represent where in our divinatory practice we may have gotten stuck in a rut or begin to grow too comfortable and not curious enough. Next, let’s allow the cards flanking the knight to represent a way of forging our own path forward away from this. 

If you want more information, look for the Page of Swords in your deck and let it speak to you intuitively—maybe it adds to the HM’s cards, maybe the knight’s; maybe it has some third, related thing to say. That part is optional. If you’ve gotten an answer you like, you don’t need to do it. I mean, you don’t need to do any of this obviously, but . . . I’m too curious, so I will probably look.

Two things to note: First, this is another spread that implies you’re having this issue. If you’re not, it may be harder to make sense of. Not everyone is stuck in a rut. So feel free to release yourself from too much in the way of restriction. Follow your gut. This “position” of the spread is an “opportunity” for you divinatorily, related to being stuck; the other cards are a potential solution. 

One more thing to note, actually: there’s something cool about doing this without shuffling the deck. Pick up a pack you haven’t used in a while and do this without shuffling. See what happens!

For my two HM cards, I got the Ten of Wands and Art (Temperance) card; for my Knight of Wands cards, I got The Fool and the Six of Disks. (I’ve switched the the Thoth because I tend to use it most for myself these days.)

The Tens of Wands is a repeat card from the original arc, above. The initial impulse that I get from this pairing is that my “rut” stems from mixing my own evangelism into my divination. In this case, the “mixing” comes from the Art card, which is exactly what the card is doing. I might take this to mean that forcing my own mission on the reading may be distracting me from really blending all the cards. By which I mean my agenda to explore “hot topics” (all that fire) is getting in my way. 

The knight’s cards, The Fool and the Six of Coins, are my “solution.” The Fool calls back to the Page of Swords from earlier, doesn’t it, because I compared the two. I said then that the page is similar to The Fool, but has experience and so has expectations. The Fool suggests having zero expectations—other than “success” (which is the title or keyword for the six). Know you’ll succeed, don’t worry about how you get there. 

Easier said than done, like I said. The Page of Swords’ (in this case, princess) cards were the Ten of Coins (another ten!) and the Princess (page) of Wands (more wands!). The spread is connected to the “solution” cards by the appearance in each of coins/disks/penties. We have an abundance of earth at the command of a fiery page/princess of wands. There’s a lot of life to get excited about (in this case, let’s take “excited” to mean “interested in”), so be open to all the options, not just the expected ones. 

This is an interesting series of “solutions” and even the “problem” is interesting, too. Mostly because everything here is a core part of how I read. I do tend to evangelize to a degree with my readings—that’s in some ways the whole point of this blog. But I have also been known to impose societal realities on readings that don’t necessarily contain those impacts. Sometimes we’re simply at the mercy of life events that aren’t massive societal moments. Even if they’re caused by societal issues, they may not be relevant in a particular moment for a particular client. Likewise, open curiosity is my main goal. That’s good, because it says that I’m doing the right thing. I just benefit from being generally more curious and less interested in demonstrating my social justice cred (for example). 

There you have it, friends. “See” you next week. 
(Assuming there is a next week, of course.)

Cards drawn
The Tower
Seven of Rods (wands), Seven of Roots (coins/penties), Temperance
Queen of Vessels (cups)
Deck: Age of Witchery Tarot by Roger J. Horne

Tis the week of Hallowe’en (I really can’t make myself say “Samhain,” no matter how it’s pronounced). And with wonderful timing, this deck arrived from Printer Studio just in time. And as I was considering the post for this week and using this deck, my mind landed on one of the two spreads I’ve been using most in this blog. This cross is a spread I don’t really use other than this blog and I only started using it impulsively to mix things up from the five-card arc I seemed to use (which I do use with clients, typically as a follow-up or secondary reading).

Like all my spreads, the spread itself and the “positions” have no inherent meaning. None of the spots “mean” anything; they’re just the places where the cards go. I work with the interrelationships of the cards now that they’re arranged this way, but the shape of all my spreads is really incidental. It’s just a way of arranging the cards so that interesting relationships develop.

But why have I been so drawn to this shape? There must be some reason.

There is and it occurred to me today. A quick story: When I do spell work, I tend to work with candles and herbs primarily. When I was learning, I would typically arrange the candles in sort of a square or circle and use herbs to connect the dots, creating a boundary around the spell—not unlike a sacred circle. But I only really did that because it’s what I learned in the various books I’d read and videos I’d seen. At some point, it occurred to me that what would make more sense is first arranging herbs on my plate or surface (what I tend to call my “canvass”) in a + sign. Just like this spread.

It is at the crossroads where throughout history people have gone to make magic. In traditions around the globe, the crossroads is a place where one might meet the devil, any number of Barons from New Orleans Voodoo and adjacent traditions (heavily influential on me, though it is not my practice), and all kinds of fae and underworld folk. The crossroads has a negative connotation in christo-culture, because of course it is where people go to sell their soul to Satan—or one of his/their/her siblings. (The Devil is a shapeshifter who manages to be all at once the gender[s] to which the practitioner is sexually attracted [sex is important to him/them/her—if the practitioner experiences sexual attraction], as well as the gender of the practitioner, and at the same time all genders. The binary is imaginary and he/they/she isn’t interested in being bound by christo-colonial norms. Bound, yes; there’s kink there. But not by gender norms, and not in any way he/they/she can’t control). The crossroads is often described as a liminal space. Many magic-minded folx say that magic lives in the liminal. Why wouldn’t it? It is everywhere and nowhere; it is potential and not; it is choice and limit. You can choose to go in any direction, but in so choosing, you’ve limited the options. 

This has become foundational to my spell work, particularly because I’m a city mouse who cannot risk (and has no interest in) being seen by others in an annoyingly middle class neighborhood, working with magic at the actual crossroads. I already have enough issue getting the maintenance folx into my apartment because I’m a homo, so . . . I don’t need to be spotted down the road lighting candles at midnight or burying the remainders of work. I use this temporary crossroads created with herbs and often a candle at each point. And so it makes sense that I would have landed on this shape for a go-to tarot spread. Why shouldn’t I? It is yet another liminal space, this time the liminality of a tarot reading—where, as soon as the cards are swept back into the deck, everything returns to its meaningless state. 

At least to my thinking. 

And so there is your lesson on why the crossroads spread, which is what I now call it. 

And what do we find at this crossroads, you li’l devils? Why, lesson nineteen of course! 

When I work with this spread, I tend to work outward from the center. At the center of this reading, we have the Seven of Roots (coins/penties). Could there be a more appropriate number to sit at the center of a crossroads? Not in my estimation. Seven nearly demands liminality from us. Introspection. It is the number of turning inward; the number of self-assessment, self-reflection, and self-regard. It isn’t innately a selfish number, though it can be if it becomes obsessive. Roots/earth might indicate the tendency toward getting stuck in a naval-gazing mode, but I think that the influence of The Tower negates that. 

The Seven of Roots asks us: why are we here? Meaning, what are we doing on this earth? Why are we even at this crossroads, asking for divinity to give us intel? And there is a real benefit to asking such questions at this time of year: as the evenings grow darker and earlier (gah!) and the liminal becomes more present. In many ways, I think of the space between Halloween and January 1st (New Year’s day, here) as a liminal, non-time; a space in which we’re not in the regular calendar—and in fact there was once a thirteenth month, which is why the numerical associations of our month names don’t make sense. (October: octo means eight, so it should be the eighth month; September, the seventh.) And just as a fact of the capitalism’s devotion to “the holiday season,” many of us are left in an unsettled state from about Halloween through to the end of the year. It is a time I’ve come to dread. I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and (other than the decorations) I really loathe Christmas. And so of course we’d ask, “what am I even doing here?” This year, I think, the added trauma of an election amid massive fuckery across the planet is making even more of us wonder what the actual fuck. The Seven of Roots is, too. 

Of course, this blog is about divination—so it’s a time to ask ourselves “what the actual fuck” in terms of reading. Which, sigh, I sometimes ask myself. I’m constantly terrified that I will lose this particular ability, and there are many ways that could happen. Not by losing my ability to read, but a lot can happen to the brain and body as we age. And I’ve found that whenever I make something my personality, as I did once with theatre, I eventually find that it becomes toxic and I have to give it up. I’ve said recently, “Adulthood is nothing more than giving shit up that you love until finally you’re like, ‘ok, well, I guess I’m ready to be worm food now.’” This is, of course, in my darker moments, but heading into the darker half of the year, there’s the strong possibility more of those are on the way. And because I have such a tendency toward disaster thinking, something happened this morning that made me think, “Oh, this is the universe telling me I’m going to have to give up tarot, soon, too.” (It’s dumb: an ad for an event I’m reading at went out with a picture of me but no description, and it somehow felt to me like an in memoriam, in this case for my career. Dumb objectively; within, I’m always looking for signs that it’s “over.” Impermanence, baby.)

So lesson 19 begins with an actual question: “what the actual fuck?” In this case, in the realm of earth. 

Sometimes I feel a call to read the next card based on something “loud” in the reading—cards will call to me, or demand my attention. None of these cards are quiet, so where does one go next? To the other seven, of course, because it just amps up the sevenness of the reading. The Seven of Rods/Wands/Fire. Here, all the questions I ascribed to the Seven of Roots are re-asked in the suit of fire. But in this case, I think it’s not asking anymore so much as answering. Why? Couple reasons: first, I just feel it; second, the way Roger J. Horne arranged the wands looks a lot like a tick sheet, where we’re counting points and crossing them out when we’ve got a block. Normally that’s done with five. But it’s sorta giving the same vibe, here. If that doesn’t make sense to you, it’s OK. We all have different access points to readings. 

On the other side of the Seven of Rods is Temperance—a card, I have to admit, I find annoying. I am notoriously intemperate in nearly every way. 

I don’t really have much of an impulse at all for what this trio means, and this is the time where I could easily just get down on myself and start letting the intrusive thoughts win. But not this time, intrusive thoughts; I’ve got a blog to write. If Temperance were in the middle, I’d say that the two sevens need blending. But that’s not the case here, and Temperance seems almost on its own journey, uninterested in the other cards. It “moves” toward the two sevens, but looks away — not out from, kind of to the left, but the left sorta middle distance. There’s a disconnect. It’s almost as though this Temperance is, like me, not a fan of temperance. It’s almost as though intemperance is its MO in this spread. 

“Don’t bother asking why you’re here,” says Temperance, “don’t bother attempting to balance your sevens.” It’s possible the fact that this card depicts a devil that makes me say that, but remember no deck choice is an accident. Had a done this reading with another deck, another card would probably have shown up here. “You know where your roots are,” says this Intemperate Temperance(TM), “you’ve been grounded there your whole life. Where do you get ignited? Where is your fire stoked? What’s important to you in the core of your being, where your own fire burns?” The Seven of Rods, it turns out, isn’t asking us to be self-reflective in the way the Seven of Roots is; rather, it’s saying, “go deep—into your gut. What burns there?” Investigate your motor, so to speak. We could take this to mean, “what is it about divination that really lights you up? Find out. If you have to blend, blend, but err on the side of your fire.” This is very devilish in the sense of modern Satanism, which is heavily focused on self determination, on, as Crowley called it, “the will.” This is a distressing idea, particularly thanks to the individualism that is (I feel) rampant in esotericism. (For context, Satanism, as developed by LaVey, isn’t esoteric at all; in fact, it pegs off anything magical. It is an entirely a-thiestic movement focused on evangelical rationalism. At least in my understanding.) 

In last week’s blog, the one about my own struggles with my sense of self worth, I explored the idea that the issue was my lack of “play.” There are a lot of layers to that particular psychological croissant, but I left it wondering how one balances self-gratification (the healthy kind, the kind that keeps us motivated, engaged, and feeling decent despite the state of the world) with the seriousness of the times we live in. I still don’t have an answer to that. The main solution I’ve found so far is basically to allow myself time to read fiction this week. And really not until Friday. So, shrug. But there is a common thread in the world that if we’re not taking care of our needs, we cannot sustain our power to impact anything positively. 

There’s a certain irony to this row being “crowned” by The Tower. It makes me think of the ultimate tonnage of trauma going on the world, the feeling of everything crumbling—and at the same time, the need to be, like, “gee, what makes me feel really good?” Of course the Devil would ask us that in a time like this, right? But of course we know that the Devil isn’t binary. In fact, there has always been something weirdly binary about Temperance because of the two cups and the implication that each contains something unique. It’s always given an either/or quality to me. I don’t think I’ve ever really actively noticed this, but it’s been there. This one doesn’t and actually Horne has given us an even more impossible exchange of liquid between the two cups. “Yes,” this card seems to say, “you have to take care of yourself at the same time—you have to keep your fire lit. If you don’t, what’s the point?” (You may be wondering what any of this has to do with a lesson on tarot, and we’re getting there.)

The Queen of Vessels/Cups is linked to Temperance by the cups or vessels. This queen is in many ways the ultimate “caretaker” of the tarot—it is stereotypically linked with all the mom qualities we expect in a patriarchal world (this also applies to The Empress . . . with The Empress giving mom-to-be and the Queen of Cups giving post-natal motherhood). Because it’s such a stereotype of femininity, I tend to reject any interpretations that put her in that the caretaker category. But this is a reading about caring; that’s it’s whole thing: what do I care about, why, and where is my energy going? Here, I think the central column says, “If you care about the crumbling of the world, then you have to do things that will sustain your fire.” Or, if you want to read it in another way, “If you care about being a destabilizer of the status quo, you must do things that will sustain your fire.” Either way, the point is that if you want to participate in the improvement of the world, you also need to make sure you tend your fire, too. 

In essence, it’s the same thing we hear frequently. As a cis white man, I tend to feel as though this is criminal of me. But there’s a saviorism there, too, which we explored last week. And given that my battery runs low relatively quickly, I agree—even if I can’t say I’ll obey. 

What does this have to do with divination? What is the lesson about tarot? Well, I think there’s two: first, if divination is one of those things that sustains your fire, then you should do it! You should nourish and feed that part of yourself. The second part, though, is this: if you divination is directed at major perception shifts or destabilizing the status quo or healing a crumbling world, you need to make sure that you’ve got the energy (fire) to give to it. If you burn yourself out or find yourself sinking into the mud, you’re in trouble. Actually, if you find yourself sinking into “temperance” (for example “both sides ism” or “well, we have to stay balanced”), you may be in trouble—because this Temperance isn’t that Temperance. This Temperance is doing the impossible—which might, in this case, be finding ways to feel good once in a while so that you can face the work you feel your “supposed” to be doing. Either way, it is the your fire that needs tending. 

I’ve had a very tarot-y summer. Year, really. In a good way. I don’t feel burned out, but I do sometimes wonder if I’m pushing too hard. The reading could be reminding me that I don’t have to say “yes” to every event that I’m offered and I don’t necessarily benefit from making my whole personality one thing. Of course, there is a great degree of this work that does make me feel like I’m tending my fire, too. And I suppose here we find the more traditional concept of Temperance: do it, but not so much that you hate it. Balance. Rest. Play. Work. Nourish yourself (Queen of Vessels) so that you can fuck shit up (Tower). And fucking shit up can be whatever you need it to be in your life. In may case, it is so much about perception shifts. I want my clients to see things differently, more clearly; I want my readers to see tarot and themselves differently, as well as their abilities and potential; I want the work that I do and the things that I say to effect change in the world, too, even if I’m limited in what I can do. When I manage to change a mind, I’m shifting perspectives. That’s my “mission,” so to speak, flawed though it may be. Whatever your mission is, that’s what The Tower is in this reading. 

So that’s our lesson. Nourish your fire, so you can use your divination to fuck shit up. Took a minute to get there, but get there we did. Not bad advice, either, if you can take it — which . . . I usually cannot. 

A read of one’s own
Here, let’s use the crossroad spread in a new way. Why not? Let’s let the vertical (up/down) column tell us where we could use some nourishment in our divinatory work and the horizontal (left/right) row indicate how to nourish it. We can let all five cards speak to their own story, too, if we want to—but we’ll see whether that’s necessary. Up to you! You know I’m a fan of reading the same spread several ways. (If you didn’t know that, then hi! I like you read the same spread several ways!)

A nowhere near brief enough example.
My vertical column: Ace of Blades (Swords), Queen of Rods, Temperance(!)
My horizontal row: Eight of Rods, Queen of Rods (again), Five of Vessels

Beginning with the vertical, which explores where in my divinatory work I could benefit from some nourishment, we’ve got the first blades/swords card we’ve seen today. The ace. There’s a small-mindedness I’m feeling from this, and while I don’t like to think of myself as small-minded, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. An immaturity. And while I could easily start beating myself up again, I’ll also recognize that (like The Tower, which occupied this same spot in the first spread) the Ace of Blades often has to do with perception shifts, too. The Queen of Rods (who is buoyed by the Eight of Rods at her back) represents the ultimate tender of fires, if we continue with the nurturing aspect of queens that I reluctantly agreed to in the reading above. I think this column says that the area where I could use some nourishment is in my immature relationship to Temperance. You’ve already seen how I resist the idea as it is commonly interpreted and in fact did a whole number of how this temperance wasn’t that temperance. I’m not super clear why, though. I don’t necessarily have an intemperate relationship with tarot. I quite like it. I tend to feel at my best working on it. So perhaps it means that I’m over-thinking whether or not I’m over-doing it. 

I’ve gone ahead and added an additional card to the Ace of Blades and Temperance. The Ace of Blades got the Five of Blades. Which is definitely a card of perception shifts, too. In this case, though, I think it reductive thinking. Why? Blades cut. In this case, the five blades are cutting away at the wholeness of the ace—because fives shake up, destabilize, etc. Reductive thinking about what? The added card for Temperance was The Moon. This particular moon shows a coven of witches dancing under the somewhat dour-looking orb. I actually think this is telling me that my reductive thinking about “joining” is the issue. I was just saying today “I’m not a joiner.” I do not feel safe in “communities.” The lack of community, or my resistance to joining them, may be an issue. The Temperance card says, “look, bitch, you’re not joining a cult; you’re joining a community of like-minded weirdos dancing under the fucking moon. Relax. It’s not a forgone conclusion that you’re going to be ostracized or made to feel small.” Which is kind of fucking rude of Temperance, but remember: this Temperance isn’t that Temperance. And we’re talking about the Devil here, too. 

The crossbar or horizontal returns us to rods/fire with the Eight, of course the Queen, and closes is out with the Five of vessels. Another five. This segment tells us how to nourish the part of us that needs nourishing. My magico-spiritual isolationism is what I’m trying to “heal” or “nourish.” And at first glance, none of these cards speak to that answer. The Eight of Wands is all about effort, labor—vocation, certainly, but also just work. Passionate work, but work. There’s a quality of pushing work into the world with many iterations of this card; though this one is actually pretty static. The Queen of Rods, who we’ve really barely even discussed, doesn’t really seem to be too chatty right now, either. And Five of Cups is always a difficult card to interpret in an advice point of view, because of its constant association with “sad.” 

So, what the hell, I added two more cards. One partnered with the Eight of Rods (the Six of Vessels) and one partnered with the Five of Vessels (the Eight of Blades).  The Six of Vessels, which suggests “feeling good,” joins forces with the Eight of Rods and says “where you feel good about your work.” That’s not a full sentence, but at least we can talk more fully about the Queen of Rods. “Where you feel good about your work, your fiery potential is realized.” The Queen of Rods, in this case, kind of giving powerful bad assery—at least in a witchy way. When she (the queen) goes where her work is celebrated, makes her feel good, she is at her best. But this means facing the potential for upset (Five of Wands), which causes the mind to overwork (Eight of Blades). This isn’t the outcome we want, and it might mean I’ve misread the row. It also might mean that risk is inevitable and that over thinkers gonna overthink and the emotionally unstable gonna be emotionally unstable. All of which is true of me. But that’s not really very good advice. “Nourish yourself by doing your work in places where you feel good—even though that means you’re going to end risk feeling like shit and overthinking it?” I mean, that’s basically how I live my life right now. And if that were working, it wouldn’t be showing up here—unless it means, “keep doing what you’re doing.” But I don’t like that answer. 

If we divorce the Five of Vessels from its typical meaning, if we focus on the fiveness of it as “shaking up” rather than “upset,” it suggests a change in feelings. If we divorce the Eight of Blades from its tendency toward feeling trapped by our thoughts, we return to the concept of labor and effort. We also see the connection to four and stability times two. We have to think differently about our feelings, particularly when they’re shifting and we don’t know what they mean. That might be it. But, frankly, that also kinda pisses me off as a pile of divinatory nonsense—that kind that makes me furious when I hear readers delivering it. It’s not an answer. It’s a vague interpretation that sounds fancy but has zero use. So I have to keep digging. And this does happen sometimes. 

The Queen of Rods holds a wand (a stang) up to the Five of Vessels (see photo below), almost commanding it. To change the way we feel (Five of Vessels, a change in feelings), we have to do a lot of thinking about it (Eight of Blades). An effort has to be made to actively revise feelings about “joining” and being in places where we feel our best. An effort may also need to be made to find such places and also to deal with the fact that just because you’ve found “a” place doesn’t mean it’s “the” place—and I’m really the king of trying to get into clubs that simply don’t want me. But that’s a whole other story. 

There you have it!

Happy Hallowe’en friends, and happy new year. ​

​Couple things before we get into it. This is the rare time when I’m not only sharing a real reading with you, I’m sharing a reading I did for me. I don’t read for myself that much, but when I do I’ve noticed I tend to abandon all the “rules” that even I hold to be true. And that’s why I’m sharing this with you. The primary rule this “breaks” is the common admonition not to pull more cards after you’ve laid out the spread. I do this often when reading for myself and below you can see why. That’s the lesson of this particular post: pull more cards if you damn well want to! But don’t do it haphazardly. Have a reason, have an intent. If you’re going to use additional cards, don’t randomly pull them and hope they’ll clarify the situation; dictate to the cards (something I rarely do!) what they’re meant to be discussing. You’ll see what I mean, below. 

I’ve added some commentary from future-me and you’ll find that in bold throughout the reading. I’ve also edited out some things that aren’t any of your business. Smiley face. I didn’t intend for this to become a blog post, but as I worked through it I realized there were a lot of learning opportunities with in it. So this is a lesson on divination, but in this case the lesson is . . . me.

Finally, the topic of this reading might be triggering for some people. It’s a question of self-esteem and mental health, as well as self-perception. If you find these topics upsetting, I’d recommend skipping this one. And because this is a real reading and it’s for me, it’s worth pointing out that I’m much firmer (maybe meaner) to me than I ever am with clients. I have found that if I tiptoe around things in readings for myself, I let myself off the hook. I’ve often said, but I’m not sure this is true for everyone, that we do have to be somewhat ruthless with ourselves when we read for ourselves. You needn’t be this nasty with you, but that was kind of the whole point of the reading: I’ve been awfully mean to myself lately and I needed to dig deep and explore why. Please know that I’m A-OK, there’s no need to worry about me, and in fact doing this reading gave me the ability to download a lot of what I was feeling. Since doing it, I actually feel better. That’s obviously more important than whatever the message is. 

While I’m shockingly shy for a Leo and while it may simultaneously seem like I tend toward oversharing, I’m actually loathe to talk too much about my insecurities . . . because, well, I’m insecure about them. But I’ve also found that when I am open about my struggles, it makes other folx feel less alone. So if you take nothing else from this, I hope you’ll take that you are not the only one who downward spirals into self-loathing sometimes—and that, like me, you can probably lift yourself from it. It’s a trauma response. Many of us operate from shame. That can make us struggle. Here, you’ll see one way that manifests in my life. 

I think that’s it. 

OK. (Deep breath.) Here we go!

The Question: Why is self-hate my body and mind’s go to response to everything lately? Why can’t I do anything without that being my response? (Commentary from future me: This isn’t the clearest or most well-phrased question, but I was partly trying to figure out what the actual fuck was going on and so I let myself go long.)

Wheel of Fortune
Ten of Wands (Oppression), Knight of Disks, Eight of Wands (Swiftness)
Four of cups. 
(My intent was to pull only three cards, but I knew immediately I needed to add two more. How did that know that? Intuition, I guess; I could just feel it.)

While I wasn’t expecting to add the Wheel and Four of Cups, I’m compelled to start in that central column. The Ten of Wands suggests a supreme level of burnout, probably due to the very uncertainty of, well, everything — and the fact that you’re in an emotional rut. (I didn’t see myself that way, I didn’t feel like I was in a rut—but I realized there was a rut when I wrote that. We can’t assume we’re wrong, even when we say something in a self reading that doesn’t immediately click.) And somehow the sustained nature of that rut is fueling the burnout. Somehow you’re willingness to stay burned out, to luxuriate (4 of cups is luxury) in that is actually sustaining it. (Here we get an early sense of how direct I am with me in ways I’m not with clients. You can see me “blaming” the querent here already. Again, I needed to be really direct with myself to cut through the fog. There will be more of this.) The problem becomes the total lack of specificity that the Wheel offers. The wheel won’t turn. It’s stuck in the mud of the 4 of cups, and your energy is spent trying to shift into a gear that will get you out. But you’re simply stuck and the more energy you put into attempting to unstuck yourself, the more energy you’re wasting. You cannot get out of this rut that way. It’s a self-sustaining rut forged by the very attempts to transcend it. And because the Wheel loves to be so fucking vague, it doesn’t even want to tell you the answer to this question—it doesn’t want to give you a why. It’s attitude is just, “it’s your turn, loser.” (I don’t think I’m a loser, but because of the states I’ve found myself prone to lately, I went there. This is not evidence of directness; it’s evidence of how I was feeling about myself at the time. Again, I promise I fine!)


The Knight of Disks as your significator stares up toward the Wheel at the same time as he’s being blocked by the Ten of Wands. (He rules the third decan of Leo, which is where my birthday falls.) He, despite all his worldliness, can’t proceed. He, despite his understanding of how things work, cannot solve this problem. And it may be because earthly answers don’t fit, here. And he can’t understand that. He’s supposed to be the smartest dude in the deck; he’s the most grown, the most mature, and nothing he does makes the Wheel make sense because it doesn’t care about him. The Wheel doesn’t care about anyone or anything; it simply turns and when it lands on you, you’re fucked. Or you’re lucky. But most of us rarely get lucky, these days; that’s for people of wealth and privilege. At least the kind of luck we’re talking about, the kind where we’re not at the mercy of the fates. The kind of luck where we’re get to dictate to fate. That’s not for you. You cannot change the course of things and you cannot “pass” on your turn. You’re in a rut and you’re staying there until the wheel decides to turn again. It’s worth noting Crowley said that usually when we see this card, the person is on the upswing—people generally don’t get readings when things are fine. So by nature of the wheel turning, you are likely to see some improvement at some point soon—but we know that there’s no believing that until its seen. (Maybe the one “nice” thing Crowley ever said?) Some people are good at that, but not you and not the Knight of Disks. The Knight of Disks tries to make things make sense by the logic of the earth. The Wheel doesn’t give a flying fuck about that. This can’t make sense to you because there is no way to understand this in a banal fashion. And nothing in the reading is interested in giving you a non-banal answer, either, other than that “it’s you’re fucking turn, loser.” (Again, just a little self-flagellation. Kinky. Here’s the sitch: I actually don’t think of myself as very “disky” or “pentaclesy” at all. That said, I am in many ways—particularly as I get older. And I also tend to swing wildly back and forth between there must be a logical solution or reason for this that makes sense! and there must be some spiritual reason for this that means I’ve angered the gods or been thrown at by some asshole. So I swing back and forth, really, between air and earth. It’s also worth pointing out to me [thank you, me] that I wrote a book called Tarot on Earth which was all about the down-to-earth vibe I use in most readings . . . so, this is evidence that while we may not think of ourselves in a certain way, that doesn’t mean we’re not that way. This is one thing that makes reading for ourselves so difficult. And it’s one reason why, though it might seem somewhat unhinged, I do need to be fairly blunt with myself. I can’t negotiate my way out of the message—and for me that sometimes means I have to be harsher than I maybe “should” be.)

“Well,” you think, “It’s been my turn my whole life.” (OK, yes; I do sometimes feel that way.)

No one said the wheel turns more than once in a lifetime. (Ouch. But true. Of course it does. We are not one turn of the wheel, we are many. But also, for many of us . . . we don’t get to travel that far from the life we were born into. This despite the messages that the pop culture machine gives us about being anything we want to be.) Maybe you’re stuck because that’s the turn you’re taking this life: the stuck turn. And no matter how much you try to get out of it, you can’t, because in this existence, you’re simply stuck. (God, I hope not. 🤣)

Maybe you should luxuriate in being immobile, in being emotionally and spiritually stunted. Maybe it lets you off the hook. Why bother trying if trying is the thing that gets you burned out? Makes sense, right? If effort is the thing that is burning you out, stop making the effort. (If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll potentially recall how many times in recent weeks the message has had to do with allowing fallow times to flourish. It’s entirely possible I was talking to me that whole time.)

We have a final card we’ve yet to deal with: The Eight of Wands/Swiftness. I mean, this could suggest there is a turn of the wheel coming soon — but I know you don’t remotely believe that, and it’s also not really what the card is usually talking about. (He’s right. I don’t believe that. Although a few things since I did this reading, including this reading, have made me think that in fact I am due for a turn soon.) Most editions of this card show forward motion, direction, and arrow on the way to hitting its target. Not this one. This one shows energy going in all directions. It shows a total lack of focus. (I hate this version of this card.) Even commentators on this card aren’t really sure what they’re looking at. People say that we’re seeing pyramids from above, we’re seeing some kind of crystal, even planes of existence. It’s really just a ton of energy being misdirected, unfocused, which—let’s be honest—is exactly how you do everything. (I’m hyper aware of my ADHD since my diagnoses—but I do tend to operate this way and it is often what triggers my self-loathing, because in so doing I fuck things up that could easily not have been fuckupable . . . and that’s the core of what’s been happening. It’s not like I’m failing in any especial way. Actually, in many ways it’s been quite a good time. Sure, I sometimes [often] feel like I’m constantly trying to sit at the “cool kids” table in whatever worlds I operate in, and that I’m constantly being denied the chance to . . . but that’s also a trauma response and it’s not what’s really been causing my moods—not alone, anyway. Weirdly, it’s been dumb shit like dropping my keys or spilling a glass or fucking up a recipe. And that’s why I knew I needed to go deep with this reading; it’s not normal to hate yourself for breaking a mug or tripping on your slippers.) In many ways, it resembles the Wheel, except that in this Wheel, the energy seems way more unified. The Eight of Wands’ energy is anything but. It’s going everywhere in really jagged ways. I guess this suggests that if it weren’t self-loathing that you keep triggering, it would be something else—whatever the energy seems to hook on first. But that’s more of a guess based on the card’s imagery. (I think many of my fellow ADHDers will recognize this . . .)

Eights are associated with labor and there’s an energetic output here that is likely another reason you’re so self-loathing. Whatever energy you do have is being pulled that way. Why? Cuz it’s your turn, loser. (I mean, look: sure that sounds mean . . . and again this is why I’m NEVER that blunt with clients. In this case, it was really just good writing . . . like, I can’t turn that part off of me. It’s a structural and thematic callback. I know I’m not a loser. On the other hand, I also recognize that we do have “turns” in life where things, including our perceptions, aren’t peak. Stealing from Truman Capote, I call it “the mean reds.” It happens. What’s really dangerous is when we don’t recognize we’re there. Happily, I usually do.)

Fire is the dominant suit, which also suggests rage. (I mean, uh-huh. That part. Also: I’ve never read wands that way, but Jesus Fuck if it doesn’t make sense!!!) There’s a lot of rage (ten—the most you can have). You’re deeply angry. Furious. (“Deeply Furious” was a song in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the bizarrely-generated Broadway musical. Just thought you should know. The book writer of that show write a memoir called Song of Spider-Man, and I think it’s a good one if you like that kind of thing.) At oppression and the idea of being oppressed, if we’re looking at the keywords on the card, but you also (because you’re signified by a Knight/Knight) under the assumption that you matter. (Again, I know I matter. You’ll see me harp on this “not special” thing a few times, herein. What I mean, and again why I wouldn’t talk this way to a client, is “you aren’t more important than anyone else—even though deep down you kinda think you should be.”) The Wheel reminds us we do not. (That is true.) The Knight is like “wait this isn’t fair!” and the Wheel says “tough titty.” (Also true.) Because knights are awfully entitled (literally) they think they’re special and when their way is blocked, they try to fight through it because they’re entitled to pass. (The Princes/Knights and Kings/Knights are the cards to whom I typically assign “privilege” to. Here, I’m talking about my own privilege despite my mental health journey.) “Nope,” says the Wheel, “you are unimportant to me. You do not matter. You shall not pass. You are not special.” Something life has always been uniquely good at pointing out to you. (This is me wallowing in self pity quite beautifully. Still, how many of us feel this way, despite our privileges? I do! I often marvel at how some people succeed at life so easily, where I am frequently having to work much harder to get much less “success.” Shrug. I’m sure there are people who look at me and think, “He seems to get things so easily where I have to struggle so much to get much less.” This is why comparing ourselves is shite. And yet: we do it.)

And it’s that rage, in many ways, that we’re talking about. It’s partly loathing the self, but it’s also partly—maybe even moreso—your entitlement, to thinking you deserve or will inevitably reach some further apex. You think you’re entitled to things that life doesn’t think you’re entitled to. You think progress is inevitable. Having become the pinnacle of the deck, the final card in the deck, you’ve probably gone as far as you can go. (I know I haven’t. Keep reading.) Alexander wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. You’ve gone as far as you can go—as far as the Knight of Pentacles can go. (This is key. The Knight of Disks/King of Pentacles isn’t who I’m becoming, it’s who I am. This isn’t where I’m going, it’s where I’m coming from. What is the point of divination if not to elevate? And this is why I have a love-hate relationship with significators: they can become limiting if we think of them as the end goal, not the starting point. We are all the courts. We are all the cards in the deck. The Knight of Disks will always be my root, my core, not unlike my sun/moon/rising sign—but the aim isn’t to stay the same as I was when I was born; it’s to grow.) I suppose if you go back to the beginning of the deck, The Fool, things might change—but you’re not really that type, are you? See, the problem with reaching the Knight’s status is that we want to keep it and expand it. But that’s not how life works. It ain’t fair, but them’s the breaks. And again the more you try to fight it, the more you try to move out of the tracks laid out for you, the more burned out you get. (Here we [I] hit on a core thing to my personality: I cannot allow myself to feel foolish! I am in a rut, and in retrospect it’s in part because of my refusal to let go of the need to be perceived as an “expert” or as “cool” and “worthy.” But what I know from experience is that this denies me real growth opportunities, because I never allow myself to get messy and play—the way I demand of students who read my books/take my workshops. And you’ll see, this comes full circle at the end.)

To expand, I’ve drawn a card and placed it behind the Knight to answer what the source of this entitlement is, why you think you deserve more than life wants to give you. 
(Here is where things get crazy! I’ve gone and done it! I’ve drawn more cards—many more cards—to this spread. WHAT IS HE THINKING? Well, in this case, I drew additional cards to explore a bit about how I/Knight of Disks got the way we are. Warning, I do get a little mean again . . . I promise it’s mostly snark! Again, this is why I don’t share this shit more often! But if you’re curious, I have great support systems!)

The next question is, how can that be sustained to your best good—so that the praise the Prince of Cups gets doesn’t lead you to another downward spiral when that fades. To answer that, I’ve drawn the Hanged Man, the Seven of Swords, and the Aeon. (Here I’m actually doing a whole new reading within this one. I’m asking a new question [how to sustain this for my best good] and drawing three unrelated cards to answer this. I absolutely shuffled the unused pack and set the intention to answer this before I drew these new cards. It’s a new reading, but it’s still in dialogue with the one we’re doing—and again this is totally fine, because I’ve started thinking of reading for myself as having a dialogue with the guides or divinity or whatever makes this crazy ol’ system work so wonderfully. I have a question, I slap down a card: “Tell me more about that, stud!” “You got it, Tommy.” And I get more info. And I mean I know that’s not how many of us read, but, like, could anything be more natural? And in the energetic flow of reading, something has to be cooking between us and the liminal, so why not take advantage of it? The problem becomes when we start slapping down cards and 1) don’t have an intention behind them or a question we’re trying to clarify/answer; and/or, 2) we don’t immediately recognize the connection between these two cards and the intent, and so we give up on ourselves and the entire reading. If you’re going to do this, you have to be tenacious, bitch! You’ve got it in you!)

This is an interesting combo suggesting a prolonged period of deep-diving into this new version of you. It’ll be a new era. And you’re likely to have a bit of a breakthrough in terms of your perceptions at that point. Now. I feel compelled to say, in an unusually generous moment, that you needn’t have to wait a year to do that kind of reflection. (WHAAAT??? IS HE BEING NICE TO HIMSELF??? IS HE RECOGNIZING THINGS MIGHT ACTUALLY GET BETTER OR AT LEAST THE CLOUDS MAY PART??? Yes. Fucker. And this is an opportunity to comment on my use of this deck . . .  what am I doing still using this DECK? Reader, it works like a dream. I do not know why. I read better for myself with this deck than literally any other in my collection. Whatever. I’m going with it.) And while only one of these cards has an astrological timing associated with it, it is connecting to your rising sign (Aquarius) (we’ve had several cards connected to your sun; this is the first of your rising—the Four of Cups, Moon’s decan of Cancer, also reflects your Moon sign—which suggests, to a certain degree, a love for wallowing [luxuriating in] emotional ruts—you feel safe there, so this is potentially a habitual thing you do because you’re familiar with it—and be honest, have you ever really operated from anything other than self-loathing?) (I mean, look: I read The Velvet Rage [outdated but valuable . . . probably only to cis gay men, but a lot of cis gay men really need to face our issues] this year and . . . yeah. It’s a thing. But don’t cry for me, Argentina. I’ve got the skills to heal.) You may feel the seeds of this—or even something more than that (sevens are greater than seeds, of course; so I’m hedging my bets a little) around mid-February. Or, if not that, your tendency to do that kind of exploration will ignite around then. Sevens, of course, look within—mentality, in this case, is key to that and you’ll have the sense of stillness (Hanged Man) to really explore this new era. Makes sense. That time of winter, after the fuckery of xmas and new year, is a static time typically—and one you know you tend to feel fairly bleak during. But you may not experience that this time; you may find yourself really coming into your new Aeon. Whatever the fuck that means. (Also, hi: Look at me using astrological correspondences like a champ! Go me! Even though I think most of them don’t make sense, know what? They can help in a reading. Fuck it. I was wrong. Fine. I can say it . . . Usually on repeat until I don’t like myself anymore. KIDDING! Kidding. I’ll be here all week, tip your servers.)​

​I’m going to clear the deck, so to speak, and put all the cards we’ve drawn back into the pack--except for the five we began with. I want to come back to that central card, that Ten of Wands. (This was a fun exercise because I took all but the original five—and in the picture you’ll see how many cards I had out—and put them back in the deck. In this case, I wanted to see if we’d get any repeats!)

I want to understand that one better, because—while I’m not necessarily wrong about anything I wrote above, I also haven’t given you much kindness. (Thank you, me! See? I softened up a bit, here. I decided, “Give the boy a break, you dumb bitch!” [Kidding, again. That was my best Liz Lemon.] But this highlights why I’m sharing this . . . sometimes we have to go through the dark to get to the light. Sometimes we have to vent all the garbage so that we can find what’s recyclable; we have to let the compost decompose before it can be useful. This isn’t bad. It’s only when we let these things fester and eat at us and never deal with them that we’re in trouble. Know what I mean?) Well. The reading hasn’t. (Right. The Reading. Pas moi.) I had to stop myself several times throughout and ask myself to what degree my own bias was impacting the cards. I’m not saying I didn’t find evidence for what I wrote, but I am admitting that I’m not maybe the best person to find more uplifting evidence in this reading at this time. Given the subject happens to be, well . . . me. (Gurl, right??? Woof.)

I’ve put the other four cards aside, though not back into the pack. I don’t want to see any of those showing up again right now. (The four cards surrounding the ten.) I also want to pause and note that while I’ve been writing this reading, I kept getting a sense memory of my twenties—something that came from a scent I couldn’t quite place that kept arriving in my nose. And I did burn some incense earlier, but that’s not the smell. And I can’t place what it was now because I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time. I wish I’d paused and done so, but maybe I’ll get it again as I keep working. Who knows? It’s also entirely possible the incense in the other room is the scent and somehow something in it was triggering a memory. I’m not sure. (This happens to me a lot, but I was never able to place it. That also happens a lot. I’ve noticed that my sense-memory gets stronger the older I get.) (A note from FUTURE future me: I did remember. Cigarettes. 🤣)

Anyhoo—I’ve drawn the Three of Cups (Abundance), the Ten of Swords (Ruin) and the Two of Swords (Peace) to explore how, if at all, the Ten of Wands and its impenetrable wall can be blasted to bits. The Three of Cups (center) is Mercury’s decan of Cancer. Here, your beloved pal Mercury is in your moon sign. (He’s talking to me. I love Mercury. The god, not . . . not the poisonous metal.) And while I’m immensely turned off by words like abundance and gratitude, (BIG TIME) which sound like bullshit platitudes (especially now), there is something about Mercury’s playful and irreverent relationship to . . . everything that is interesting to me, here, and the sense of experiencing that playfulness as an emotional reality. Play isn’t necessarily a word associated with Mercury, but how could it not be so? He’s a trickster; in this deck, he’s the Magician; he’s also a writer and messenger (as such, he’s a tarot reader or diviner—just fyi), and there’s a possibility that the lack of abundance of his energy in your life is one reason why you’re prone to more dramatic tendencies right now—you have no sense of play left. At all. (And I realized that the whole reading was pointing to this lesson, this message. Was that the answer I started out looking for? Not if you look at the question I asked. But recall that I began by saying my question wasn’t that well-worded and, in fact, I was really trying to figure out what I needed to know . . . because I knew [and know] why i downward spiral that way. I already told you: it’s a trauma response. So even though my questions was “why” what I really wanted to know was “how”—as in, “how to get out of this funk?” Did it take me a long time to get there? Yes. But just like a dialogue, we had to go the long way round to figure out what we were really trying to say. And this is the great benefit of reading this way. Rather than limiting ourselves to one question and one locked set of cards, we instead engage in dialogue with divinity, with the cards, however you want to think about it. It’s a dance, but when we’re reading for ourselves the dance needs to be more circuitous. I guess. Point is: I never would have landed here with the question I asked and the cards I drew . . . but it’s what I needed to know. And by thinking like a detective or an excavator, I kept digging and trying new things—gathering more context—until I landed on the answer I finally realized I needed.) Nothing is fun to you anymore. (This, alas, is quite true—and something I have to address. I feel it’s tacky to enjoy anything when the world is so fucked up. We’ll touch on more of this in a bit.) An abundance of fun, or at least a growing exploration of playfulness, may be something that can push through the dross of that ten. Threes being expansive suggest that both your emotional and spiritual wellbeing can benefit from adding play into it—like, by just fucking around and finding out, your emotions and spirit will expand with it. 

The card is flanked by another ten—the Ten of Swords—and another swords card, the Two of Swords. The Ten of Swords is styled “ruin” (yay!) and the argument can be made by that thinking so much about ruin, you’re ruining yourself. That sounds a lot like a privileged thing to say, though, and we both know you think that it’s not appropriate to experience any kind of joy while the world in burning. (Toldja.) We both know that deep down you think you’re a fucking martyr, and to return to the arrogance question we know that you have an arrogant attitude about that. (OK, this is mean, but . . . not untrue.) “Look how I know how painful everything is, look how I suffer for it!” I don’t mean to denigrate your reality that way, but it’s a performance. (Is it? This comes down to a philosophical question . . . can altruism ever be fully generous? Can any activation ever not have a performative aspect? I don’t know the answer to that. Do I feel good when people I respect like my points of view? Yes. Is that why I share them? No. I truly want to help perceptions shift.) (REDACTED . . . in summary: “your slacktivism is performative.”) 

OK, maybe that’s a little ungenerous of me—but come on. How much of your behavior is influenced by what you want people to think about you? And you’re ruining yourself doing it. Because you don’t have any play, you don’t have any peace. Have play, have peace. (This might make a little more sense had I left in more of what I took about above . . . but I am shockingly scared of fucking up or not knowing the “right” answers . . . mostly because I don’t want to hurt people! I know what the fuck it feels like to be erased, ignored, stepped on, and marginalized. But a little of it is that I don’t want it to damage people’s perceptions of me . . . the ones who I admire, anyway. And that’s, again, ego! And what this is really saying [I know because I wrote it] is that . . . you gotta let go and get messy sometimes. But even as I say that now, my mind goes “but what if people think you don’t care about their issue!” Complexities!)

Now, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? (Boy, is it.) (REDACTED BUT I CAN’T SUM IT UP BECAUSE FUCKING PAGES QUIT ON ME AND I LOST WHATEVER IT ISAID.) The Two of Swords reminds us two things can be true at the same time and you’re about to write about dialectics, anyway, so this is on brand for you. I mean, and I hate to say it this way, the lesson of this reading is in some ways you’re not that special. Instead of taking that to mean you don’t matter, take it to mean you’re not a fucking messiah, so why don’t you let yourself have a little fun every once in a fucking while. Know what I mean? You’re not letting yourself off the hook, you’re letting your battery recharge. Sorry if that’s not a cute look for social media, but it’s probably the only way out of this very rut you think you have to stay in because, to return to the Knight of Disks, you think you’re so “important.” That’s the saviorism that comes with arrogance. Y’aint Jesus, buddy, so quit tryina be a damn martyr. (This actually is part of what I deleted above . . . and it’s something I’ll spend the rest of my life, however long it may be, trying to figure out. How much joy is acceptable when everything is awful and your tax dollars are funding some of the main reasons why . . . ? At the moment I guess the answer is “enough to stop you from burning yourself out and hating yourself.” Which, I mean . . . , honestly still seems like too much to me. But several people have said to me in the last couple years, “you really need to have some fun.” I can’t remember how. To be honest, it’s never really been part of my nature—not since school, anyway. But that’s trauma for another day. What matters here is a point I made when doing the reading, wayyyyy back about 7,000 words ago: if the King/Knight of Penties is the last card in the deck, then the card that follows him has to be The Fool—and that, I think, is where healing lies in this case.)

Or something. Who knows? (And here I negate myself, again. 🤣)

Final thoughts: Listen, if you got this far—thank you. I hope that it did teach you something, at least something more interesting than the tales of my own descent into shitty self image (a term we used to use a lot in the nineties—it was the one time Catholics got to swear!). 

The lesson is: experiment; use more cards, but with intent; keep digging, keep excavating; reading for yourself isn’t like reading for others . . . it’s harder, and it requires more tenacity, more context, sometimes more ruthless self-appraisal, and often a lot of grace. Be Sherlock Holmes. Be Einstein, who once said that it wasn’t so much that he was smart; it’s that he sat with the problems longer. That’s the point, but I hope that this whole peek into my mind helped make it more memorable. 

A read of one’s own
It would be morally reprehensible of me to do a demo reading of a spread after over 8,000 words! But I do have a spread for you to try. 

Start with the five card cross I used above. Use it to answer a question. Read it in pairs and trios, etc., but as it gives you information, pull additional cards to add more nuance to some of them. You don’t need to do all five. I didn’t. I pulled cards on three of them (the Knight, the Ten of Wands, and the Wheel—plus a fourth set, related but not part of the original draw). If you think of a side question, pose that to the remaining stack. Whatever you do, though, add the additional cards with intention—know why you’re drawing them and what they are to speak to. Then be tenacious about figuring it out. 

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself! Play! Experiment! Have fun!!! (I mean, that was the overall lesson for me, here, and it’s part of the lesson for you!)

\Cards drawn: Devil (4), Hanged Man (2), Knight of Wands (1), Knight of Pentacles (3), Six of Wands (5). 
Deck: The Bohemian Gothic Tarot (3rd edition) by Alex Ukulov and Karen Mahoney 

I had a feeling this Devil card would show, as it’s my least favorite devil card probably in any deck. It’s actually one reason I don’t use this one more. I hoped it would change in the most recent edition, but it hasn’t. A close friend detests the Justice card in this deck because it shows two fuckers with the Malleus Maleficarum--but that doesn’t bother me, because I think it actually shows you exactly what justice looks like in the christo-colonial world, at least since the that proto-edgelord, proto-incel piece of fan fick arrived in the hands of powerful shitheads the world over. One thing I’ll say about this deck: it usually shows you the darker aspect of many of the cards, which is kind of the point. Anyhoo . . . the blog:

With two knights in the spread, we could have a lot of action—although one of them stares dead-eyed into the middle distance and the other . . . well. He could use some head, as it were (it’s giving the battle scene at the denouement of Bedknobs and Broomsticks). We’ve also got a knight in the Six of Wands, who is actually active and appears to be leading their army of the dead out of the reading. And then on the other side of the reading we’ve got . . . all . . . that.

No cups, no swords; two wands, to majors, one penty. I think this is the first time we’ve had such a fiery/majory reading in this blog. But what’s the lesson? Good question. And I’m having one of those moments where I don’t really feel like doing the work to figure it out. I had a bad day. I accidentally knocked a tray of handmade kyphi (ancient Egyptian incense that requires a lot of grinding of woods and resins by hand and it’s a workout) off the surface on which it sat, and it and I both downward spiraled. It was hours of work and weeks of drying—all for some supposedly sacred fumigation . . . and I knocked it all right onto the floor. And I had an absolute meltdown because I do shit like that all the time and after forty-five years of it, it really makes me dislike myself. I needed someone to give me grace today and the only one who could do it really didn’t want to and really couldn’t afford it: me. In fact, I had a moment of self loathing so deep, I thought about cancelling all my upcoming bookings and just saying “fuck it.” 

What am I tell you that? I’m stalling, honestly.

Not unlike this weirdly static Knight of Wands, whose ghostly gaze seems somehow to be looking both everywhere and nowhere. This usually most active of knights has parked his horse (is that a thing?) and strode off a bit. Why? What’s he doing? 

Maybe he’s stalling like me. 

He’s flanked by two dramatic stories. In one corner, on our left (his right), we have The Devil and the Hanged Man. This is an interesting combo because they’re quite opposite. The Devil tends to be active, projective, aggressive; the Hanged Man, static (like this knight). I really hate this image of The Devil. I think that making the “devil” an exclusively negative card, as this one appears (to me), is just a reconfirming of christo-colonial stories about who is good and who is evil. It shows us how deeply we’re impacted by these stories even if we’re not or never were Christians. But I will take it as it comes. So on this side, I see a path where he stays in an endless cycle of stuckery and fuckery—a bad relationship, a stale job, a tendency toward self flagellation when (for example) he knocks a fucking tray of hand-ground, hand-formed, hand-sweated-over incense to the floor and has a menty b. There’s great comfort in the familiar, even if the familiar sucks. The devil we know, right?

In the other corner, the headless Knight of Penties and the Six of Swords. If this knight had a head, he’d be looking at the Knight of Wands like, “dude . . . what the fuck?” But he’s not because he can’t. Because he’s been knocked headless by the banalities of his own suit. How do I know that? Because it just came out of my fingertips. The Six of Wands, literally the only card with any sense of progress here, wants to fuck off into the future—with their army of skeletors. There’s a tug-o-war with the self that we see depicted in these two cards. The desire to stay and make things better for the other knight . . . even as doing so is causing him to lose his head and (I’ll wager) more and more pieces of him—and the desire to get out of this situation, even if it means ripping a part of himself off and leaving it behind. Except we can’t do that. So he’s forced to drag all this crap behind him. 

If we were looking at this reading as a choice, we’re in a situation with the Knight of Wands has two choices and neither of them are good: he can stay in the same garbage doing the same crap and experiencing the same highs and lows; or, he can continue to study himself and his life while trying desperately to break out of it. 

The aim of this blog is, as always, to pull from these randomly drawn cards a lesson about divination. And I suppose we could say this reading is reminding us that sometimes we’ll have readings where every option is crap and the client’s likely to stay stuck for a while. And that’s certainly a thing that happens. But I’m not convinced that’s the lesson, here. So I’ll keep digging. 

Mirroring the cards (using “reflecting” cards, or the cards that are symmetrically opposed to each other), I have two new pairings: Devil/Six of Wands; Hanged Man/Knight of Penties. The Devil and wands have a natural affinity for each other, because devils like things “hot” — and if I ignore this image, it is The Devil’s “job” to fuck up the status quo. I’ve been reading a lot about devils lately, and I’ve come to realize that what is considered devilish or satanic is whatever the powerful decide is bad. Witches are “satanic” because they present the church with competition. Anyone who lives on the margins, anyone who is remotely fringe, is “satanic” by these standards. This is one reason I get cranky when the card is depicted negatively. It’s just a confirmation of the idea that anything “other” is “evil.” It’s true that the card is frequently associated with addiction, but that’s because that’s what the church wants us to think. They want us thinking that if we experience “the devil” we’re going to get burned. 

What if I turn what I think I see? What if I turn that notion of the devil on its head, even working with this image? Suppose this winged entity isn’t injecting the desperate figure in front with drugs. What if she’s administering an antidote? What if this is the cure to the figure’s ills. Perhaps this devil is a “witch” who can help this figure with what the industrial powers cannot. These things must be done in “secret” (the darkness of the card) because we can’t be caught disobeying the rules. I read recently read (in Orion Foxwood’s The Flame in the Cauldron) “What is spoken fades away, but what is written may hang you some day” (this was his teacher, Lady Circe). Incidentally, if that’s true, I’m among the most fucked. But I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If I read this card that way, turning this image, then when I pair it with the Six of Swords, I get someone setting off after recuperating. After some mysterious antidote administered by mysterious “witch.” This suggests that the solution to our Knight of Wands’s dilemma is to seek “alternate routs” (as the road signs say during construction). 

What of the Hanged Man and the Knight of Pentacles? Both are in rough shape.  One suspending upside down, however meditatively, and the other is headless. In both cases, the head is not where it’s supposed to be—the head is not in the game. Which offers one reason why the Knight of Wands has dismounted and stares off into the distance. He’s stuck because he lost his head, but the solution to forward motion (we can imagine the knight in the Six of Wands “becoming” the Knight of Wands, when it’s time—even though they don’t resemble each other) is this witchery proffered by the scary-seeming entity. And I think that is the lesson . . . There are times when the solution to a reading lies in the place that seems scariest, weirdest, “darkest,” or least acceptable. Sometimes the answer lives in the spaces you’re “not supposed” to go. 

One sort of easy example of this, maybe not quite as dramatic as the words I used above, is the way I handled the fact that I didn’t like my initial interpretation of this cards or the lesson they indicated. I could have given up, scrapped the reading, redone it and used a deck that I vibe with a little better. But instead of doing that, I took the thing that was bugging me most (the image of The Devil in this deck) and went “deep.” What else could I see? So often we limit ourselves to what it seems like we’re seeing. In doing that, we miss what’s really there. 

I often say that whatever makes divination work uses the reader as much as the cards. By which I mean, they’ll take advantage of our moods and tendencies as much as they will our reactions to specific cards. This is why two readers answering the same question and getting the same answer might get completely different cards. Somehow they end up in the same place but the route they took (the cards drawn) were totally different. Neither of them would have landed on the same interpretation had they gotten the other reader’s spreads. In this case, it’s not a secret that I can’t stand the implications of this Devil card—and that becomes part of the reading. It’s probably exactly why the card showed up. Because the divination divinities knew that I was in a bad mood and would have a little bitchy moment about the card—and that, if I were tenacious and practicing what I preach, I would “get there.” 

In this case, not only did I do the reading, I became part of it. I became one of the cards because of my oft-asserted crankery around that depiction. But I wouldn’t have gotten the answer, I wouldn’t have unlocked the reading, had I not dug into the very thing I disliked and found a new way to make sense of it, to recontextualize it in a way that makes sense for me and the way I read. (I feel compelled to say that I actually do like this deck; I don’t use it much because of this card, but also because I rarely use theme decks with clients.)

If you can, when you are struggling with a reading or with a card in the reading, take a look at the thing that seems to be the least helpful or the part that makes no sense—lean into it. What I don’t mean is staring at it until you lose your will to ever pick up the cards again. Instead, it’s simply asking ourselves what else we could be looking at. There’s a phrase we use in learning design that comes from the tech world: iterative development. In this way of working, you might write a first draft of a learning design. But rather than going on to the next step, you’d pause and do a completely different “first” draft that doesn’t resemble anything you already did. And then you did a third “first” draft, this completely different from the other two. The idea here is that you might use your first design, you might use the third, but you would never have had the idea for the third unless you forced yourself to do it. In many cases, your final draft will likely be a mix of all three. 

Readings can work that way, too. Much of the time, the first path we take works. Not always. But even if you’ve got a “good enough” answer, if you don’t “feel” it then keep going. There’s nothing wrong with that. At worst you’ve gathered data you didn’t need; at best, you’ve added a whole new set of information that gets you and/or your client closer to where they want to be. I always say that every reading is an experiment, and this is a case in point. You can read one spread of cards three ways and see what you get. (This is one of many reasons I love my nine-card square so much.) And when you try to re-interpret a spread, start with what you’re not connecting with. Go “deep.” What you see when you first lay out the cards is the surface impression. What happens if you don’t accept that. What if you were forced to take the Waite-Smith Three of Swords and interpret it as representing the happiest thing ever to happen to someone? You could do it. Try it now. It’s totally possible. (I once interpreted that card as a Brazilian barbecue because that’s where they serve lots of roasted meats [including chicken heart] on long skewers. I’ve written recently how I saw swords as pipes.) What lies beyond what we assume we’re looking at?

Or, what happens when you cast your eyes across a spread and one of the cards just doesn’t fit? In a recent entry here I said you don’t have to start there. You don’t. But what if you do? What if you don’t look at the other cards until you’ve found a way of reading that incongruent card in a way that makes contextual sense? I can tell you that the rest of the reading will probably be unlike anything you’ve ever done before and probably in a very good way. Look, not every card carries equal weight in a spread and sometimes a card that doesn’t “fit” is really just offering a little grace note, an accent, or even carrying one card to another the way vowel sounds carry consonants. If you give it a go and can’t make it make sense first, don’t worry about it. Maybe it’s not that important. But why not give it a try? You won’t know what you could discover until you decide to take the chance. 

I know that seems scary, particularly if you’re sitting across from someone else and they’re waiting for you to reveal their future. (I did a reading for a friend recently on video and she hadn’t had time to watch it yet and she said, “It’s so weird to me that you know my future and I don’t.” It was funny.) But remember as the reader, you facilitate the experience. You’re are fully within your rights as a reader to say, “OK, we’re gonna go on a crazy little journey right now and I think it’ll pay off—but if it doesn’t, no worries. I still know where we’re going to go.” It’s OK to do that. Why not? Every time I’ve said something similar to a client, they’ve gotten excited. They’re part of an experiment! They’ve inspired you to try something new! I know it’s weird to suggest that you don’t necessarily “know what you’re doing,” but we don’t know what we’re doing every time we spread the cards. Anything could happen and we take the gamble we’ll be able to make it make sense. Usually we do. Sometimes we don’t. We’re human. And clients enjoy being part of the process. If you’re reading for someone else and you say, “I think we should try something really wild” they’ll almost always laugh a little and look both happy and slightly apprehensive and they’ll say, “OK!” Because they know you’ve got their back. And you do. 

READER: I think we should get wild with this interpretation. 
CLIENT: OK!
READER: I get the weird feeling that this card means you’re gonna become a hot air balloon pilot!
CLIENT: I am absolutely never doing that, I am terrified of heights.
READER: OK, let’s look at it this way, instead . . . !

When you’re reading for yourself, I recommend writing them out our recording them so you can listen to them later. I think this allows you to separate yourself from your own question and puts you in “reader” mode. And then, because you’re not as worried about getting the “right” answer, you’re more likely to experiment. And I bet that as you do the experiment, you’re going to suddenly find something that “clicks.” It happens so much. 

OK . . . this all takes us to . . .

A Read of One’s Own
This isn’t an easy one to develop a spread for! So instead of giving you a reading spread, what I want to offer in this case is a bit of an experiment . . . Grab a deck (if you have more than one, grab one you like but don’t use much). Go through it and pick out the cards you wish were different or that show imagery counter to the way you read the card. Make a little stack of these cards and set the rest of the deck aside. (I’ve chosen to call this stack of cards you don’t love “cranky cards” for the rest of those post.)

What you do next depends on the number of cards you chose. If you have between one and three, randomly throw in some additional cards—another three, maybe. Enough that you can shuffle a bit, but not so many that you won’t get any of your cranky cards if you were to draw three from the pile. 

If you have four or more, you can add more cards or not—but again, don’t add so much that you won’t get any of your cranky cards. 

Now, shuffle your little stack of cranky cards and filler. When ready, draw three. Begin by looking at the crankiest of the cranky cards and begin to reinterpret the image in a way that you like. If you were to look beyond the image, or if you were inventing a story for the image that was somehow the exact opposite of what the artist seems to have intended. How would you read this combo if you did that for each of the cranky cards? 

Come up with an “answer” or a meaning for the reading—as if you were doing a general reading. Write it down. And then take a little time away. Maybe a day. 

Then, come back and think of a place in your life where this answer to a question you didn’t ask could help you. It’s OK if nothing comes, but I bet if you’re tenacious and get playful with the answer, you will find a way that this reading is telling you something you needed to know even if you didn’t know it when you shuffled the cards. If nothing connects, that’s OK. It’s really about the experimentation. Maybe it’s going to answer a question you’ll suddenly have in the coming days. Maybe it was just a silly game to play to help you out of a rut. Either way, it’s worth doing. 

Let me know how it goes—and have a great week. ​

​The Star (2), Nine of Cups/Happiness (1), Justice (3)
From Vanessa Decort’s glorious Sun and Moon Tarot. 

Let’s start by taking one card at a time, dearies: Nine of Cups. There can be too much of a good thing and nine represents that. I think it was Mae West who said “too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” (If she didn’t, it was Nigella Lawson—but I’m fairly sure Nigella, one of my great loves, was quoting Mae West . . . another of my great loves. Gay men, y’all. We have a type.) Queen Mae was right, but sometimes--sometimes--it can burn you out, and I think that’s what happened with me. But I also think that I wasn’t spiritually connected to the work anymore, and what’s interesting about that is what pulled me back into tarot was eschewing all the spirituality that dogged me to that point. 

When I began reading in the late nineties, tarot has kind of synonymous with Wicca—at least from what I was experiencing in the nascent interweb communities. And honestly, I tried to get into Wicca. I read my Scott Cunningham (I know he’s considered problematic now, but he was at the time the gentlest and least arrogant voice I encountered in that space, and so he’s who I clung to. He--we--contain multitudes. I got to meet his sister recently [she’d actually won a copy of my book!] and listening to her talk just a little about him reminded me that, though problematic, he was a generous human. Based on what I know about him, I do believe that had Scott lived he would have seen the need for evolution. I know that sounds like justification. It isn’t. I have no interest in defending mostly anyone these days. But based on his work, I think he would have gotten it had he lived.) But in Wicca, I just found a new dogma. It was more to memorize, more motions to go through, and more icky ritual. I don’t do ritual. I find it embarrassing. It’s performative to me and I know that there is great power in ritual, but it’s well to know that my Catholic upbringing and the joyless drag show of the Catholic mass informed that view and I just can’t shake it—even though I was a theatre girl for so long. Go figs. 

The Golden Dawnery was always a turnoff for me, even before I could articulate why—and though I tried to engage it, again I just saw more dogma. And this dogma was closely aligned to the dogma of my childhood, so it didn’t even have the sexiness of Wicca (which, also, not that sexy—sorry). Now I know that Wicca was directly inspired by Hermeticism, so I understand why I disliked the two so much. 

I traded one kind of limiting dogma for another. And my attempts to make that work . . . fizzled. I found the esotericism interesting at an intellectual level. Clearly I often still do. I enjoyed the time I spent working on The Tarot School’s correspondence courses, and I always enjoyed my conversations with Wald and Ruth Ann—who I admire a lot. But nothing in those esotericisms and correspondences ignited me. In fact, they took me further from tarot. The tarot I was trying to find. They took me farther from life. And tarot is life, or it’s about life anyway. But I didn’t know that, then. I thought I was doing something wrong. I thought I was dumb. 

This is the part of the story where I tell you how my schooling taught me that I’m stupid. By the time I’d reached, oh, sixth grade, I accepted that I wasn’t very bright. Everyone kept telling me I wasn’t trying and I was trying—or I was trying the way I knew how. But I was objectively lazy: I avoided my homework; the innards of my Catholic school desk looked not unlike my own innards—gory; I struggled with understanding things that everyone else got instantly; and, even when I did succeed, my teachers told me I hadn’t—they didn’t believe that I’d really done the assignment, so they told me to go back to my desk and . . . what? Pretend to work? So I did. And what I did get good at was hiding and concealing. But I knew I was an idiot. By the time I got to high school, I had nothing left in the tank and the only thing that kept me going was theatre (see last week’s post, please—we now know how that love affair turns out). I nearly wound up flunking out of school. I spent every summer in summer school. And I had no selfhood left so I made no real effort to get into college. I flamed out in community college and in the embers of that debacle I found corporate training and tarot. Through those two things, I learned I wasn’t (amn’t) dumb. But that’s a story for another day. The salient point here is that, though I’d learned I wasn’t dumb by the time I stepped away from tarot, I had an innate tendency to doubt everything I did. Including tarot. And as the esoteric stuff failed me, I began to assume I was the problem. I always assume I’m the problem. 

But that’s not the only thing that stopped me. I often say I’d burned myself out with tarot, and that’s partly true. When I gave it up, I had been weirdly pushing too hard to consume too much information and produce too much product. But that’s not unusual for me. I do that with just about everything. (I was going to use that as a way of blaming myself for “giving up” on theatre, but I had the ability to pause and say, “No, you’re letting go of that because you can no longer accept the abuses of power and refusal to change or atone.” Growth!) I think what really happened is that the return on investment dried up. I wasn’t getting out of it anywhere near what I was putting into it. And that’s not anyone’s “fault,” I think I’d reached a tipping point. As many of us do. 

We don’t typically think of the Nine of Cups behaving this way, but it’s not out of the realm of validity to say that each time you add a number to one of the minors, you’re “spending” the energy of the ace. We can think of the aces in a suit as the whole pizza. Each new number subdivides that whole, weakening it. This is counter to how many of us view the ascending numbers—we usually tend to think of each higher number as more of its suit. Totally real, totally useful, totally valid. But there are times when it makes sense contextually to consider the depletion of the potential represented by the ace—and I think that’s a pretty good way to look at nines and tens. The suit has been “spent” by that point. I don’t know whether it was burnout or what, but by the time I put my cards down for what I thought would be forever, I’d spent whatever I had and there was nothing left in my tank. Because we’re talking about cups, this indicates that I’d spent myself emotionally as well as spiritually, because those are two aspects of the suit of cups. 

It’s also relevant to point out, thanks to cups, that this also coincided with the beginning of a long term relationship—and because of that, there was some degree of shame involved, too. Some part of me that didn’t want potential mates thinking I was weird or creepy, because there was already so much against me: I wasn’t rich, thin, hot, or fit. So to add being a weirdo tarot reader into the mix was a bridge too far, maybe. I know that was part of it and while I don’t necessarily think that’s depicted in the card or this reading, I’ll admit it was a factor. (It turned out not to be something worth worrying about, but it’s there nonetheless.)

This card receives the title Happiness in the Thoth tradition, and while I think it’s perfectly fine to ignore the word any time it’s irrelevant—I’ve also found that, if I dig, it can usually afford some additional nuance (sometimes it’s the main interpretation of the card!). Here, I think it reminds me that I was really perfectly fine with the choice. I didn’t grieve it the way I do with theatre because I never really thought of it as that big a part of my life. I enjoyed it until I didn’t, and that was fine. It was a hobby. While I sometimes fantasized about writing books about it or teaching it, I really had no desire to make it a profession or a vocation. I had other things I was doing; other purposes for being on this planet. Tarot was just something I did when I was in the mood. And I wasn’t in the mood anymore. It happens. I didn’t feel like I was losing something, and it’s not like I threw away all my cards and books. I put them away. I assumed mostly because I’d spent so much on them. But I wasn’t worried at all—a massive rarity for a freak like me. 

Now, on to the next card. The Star: I don’t believe in destiny. There’s something majorly privileged about the idea and it makes me uncomfortable. Things being “meant to be” make no sense. It’s meant to be that the world is destroying itself? It’s meant to be that powerful, greedy, wealthy white cis gendered het men get to run the show and have done for centuries at the expense of so much human life and culture? It’s meant to be that they’ve taught everyone else to operate from this scorched earth, it’s-mine-or-else mentality that half the people on this planet (OK, maybe less) are willing to throw their own best interests out the window just to make other people’s lives worse? No. I cannot believe that any of this is divinely inspired and I can’t believe that if there is divinity they prefer the lives of certain people over others, unless we’re talking about divinities who loathe wealth and greed. I can’t accept it. And I know that destiny is a central concept in many world faiths, and while I’m a big believer in not negating people’s experience or faith (providing it isn’t harming others), I will not accept that some people have everything and some have nothing just because it’s “meant to be.” I don’t accept that it’s part of some karmic wheel, either (and, from what I can see, nor does the actual concept of Karma, which differs dramatically from the lazy way that term is used in pop culture and new age spirituality). 

That said, I do think we can be on a path and not know it. And I think The Star highlights that part of my journey, too. The idea that I’m “supposed” to be working with divination makes my skin crawl. It puts me in a position of being “special” in a way that I hate. Again, it’s the implication that I somehow have some divinely ordained responsibility that other people don’t; that I’m unique or somehow important. Ew. No. I’m not special. I’m not important In any way. (I mean in any way that makes me different from anyone else.) And in fact much of the journey of my adulthood has been letting go of the idea that I should be. 

I guess, if I were to give it language, I might say that The Star indicates that my being is particularly well suited to doing this kind of work, and that I was moving in this direction even though I didn’t know it. I mean I’m objectively not well-suited to the world I was trying to be part of. Most days I’m not really sure I belong in the tarot world, either, to be honest. I spend most of my time feeling not cool enough, not well-connected enough, not worthy enough. I’m not as star struck by the divinatory and new age glitterati as I used to be, I’m not really start struck by anything anymore—because that has burned me more than once. And while part of me wants people to be like, “OMG, Tom Benjamin is so cool!” I also am terrified of anyone thinking that because I know at some point I’m going to screw up and let them down. It’s a strangely double edged sword and you’d be surprised how much of my time that inner battle wages in me. I’m constantly curious what it feels like to be a person who, ya know . . . likes themselves. 

But the way I know that I’m well suited to this work, and why I think The Star shows up here, is because when I am doing this work? When I’m doing it well? All of that self flagellation goes away. It’s just me, the cards, the client, and the question—and we’re engaged in this beautiful dance. Even when I’m working with a client through a difficult conversation, even when I have to tell someone that what they want isn’t on the immediate horizon (or at least not a horizon that I can see), I don’t experience the self loathing. I actually experience a sort of non-state, a place where I’m simply there doing the work. Now I have to be clear: this isn’t every time, not by a long shot. But it happens enough that I’m able to look back and recognize it. The only other times I feel that way is when I’m writing or cooking. Those seem to be the three parts of my life where I’m the gentlest version of myself to myself. And I think that’s part of what’s represented by The Star. 

But that’s not addressing about the fact that this reading is about why I gave up tarot, not why I picked it up again. I picked it up again, based on the above, because there was something in my body chemistry that needed it. But it didn’t need it then. And what it did need, what my being needed, is another aspect of The Star I don’t talk about much: rest. 

The Star’s association with things like “hope” always left me cold. I’m not and never have been a hopeful person. There is a peace to the card, though, especially when we consider the heat of what comes before it. If we think about The Devil and The Tower as more erotic than destructive (and I typically do think that), The Star is “after care” (I term that also makes me cringe, but I’m a weirdo). It’s rest. It’s respite. It’s stillness and quite and nighttime. Not the intensity of The Moon’s night, which is also a card that has erotic or energetic connotations. Rather, it’s the rest that comes from REM sleep. From simply being in the throes, for lack of a better word, of slumber. We might call this the hibernation card, and if I were designing an animal tarot deck (I’m not), I’d probably but a sleeping bear on this one. 

Long story short, I put it down because I needed to. I needed to rest. I’d really starting getting bitchy about the questions I was getting to read about (this was at the free tarot networks, which was my only real way of reading for others at the time). I’ve told this story before, so I won’t get too much into it here, but I’d grown to really get pissed at questions I deemed “stupid.” These days I don’t think any questions is stupid, so you can see how far I’ve come—but I really started getting angry at people who wanted to know what I perceived as dumb shit, when we had the power to read about any of the world’s great mysteries! (See, basically, everything I’ve written since is an exploration of why that was bullshit.) Even though I didn’t like the esotericists, I’d adopted their snobbery. 

I needed to let all that go and that required rest. And I think The Star is an apt card because we can both be resting and progressing at the same time. If you’ve read Tarot on Earth, you know how often I write breaks into the activities. That’s because we need to let what we learn grow and ferment and infiltrate our bodies before we take on more. “Cramming” isn’t good, and leads to the kind of burnout where you, say, start resenting the earnest and honest questions of people you volunteered to read for. 

We have to take breaks and I, to sort of borrow from Alanis Morissette, equated stopping with death. A break meant never picking something up again. And so I would push myself until I reached the point where I’d overworked myself to the point of hating the thing I used to love. I did it with my day job, I did it with acting, and I did it with tarot.

Next: Justice, a card I never really enjoy seeing in readings thanks to its imaginary nature. As I’ve said before, this is one of the changes Crowley made to the Thoth deck that I like—the retitling to Adjustment. I don’t read it the way he intended it to be read I don’t think but I also don’t care. One of my great loves is using the work and words of things that hurt me or others to negate the harm they did. So I use Crowley’s deck in all kinds of ways he would have hated. Anyway, Adjustment: I like the concept better and it can still retain the concept of justice which, if we’re being honest, should be a thing that adjusts to the situations presented with it. I have a friend who has spent years working with mothers on various aspects of pre- and post-natal care and has told me about many, many women she’s spoken to over the years who wound up in prison pregnant or with young children thanks to a broken taillight and some unpaid parking tickets. That’s not fucking justice. Justice would recognize that a single mother about to bring a child into the world—and, let’s be generous: nobody, really--should wind up in prison for parking tickets and broken taillights. That’s just another modern way in which we criminalize poverty in this so-called country. Anyway, the point is, older depictions of “Justice” are static and the Crowley-Harris revision isn’t, and that’s why I like it. Happily, this stunner of a deck (again, we’re using the Sun and Moon Tarot) presents us with a butterfly, which subtly hints to the concept of “adjustment” while keeping the older title. And what’s so right about this card in this context is that I took the break because my caterpillar days were over and my butterfly days were beginning. 

Jesus that’s a pretentious thing to say, isn’t it??

Well, pretench or not, it’s something worth talking about—particularly if you’re experiencing fear that you may never pick up a thing you once loved that you’ve put down. Earlier I said breaks are necessary. The butterfly metaphor makes sense. If a caterpillar insists on remaining a caterpillar, it will suffer—because it can’t. Now, I don’t know whether caterpillars know what they’re going to do when they’re born. I don’t think science knows, either. While the general assumption seems to be, as of the time I’m writing this, that insects lack the “hardware” to “know” this will happen, I can’t imagine that there isn’t some awareness. See, a caterpillar isn’t even really “born” a caterpillar; their whole pre-butterfly lives are a series of transformations, moltings, the like, that help them grow. When the time is right, they wrap themselves in a cocoon and, as it’s been explained to me, “digest themselves.” What happens inside that cocoon ain’t pretty. The caterpillar turns itself into goo that eventually divides and multiplies in such a way that the butterfly forms. 

What I didn’t know prior to writing this is that caterpillars (which more accurately are larvae) are born with “imaginal disks”—groups of cells that, as I interpret it, hold the place for what the insect will become. They are the butterfly, but not yet. These cells survive this self-digestive process, eventually forming wings, eyes, reproductive organs, etc. So within the caterpillar at birth is are these imaginal disks of what it will become once it eats itself alive and shits itself out, which is admittedly a coarse way of saying something . . . but it’s a coarse way of saying something that, in my experience, humans do at a metaphorical level at least once and often multiple times during our lives. And I think that’s part of what was happening for me, here. 

Again, this runs the risk of suggesting that I’m some kind of special somewhat who was “born” to do this. I don’t think that’s true at all. I guess what I’d say is that . . . we’re all born with imaginal disks of what we might be (rather than the caterpillar’s, which are what they must be). Our metaphorical imaginal disks maybe nudge us toward certain kinds of things, but not necessarily any one specific thing. A caterpillar must become a butterfly (or moth or whatever, they don’t all turn into Monarchs); we, though, maybe have like different lanes or paths that take us to our version of that. And I think that’s why this particular card shows up here. And that actually does tie into a common way I read Justice: as the “right” or “correct” thing. I put those words in quotes because I think there’s something imprecise about them—but they’re OK for our purposes here, as long as you don’t think I think I’m somehow insinuating that I’m “better” than you. (See, I did it with the quote marks again. I love punctuation!) I stopped reading because it was right to. I think I’d reached the end of the line, or anyway the end of that particular part of my journey. I needed to let it go. It was time. I didn’t know that I’d pick it up again, nor that when I picked it up again it would become such an intense part of my life. But I didn’t worry about it because I (and this is so weird to say right now) . . . didn’t care. I didn’t. I didn’t miss it. At all. Didn’t think about it once I put the cards down—and only really remembered I even had ever done them was when I’d open my closet and see my most used decks hanging from their little bags on a hook near my clothes. 

I was going to say . . . “I’m lucky they survived.” I had a mold issue in that apartment. And then I didn’t say that. Well I did, obviously, I typed it above—but I stopped myself from leaning it for two reasons: One, they were all commercially made cards which are loaded with chemicals. But also . . . maybe . . . ? They survived because they were supposed to? I lost a bunch of books in that place. Ones I actually did want to keep, so—it’s interesting that they got damaged and none of my cards did. 

So, really, that’s kind of the story—at least contextualized by these three cards. But I suppose someone may wonder, Well: What brought you back?

And it’s the same thing that, I think, brings everyone back to tarot: ASMR videos. 

OK,  I know that’s not what brings everyone back. But I happened to stumble on ASMR videos way back toward the end of this respite and one of the creators I stumbled on was an artist who was making ASMR videos about a collage tarot deck she was making. She wasn’t a tarot reader and didn’t, as I recall, “believe” in it. I think she sort of worked on the images based on a little white book. I can’t quite recall, but it’s what I remember. I know she printed some copies and sold it, too, but I no longer remember the name and it went out of print ages ago. And, like many YouTubers, she seems to have disappeared into the ether. But it was weirdly those videos that got me thinking about it again. Not right away. That took time. But the inkling was there. This was the early days of YouTube, incidentally, or at least my experience with it. It must have been around 2010? I think I was in my early thirties at that point. 

Actually, you know what? I now know exactly what year it was. 2009. Because there was one thing—a deck—that brought me fully back into the fold. The Shadowscapes Tarot by Stephanie Law. That was published in 2009. I happened, on a whim, to browse the aisles of a Barnes and Noble and my eyes fell on that deck and I couldn’t look away. I snatched it off the shelf, paid for it, brought it home, and fell in love. It is stunning. I probably should have used that deck for this blog, but as always there’s no accidents when we do these things. And I think the Sun and Moon deck managed to provide the right cards, particularly that butterfly (which, honestly, is not one of my favorite cards in that pack—though I like them all, there are a few [as there always are] that I would have . . . done something different with). 

What happened next could fill another blog, but I don’t really need to write it because my YouTube Channel and my first two books (Tarot on Earth and Your Tarot Toolkit—the indie one with my name on it, not the one that came out later from Llewellyn) are sort of about that journey. Not in the sense that I share with you what I was doing or going through was I was writing them, but in the sense that they both reflect what I did to land where I am now. And my forthcoming book kind of fills in the blanks since Your Tarot Toolkit was released a few years ago. 

So there you have it. That’s the story of how and why I put down tarot for a few years (I don’t recall how many because I can’t figure out how to see when I finally gave up. If I picked it up again in 2009, then I’m assuming I put them down around 2007? Which sounds . . . not wrong. So maybe two years, maybe three? It may actually be shorter time than I thought it was, but of course it also wasn’t a part of my daily life back then as it is now, so—like everyone—my practice waxed and waned. But it doesn’t matter how long it lasted. It lasted as long as it needed to and that’s the hard part for many of us to deal with. I was lucky because I thought I was done and didn’t care. And it wasn’t even a big drama, like the one I shared with you last week. I just said, “This is stupid” and put the cards down. You know that thing where they say, “One day you’ll do this thing for the last time and you won’t know it’s the last time”? It wasn’t like that. The last time I picked up the cards, I realized one day, was the last time . . . 

And then it wasn’t. 

Creating spread off this lesson (which, alas, is really more of a personal narrative than a straight up lesson) isn’t easy. But, I can’t leave you hanging, can I? So here’s what I’ve come up with. 

A read of one’s own
This spread is meant to help you prepare for fallow times, like the ones I describe. The difficulty with these is we generally don’t know they’re coming. Unlike burnout, there isn’t a moment where we go I can’t do this anymore! It’s usually more a thing where we put something down and then one day realize we may never do it again. Also, in this case, I’m not going to offer a sample reading. I think I’ve gotten personal enough. Wink. 

As always, you can use as many cards as you’d like for each position. I recommend three, but do what works for you. 

Position One: This card or these cards represent how you can calm any anxieties around the worry that we’re leaving something we love behind. 

Position Two: This card or these cards represent how we might make the most of these fallow times. 

Position Three: This card or these cards represent what we can do during fallow times to ensure we don’t feel stalled. 

This spread is probably best for times when you’ve realized you’re in a fallow period—but it doesn’t have to be. You can reword things a bit to bring you to thinking about what you might do if and when you reach that place. 

Hope you enjoyed this little deep dive into my psyche! See you next week!