Plot Twist: I'm Into Tarot
This morning, I pulled the Eight of Wands.
Eight: Mastery. Correspondence with Strength (the eighth card of the Major Arcana). Wands: Creativity. Energy.
As good of vibes as one could hope for when sitting down to write.
***
May 28, the Chariot
I do think of myself as a strong-willed person, possibly going back to the time I peed on the floor when my dad tried to send me to my room. Something I’ve been trying to deal with professionally is resisting the urge to over-exert my will. To manage things that aren’t my business or my problem. Instead, I’m trying to focus on things within my spheres of control and influence. I think this is what can be so taxing/frustrating societally—that I (and so many others) feel helpless. All our will is sawed down and handed off to politicians, most of whom are either mildly corrupt or wholly with conscience.
***
I am not someone predisposed to be interested in tarot. I am Type A. I am an Enneagram 3. I am an ENTJ. I am an atheist, for fuck’s sake. Tarot is inherently open to interpretation, and I am the type of person who wants the Right Answer. But the occult has always appealed to me, ever since I was a young and exceedingly strange child who had a vampire costume that she refused to take off, even to go to church in the summer.
And in the spring of 2022, I began studying tarot.
***
May 30, Wheel of Fortune
Thanks to my terminal eldest daughter syndrome, I hate the idea that I am not the compass of my soul, the master of my fate.
***
I have had exactly two professional tarot readings, and I am a little embarrassed to admit this.
The first was when I was in Palm Springs. Technically, it was when I was in Joshua Tree—a friend and I traveled to see the spiky alien trees in February. We figured February in California would be balmy, but we forgot we were in the desert. The outdoor activities we originally planned were, at best, an exercise in mild discomfort. So we drove into Palm Springs and roamed the downtown strip until we ran into a psychic shop. Partially to amuse my friend and partially because I am a glutton for novelty, I had a reading done.
The woman did not awe us with her divinatory prowess. She instructed me to ask three questions and then began laying out a spread. One of my queries was if my husband would get a new job. (He was transitioning from teaching public school to developing software at the time.) It became clear that the psychic was under the incorrect impression that my husband had been out of work for a period of time, which cast her abilities pretty sharply into doubt. She asked me if I had any follow-up questions, and I said no, thank you, eager to extricate myself from the situation, since at that point my friend and I couldn’t risk making eye contact.
What stood out to me most, though, was that she was interpreting the cards without explaining herself at all. I remember the spread featured the Devil, but she never endeavored to explain what it meant.
Six months later and several months into my own tarot practice, I paid for a reading from a semi-famous internet witch. It was a significantly less cringey experience, but since it was over the phone, I had no idea what cards she was pulling or how she was interpreting them. I have notes on that reading, so I can recount what she predicted the year had in store for me. We talked about the theme for the year (radical change), if I would move (she recommended holding off; oops), my creative project (she foresaw big things that have yet to entirely manifest), and my job (she advised gratitude and balance; the latter is a work in progress). After I asked which cards were coming up, she told me Strength and Death were making repeat appearances.
It at least left me with plenty to think about, though perhaps not two-hundred and fifty dollars’ worth.
***
July 13, Two of Wands
I don’t think ambition is a bad thing, but it can trap you, wall you into a life you never intended.
***
2022: It was my Death year. It was the year I turned 30. It was the year I planned to drink ayahuasca and experience ego death. (Though, as fate would have it, that wouldn’t happen until a little later.) I started doing shadow work in preparation for the experience, trying to shine a light on all the most decayed parts of my soul before Mother Aya could do it for me. (Before you sit with the medicine, it’s easy to kid yourself that you are in control of the experience.) Each day, I began my journaling with a tarot pull as a prompt.
***
July 17, the Tower
The entire country—probably world—is experiencing this archetype. The bit of hope: maybe things will fall apart so completely this time, we can build up something better. I think what keeps individuals (self included) from realizing this possibility is the trap of the Tower—the ego, the way we can use the material to wall off the parts of our higher self that might know better. The card shows people falling, but me, I’d rather jump than fall.
***
The ritual:
Light my sage. Let it burn. (Stink up the house, according to my husband.)
Shuffle my deck. Seven times one way, seven times another way.
Use my left hand to cut the deck.
Pull the card sitting on top.
Reflect. Read, if necessary, if the card’s meaning felt too opaque to even begin to interpret.
And then, write.
***
August 16, the Fool
Isn’t it so stupidly individualistic to think we all have a unique purpose? Aren’t we all just here to enjoy our lives as best we can and attempt to do so in harmony with the world? Doesn’t shit get fucked when some asshole thinks he has another purpose? Or—maybe I just don’t know mine. Maybe I’m lost. But the Fool doesn’t know what they don’t know; the Fool is the wanderer, the journeyer. At least right now, maybe my purpose is the search.
***
I learned the cards through a variety of sources: the Strange Magic and Between the Worlds podcasts. The writing of Rachel Polluck and Mary K. Greer. The little books that came with my decks. The internet.
I ingested all the explanations and interpretations and began to shape my own.
The Devil was not just about temptation or vices, but flouting convention, walking on the wild side. The Hierophant was not only about religion, but about order, ritual, and devoted practice.
The Ace of Swords brandished the power of truth: finding it, speaking it, living in it, despite the discomfort it could bring. In the Six of Pentacles, I saw myself as both the supplicant, begging capitalism for scraps to live on, and as the noble, full of relative privilege. Through the Five of Cups, I learned to let go, to walk away from what couldn’t or wouldn’t be, and to focus on what is.
***
November 15, Nine of Swords
I never don’t imagine the worst-case scenario. Every time I had to get called to the office in school—always for something benign—I had the fleeting fear I was about to be told my entire family had died in a car crash. The monsters are in my head, and possibly the part of me that doesn’t want to heal.
***
I entered a period where I was deeply stressed about work. My journal entries from that time are nearly unreadable in hindsight. I can’t decide what part is more painful: reliving the terrible headspace I was in at the time, or suffering through my own tiresome bitching.
It was all so stupid. It didn’t matter, certainly not on the cosmic scale, and, honestly, not even really in the greater picture of my life, but I was burnt out, and everything was agony. It was all swords: I saw myself in the Eight of Swords, imprisoned by a cage of my own making; in the Five of Swords, hoarding what power I could; and in the Ten of Swords, utterly defeated.
***
December 12, Ace of Swords
The truth is…I’ve identified things that are shitty for my mental health but I haven’t been able to let them go. The truth is, I will probably lose some of the good things that come with them.
***
I have control freak tendencies. The worst part of being myself is the knowledge that if I could, I would choose to control everything. Details, plans, logistics. Other people—their perception of me, what they do for me. My own life, and everyone else’s. It’s exhausting.
One night, in the Cancun jungle, after hours of shivering on the ground as colors exploded behind my eyelids, I felt myself sink into the earth. The roots of the earth wound around my muscles and veins, and the earth animated me to sit up, to move, to dance. I sat by the fire as the night ended and cast off my obsession with being in control.
I am in recovery, the same way some people are in recovery for drugs, booze, gambling. An addict can’t flip a switch and become permanently and effortlessly sober, and changing your worst habits isn’t as easy as deciding to be different. I remind myself of a passage from the Bhagavad Gita that I read years before I sat with the medicine, even years before I picked up my first tarot deck. The deity Krishna, when speaking to the young warrior Arjuna, explains the concept of karma yoga: action with attachment to the results.
***
December 22, The World
It’s a lot to want. It feels like in some ways I’m pressing my luck. But what’s the point of life, if not to create what you want for yourself?