Gray November…I’ve been down since July.

Well, apparently I’m starting this post with a Taylor Swift lyric like the basic white lady I am.

Hello friend! I came to my cozy home office today craving a moment of peace, but it’s hard to find peace in my heart. Out the window it is indeed a gray November. And I have indeed been down since July. And now it’s the holiday season when you’re supposed to be happy and spending time with loved ones. But one of my loved ones is gone, others are sick, the broader world is in chaos.

I do believe it’s possible to find peace in your heart even when life is excruciating. But sometimes it is a struggle to find any peace. Sometimes all I can do is stay open to the possibility of even a tiny sliver of peace in my heart.

I drew a card from the Spacious Tarot and it’s the reversed Three of Pentacles, which in the version I’m using we infamously misspelled as Penatcles.

Pulling this card made me think about how I often feel alone, and it reminds me that other people feel this way too. Sometimes we need to just remind each other, hey, I’m here! I may be far away, but I’m here. I may not have a lot to offer you in this moment but we are both existing together.

And the fact that the card is misspelled in this moment reminds me that you don’t have to be perfect to show up and support someone else. That’s a thing that often stops me from writing here. I tell myself “ugh, I’m tired, I have no energy, I have nothing interesting or helpful to say!” And it’s like, okay Carrie, you aren’t feeling perfect. But that doesn’t mean you can’t contribute anything to the collective.

I saw a post somewhere on social media recently that said something like “if you only have 20% to give today, and you gave that 20% then you actually gave 100%.” Good perspective!

I pulled another card and it’s the Moon. It’s interesting because I was talking about peace earlier. There’s a type of peace in the Moon card, but it is also unsettling. Things are calm and dark but also strange. The mushrooms growing here could provide nourishment or could kill you. The glow of moonlight could make things look extra beautiful or extra menacing, or both at the same time.

Perhaps what’s called for here is shifting my vision of peace into something that aligns more with the energy of the Moon. Perhaps the blissful, safe, secure peace that I crave isn’t realistic right now. But the bizarre and contradictory peace of the Moon could be something I embrace at this time.

There’s a quote attributed to Carl Jung (I think from the Red Book but I’m having difficulty finding a definitive source):

Silence and peace come over you if you begin to comprehend the darkness. Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the abyssal in you, you become utterly simple.

That is the peace of the Moon. I am shifting my definition of, and my expectation for, inner peace. The shadows within me don’t have to prevent peace, they can be components of peace.

I thought I would wrap up with one more card and here is the Eight of Cups. I pull this card often. It has a similar energy to the Moon. At first glance, life seems like a linear path. This happens, then that happens, you move on from this cup to that cup. But you can only see so far ahead on the path. Maybe it dissolves and becomes a pit of mud. Or a craggy mountain you don’t know how to scramble up.

And hell, maybe all of linear time is an illusion. I’ve felt this way lately, and I’ve heard a lot of other people express similar sentiments. The pandemic seemed to amplify this. We’re just out here like “what is time, anyway?” This all reminds me of a song from one of my favorite shows Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, sung by Josh Groban:

You want things to be wrapped up neatly, the way that stories do. You’re looking for answers, but answers aren’t looking for you. Because life is a gradual series of revelations that occur over a period of time. It’s not some carefully crafted story, it’s a mess, and we’re all gonna die.

If you saw a movie that was like real life, you’d be like, “What the hell was that movie about? It was really all over the place.” Life doesn’t make narrative sense.

It’s so true, life DOESN’T make narrative sense! Yet somehow many of us human beings deeply long for it to do so. This is what brought me to tarot in the first place. That aching need to make some semblance of sense out of the human experience. And you know, sometimes tarot can do that. Sometimes it does help life actually make some type of narrative sense.

But other times, like today, tarot reminds us that we can’t always wrap things up in a simple way. Sometimes being a human is a strange mess, and that’s okay.

Things have gotten weird, but it brings me back to the groundedness in the Three of Penatcles. Which is to say, if life feels weird, you’re not alone. Life is weird. And that’s okay. We don’t need to expect it to be otherwise, we don’t need to wait for it to be otherwise. We can support each other and find small moments of connection in the haze. We can show up together and do something even if we do it quite imperfectly. Yeah?

There’s a scene from Sex & the City where Samantha exclaims “shit! Mother fucker, fuck, shit!” And Miranda replies, “there’s a shit mother fucker fuck shit situation?”

I can’t recall what the context was, certainly nothing as dire as your country re-electing a racist sexist wannabe dictator. Probably like, a brunch scheduling conflict, lucky them… Anyway, this line has been echoing in my head since the US election concluded last week because my friends, indeed:

There is a shit mother fucker fuck shit situation.

So, I made a tarot spread because that’s what I do (this one is sort of a spiritual descendent of the WTF Tarot Spread created by Interrobang Tarot in 2016).

Let’s try it together, using the Hayworth Tarot, and you can try it on your own, too. You don’t have to use it specifically to process the election, either! That’s what I’m focused on today, but you could try this for any shit mother fucker fuck shit situation you find exploding around you.

To clarify what happened (or the first SHIT, if you like) I have the Two of Pentacles. The imagery in this deck shows two hands emerging from clouds, or maybe sand. The Hands exist within a void, without the context of the rest of the body. The Pentacles themselves appear to be black holes, or even wounds within the hands. Perhaps this is projecting too much of my personal response to the election on to the cards, but I can’t help but read this as people harming themselves without the full context of what they’re doing.

As an example, exit polls showed the main reason voters chose Trump was the economy. But why on earth does anyone believe that he will actually help the economy? The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan non-profit organization, ran an analysis before the election and projected that Trump’s proposed policies would increase the national debt more than Harris’s. And 23 Nobel Prize winning economists signed a letter endorsing Harris, stating Trump’s policies would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.”

I rarely use clarifiers these days but I felt like I was missing something with the Two of Pentacles so I pulled another card to go along with this and got the Three of Swords. This confirms the direction I was already going in my interpretation. People harming themselves without the full context of their choices.

The Three of Swords also shows that pain was a big factor in how the election panned out. Not to give too much credence to the economic argument, but it’s one thing to see oh hey this economist endorses Harris and it’s another thing to see oh hey I can’t afford groceries and child care. So I’m trying to be generous and say maybe some of this pain is justified.

Isolation is a key word that often gets thrown around with the Three of Swords and I think that’s applicable here, too, on multiple levels. First, the isolation of only voting on one issue. I can’t remember where, but I saw a post on social media alluding to this by saying “I hope you enjoy your eggs being ten cents cheaper while your girlfriend is dying of sepsis.”

And on a broader level, isolation already has been and continues to be a huge issue in American society. It’s easy to see your own problems. Maybe not so easy to imagine what things are like for people of a different gender or age or skin color or tax bracket.

So, what happened? People voted out of pain and isolation and maybe without the full context of what their vote would mean.

The Seven of Wands gives consideration to who or what carries blame in this situation. You know, I normally don’t like blame. It’s not a great energy. And this is an interesting card to see here because the message that comes to me with it is “blame itself is to blame.” White people blaming immigrants and/or people of color for the ills of this country. Leftists blaming liberals. Liberals blaming leftists. And on, and on, and ON. If there’s one thing we don’t have a shortage of in this country it’s blame flying in every god damn direction.

Look, I’m not immune to this. It feels good to blame someone or something. And it’s not always entirely inaccurate. We do need to identify the root causes of problems in order to fix them, right? But perhaps the Seven of Wands is a reminder that this process isn’t always so simple. There are many factors, coming from many directions. Not a dissimilar message from the traditional interpretation of the Two of Pentacles.

For advice on processing my initial reaction here I have Justice. This deck has an unnerving illustration for this card, but it feels spot on in this situation. One of the concepts I associate most closely with Justice is Integrity. And a phrase that has been thrown around a lot the past few years is Election Integrity. And as far as we can ascertain so far, there was not widespread ‘election interference’ at play here.

Of course, the system itself is extremely fucked up. The electoral college is bullshit. Gerrymandering is bullshit. There’s all kinds of voter intimidation and measures that make it more difficult for people to vote. We should have ranked choice voting. And on and on. I’m not saying our system itself has actual integrity.

But in theory, this election was won within the realm of “integrity” in our current political system, no matter how broken that system is.

That is unnerving. It’s like this menacing specter on the ceiling coming toward you with a knife and knowing others in your country fully and willingly opened the door to invite it in. It didn’t have to sneak in. It was welcomed by half the population. This card is supposed to help me process my initial reaction, and I guess in a way having that clarity that other people willingly chose this, as unsettling as it is, does inform how I will move forward.

On that note, the Hanged Man offers insight on planning for the future. The idea that comes to me here is avoiding falling into the default energy that may be expected of me/us. I recently came across this quote:

“The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.” -Daniel Hunter

The Hanged Man makes me think I may have to be more liminal than ever. To take a broader perspective, which is certainly easier said than done. Natalie Wynn summed this sentiment up on a recent episode of Conspirituality (recorded before the election but still relevant, perhaps even moreso now):

“Everyone has the potential to feel like something uniquely apocalyptic is happening…like some unspeakable doom is imminent. That seems to be a common feeling people are susceptible to… You can go back to a lot of points in history and if you were there and didn’t know how it turned out it would seem apocalyptic…. Part of what’s scary about the present moment is you don’t know how it’s going to end and you put nightmares into that uncertainty…. taking a ‘zoomed out’ view of things is helpful in understanding that you are not some unique sufferer… there’s a difference between productive fear and unproductive fear and I’m trying to train myself to understand that difference.”

That zoomed out view is the realm of the Hanged Man, and I’m going to attempt to find some (any, even a tiny scrap) of comfort within that discomfort as we face whatever comes next.

Take care of yourself, and take care of others. Until we meet again…

Lately I have felt somewhat pathless. This isn’t new for me; over the years I’ve often felt like I’m bushwhacking through the wilderness to create my life. Sometimes it is quite the adventure, other times it feels exhausting, lately it feels like I’ve stopped creating the path altogether and simply holed up in a hideaway.

This year has been brutal on a personal level, as I cared for my mom through a horrific illness, sat by her side as she passed away, and now carrying that grief for the rest of my life. Of course, it has also been an unbearable year on a collective level, you don’t need me to tell you about that.

So yeah…between my personal sorrow and the collective anguish I have felt pretty adrift. To some degree I’ve accepted this. I’m not pressuring myself to make huge strides during a tender time. But I do find myself wishing I had some type of path, even if I could only see the next step.

(Side story: a few weeks ago I went to re-order the cards in my personal copy of the Spacious Tarot and discovered my deck was missing the Chariot but had two copies of the Moon. This very much felt like a metaphor for my life.)

These thoughts have already been with me, and today I randomly thumbed through the guidebook for the Gaian Tarot (one of the best tarot guidebooks ever written in my assessment) and was drawn to this spread, created by Carolyn Cushing. There’s a twist here in the way you divide the deck for the reading, described in the graphic below:

For my path, I have the Ace of Pentacles. This is equal parts fascinating and frustrating as instead of a clearly defined path, there’s infinite paths available to me here. As I wrote in the guidebook for this deck, “contained within is the entire spectrum of the suit of pentacles. Solid, healthy things can grow from here as you tend to this seed.”

In a way, this is an affirmation of what I said earlier about not necessarily pressuring myself to find a specific path, just a better sense of direction. And perhaps I can start by assessing my material realm (represented by the suit of pentacles).

I’ve already been doing this to some extent. I’m slowly returning to yoga. Been walking daily. Going on the occasional bike ride. Perhaps one reason this card came up is to remind me to give myself credit for what I’m already doing. To trust that these small actions are building a foundation.

The bigger questions of how to exist in this world feel too huge to grapple with right now. But the Ace of Pentacles affirms that even grappling with smaller questions of what to have for lunch and how to find my way into downward dog are part of the path.

Let me try to phrase this simply. At this time my path is: being in my body. Not looking too far ahead. Observing new developments in my energy and tending to them in each moment. Letting potential reveal itself at its own pace instead of trying to force it.

For my practice, Nine of Pentacles. We have a manicured, potted tree in a walled garden. There’s similar vibes to previous card here. I’m invited to practices of (for lack of a less cliché term) self-care. There have been times in my life where my self-care game is strong. I will admit that lately I’ve been kind of like… what’s the point?

The world is a cruel, dark place. I have so much privilege to even have the potential of self-care and although I’m grateful for that it also makes self-care seem… trite. What kind of person would I be to wall myself up in my own little world, and take care of my own little self, while everything around me crumbles?

But of course I know that on the other hand, not taking care of myself does not make the world crumble less. And it makes me less resilient when it comes to doing anything (even something tiny) to partake in forms of healing. I’m never going to be able to ~*save the world*~. But I can’t even make little contributions here and there if I’m stuck in freeze mode.

Siiiiiigh. All things I’ve thought about before, but sometimes you have to learn the same lessons over and over again, ya know?

So. My practice is to remind myself (again) that self-care is in fact not trite. I need to become more resilient internally so that I can be a part of building external resilience. I need to allow myself to accept any kind of stability and protection available to me if I want to offer any form of stability and protection to others. Easier said than done but okayyyyy.

And my posture, Guardian (Queen) of Cups. This is very sweet because I’ve long thought of this card as representing the best version of me (Cancer Sun, INFP, calm cool mature healer vibes). But lately I feel adrift from her. Life has made me a lot more bitter and cynical the past few years.

It actually low-key breaks my heart seeing this card and yearning so much to reconnect with that part of myself. Last week I re-shared the free Foundational Tarot course I created five years ago. I went back and listened to part of the recordings and I was like “wait, that’s… me? She seems so sweet and calm and spiritually assured.”

I’ll never be who I was five years ago, but maybe I can continue to reclaim some of those traits. I think to some extent, I’ve developed an unconscious belief that if I’m on-guard and cynical and jaded there’s less of a chance that life can harm me. But life can harm you no matter what. Maybe my inner Guardian of Cups is ready to start peeking through just a little bit by bit.

I could go on but tbh the rest is probably better to stay between me and my (non-existent but I’m looking for one) therapist. 🙂

I hope you will try this spread for yourself as I think it is a quite good one.

In December of 2021, I downloaded an app called WOMBO and used it to generate some tarot cards.

AI generated art was still a novelty at the time. In fact, when I first shared this image on my Instagram Stories almost three years ago, many people replied to me saying they’d never seen AI tarot art before.

Ah, we were such sweet summer children back then, weren’t we?

I don’t need to tell you that since then the topic has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds, not just in the art and tarot worlds, but everywhere. In every industry. In every corner of humanity. You can’t escape hearing about it. In fact, I’m kind of tired of hearing about it, and don’t even really want to talk about it. But…

Not long ago I was lurking on threads (a treacherous habit) and a post came up referring to some drama between two people I don’t know. Tarot Reader A declared they were unfollowing Tarot Reader B because Tarot Reader B admitted to using ChatGPT to conduct personal readings. The responses were mostly in support of Tarot Reader A and throwing shade towards Tarot Reader B.

So while AI has been a hot topic for a while, it feels more and more like we’re reaching the point where you have to declare your stance on this. Siiiiigh.

Declaring my stance on AI & Tarot
The truth is, I don’t have a simple stance on this, at least not yet. Overall my feelings on AI lean towards the negative side, but not to the extent that I would police someone else for experimenting with it. The aforementioned interaction on threads actually really rubbed me the wrong way. These are new, wild and mind-blowing tool. Of course people are going to be curious and want to see how it fits into their tarot practice.

It’s interesting that some of the same folks who shout from the rooftops that there are no rules in tarot will turn around and shun you from the group for entering a prompt into ChatGPT.

I think we can critique AI tools/models/programs without demonizing the actual human beings experimenting with them? For example, one of the main criticisms of AI is the amount of energy, water, electricity it takes to maintain these systems; and how this can accelerate climate change and other environmental issues. This is a valid concern and very much worth talking about.

But the same concern applies to, I dunno…buying fast fashion, flying on airplanes (or riding in cars for that matter), eating factory farmed meat, and so on. I am concerned about all of these things, yet I would never get on threads and blast an individual person for participating in them.

Since the fateful day I used AI to engineer the imagery above, my personal use of AI has been pretty limited. I have never used AI to interpret a spread or do any type of tarot reading. I haven’t messed around with making any further imagery. Haven’t used it in my writing at all, ever.

I HAVE used ChatGPT to generate ideas for a tarot related project I was working on – mostly because I wanted to see how it would relate to the ideas I’d already generated in my own brain. I’ve also asked it some questions about tarot history, but that was more as an experiment to see if it would answer correctly. And, unrelated, but I have also used it to generate some silly little poems about my pets.

I know tarot readers (who I consider to be ethical and level-headed people) who regularly use AI to generate spread ideas, suggest alternate interpretations, create tarot inspired journaling prompts and more. If that serves you, you do you!

When I consider why *I* haven’t utilized AI more in my tarot practice, the typical critiques do apply. I don’t like the environmental implications, I don’t like the pilfering of intellectual property, yadda yadda yadda. But more than that, I’ve come to realize AI just doesn’t really align with why I want to use tarot to begin with.

In general, I’m not interested in telling anyone else what is right or wrong. I do enjoy sharing MY thought process from time to time on why I think something is right or wrong, but opinions are like assholes, as they say. You’re an adult (presumably) and possess your own unique human intelligence (presumably, unless you are a bot scraping my writing to feed AI models, in which case, SCRAM!). Do as you will.

Why do I use tarot?
This is the deeper question at work here, I think. Why you use tarot will have a lot of influence over whether or not AI has any place in your practice. Here are some of the first things that come to mind when I consider why I use tarot.

To tap into ALL aspects of my intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence models contain knowledge, more knowledge than any human brain could ever possibly hold or access. Cool. But this is only one form of intelligence. For me, reading tarot is about more than just dredging up knowledge. It’s about the sensations in my body when I see a card. It’s about the ever-shifting state of my brain chemistry and how that reacts to a spread. It’s about the current fluctuations of my emotional landscape and how that emanates as I gaze at an image.

To my assessment, these are uniquely human types of intelligence. One of the reasons I love tarot is that it reminds me how special it is to be a human being! Through a lovely synchronicity, as I was writing this piece I came across a post Benebell Wen recently shared on social media where she said:

“Do you have a skill that AI cannot replicate? Such as emotional intelligence, empathy, nunchi 눈치. Original ideation, truly novel ideas, creative leaps that sidestep logic and rationalism. All that leans into the intuitive, feeling, and sensory. Many fear what AI means for their jobs. But the mystic who is prepared to adapt will be fine.”

And while we’re mentioning her, she’s shared many astute, thorough and thought-provoking observations on AI over the years (with much more depth and breadth than I’m capable of) and you should definitely check out her posts if you haven’t already.

A side note… another phenomenon I’ve observed when I use AI tools myself is I find myself feeling some type of pride or ownership over the things I used AI to generate. Like, that Star image above. I like it! I think it’s pretty! It gives me a nice feeling. And yes, at the time the AI spat it out I felt proud. Even though I didn’t actually do anything? It’s not really my creation? I just entered a prompt into a computer.

I’m weary of AI giving me a false sense that I’m being creative or that I’ve produced something meaningful. I’ve tried to remain fairly neutral here but one thing that gives me the ick big time is using AI in my writing. Don’t get it twisted, I’m not shitting on people who use AI for editing or proofreading or whatever.

Writing is hard. Excruciating sometimes. But it gives me a feeling like nothing else does. I could have had AI write this entire damn post for me and it probably would have been more cohesive. But that goes against the entire role writing serves in my life. Writing is self-expression and catharsis. I know this is how many visual artists feel about image-generating AI.

To connect with other humans

It delights me to see how an occultist 100 years ago interpreted a card compared to how someone I follow on social media interprets a card today. It is a joy to try tarot spreads that other people thoughtfully crafted. It’s wonderful to look at an image and know an actual artist put effort and intention into its creation. It’s an honor to go to another reader and have them pull cards for me and share a message shaped by their individual energy.

If I’m talking to another reader about a card and they see it in a different way than I do, I can ask them, why? Did you read that interpretation in a certain book, or is there something about the imagery that sparked it for you, or just a random intuitive ping, or…? And they can answer, with specificity.

Whereas if I’m ‘talking’ to ChatGPT there’s a lot more shadiness about sources. As research for this post, I asked it for an interpretation of the Magician from the Wild Unknown Tarot. As many of you know, some years ago I wrote a series of blog posts sharing my personal interpretations on this deck and at their peak those posts were receiving 70,000+ hits per month. Interestingly, the response AI generated shared quite a few similarities with my post. Huh. I wonder why.

I then asked it to share sources for its interpretation. It gave me an answer which to its credit did list a few specific sources (the official Wild Unknown guidebook and Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot) and also included a vague allusion to sourcing from “modern tarot readers and practitioners.” Wait…is that…me? Probably, but the world will never know. And perhaps the next generation of tarot readers learning with this deck will default to AI instead of finding my website and never know that my ideas shaped the results AI churns out.

To expand my consciousness & imagination

My favorite thing about tarot is when the messages it inspires come from somewhere deep, weird and unfathomable within my own psyche. I guess one could argue that messages generated by AI also come from somewhere weird and unfathomable. But it hits different, you know?

I’m a mystic at heart, and I love tarot the most when it facilitates a connection to the mysteries of Being. I’ve always been less about wanting a specific answer from tarot and more about seeking a shift in consciousness from tarot.

Frankly, there’s already enough technology in my life that in theory could create more space for imagination but in reality serves as a distraction, a downer or a temporary dopamine hit. I’m suspicious that AI is just the newest (and perhaps biggest) technological innovation to fit into this category.

The vibe AI gives me is 7 of Cups-y. Like ‘ooh, wow, bewildering! So many possibilities! Some very bad and scary but some very cool!’ And that’s not really the vibe I want to be in for my tarot practice or for my life. I’m more about being in the vibe of the Magician, or the High Priestess.

Hopefully I’ve made it clear that when it comes to my little nook of tarot, I’m not interested in telling anyone else what to do. But if you’re a fellow tarot reader grappling with this question I do think there’s value inquiring why you use tarot (and your answers might be very different than mine) and considering how AI tools fit in, or don’t fit in, with your answers.

Accepting the inevitable
It’s likely that no matter how my personal thoughts and feelings on AI evolve, it isn’t going anywhere. It’s only going to get more powerful and infiltrate more and more of our daily lives.

I have a pattern of being critical of new technology. I was one of the last people I knew to get a smart phone. I spent many years wishing smart phones would go away before I caved and got one. Before I joined the cult, I remember being at dinner with a group of friends and looking around and everyone at the table was in their own little world looking at their phone. I swore that would never be me, but now I’m just another person at the table entranced by their silly little screen. I don’t like this, and I do still sometimes fantasize about throwing my phone into a volcano, but I haven’t done that yet.

When it comes to AI, I suppose I’m trying to be, as Benebell put it, a “mystic who is prepared to adapt.” For now, my version of adapting looks like keeping a safe distance from AI, but not wasting too much energy raging against it.

There’s something about a three card tarot spread. Layers to digest, yet not at all overwhelming. So, that’s what I come bearing today. Another three card spread. Not a particularly revolutionary one, but one that came to me on a walk today and seems appropriate for the moment. Because there’s an eclipse happening, or so the astrology girlies tell me, and eclipses can be a time for moving things in and out of your life.

The positions go like this: carry, bury, shovel. And in case that merits expansion…

Carry: what should you bring forward, what still serves you, what is worth the effort to sustain.

Bury: what should you release, what must go, what is taking up more energy than it is worth.

Shovel: because letting go isn’t easy, this card suggests a tool/resource/mindset/key that may assist you in the necessary burying.

I’ll give it a test drive for myself – maybe some of the messages will resonate for you, as well – using the Spolia Tarot.

Well, fuck. I was going to try to remain stoic today and I’m already about to cry as soon as the cards come out.

For what I should carry forward, I have the Hierophant. This is quite the synchronicity as just before I started writing this, I had a long think about how thoroughly I’ve abandoned many of my spiritual practices. I used to meditate, don’t do that anymore. I used to read poetry or spiritual texts most days, don’t do that any more. I used to have other such small rituals that helped me through this deranged reality we find ourselves in, but I haven’t engaged with them in a long time.

So perhaps for me this card isn’t exactly about carrying something forward but about picking something up once again. I’ve fallen into this pattern of not engaging in spiritual practice because I feel too despondent to do so. But then there’s nothing to support me through the despondency.

I guess I wouldn’t go so far as saying this is a universal truth for ALL human beings, but for many of us (myself included) we need rituals. We need activities that feel sacred, even in small ways, that help us feel connected to… something.

In the guidebook for the Spolia Tarot, Jessa Crispin writes of the Hierophant: “this card calls us to be the highest version of ourselves and to be focused on the wider world and not just our small, insignificant selves.”

It ties in perfectly to my next card, the Five of Cups. My first impression was this tells me to bury my sorrow and despondency. But in light of the Hierophant, I think it asks me to bury the isolation that accompany these, not the emotions themselves. Grief can be a lonely thing. Grief is intensely personal, manifesting in different ways for each of us, and even then manifesting in different ways from moment to moment.

Grief can make you feel ‘small and insignificant’ because it threatens to swallow you whole yet it is invisible to everyone else. But this is a trick. The isolation is a lie. Because although it is true that the exact flavor and shape of YOUR grief is unique to you, grief itself is a universal human experience.

I can see that connection between the Hierophant and the Five of Cups here. Maybe there’s an invitation for me here to explore rituals that might help me connect my individual grief to the grief of humanity (wow, that’s not grandiose at all). This is leading me down many rabbit holes of thought to explore further on my own.

Of course for the shovel I have the Ten of Cups. A reminder that you’re never alone even when you feel alone. That is how you release or ‘bury’ isolation, by simply opening to connection. Or, maybe even being okay feeling both at once. No one else can understand your specific emotions, but they can have empathy. And the same is true the other way around. I can’t know the exact experience of someone else’s pain, but I can offer them compassion.

In essence, these cards invite me to reconnect to ritual. Even in small ways. Not sure I have an elaborate ceremony in me at the moment, but even sitting quietly with a cup of tea can be a ritual. And the purpose of ritual is to remember I am part of something greater than just myself. My ancestors have known sorrow, my contemporaries have known sorrow, sorrow is part of the whole of existence. In that way, what isolates me is also what connects me.

Thank you for being here. If you try the spread for yourself, let me know how it goes?

I’m back in my office for the first time since April, trying to write for the first time since my mom died. I was living with her part time these past few months, helping take care of her. That’s why I haven’t been around in a while, and why my past few posts vaguely alluded to difficult times. My mom had ALS, a cruel disease. She passed away July 6. It still doesn’t feel real.

So, there’s the facts. I want to write about all the spiritual lessons my mom taught me, but I don’t know how. I’m not sure I’m ready. She believed in God, but she didn’t believe God controlled everything. She experienced God as a loving presence guiding you, crying with you during dark times and cheering you on during good times.

I want to talk about how brave she was, even though in the months before her passing she wrote me a note (because this disease took away her ability to speak) about how it’s actually kind of annoying when people say someone going through a terrible illness is brave. But there’s no other way to say it, she WAS brave. She was scared, but she kept going. She tried to keep life as normal as possible for as long as possible.

And I want to convey the empathy she had for all of humanity even as she went through something so devastating. As the crisis continued in Gaza, she donated to Doctors Without Borders and told me how lucky she felt compared to how much others are suffering.

I want to talk about what an honor it was to spend so much time with her these past few months, but also how it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Don’t know how to describe that either, though.

I don’t have the words for any of this. I’m still processing. I’ll probably still be processing for months, years, the rest of my life – however long that may be. That’s something this experience reminded me of – none of us know how long we have.

I want to tell you that I miss writing about tarot, and I’ll be doing that again soon. Throughout this massive life event, I have continued to turn to tarot. Even when I’m not physically pulling cards, I am connecting them to my inner and outer life. And that, for me, has always been one of the greatest appeals of tarot: it gives us something to contextualize our personal lived experiences within the greater web of existence.

I’m not sure what else to say. Thank you for being here and I’ll talk to you again before long.

”We make it comfortable and safe when we assure ourselves that Death means a wonderful liberation of our best qualities. Death does come easily to the person who truly has opened the heart. But most of us have not gone through these deep experiences of release and connection. And while death liberates, it also frightens.

To fully open the heart, we must embrace death – not as an idea but as an experience. …We cannot embrace Death only to get the good stuff afterward. We must love Death and join with it.” -Rachel Pollack, Forest of Souls

“And if Death spoke: ‘I am the one with whom you share your life – if you refuse this, you will not be living in the truth. I make destruction a process of extreme splendor. I wait for life to display its most supreme beauty, that is when I appear to eliminate it with the same beauty. What immeasurable joy! My destruction opens the way to creation.” – Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot

“All loss needs to be honored through engagement with grief. Besides sadness, there can be anger, shock, disappointment, regret, confusion, numbness, guilt, blame, yearning, gratitude…these can shift from minute to minute. We can have multiple conflicting feelings at the same time as we attempt to process everything that a loss encompasses.” – Dreya Blume, Tarot for Transformation

“Death is always in the second act of the story, not the last. It is not even the final trump in the second act.” -Robert M Place

Start writing… that’s what the prompt on the screen says. I’m trying, okay? I’m in my office listening to lo-fi beats. Sun pouring in, trees in bloom outside. A fly came in the window and my cat is chasing it around. There’s so much pain in my heart, I want to hide from the world. But I’m trying to show up. So that’s an abridged version of where I’m at, let’s pull some cards (using the Spacious Tarot) and see where it takes us.

The Sun reversed. Joy is there, but difficult to reach. A few months ago I wrote a post about gratitarot (gratitude + tarot). Things were already rough in my life at the time, and it’s only gotten harder since then, and I know it’s going to get harder still. But gratitude is still so important.

Gratitude is a lifeline, I truly believe this. I have witnessed people going through things far more horrific than what I’m facing who are still tapping into gratitude. It’s something pretty remarkable about the human psyche that we are able to do this.

I got on a tangent about gratitude but the word I initially used was joy. And how it’s difficult to reach. Sorrow feels more prominent. But then I remembered something else I wrote about the Sun all those years ago:

Joy is a more potent word than happiness, because true joy can contain happiness AND sorrow. True joy is about being fully present for all aspects of life, about letting yourself fully feel the radiant life force that infuses you, and knowing this is the same energy that infuses the entire universe.

In a way, the Sun reversed is also an accurate metaphor for how I feel “trying to show up” in my professional life lately. I want to put out my usual content about tarot history, spreads, tips and so on. But it feels weird and hard to do that with what I’m going through. So then I think, well, I can write about what I’m going through. But I can’t really do that because it involves other people who deserve their own privacy. So then I try to put my personal stuff aside and just focus on tarot but then I feel disingenuous?! So then I end up here, vaguely alluding to things but not going into any details which I’m sure is obnoxious for anyone who reads this so I’m sorry. Siiiigh.

ANYWAY… let’s turn to a second card. THE DEVIL? I’m not typically one to want to shove a card right back in the deck, but I had a moment just now. It was a fleeting moment because now I’m intrigued by the parallels in the imagery. The Devil also has a ball of light on the horizon and I’m picturing moving through that shadowy landscape and emerging into a field of sunflowers. Dark moments feel like they’re going to last forever, but things can and do shift.

At the same time, I appreciate that the Devil gives space to acknowledge the shittiness of a situation. Obviously I’m all for gratitude and finding shifts and blah blah blah. But sometimes you just need to say to yourself, or to someone else, you know what? What’s happening is abysmal. There can be some relief from suffering just by validating the suffering.

Next, the Four of Wands is here. This feels like a reminder that we are all really just out here in this world doing the best we can under the circumstances. Yes, I have my own struggles. And I know you have yours. Everyone I interact with lately has been going through some type of immensely stressful stuff on a personal level. And then there’s everything happening globally. It’s A LOT.

There’s no perfect way to react. There’s no easy way to navigate these times. But this card reminds us all: we are all doing the best we can. And as the cliché goes, your best is different in every moment. It is dynamic. All we can do is be present with ourselves + each other and try to adapt as things unfold. Be extra patient with yourself and your people. Simply continuing to show up is an enormous accomplishment.

Thank you for being here.

Sometimes I encounter a tarot book and I think “wow, we really need more of this.” That was my reaction when I heard about Theresa Reed’s latest, The Cards You’re Dealt: How to Deal When Life Gets Real. Here, card meanings and activities are tailored for navigating the biggest challenges in life: grief, loss, caretaking and other destabilizing events.

Could this release have been more perfectly timed? I don’t think so.

Theresa’s signature blend of directness and empathy is what makes this book special. She talks about topics that many of us shirk away from with directness and clarity. At the same time, her tone is compassionate and centered. She knows who she is as a tarot reader and has years of experience to back it up, yet never presents her perspectives as THE way, but A way.

There’s a particular spread in the book that called out to me, so I want to try it for myself and share it with you here today. Theresa writes:

Buddha recommended meditating or reciting the Five Remembrances, also known as Upajjhatthana Sutta, to remember that life is precious and finite. This practice helps alleviate grasping and attachment. Here is one version of these remembrances:

I am of the nature to grow old; there is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health; there is no way to escape having ill health.

I am of the nature to die; there is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My deeds are my closest companions. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.

I took the liberty of creating a graphic to show Theresa’s spread based on this concept.

Let’s try it. As usual, I’m pulling cards for myself but maybe you’ll find something that resonates with you. And I hope you’ll be inspired to do the spread for yourself, too. I’m gonna use a deck which has been gathering dust for far too long, the Prisma Visions Tarot.

The Tower reversed suggests what I need to know about aging and my immediate thought was this: aging doesn’t have to be bad or scary. I think sometimes we focus on the wrong fears around aging. Like, wrinkles aren’t actually scary. Gray hair isn’t scary. Sure, some parts of aging ARE scary. Organs and joints and other body parts degenerating or losing function, THAT is scary. But so much of what we think about when we think about aging really… isn’t?

Who benefits from aging being viewed as scary? Capitalism, baby. Cuz corporations can sell us endless serums and injections and shapewear and whatever the hell else. I mean, I love my skincare routine as much as the next American Elder Millennial but come on.

I think the Tower also shows the liberation that comes with aging. For me, the older I get the less fucks I have to give about things that concerned me more when I was younger. I hope this will be a continuing trajectory.

Justice reveals what I need to know about health. I have to admit, this does not immediately click for me. The imagery in this deck leans heavily into the ‘cause and effect’ interpretation: a serpent bites a hand, yet this results in the serpent being stabbed by the dagger the hand holds.

I acknowledge there is some element of cause and effect with health: certain lifestyle choices are linked to certain ailments, blah blah. But this gets complicated quickly. Not everyone has access to ‘healthy lifestyle choices’. We can’t all afford the best food, we don’t all have the luxury of low stress, and so on.

Then there’s the fact that sometimes even if you do everything “right”, even if you make the best choices you can, this does not guarantee good health. This leads me to consider the theme of impartiality that is also commonly attributed to Justice. Perhaps that is relevant here. Health issues don’t always arise for a discernible reason. There isn’t always a clear cause. Sometimes shit just happens.

The Six of Pentacles shows up for what I need to know about dying. This card can represent the resources we have and how those are distributed. In this deck, one person passes a coin to another. In a way, isn’t that kind of what dying is? I can’t take up resources forever. Eventually, I return to the soil so that new life can access the bounty of this universe.

It also reminds me all life is made of the same stuff. Always has been and always will be. Like, the water molecules inside me right now could be more than 4.6 billion years old. Someday in the future the chemical components that currently make me could be in a flower or a bear or a new planet.

I pulled the Ace of Chalices for what I need to know about loss. This is a beautiful card. And I hate to say it because it sounds so trite, but maybe it is reminding me that loss can be beautiful. If I’m feeling loss, it is because I cared deeply about someone or something. It’s been said a million times that the only way not to experience loss is not to experience connection. Loss and connection flow from the same spring. They are both deep, primal emotions and they cannot be separated.

What do I need to know about karma? DEATH. Let’s take a moment to appreciate that I had Death AND the Tower show up in this reading. Lucky me.

Irreverence aside, it is interesting considering a card that represents karma when earlier in this reading, when talking about Justice, I more or less said I don’t believe in karma. I suppose I should clarify. I don’t think it it impossible that on some cosmic level that transcends lifetimes, “my deeds are the ground on which I stand.” In fact, I actually kind of like this idea.

I guess what I don’t resonate with is the notion that I can completely understand or control my karma, or that I will see it play out in this lifetime. And in that way, maybe the Death card makes a lot of sense here, because it can be a card of letting go. All I can do is try to live this life with as much integrity as I can muster in each moment. What happens from there isn’t up to me.

This whole concept of meditating on the Five Remembrances was described as a way to “alleviate grasping and attachment.” And that is exactly what the Death card is about.

Wow! What an interesting and illuminating spread. I extend my gratitude to Theresa Reed for creating this.

And thanks to YOU for being here. Let me know what you think?

Carrie