And she can read destinies!

I’ve been reading Crystal for years, and I always found her fascinating. Lately, we’ve been emailing back and forth quite a bit, and are developing what looks to me to be a serious sort of valuable friendship. I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been sort of down and stressed out lately, and she sent me the nicest email I’ve ever received, and mentioned which tarot card I remind her of. “Did you know”, she asked me, “I can read tarot cards?” I replied: “I did *not* know that! Did you know that I am fascinated by tarot cards? And that I’ve been carrying a deck around with me everywhere I go for the past week, because I’ve been meaning to do a reading for myself for forever, and I just keep not having time? Your mention of it prompted me to finally put out a spread here on a study table in the Harvard University library.”

Crystal replied that I should write about that, so here I am. It’s quite quiet here… I worry about typing too loudly. The room I’m in has large four-person tables. I sat at the only empty one when I came in, but shortly thereafter (after my spread was already out) a girl sat down opposite me. She seems nice, and is reading Hume’s Treatise. An undergrad in a philosophy course, I’d guess. Ah, she just woke up, and smiled at me. She gave an interested glance at my cards when she sat. No one else seems to have noticed.

(This entry is about tarot cards, and how they’re valuable to me, and what a specific spread might mean to me. No, I don’t believe in supernatural forces, but yes, I believe that tarot cards are valuable.)

I’m talking to Savannah about my spread. It’s been *forever* since I’ve done a reading. It goes like this:

Knight of Pentacles
Crossed by Justice
Past: Eight of Cups
Future: Four of Cups
Above: Ace of Swords
Below: Queen of Pentacles
House: Queen of Swords
Answer: Three of Wands
Savior: Knight of Swords
End: The Sun

Briefly: I was surprised by the bored-looking Knight of Pentacles, because I’m so busy and full of crap to do. Savannah’s insight was that I’m internally narrowly focused. The coin is physical stuff: “is this (giant pile of stuff I have to do) all there is? Lame.” Crossed by Justice. Easy: I gotta find me some balance. Emotional, spiritual, whatever you want to call it.

Ace of swords is above — that’s how I see myself. Badass and in rigid control. It’s a giant hand holding a giant sword straight up in the sky. The sword is things that I do: philosophy, comic opera, etc. It’s a big one because hey, I’ve got a lot of that right now. This card in this position means I see myself as powerful and in control over it. That’s an overstatement, but not in the important way — the real key, I think, is the contrast with the Queen of Pentacles, which is below.

She’s an old friend by now. Feminine, nurturing. Motherly. Early last fall, pretty much all of my spreads were about getting in touch with my feminine side. Balance, care, focused on people instead of actions, etc. It’s a lesson I’ve learned (yes, tarot has caused me to grow and mature, and that’s why I love it), but yes, it’s worth a reminder. I’ve been treating emotions at best as things to appreciate and at worst as obstacles — I’ve forgotten, at some level, that emotions can and often should be things to be embraced and used. More to come.

In my past, I walk away from eight cups, holding a wand. It’s been long-established that wands represent academia for me. And in my future, if I continue as I am now, I sit pensively with three cups in front of me and another being offered to me by the hand of God.

I think they’re women. Generally, love. I sort of turned my back on the whole idea of being in love when I started grad school. Now I’m theoretically open to the possibility, but the cups that are currently sitting in front of me all failed to excite me. I’m so wrapped up in other things, now that odds are, if Fate sticks the cup of my dreams into my face, I won’t even notice. Especially since I’m putting my Queen of Pentacles in the back seat.
Ok, so then I have this funky “House” position where the cards sort of tells me where I see myself — how I’m situated. It’s confusing. But the card is the Queen of Swords.

You might think that the Queen of Swords represents just the sort of synthesis I need — I had a sword on the top and a queen on the bottom. But I’m not sure she’s going to do the trick. She’s, like, not very womanly. If my problem has to do with failing to appreciate and use and interalize my emotions, the Queen of Swords will not make things better. Which brings us to the Answer: the three of wands. A man looks out over… something. An ocean? A desert? Big and empty-looking, that’s all we know. From this card I take the simple message that there’s more to life than the wands we know and are compfortable with, even when we can’t see it. Sometimes it’s still worth looking.
The next card is where the real fun lies. My Salvation card is the Knight of Swords.

The Knight is the only figure in my entire spread how has a visible face with a non-neutral expression on it. The Knight is the only instance of passion in my spread. He is wielding his sword, and he is charging forward, and his emotions and his actions and goals and pursuits are well-aligned, and each helps the other. He is a much better synthesis than the Queen was.

Check out that horse, too. Pretty badass. Compare it to the black horse that the Knight of Pentacles, where I started out, is riding. Well, maybe riding is an overstatement. He’s sitting on it.

The white horse is being used WAY better. I look at the horse as a foundational part of myself with respect to emotions. My character traits, my emotional dispositions — basically, the kind of person I am. It’s possible to take two very different sorts of attitudes toward things like this: according to the passive attitude, we have the kind of person we are (and we just have to live with it) and we take that and figure out what we can do with it. That’s what the black horse is like.

But on a more active conception, we recognize that our traits are a part of us — that we are in some control over what they’re like and what they help us do. The kind of person that I am includes many traits that can be used to further my interests or not. This is the white horse. The Knight of Pentacles would be no worse off without his horse. The white horse is very valuable to the Knight of Swords.

It’s the difference between “this horse is where I am, now what?” and “what can I do with this horse? how can it help me pursue what’s important?”.

I’m in control, to some extent, over what sort of person I am, and how passionate I am about the things I care about. I could decide to get passionate about Yeomen. Or about particular women.

mineownaardvarks: Do you think everything in here ties in together? Does the horse thing have to do with the cup thing?
Jolly Utter: Yeah, it does.

Jolly Utter: The knight of swords is a better synthesis of stuff with emotions than the queen is. Sure, she’s female and has a sword, but she’s a super-masculine woman, and her sword is just sitting there, not doing any good. Much as she is.
Jolly Utter: The knight, on the other hand, has his passion. He’s very masculine, but not in the emotion-stifling way.
Jolly Utter: (A horse is way better than a thrown.)
Jolly Utter: (Is that how you spell that word?)
mineownaardvarks: Throne. :-)I don’t know if I’ve ever written the word “throne” before. I knew my way didn’t look right, but I apparently wasn’t sure.

The short version of the lesson from these cards, I think, is that I should remember that I may be better off caring more. Caring is dangerous, because hey, sometimes it hurts. But I’m missing out on joy, I think, by swinging too far in the other direction. I should allow myself to emotionally invest more in the things that I care about. Good things may come if I do. At the end of the path the cards lay out for me lies The Sun.