First, a question: does one tarot reading mean anything at a moment like this?
Generally speaking, a tarot reading is only interesting to the people involved.
That said…
Tarot is a window into the vast realm of the collective unconscious, the place of the mythic imagination where symbolism is a language that everyone can understand and anything is real if it has meaning.
Tarot has a way of blending the collective and the individual, taking the universal and making it personal.
And then (here’s the magic I love best): once you make these big, timeless ideas your own, you’re ready to take that inner transformation and make it manifest so you can do your share of the work that will renew the world.
But before all that fabulous, transformative outer work, there’s someone pouring over the cards, trying to make sense of it all.
Why tarot, why now?
In the best circumstances, a tarot reading opens a series of paths and portals that are both deeply personal and speak to the entire human condition. Each of the 78 cards is a reflection of the human experience - a prism that is at once universal and yet so very intimate.
A reading offers you a map for a journey you’ve always been on, and then invites you to approach and understand in an entirely new way. The cards inspire you to look deep inside so you can make the small shifts as well as the huge changes that determine how you’ll make your mark on the world.
But, before you can do the alchemy and turn the insight into action, describing your own tarot card reading is like offering someone a magnifying glass and saying “would you like to gaze in my navel while I read the last 23 pages of my journal aloud?”
As someone who has used the tarot cards to figure out my shit for the last twenty-five years, I get that. But bear with me. The specifics of the latest reading I did for myself don’t matter to you, but the dance between the personal and the collective and the way those two constantly flow together? That just might have some significance to you, dear reader, and to all of those you’ll touch in the wider world.
When a tarot card is more than just a tarot card
I shuffled my tarot cards (Chris-Anne’s Light Seer’s Tarot is my go-to for personal readings right now) and I did a traditional Celtic Cross spread (I’ve been cozying up with Rachel Pollack’s seminal tarot text, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, and really appreciate her approach to this well-used form).
You know the movies in which the young heroine visits the fortune teller? If it’s a rom-com, she gets The Lovers, The Sun, and the 10 of Cups all at once.
My current life is certainly full of love and occasional bouts of hilarity, but I’m definitely not playing the role of sweet young thing these days.
Plus, it’s 2020. Those happy, blessing-laden blissed out cards haven’t been removed from the deck, but they seem to be stuck in the bottom of the box because the deck got soaked in tears after the last reading.
Instead, I’m in the kind of place in life where I pull Death, The Devil, The Tower. Then The Wheel of Fortune and The World appear, and they are both turned upside down.
Since I’m not actually starring in a slasher film, there is clearly a hell of a lot more happening than “beware evil men who will kill you and tear your entire life asunder!” (Again, it’s 2020. There’s more than just one bad guy in this scene and this year’s plot couldn’t possibly fit into one movie anyway.)
The first question when I ask when I see all of those big, scary seeming cards, of course, is: holy hot damn, is this all about me?
Is this carefully balanced life really that precarious? Will I lose everything that I hold dear? Did I marry the wrong man? Are we going to lose the house? And wait, everything is quiet... Have the children been kidnapped?
Panic ensues. Or at least that kind of disquiet that has you wanting to reshuffle the cards and ask for a do-over since you clearly got the reading intended for an ax murderer in another dimension.
Resisting the urge to sweep it all back into the deck, I get up from the cards and eat Nutella straight from the jar and snuggle the cat excessively until he bites me and then jumps on his brother’s head, causing the cat tower to fall down.
As with everything, it’s essential to take a deep breath and look beyond your first reaction
Yes, these cards are deeply resonant and relevant to my own unique circumstances.
When I can pull back the lens to see the bigger picture and look at all of the cards in conversation with one another, I can get curious and find the insights that shine on the other side of reactivity.
I get to keep exploring the question of whether my marriage is destined for a huge disruption or whether all the work we’ve been doing lately is transformation-in-action. I get to ask whether I’ve compromised my values for the sake of comfort and materialism. I get to ask whether I have been talking about change but resisting it through my actions.
But then what?
Is this all about me, or is this reading all about all of it?
I hear the guides whisper “both, dear woman, it’s always BOTH.”
We’re always in a dance between the individual and the collective. Right now, that’s more obvious than ever before.
I’ve long been taught that the healing work you do for yourself or for one other person is also in service to the Greater Reality. One act of renewal or transformation always ripples forth in powerful, unseen ways to bring growth and healing to the Whole.
Of course, this can quickly become a path to self-absorption and spiritual bypassing, but it doesn’t have to. When you pair your desire for personal healing and conscious evolution with your desire to be the change you wish to see in the world, you become the sort of integrated force for good who really is open to creating collective renewal.
These ideas are at the heart of Sovereignty, too. Here’s a passage from Chapter 1 of my book The Sovereignty Knot:
Each one of us moves through the knots of Sovereignty each day. We are independent, Sovereign beings, each here on our own personal quest. And yet, we are all in this together, our fates forever bound to the fate of the collective. We constantly move between caring for the self and caring for others, balancing our own needs and desires within the great web of creation. We are Sovereign souls living one great, interconnected dream.
Back to the reading: what are the “big cards” saying about this particular moment?
Death, The Devil, The Tower. The Wheel of Fortune and The World both appearing upside down… This is not business as usual.
To assert that we are not going through a period of massive disruption when the old systems are crumbling and the old ways are dying… That would just prove that you’re not paying attention. (In a way, you have to wonder about the veracity of any tarot reading at this moment in history that doesn’t include these big, “scary” cards.)
These cards are reflecting the truth. Immense disruption, uncertainty, and transformation are coalescing to form the strangest, cruelest, and most possibility-laden year we’ve seen in memory. If you’ve learned to take the cards at more than face value, you know that all of these explosions and implosions are there in service to peace and growth.
Just as I looked at the cards in relationship to my own life, we’re all called to see them as an invitation to look deeper, to understand where we are in relationship to internal and external change.
Remember: there’s nothing to fear in a reading full of cards like these, but the Devil is the one you need to stare down.
I read The Devil as offering a seductive invitation to go back to sleep. He offers what might look like the easier path. He’s whispering the most insidious lies: forget the racial justice movement because it’s no longer on the front page; this race conversation isn’t really about you; it’s not important to wear a mask because things “aren’t so bad” in your part of the country right now.
The Devil is one advocating for the status quo and “the bad old days.” He preys upon the sense of defeat, resignation, and disengagement that have become so endemic in our over-connected, yet ever-so-disconnected world. This guy revels in our complacency and habitual fear.
It would be his pleasure to erode your personal Sovereignty so you forget you’re meant to be part of the glorious cycles of disruption and evolution happening around us all right now.
These cards are yours, these cards are ours
Imagine this were your reading and half the cards spoke of destruction, irreversible change, and maybe even a spate of bad luck.
Breathe into that. Understand that the cards don’t necessarily predict a bleak, set future but instead reflect the energies that swirl about you right now. Understand that if this is as “bad” as things can get, you’re already stronger than you imagine. Understand that you’re a Sovereign being who can redirect these energies and be part of a great renewal.
And, understand that this collection of cards is for all of us.
When you read between the lines of the chapter of history that’s being written right now, the chapter that describes some of the greatest changes in contemporary human history, we’re all in it. As diverse as our experiences and origins might be, we’re all walking together through this moment of falling and rising, of death and rebirth.
There’s no single way to “do transformation right” in 2020. Just keep in mind: on the other side of this (perhaps when you’re standing at the doorway to the next life since there’s no telling when this era of cataclysm and transformation will end), when someone asks you about the story of your life and how to navigated the 21st century, just be sure you’ve got more to say than “the devil made me do it.”
What’s in the cards for you? Book a Tarot As Intuitive Healing session now.
