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Our own Verbal Remedy sent me a proposition.  She was getting reacquainted with some of her old tarot decks, and knowing I was a professional reader, she asked me to help her interpret a reading she’d done. Since it seemed to be not only fun but an interesting writing project to boot, I said yes.

I can and have done entire lectures about the origins of the tarot deck and how to properly use it.  The short answer as to where tarot comes from is that there is little to no difference between the historical origins of a tarot deck of 78 cards and the 52-card deck that you buy at the drugstore.  Tarot began as a 15^th Century card game based on trick-taking and trump cards, not unlike bridge.  The images of the tarot deck are rich in symbolism, and work as a pictoral language, providing an alternative framework and perspective on your experiences that can be useful as you examine your life and your problems.  I explain to my clients that the reasons tarot “works” have as much to do with Jungian archetypes as any kind of magic.

To put it even more simply, I look at the pictures, and they tell me a story about my client.  The story is almost always correct. 

This is the spread that Verbal drew:

A tarot reading usually occurs in the context of a “spread,” cards laid out in a certain pattern in response to a query. This is a basic “Celtic cross” spread, one of the first spreads that people learn when they first take up tarot. Usually, if someone does tarot, and he only knows one spread, this is the spread he knows. It’s a good, serviceable spread that can give a lot of information about where you are and where you might be headed.  I use a modified version of it with clients.  Which spread you use is important because where a card is in a spread carries as much meaning as the card itself.

The cards are laid in a certain order.  The cards Verbal laid out for herself are as follows:

Initial cross: The Fool and The Star

Below: Seven of Swords, reversed (upside down)

Behind: Justice

Above: Page of Swords, reversed

Before: Queen of Cups

The progression up the right side is four cards:

Lowest: Eight of Cups

Next: King of Swords

Next: The Emporer

Top: The Wheel of Fortune

With all of this basic information, you can begin to “read” what’s in front of you.

When I start a reading, the very first place I look is to the initial cross in the center of the spread.  This area represents the crux of whatever problem or issue Verbal is facing.  In the end all issues in our lives arise from the juxtaposition of two ideas or forces, and that is what represented in the initial cross. 

The Fool being crossed by The Star immediately suggested to me an issue of risk and vulnerability.  The Fool is the “wild child” of the tarot deck, representing that moment when one is totally free of responsibility, unencumbered by preconceived notions, at the start of a great adventure.  The Star is generically considered to be about hope.  But it’s more than that. The traditional image on the card is one of a woman, naked, alone in a field at night. She has nothing but two jugs of water with her and she is pouring both of those out on the ground.  She is completely vulnerable in every possible way.  But the card is not about her, it’s about the star above her, the guiding light that makes her feel safe despite her vulnerability.  The heart of Verbal’s dilemma has to do with some recent risks she’s been taking, and they have left her feeling very vulnerable.

It’s easy to see why when you look at the card beneath the initial cross, the Seven of Swords, reversed, and the one behind, Justice. Both cards are dealing with the issue of honesty.  Justice in the position behind the cross represents what has recently happened, the Seven below represents what I like to call “what’s driving the bus” – the things that are going on with Verbal that are making this such a problem for her.  Justice in the recent past means that probably Verbal has recently received some news or had a conversation with someone where she finally got the truth about things, a truth that may be hard, or not, but in any event is necessary.  With Justice, the truth is nothing personal, it is the notion that everyone should say what they mean and mean what they say. The Seven of Swords upright represents the notion of tricky-ness, doing things on the sly, going through the back door because the front way is not open to you.  Reversed, those kinds of tactics are really unavailable, or have been tried and are not working. 

The conclusion I reach looking at this is that the recent honesty with respect to this venture (my intuition says it may have something to do with her career and her writing) has been a little upsetting to Verbal because she was hoping to avoid the confrontation, and perhaps may have been in a little bit of denial as to exactly how vulnerable she was feeling, and exactly how risky this is.  Indeed, it is likely that Verbal has a history of avoiding confrontations, and those instances have not worked out for her, and her instinct to try and avoid what’s really happening here is strong in her.

The Page of Swords, reversed, above, suggests an added dimension around the issue, in that Verbal is probably having some trouble with both thoughts and words surrounding her interactions at this time.  She’s not got the clarity of purpose she wants, and in fact may be acting a little churlish, or dealing with childish behavior on the part of others.  There is a touch of unnecessary manufactured drama in this situation, which may be the result of Verbal’s own lack of purpose, or the result of others determined to get all into her business.  If she hasn’t been watching her words, she should, and if others around her have been talking out of school they need to be encouraged to stop. My guess is that there is some “chatter” associated with her work, or that the people who she is working with are creating pressure on her, drama that ends up dragging her down and confusing her.

If I want some insight into what Verbal wants from this situation, her hopes or her fears, I take a look at the card just one from the top on the right hand column.  I usually look at this card about now to gauge what the client feels about the whole enterprise.  The Emperor, who occupies this spot, is the ultimate in masculine, traditional notions of power and control.  The Emperor and its female counterpart, the Empress, are between them the representation of worldly power.  The Empress is about the power of creation, the power to make from one’s own resources. The Emperor represents the power of fiat, the power to marshal others’ resources to your cause.  The Emperor in the “desire” section of the spread suggests that what Verbal really wants is the power to control, the power to merely say what she wants and have that be what happens, a cause that is frustrated not only by the sheer risk of her undertaking but also by the fact that she is not prepared to handle the raw truth of who and what she is dealing with.

Others are convinced that she is thinking herself into a hole.  This I know because the King of Swords is below The Emperor, occupying the section that represents what others are bringing to the party.  In this space, a card can represent what others are doing to the client, or what others think of what the client is doing.  In this case, having a face card here indicates either (a) a specific person who is causing all the trouble, or (b) this is how others see her.  I’m choosing the latter because my intuition notices that with swords all over this reading, the underlying issue here is about thought, not action.  It’s what Verbal thinks about her problem that is causing her so much strife and anxiety.  The King is about mastery of the element he represents, and often in this position represent a desire for mastery of the element that gets carried too far (particularly if the card is reversed).  The King of Swords never met a problem that he couldn’t think his way out of, or so he thinks.  It is both his greatest strength and greatest weakness. Because sometimes the answer to a problem isn’t using the intellect, it is using the heart.

And heart is precisely the kind of energy that is being sent Verbal’s way right now, courtesy of that Queen of Cups just to the right of the initial cross.  This position is about what energy is coming in the near future, say over the next three months. Of all the “court cards” in the deck, (“face cards” in a standard poker deck) the Queen of Cups is the most creative, the most nurturing, the most beautiful.  If Verbal is looking to do something creative, a project that requires the ability to make beautiful and wonderful things, the energy coming from the Queen will be most helpful. It may also be that there is someone she has just met or about to meet who is firing her creativity.  It is not necessarily a woman just because the card is a queen.  Queen of Cups is also associated with the astrological sign scorpio, and it may very well be a man who has the same qualities typically associated with that sign.  Either way, Verbal has the capacity to really nurture her creativity now.

But the road ahead at the moment is not necessarily without sacrifice.  At the bottom of the right hand column, the position that shows where Verbal will soon find herself, sits the Eight of Cups.  Eight of Cups is about that moment when one makes the hardest choice when it comes to love and emotional investment of any kind – the moment where you know you have invested yourself emotionally on a significant level, and yet you must still walk away from the object of your affection in order to become truly fulfilled.  Verbal’s risk is going to demand that she sacrifice something of great value to her, perhaps risk the entire enterprise by entrusting her creative product to someone over which she has no control, hoping they will do what is best with it.

The outcome card, the card at the top of the column, indicates that if Verbal was looking to “change her stars” with this venture, she’ll do so, though she might not have a significant level of control over exactly what her stars change to.  The Wheel of Fortune is about the fact that life goes in cycles – sometimes we are up, lucky, feeling like we can take on the world.  Then something happens and we are low, best with trouble, fighting to stay afloat.  And the fact of the matter is that we have no control over how the wheel turns. Our only hope is to learn to roll with the wheel as it turns, accepting that change is the only constant.  Verbal here is looking at an opportunity to really make changes, but even though she desperately wants to control how those changes transform her life, it’s really out of her hands.

The most important thing to remember about tarot is that it never shows you THE future, it shows you A future.  All of us are beings of free will, and we can choose how to apply our energy to achieve outcomes in our life.  I tell clients all the time that a good tarot spread will tell you where you are now, and based on the energy you are currently applying, where you will most likely end up.  If you don’t like where you are ending up, you can always change how you apply your energy and get a different result.  Consulting tarot actually provides a good opportunity to find out enough about where you are going to alter course if you need to. Many of my readings do not ultimately come to fruition, not because the readings are wrong, but because the client successfully alters their course of action to create a more desirable outcome.

So the bottom line for Verbal in the context of this reading is this:  Her search for control over what is happening with this new project of hers, this new venture, really is a fallacy.  She has the opportunity to pour out her creative energy, but the situation is going to demand that she give up a certain level of emotional attachment to her creation in order to really realize the changes she wants in her life.  The reason this is such a problem for her is largely because she can’t seem to get her brain to shut up.  She keeps looking for the clever solution, the right button to push that will guarantee the outcome she desires.  But in the end there is no shortcut, and there is such a thing as being too clever for your own good.  She needs to stop taking her work so personally, and instead of using her intellect as a way to shoehorn herself into the right position, she needs to use her heart to honestly present herself and honestly advocate for herself on her own behalf. She has to realize that it is not her thoughts that make people like her work, or even like her.  It is her heart, her person, the authenticity of herself that she places in her work.