Emergency Super Tuesday Tarot Reading

So something I do when I’m feeling anxious or uncertain is pull out my Tarot cards and do a reading. I did that tonight, because yeah. 

A brief word on how I approach the Tarot: I don’t come at it with any particular eye toward supernatural intervention, spirits, vibrations, or anything else that falls along those lines. Other people find that powerful and resonant and that’s totally cool, but it’s not me. For me, the Tarot is an elegant meaning-making system with cards, a way to focus and direct a mind already inclined to pattern recognition toward insight and problem-solving. It can also be a kind of entry into a focused meditative state, which is good for my blood pressure. 

I did a three card Past-Present-Future reading, and I left it open to be about myself but also about kind of the general current state of affairs, the context I and also we are in. Which is part of why I’m posting it; maybe you’ll find it useful. 

So let’s get into it. 

THE PAST: The Empress. I confess to not being entirely sure how to make this fit into either my or our situation—which is fine, sometimes that just happens and things make sense later. Again, meaning-making system with cards, it’s elegant but it’s not perfect. 

In any case, the Empress is the earth mother figure of the Major Arcana, representing abundance, growth, nurturing, the physical body in general and health and the senses in particular, generation and regeneration, and a connection to the natural world. 

As I’m writing this, it’s coming to me that I’m having trouble making sense of her because when I look at her, what I feel is the profound absence of just about everything she represents. It’s been winter, and in a lot of ways it’s been a pretty rough one. Good things haven’t exactly been in abundance, for me and for most of the people I know. I think we’re all feeling short on nurturing and nourishment, and a lot of us have been sick in one way or another. It’s tough to have a rich connection to the natural world right now. Fuck’s sake, I’ve been inside pretty much constantly for three months because I don’t handle even moderate cold very well. 

Winter, especially winter in 2020, has been the very antithesis of the Empress. Which is why I think she’s exactly what we’ve all been needing and yearning for whether we know it or not. 

But it was pretty mild today, so I opened up the windows, and when I went outside I noticed a bunch of my garden is coming in. Things are getting very green. I’ll be able to go outside most days soon. There will be more light. 

So I guess that does make a kind of sense. 

THE PRESENT: The Hanged Man

I actually want to save this guy for last because he means the most to me in this spread. 

THE FUTURE: The Nine of Cups

I like seeing this one. But I’m almost nervous to see it, because I’m scared to hope for what it promises and then be let down when it doesn’t arrive—which could very well happen, because in the Tarot, cards that represent the future don’t promise definite futures. This isn’t fortune-telling. This is about being aware of a possible future, a potential outcome. 

The Nine of Cups is first and foremost about happiness. It’s about accomplishing something and feeling really good about it, being content with what you’ve done and the gains it’s yielded. It doesn’t have to be material goods or wealth—that would be in the territory of Pentacles. But it can be. Cups tend to be more about emotions and the heart and spirit, so it makes more sense to interpret it as the feelings that go along with gain and accomplishment rather than the accomplishment itself. This feeling is available in the future. An outcome in which there’s a state of contentment is possible. 

Which, sure. I don’t expect that but it could happen. Seeing this in the spread can maybe serve as a reminder to not be fatalistic, to be open to good things, and also to look around and value what you have, to find contentment in what’s already present. 

Speaking of present. 

THE PRESENT: The Hanged Man

I always feel a little jolt when this card comes up, because I think what it means is so incredibly powerful in so many situations—at least for me, it’s one of the most resonant cards in the deck. It is, in many ways, how I came to the Tarot in the first place. 

One of my favorite singer-songwriters is Tyler Lyle (he’s also one half of The Midnight, one of my favorite bands, which means he swings wildly back and forth between folk/country and synthwave and does both equally well which is fucking bonkers and I love it). ANYHOO, his latest album is called The Floating Years, and he describes how he arrived at it really beautifully on his Bandcamp page: 

Just before putting this record to tape. I woke up at five am, in our Brooklyn apartment with a vision in my head of The Hanged Man; card 12 in the Tarot. The image was so strong that I got out and found my wife's deck of Tarot cards. Out of 78 cards, I pulled The Hanged Man- a figure I was only vaguely aware of at the time...As I meditated on The Hanged Man, I realized that I was him. I was floating in suspension- stuck; stuck in a career rut; living in a political wasteland; stuck in New York- too old to live a life of youthful hedonism in Bushwick and not established enough to afford a BAM membership. I realized that these songs are all about characters who are also stuck. 

...

Something that's true about The Hanged Man however is that he can think and plan. If you look at a traditional Tarot deck, he's suspended by his foot from the Tree of Life. Not only does he have a halo around his head, but he's smiling. Why is he smiling? Because he sees a brief glimpse of The Vision- the interconnection of all life- the ever balancing game of temporal nature- the ceaseless mutation of forms composed of indestructible substances- Maya. More importantly, he sees his plan. His inability to act is actually his greatest asset. It focuses his mind. It sharpens his will. He is smiling because he knows exactly how he will lay out his blueprint as soon as he is untethered. The Hanged Man is the hero we need for our modern age. The are the days for inwardness. The full fruition will come. Right now, we grow sharp. We sketch our plans. We meditate with the knowledge of the full weight of responsibility we will have as soon as it's time to stop thinking and start acting, and when it's time to act, another hero will arise and show us. 

How does The Hanged Man gain transcendence? Simple. Turn the card upside down. Now he's The Floating Man, and he's carrying the whole world with him, tethered to his ankle as he ascends, aimless, upward into the sky. 

If this is a reading in part for all of us and not just me, I can’t think of a card that hits it harder than this one. We are all of us, right now, suspended in place in one way or another and unable to do very much in a push toward the future—primarily in a political sense but isn’t politics also everything now? Is there any part of our lives it doesn’t touch? We’re staring down the future, and it’s exhilarating and terrifying, and besides vote and encourage other people to vote, and volunteer and donate, there isn’t very much we can do. We just have to wait and see how it all shakes out. We’re stuck in that waiting, and it’s enormously anxiety-making. I feel like that right at this moment, as we wait for the returns in so many states where so many things could swing different ways and have huge implications.

But this is also a moment to prepare and plan. We can embrace our fundamental lack of control, sit with it and use it to focus on the few things we can control while accepting that we don’t have a handle on most of the other stuff and may not for a while. We can take this time to gather strength and resources for the work ahead. There will come a time, soon, when we act. There will come a time when we must act, powerfully and united, when what we do will stand or fall by whether or not we can do it together. 

So basically this is the best card I can think of seeing tonight. 

That’s the reading, for whatever it’s worth. As I said, I hope it’s been useful for you, or at least helped you feel a little more centered, which is what it’s done for me.