A Lovely Conversation Over Some Lovely Cards

This post was written with the express permission of the querent.

On Saturday, April 15th, 2023, we held a gender reveal party for my daughter and son-in-law. This being Mississippi, the gathered crowd waited anxiously within the gated pool area as my son-in-law carefully aimed. He screamed, “Cover y’ears!” and pulled the trigger. A second later, a small box of tannerite about a hundred yards away exploded in a huge cloud of pink that was visible well before the windows stopped rattling from the sound. So now we are expecting a new little bundle of girlie joy and couldn’t be happier even if her father insisted on announcing her gender with an explosive. Later, as the party wound down, a couple of the attendees asked me quietly if I would mind their coming to my home later that night for a couple of readings. I said I would love to, and later my daughter met us at our house with a few of her friends.

As has become my habit, I read the cards at the end of my dining room table (which is otherwise used maybe twice a year), I roll up the table runner that my wife loves, unfold my tarot cloth, and light a candle. As a collector of tarots and lover of the art of tarot, I will generally lay out four or five of the one-hundred-fifty-or-so decks on hand and prepare. In this case, the four were the Ethereal Visions Tarot, the Fountain Tarot, the Original Rider-Waite Tarot (old school blue rose-and-lily back), and the Épinal Tarot by Deviant Moon.

There were two young women to be read that night. The first is an old hand at the tarot game. I have read for her for years. The second young woman was a passing acquaintance of mine. I had met her at both of my daughters’ weddings, but to me, she was essentially the “girlfriend of another friend,” a young man whom I have known since he was eleven, now in his mid-twenties. My daughters adore her, but I did not know her, and she had never had a reading before.

Around the table sat both young women, the boyfriend, another dear female friend, and my daughter. A communal vote decided that M— would have her reading first since she knew what to expect and this would give R— a chance to watch a reading or two before having her own. I performed two readings for M—: a Celtic Cross and a Five-Card Yes-No Variant. While I didn’t realize it at the time, I appear to have broached enough subjects in the two readings for M— that R— was now more nervous, not less.

M— had chosen “Old Faithful,” the Original Rider-Waite Tarot, a deck that I have used for her for years. Very often, people new to tarot will choose a Rider-Waite-Smith deck based simply on its ubiquity: this deck is what many—probably most—people think of when they think of tarot. For this reason, I always have a copy of that deck no matter how many I offer. For R—’s first reading, however, she chose the Fountain Tarot, a deck of which I am fonder with every use. As is my habit, I handed her the deck and instructed her to look through the entire deck and pick out any cards which spoke to her which we could then narrow down to a significator card. R— chose two cards: the Page of Pentacles and the Queen of Swords. Generally, I will discuss the meanings of the various cards, and the querent will choose one. This night, as I discussed the meanings of the cards, contrasting the bright, upbeat promise of the scholarly young page and the more guarded, perhaps even jaded nature of the Queen of Swords, R— put her hand on the cards and quite enthusiastically said, “Yes! These are me!” So one goes with the flow: two significators it is. As I looked at them, so perfectly opposite, a thought occurred to me, and I looked at her: “So one card for your public persona and one a bit more private?” She smiled sheepishly, perhaps gently embarrassed that I had divined her secret, and nodded.

As I shuffled the rest of the deck, I asked her if she had a question or issue on which she was going to concentrate. She said, “Yes,” and I shuffled. I asked if she would like to tell me her question or whether she would keep it to herself. She looked around the table and said she would keep it to herself. I have noted that other readers place a great emphasis on “defining the question,” they want to know the question so they know how to interpret the cards. In the thirty years I have studied tarot, I have never felt very strongly about knowing the question beforehand. I suppose I have always naively assumed that the cards will work or they won’t. Of course, I see the irony of the situation: If the question is so personal that one doesn’t feel comfortable telling the diviner—or Woo Engineer, if you prefer—who has been sought out and approached to answer said question, what does that action or lack thereof suggest in and of itself? But I can respect that. As I said, the cards will work or they won’t.

The entire spread that we had before us that night.

I laid the first card down atop her twin significators: Justice. The first card told me nothing, and I said as much, so I laid down the rest of the cards in my spread to see what story they told. As the other four people at the table chatted, R— was quite focused. Once all the cards were down, I could now see that Justice had another, harsher face. “So Justice is normally a good card,” I began, “but for you now, the only question on your mind is ‘Why do bad things happen to good people? Where is the Justice in that?’” Her eyes simultaneously widened and welled with tears: “Oh, my God, yes!” The tears in her eyes and the catch in her now emotional voice triggered my daughter’s reflexes. As the child of a long-time tarot practitioner, she snapped to attention with a little jerk of her head, she looked at the three other people and said, “Yeah, OK, we should probably head to the living room. Leave them alone.” And in what I must say was a proud-papa moment for me, all the people at the table stood in unison like the politest of automatons and left the dining room.

Now in private and with tears still in her eyes, I began again. I spoke of the secretive Moon, of a childhood where the details of the current matter were not known but have now come to light as she has matured into their knowledge. She nodded, and we moved on. Of the Empress, I told her that she was not pregnant though that type of “creation” was also the domain of the Empress, and she laughed. The Empress for her spoke of the new roles that are presenting themselves and of her creative drives as she becomes a young adult. I spoke of a new freedom, and again, politely, she smiled and agreed.

I then noticed the four cards together. Very often, one can see definite trends in the cards laid down in a spread. For her, the Temperance card above her, the Hermit to her side, the Seven of Wands, and the Four of Cups all suggested the opposite of the Empress, a pulling away, a separation, a mitigation of the potential extravagances of the joyful Queen of Queens. I talked about how she sought balance. We talked for a moment about what “temperance” actually means, and I am always a bit surprised. Perhaps I never noticed before, but it seems to me that the idea of “temperance,” of restraint against excess, against thoughtless polarization, has become foreign to people; the “middle path,” whether socially, personally, or politically, is an intellectual terra incognita.
I continued that unfortunately, she may soon feel like breaking away from people, and I got the impression, again unfortunately, that the people that she needed to separate herself from would be certain members of her family. She looked at the cards with what appeared to be a certain comprehension before saying quietly, “My father.” “Oh,” I responded. I had originally thought it to be her mother since, when I heard the words in my head, I had only heard them from female members of my own family. I asked her, “So you recognize these phrases: ‘Well, I’m just glad you could come by at all, but I sure wish you could stay longer’ and ‘No, no, I understand you have friends,’ but with that poor-me tone?”

Her eyes widened again. “Oh, my God. He has said those exact words to me just within the last two weeks!” I asked her to look again at the seventh position. I explained to her that when I saw the card initially, I thought that the Queen of Wands might also refer to her mother; however, the card was topped by the Seven of Wands, an action being taken by the querent herself. Referring back to the position, I now understood the Queen of Wands to be a projection of the querent herself. This Queen, defending herself against others, holding her ground, was, in fact, the Querent’s vision of the Ideal Woman: the essence of the independent, strong-willed person she has determined to become. I reminded her that the combination of these two cards suggested a slightly combative, defensive nature when Temperance was the goal: “When I say that I see you disagreeing with family, what I mean is that you are holding your own when people try to impose themselves on you.” She agreed. I then told her that the Four of Cups also reinforced this sense of simply being fed up, of being done, or of having enough of an emotional situation, but that this was also in a position of potential “fears.” We don’t want to cut anyone off, but we do want to set certain boundaries. She was smiling and nodding more now. As we neared the end of the reading, she was feeling much more comfortable, and I feel that we had accomplished what I always hope to accomplish with a tarot reading: to have a meaningful conversation.

I finally pointed to The Fool of the Fountain Tarot: happily skipping away from the situation. She was beginning to laugh now as we ended, and I was finally able to ask: “Might I know what your question was?” Now that she had her answer, she was much more forthcoming with the question and the situation that prompted it. She confirmed that she had indeed asked about the relationship between herself and her father. He had left her mother, along with her and her sister, when the girls where very young and had essentially been gone for nearly two decades. Recently he had moved back into the area and was trying to rebuild a relationship with his kids, but their personalities and lifestyles were too different now. She recalled to me that he was always trying to manipulate the situation by making them feel bad about not coming to visit him more often using the exact phrases that I had mentioned. And she told me that the situation with him had bothered her to such an extent that she had been crying earlier on this very day to her boyfriend and asked him, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Her reaction at the outset made so much more sense now since that exact question had started the reading. She went on to confirm everything that I had said was true to her knowledge.

This reading too proves what I often say about not really predicting the future. I don’t consider myself a fortune teller, but I do consider myself a person who can give another person some perspective on the present with a suggestion about where present actions may lead. Thank you, R—, for allowing me to share this reading. We experienced a beautiful and moving conversation, and I hope that we are able to have more.

*A record of another older reading is available here.