Every occasionally, I break out my deck of tarot cards for a few days, and start to mess around with them.

I don't particularly believe in an ability to see the future. I wouldn't want to be able to see the future if I could. I like not knowing, because yes, it could be terrible, but yes, there is still hope. Without knowing how terrible it will be, there is always a sense of hope.

I don't know how much I believe in magic. How much I believe that I can attune the deck to myself. I refuse to keep the deck in its box though. I keep the cards wrapped in a piece of sheer black cloth, and I have for several years now. They live under my bed sometimes, and on my desk sometimes, but I can always tell you where. They're not important to me rationally, but every once in a while, I get spiritual, and it's nice to have a physical component to my rituals.

The first thing I did when I started to seriously use the cards was get rid of the instructions. Get rid of the interpretations. Get rid of what other people think the cards mean when you draw them, because the other people have no idea what's going on in my head right now. Using pre-defined concepts limits how I can interpret the cards. It turns it from a ritual to a silly little game --"Oh, I wonder what sort of tall dark stranger will come into my life this week."

I interpret the cards based on myself, and only on myself. I can't read for other people --I tried once, I think, and it got twisted up with my own unconscious. Nor do I let other people read for me. This has to be a purely personal thing¹. All the cards get read as if they were drawn right side up -I don't hold for reversals having any specific significance. I shuffle the major and minor arcana together.

Not having set interpretations makes me think about every card. It's a rorschach test --I'm presented with a picture that has nothing to do with me on the surface (Seriously, who has ten swords lying around?) and I have to figure out why the deck gave me that, and what that means to me today. And not having set interpretations means that the deck can use the same cards to tell me different things, depending on who and where I am when I draw from it.

There is some constancy to how I interpret things, of course. Pentacles always tie in with religion, swords are violence or masculinity. Staves are again masculinity, or turn to pencils to represent school. Theoretically, they could also become a message of creativity. Cups are femininity, and sexuality. The major arcana is largely interpreted as it is. I have a standard Rider-Waite deck, and the pictures provide insight as well --eight of swords, five of cups, both are sinister cards for no more reason than the images they show.

I am also not consistent in how I do a reading, though just now I've hit upon a variant I'm rather fond of. I shuffle the deck, sometimes counting how many times I mix the cards, sometimes just letting them become scrambled. Last year I was doing a lot of readings with four or eight cards, oriented to point in four directions. Thirteen is my luckiest of numbers, and I will often pull the top thirteen aside before revealing a card --my newest variant involves doing that five times, then taking the remaining eight cards as a sort of minor reading. Eight is my personal number, I jest that years linked with it are better for me (eighth grade, eighteen, and 2008). And of course, this variant leaves me with thirteen face up cards at the end.

After I've stared long enough, I shuffle the cards back into the deck, and leave it be for a bit. Sometimes I better know who I am, and what I need to do; sometimes I've simply distracted myself for a moment, away from whatever pain made me need the ritual in the first place. I don't do it for answers, I do it for focus, and for stability.

No, this entry doesn't have a proper ending. It's not an essay, it's a collection of thoughts. It's my journal, I can do that if I'd like.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: "Ich Errinere Mich An Weimar" by the World/Inferno Friendship Society. Which is largely not a band that ties into my homebrewed religion, but then again, I have found great power in some of their songs. It fit.