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I have always loved metaphors. And ritual. And things that are slightly mystical and shrouded in secrecy and specialness.
How badly did I want to be Morgaine in The Mists of Avalon?
Prettttttty badly, lemme tell ya.
Badly enough that I dressed as Morgaine every Halloween for six years in a row (possibly contributing to my lack of popularity in junior high), and I reread that book every year for more years than that, and when I decided to Go Goth or Go Home in grade 10 (a story of self-definition for another day), Morgaine was my template.
And so, of course, it is a pagan sort of woo that draws me.
(Did I once embroider an assortment of mystical symbols into a black cloak I had made for myself, because I was both Gother Than Thou and crafty af, and maybe also just desperately wanted to be magical? Yes. I did.)
But when it comes to self-care, tarot is more than just another iteration on a lifelong theme.
I came to tarot (or tarot came to me) at one of the lowest points in my life.
I felt like I was dying. Not to be dramatic, but I am pretty dramatic, so… I felt like I was dying.
I was desperate for hope.
I was desperate for another story.
A friend offered me a tarot reading. I said yes.
They pulled some cards for me from the Wildwood Tarot (a deck I still don’t own, and would very much like to someday) and they told a story that resonated for me (because my friend does tarot like I do tarot – conversationally).
The story was hopeful.
The story was about survival, and about persistence.
The story was exactly what I needed.
(Fun fact, every single story a tarot spread tells can be about survival and persistence. Tarot is, after all, the story of journeying through many stages of selfhood.)
After my friend read my cards and gave me back a shimmer of hope, I bought my own deck.
I landed on Stephanie Pui-Mun Law’s Shadowscapes Tarot , and it’s still my favourite deck. I love the colours, I love the art, I love the stories that the cards tell me and that I tell with the cards. It’s a gentle deck. It’s a little bit sassy. It’s soft, and welcoming. All fae creatures are genderqueer, in my imagination, so the deck feels welcoming for me as a genderqueer reader, too. (That’s important. That’s why I don’t own and probably never will own any of the standard decks. I want my metaphor magic to be queer and genderbendy.)
Then I found Little Red Tarot and got my second deck, The Wild Unknown . It’s sharper. A little more stark. Less sass, more ‘sit down and listen.’
I started reading tarot almost every day.
It was a hard time in my life.
I was seeing my therapist every week, and after every session, I would sit in the park by her office and read my cards. I bought a whole bunch of tarot books (that’s how I roll) and learned about card interactions and about the tarot suits and about intuitive and conversational reading. I did Little Red Tarot’s Alternative Tarot Course and found a space that welcomed my non-religious woo.
I bought the Fountain Tarot, which is beautiful and cold and I only use it rarely. It’s not nearly as welcoming or intuitive for me – it speaks a language I’m not as fluent in.
I bought more books.
I added crystals, because if you’re going to survive on the strength of your woo, you just may as well. I bought a whole bunch of oils from Twilight Alchemy Lab.
I used tarot to get me through some very dark, very long, very desperate days. And nights. And weeks.
“Can I keep going?” I asked the cards.
The answer was always, always yes.
Every card in the tarot deck can say yes.
Every story can be a story of survival, a story of persistence.
(Every card can say no. Every story can be a story of ending. We write our own stories.)
Eventually, as the tarot deck promises, the wheel of fortune turned.
My life stopped being so awful.
I stopped reading tarot so often.
Now, I have more decks. I have a couple oracle decks. I read my cards less desperately, clinging to those metaphors a little more loosely. I no longer feel like I’m going to die. My questions are a little less fingernails-digging-into-the-crumbling-edge.
But I still find a lot of comfort in the cards.
In the conversation.
In the answer that is always “yes, you can continue.”
***
When I was in junior high (or, as I like to call it, hell), I had a bit of a mental break.
I took all of the anger and hurt, all of the parts of myself that could not go on any more, and pushed them into a corner, and they clumped up in that corner like some kind of psychic dust bunny of doom, and they developed a personality (which was as sparkly and delightful as you’d imagine) and we had very many conversations through the long nights of asking “can I keep going?”
And unlike my cards, the answer was usually, “no. you should not. give up. stop now.”
I have often wondered what I love so much about tarot, since the woo does still give me twingy little feelings of anxiety (do I really believe in mystical tarot cards? telling me things? I mean… do I believe in mirrors? I guess? I don’t know. These questions are hard.)
I think that at the core of it, what I love about tarot, and oracle cards, and other woo – what I love is that it gives me a chance to have those conversations again, and instead of answering back to myself “no, stop, give up” and then fighting like hell to deny that dark pull, now I have those conversations and the answer is “yes, absolutely, you can keep going. you’ve got this. I believe in you.”
I have always needed those conversations to somehow be externalized. Either in the form of the psychic dust bunny of doom, or the cards.
I like the cards better.
Maybe it’s more that I like myself better, now.
I have better stories to tell.
That dust bunny still lurks in the corners, and even though she’s no longer splintered off away from the “real” me, still, sometimes I sweep her out gently into the light and give her a hug and let her tell me how nobody loves me and I’m stupid and there’s no point and I’m going to die alone and I should just give up now – she’s trying to help, in her own way. All my anxiety and trauma, all bundled up into something I can speak with, instead of something I have to be.
(This is not necessarily the most healthy coping mechanism and I am lucky to have found excellent mental health care, but it is also not something I am willing to disown or feel ashamed of. Externalizing my pain is what allowed me to survive my teen years, and whatever we do to survive, well… fuck it. We’re survivors.)
I love the cards for the way they let me tell my story in new and wholehearted ways. I love how tarot can be queered, and how there is so much power in these metaphors. I love how tarot traces cycles – small cycles through the year, and large cycles through lives, and huge cycles through human nature.
I love how people throughout history have found ways to make our magic, our metaphors, tangible.
I love us. Weird and woeful and wooful creatures that we are. Fae and fantastic. Strong and struggling.
I just got a new deck – an Animal Spirit* deck to go along with my Wild Unknown.
The first card I drew was the Fox.
The little sheet of meanings says, “Smart. Adaptable.”
I look at the card, at the fox, and take a breath.
Smart.
Adaptable.
I think, yes.
Good.
That’s a story I can hold.
*This is not a “spirit animal” deck, and I wouldn’t buy one that was. Cultural appropriation is a serious issue in contemporary woo, and, as this post on The Wild Hunt points out, “At its core appropriation is a form of violence and aggression against brown bodies and brown communities. It is a minstreling, a racist caricature that tells more about the frame of mind of the performer [appropriation is a performative act] then it does about the original practice or cultural significance. Not only does it cause harm through this mimicking of symbols and actions, but it further creates difficulties for seeing real images of brown people and our gods on community altars due to the fear of appropriation.”
Spirit animals, when used by people who are not Indigenous, absolutely are appropriation, and this post by Spiral Nature goes into some depth about how the language we use matters, and how even though animals are present as spiritual guides in many practices, there are relevant nuances. Whether we use our woo as a spiritual or metaphorical or religious or blended practice, we have to work to decolonize our language and our practice. From the post, “We must accept that the reason that the idea of spirit animals exists within occulture is cultural appropriation and the misrecognition of Indigenous beliefs, and had that early appropriation not taken place, there would be no such confusion now. Even if the practitioner does not otherwise engage in sort of pseudo-Indigenous practices as filtered through early spiritual texts, relying on terms like “spirit animal” is still cultural appropriation and should be avoided at all costs.”
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