The Business of Tarot

Spent a greater part of the late afternoon designing my "menu".  I plan on having a copy of each page printed and laminated for my kit, then a few dozen printouts of all the information, as a handout.  I also have to do a brief writeup of tarot or "about me" section, something like that, to put as the last page in my kit.  This "kit" is a binder that will hold a total of about 4 laminated pages.

I got my oracle decks today, and felt compelled to read with them right out of the box.  Love them.  My intuition was zinging and singing.  I'm going to work more with them, then maybe work them into paid readings.

I sat down the other night and outlined what I Want.  It's my longterm goal to make enough money being a transient tarot reader, to eventually afford to have a little place of my own.  Gain a big enough following to sustain opening an actual shop.  I've never really "networked" in my life, and it's not the most instinctive thing for me, but I'm actually doing it, passing out business cards left and right.

They are not a scientific calculator.

Been thinking about cerebral versus intuitional tarot reading. Lately, I've been getting way too thinky, and really analyzing every aspect of every card, turning each one into this mental labyrinth that's easy to get lost in. That's fine when studying, or really picking apart every aspect of the Thoth deck, but when reading, when doing what I do best, the logic and thinking have to have to take a back seat to intuition. My gut response, my initial "this is it" has been taking a backseat to elaborate pondering, and critical thinking, this pointed turning each card over and over in my mind, using it as a tool.  Cold logic.  Good for most things, hindering my reading style.

So, on impulse, today I went and looked at oracle decks. These are decks that hold any number of cards, and they can be about whatever the hell they want.  No stringent tarot guidelines.  Just a bunch of images designed to provoke intuition.  I ordered a few, with a few more on my wish list, and I'm going to try working them into my typical card flipping, and just let my mind fly again, instead of bogging it down with associations, dignities, numerology, astrology, alchemy, geometry, and all that.

I have to start meditating again.  I had this problem a few years ago, when I was studying cards too hard, and not connecting with them.  They became something like a chore, and as a result, hard to read.  I can't afford that, now.  I really have to make some changes, or find my groove again.

Rambling...

I've been doing a lot of theological and philosophical study, in spite of outward appearances.  I mean, I was in Duquette's online Thoth course, and I sort of petered out of my study there.  It got to be too much, to much knowledge, too much mental masturbation from the other students, and just too much in general.  I plan on saving the material and looking back in bits and pieces, at my own pace.

At times, I think that makes me a bad...whatever I am. Magi? Witch?  Soror?  At times, I feel bad for not dedicating myself wholesale to a dogma.  I read extensively on some philosophy, religion, labeled set of rules, historic secret society, and file it away.  I think about that knowledge, late at night before I fall asleep, when I'm in the shower, when I appear to be doing something menial like chopping vegetables, or picking weeds.  I think about it a lot.  I feel it.  I really try to find my place in this knowledge, these ideas, dogmas, names, charts, numbers, alphabets, connections.  I try to find places within my self for this stuff.

When learning a new system, I always have this period of feeling like "this is so close to my 'thing' that this must be it, and I have to try very very hard to learn it and use it"  It happened with Satanism, first, then Wiccanism, in my early teens, then...well, after that I was well adrift. I toyed with ceremonial magick in my late teens, but was in over my head. I drifted, always at first embracing, then really digging into, then not exactly abandoning, but sort of filing away whatever set of theological "rules" I've found.  I have, and this stands true to this very day, found only label that I can identify with, and that is Thelemite.  Not a member of the A.A. Not a member of the OTO, although I imagine affiliation with those groups would teach me immeasurable amounts of knowledge, but then...what good is a fuckload of knowledge, without the zing?  How much is too much?

It's not knowledge I seek. I get ahold of what I need to know, when I need to know it.  I definitely don't seek any sort of fraternity, because I hold that the minute I attach myself to a group, then my own path is compromised by the group's goals.  I wouldn't join any group that doesn't 100% coincide with my personal trip to enlightenment, and I haven't found one yet.  Even my soul mate, my magickal counterpart, my twin flame, and I disagree. A lot.

Last year, I really got deeply into ceremonial magick again, really delved deep into Crowley's teachings, reading greedily, studying, meditating.  Quabala, Goetia, a little Enocian stuff here and there.  I love it.  I mean it's really fucking fascinating, loads of useful stuff.  Only, I am not it.  It's not me.  Every book I read about Crowley's life devolves into I don't even know....  This title, that name, this group, that exclusive society, this high priest of hoodyhoo shit talking that high priest, this student doing that, that student doing her, he said, she said....the minutia of group politics, and drama.  I'm reading an *excellent* book right now paralleling Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley's lives, and how they've together ushered in the current Aeon.  Awesome.  Till it drags in the middle chapters with loads of names, fabricated trumped up titles, shit talking, politics, stealing, pomposity...and I think to myself "these are the people that mold my spirituality?".  I file the good. Ignore the human claptrap and move on.   Sometimes, I really feel as though I should have stuck to reading only the Book of the Law, because I fully embrace it. It's a poetic framework for my own beliefs.  It's still the words of man, and I have separated the man from the Word.  Delving very deep (and I mean very) always leaves me a little disappointed. I feel like I've chased all the goodies down this path or that, and it eventually leads the same place, the same things I've known in my heart since childhood, only with different names.  Reassuring, but sometimes a waste of time.  Good to increase the knowledge, though.  It's sometimes hard to sort out.

The point is, all knowledge is a tool.  That's all it is, no more, no less.  The more knowledge I have, the wider range of tools I have to choose from. Knowledge is a powerful tool, a Sword, if you will.  I use the sword, master it, control it, and I am coming to terms with not eviscerating myself on it.

 As I get older, it's easier to separate the useful tools, the helpful ones, from the crap.  It's a lot easier, these days to sort out opinion and trumpery.  I'm beginning to not feel bad about not learning every scrappy little nuance about any system, and adopting it as my own.  I used to think I was a seeker, looking for just the right thing. Now I think throughout all the seeking, I've sort of invented, polished, and work ever towards perfecting the Right Thing (for me, anyway), and I always do it with love. Love for the divine, love for myself, love for the journey, love for the process.  No guilt.  I work daily to strip my own ego, to purify my path, and strengthen my empathy for the world and people.

My best knowledge still comes directly from the Universe.  I still have gained more watching the life and death cycles of living things in my proximity, the movement of the sun across the sky, and the spinning of stars, growing things, destructive forces.  Watching the crushing force of a thoughtless boot on a newly sprouted sprig of basil, the effects of neglect and abuse, the effects of love and compassion.  It's all magickal, and to notice and tap in is truly the Great Work, to become one with all of this.   Nothing, no words, symbols, artfice, bells, herbs, candles, books, no alphabet, nothing is more magical or powerful than the connection, it's divine Will that moves these things, and the divine Will within myself allows me to connect, to alter reality, learn the secrets of the universe, alter or enter the web that connects every living thing on every plane, move freely throughout space and time, find my fucking wallet, help people sort out their lives, sort out my own life. It's the divine connection, the pure shining empathy, unity and Love.  The tools only help.

I don't know where I was going with this, honestly.  I think I've just come to terms with not now, and not ever being a Grand High Whooptywhoop Authority High Priestess of Blah Blah Blah.  It really is a load of bullshit.

Suprise!

Got the gig! I'm doing a "girls night out" sort event at the bar, for cash.  Hopefully, this leads to a regular reading night over there, where I get paid.

I was so confident going into it, knowing my limits and prices, and feeling very confident, but now that it's official,  the door has been thrown open to a hundred doubts.  What should I wear, what if a hundred people all take the free sample, but none want to go on to a paid reading, what if they all want some deep paid reading, and I collapse from the effort, what if I'm sitting there all lonely all night, what if...what if.... Then, are my prices right? Are my business cards/demeanor/whatever professional enough?  I hope I'm not selling myself too short, or not selling myself enough, or too much....argh.

Ah well, it's just one night. I figure, worst I could do is distribute a ton of cards, and talk to a lot of people, and have fun. The best I can do is wow em, land a regular job, and maybe a steady batch of clients.

Moving into the big time.

I'm getting involved with a paying gig, at the bar across the street.  Bill the Best Bartender Ever wants me to come read a few times a month. The last card reader they had, Bill says, pulled in $200-300 a night.  I can do that.  Hell, I read cards there more than a few times a month, for falling down drunks, for love, noteriety, and free drinkies, till I, myself join the falling down drunks.  I'll come in dressed up, with the little cloth, and trappings, and my dirty and beat down decks.  I'll smile, and refrain from swearing, and drink nothing but water and occasionally coffee, and I stand to make a chunk of change.  Lucky break! Lucky me.  I can do it, for sure.  I get all these second guesses, like, "what if I'm not good enough?"  But, then I know, I am.  Cynics will come play "Stump the Psychic" and I'll find their mother issues.  Drunks will come to me depressed, and leave reassured.  It's not about the money, it's about the act of touching other people's lives in some small way, in an unlikely setting.  I want to share my gift.

Who am I

In entering this class, and really following magickal practitioners around the web, I'm beginning to think of my place in all this, and my own path.  I see people that have been studying and practicing for half the time that I have, and see that they have published books and active blogs filled with information and guidelines.  Good stuff, too!  I have to think...why not me?  Where am I in relation?  I never think of stuff like this.

I've been into the occult since I was 11 years old. Early bloomer, right?  When I was that age, I was visiting a friend of the family. Apparently, while she and my mom were gossiping over coffee, I looked bored, because she handed me a stack of books, and said "I think you're old enough now, to handle some of this. See where it takes you."  The top book on that pile was Modern Witches Spellbook by Sarah Lyddon Morrison, and the next one down was Buckland's complete.  I snatched up Morrison's book, and sorta grazed through Bucky's.  From that day forward, I was a total practicing witch.  At 11, I was combing my mother's garden for usable plants, sticking pins in candles, burying mysterious parcels under trees, throwing stuff into moving water.  You name it, I was doing spells for it.  Not Wiccan, that shit never sat right with me, although I will say some of the better Wiccan authors have taught me plenty about spellwork, but I could never grasp the whole earth-based religion thing.  Throughout my teens, I voraciously devoured everything EVERYTHING occult I could get my hands on.  I stayed hours at the library reading mythology and researching ancient gods.  I was probably the only fifteen year old to have read Joseph Campbell and Anton LaVey.  I experimented with Satanism, atheism, shamanism, and all manner of pagan practices, never embracing one path, never settling into a "religion" of sorts. But always studying the tools of these faiths, the alphabets, herb lore, color indices, astrology, and above all runeworking and Tarot.  I've shamelessly and seamlessly included all pantheons and philosophies into my workings, always doing spells, both high and low.  I mean, I didn't know shit, but I was always doing something, anything with the little bit of shit that I did know.  Sometimes, it even worked!  (Lots of abject failures, too)

I got into ceremonial magick at around age 17.  An influential person in my life got me into Crowley, Enochian magic, Goetia, and all the really heavy stuff. Only, he did it for all the wrong reasons, and I went along with it all, unprepared.  It was an obsessed, dangerous relationship with a sick but powerful person, that culminated with him attempting to kill me.  I got out of that life, I put all magic aside, all tarot, ceremonial anything, shelved my books, turned away from Crowley, and just all of in general.  I focused on school, family, job, and went back to the magick I knew, loved, and practiced. Folk stuff, love spells, hate spells, runeworking. No demons in bags for me, no thank you.

Till my mid 20's that was satisfying enough.  Then I started picking the old books back up, digging for more, reading, learning.  I've read a lot of bogus crap, and a lot of genius writings, and I think only now in the past 6-7 years am I able to really look with a critical eye and sort it out.

My path has lead me back to the tarot, and I've picked the Thoth deck up again. Last year, I bought a book to really help me crack the Thoth code.  Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot by Lon Milo Duquette.  It threw open the floodgates, WIDE open, to all the old stuff.  Last summer, I bought more books in 3 months, than I've purchased in the past 10 years, and I am voraciously devouring each and every element.  I have dedicated myself to the path of Thelema, and the Great Work, and whoa.  Where I was once meandering through a forest, I'm now racing uphill at downhill speeds.  I GET it now. I have a purpose.  The good new is this:  All my past meanderings have only prepared me for what I'm doing now, this Great Work.  It's given me a tremendous knowledge of all things occult, all the connections, astrology, the tarot, stones, herb lore, god and goddess associations.  I mean, wrote down the concept of Tipareth before I even knew what it was.  What I'm going through right now is sort of a back-categorizing. Stuff I've known my whole life, the god within, the god without, as above so below, the eternal cycle of birth-life-death-reincarnation, that I've seen all around me, meditation, all this stuff...now has a name, and a place on the Tree of Life.  Now, it's all got a home, I have a title, and everything makes much more sense now.

I still balk at charts and alphabets and numbers.  I shun anything ceremonial and anything that seems artificial.  I hate memorizing countless long names. Names are things discovered and given by man.  It's a narrowing of the path. When I can feel and be and see and smell and taste and breathe in the element of fire, why must I name it anything but that?  Why give it some long Hebrew angel's name or something, when I can summon it through idea and visualization, and literally live in it  Names sometimes separate, and make things more confusing when I'm really working.  I've been successful and on my path for so long, I'm sort of used to the idea of working without the stuff, the tablets and wax seals.

To be continued, maybe...

The truths they already know

Lately, when doing readings, for both friends and strangers, I've been getting this a lot, "I sort of thought so, but you helped confirm it." or "I was afraid of that." or things along those lines.  Sometimes, tarot seems to make whatever nebulous idea, hope or fear, concrete, for someone.  The truth exists whether I read for it or not. People know more than they let themselves believe.  It's nice to go along with whatever feels pleasant or easy, or makes you happy, but the truth is there hanging around no matter what.  The hardest readings come when the truth reveals itself, and the sitter says "but I can't..."  Those are the worst.  It's difficult to watch friends and strangers box themselves in.

That happened with a reading the other day.  A man being strung along and manipulated in a glaring case of unrequited love.  Every card looking at it from her perspective, every single one was a sword.  Every card from his perspective was a major or a cup. It came out that she lied constantly from the moment they met, and that she only kept him around as a "maybe" because she knows what she can get from him (financially.).  Finally, after this exhausting roller coaster ride, I asked "How can S. help himself?"  There's the swords.  8 of Swords.  In relation to the question, and because the 8 of Swords came up for a question regarding the girl's feelings, before, I said simply. "Be like her.  Surround yourself with cold logic, protect your heart, gird yourself with rationality."

"But I can't," he says.  "she needs me."

The 8 of Swords? I should have told him the whole thing. It's him, imprisoning himself, he keeps going around and around in this dangerous, painful hamster wheel, because he, in some way...likes it. He takes comfort in being this brokenhearted heroic, romantic soul.

What can I say to that?  I don't get paid for commentary, I just get paid to pass along the message.  Hopefully it sticks. This time, I'm sure it didn't.