I Don’t Reveal Your Future, I Read the Tarot

Let me explain the difference…

I am not in the Fortune Telling Business.

I cannot predict your future. I cannot tell you what is going to happen to you. I can’t tell you if you will get the Career, the Lover, the Thing that will get you Bloody Satisfaction. I can only get you to lay your mind down on the table, and then I can massage the kinks out of the body that is your Story, the one you tell me, and the one you tell yourself.

The cards do not contain the Power any more than your television contains the People. The cards are like a tin-foil antenna that we hold at strange angles to capture the subsonic dream-songs that echo out from your missing half, your sleeping-self, your benevolent and articulate and un-met “unconscious” partner-in-crime. This is the wordless you, and they are very much “of themselves”, all at once a person and a rainforest, a civilization and a star-filled sky. This is someone who has something to tell you. I’m just translating their messages into English.

Your hopes and fears are a school of fish, the reading is a net we toss into the Ocean of your Spirit. We’re not entirely sure what we’ll catch. Once the cards are on the table, the knots in your existential muscles begin to pop, like little firecrackers jumping down narrative ligaments.

There is only one character in the Tarot. Between the cards are dressing rooms, prop shops, and uncountable production assistants ushering you down long hallways at strange angles. You will, at some point, be asked to play each role, in succession, from the Fool to the Magician, from the Emperor to the Devil, from the Hermit to the High Priestess.

You haven’t forgotten that you have the entire universe inside you, have you? You know, like a reverse mirror that holds a complete reflection of the Sun? You were never a singular. You are a constellation. You are an archipelago. They put your ego in charge as a joke! You are a gaseous swarm of conflicting needs and desires, a swirling flock of precious memories, a crowded bus full of tired commuters. The reading is an internal role call, it’s a team sport that you play with all the pieces of you.

We are not in the Fortune Telling Business. We are in the Contextual Interconnection Business here, and we are professionals. Look at the cards and tell me what YOU see.

Hopefully you will see a wink and a nod from that exasperatingly sharp knife-edge that cuts along the perfectly flat line of the ever-spooling present moment. To shuffle the cards is to gather storm-clouds. To select the cards is to smell ozone and feel your hair stand on end. To reveal the spread is to capture a photograph of the lightning bolt as it hit. We’re only looking at that one single frame of time. What shadow would you cast if the light were to hit you right now?

The Power is not in the Cards. With enough practice, you can do the same trick with a skyline or a cloud or the cracks in the sidewalk. Every atom is connected to the position and momentum of every other atom, so I guess you could technically do divination with a single atom if you tried hard enough.

We are not in the Fortune Telling Business. We are in the Waking Up Business. We are in the business of climbing up from the mud of time and washing it off with the waters of life. Look at the cards and see that we are all in this same story together, see that your glories and your troubles are irrevocably embedded in the space-time continuum.

Look at the cards and see that your pain is my pain, everyone’s pain! Look at the cards and see us all running around learning and creating and loving and dreaming. Look at the cards and see that we’re the only game in town. Look at the cards and see that we’re all we’ve got.