Tarot is a Machine
a tarot is a machine. you put information into it: most obviously, you choose a question and express that question in a grammar, known as a "spread"
the most popular spread goes 2-1-3
1. present 2. past 3. future
arguably the simplest spread is when you pull a single card
i pull a card most days and usually include it in my journaling/dispatches on ghost traffic. it is a common misconception that tarot is about the prediction of the future. i often pull a card at the end of the day, even if I've already pulled one that morning, as a way to shed light on and process what i expirenced that day. or I'll review the meaning of the card i pulled that morning but didn't have time to research
some days i don't pull any cards, and that too casts a spread
somedays i don't fuck around with magick at all, or only practice prayers and ocd rituals and charms for protection. these can regulate madness prevent the end of the world. you (that is, the first person you) have to be in to the right head space to bring up and put down the right stuff. it's like writing poetry or dropping acid, you're creating space and casting vibes
currently i have the 3 of Wands on my altar. i drew it the other day and it's speaking to me. or resonating, if you like, a great bell going off in my soul 🔔, or a windchime 🎐 🎐 marking the passage of some spirit, on a promenade over my shoulder, down the stairs of my spine and the bowels of my soul. i mean these things literally and not literally, and both literally and not literally and neither literally nor not literally, and these things mean me and the absence of me, and what they refer to means the opposite of itself.
you choose inputs, but you can also choose the outputs. tarot is less like a magic 8 ball and more like a series of flash cards. there is no Yes card, no No card, no All Signs Testify to Definitely Maybe
so choosing a card, or cards, to include or exclude in your reading does not necessarily prejudge the process. i did a reading for Michaelangelo a couple nights back and before i did i left a card out from my new deck i got. it has philosophers and philosophical terms on each of the cards and one of the major arcana was a philosopher i knew he detests and wouldn't be helpful in any reading, so i left it in the temple on my desk.
why am i doing into so much technical detail? well, spiritual technique and technology has interested me since i was a little kid and i think you have maybe got a lot of invisible assumptions about what my practice looks like on just a knuts and bolts level that is possibly completely wrong, if i understand some of your questions correctly
is a computer which is aware of light sentient? am i, when I'm first clawing my way out of my daily mid morning nightmares and I'm rising through stupor's syrup atmosphere and i remember nothing know nothing understand only that there's a bright unpleasant light or a screaming alarm peircing my full round zeroness embryo of consciousness to vaccinate me against the nightmares by putting a different strain, a waking strain of the virus, into the micro-biom of my mind (psychobiom, perhaps) ?
i can keep a card on the altar i keep clear so Buttercup can jump from it to her kingdom and so i have a clear space because space is sacred when you set it aside to be.
the spiritual and the sacred are not in opposition to materiality or (dialectical) materialism, far from it! the spirit both etymologically and conceptually is associated with breath, breathing, awareness of a thing which almost always is happening but which by it's very primariness recedes into the background, exceot for particular moments and habits which bring it not so much to the foreground but center or rather wrap a panorama of experience sense perceptions phenomona around the breathing, which is going on through and inside one's body
idealism is often opposed to materialism and spiritual is often conflated with idealism but misleadingly so. everything i encounter is a phenomonological aproximation repression representation construction across the interior expirence and external reality, which of course is already undergrounding and penetrating experience
therefore everything i expirence if wholly partially partially wholly me, or part of my substance, of we define me as the recursively processing mind, and therefore objects are inevitably intangled in the becoming-person(a) associated with this body, with zach, with 32116336 (my Starbucks employee number) with the role of tarot reader, with Reality, with God. you have claimed, and i understand that you percieved and maybe still percieve this to be true, that idols are distractions and that God is big. indeed! and I'll go one, 7, 7 times 70 better yet--God is much too big not to spill over into every single vessel, every idol, every human and animal and ghost and goddess and demon and angel and aeon that every existed, ever could exist, ever could be referenced, ever could be elided, ever could be obscured. when i treat the tray I've lovingly decorated and painstakingly over panic filled hours returned my meds to, have i completed a pilgrimage of heroic import? yes, i have! more then that: i have created a world, imbued Life into void and Word into irreference! the sacraments are performed daily in my coughing and sweating, my eating and drinking, my bathing and burning incense and burning the midnight oil and translating with demons and wrestling with angels. i refuse not to live in and thereby to understand myself in a profoundly spiritual, psychology, sign-ificant, material, social world. how i could i be otherwise? what would that Even mean ?
The Mountain Goats - Estate Sale Sign
Official video for "Estate Sale Sign" by The Mountain Goats, taken from the album All Eternals Deck, available on Merge Records.Vinyl / CD: http://www.merger...
www.youtube.com
Estate Sale Sign Lyrics [Verse 1] Crude little wooden idols and aviator shades The trinkets and the treasures we brought back from the Crusades Some guy in an Impala shakes his head when he rides by But I remember when we shared a vision, you and I [Verse 2] Worked hard to build this altar—we made it earn its keep The cracks across its surface spiderweb while we're asleep The sacrificial stains all spreading out and soaking through But I remember when we kept it pretty, me and you [Chorus] And high above the water The eagle spots the fish Every martyr in this jungle Is gonna get his wish [Verse 3] Stock shots, stupid stock shots from the Pomona Mall Set up like unloved icons, gathering dust upon the wall From films no one remembers, they call down silently But I remember when their names were dear to you and me Yeah [Verse 4] Pennies on the dollar, everything's gotta go The things that we can't even give away—I don't wanna know Try to see if secrets burn when you hold them up into the light I remember when we loved each other day and night [Chorus] And high above the water The eagle spots the fish Every martyr in this jungle Is gonna get his wish
https://genius.com/The-mountain-goats-estate-sale-sign-lyrics
fun fact about me: every breakup song is a hymn, and every haven't broken up yet but should song is a protest anthem
i aim to be spiritualy ungovernable. once I've achieved that state, *then* we can start discussing your covenants and contracts, signed by Father or by the State or by Freedom or by God *in loco parentis*