It’s a new month, and that means another tarot pull. I’m doing another three card past, present, future spread, once again using my deck of the Bianco Nero Tarot, like last month. For the new year I’ll kick us off with a new deck, and from there we’ll move into some new spreads.

We start with the Queen of Wands in the past position, followed with the Emperor reversed at present, and the Page of Swords reversed in the future position. Once again, let’s read from left to right. The Queen of Wands typically represents a person of focus and achievement, more broadly someone who’s confident and competent. The Emperor is a symbol of power and authority, but in the reversed position this typically means an abuse of power, or feeling like you are being controlled by an overbearing force from without, be that a person like a work superior or an abstract concept like a hierarchy. The Page of Swords is, like the Queen of Wands, a person with energy and enthusiasm, but this is more of an intellectual sort of energy, a person brimming with ideas, questions, and wit. When reversed, this tends to be aligned with the downsides that come with intellectual energy, like being manipulative, hurtful, and obsessed with being right. Another reversed interpretation could be that the intellectual energy represented by the Page is being squandered, resulting in boredom, indecision, or a lack of ambition.

To me, this sequence is a story, and a warning. The past was marked by true achievement, by accomplishing something real that put you in a position to achieve your goals. The present, though is marked by a continuing attempt to recreate the achievement that happened before, specifically through a rigid attempt to do the same thing that you were doing before and believing that the same approach should result in the same success. This of course leads to a warning; by simply standing your ground, insisting you’re right and lashing out as that isn’t in fact the case, you will waste the early success you built.

As is often the case, I will interpret these spreads through the lens of being a creative, being a writer, and that’s shining through here. Past success does not guarantee future results, and one must always strive to show how they’re adapting and growing. This story could just as easily translate to a work situation, and for me personally in research-focused work there is always a risk of resting on your laurels, especially as your success often begets more work which almost forces you to spend less time on your fundamentals.

More broadly, I think it’s important if you’re going to use Tarot as a tool in daily life, be that for creativity or other purposes, that you move away from a frame of mind that treats a spread like this as ‘divination’. The story here is a warning, and even if you believed that Tarot had the ability to provide inspired meaning beyond a random set of cards, you should still take what’s being put forth as a potential, not proscribed outcome. Spreads with a ‘future’ position, even in the most occult interpretations of Tarot, provide a possibility, not a guarantee. That’s an important thing to remember as you consider what narrative has been put in front of you.

As a fun aside, I’ve been using Tarot as an element in one of the RPG campaigns I’m currently running. My main group is playing Apocalypse World: Burned Over, and the player with the Brainpicker playbook acquired a deck of Tarot cards from a mentor in-game. Whenever the player wants to use the character’s in-game Tarot deck as an oracle, I draw an actual card (I then send the image over Discord, as we’re playing online). I’ve now been told a couple times that the cards have worked ‘spooky well’ with what’s going on in the game when they get drawn, but that’s usually nothing more than looking at multiple layers of interpretation and quickly identifying thematic links back to the game. Since character-oriented games like Apocalypse World do tend to have their conflicts and non-player threats very clearly telegraphed, it makes for a great arena in which to practice reading Tarot. I’ve had a lot of fun with this new version of Apocalypse World; if you’re interested in checking out Burned Over it’s currently crowdfunding.

December is a busy month with the holidays, but I’m hoping I can still sneak away to write. I have another piece of fiction I wanted to get started which will again feature Nat, but also have some thoughts about the new year and some other things that have driven me to write which ended up surprising me. Hope your month starts off well, and your holidays are joyful!