April 29, 2003

• Yesterday I did the first tarot reading I’ve done for myself in a long time. It was great fun.
  
  The way I look at the tarot is that it’s a way to tell a story. It’s like the pages of a book, presented in a random order. You have to make a story that imposes some kind of meaning onto it.
  
  With this in mind, here’s how I do a reading:
  
  I shuffle for a while, since shuffling is meditative. I pick a card, and figure out what it’s supposed to mean. And given what it means, I proceed to do something else with the deck, like maybe pick a card for what’s impeding and what’s helping. Or pick a card for the next chapter of the story. Or draw a shape out of cards and make up some metaphorical meaning for each part of the shape.
  
  I’ll call it Tarot Jazz.
  
  For instance, last night I had the three of wands as the first card. I interpreted this to be the three bottom chakras I’ve talked about in other ‘blogs. I use the Thoth deck, so the cards are abstract and psychedelic enough that it’s easy to disregard their traditional meanings.
  
  I put a card to the left, the 5 of disks, which is titled ‘Worry.’ This is what’s impeding. I put a card to the right, the 9 of disks, which is titled ‘Gain.’ This is what’s helping. The message here: The same thing is impeding and assisting, and I need to figure out which of these two visions of my worldly existence I want to steer toward.
  
  The most important thing, however, is that it occurred to me that the difference between Worry and Gain would be the 4 of disks (9 – 5 = 4). It’s called ‘Power.’
  
  So here I have a card in the spread that isn’t in the spread. It’s a picture of a castle from above, with the four elements locked away in the four towers. There’s a wall and a moat, and a single bridge. There is a gate at each end of the bridge, and an escape door opposite the bridge.
  
  This is telling me that boundaries and access are the most important things. My material world is bountiful, and the unseen thing, the thing that I can only arrive at through deduction, is that I have to be more active in its wise use, rather than its unwise waste.
  
  The other thing, and this is the important part, is that what’s really at stake here isn’t my material wealth. It’s my three bottom chakras. It’s my sense of self, my standing in the world, and my creative abilities.
  
  There were other cards, but they just amplified this notion of the connection between my physical, material wealth and health, and my productive output.
  
  So today was organize the garage day. I made some progress, but it’s a monumental task. Here’s an example of what my landlord left behind: He’s a single man who lives alone, and he has three ironing boards, all seemingly new. There’s a tremendous redundancy to everything in this house. The bedroom is tiny and has a torchere, a floor lamp, and two lamps on the bedside table, in addition to the hanging light fixture.
  
  These things clutter my existence, and I have to do something about it. The trick is how overwhelming it is.
  
  The other aspect of this is that I let way too much information into my life. I watch too much TV, I read too many newspapers and magazines, I spend too much time reading usenet. Who has time to be a lazy slacker when you’ve got a schedule like that? And how can I not be affected by all those implications and intentions chipping away at my rootedness?
  
  So I’m cutting back. I watch the things I know I’ll enjoy, and I don’t watch infomercials out of morbid curiosity anymore. I only read about half the usenet posts I used to, and then mostly so that I’ll have an excuse to say to myself how stupid I am for wasting my time with these people.
  
  I’m sure I’ll come up with some way to fill the void(s).

  • 7:17 am
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