I’m going to try to tell this only once, for the archives, and reference it when appropriate. Famous last words, I know. Anyhow, I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness and nigh unto everything was in some way connected to evil spirits. Some things, like tarot, it’s pretty apparent to me how it got there. Other things, not so much. Like wind chimes.

Relatively recently, in my early 40s, I’ve started reading books about doing magic. My introduction to the topic was Peter J. Carroll and his books Liber Null & Psychonaut on chaos magic (I read the book, but honestly can’t recommend it–I don’t think it holds up that well). Mentally, I find myself coming from a place where none of the actions, the ritual of magical practice mean anything to me. Carroll’s ideal first spell he lays out for the newcomer is a protection or banishing ritual that feels like awkwardly waving a knife around.

He also suggests every practitioner have at least one divination tool. His emphasis is on making sure it’s “not too random” which I find curious but will spare you my detailed thoughts for the moment except to say I think I need random for what “divination” means to me. I like the idea of tarot, because I feel like it has value, at least to me, as a way of disrupting my own thoughts. Each card has some meaning or collections of meanings, and it’s my task to think about what’s going on in my life and how it might apply.

In any case, I don’t own a Rider-Waite deck, but I do own a post-2017 print-on-demand version of the Mage: the Ascension tarot deck. Don’t worry, I’m not doing this with the long out of print 2001 version that’s probably worth more than I’m willing to pay as much as I’d enjoy having one. The arcana of this deck are fairly different from more traditional decks I’ve seen, but The Internet is now a commercial hellscape and I can’t find a guide written by a cool online witch anymore, just thousands of places trying to sell readings done by robots or something.

The Actual Reading

Everything above is just the incomprehensible essay before the recipe you wanted. To be clear, I have no idea what I’m doing, this is literally me learning as I go. I gave the deck seven good riffle shuffles before pulling the spread because I’m a Magic: the Gathering player and that just feels important to me. You can snag the free PDF guide from the link above if you want to figure out what’s going on in this weird deck’s arcana. I’m doing a three-card spread representing Past, Present, and Future. This is a reading for me, not for you, I’m just sharing it.

Past: Queen of Questing (Wands)

She’s associated with aspiration, which definitely hits me in the feelings when thinking about my past in depth. Meanings, though, give me a lot to feel good about, though. Self-knowledge, transformation, self-reclamation, and fluidity–especially placed in the past–all remind me that I knew I was trans somehow some way back in college. At some point, I buried that knowledge away but rediscovered it again. I may not have reached my ambitious professional goals, but I think I’ve managed to be true to myself.

Present: Queen of Dynamism (Swords)

She’s associated with observation, which again feels appropriate given where I am now. I’m looking for the wonder, the hope, the beauty I felt in the world when I was younger. It’s not easy to find it when my thoughts are clouded by the personal struggle it took to get to where I am now, but maybe the knowledge and wisdom I’ve gained will let me begin to see things with more clarity than I could with only a naive sense of childhood wonder.

Future: Five of Primordialism (Cups) [Reversed]

Associated with vulnerability and while reversed can mean hope or return. This was a bit frightening to see at first, before recognizing the inversion. Frankly, it’s still a bit frightening how relevant it is to pull something that symbolizes return when my present goal and ambition is to “return” as my true self that I started to recognize so long ago before tamping her down as well as this online space, a blog, a relic from the past that hardly feels like it has any place at all in the second quarter of the 21st century. Maybe this is a sign I’ll actually stick with this and I’ll be doing a full Celtic Cross reading by this time next year.