When Death Means Death; What’s Your Tarot Theme Card?

Ste McCabe from The Tarot Cat explores how death brought him to the tarot and asks - which tarot theme brought you to the cards?

Like all tarot cards, the interpretations for Death can be endless depending on the deck you’re using, the position the card appears in the spread, what cards are near it, the question asked of it - all kinds of factors. I don’t believe in being too prescriptive with ‘keywords’ when reading tarot, but having said that, there are a few common Death themes that most tarot readers agree on that ring true for me too - themes such as personal, revolutionary life transformations for example. Out with the old, whether you like it or not. The new chapter will be coming soon, but perhaps after a bereavement of some kind.

Unlucky Number Thirteen?

In most cards, you’ll see a figure looking fairly morbid, sometimes clearing away old bones. The Death card sits at number 13 in the Major Arcana, sometimes without saying Death on it at all; it was a nameless card in most decks for centuries, and has been considered an unlucky number for many reasons since. Fear not though, my chickens, as there’s plenty of cards with positive, uplifting messages following in the Major Arcana’s progression after death.

Card 13 from the CBD Tarot de Marseille

Ask the average tarot reader about the Death card and the first thing they’ll say is ‘don’t worry, it doesn’t mean actual death!’. Well, actually, sometimes it does. Essentially it can be a card of revolutionary and difficult change, so it stands to reason it can be understood in the most literal sense too. I realised this for myself when doing a reading for a friend a year or so ago, whose mother had died not so long earlier. When the Death card fell into place I began the (subconscious) usual avoidance of the literal translation, when she turned to me and said, that’s talking about my mum’s death. Never has a tarot miss been so glaringly obvious for me; I’d spent the previous months chatting with her about this awful event in her life, and yet such was the level of my hippy tarot indoctrination that I still misunderstood what should have been the most straight-talking card on the table. Of course, most of the time the Death card is speaking metaphorically (as the cards do!), and personally I’d only explore the possibility of an actual death if the card was in a past position, or if the querent had brought that topic to the table themselves (with a lot of consideration and sensitivity in both cases). Tarot should be insightful and useful. It can give us difficult home truths for sure, but it should never be downright f*cking terrifying! It’s unethical and potentially very damaging to be talking about a death lurking in someone’s life unless you already know it’s a given. That aside though, as I learned, death can mean death; we just have to know how to work with that if it does appear in a reading, and to give someone the chance to talk about it if they want to.

Death of the Physical

When I first became obsessed with tarot, eleven years or so ago, it was shortly after my dad died. In retrospect, I was looking for something to help me understand life, death and to open up the possibility of something else happening after death. In 2004 I found myself buying a Tarot of the Cat People  deck from a New-Agey book shop in Manchester (England) and was pulled into a world of beautiful symbolism which helped me deal with his death in the most beautiful way I could have hoped for. Ultimately, it was a spiritual connection I was experiencing with the cards the first time around. Subsequently, as I slowly started doubting the concept of the afterlife and ‘another realm’ (yes my dear spiritual hippies, it does happen and it’s okay), the cards slipped into the background in my life. 

Death of the Identity

It’s ten years later. I’ve been a musician with a passionate music act who has been constantly performing and releasing records for almost my entire adult life. Around the time that this major phase in my life was dying (once again, against my will), my friend bought me the gorgeous and surreal Nicoletta Ceccoli deck as a Christmas gift. At first, I peeled off the wrapper and gorked. Tarot? Now? All that creepy-cute, little-girls-with-massive-heads artwork, too (even if I did still care for tarot, I’d never choose a deck like this for myself!). But I pulled out the cards regardless, and even with a Christmas Day hangover from hell, within one hour I was back there again, simply appreciating how incredible it is that these images and symbols developed by human beings, for other human beings seem to capture pretty much all of the major themes we experience in life. I became obsessed like never before, only this time keeping an open mind as to what’s going on with tarot. Whatever is happening, I decided, it just doesn’t matter. I was sick of music, sick of the underground punk communities I was involved with, sick of the politics, and - to an extent - sick of people in general! Exploring the phases of my life through someone else's symbolism and artwork was powerful and moving; it made me feel small, insignificant, and all the more amazing for it. Move over, massive ego, you’ve had your decade. Here was the tarot again, giving me a new passion and focus in life, helping me through this metaphorical death that I was kicking so slowly and pathetically against, and I began a professional tarot reading service with a desire to share it with others. I adore that Ceccoli deck now too (big-headed-little-girls and all); it really is like being transported to another world, and that’s very welcome at the moment. I honestly don’t like this one very much right now.

Major Arcana 13 Waite Smith Tarot

Death in both its literal and metaphorical sense is what brought me to tarot, and yet the card is cheeky enough to never show up in my own readings, despite it being a card I am very comfortable with. Perhaps the cards which don’t have strong lessons to offer at any given time in your life won’t show up for you. What can such a card have to actually offer anyway? Death has brought me to the tarot twice over; I am still feeling its impact in my life on a daily basis, so it stands to reason that I don’t have anything to learn from it right now. On the other hand, the skeptic side of my tarot brain (it’s still active babes, and I embrace it) says perhaps it’s just a coincidence not worth reading into. I honestly find tarot amazing, whatever is - or even isn’t - going on. Either way, the tarot holds my hand through both life and death, and for that I am so happy to have discovered it.

Perhaps, like me, the tarot “theme” that brought you to the cards is not one that you see reflected in your own readings. Have a think; how did you discover tarot? Was it family (10 of Cups)? Childhood (6 of Cups)? Pure chance (Wheel of Fortune)? Destructive habits (The Devil)? Take the suitable card out, do a bit of work with it, and give it an appreciative thumbs up. You’ve got a lot to thank it for!

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This week in tarot: smart, provocative blog posts

In most any professional field, blogging is a way to share ideas with colleagues and clients. Blogging adds to the body of knowledge in a dynamic way that couldn’t have been accomplished before the age of social media.

I’m sure every field has its share of bloggers who need grammar lessons, or who don’t bring anything new to the table. Consistent posting can equal internet cred, whether or not the posts are original or informative.

Nowadays, it is de rigueur that serious tarot enthusiasts, whether professional or hobbyist, blog about tarot. I expect that, within the course of any week, there will be some new stories, techniques or commentary to read about my favorite topic.

With so much tarot talk flying around, and with more than two decades of my own full-time professional tarot journey under my belt, very few tarot posts stand out to me as remarkable or significant. That is, until this week when two unrelated tarot bloggers published really provocative, important pieces.

I saw Benebell Wen’s piece first. I immediately wanted to write a post to promote her piece, share my angle, and to continue the conversation she had begun.

Then, I saw Ste McCabe’s piece on Biddytarot.com. What is going on astrologically that has inspired all this tarot brilliance in just a few days? At a time when I bemoan the dumbing down of modern society almost daily, these genius tarot posts are a breath of fresh air, earth, fire and water!

I feel like I want to write a book about both of the topics these tarotists treated in their recent blog posts. What I have time to do is a few short paragraphs about each, with the hope that you will follow the links and read these important contributions to the body of knowledge that is tarot.

One might think that Benebell Wen and The Tarot Cat, Ste McCabe, don’t have much in common beyond tarot. One is a corporate attorney, the other a punk musician.  One has published a groundbreaking book on tarot, the other has dedicated their tarot practice to helping members of the LBGTQ community. To me, this a testament of the diversity of talented people who count tarot amongst their tools. You will see that they both honor tarot as a sacred tool, and that they both have a high standard of tarot ethics.

Please take the time to follow the links and read their posts, and to read my thoughts on each. Most importantly, please spend some time deciding what your thoughts are on both important topics.

I’ll address the posts in the order I saw them, so first up is Benebell Wen’s post, “Tarot and Social Inductive Reasoning”.

In this post, Benebell Wen discusses “cold reading”. Often, we readers are accused of using “cold-reading” tricks to make ourselves appear more psychic.  Wen’s concern is that perhaps even the most ethical readers might do this accidently, without the intent to mislead.

She compares “cold reading” with Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a technique that is often heralded by New Age practitioners, including tarotists.

Benebell Wen’s understandable concern is this. To her, tarot, divination and the intuitive process are sacred things. In her own tarot practice, she wants not even a hint of the flimflammery of which we are so often accused.

One of my favorite aspects of this post is the way she describes her feeling about the possibility that she and other well-intentioned tarotists might be fooling people as we try to enlighten them. It makes her feel “icky”. That icky feeling is something I’ll bet most ethical tarotists know well, but few dare to speak about. The word I use to describe that feeling is “smarmy”.

In typical Wen style, she researched NLP extensively, and created a free download comparing social inductive reasoning to tarot reading. Her hope is that we will come to understand social inductive reasoning, and learn to use this tool properly without fooling people into thinking we are more psychic than we are.

This is the first time I have ever known a tarotist to publically discuss this topic in this candid way. Brava, brave Benebell!

Wen frames her concern this way. She feels that, in truth, “cold reading” or “social inductive reasoning” is somewhat akin to the intuitive process. That kinship is what makes her ethical concern so pressing.

Is it possible that none of us is actually “psychic”, that, in fact, we are all just really good at reading people in this mundane fashion? That is what our critics would like you to believe.

Wen is clear to point out that, even when certain personality traits are communicated through mundane observation versus sacred intuition, those same traits will be revealed in the cards, and through astrology.  I concur.

Her concern is that we not fool people into thinking we are being psychic, when really we are just being smart and observant.

One of her suggestions to avoid this is something I always do in readings, and had never before heard another reader discuss. If we receive information from some mundane source, she advises us to be quick about confirming why we are saying what we are saying. That is, revealing where the information came from.

I will often say, “This isn’t psychically derived, it’s just an observation” as a way of separating information derived through reason versus information derived through pure intuition. It pleased me that Wen was able to quantify this technique, and teach it.

Wen also brings up my first line of defense when someone suggests my career is based on “cold reading”.  That is, cold reading can’t be any kind of factor when performing distance reading.

Wen does lots of email readings these days. I do much of my work over the phone, reading for people I have never met in person, nor seen in a photo.

Clearly, if we can do accurate, comprehensive, insightful readings for people we have literally never seen, the cold reading argument becomes null and void, doesn’t it?

Wen relates that social inductive reasoning involves noticing things about people, and interpreting those things. In her download, she includes accepted interpretations for body postures and clothing choices.

These, I am sure, are valid and accepted techniques, and helpful in many life situations. Wen suggests that using these techniques in our in-person readings could be helpful, as long as we do not use these techniques to make people think we are super-psychic, or to trick people to buy in to what we are saying.

I can agree to this in theory, but I have another angle to share, in the form of three specific points.

First, I agree that cold reading and intuition are often very similar. We need to be clear about separating the two when appropriate. However, I suspect that sometimes those mentalists who insist they are cold reading are actually truly using their intuition. Yes, the problem could exist in reverse.

Both cold reading and intuitive reading are things we all may do innately. So our very detractors could be, themselves, a lot more intuitive than they realize.

Second, in my book “Fortune Stellar” I share techniques that I developed through trial and error in my own practice. One thing I learned early on is this. In an in-person reading, I try never make observations based on a person’s physical appearance.

That’s right. Although cold reading suggests that a person’s appearance is the whole of where we get our information from, I have learned to disregard what I see with my eyes, for two reasons.

First, many people like to try to fool the psychic. They take off their wedding rings, they wear clothes to the reading that they wouldn’t normally wear, to see if that influences what I say. It doesn’t, I promise you, because I make certain not to notice the physical when I am working with the intuitive.

Secondly, sometimes it’s inadvertent. The construction worker may be dressed in a suit because he’s on his way to a funeral. If I looked at his attire, I might not visualize his career correctly. If I look at him instead of his attire, I will know more true things about his life.

Finally, there is basic practicality. In some professional tarot settings, people need showmanship. There can be an appropriate theatrical, performance aspect to what we do. At a party, we are hired to entertain. That I can perform real psychic work and give real insight in that entertaining environment makes me feel like an under-cover agent for real personal change. Sometimes we need to appear a little larger than life to get our message heard.

Here, the difference between performance and fraud is exactly as Wen advised earlier. I think it is fine to use a few techniques to help people invest in the process, relax and have fun, as long as we are not using those techniques to actually fool or defraud people.

For example, when the Christopher Reeve Superman movies came out, their trailer tagline was “You’ll really believe a man can fly!” We all knew that Christopher Reeve couldn’t fly, but that didn’t make us think he was less of an actor. (I realize this example just dated me big-time.)

As long as we are honest in our intent, and make sure that we do not mislead people about our actual process and abilities, using select techniques to increase the value of a performance isn’t a problem, in my opinion.

Of course, not every reader does “performance tarot” or “tarot entertainment”, so this won’t apply to everyone. We also must remember that sometimes needy people will put too much faith in us, and not enough faith in themselves. We need to be careful not to engender that, nor capitalize on it if it happens.

Psychic fraud is a real and dangerous thing. I would not want to conflate the showmanship of a dynamic presentation with convincing a bereaved parent to trade family heirloom jewelry to keep their son from doing drugs in heaven. (Yes, this really happens in 2015 in the western world.)

I applaud Wen for starting a deeper conversation on one of my favorite topics, tarot ethics. I hope this reminds each of us to tune in to our inner smarm meter and make sure that we are taking steps to be truly within our integrity.

There’s a payoff for that, too. The clearer we feel, the clearer our intuition will be.

The fact is, tarot reading and fortune telling have always existed in the shadows. I often call psychic work the “second profession,” that is, second after the first profession, which is prostitution.

A new generation of tarotists is working to bring tarot out of the shadows. I believe I am a part of this movement. However, not every tarotist is thrilled with the idea of shining that bright a light on tarot.

That brings me to Ste McCabe’s article on Biddytarot.com, “Tarot in the Mainstream? Thanks, but No Thanks”.

In this post, McCabe imagines a world where the mainstream embraces tarot to the point that tarot becomes a dishwater-dull dumbed-down version of itself. He cites a few of the many examples of what happens when the (m)asses discover something cool.

McCabe is a musician. Like him, many of the examples I can think of to back up his point are musical. We all know what can happen when the general public discovers your favorite previously-obscure band.

I have always been an advocate of making tarot more accessible and acceptable. In fact, at TarotCon (Florida) 2015, Jenna Matlin and I led a Trance Dance Tarot magickal spell for exactly that purpose. Our stated magickal intent was to make tarot more accessible and acceptable.

McCabe’s article caught my attention specifically because of this. The day after our Tarot Trance Dance, a colleague suggested we had done magick to make tarot “more mainstream”, and that she didn’t think it was a good idea. Clearly, she would appreciate McCabe’s point here.

I was kind of shocked that she conflated being “more mainstream” with being “accessible and acceptable”. To me, those are two entirely different things.

As a full-time professional tarot reader for more than two decades, I have dealt with my share of harassment and discrimination. I would like my career to be as acceptable as my friends’, the yoga teacher and the massage therapist.

I know that there are people who are hungry for the wisdom that tarot brings, but have no access. For example, I was a popular teacher in adult education programs for many years. My tarot classes always filled. One year, my classes had no sign-ups at all! What had happened, I wondered?  It turns out, a new employee at the adult ed program had a personal prejudice against tarot, and refused to let anyone register for the class.

Because of this person’s prejudice, people in our small town who wanted access to tarot were denied it. In the days before the World Wide Web, that was kind of a big deal.

While the web gives us access we did not have before, access to tarot is still limited to those who know to look for it.

McCabe’s concern is that if tarot were to be mainstream, it would be essentially changed, and not for the better. We’ve all seen that happen to many beloved cultural icons.

One of the examples he gives of a potential change is that Major Arcana Thirteen, Death, would be removed. Honestly, that’s already happened. Doreen Virtue’s Angel Tarot Cards are to me the grossest example of this, but there are plenty.

The lovely Chrysalis Tarot made me sad because they demoted the Hierophant to “Divine Child”.

The thing is, while I find these sorts of decks silly and disrespectful, and, like McCabe, I would hate to see a world full of them, I know two things to be true.

First, these dumbed-down decks bring wisdom to people, and bring people to divination who wouldn’t otherwise be there. When people develop an appreciation for tarot through these channels, they become more accepting and open in general. To me, that’s helpful.

Second, that these hairy-fairy decks exist does not cause deeper, more traditional decks to cease to exist.

I am not sure that tarot could ever become mainstream in the popular culture as McCabe fears. It’s very nature may prohibit that. However, there are certainly “psychic fads” that I’ve observed and, frankly, profited from. When psychics are popular because of a movie or TV show, I work more. That’s not a problem for me.

When the fad is over, my work continues. The shallow interest falls away, but a few people who were brought in by the fad stick around and become lifers like me.

In truth, I was brought in to tarot by the New Age fad of the 1980s. I don’t regret that.

One of the things I appreciated most about McCabe’s post is this. He tapped into a significant question about tarot; one that has been debated in prior centuries.

Long before we had social media or used words like “mainstream”, early tarotists debated whether tarot was “esoteric” or “exoteric”.  Was tarot a tool to be used in secret, only by adept masters, or was tarot a tool for everyone?

Tarot is certainly about everyone. But truly, the very word “arcana” means “secrets”. Clearly, there are points to be made on both sides.

The assumption that anyone can find value in tarot is a modern one, credited to tarot author Eden Gray. We’ve embraced that idea firmly as a community over the past thirty years. It may be time for some young voices in our community to cry out to protect tarot’s esoteric nature.

Although many tarot enthusiasts are tarot businesspeople, we must resist the urge to monetize tarot to the point that it become meaningless. This, I think, is McCabe’s essential point.

So there you have it. Two smart posts from two modern tarot bloggers. Our tarot world is in good hands, I think.

If you have tarot thoughts to share, you may share them here, on my Tarot Community Blog.