Turning Things Around: The Inner Tarot Revolution Week 1

Review of Known Knowns

Here it is: The proverbial rubber meets the road. It’s Wednesday, meaning it’s been one week since my snarky and ballsy “dare to the Universe” that was my post, The Super Bowl Halftime Game.

And what. A week. It’s been. Phew. I think the real question here is, “How obnoxious do I get doing my lil’ victory dance?” And, of course, the answer, since I want to learn some lessons here, is: “Probably not as obnoxious as you want to get.”

This week’s entry should be fairly straightforward, since my cards were revealed last week and all I’ve been doing ever since is…well…playing the hand I was dealt, which is all any of us can do in the end, ya know? And I’m not sure yet if I will reveal next week’s cards today in this post, or wait until next week?

Which would be more fun? Man, I can’t even decide that. I might need to run through some pros and cons.

Pros to revealing this week: I get the card pull down on record, and my readers can observe syncs over the week in confidence that the results are what they are, and are genuine.

Cons to this: The ultimate magician’s “con,” confirmation bias. If I tell you the cards now, you'll probably want to see the coming week’s events in that light. You might deny it because you’re a “real” magician, but I call bullshit because you’re also a real human being (I’m assuming. Nothing is assured these days).

TIME OUT.

Okay. I’ve conferred with my better half, Veronica, and although she initially thought I should wait until next week to reveal the cards, after reading my rationale, she decided to go the other way. So I will be revealing the cards today. Everyone who prefers that route, thank the Lady of the House.

The Sun Stack

As I gently touched upon in last week’s post, The Sun Stack represents qualities that are clear and present within our hearts. The naming of this stack after the Sun should not be taken to suggest that all of the qualities contained in this stack are wholly good qualities; they’re neutral in and of themselves, just as they are in more direct tarot practice such as divinatory readings (not that this Working couldn’t be viewed as a big, long spread of sorts if that tickles your fancy). No, this is just stuff that’s part of your soul and isn’t hiding out at all. Everything in this stack describes you as you are when you let it all hang out.

My Shadow card (the bottom card of the stack) is Princess of Wands, which seems apropos to me. For some background about Shadow cards, I learned about this concept in, I wanna say it was 2014 or 2015, when Lon Milo DuQuette came to visit Chicago. He did a book signing at Alchemy Arts, which I totally went to. He also did a tarot workshop (which, if I’m not mistaken, was organized by a local B.O.T.A. chapter, though I have been known to pull stuff like this right out of my ass from time to time). It was at this workshop that he taught us about the Shadow card at the bottom of any given card stack when you’re doing a reading. It’s an important concept here, since an entire stack in this practice is also based on it. The “Shadow” in this sense is everything within us that we reject as not being a part of ourselves. The rub is that everything in the Shadow is very much a part of ourselves.

Just as the cards of the Sun Stack aren’t necessarily all good, Shadow contents are not necessarily all “bad” qualities; they’re just the qualities we reject. It’s an important distinction that can really keep a person jammed up for years, which is why I am sharing this practice with the world.

So, I just started reading the entry in DuQuette’s Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot (I need to remember to write a good review for the algorithm) about the Princess of Wands, and I had to put it down because it hit so close to home. Holy fuck.

So. Princesses are a big theme for me. They stand behind everything I do, in a sense. For one, on the first Wordpress blog I wrote, way back in 2013, the first order of business was to pull a card as an “omen” or “mascot” for the site and write a post built around it. I got Princess of Swords. So that set a nice tone.

Once upon a time, I pretty much fell in love with the writings of Don Webb about Temple of Set (I bought my first copy of Mysteries of the Temple of Set at Alchemy Arts, as it happens) and one reason was because of how the concept of “The Prince of Darkness” resonated with me and felt like coming home. To be clear, Webb described this entity as being completely beyond not only gender, but any sort of individual identity attribute other than the pure archetypal pattern of “Selfhood Itself.” And I was totally onboard with every aspect of it except what appeared to be an insistence on calling this entity the “Prince” despite the above clarification. Why?

Why?

(Side note: Here’s why).

Seems arbitrary to me. And the reason I feel so passionately about this is because I met “The Prince of Darkness” in the form of the Goddess Hekate. So to me, She has always been a Princess of Darkness.

However, I am totally wriggling away from the real reasons I had to put the book down. Let me quote Lady Frieda’s description of the ordeal of trying to capture the Princess of Wands in paints:

I am a bit worried. The princess is behaving most queer! She won’t have any nice tidy lines & I really don’t know if she will be alright. She is certainly no relation of the first sample submitted. I think when I have smacked her, I shall have to post her to you, & you can tear her up or retain her as she strikes you. Oh dear I am tired. I have battled with her blaring wriggles till the eye falls out & she has burnt my throat & I can’t swallow.

*Cough, cough* Oho, that…that’s nice. Kinkay!

I’ve also got The Rainbow Flame Pinned on the Gogo’s Airship Facebook Page. That’s a story for another post, but it connects to the Hekatean image above, which was part of an elaborate magic(k)al operation meant to “steal” the Black Flame and appropriate it for our Princess here…because our Princess behaves most queer and would make a fine representative of the LHP for people who are tired of a symbol like the Black Flame and what it represents being male-dominated.

I also see this Princess embodying many of the qualities of Rihanna, whose Super Bowl Halftime performance this past week was stellar.

The Top Card on my Sun Stack is a very auspicious card to be pulling for a working such as this. The Sun is the Major Arcana card connected most closely with the Sun itself (duh), along with the Sphere of Tiphareth on the Tree of Life. Tiphareth has been my favorite Sephirah since high school (well…it competes with Da’ath, if I’m being honest). The deep and ineffable, dynamic principle of balance at the heart of the Tree is also very close to my own heart of hearts. I do everything I can, every day, to live by the principles of the Sun, of Tiphareth, of leading with the heart. It is without a doubt my number one guiding principle, even if I do drop the ball every so often. According to DuQuette, the card speaks to our human nature as being primarily Solar in essence as illustrated by this card.

All in all, I would say my Sun Stack this week is a resounding hit. Flipping the Sun card from the top to the bottom of the deck, my new Sun Card for next week proves the point I raised above about our Sun qualities being both good and bad. My card will be 7 of Disks: Failure.

The Shadow Stack

Now, onward to this week’s confrontation with the Shadow: The exploration of the cards representing the qualities of myself that I reject, for whatever reason(s).

This week, my Shadow Card is Nine of Wands: Strength. Sigh. I’ve written about this card before, and I normally love this card. Today, however, it is very evident how this card lurks within the darkness of my heart, waiting to be fully owned.

The card basically suggests a bunch of lunar arrows, perhaps the kind fired by the Goddess Artemis? The central arrow shows a Sun at one end and lunar crescent at the other and this suggests eclipses, or simply the coniunctio, or Union of Opposites. It is a blending of polar forces, producing a divine “arrow” that can be used to heal or to harm. It reminds me very much of a lot of the work I have to do. It points to promises that I have to keep to communities I have pledged to help. However, I have been holding back because I fear my own strength. Those who have followed more recent posts of mine may understand some of the reasons for this.*

[EDIT 2/4/2025: This pertains to posts no longer found on the site. I can’t completely “edit” the concept out, however, so the references to “destroyers” remain. For more background on this reference, see Games People Play.]

I’ve undergone some significant changes regarding “destroyerhood.” The information is in a post I’ve already linked to above. I had a stark wake-up call this morning about just how real this power is, and how respectfully it must be wielded. I won’t repeat the story right now, but V will attest, as she was there: It’s terrifying. And it’s not hard at all for me to activate now, even accidentally. Thank the Gods there are safeguards in place, is all I’m going to say about it now. I will, however, show you a picture. This is what happened when I went for a walk around the block because something V said after I woke up from a nap (when I write The Wind Rose tomorrow, it will make more sense) hit me the wrong way. I don’t remember breaking the doorknob, I just remember walking back into the house and touching the doorknob hard. I’ve destroyed property before, but it used to take effort. This, I’m told, is to be expected right about now. My body is changing.

[EDIT 1/19/2025: This is something I view differently in hindsight, although the words do need to be taken with a grain of salt. The above paragraph is a testament to the powers of what are known in some magical circles as “atavisms” or “shapeshifting,” and it’s debatable to what degree physical changes take place and/or are permanent in nature—but for some of these effects to be experienced, one does suppose that some kind of physical transformation occurs. This is magic.]

Now for the juicy part: That bottom card, the “Shadow card of the Shadow stack.” In my case, the card here is Six of Disks: Success. I mean, ‘nuff said, right? In the opening post for this series, I asked if the card in this position just gets an automatic flip back into the “on” position because being the Shadow card of the Shadow Stack is a double-negative.

I do like the ring of that: The idea that, yeah, at this point, the only thing standing in the way of my own success is the willingness to take the steps necessary to actually meet it halfway.

Next week’s Shadow Card:

The Queen of Swords.