I found today’s draw especially interesting because the message it contains, loudly, insistently, is that we keep doing the same damn thing over and over and over and over. As I read it, every last one of the five pairs says the same message in a slightly different way, something I find endlessly fascinating about both tarot and teaching and learning in general. If one way of putting something doesn’t get the message across, perhaps a slightly different way of putting it will. Sometimes the universe can be just as stubborn in trying to hammer home its messages as we can be in ignoring it. Today’s draw also really wants us to know we are screwing up — every last card was drawn in a reversed position. Today’s draw can be called a lot of things, but subtle is not one of them.

I’m visiting family in central Texas this week and was stirred to the question once again by the smell of oak and cedar that permeates the area. While oak can be found throughout the state, the redolent smell of the local cedar trees — or juniper, really, if you wish to be correct about it — is particularly distinctive to the Hill Country around Austin, where the trees have become something of a nuisance. Scrappy, twisted little things that have a tenacious ability to thrive even in arid, rocky soils, the trees have taken over the hills surrounding the city, sending local residents into fits of “cedar fever” every winter as clouds of pollen roll down into the valley of the city. As I smelled the trees on the wind, I got to wondering about the juniper’s metaphysical properties. Is it lucky? Protective? Does it represent longevity or wealth or any of the many things various herbs and trees can represent? I came inside to ask the Llewellyn Book of Correspondences, but just before doing so it occurred to me that I might actually be able to ask my tarot cards, instead.

Both the two of coins and the page of coins are interesting anomalies within a suit that is otherwise largely devoted to material resources. The two represents the skill and magic required to manifest our goals, but the magician attains these goals through a careful balancing act that acknowledges all of the elements, not just the material resources of the earth.

The page, like the two, also points us away from overfocusing just on material wealth. She is the innocent and curious archetype of the suit, the one whose purity of purpose looks to the whole of creation for its inspiration, still guided as she is by spiritual hopes and not only material acquisition.

When I was younger, I was obsessed with the story of the Greek prophetess Cassandra, who had the ability to tell the future but was cursed with the fate that no one would ever believe her. As the story goes, she asked Apollo for the gift of sight and he agreed on one condition: that she repay him with her attentions. But after whispering in her ear and giving her the ability to know the future, she recoiled, failing to uphold her end of the bargain.

The Empress also appreciates her men with some spiritual depth and seriousness, but balanced by the joyful playfulness of the child in the sun. Let’s be honest: nobody wants a dour Puritan who sucks the joy and beauty from the brief time we have in the world, but nor do they want a grown man-child who must be tended to as if a toddler. The Empress looks for partners who can keep one foot in the spiritual plane and one foot in the physical at the same time, who know when to be romantic and when to be steady, and who know when to be playful and when to act like grown-ups. In exchange, the Empress offers her partners an abundant generosity, spiritual wisdom and intuitive insight, a sharp and creative mind, compassion, and a steady well of power and support.

In the traditional Rider-Waite, judgment is the last thing that comes to us in this life as we die and move on to the next world, where everything is fixed and perfect all the time. I’m fonder of other decks’ interpretations, where judgment is an act that can occur at any time while lacking the finality of the Christian version. It does mean we don’t get to be absolved forever and never have to worry about slipping up again, but it also means that judgment serves as much of a beginning as it does an ending.

Today’s spread is one I created while focusing on healing work. In particular, the question driving it was “what needs healing before you can manifest healthy things in the world?” Perhaps another way to put it would be to ask what needs fixing in the tree before it can put forward fruits that are sweet and healthy rather than bitter or poisonous.

For today’s woo, I asked the cards about what’s ailing us collectively. What’s out of balance? There was no mincing words with this one. Too many of us have given ourselves over to our own worst tendencies, particularly expecting or even coercing others to do the work that is our own to do. But we fool no one more than ourselves when we think we can get away without paying the price for this particular trick. Our normal strategy for refusing to face up to the truth that the mistake was ours from the beginning — to try and strong arm control when our softer manipulations fail — has long been exacerbating the problem. Collectively, we’ve reached a breaking point.

You have a tremendous amount of generosity, wisdom, and stability to offer those around you, but you may be struggling to manifest that fully. What are you hung up on?

It’s time to have a healthier relationship to material things. A scarcity mindset can manifest in a lot of ways. Some may find themselves grabbing everything in reach only to hoard it like dragons while others burn through resources like there’s no tomorrow. Still others may find they deny themselves or those around them the minimum to live a full life. Many will also find they struggle to trust in a way that allows them to connect with others — if they fear losing the wealth they have, they’re liable to distrust others’ intentions and view the world with suspicion.

Part of the reason the number six is the domain of family is that it seeks to combine the direction and goals (3) of two different people in a way that, ideally, balances both. If those goals are working against one another or point in off-kilter directions, you may run into trouble. That’s why in some sacred geometrical systems that treat 6 as two balanced triangles (e.g. Jewish mysticism & Indian chakra mandalas), one of the triangles represents the masculine and the other the feminine. The two brought together in opposite directions balance one another to draw the heart as a six-sided star.

I found myself laughing at myself today as I started to lay out the latest spread, because I defaulted to my go-to draw of three cards. Three is an excellent number for when you want to point the way forward; there is something particularly active about the way it whittles problems down to their barest essentials: On the one hand. On the other. Solution.

This is of course a gross simplification of the kinds of problems we tend to face in reality, where there may be fifteen moving parts, five parties, and eighteen realistic paths to take, but there’s something absolutely seductive about the way three cuts to the chase.

To continue thinking about ancestral readings, I decided today to create a trinity spread with a twist. The first card for the past — what do our ancestral mothers wish from us? The second for our future — what do our daughters wish of us? And the third for that impossible space between, the one that gives meaning to both and animates the directions we choose to take them.

I find myself coming back again and again to different decks featuring animal archetypes. I imagine there are a number of reasons, but one in particular is a fascination with the ways that multiple different cultures have come to similar conclusions about different animals’ “energy,” even as other cultures have come to wildly differing interpretation. The snake, for instance, was considered to embody healing and transformative energy in Indian, Greek, Celtic, and Mayan traditions, among others, but neighboring Native American tribes might have vastly different beliefs about it, with one people seeing it as an omen of bad luck. Christianity, meanwhile, has historically treated the serpent as a symbol of betrayal.

Today’s deck initially drew my eye for its minimalist artwork and juxtaposition of black and white with focused, strong colors, but it’s held my interest for the ways that it incorporates an eclectic hodgepodge of different magical practices and narrows them down into an extremely focused interpretive point. The Naked Heart Tarot uses crystals, animal familiars, shadow work, tarot, and sacred geometry to focus specifically on getting your heart right as the first step towards manifesting your goals.

Today I did a little experiment where I used a pendulum to pick the card for the day, because why not?

Today’s deck comes from Tayannah Lee McQuillar, who designed The Hoodoo Tarot to connect the traditional Smith-Rider-Waite deck with her own spiritual roots in hoodoo, a uniquely American set of magical practices derived from the historical interplay between the peoples of new world America, with particularly strong roots in the southeastern US. While that includes a multitude of newcomers and natives alike, it is especially drawn from African rootwork and Native American traditions, with strong Christian influences and lesser influences from other immigrant traditions.

I’ve been looking high and low for a desert deck in forests of forest decks. Neo-pagans have made up a disproportionate number of the tarot revival, and their spiritual project has largely been trying to reclaim older European spiritual traditions that were forcibly displaced by Christianity. And Europe is…well…mostly forested. So there’s a real dearth of tarot decks that draw inspiration from other natural places, whether the sea, the desert, the jungle, or even plains.

The layout today has five cards, which is the number associated with change in a number of different knowledge traditions…And in a case of the cards stating the obvious, we start our path to change today with the Eight of Wands, or change itself. In the first position, this marks the point or goal of the journey. How we accomplish it is read through each of the next cards.