It’s a beaver.

I’ve chosen another three card spread, as three is the number traditionally associated with doing things, and I have some things to do today! Whether you have a project that you’re planning, need to motivate others into action, or are trying to identify a goal to focus on, three can point the way.

When I want to think in more nuanced ways about how to draw boundaries, I find it useful to look to other sources than the Rider-Waite tarot. Western thought is notoriously bad at seeing the big picture holistically and in terms of mutual dependence. It’s a little too obsessed with drawing clumsy dichotomies and putting fences around things, as if one could simply cut out undesirable things from life as easily as slicing a visible piece of mold off bread. More interesting and realistic approaches imagine the world as a web of mutually dependent interactions that come together to create a whole that goes beyond the sum of its individual parts.

The centerpiece of today’s reading is The Devil. In tarot, this card doesn’t generally mean the Christian devil, it’s not usually like The Devil Devil. It’s generally read as saying that, while yes, there may be negative forces out there, you are the one letting yourself be held back by them. If the devil approaches you, you have the choice to walk away. So why aren’t you?

The spread I’ve used here draws on traditional numerology. Across most cultures, four is the number of balance. There’s a reason we call boring people “square,” after all. It’s the shape historically considered the most equitable, unchanging, and stable — the moment any of the sides change in relation to the others, it ceases to be a square.

In many cultures, healers, saints, and holy people come to their state only after overcoming a series of devastating challenges and obstacles that teach them humility, compassion, and resilience. It is considered a dangerous journey, for it’s just as likely that the trials they face will leave a lasting poison in their souls, ranging from bitterness, resentment, disgust at others’ weaknesses, or a survivor’s guilt that mutates into haughty pride and imperiousness. To make the journey safely requires both sacrifice and a retreat from society into hermeticism.

The deck I’m using today draws heavily from several historical world traditions that see Crows as representing the most important universal truth that all things are fundamentally equal and must remain in balance. This is not to say that all things are the same or indistinguishable, nor to say that we must nihilistically throw up our hands and refuse to make choices. Choice is inescapable.

As a historian of science, I’m especially interested in different “ways of knowing,” as we like to call them. What counts as science? Knowledge? Who do we give the authority to determine truth and falsity, and in what ways does that authoritative license link up to those to whom we give political authority? More often than not, this leads me to what a lot of arbiters would consider “inappropriate” questions. Where does faith start and empiricism begin, and where is the point where the two meet?