Divination is About Not Being Afraid
Susan Chang is known for her vast knowledge of the cards. Her esoteric foundation shows in her work, and yet her writing and teaching styles are so approachable and relatable. She does have a rare gift of making heady information understandable. Her Tarot Correspondences is an essential reference, full of charts of correspondence. What is exciting about her book is that she teaches how to use the correspondences, something not every book or teacher does. Her Tarot Deciphered (with Mel Meleen) is a brilliant exploration of the Rider Waite Smith and Thoth decks, and their common Golden Dawn roots. In Living Tarot, she gives complete beginners (and those wishing to consolidate their knowledge) and takes a very different approach. Instead of finding the meanings of the cards in old, dusty tomes, she helps us find connections between the cards and our lives. This makes our readings much more practical and relevant.
Susan is such a great teacher. She provides information that matters and in an easy-to-understand way. Not only that, but she shares information that is important for readers to consider, ideas that we don’t always think about. For example, people write and talk about the idea that there are “no good or bad cards,” and mostly help people spin the harder cards so they are more palatable. Susan has a different idea, one that might help us give readings that actually reflect the great variety of human life. Enjoy this excerpt:
Divination is about Not Being Afraid
When I tell people I’m a tarot reader, there are two kinds of negative response, neither of which really bothers me. One is “Oh, I don’t believe in that!” That’s completely understandable. Nothing in the way we’re brought up, as moderns, would make anyone predisposed to think divination has value, or that it’s “real.” So I don’t look down on anyone who thinks this way, and I also don’t have much interest in trying to make them think otherwise.
The other kind of negative response is this: “Oh, that just scares me. I don’t want to know!” This is also completely understandable, but I think it’s curable.
I can’t emphasize this enough: Divination is about not being afraid of what’s going to happen.
This is important because divination, at its heart, deals with the future. And the great secret gift of divination is that it enables you to face the future—whatever it may bring—with confidence and openness.
If you engage in a divinatory practice based on sortilege – random drawing from a set of meaningful objects – then you’re going to get them all at some point, especially if you do card of the day. If you draw one card a day you’ll probably get them all in nine months. If you draw two cards a day you’ll probably get them all in six months. The benefit, or maybe the drawback of doing this, is that you are going to get every card, including the scary ones. You’re going to get the ones that fill you with joy and anticipation, and you’re going to get the ones that make you want to roll over and go back to bed—or re-do your draw.
But remember: there are no good or bad cards. There’s only meaning. Every card has a range of light and shadow, and it can appear in any form within that range. By drawing the random card every day we’re signaling that we are open to—in fact, we embrace— life’s variety. Think of it as playing a game. We engage in games with a great deal of passion—but then we let go, because it’s just a game. It’s the same thing when you’re playing sports. You really, really care if you win at the time, and then, hopefully, you let it go. Because it’s just part of life, right? You fulfill your part of life’s pattern whether you win or lose, and you get to make meaning out of either outcome.
In the chaos magic movement of the 1970’s, spearheaded by Austin Osman Spare, you would do a ritual or working and you would ask with all sincerity for the thing that you wanted. And afterward, Spare maintained, you would utter the mantra “Does not matter, need not be!” The theory behind this is that you want to avoid “lust of result,” which I think of as the ego leaning hard on Fate to produce a precise outcome in a precise way, which is not how it works.
It’s the same thing in the paradoxical headspace of divination: you’re very engaged, you’re very alert, but at the same time you’re not pushing it. You’re not trying to pressure fate. You care, but you leave the details in the capable hands of Fortuna.
So to help us get into that headspace, where meaning is more important than technically “winning” or “losing,” we’re going to explore that idea that there are no good or bad cards. We’re going to try and better understand their range of meanings: their patches of sunlight and their deep shadows. With time and experience, we will also become profoundly acquainted with the extensive gray areas in between.
