by John O'Donohue
for his mother Josie, in his father's passing
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
okay i need to break this apart in context with the other translations because this is an incredibly deft and incisive translation. i've adjusted a few of the the line breaks of the earlier translations a bit to line up with this one.
Queen! Belt out a banger of a turnmaxing moid
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, [...]
who highkey through savage sidequests toughed it
driven time and again off course, [...]
tell me how he wandered and was lost
after chopping Troy-town to dogfood deadass
once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
Sailed through sick storms and dealt with dramas
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
Locked in to lead his fam to a homey safe space
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home.
Talk of the trips and trenches, the sus opps he faced
how the GOAT cooked and vibed with the randos
though he lowkey took the L on that mission when his bros
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove –
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
Like NPCS blundered badly to beef with the big G
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
and got ghosted, permablocked, cooked completely.
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return. . . .
kept them from home. . . .
--Magnus Pharo, 2026
--Robert Fagles (1996)
--Emily Wilson (2018)
So this weekend, our Airbnb was right across from a graveyard, and the fastest way to get to my parents' house was to walk through it with a 5-year-old and a toddler. There were questions.
First off, we have to talk about respect: "This place is important to a lot of people, so you have to be quiet, and those stones are not for climbing, no matter how neat they look.” My wife did a good job of explaining that people die, that makes people sad, and sometimes dead people are put in caskets and buried.
We had to explain the special section of children that we walked through. Sometimes children died, and that made people very sad. Children used to die a whole lot more than they do now; some people don’t really understand that.
Once we got to my parents' house, my 5-year-old was still talking about the graveyard and memorials, so I let her know that my grandmother is still on the bookshelf downstairs. My grandma died right before COVID, and so we haven't yet had a chance to bury her in the family plot several states away.
I showed her my grandmother's urn, and my 5-year-old kept coming up to me throughout the night asking to "go visit her [great] grandma.” So after she visited a couple of times, my 5-year-old wanted me to come down too and explain some stuff.
So I walked downstairs, and there was Grandma in a pink marble urn. I then had to explain the difference between a casket and an urn, the ceremonies associated with cremation, and that we sometimes set dead people on fire.
"I thought grandmas were taller"
Fair question. So I had to explain that, after the fire part, people were turned to ash. And that the ash was smaller than the person. This happens during a special fire ceremony. Then I had to explain ceremonies: "Like a birthday. People like to mark special moments (we don't have parties every weekend). Ceremonies can be happy or sad."
"Oh. Can we open up the urn?"
"Traditionally, that's a thing that we don't do without a really good reason. We like to keep Grandma safe and together."
We had to talk about the numbers on the urn, my grandma's birthday, and how old she would be today, and that she would have really enjoyed seeing her great-grandkids, especially their curly hair, but it wasn't meant to be.
Anyway, that's what it's like to have kids. Just explain some of humankind's oldest and most important rituals using words a precocious 5-year-old could understand, while doing your own emotional processing, but before the hot dogs are done. She went off to play.
This is the break where we turn from a cute-ish story to emotional processing. Leave now if you don't want to read about my bullshit.
Now I gotta process. Frankly, I have my own anxieties about death. Over a long enough timeline, there isn’t anything you can do about it, but the anxiety is there, just something to needle me. Of course, I remember a joke that we all go through three traumas regarding death.
First, death happens.
Second, death happens to everyone
Third, this applies to you.
I am on the third part of this. I am at the age now where people are no longer dying from just very stupid choices. I hope that my daughter grows up with this and understands the cycles of humanity, and doesn’t just begin to think of them when they are middle-aged. Might as well get a jump-start on the whole thing. For me, this was really laid bare when my grandmother died.
My Grandmother’s death was traumatic because she decided to be honest about it. I think part of the secret is that people who know they are dying put on a brave face for everyone else, because that is the comfort we can pass down to those we love. Either that or we don’t talk about people being scared. My grandmother showed a different kind of love: Honesty. One of the last things she said was “I don’t want to die” in kind of the wimpering tones that a 98-year-old woman who just had a stroke could produce.
I don’t want to give the impression that she wasn’t a fighter or couldn’t hack it. A stroke crippled her, but, and I mean this with respect, that bitch held on. She held on and was conscious until my sister could drive across the country for 8 hours. She held on through a pulse rate that hit the roof, she held on through likely additional strokes, she held on through fucking all of it so my sister could see her one last time.
My grandmother was like that; she was less than 100lbs for most of her life and had this “I’m just a cutesy southern belle” act that put people at ease. She was kind, but she didn’t put up with bullshit, and always kept trying to learn. She taught me how to type. After her husband died in the 80s, my dad (her son) was so worried that she would be taken advantage of during the funeral planning. But such fears were unfounded, my dad noted: “To my surprise, she was all business.” She learned to use a computer to video chat at 75. At 92, she did a shot at my wedding.
In some of her final conscious moments, while my sister was barreling toward us at unsafe speeds, we watched Bob Ross. In my memory, it was the Mountain Ridge Lake episode. You know the one, it’s where he talks about the necessary contrast between darkness and light, and how that is important in life. “You know, it's like in life: you've gotta have a little sadness once in a while, so you know when the good times come.”
Maybe my anxiety is here so that I know when I am at peace.
When she finally slipped out of consciousness, she was moved to the part of the hospital that was quiet. I wanted to stay the night in the room, but the nurse suggested that I go back to my childhood home, sleep, and this was going to take days. Plus, if it is a birth or a death, hospitals are exhaustingly uncomfortable. So I went home.
My grandma died that night. She was the last “grand” I had. I wasn’t there, and I carry that with me. I didn’t want her to die alone. She should at least have a family member there to talk her through it. I wanted to put on that brave face, tell her it's going to be fine, and pass on what comfort I can to those I love.
I hope, somewhere, somehow, she knows that I am sorry.
I can’t escape the idea that this is related to my last reading. The Knight of Wands appears again. The odds of any card in a three card spread appearing in the next three card spread is around 11% for a normal 78-card deck, and 7.5% for my 120-card deck. The odds of a particular card appearing is slightly under 4% for a standard tarot deck, and about 2.5% for my 120-card deck.
The Knight of Wands (by Anita Inverarity) is upright now. Knights are passionate people with wand energy, regardless of their suits. The Knight of Wands is a special case because they double reinforce that passion. While passion is a great motivator, it can become stifled by decision-making (who wants to make decisions when there are things to do?). Without execution, passions become mere daydreams, and the Knight is looking away from the reversed Ace of Swords.
That's what the reversed Ace of Swords (by Ayolland) is telling us. You have a problem beginning and even thinking about beginnings. How do you start? How can you go on when there is so much to decide, and any wrong decision might lead you astray?
The answer comes in Judgement (Kamille & Kevin Areopagita). Yes, it has religious overtones, but in this setting, the card really asks you to have faith in yourself. Artists and crafters of all types will tell you that every great adventure and passion projection starts in a different place than it ends. Part of the journey is the learning you do along the way, and that ultimately changes you and your passions. You will fuck up, of course. You will be angry for all the things you “wish you knew,” but you can’t know them until you start.
So just start. Start practicing and doing, and worry less about a theoretical concept. Start that religion, write that book, paint those lonely Warhammer models.
I’ve been watching Game Changer as a salve for the terrible world, and Sam’s opening line is apt: “The only way to learn is by playing, the only way to win is by learning, and the only way to begin is by beginning”
Again, no swords. Can’t wait until that pattern breaks.
The Three of Mugs (by Cat Rocketship) shows joy, companionship, and harvest, while the reversed Knight of Pentacles (by Ambisun) and the Reversed Knight of Wands (by Anita Inverarity) tell a different story: Blocked energy, action, and decision-making. The two Knights reinforce each other; it's a powerful message. I don’t see this as necessarily a linear spread, first joy then inaction, but more of a tale of what happens when you don’t find your joy in your work. You’ll note the Knight of Wands, while reversed, is looking away from the Three of Mugs, but if they were right side up…
Without some joy in your work, whether that’s employment, hobbies, or even pursuits of leisure, you won’t reach your full potential. There is a difference between pursuit and grind. The spread asks you to consider where you find joy in your work, and whether it is enough. Has that changed, and if so, why? What do you need to change in your current circumstances to feel that joy? Even if you can’t take drastic action, what smaller steps can you take to revitalize that feeling?
“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.
“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”
She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”
After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”
This is more complicated than my basic three-card pull. This is from the Pride Tarot guidebook. The order of my cards goes from top left to bottom right.
Red - Life - Where you are right now. Hanged Man from the Flux Arcana Tarot. Despite the potential discomfort—hanging on a sword’s edge—of this Hanged Man, the main character of the card exudes serenity. There is deep, complex work underway to prepare them for their next step on the journey. The next step is XIII or Death. Change is coming, whether you know it or not, and you are preparing yourself for it. Nice to know I am walking the edge.
Orange - Healing - Identifies part of you that needs healing. The High Priestess from the Lubanko Tarot. Woof. Some place in my subconscious needs healing. I think there is a hole here where religion should be.
Yellow - Sunlight - Some bright spots in your life: the reversed Seven of Cups by Lisa Hunt. I have a back-and-forth relationship with this card. It represents choices, and in the traditional version, the figure looks at their seven choices before them. In this case, the artist has the main figure looking away from all the choices. The intent is to make the choices look more ethereal, while in the traditional Pamela Colman Smith version, they are literal. But it can also mean that the figure has turned away from their choices. This is too ambiguous. I need to swap this card out of my deck. Regardless, the reversed Seven of Cops tells us that one course of action to take—don’t think about it too much, he said, thinking about this card too much.
Green - Nature - How to connect with nature. The Ace of Wands from the Lubanko Tarot. This makes me think of an old oak tree. In the park where I was married, there is a towering oak tree, quietly looming over the amphitheatre’s stage. I think it's time for a visit.
Blue - Serenity - how you can experience more serenity. Four of Wands by Cat Rocketship. This is an amazing card. The Tower quietly sits in the background while people leave the tower and dance under a pergola. To me, this shows a way to escape the Tower’s consequences. While the Tower is the loss of a foundational illusion (an unwelcome but necessary revelation), this Four of Wands shows people leaving the Tower’s illusion before it collapses. Can you see through the illusion before it becomes foundational?
Violet - Spirit - What moves your spirit? Four of Wands by Casi Cline. Family, but that bonfire also means something. Dancing around a fire is something ancient, something burned into the psyche of each and every one of us. This feels very “dance around the fire at the Solstice,” and I love that. Maybe it's time to dig deeper into a spiritual path.
Other Notes. Three wands in a 6-card pull. Two of them are the Four of Wands: passion and stability, things that never quite go together. There are a lot of notes pushing spiritual and subconscious meanings (Hanged Man, High Priestess), and suggestions on where I can find healing for my subconscious. Perhaps now is the time to start seeking and find something beyond the rote materialism/capitalism that governs my default mode.
What a rough start. The Three of Swords (by Sabina Espinet) is so iconic, it's hard not to base the whole reading around it. It is reversed, though. I know the Three is about heartbreak, and the reversal says this energy is blocked. That doesn’t mean that “I’m fine,” but that I am stuck until I experience (or stop ignoring) that heartbreak. If you go floating through life and don’t experience the lowest of the lows, how can you shake yourself out of that path? It is difficult to invoke deep change without a critical event or “hitting rock bottom.”
Strength (by Francesca Ruffoni Ruru) is also reversed. Fuck. Strength isn’t about martial might, of course, its whole vibe is using compassion to conquer—if you could even call it “conquering”. Again, it's reversed, so we are looking at a world in which the power of your compassion is blocked. Well, that seems related, doesn’t it? Think about how it relates to the Three. If you have turned off your ability to feel to save yourself from heartbreak, how can you be compassionate?
What’s left is the Page of Cups (from the Wyspell Starlight Blue Tarot). I love this card. The Page of Cups is the kind of person who knows how to have a good time, and this card represents it well. She is looking over the reversed Three and the reversed Strength and holding up her glass. Time to take a drink, give a toast, and get down to business with your feelings.
Here is a small toast of Scottish origin, which I first misheard from Return to Zork,
Here’s to Us
Those like us.
Damn Few.
And they’re all dead.
Yikes! Having some problems holding it all together?
TLDR: Death (Modern Witch Tarot, Lisa Sterle) tells you that change is a-comin’. While the Eight of Swords (Pride Tarot, Liz Huston) shows that you are unable to respond to that change because your own thoughts trap you. The reversed Eight of Pentacles (Pride Tarot, Rayne Klar) notes the consequences. You are unable to work on your practice—your current process has become stale. You might consider this a “bad” reading. Something to consider: Is a “bad” reading actually bad if it helps? Certainly, this reading points to energies that need to be sorted out. You can’t work through the change at the moment because you are trapped.
Or are you? There are little nuggets in the art that tell you all may not be lost, and dealing with whatever this is will be easier than it first appears. Let’s start with Death. This card mirrors the RWS version, so we know a lot about the symbology. The King is dead, showing that all the material and political power in the world can’t stop change, while the older person in front of Death can withstand the change, through their own experience and/or religious training. The child can withstand change because they don’t yet know its consequences , while the middle-aged person looks away, unable to deal with the approaching change.
Moving on to the Eight of Swords, the central character can easily escape the loosely tied ropes. With free hands, they can remove the blindfold and easily step outside the ring of swords. The torment the character receives is (from a certain point of view) self-imposed. You’ll also note that a hand rests on the character’s shoulder, symbolizing that help is available. The Eight of Swords is that task that, once built up in your mind, seems impossible, but in reality could be solved quickly, once you start.
The only way to begin is by beginning.
This is one of those moments to reflect on whether you are purposely blind to the change in your life, and why? Do you have specific hang-ups that have emerged recently? Any new negative thought patterns or habits that have started to take up oxygen in your life? This is the time to root out and examine these issues and see the associated consequences. How are you (not) adapting to this change, and what can you do to start sorting it all out? Not facing this change will eventually outstrip your ability to manage it.
Beltane: The Eight of Pentacles, Strength, and the Three of Wands
I am using the three-card Beltine spread from lioneltarot.com. You pull the first card and place it in the middle. It's the Fire card; it serves as an intense anchor for the spread. The second card is to the left, it's the Winter card, which serves as a reminder of what you are letting go of and the hard lessons you have learned. The final card to the right is the summer card, and a direction for growth.
Fire card. The Reversed Eight of Pentacles (Rayne Klar). The work, the mundane, repetitive work that helps you build skill and learn. You can’t just focus on the result; you have to do the work. The reversal means a scattering of energy and a lack of focus—even an overburdening of life.
Winter Card. Strength (from the Lubanko Tarot). Conquering your animal self through compassion. A reminder that we are human and all of those feelings we have, anxiety, self-doubt, and fear, can be met with compassion. To know that we can meet these feelings with compassion, and they are not the killers we imagine them to be.
Spring Card. Three of Wands (By Ambisun). Reversed. Now is not the time to dash off on a quest: You’re just not ready to take on something else. There is power in the knowledge. There is no shame in taking time to compassionately focus on the tasks at hand, and a reminder that there are other journeys out there once you are ready.
Bringing it all together: It can be frustrating to feel overwhelmed by life’s demands. However, the daily work is the important work you need to grow. Social media allows us to view the world through a lens that often minimizes the work required for success. You only see the victory and not the work that got people there. For example, I learned tarot by reviewing a card every couple of days and typing up over 90 pages of notes. This is all unseen on the back end; every hour spent typing, every book I referenced is something you’ll never see or experience. But that is the work that matters.
When taking on life’s daily work, remember to show compassion for yourself; these things take time, and growth is ultimately uneven.
Now is the time for daily reps, not a grand adventure.
Three of Mugs, The Wheel of Fortune, and The Ace of Wands
If you zoom out from this reading, you have a “happy” card, the Three of Mugs (by Cat Rocketship), contrasted by a “less happy” card, the reversed Ace of Wands (E. Lubanko). In between these is the Wheel of Fortune (by Micha Ulrich), reversed. Of all cards, I think the reversal on the Wheel is meaningless; it just keeps rolling along.
This reading points out the cyclical nature of life. Bad stuff happens, as well as good. The first point is to remember that you have a limited view of your current situation. As you move forward, you might realize that your unhappy situations were necessary for growth or were not as bad as you thought. “Good” situations may not have been so. Perspective matters. It can also change on a dime. This reminds me of the Chinese parable of the “old man who lost his horse,” where his son’s broken leg (bad!) prevents his conscription (good!).
The other message: when you are at the zenith of the wheel, awash in good fortune, surrounded by your retinue, remember that change is always afoot and no zenith lasts forever. Consequently, you should acknowledge when times are good, show love to those around you, and relish it. Party it up (we all see you, Three of Mugs). Hug everyone.
In the nadir, when you just can’t get things started, and energy is low (thanks, reversed Ace of Wands), remember that sometimes it's out of your control, and, well, there is always tomorrow. The Wheel turns, so don’t lose hope.
This reading asks you to look at some of the cycles in your own life. Have they fallen out of balance? Are they more trouble than they are worth? Do you have the right perspective on “good” or “bad” situations in your life? Is this a time to reevaluate them? It is also a reminder to love and relish the good times and not to lose hope in life’s doldrums. Are there acknowledgements that you need to make? What brings you hope when your life is out of synch?
The Queen of Mugs by Cat Rocketship. The water rank in the Water suit. The Queen of Mugs represents emotional maturity, and a big part of that is understanding how to meet people where they are. Don’t build someone up into something they are not. Seems easy, but we humans have limited insight into who someone is with their mask off. We all adopt masks and personas based on where we are (work, party, playing D&D, etc.), and that doesn’t always reflect who we truly are. This isn’t a bad thing, per se, but it makes it difficult to meet people where they are.
The Eight of Canes by Cat Rocketship is reversed. The Eight of Canes shows 8 canes, falling to the ground. Can you catch them all? Should you? When you have 8 rapid-fire canes heading at you, you have to be selective, as most people are not in a position to select them all. Some will be dropped, for sure, but you should focus on the ones that you can catch. Since the card is reversed, the Canes aren’t coming down; they are going up. The chaos isn’t here yet, but it’s always lurking.
Justice by Ambi Sun. The Wise old owl sits on the sword and scales of this traditionally numbered (pre-RWS) Major Arcana. Justice is all about balance and using your knowledge to make the appropriate choice.
This reading is a call to consider how you are applying your wisdom. First, in work and life, you are reminded to meet people where they are. Use the emotional wisdom of the Queen of Mugs to guide you. What you see may not be what is actually there; people are exceptional at putting on a tough face. In the same vein, the Eight of Canes asks you to consider, in any potential chaos, what you can control and what you can’t. Finally, Justice is again asking you to make wise decisions about how you spend your time and energy.
There are two Eights in this reading, time for action.
It’s Death wearing sunnies, so they have to be cool. Again, liminal death, by L0st Vegas. It is telling you that now is not the time for a big change; combined with the (reversed) Three of Wands by Ambi Sun, which notes that beginnings are hard. The Three of Wands is about exploration and growing. When it is reversed, that energy is blocked.
The first two cards are telling you not to pursue large, grandiose changes. That energy is blocked, whether it's by time, available effort, or even cash. A question to ask yourself is, what small change can you make that doesn’t upset your entire life? I’ll give a personal example: I turned off social media for a week. No Bluesky, no Reddit (unless linked to through Google to answer a tech problem or give a product review), no infinite scroll. Just for a week. A small, liminal change, and it's made a difference. I wasn’t an addict by any means, but it took up time. Without social media, I am bored… and now I have to find things to do. This is a good change for me.
The Four of Canes is a card of stability. Interestingly, the Cat Rocketship version put the Tower in the background. The Tower is about the destruction of a closely held illusion and the inevitable consequences. Perhaps the Four of Canes is providing an off-ramp from a Tower in your life? If giving up social media is the Four of Canes offramp, then the Tower version would be learning at 75 that you missed out on so much due to the infinite scroll.
What small changes do you need to make to stop a situation or behavior from spiraling out of control? When they take a step back, people know what they should or shouldn’t be doing. This is a call for you to self-reflect on the little things.
I finally read Tarot Interactions by Deborah Lipp, and she notes that the distribution of cards in a spread can also give insight into the reading. She notes that when the distribution is uneven, that counts as “another card” in the spread.
She really doesn’t go into the math, but provides a chart or two showing “normal” distributions of cards. She states that when the cards in a spread are outside those distributions, that means something. I think that’s cool and insightful. It also reminds me of this meme.
Half a meme. Original from https://jakelikesonions.com/
I am a “show your work” kind of guy. First, people get it wrong, especially with probability, and it’s nice to see where they (or I) go wrong. Second, when we look at the numbers, we get to decide what is worth interpreting and what should be left unsaid. This allows us to tailor how we read our cards.
To figure out the odds of drawing a sword or a Major Arcana, my process is to
Figure out the total combination of cards you can get with the number of pulls you decide on
Figure out the number of “successes” for the set conditions. (e.g., pulling two or more Swords on a three-card spread)
One caveat for this math, order doesn’t matter; pulling the Ace of Swords, Two of Pentacles, and Strength, or Strength, Ace of Swords, and Two of Pentacles counts as the same combination, even though they would have distinct readings. We only care about the distribution of cards, not the order.
Let’s do a standard 3-card pull.
The number of unique card combinations.
When you pull 3 cards from a tarot deck, the odds of each pull change because the deck isn’t replenished between pulls. When you pull the first card, you have 78 cards to choose from, then the second card is 77, and finally, the third card is 76.
If you multiply all of these together, you get 456,456 unique combinations, but this considers the order of the cards. Since order doesn’t matter to us, you have to divide that number by a factorial of the number of cards pulled: 3*2*1 or 6. Dividing 456,456 by 6 gets you 76,076.
How many of a certain type?
What are the odds of pulling at least 2 swords in a three-card pull? We already have the number of unique combinations in a standard tarot deck. We can use the same method above to calculate successes.
First, we have to determine the odds of pulling exactly two swords. There are 14 cards in a suit, so the odds of pulling two cards in a suit are (14*13)/(2*1) = 91, and then we have to toss in the last card not from that suit, which is (78-14) 64/1. Thus, the total number of combinations is 91*64 = 5,824. If we divided this by the unique combinations above, it would tell us the odds of pulling exactly two swords in a 3-card pull. Which is 7.66%
But we want to know the odds of getting two or more cards, so we have to do some more math: specifically, what are the odds of getting 3 swords? The math for that is (14*13*12)/(3*2*1) or 2,814/6 or 364.
So we add the two amounts from above (5,824+364) to get 6,188. We divide that by the total number of combinations (76,076), or about 8.13%. It’s your choice to consider that “significant”. I do. It's about the same odds as rolling an 11 or 12 on two six-sided dice.
From my magpie deck, this had a 1.62% chance to appear. The Ace of Swords by Ayolland, the Kanve of Knives by Cat Rocketship, and the Five of Swords by Micah Ulrich.
What about Major Arcana?
For getting at least two Major Arcana, the process is similar, except there are 22 cards as opposed to 14. The Math is (22*21)/(2*1) = 231, for the possible Major Arcana cards you could pull, then you have to add a minor arcana you can pull as well, which is 56/1 or 56. So the total number of combinations is 231*56 or 12,936.
We also need to determine the total possible combinations of the 3 Major Arcana. The equation for that is (22*21*20)/(3*2*1) or 9,240/6 or 1,540.
If we add the combinations from the two scenarios above, we get 12,936 + 1,540 = 14,476. We divide that by the total combinations above (76,076), and you get ~19%. Less impressive.
Specific vs. General: Pulling it all together
If you consider the 8% chance for a particular suit to have two cards in a three-card spread significant and worthy of interpretation, it is going to happen more frequently than you think. Since there are 4 suits, the odds that at least two cards in a three-card spread are of the same suit are (8% x 4), or 32%.
In short, about a third of the time, a three-card spread’s suit distribution is going to have something to say. A lot of probability works this way. For something specific, like “two swords in a three-card spread,” you have a low probability, but for a general “two cards of the same suit in a three-card spread,” it’s much higher. In my experience, that is a hard connection to make. In the same vein, it takes a smaller population to find two people with the same birthday than to find someone with your birthday.
Why go through all this math?
Well, I am a giant nerd. Part of this is me learning how to calculate those odds, plus you can double-check everyone else’s calculations, which can be wrong. Also, I don’t have a standard tarot deck; my deck is a magpie/patchwork deck with 120 cards. It has 80 minor arcana (with 20 per suit) and 40 Major Arcana cards. Thus, I have to calculate the odds specific to my deck.
Calculations with a 120-card deck
For a standard three-card pull, there are (120*119*118)/(1*2*3), or 280,840 combinations.
To determine how many possible successes there are, you can follow the process above with the standard tarot deck and just substitute my deck’s numbers. For my deck, there are 20 cards in each minor arcana suit. Two successes in a three-card spread is (20*19)/(1*2) or 380/2 or 190. Then the final non-suit card is 100/1. Multiply those results to get 19,000 as the possible totals.
Then the results of pulling all three cards in the same suit: (20*19*18)/(1*2*3) or 6840/6 or 1140.
You add the total number of successes above (19,000+1,140 = 20,140) and then divide by the total number of combinations, 280,840. The result is 7.17% or about the same. See the table below for percentages.
I recently snagged a couple of issues of The Rebis , and it's fantastic. Deep in the Star issue is a “Reaching for Starlight” spread where
I recently snagged a couple of issues of The Rebis, and it's fantastic. Deep in the Star issue is a “Reaching for Starlight” spread where four cards are laid out in a square. The Upper Left is “a grief to acknowledge,” the Upper Right is “a transformation to embrace,” the bottom left is “a hope to believe in,” and the bottom right is “a faith to renew.”
Let’s get into it.
A grief to acknowledge. The Moon by Emily Balivet. The moon indicates “not-knowing” and potential confusion. Remember, the “light” of knowledge is only a dim reflection in areas illuminated by the moon (although such light reaches where the Sun cannot touch). It is a hazy, dream-like world. Occasionally, there is bliss in not knowing, and grief in fully understanding something. I have personally been struggling with reaching middle age, and I can now see a time when my world ends. There is a difference between intellectual understanding of something and an emotional experience of it. I am young enough that such a place is (likely) far away, but the end is there. It wasn’t there when I was in my 20s. The not-knowing is gone. And it's ok to mourn the death of that illusion and start to process the crushing weight of mortality.
A transformation to embrace. Ha. The Fool by Cat Rocketship. The world is different now, and it's time to embrace those differences with the mind and energy of a beginner. As Valentine Michael Smith would say, “I am only an egg.” Life is different now, and I am on a timer. There are so many new things in my life, or a change in my point of view. I have two young children, I am in the middle of learning a new job, and, of course, there is my personal tarot practice. My old practices and capabilities are no longer sufficient for my new life. It is time to head off, toward that cliff, with a beginner’s mind.
A hope to believe in: Strength by Francesca Ruffoni ‘Ruru’. To tame the world through compassion. To believe that, in the end, compassion is one of the greatest tools we have. To be loved, and to be understood. For someone to look at you, without the mask on, and still love you. Damn. Sometimes the cards just line up, don’t they?
A faith to renew: The Queen of Mugs, reversed, by Cat Rocketship. The Queen of Mugs knows how to meet people where they are, and I haven’t been doing that. That is such an important and valuable skill, and something I need to work on, especially with my children. They are wonderful, and also the largest sources of entropy in my life. Right now, as I write this, I am in a house that is somewhat picked up. This will absolutely change the moment my kids wake up. They are young enough that they can’t be expected to clean without supervision and guidance. I need to meet them at their level, and that means understanding that they are not adults.
