Category: Grief and loss

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Eight Useful Tarot Spreads: Day 3 Emotional Arrow

Today’s review is of the Emotional Arrow tarot spread from Evvie Marin’s Interrobang Tarot ebook, Eight Useful Tarot Spreads for Times of Change and Resistance. I drew this spread for all of us on the margins who are currently experiencing despair and discouragement over the economic, political, and ecological climate.

This group of despairing humans includes me – I have been following the pipeline debate in this land currently called Canada, where colonial governments are colluding to force Indigenous nations to allow the pipeline in their unceded land… it is a collision of economic, political, and ecological issues that leaves me, and many people in my communities, feeling more despair than usual. And in other places on this hurting world, there are other sources of despair and discouragement. And across all of these spaces, the long shadow of white capitalist colonialism stretches.

So, today, as I came to my table and my tarot and my weeklong review of Marin’s generously shared spreads, I thought – perfect. Let’s see if the cards have any wisdom for this experience of despair and discouragement.

This spread is for us, all of us who are witnessing injustice and oppression, and feeling hopeless.

Image description: A tarot spread, showing the reversed Ace of Pentacles, The Hanged Man, reversed Seven of Cups, reversed Ace of Wands, The Empress, and the Six of Pentacles. The deck is the Steampunk Tarot.

First, I named the emotion: despair and discouragement. Marin suggests not using this spread while you’re in the grip of an intense emotion, so I set my intention early this morning but I didn’t actually pull the cards until this afternoon, after I’d spent some time outside, and after I’d had a good meal.

The source (what prompted this emotion? what lies at the root of it?): Two of Pentacles reversed. When I flipped this card, all I could do was sigh. Yes, of course. This despair and discouragement does come from the lack of balance. Wealth inequality. Power inequality. Racism and white supremacy. Ongoing colonialism. Capitalism. There is no balance here – there’s no honouring of Indigenous sovereignty and land rights, there’s no honouring of marginalized lives and knowledges, there’s no respect, there’s no balance.

The impact (how is this emotion effecting us now?): The Hanged Man. We feel stuck. Helpless. But I also think that this card references the way witnessing these injustices, which are consistently denied and dismissed by people in power or people who are invested in maintaining the current power structures, seems to flip the world upside down. Sometimes this can feel like we’re crazy – the kyriarchy (that complex web of intersecting privileges and marginalizations that impacts each of us) does a good job of gaslighting anyone who tries to speak about injustice. But The Hanged Man here is a reminder that we are seeing things clearly – we are just looking at them from a different angle. We have our Social Justice Goggles on, and it gives us a whole new perspective on the world we are inhabiting and witnessing. Our despair leaves us feeling strung up and stuck, but it also has the effect of opening our eyes.

How to navigate this emotion (how can we better harness, navigate, and channel this emotion?): Seven of Cups reversed. The Seven of Cups can be about wishful thinking, too many choices, confusion. There is a lot of wishful thinking when it comes to economic, political, and ecological despair. The idea that we can “positive think” our way out of intergenerational poverty or the eroding social security net. The myth of bootstrapping ourselves into prosperity. The lie that racism is a thing of the past, or that equality has been achieved. In our despair and discouragement, it can be so tempting to wriggle out of the uncomfortable Hanged Man clarity and dive into all those promising, lying cups. But we can resist that. We can let those cups pour out on the ground, and work towards something better, something more true and more real and more just.

The message (what is this emotion trying to tell us?): Ace of Wands reversed. We don’t get a clean slate. We don’t get to start fresh. There is no shiny new beginning. In our despair and our discouragement is the awareness that we bring our baggage with us – that as we move forward through these difficult times, and as we challenge and resist these many injustices, we will also bring forward the echoes of our own existence within unjust systems. We will bring our internalized bigotry, our toxic narratives, our histories of complicity. But knowing that, we can resist, we can unlearn and relearn, we can change. No clean slate, but that doesn’t mean no growth.

The target (best outcome/goal of working constructively with this emotion): The Empress. The best outcome of our working through (and with) these emotions is renewed creativity and growth. I love the way this works with the reversed Ace of Wands. The Empress is not brand new energy – she’s grown. She knows herself, knows her power, is connected to her creativity. And although I think the naming of this card is a warning – how will we challenge injustice, which is tied to imperialism, when the best available outcome is The Empress?! – I also think that we can queer this card (link is to an article on Little Red Tarot by Cassandra Snow about queering the Emperor and Empress). If we allow ourselves to feel our despair and our discouragement, and we allow these emotions to motivate us to seek change – to use our power to challenge and resist injustice (maybe even to look to women rulers who have resisted anglo imperialism, like Lakshmibai, who resisted British rule in India) – we can connect to our creative, generative power. We can make a difference. We can build something better.

Overkill (how does this emotion mislead us? how might it take us too far?): Six of Pentacles. But our despair and discouragement might mislead us, too. Might have us begging for scraps from the people who already hold too much power. The source of our despair is the lack of balance, and if we try to survive these feelings of scarcity, lack, and precarity by appeasing those in power and hoping they’ll share some of their wealth… well, we’ve tried that. And it doesn’t work. And it always leaves the most vulnerable more vulnerable.

Our despair is real, and valid. What we are feeling is based in a true experience of injustice, and we despair because we want justice – we want balance and a more fair world. Our despair can leave us feeling trapped, unable to move forward, but it can also motivate us to create new ways of being. We don’t have to beg for scraps from systems that have always been built to oppress. We can build something better.

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A Spread for Moving Within Grief

There are a lot of things I hope to offer with Fox and Owl Tarot.

Trauma-informed tarot.

Queer tarot.

Trans tarot.

Non-binary tarot.

Polyamorous tarot.

Tarot for grief.

I designed this spread for myself, and this post is about the spread, with an example of how I interpreted the cards that I drew for myself.

So, first, the spread.

I was wondering how we can move within grief, which can often feel like such a mountain to climb, an ocean to drown in, a swamp, a fog, an endless road – our metaphors for grief acknowledge the ongoingness of it, the immensity of it.

I was thinking about my own current and specific grief when I drew the cards for myself, but I was thinking about grief as a larger and more inclusive experience when I designed the spread. We grieve many things – we grieve our lost futures and selves when chronic illness, disability, or socioeconomic insecurity reduce our physical or social mobility; we grieve lost relationships with friends, with lovers, with family members, and we grieve even when these relationships are lost because those people rejected or hurt us; we grieve the deep loss of ecological destruction; we grieve our role in the violence of colonialism, grieving our complicity as settlers, like I am, or grieving the harms done to generations of colonized peoples; we grieve large and small losses and those griefs are valid. And we grieve the dead and the dying.

Tarot can help with this process.

Grief is often an act of storying – as we grieve, we tell ourselves (and ideally we are able to share with others) the story of the lost love, the lost self, the lost future, the lost friendship, the lost parent, the loss. Wrapped up in the story are all of our hopes – the ones we realized before the loss, the ones we couldn’t – and our longings and our hurts and our fears. Grief stories are deep, complex, multilayered narratives.

This spread is shaped like a mountain, because we climb it and it is impossibly steep. And it’s also shaped like roots coming down into the earth, because our grief runs deep and we are able to pull nourishment up from there.

You can work with this spread in a few different ways – you can select cards intentionally, you can draw them all after shuffling, or you can do a combination of both.

Image description: A sheet of lined paper, titled A Spread for Grieving. Numbers 1-7 are arranged like a mountain. The spread positions are described as below.

Position One – Where I come from in this grief. The roots of the lost relationship/self/hope. If this grief is a complex or conflicted grief, particularly if it’s a grief related to losing someone who was harmful or hurtful to you, it might help to choose this card intentionally. The Three of Swords might help validate your experience of betrayal, heartbreak, or pain and also your resilience and ongoingness, for example. The Five of Wands might validate your experience of conflict. Or you can choose a card that validates the aspects of the relationship that were meaningful for you even if they weren’t recognized or honoured by people outside of the relationship. This can be an opportunity to intentionally counter any gaslighting or self-doubt, any external invalidation or invisibility, by selecting an origin card that speaks to your experience in the relationship, whatever that needs to be.

Position Two – How I can receive connection in this grief. This card speaks to where you might be able to find community and social support, and it’s important because grief is often so isolating – especially complex grief, disenfranchised grief (meaning grief that is not socially acceptable or supported – this is particularly true for someone grieving the loss of a polyamorous relationship, the loss of an affair partner, the loss of an abusive parent, an early miscarriage, or a grief that lasts “too long” and has become uncomfortable for the people around us).

Position Three – How I  can receive comfort in this grief. Experiencing comfort within grief can feel selfish, wrong, bad, ungrateful, or otherwise not allowed. I included this card because I think that we suffer enough, and that comfort is allowed. I also think that comfort is complex, just like grief can be. This is another card that might be helpful to select for yourself, especially if you struggle with allowing yourself to feel comforted within grief (this can be particularly challenging if we feel guilt or shame within our grief). Maybe the Six of Cups could give you permission to return to childhood pleasures for a reprieve from the pain of grief. Maybe the Empress can offer you an invitation to engage in some art or creativity. Maybe the Hermit can open a door to some quiet time alone.

Position Four – The loss. This card represents the loss itself, and is another one that works well for choosing for yourself, or allowing the deck to offer up a card.

Position Five – How I can offer comfort in this grief. First, we take in what we need – find our roots, validate our experience, lean on community, allow ourselves comfort. Then, cups more filled, we pour out. Offering comfort to others who may be grieving (sharing our own specific grief or dealing with something else) can be part of the healing process. I also think that this card can show us how to offer comfort to ourselves if we are still in need of that.

Position Six – How I can offer connection in this grief. An invitation to build bridges to community, particularly after we’re starting to heal.

Position Seven – What new roots will grow in this grief-soaked soil. How will we grow as a result of this? What can we dig our toes down into in order to once again feel grounded and solid? Grief is such a destabilizing experience and can leave us feeling like we will never be grounded, rooted, or solid again. This card is an invitation to imagine a future that doesn’t erase, invalidate, or abandon the grief, but also continues to move with the grief rather than staying stuck. This is another position that welcomes an intentionally chosen card.

I hope this is helpful if you find yourself grieving! And if you’d like to do a tarot reading with me using this spread, let me know!

Here is how I used this spread for myself, in dealing with a specific grief that I am struggling with right now.

Image description: A notebook in the upper right with the spread description from above. The Wild Unknown Tarot deck facedown in the upper left. Seven cards (described below) arranged according to the described spread.

1 – The roots. Nine of Wands. Inner strength and stamina, but also work. The work that never seems to end, the ladder that is always almost there but never quite reaches. I didn’t select this card myself, but in my journalling earlier in the morning, I had been writing about how the relationship containing this grief includes this shared experience of work, of striving, of often feeling just at the edge. This was a lovely validation of shared experience.

2 – Receiving connection. Three of Cups. Friendship. Support. Those corvids sharing stories and secrets on that branch. I see my little coven of tenderqueer wonder witches in this card, and I know that it’s true. I also see my many friendships represented here.

3 – Receiving comfort. Five of Cups. Oh, Sad Horse. There is comfort in allowing the grief to be felt. There is comfort in a good cry. There is comfort in looking at the loss directly, and not immediately jumping to find a silver lining.

4 – The loss. This is the only card I intentionally selected. I chose Death. Death means many things – transformation, closure, necessary endings. Sometimes it means physical death.

5 – Offering comfort. Mother of Pentacles. I love this card for her practical engagement with material needs, her ability to recognize and validate her own needs and the needs of others. She’s an interpretation of offering comfort that isn’t entirely outward-focused – she invites me to be sustainable in my work. I see my narrative therapy work in both this card and the next, and I find that very comforting.

6 – Offering connection. Mother of Wands. My creativity and passion can help me build and sustain connections and community.

7 – Judgement. This card came up in a reading I did yesterday within the relationship holding the grief. It feels powerful here. Forgiveness. Renewal. Reawakening.

Phew!