The Witching Hours

I started by simply asking what’s going on with H and these “leaks” that are happening and the first card out was the 4 of Cups. I was using the Wild Unknown tarot, which is one of my favorites, and the visual for this card in that deck compared to the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith or a lot of other decks is a bit more…well, see for yourself:

In two of my previous readings I’ve asked about H’s Vancouver friend group. On both occasions I used the phrase “are there snakes in the camp?” when asking about their intentions and on both occasions the first card I pulled after asking had a big snake on it. I’m someone who often gets the sense during readings that the visuals on a particular card are equally or sometimes even more relevant to the message. Snakes to rats feels like a consistent vibe here and that vibe is decidedly not love, harmony, and the power of true friendship.

Considering the visual, the context of the situation, and my intuition, my interpretation leans into the negative as well. This card can represent someone who is dissatisfied, bored, frustrated, self-absorbed, and far too focused on the negative. Someone who may be discontented with the level of progress in their own life and possibly also envious of what others have achieved. This card can also touch on themes like remorse and regret from the past and what came through for me was a feeling like the negative and toxic flipside of nostalgia. Someone who preferred things the way they were before and may even be willing to take actions to restore what their limited and self-absorbed vision sees as the way things “should” be, blind to the fact that dragging H down isn’t actually going to make their own lives any better or give them whatever satisfaction they’re lacking within themselves.

The second card I pulled was the 7 of Wands and this time I was struck even more by the visual and also the sense that these two cards together tell a story.

Here we have one member of a group standing taller and shining brighter than the others. Standing out from the rest, maybe even in a way that has startled and unsettled some other members of the group. And as we know, rats are traditionally not the biggest fans of bright light. Looking at these cards together, “tall poppy syndrome” popped into my mind. For those who aren’t familiar, the idea of tall poppy syndrome is that if you have a field of flowers where one happens to grow much taller than the rest, there are some who will feel compelled to cut it down to restore uniformity and similarly with people, if someone in a group were to grow bigger and shine brighter than the others there would be some who may feel the desire to try to cut that person back down to size. So taken together I think the first picture painted by these two cards is of a person or multiple people who are bored, dissatisfied, jealous losers who don't like that H stepped up above them and is shining on his own, probably in a way that shook up the dynamic of this friend group and brought H out of the box and role that they were comfortable having him play.

Beyond the visual element, the 7 of Wands is a card about standing your ground. It can mean taking on challenges and setting or defending boundaries in the face of pushback or opposition. And as the visual shows, you may not have anyone by your side to support you in this moment so support comes instead from the “inner fire” of strength, bravery, belief, and self-trust that you pull from within you. So in this three card reading, this middle card serves as the bridge between the first and the last card, illuminating both what’s going on and how H may respond.

The third card I pulled, after asking about the deeper motivations or truths within the situation, was Judgement.

Judgement can be a card of reckoning, a wake up call that sparks reflection and makes you re-evaluate. Judgement can be a rebirth if you’re willing to reflect honestly and with clarity and identify patterns and behaviors that aren’t working anymore. Learn from the past so you don’t get stuck there and let yourself heal enough to feel and heed the call forward to something higher and better and more aligned with the truth of who you are and where you’re meant to be. One of the lessons of Judgement is that beautiful things await those who are willing to let go of their old self, and what really came through for me in the context of H and this situation was the message of letting go of what no longer serves you so you can rise unburdened. 

and then there's the additional problem that the internet has become increasingly homogenised - the spaces that existed for fans when i first got into fandom in the early 2000s largely don't exist anymore (forum culture is bones, LJ is a husk, tumblr still hanging on) so so much of fandom is social media based now. in some way that's good for PR; they want Cindy from the office retweeting a cute Hollanov fan-edit but it's bad for fans, especially when people aren't well-versed in fandom etiquette start running around like bulls in a china shop. and it means we rub up often against casual or non-fans in ways we didn't used to.

and THEN there's the additional problem that we have more access than ever to cast and creatives and parts of their lives and personality that they want to show us and in turn they have far more access to our thoughts, feelings and theories. and you can see how H, K, Aika et al, H's Vancouver friends are all using social media differently and maybe to different ends but while the general public and casual fans will watch, heart, move on and not think about it, fandom will study that shit. i'm not inclined to interrogate the ethics of it in this ask, simply to acknowledge that it's a thing that happens and it's a natural extension of fannish meta and analysis just now with real people.

people are reading body language, looking for love-bites and swollen lips, comparing carpet colours, rugs and sofas to decide where a story is taken, keep track of who's following you and trends in the posts they're liking, playing detective with online minutiae. no PR person, however savvy, is going to be able to sustain a false narrative that passes the sniff test with fandom indefinitely - fans are looking for the mistakes, the things that trigger the huh moments, the things that prove their theory and disprove someone else's and PR narratives are only built to withstand the casual fleeting interest of someone who maybe liked the show and is pleased that H won an award but couldn't pick K out of a line-up and has no vested interest in whether H has gone/is going to Atlanta. another social distanced picture of H and K looking wan and irritated isn't going to wash, especially if it drops right after social media excises a glowing H talking about C from the Bell upfronts interviews. we're paying enough attention (possibly too much attention) to be fobbed off.

Many great points, anon. Totally agree about PR liking the idea of fandom and how it could be used but lacking true understanding. Also agree on the death of separate fandom spaces and the issues it brings (FanForum, anyone? ONTD? Pour one out.) While on one hand you could say that there's a level playing field quality and an openness to fandoms existing on platforms like twitter, after the 10000th unnecessary drama or impossible to wrangle discourse, one does long for the old forum model of posting guidelines and moderation and everyone being on the same page about fandom etiquette even if there were some issues with that in practice as well.

In terms of the fandom detective phenomenon, I'm definitely not going to claim to be above it or sit in judgement because that would be hypocritical as I kinda love a bit of detecting and analyzing as long as no lines are crossed. In fact, some of the moral superiority from some corners around that can be kinda tiresome to me, especially when it's coming from hypocritical people (coughhudcelscough) who privately engage in the same actions they publicly criticize. On the flip side, it can be taken too far and if someone finds themselves actively stressing out or jumping to conclusions because someone didn't like someone's Instagram post or comment, it can be good to take a step back.

You're so right anon, let me awaken to the error of my ways and go off somewhere to reform. Thanks for your door to door tumblr evangelism.

So sometimes when you find yourself asking things like 'if this is PR, why are they going about it in this weird way that makes no sense and isn't really believable?', the simplest answer is the correct one and it's because the PR team in question just isn't doing a good job.

I have asked about this Vancouver friend group in two of my recent readings. Both times, when asking about the overall vibe/energy and their intentions towards H, I included the phrase "are there snakes in the camp?" in my question. And no joke, on both separate occasions the first card I pulled after asking that question had an image of a big snake on it. (And it's not like I was using a Snake Lovers Tarot deck or anything like that, the deck I was using only has 3 or 4 cards with any kind of snake imagery.)

It's not every tarot reader's style but I believe that sometimes the visual imagery on a card can be equally significant or even more significant than the card's "official" meaning and I definitely think that was the case here and the message was pretty clear. If I do a more in depth reading on this crew I will definitely share it.

-When readers regularly talk about what they're allegedly getting in their readings but rarely or never show their actual spreads so people can see what specific cards they got. Readers can make mistakes, and readers make choices about how to interpret things. Interpretations can also be guided in the direction of supporting a certain narrative that a reader already believes or wants others to believe, sometimes innocently and sometimes because the reader has that agenda in mind. Seeing the cards for yourself allows you to form your own opinion, even if you're not a reader yourself, and to get a sense of whether you vibe with someone's interpretation style in general.

A few examples of why this matters: 

-It’s common to have some less experienced readers in fandom spaces, especially if it’s a fandom with multiple tarot readers active. People get excited and inspired and want to join in. And that’s not a bad thing, but it’s helpful to know when a reader is inexperienced, especially if they consistently produce interpretations that don’t ring true to you or seem way out of line with what other readers are getting. It’s extra helpful to see the actual cards in these situations too, because there have been times when I’ve seen a reader post a spread of cards and an interpretation that seemed to have almost nothing to do with each other. 

-There are some readers in fandom spaces who are just straight up doomers. Whether it’s simply their style to lean towards more negative or pessimistic interpretations or, in a few cases, they have a narrative that they want to push driven by their personal agenda/beliefs or by the enjoyment they get from whipping the fandom into a panic. I’ve seen readers post a spread of cards that was very positive overall and somehow pull out an interpretation that is 95% negative and pessimistic. There is also a popular (or at this point maybe “notorious” would be a better word) reader in fandom who I’ve noticed has a tendency to completely gloss over the most positive cards in her reading, or to pair them up with more negative or neutral cards so she can insist that the overall meaning is not positive. I’ve also seen entire sections of a reading that she insists is related to one aspect of a situation but I feel is pretty clearly about another aspect. And of course I could be wrong or both of us could be wrong, but the overall point is that without seeing the actual cards a lot of people end up taking readers at their word in situations where there’s actually a lot of room for questioning or disagreement. 

Related to this, if a reader gets super defensive when people disagree with them or even simply ask questions or seek clarification. This goes double if a reader regularly threatens to leave or stop sharing readings if people question or disagree with them.

-When something happens and a reader pops up and claims that they totally did a reading that predicted this exact thing happening a few weeks/months ago but never shared it before because of reasons. I'm not saying this kind of thing can never actually happen or that readers are obligated to share every single thing publicly, but it's something to watch out for if the whole 'I totally predicted this but didn't tell anyone until after it happened, trust me bro' routine becomes a pattern.

Related to this, when a reader seems way too focused on being right all the time and constantly providing “proof” to show that they correctly predicted every little thing that happens. It’s a good thing for readers to go back over their readings to see what they may have gotten right or wrong or what may make more sense later with more info. But it’s a red flag when a reader instead seems to be pushing the idea that they’re always right, with the accompanying implication that people should believe everything they say without questioning them because they’re some kind of oracle of truth. This is especially true if the evidence of their “correct” predictions is actually on the vague side.

An example of this is one particular reader in a couple of fandom spaces who has a habit of writing very long posts about their readings that go around in a dozen circles and cover a zillion different possibilities of what may happen, often using vague or confusing or circumspect language. I suspect that the reason why she does this is so that weeks or months later when something happens, she can go back and pull out a snippet that sounds close enough to be related and share just that snippet as a “correct” prediction, knowing that nobody is going to go back through the whole epic length reading to see that it was actually said in a different context or listed among a dozen other “predictions” of what might happen.

-When readers make predictions or claims based on readings that are way too specific. If you find yourself asking ‘can they really tell all of that from a tarot reading?’, the answer is often no. And on the flip side, when readers engage in vague posting in a way that seems designed to create confusion or stress people out. 

-When a reader insists that one particular specific interpretation of a card or a reading is the only possible correct one. It’s totally fine to make a case for why you’ve interpreted something in a certain way or why you think you’ve got it right and it’s also fine to say that your intuition guided you towards a certain interpretation. But if a reader consistently offers only one possible interpretation, especially if it’s really narrow or specific, it’s healthy to be skeptical.

Especially when it comes to readers in fandom spaces, the reality is that there will always be a few who start buying into their own hype and engaging in a way that is no longer responsible or respectful of the practice of tarot. Just because someone claims to have tarot expertise, that doesn’t mean that you need to take their readings as gospel truth or even entertain them at all if you feel that they’re moving in a way that doesn’t feel right to you. You don’t have to be a reader yourself to trust your own intuition.

And that's enough of a yap out of me for one night.