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Editor's Note: This post was first published on another site that I no longer own. Some links and images were lost in the transition. My apologies.
I wish I could say that when I have an epiphany, it’s one and done. The lesson is permanently branded in my brain and I never make the same mistakes again.
Yeah, no.
It’s more like I have the epiphany, the chorus of angels sing, and I forget about it by the morning—maybe the next week if it was really big. And then I’m left making the same mistake over and over again, wondering why I’m in the same crap situation.
Recently I had the opportunity to remember my lesson and change the narrative. You see, I am a good girl. I would argue a lot of my happiness relies on others seeing that I am good girl, that I did the right thing. When making major life decisions, my internal monologue sounds like “I should move home after college, I should take this job, I should, should, should.”
I bet you can see where this is going. I wasn’t happy. Some days it felt like my skin didn’t fit right, that I was allergic to my surroundings.
I made a conscious decision to do what I want to do, not what I should do.
(Shout out to Cardi B’s verse on I Do—“good girls do what they told/bad bitches do what they want”—for sending me into an existential crisis one night. Yes, I do make life changing decisions off of hip hop lyrics.)
I moved across the country without a job, home, or even a friend in the state. So far, I don’t regret it. While here an opportunity came up for me and I turned it down.
I’m still not sure if it was the right decision.
But my gut said I wouldn’t be happy. That I would be walking the path of should again, on the other side of the country.
I had to change course.
Which, in a very long winded way, brings me to tarot.
We are always learning lessons and growing as people. While my lesson is about living for myself and no one else, yours may be about undervaluing yourself, hoarding material possessions to make up for an emotional loss, or anything else under the sun.
The cards below are not about your lesson itself. They’re little signals that come up to say, “Hey, are you listening? Maybe now is a chance to show what you’ve learned.” They’re about the habits and beliefs that circle your lesson.
The Hierophant
This is a card that many struggle with. It can represent traditional learning, institutions, tradition, and belief systems.
Frequently, for both me and my clients, this is a card indicates outdated belief systems. She Is Sitting in the Night gives possibly the best description for this card: scaffolding.
As a medium between humans and gods, the Hierophant can draw your attention to formal institutions or cultural matrices in your life—be they heavy and archaic and imposed or more consciously developed collections or revisions of those that you use in your own internal scaffolding. - Oliver Pickle, She Is Sitting in the Night
The way I see it, we have established thought patterns throughout our life. These patterns can be positive, negative or neutral. Some of our lessons we consciously remember learning, but many have worked their way in through society, media, and the adults in our lives. These patterns then become the building material for how we view the world, our paradigm.
The Hierophant shows itself in a reading when those beliefs are no longer working for you. Some of the beams in your scaffolding may be rotting and need to be taken care of. Or, hell, maybe they are perfectly fine, but you don’t know how they got there.
If you find yourself in the same situation over and over again, take a moment to turn inward and look at your beliefs. Are you acting on thoughts that you truly believe in or ones that are just…there.
This is especially true if the Hierophant shows up with our friend below.
The Hermit
Did you see that phrase above? “Turn inward.”
If you’re new to tarot, be prepared to see that phrase a lot with the Hermit. It’s kind of his mantra.
Like the Hierophrant, he indicates a time to examine your beliefs. Unlike the Hierophant, he’s not necessarily an indicator of societal beliefs.
When the Hermit appears in a reading, he signals separation, metaphorically or physically. To momentarily step back from your environment, your connections and take stock of everything. Are the friends around you encouraging growth or stagnation? Does your environment support your goals? What do you need to hold onto and what do you need to let go?
It takes a shrewd mind to do this work. You have to be unafraid of hurting someone’s feelings—even your own. You have to sever your ego and say to yourself, “This thing that I love is no longer serving my highest
good.”
Knight of Cups
(not pictured)
To be completely honest, I hate seeing this card. The Knight of Cups in other decks is supportive and encouraging for me. In this deck, I think he’s a bastard. Look at his smug face as he swirls his wine, like it means something. (I know nothing about wine tasting. The last time someone asked me to smell a glass I thought, “Wow, it smells like fermented fruit.”)
But J.D. Hildegard Hinkel defines her Artisans (Knights) as the “ability to use the suit’s qualities in productive ways.”
What does a productive application of the Cups suit look like?
Discernment. The ability to judge well.
Such a simple sentence for something that can be rather hard to do in practice. How often do we act on autopilot? We move through life following old habits and doing things because that’s how it’s always been done, not once questioning why.
The Knight of Cups shows himself when you need to sit up, be alert, and think about how you think.
10 of Swords
The 10 of Swords. What a bummer of a card to see, huh?
In this context, this card speaks to clouded or biased thinking. For me, it’s that I’m swirling the same problem and not making any progress. Sure, it could be an objectively junky situation, but how much is my mindset contributing to it?
The 10 of Swords can also be a bit of a red flag card for me. A big neon sign that says “HERE IS YOUR CHANCE. Are you going to make a different choice this time? Because the path you’re currently on points to no.” And then it is my chance to reevaluate my thinking of a situation or opportunity.
8 of Pentacles
Do the work.
It’s as simple as that. Do the work of the Hermit. Clean out the garbage spotlighted by the Hierophant. Take action like the Knight of Cups urges you.
Passivity will not change your life. Direct action will.
Do the work. Do it often, until it becomes habit.
These are just the cards that showed themselves during my own journey of learning the same lesson over and over again. In fact, generally when I see these cards, I say “Oh crap, not you again.” (That’s not true. There’s more cussing.) But they are valuable signposts that keep me from getting lost and doubling back on the same route.
Drop a comment with a card that showed up for you and what your lesson was.
P.S. The deck used throughout this post is the Tarot of Delphi. It is out of print. I know people don’t like seeing OOP decks. But I cannot speak about life changing decisions without using this deck, because it’s the one that helps me make them. The creator is releasing a new deck soon is contemplating re-releasing Tarot of Delphi, so if you like the deck, sign up for her mailing list. The Beautiful Rebellion Tarot on Etsy has a similar vibe.
I wish I could say that when I have an epiphany, it’s one and done. The lesson is permanently branded in my brain and I never make the same mistakes again.
Yeah, no.
It’s more like I have the epiphany, the chorus of angels sing, and I forget about it by the morning—maybe the next week if it was really big. And then I’m left making the same mistake over and over again, wondering why I’m in the same crap situation.
Recently I had the opportunity to remember my lesson and change the narrative. You see, I am a good girl. I would argue a lot of my happiness relies on others seeing that I am good girl, that I did the right thing. When making major life decisions, my internal monologue sounds like “I should move home after college, I should take this job, I should, should, should.”
I bet you can see where this is going. I wasn’t happy. Some days it felt like my skin didn’t fit right, that I was allergic to my surroundings.
I made a conscious decision to do what I want to do, not what I should do.
(Shout out to Cardi B’s verse on I Do—“good girls do what they told/bad bitches do what they want”—for sending me into an existential crisis one night. Yes, I do make life changing decisions off of hip hop lyrics.)
I moved across the country without a job, home, or even a friend in the state. So far, I don’t regret it. While here an opportunity came up for me and I turned it down.
I’m still not sure if it was the right decision.
But my gut said I wouldn’t be happy. That I would be walking the path of should again, on the other side of the country.
I had to change course.
Which, in a very long winded way, brings me to tarot.
We are always learning lessons and growing as people. While my lesson is about living for myself and no one else, yours may be about undervaluing yourself, hoarding material possessions to make up for an emotional loss, or anything else under the sun.
The cards below are not about your lesson itself. They’re little signals that come up to say, “Hey, are you listening? Maybe now is a chance to show what you’ve learned.” They’re about the habits and beliefs that circle your lesson.
The Hierophant
This is a card that many struggle with. It can represent traditional learning, institutions, tradition, and belief systems.
Frequently, for both me and my clients, this is a card indicates outdated belief systems. She Is Sitting in the Night gives possibly the best description for this card: scaffolding.
As a medium between humans and gods, the Hierophant can draw your attention to formal institutions or cultural matrices in your life—be they heavy and archaic and imposed or more consciously developed collections or revisions of those that you use in your own internal scaffolding. - Oliver Pickle, She Is Sitting in the Night
The way I see it, we have established thought patterns throughout our life. These patterns can be positive, negative or neutral. Some of our lessons we consciously remember learning, but many have worked their way in through society, media, and the adults in our lives. These patterns then become the building material for how we view the world, our paradigm.
The Hierophant shows itself in a reading when those beliefs are no longer working for you. Some of the beams in your scaffolding may be rotting and need to be taken care of. Or, hell, maybe they are perfectly fine, but you don’t know how they got there.
If you find yourself in the same situation over and over again, take a moment to turn inward and look at your beliefs. Are you acting on thoughts that you truly believe in or ones that are just…there.
This is especially true if the Hierophant shows up with our friend below.
The Hermit
Did you see that phrase above? “Turn inward.”
If you’re new to tarot, be prepared to see that phrase a lot with the Hermit. It’s kind of his mantra.
Like the Hierophrant, he indicates a time to examine your beliefs. Unlike the Hierophant, he’s not necessarily an indicator of societal beliefs.
When the Hermit appears in a reading, he signals separation, metaphorically or physically. To momentarily step back from your environment, your connections and take stock of everything. Are the friends around you encouraging growth or stagnation? Does your environment support your goals? What do you need to hold onto and what do you need to let go?
It takes a shrewd mind to do this work. You have to be unafraid of hurting someone’s feelings—even your own. You have to sever your ego and say to yourself, “This thing that I love is no longer serving my highest
good.”
Knight of Cups
(not pictured)
To be completely honest, I hate seeing this card. The Knight of Cups in other decks is supportive and encouraging for me. In this deck, I think he’s a bastard. Look at his smug face as he swirls his wine, like it means something. (I know nothing about wine tasting. The last time someone asked me to smell a glass I thought, “Wow, it smells like fermented fruit.”)
But J.D. Hildegard Hinkel defines her Artisans (Knights) as the “ability to use the suit’s qualities in productive ways.”
What does a productive application of the Cups suit look like?
Discernment. The ability to judge well.
Such a simple sentence for something that can be rather hard to do in practice. How often do we act on autopilot? We move through life following old habits and doing things because that’s how it’s always been done, not once questioning why.
The Knight of Cups shows himself when you need to sit up, be alert, and think about how you think.
10 of Swords
The 10 of Swords. What a bummer of a card to see, huh?
In this context, this card speaks to clouded or biased thinking. For me, it’s that I’m swirling the same problem and not making any progress. Sure, it could be an objectively junky situation, but how much is my mindset contributing to it?
The 10 of Swords can also be a bit of a red flag card for me. A big neon sign that says “HERE IS YOUR CHANCE. Are you going to make a different choice this time? Because the path you’re currently on points to no.” And then it is my chance to reevaluate my thinking of a situation or opportunity.
8 of Pentacles
Do the work.
It’s as simple as that. Do the work of the Hermit. Clean out the garbage spotlighted by the Hierophant. Take action like the Knight of Cups urges you.
Passivity will not change your life. Direct action will.
Do the work. Do it often, until it becomes habit.
These are just the cards that showed themselves during my own journey of learning the same lesson over and over again. In fact, generally when I see these cards, I say “Oh crap, not you again.” (That’s not true. There’s more cussing.) But they are valuable signposts that keep me from getting lost and doubling back on the same route.
Drop a comment with a card that showed up for you and what your lesson was.
P.S. The deck used throughout this post is the Tarot of Delphi. It is out of print. I know people don’t like seeing OOP decks. But I cannot speak about life changing decisions without using this deck, because it’s the one that helps me make them. The creator is releasing a new deck soon is contemplating re-releasing Tarot of Delphi, so if you like the deck, sign up for her mailing list. The Beautiful Rebellion Tarot on Etsy has a similar vibe.
