notes from a person passing through

Written on a random Tuesday afternoon, sick and half-dissociating, after picking up a deck I hadn’t touched in years.

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I used to collect playing cards when I was a kid. There was something about the texture, the repetition, the quiet ritual of shuffling them that calmed me. I think that’s part of why tarot lingers in the background of my adult life. I don’t fully believe in prophecy, but part of me does. Or maybe wants to. I treat tarot like a mirror: a way to pull something out of my own subconscious and look at it from a safer distance. But every now and then, I wonder if something else is looking back, too.

This afternoon, while sick and slightly outside myself, I picked up my Occult Tarot deck. I hadn’t touched it in years. I didn’t even mean to pull anything. Just started shuffling, and eventually, I asked two things: How am I feeling? and How will I heal from this?

I wanted something outside of myself to react to, perhaps a framework to think through. Neither comfort nor clarity. So I pulled two cards.

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Card 1: Andromalius

I pulled the 7 of Swords, reversed, represented in this deck by Andromalius, one of the demons from the Ars Goetia. According to the description, Andromalius exposes thieves and liars, returns what was stolen, and reveals hidden enemies. But in the reversed position, the focus turns inward. Therefore, instead of being about someone else’s deception, it felt like it was pointing to something internal. Self-deception. Avoidance. A sense of mistrust toward myself. That unsettled feeling of knowing something is off but not being sure what, or why, or whether it’s even okay to name it. In a weird way, I was dodging something without realizing what I was trying to avoid. I felt like the card held up a mirror I couldn’t ignore.

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Card 2: Raum

The second card was the 3 of Swords, represented by Raum. I didn’t know that this was such a hard-hitting card at first. Apparently it’s about grief. Sometimes it’s about loss that’s piled up quietly over time. A sadness that’s been sitting somewhere in you, waiting to be felt. In this deck, Raum is described as a figure of destruction. He brings down what’s powerful, what’s rigid. But he also brings strange connections, love between friends and foes, moments of clarity where there used to be noise. As a response to how I’ll heal, I found the message rather blunt:
You grieve, you let the thing collapse, you stop holding it all together just because it feels like you’re supposed to. Life is about allowing space for what’s already been lost. Letting yourself actually feel it, instead of just analyzing it.

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For me, tarot works best as a kind of distance. A way to get just far enough outside my own head to see what’s going on in there. I don’t turn to it for answers or predictions. It’s more like a conversation with something that isn’t quite me.

“You already know this. Stop acting like you don’t.”

That’s where I am right now, actually. Not healed, not lost. Just standing in the middle, holding the pieces I finally stopped pretending weren’t broken.

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