( . . . or to be less opaque, does “shit happen” randomly or not?)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: If you gag on a bit of good-natured barnyard naughtiness, you can give this one a pass. But scratch the surface and you’ll find a substantial, divination-based discussion of fate versus causality.

Those who tout the legitimacy of divination insist that nothing in life occurs purely by chance; there is always at least one causal factor that can be investigated in a past, present or (hypothetical) future sense. It may be buried deeply in the past while still exerting an undeniable impact on the present; it could be entirely in the hands of another person, known or unknown, by whom we are currently susceptible to manipulation; or it might be lurking in the future, an agent of universal change waiting to pounce, and the only reason we experience it as random is that we aren’t vigilant (or paranoid) enough to anticipate the disruptive effects of entropy. (This is where predictive astrology has an edge over tarot.)

This phenomenon can usually be flushed out (see what I did there?) and examined with the right technique, abundant sensitivity and sufficient skill on the part of the diviner coupled with the querent’s honest belief in those capabilities, along with their willing cooperation. Whether or not it’s the “whole truth” is debatable, but it’s a place to start and the client can always be referred to another professional if it resists unveiling by prognostication.

I’m one who believes that the aforesaid “shit” doesn’t happen accidentally or on its own initiative, it is always instigated by other factors. The early onset of a deadly disease frequently has a genetic signature that is hidden in one’s DNA, or it can objectify a precursor that is the consequence of long-standing “bad habits,” while being run over by a bus just means we failed to exercise due caution in the moment (the “wrong place at the wrong time” premise). I’m not convinced that it is fate or destiny, but it may well be the upshot of some kind of exposure or predisposition; lack of situational awareness; or poor judgment that is aggravated by external influences, and on the other side of the coin, good fortune may just spring from a lack of prolonged immersion in the “shitty” realities of the human condition. Unless one is reclusive and immobile, daily living involves some risk: I’m “chronologically challenged” and I go up and down stairs – very carefully – several times each day.

If we’re alive we’re vulnerable, and sooner or later we will all step in the “doo-doo” with our best Sunday pumps no matter how hard we try to avoid it. That fact is inarguable and it does no good to wring our hands and whine that we had no clue it was coming. As I see it, life is a tightrope walk between minimizing serious mistakes while maximizing one’s opportunities, and there is no safety net unless we erect one of our own device. If we let our guard down, being “shat upon” is only a matter of time. One of my favorite family memories was the occasion when our daughter gave my wife a birthday card with an image of the Grim Reaper framed in a car’s rear-view mirror, the kind that has the inscription “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.”

The “Distant Past” position in a Celtic Cross spread is a good example of my perspective on this. Conventional wisdom is that it represents preexisting conditions in the subject of the reading that are firmly established and that are no longer going to change. In other words, while it can offer a glimpse into previous inequities that still haunt us, it is mostly background noise or “old news.” However, that doesn’t prevent it from casting its shadow forward in time to signify an issue that has never been successfully resolved and integrated into our self-awareness. Although I don’t use the spread design that assumes this position to reveal unconscious aspects of the matter in question, the purpose is the same. We could say that yesterday’s digestive distress becomes today’s mental “constipation” or”diarrhea.”

It’s usually productive to discuss this possibility with the sitter (in less scatological language) when interpreting the card in that position. As Aleister Crowley once said, “the fact of consultation implies anxiety or discontent,” so it’s never wrong to propose that something may be gnawing at the individual that is rooted in long-dormant circumstances; their only response might be stare back in puzzlement or shake their head in denial, and we can then move on with the reading while leaving that thread unpulled. If the querent has come with a grievous problem, there will almost certainly be other metaphorical incontinence of excremental proportions to sink our teeth into (and please banish that thought, I don’t mean it literally <tries to hide his “shit-eating grin”>).