AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was just reading about cards that convey “endings” of various kinds: the 3 and 5 of Swords (sorrowful and acrimonious, respectively); 10 of Swords (demoralizing); Death (inevitable); the Tower (sudden); and the 5 of Cups (miserable), among others of less-potent stringency. To that group I would add Judgement because there is no turning back from the transition it portends. These developments are usually seen as distasteful since the status quo, whether happy or unhappy, is often too comfortably mired in habit to tolerate overturning it in favor of unknown circumstances. So we grin and bear it longer than we should, stoic in our complacency like the proverbial boiled frog.

These cards are among the “poster-children” of the “there-are-no-bad-cards” crowd. Try telling that to someone who has just had several tons of towering archetypal masonry land on them, or encountered Terry Pratchett’s self-important DEATH announcing himself in “all-caps” at the front door. On the other hand, in situations that are appallingly inhumane, any cessation of brutality would be experienced as blessed relief. Thus, their relative severity or mercy is dependent entirely on the context of the reading; they may very well show something that needs to come to an end for the benefit of all involved, no matter how much it hurts. But sometimes we are just holding on because we don’t know what else to do (except visit a tarot reader for advice, that is).

Most often, these cards are rationalized as not being nearly as bad as they seem at first glance. This mindset is part of the “empowerment” dogma that is fed to tarot neophytes before they even know what divination entails. There is a prevailing attitude that any situation can be steered toward a productive denouement with enough cheer-leading. I call it the “Pangloss syndrome” after Candide’s traveling companion, Dr. Pangloss, who constantly reproved the naive protagonist with his mantra “Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” For me, this assumption (which Voltaire surely intended to be satirical) lands squarely in “Gimme a break!” territory along with “It’s all good” and the dubious claims of the Law of Attraction. Those who have spent decades philosophically and experimentally probing its intricacies are fairly certain that the Universe doesn’t work that way.

As a conscientious diviner, I try to be as honest as I can about the inherent nature of the cards in a spread before I try to “spin” them in the direction of sympathetic soft-peddling. This usually involves first creating a little “distance” and an oblique perspective by talking about them in more impersonal, theoretical terms regarding their traditional interpretation. This sets the stage and prepares the querent for the occasional “zinger” that is unavoidable in some cases. I’m reminded of the kindly country doctor in Canada back in the 1960s who smiled and said soothingly as he prepared to yank forcefully on my badly-broken wrist to temporarily straighten the bones before I could get to a hospital: “This won’t hurt a bit.” Uh huh . . . .

Of course, there are times when one of these harbingers of unpleasant finality appears in the outcome or “end of the matter” position of a spread, serving up a “double-whammy” that leaves precious little wiggle room to work with the challenge or navigate around it. In such cases we may find ourselves humming silently along with Mary Poppins: “A spoonful of bullshit helps the nastiness go down.” Personally, I try not to let it get that far. I always make a high-level overview of the entire spread before I begin my card-by-card analysis, and if I spot a dire admonition at the far end of the sequence I will tailor the developing narrative to arrive at it with my (and my client’s) eyes wide open.

I may summon as many correspondences as I can remember to provide a well-rounded take on what could be a singularly depressing vision of the querent’s future, all in the interest of helping the individual find a constructive way through it. For example, we could say that the Tower embodies the abundant energy and enthusiasm of Mars and the equilibrium of a binary number (multiple of the harmonious Two) to fuel a resilient, coordinated rebound from its imminent destruction, but we must also be mindful of the aphorism that “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

Although I generally avoid the use of clarifying cards, under these conditions it is often beneficial to lay out the “rest of the story” with an additional card or two. Another tactic is to pack the analysis with numerous illuminating metaphors and analogies that will cause querents to think about where they may have encountered similar difficulties before, and how they handled the impact at that time. As with any dismal forecast regardless of whether it signifies an “ending,” I’m usually able to find a way to render it approachable even if not exactly palatable. It all comes down to presentation, and I like to say it’s how we earn our fee.