This spread was inspired by The Hymn to Veiled Wisdom and conducted using the Tarot of Oneness by Robin Voisey. Each position is aligned with an aspect of Divine Wisdom and guided by a devotional question. The reading explores themes of health, guilt, creativity, fear, community, and divine trust.
1. Ζηρυνθία (Zirinthía) - Guide me through veils untold...
Question: What am I not seeing clearly about my health and burnout?
The Tower. I see myself falling from a great height, struck by lightning that flings me from the tower’s pinnacle. This is the card of unexpected disaster, often triggered by emotionalism and unclear thinking.
My current physical and emotional state may be unsustainable. The collapse I fear is not just external (job, health), but internal: outdated beliefs about success, productivity, and what “being well” means. The universe is removing what no longer serves me. Burnout may be the consequence of structures built from self-sacrifice or over-responsibility. Their fall is painful, but necessary.
Guidance: Embrace the fall. This is sacred demolition, not failure. Let yourself grieve and let go.
2. Βριμοῖ (Vrímo) - Shake perception’s core...
Question: What truth must I face about guilt and work?
Three of Swords. I see my reflection in shattered glass. My figure is a dark silhouette. My heart is black but glows red with pain. Is the image real or illusory?
I am deeply wounded, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Much of that pain comes from trying to "manage" rather than feel. I've been suppressing the extent of my hurt. The guilt I carry for resting, or disappointing others (especially my boss), is cutting deeper than the situation itself. The illusion is that I owe my well-being to others.
Guidance: Let yourself break. Cry. Name the pain. Stop gaslighting your own exhaustion.
3. Φωσφόρος (Phōsphoros) - Kindle fires of art’s creation...
Question: What is the role of the Eilat Tarot project in my life?
Synchronicity. A golden statue stands on a globe, reaching toward the sun. A radiant bird fills the sky, its light reflected in the sea. A single feather has fallen at the statue’s feet.
This project is not nonsense. It’s sacred play, mystical, intuitive, and not meant to be rationalized. I should trust its unfolding without demanding validation. The fallen feather is a divine sign: “You don’t need proof. You only need presence.” The golden statue may represent me, already standing on wholeness, still reaching toward meaning.
Guidance: Ask for signs. Stop overthinking. Your creativity is a prayer.
4. σωτηρία (Sotería) - Wisdom you bestow...
Question: What do I need to release to be emotionally free?
Seven of Swords. A predator waits above me on a tree branch. The world is dark and silent. I am afraid."
I may be hiding from myself. There’s fear-driven isolation here, born from trauma, perfectionism, or shame. I anticipate betrayal, so I prepare for it constantly. I don’t have to figure it all out alone. My inner predator is a defense mechanism, but it may be keeping love and support away.
Guidance: Release the need to protect yourself from everyone. Begin small, but practice vulnerability.
5. Ορίζοντα (Urízoda) - Knower of the unknown...
Question: Where will I find the loving community I long for?
Embodiment of Cups. (King) A crown and ship-shaped medal hang from a ribbon. A curtain parts. A fish leaps before the crown. Am I meant to wear these symbols?
Emotional maturity and self-acceptance are my path to community. It’s not about finding loving people, but about becoming someone who feels worthy of belonging. Community mirrors my emotional tone. The more I live in truth, the more authentic relationships will flow toward me. The leaping fish suggests a sign will come soon, perhaps through water, dreams, or feeling.
Guidance: Lead with heart, not armor.
6. πολύτιμος μου (Polýtimos mou) - Precious One, embrace me...
Question: How can I trust the divine and feel held?
Nine of Pentacles. A bird is about to alight on a birdhouse hanging in the trees. Does a home await me too?
This indicates a future of safety, serenity, and sovereignty. The birdhouse speaks of homecoming, both spiritual and literal. I am not as far from peace as I feel. Even now, something within me is already at rest. I only need to return to it.
Guidance: Trust the spiritual foundations you've built. You are already in communion, even if it feels quiet.
This spread appears to reveal a familiar arc of soul-work, unfolding in six movements:
1. Destruction of false structures (The Tower)
2. Acknowledgment of the wound (Three of Swords)
3. Opening to mystery and meaning (Synchronicity)
4. Letting go of control and fear (Seven of Swords)
5. Emotional rebirth into connection (Embodiment of Cups)
6. Return to grounded, graceful being (Nine of Pentacles)
This reading offers insight and initiation, a movement from collapse to wholeness, guided by the voices of different aspects of Divine Wisdom.
It’s absolutely creepy how academia can generate modes of thinking that actually prevent thought. I just saw a new tarot deck claiming to “decolonize tarot.”
I can't stop wondering what that even means.
Tarot originated in Christian Renaissance Europe as a set of playing cards, not as a colonized object. It was never imposed on indigenous cultures. In fact, over the centuries, it’s been "culturally appropriated" (to use another slippery term) by esotericists, spiritualists, Jungians, New Agers, art nerds, cat fanciers, and everyone in between.
If academic language were at all consistent or rooted in historical logic, “decolonizing tarot” should mean returning tarot to its roots in the art, symbolism, and Christian cosmology of Renaissance Italy. But that’s clearly not what the authors of this guidebook mean.
Words like “decolonize” are incantations ("dog whistles," perhaps) with no clear definitions or historical grounding. They reduce rich, complex traditions into ideological props to support whatever moral performance someone is trying to stage.
In the case of The Decolonized Tarot Illustrated Guidebook: A Diverse Approach to Divination by Maritess Zurbano and Cathleen Abalos, the term is simply a catchword for advertising and self-delusion. They use the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (arguably the most Eurocentric deck) to support a claim that Filipino-American culture "by default, embraces all others."
The cards themselves are beautiful, vivid, and clearly rooted in the RWS visual tradition. In fact, they are clones of the original imagery. This makes the project's claim to “decolonization” even more confusing. It’s not a rejection or rethinking of the Western esoteric framework; it’s a new coat of paint on the old structure.
That same flattening carries over into the authors’ treatment of Filipino-American identity. Filipino-American culture has been shaped in part by a long and complicated history of colonization: Chinese, Islamic, Spanish Catholicism, and American. To portray it as universally inclusive by default is not just inaccurate, it’s erasure. Zurbano and Abalos flatten out real cultural tensions and colonial entanglements for the sake of feel-good universality. It’s syncretism dressed in buzzwords, marketing disguised as academic theory.
Their work is not a search for truth. It’s the use of an academic buzzword to shut down inquiry, overwrite complexity, and manufacture consent for vague ideological goals. The "language of liberation" is being used to obscure rather than reveal. This is academic cosplay without the burden of thought.
I'm all for cultural change. I'm even in favor of syncretism, as long as we acknowledge that’s what it is. But we can't evolve if we aren’t allowed to think clearly. And we definitely can’t think clearly if every act of questioning is met with moral panic, and every idea is wrapped in jargon that conceals more than it reveals.
The most useful (and radical) thing we can do is ask questions that make sense and use language that helps us think.
To nudge myself forward, I asked the UPS store to print a hard copy of the book. I thought seeing it would be motivational. I was not prepared for the size of it!
They handed me a brick.
A 254-page brick.
I hadn't realized how much material I’d dumped into my Google document. Three-quarters of it is still a chaotic constellation of notes, half-formed ideas, and passages muttering to each other in the margins.
Holding that heavy stack of paper did make the project feel more real... solid, so to speak.
But then, instead of pressing forward with Part Two, I made the mistake of reading Chapter One!
Within one paragraph, I was thinking, "That needs work."
By the end of the page: ״Oh no, all that needs to be fixed!"
By the end of the chapter, "How could I have written something that bad?"
So now I have a dilemma: which should I do first? I can't bear to leave the six chapters of Part One in such a state, but if I don't move on to Part Two, the project will never be finished. And of course, once Part Two is written, there will undoubtedly more reasons to revise Part One. Again.
So maybe the wisest choice is to a deep breath, accept that writing is a messy business, and keep moving forward.
On the other hand... maybe the book feels poorly written because I’m used to writing for my blog and keeping an audience in mind. I may post those initial chapters to my blog. Seeing them in a more public light may show me how to improve them.
