The Tower as existential crises

And how I decided to reclaim OCCULT PROJECTS

At the TABI conference last weekend the 10 of Wands popped up in a reading and I was reminded once again that I tend to make things harder for myself than they need to be. As if only the difficult things are worthwhile.

So on Friday I shuffled the deck and looked for the 10 of Wands, the card before it is what I need to drop and the card in front is what I would see as a result; what would dropping this pressure reveal to me?

On the left is the Tower, which I’m going to summarise here as “existential crises”. Totally unnecessary and not even new to me. Did I learn nothing? From my mid-teens to early 20s I beat myself up every. single. day. because I hadn’t “figured it all out”. I believed those who spoke as if you should have your future all mapped out a near decade before your pre-frontal cortex (the rational bit) has fully matured.

It was during my Saturn Return (about 15 years ago??) that I decided to stop beating myself up about what I’m SuPpoSEd tO bEEE and just enjoy life and do the shit I want to do. Magically, I felt happier than I had ever been and life started to fall into place. But after a while, I forgot. “Everything’s working out now, so I’ll be able to finally figure out who I am soon!” Oh, you sweet summer child.

That was all fine until after I left uni, and I went through my Saturn square, Pluto square and Neptune square all around the same time. To call that period rough would be an understatement. I still believed in the false foundation of my youth; that you figure out what you’re meant to be, then work towards achieving that.

During this time I found a strange little spiritual book in a charity shop (the best place to find them) and when it read “life is a dream”, something clicked, and I burst into tears. I realised I’d been so hard on myself in this life, and what for? I had to release myself from the malformed structure I had created, and so began the early days of OCCULT PROJECTS. By returning to the subjects that enthralled me as a young child I could find hope and renewal, and faith in the universe again.

But…I’d started pressuring myself again, to the point of paralysis. A form of self-harm. The 3 of Swords is that realisation. Stop boiling in that pot you silly frog - get out!

“How do you know that you are on your path – because it disappears. That’s how you know. How do you know that you are really doing something radical? Because you can’t see where you are going. That’s how you know. And everything you have lent on for your identity has gone. And so you are going to enter the black contemplative splendours of self-doubt, at the same time as you are setting out on this radical new path.” David Whyte

It’s scary to confront this in real-time, and it can be easy to cling to established customs and fall back into old, false belief systems about the Way Life’s Supposed To Be. But then you find yourself in a place where 1 + 1 =/= 2, and suddenly you’re falling screaming out of the Tower again.

The 3 of Swords can be about heartbreak, but as a Swords card the key is the realisation of heartbreak. You can’t begin to heal until you know what’s hurting you. What have you been tolerating? How have you not been loving yourself?

I’m Helen Diamond, and that’s all I have to be! Just a peaceful weirdo.

So let’s get back to enjoying life exactly as it is. Time to refresh.

For a few months I’d been humming and hawing about the name. I’ll try to be brief about where OCCULT PROJECTS came from and why I’m reclaiming it.

During a lecture from Morbid Anatomy I learned about a book called “I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me” by Trevor Paglen, revealing secret military patches. As soon as I laid eyes on the “Special Projects” patch I thought “yessss, this is right up my street!” But the title was a bit too generic, so Nathan suggested OCCULT PROJECTS (and he’s a fan of Japanese brands that have their name in all caps). When the project shifted to focus on Tarot I felt maybe it gave a false impression, but when I tried to incorporate Tarot into the name I felt boxed in.

Last night I felt drawn to pull a card from my Hermetic Tarot deck by Godfrey Dawson, lo and behold the Magician comes out. There’s just too many similarities to that patch to be a coincidence!

So here I am, OCCULT PROJECTS once again.

Lost

‘Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.’

David Wagoner