READ LIKE THE DEVIL

A CRASH COURSE WITH CAMELIA ELIAS ♠

December 28, 2016

Practice takes time. But thinking about what you’re doing
when reading cards doesn’t have to be a long road to the
top of excellence and mastery.

I give you here a practice that can get you there in 10

minutes in 2 parts.
 Part One:
4 Principles of Reading
1. Context is king
Do you have a question? A well thought out and eloquently formulated question?
Congratulations. You got the key to half the answer.

You don’t have a question? No worries. You can let the cards themselves formulate a question
for you.

You need a question. You don’t get off the hook, if divination is what you want to practice.

In case you’re listening to useless opinions out there, stop listening to the nonsense that
claims that we can be oracular without a question. We cannot.

Imagine Oedipus showing up to consult the oracle at Delphi. You think he had no
question? Think again.
2. Detachment is king
Now that you understand the significance of a well formulated question, one to the point,
even if the point is to uncover your deepest and most hidden desires that you know nothing
about consciously, we can move on to the importance of detachment.

It’s painful to formulate a real question. How do you know that your question is real?

Try this exercise: Every time you have your question ready, whatever it is, before you lay
down the cards, ask yourself, ‘do I really want to know this?’ Is this [formulate it in full] what I
really want to know? If your answer is yes, then proceed further.

You may note that your yes, while unambiguously clear, may be filled with painful emotions,
memories, or anguish and anxiety.
This is all good. Because the next step in the reading like the Devil is detachment.

You simply can’t identify with your emotions. Not even with your intellectualizing your
situation, or what’s worse, with reasoning your emotions. Perplexing yourself can be
entertaining, but don’t identify with your perplexing.

Do you think the cards care about your emotions, or your rational eloquence and response to
the world? Think again. Why would the cards care about that? They don’t.

So, the best way to approach the cards is by adopting the same – call it Zen – position: You
see what stares you in the face. You see what you see, not what you desire to see; not what
you anticipate as being a confirmation of your worst fears.

You hope for the best and expect the worst. Well, ain’t that pretty… and useless?

Stop rendering useless advice unto yourself. Detach. Whatever you think, you think. It’s not
real. Thoughts are ‘language’, and language is made up of symbolic glyphs. Not real.
3. Evidence is king
When the Devil reads the cards he has one mantra only:

Evidence, evidence, evidence.

You can only combine your analytical sense with your creative impulse if you can
find evidence for what you’re saying in the visual material you are working with.

Again, the best is to get neither emotional nor smart when sitting with your cards.

Your task is to listen and see things clearly, not to be clever or sympathetic.
4. Gratitude is king
Seeing things clearly takes courage. Also because, once you see things clearly,
you can’t go back to the old deceptions.

Thank yourself for being courageous. Thank yourself for taking the time to
formulate a real question, to detach from being too involved in what concerns you,
to seek evidence in the cards that supports what you see, not what you wish to
see, and finally to think about where real transformation really lies within, namely,
between your words.

Don’t be the reader who shouts ‘sovereignty ‘ a lot and demonstrates the opposite.

Be grateful to yourself and your true vision.

 Part two:
When the Devil makes an appearance
and we start reading with the Marseille cards,
the Lenormand oracle,
the playing cards,
and the modern day cards.
The Marseille cards
Once in my series of Tarot Prompts that I offer twice a year to groups of 100
people, the Devil popped 3 times out of 22. The series revolves around letting the
cards formulate a question connected to the context of what we identify as shared
problems or moments of collective crisis.

I share here the last prompt in the cycle that focused on the notion of ‘coping’ –
which I see as a waste of time.

‘Pay attention,’ is the Devil’s last instruction on how you become a hell of a
reader.
Devil, Emperor, Force
Lack of vision can be taken care of by action and sheer force.

When you feel you can’t see how you can think and execute a plan that you can
then devote yourself to, what do you do? Think some more? Speculate? Assume?
Think about the impossibility of it?

The reality is that coping is just a notion. A notion in your head.

You think you’re small, serving a nasty master, and you need to replace your
smallness with some bigness, such as you in command. I hear the Devil
laughing. Replacing smallness with bigness is replacing one concept with
another. In other words, replacing one fiction with another.
What you need to think about is how you are in between changing from one
metaphor to another.

What you call IT, or THAT, or a PLAN, or STRUGGLE, is just that, words in the
Devil’s den.

How are you BETWEEN YOUR WORDS?

I could go on. But I won’t. Words ruin everything. I don’t buy small. I don’t buy big.
I buy nothing. I read the damn cards.
The Lenormand Oracle

I have a question for this one:

What is the function of

intuition in card reading?
Fox, Tree, Sun
You have a hunch. If it’s more rooted than clever, then the
function of your intuition is to make everything clear.

As the Fox is a trickster, however, the cards clearly suggest that what you need to
pay attention to is the state of your mental health.

How often do you check with your mind?

Do you have a clear mind to begin with?

Without a clear mind, a grounded mind, your hunches are useless.

Playing Cards
But first, the notion of ‘playing’ in the playing cards as a tool for divination must not
be lost on you.

While you need a question, devotion to your detachment, and a vigilant eye for
evidence, you also need to play.

That’s why you’re thankful all the time. The fact that you breathe is already a good
game of life. Enjoy it while it lasts.

So the question:

What’s the fastest route to detachment from all fears and desires?
10 Diamonds, 3 Spades, 7 Diamonds
Reduce the top-level mental activity, and see that context manifests reality.

Between two rows of nervous tracks, you keep your eyes on the ball. The diamond
in the middle of the 7 is indestructible, but only as far as context allows for it.

It’s all in your head, but wouldn’t it be nice sometimes to get a sense of either how
big your head is, or what ‘all’ is? Start cutting your shit to the bones.

Diamonds are simply associated with the nervous system because your
mind is indestructible. Your mind creates the world, as at least one sage used to
insist. Rightly so. Thank you Buddha. You da man.
Modern times
You’re here. May the Devil be with you!

How does the Devil prefer to be honored?

We like the association of our readings with the Devil who reads cards like the
Devil because, well, because he’s the Devil.

In many old representations we find the Devil card featuring lots of eyes, in the
head, on the belly, and on his knees. So the Devil is something or someone
related to vision.

What kind of vision?

Depending on the context – let me say it again, context is king – if your question is
one about relationship, watch what happens: If the Devil falls on your table, he will
tell you that if you have a problem, then it’s because you can’t see anything.

Or else, you only see what you desire to see, or fear to see. But you are not your
desires. You are not your fears. You are not the embodied identification of your
self with what’s in your head.

A clear mind knows this. The Devil makes you think very hard. He will convince
you to stay in your head and feed all your demons as you channel them up and
down your body.

Nasty business.

Having things in your head does not equal a clear mind.

But say, you know what the Devil is to you.

You make a pact.

If you want anything from your card reading, then it’s clear and penetrating
vision. The Devil understands this perfectly well.

After all, in some stories, the Devil is Lucifer, the light bringer. And when Faust
desired knowledge, it was for the purpose of clarity that he desired it.

So, how does the Lord of Vision, even as he may be roaming in the darkness of
the underworld, want to be honored?

. . . Well, what do you know?

Hermit, Hierophant, Fool
Breathe through your thoughts samurai style, contemplating precisely on the
nature of your mind, just as a hermit would. Then raise that staff like Aaron in the
desert and start preaching.

You actually have things to say.

But say it in such a manner so that what you say participates in the liberation of all
from their ignorance, your own included, even if it means putting a gun to your
head.

So you honor your Devil by freeing yourself. I’ll be damned...

Thank you for taking this crash course

Keep going

Camelia

♠
Cards and references
● Jean Noblet Marseille Tarot, 1650, reconstructed by Edmund Zebrowsky, 2016
● The Lenormand Oracle: Erwin Kohlmann / Oswin Volkamer, Verlag für die Frau,
Leipzig 1982
● Otto Tragy Jugend Spielkarten, Dondorf, Ver. Stralsunder Spielkartenfabrik, 1910
● Baphomet Tarot, Akron/H.R. Geiger, 2010
♠
● For a take on what I think the Devil is, read my essay, What is the Devil to You?
● For more method teaching and writing under the signature, Read Like the Devil,
you’re welcome to consult my eight divination books, or check out my Aradia
Academy courses.