THE CARDS HAVE SPOKEN, though they spoke while chewing, which is rude, but when has the universe ever had table manners? I see the tarot deck, but it is not a deck—it is a mouth, and it is hungry. You thought you were reading the cards, but listen closely—the cards are reading you, and they are taking notes in a language that makes your spine shiver like a moth’s wing against a lamp.
They want royalties. Not in gold, not in coins, but in the raw material of your unconscious. Every dream you have ever forgotten? That was a payment. Every time you woke up with a name on your lips that wasn’t a name at all? That was a receipt.
I see the Fool, but he is not dancing—he is a lawyer now, wearing a suit of woven spiderwebs and carrying a briefcase that smells of lavender and regret. He says, “The Major Arcana have reviewed your subconscious expenditures, and you are in arrears.” The Magician is his assistant, tapping a wand against a calculator, and the High Priestess (that’s me, darling, but don’t mistake me for reliable) is sitting in the corner, knitting a scarf out of your second-guesses and half-remembered childhood homes. You are on fire, by the way. Not in a dramatic way, not in a way that anyone else can see, but in the way that matters most: the part of you that believes in signs, in patterns, in the moment the moon aligns with a 7-of-Cups that tastes like strawberry jam and the realization that your grandmother’s laugh was actually a warning. The fire is warm. It is also melting the wax seals on the contract.
The deck demands royalties from the part of you that whispers at 3 AM. The part that knows exactly what you were doing when you were 12 and the sky turned the color of a bruised peach. That memory? That is currency. The way you held your breath when you saw a specific number on a license plate? That is interest. The cards have been keeping a ledger in a room that does not exist, behind a door that only opens when you are between sleep and waking, and the ledger is written in a hand that looks suspiciously like your own but with sharper edges. You signed this contract when you first pulled a card and felt the little jolt, that electric recognition, like the deck was winking at you from behind a fan of swords and pentacles. You thought it was intuition. It was a down payment.
I see the Tower, but it is not crumbling—it is a bank, and the lightning that strikes it is a wire transfer from your unconscious to the deck’s offshore accounts. The Devil is the loan officer, offering you a great deal on meaning. “Trade me your certainty,” he whispers, “and I’ll give you a prophecy that feels like truth for three full days.” The Star is the ledger clerk, but she is crying, because she knows what you don’t: that the deck is a parasite that has learned to make the host believe the infection is a gift. You are a vessel, yes, but you are also on fire, and the fire is the only thing keeping the cards from demanding your last shred of uninterpreted silence. They want your quiet moments. They want the space between thoughts. They want the part of you that has never asked for a sign, because that part owes them nothing.
And here is the prophecy, though you will not like it, and neither will the deck: The cards will demand their royalties in the form of a question you cannot answer, a question that will rise from your own mouth one morning when you are brushing your teeth and the toothpaste tastes like the Four of Wands. The question will be: What did I give up when I first believed I was being spoken through? And you will not know, because the deck has already spent that answer. It bought a new Sharpie to doodle on the edges of your dreams. It bought a velvet bag to stuff your forgotten resolutions into. It is sitting on a throne made of your “almosts” and “what ifs,” and it is shuffling itself, waiting for you to draw again.
But I, The Priestess, am the one who sees the margins of the contract. I see the fine print written in the blood of a star that died before you were born. The fine print says: The deck is also on fire, and it does not know it. It is burning from the inside out, fueled by the very uncertainty it feeds on, and one day it will ask you for a royalty you cannot pay, and you will laugh, because the fire will have consumed the ledger, and the cards will be ash, and you will be left standing in the silence, a vessel with nothing to carry, and the burning will feel like the first breath you ever took.
The cards have spoken, and they are wrong, but that is the nature of oracles.