Cowboy Clairvoyant is a members-only newsletter and series by Autumn Fourkiller featuring dream interpretation, tarot answers, and more ventures into the Beyond. Today, Cowboy Clairvoyant answers someone’s question about work, interprets a dream about being kidnapped into a cult, and offers up a collective tarot love reading for everyone reading this.
Dear Dreamers,
How are you? I’m currently reading The Emperor of Gladness, I keep listening to The Disintegration Loops on repeat — I’ve said it before, to various friends, but it sounds like walking through someone else’s dream feels. My cats have stepped on my keyboard at least one hundred times since I sat down to write this. C’est la vie, they say each time. This weekend, I went to find a Saint Christopher Pendant and also attended a fiber arts show and reception and ate approximately three small plates of grapes, cheese, and weird crackers. Then I watched Sister Wives with my friend Sean. Across a matter of days, I made cilantro lime rice and baked bread and nearly burned Marry Me Chickpeas. I thought, wow, what a life I’m leading despite the horrors.
And I hope you’re feeling that way, too.
Cowboy Note: This week, I decided to proverbially Read the Collective on the topic of love life. It really feels like the time! So below, find one individual’s question for the tarot, one dream interpretation, and one collective love reading for you.
Yours in Brief and Beautiful Bliss,
Cowboy
TAROT READING
Which path should my wife follow: Start consulting or get an office job?
– Anonymous
Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for the gift of your question. It’s a good question, to be sure. In the past few years, I have gone through my own kind of job journey, constantly bumping up against that question that we all face at one time or another: Would I rather be poor or happy?
In your wife’s case though, I get the strong sense she won’t have a problem either way. I know that’s not what you’re asking me exactly, but I think it is good to know anyway.
As for which path she should follow, first she must consider whether or not she can live well if someone else is in control of her. I say this because, after meditating on her two options, I drew forward The Chariot and The Emperor. The Chariot representing consulting, of course, and The Emperor’s staunch upright demeanor representing an office job. For your wife, the question truly is if she prefers action (if consulting is what she feels called towards) or the ability to rely on someone else’s rules and regulations in order to live the life she wants outside of those structured hours.
I wish I could answer this for her, but only she really knows. If it helps, though, I also see for her an eventual crystal kind of clarity, one that happens so rarely in these lives we lead.
Good luck to you both, and see you on the other side,
CC
DREAM INTERPRETATION
My partner and I are leaving our friend’s house after our weekly board game night, but in this dream world the house is in a dark forest. As we walk to our car, I see him in the light of the doorway jerk to the side, like in a horror film. I realize he is being taken, and that my partner and I are too. We struggle against the kidnappers but can’t free ourselves. Now I am in a huge brightly lit room, like a convention center. This is where we’ve been taken. There are hundreds of people milling about with blank expressions. I don’t know where my partner or friend are, but it doesn’t concern me for some reason. My only thought is that I must contact my mom to let her know where I am, because she must be worried. I pull out my phone, but someone nearby tells me, “That won’t work here, all signal is blocked.” Suddenly I know with 100% certainty that this is a cult. Everyone here is in a cult that has no contact with the outside world. The word cult just keeps echoing in my head. Somewhat hilariously, this cult has a reception desk, with some clerical workers behind a long table. I rush to a worker, an older, kind-looking woman, and I tell her that this is a cult, and we have to get out. She looks at me with concern and confusion and some sympathy and hands me a clipboard to sign in. I continue to urge her that we are all in a cult, but she doesn’t respond. I go to the center of the vast room, and I try to scream as loud as I can, “THIS IS A CULT”, but my voice is throttled, and only very quiet sounds will come out. Now I turn my attention to escape. I go outside where there is an equally large courtyard and make my way to the farthest perimeter, holding my phone up high to try and find a break in the signal blocking field. Most of the perimeter is a high stone wall, but in one section, there is only a short, flimsy white plastic fence. I’m sure there is an alarm system, but I rush forward anyway, trying to jump over the fence, but crushing it under me instead. I continue running through a sparse grove of trees until I see a residential area. At one house, an older, surly-looking man is working on his truck in his yard, but I decide that this is now my safe house. I tell the man that I have just escaped a cult and that I am going to use his home as a haven. He is visibly unhappy, but he doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t stop me. I go into his house. I then begin the process of contacting my mother to help free everyone, but then I wake up.
– Hannah
Dear Hannah,
Thank you for the gift of your dream. I’m going to approach this one a little differently than I normally do, because you have truly given us all a gift. Some themes are just too good to put down.
First, though, I would like to answer your question. You asked me: “Why was I so focused on my mother, and shouldn’t I have wanted to find my partner first before doing anything else?” To begin, you focusing on your mother immediately expresses to me something your conscious mind already knows well, that you and your mother have, at this juncture of your life, switched roles. You are the worrier now, like she was for you when you were a child. In reality, you might be first focused on your partner, but in Dreamland, things are different, and often not as they appear. But you know that, too. What I am really trying to say, Hannah, is that you should give yourself some leeway. You do not have to be the perfect daughter or the perfect now-mother. You can live your own life and still be helpful; it is a hard balance, but you are strong enough to face it.
That said, I want you to know that the cult dream is, actually, more universal than we might think. I’ve had several private clients express dreams in which they are at a spiritual retreat that turns terrifying, or become converted in some way, though I don’t believe I’ve ever come across one that involves a kidnapping element as your dream does. Generally speaking, cult dreams also deal heavily with interpretations such as one feeling as if their voice has been suppressed (literally in your case), that they are feeling subject to conformity, and that they feel surrounded in their personal or professional lives.
I feel your dream specifically speaks to the social conformity element. I say this, specifically, because of the kidnapping. This was not your choice. Perhaps, in your life, you’ve been subject to a type of forced conformity and, in your adult life, are finally getting to express what you never could. That could also be why your voice is literally suppressed in the dream, coming out not as a scream but a whisper; it is an echo of those times. There is light coming forward though. I know it’s not super great that the man whose house you take as haven is visibly unhappy to have you there, but that doesn’t matter, because you just escaped a cult! Not literally, but in the Waking World you can apply this logic to your own life. It doesn’t really matter if people who think you should never bloom or grow disapprove of your life choices.
To anyone stuck having cult dreams I would give similar advice of breaking free of people’s limits on you, plus a reminder that, in the least self-help way possible, there can be extreme power in difference.
See you on the Other Side,
CC
READING THE COLLECTIVE ON: LOVE LIFE
The first card I pulled for the Collective was The High Priestess, who had a lot to say. First off, we know we need to sit down and have a real talk with our romantic interest, or interests. This is not the time for dilly-dallying! Our intuitions are at the forefront here. Also, pretending that we don’t see the problems doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Ouch, High Priestess.
The second card I pulled for the Collective was Justice, who tells us there are some issues within ourselves we need to work on, and we know that, even though the mirror is sometimes painful. If we’re going to tell the truth about other people, so do we have to tell the truth about ourselves. Ouch, Justice!
To finish reading the collective, I pulled the card of Judgement, who wasn’t actually as harsh as I expected… Judgement tells us that all of this work we’re doing regarding relationships and self-reflection is worth it. That yes, it is often uncomfortable, but we’ll be better for it afterward. That renewal will come, and with it love, or at least pleasure. Sure, things might end, but new beginnings happen when we least expect them.
