Why I Had to Force a “Yes or No” Out of Tarot
Man, I gotta tell you, getting stuck in decision quicksand is the absolute worst. We’re talking big life stuff here, not “Should I order pizza or Chinese?” It was a critical career shift decision that needed a solid, undeniable answer: YES or NO. No room for “opportunities and challenges lie ahead.” I needed a damn light switch, not a dimmer knob.
I started, naturally, by doing what everyone tells you to do. I pulled the standard three-card spread. Past, Present, Future. Result? Total mush. It told me I was capable (thanks, Captain Obvious) but that the outcome was contingent on my efforts (no kidding). I even hauled out the dreaded Celtic Cross, hoping complexity would somehow lead to clarity. It didn’t. It just gave me eleven more vague symbols to overthink. It was like trying to run an entire, massive company backend with thirty different programming languages—a beautiful, complicated mess that just ends up confusing the hell out of the guy trying to maintain it.
The ambiguity was literally paralyzing me. I realized that for binary choices, the traditional reading structures are garbage. They are too nuanced, too polite. I needed a punch in the face. I needed something that would force me to look at my inner power and ask: Do I have the strength for this? Not just the potential, but the actual, applied strength. That’s why I settled on forcing the Strength card into a strict Yes/No gatekeeper.
The Messy Trials: Why Just Upright Wasn’t Enough
My first attempt was basic, crude, and stupidly simple: Pull Strength. Upright equals Yes. Reversed equals No. Done. If only life were that easy.
I started testing this theory on smaller, less crucial decisions. Should I commit to that long-term side project? Should I confront that frustrating situation immediately? I pulled Strength, recorded the result, and then forced myself to act according to the supposed answer. It was a failure maybe 40% of the time. Sometimes the card came out upright, screaming YES, but when I took the action, it felt like pulling teeth. It was an uphill, draining fight that left me exhausted. The supposed “strength” I had was being completely wasted, misapplied, or was just too immature to handle the task.
I figured out that the Strength card, like any complex system, has subtleties that Go code just can’t handle without a ton of bolt-ons. When your core tool is too basic, you have to start analyzing every micro-detail—the position of the lion’s tail, the look in the woman’s eyes, the slight shift in color saturation.
I realized I needed to build a much more specific dictionary for this one card. I stopped relying on general interpretations and started tracking the small signals.
- Was the card upright, but the woman looked distracted, maybe gazing too far off to the left?
- Was the lion looking straight ahead, focused, or nervously glancing back at the woman?
I treated the decision-making process like an engineering problem, documenting every pull and every subsequent result. It took maybe two months of obsessive logging to refine the rules.
Hammering Down the Ultimate Binary Code
This is what I finally settled on. This is the ultimate, refined Yes/No strength determination. It requires you to be brutal with your self-assessment and super attentive to the card’s energy. Forget the standard book meanings; we’re talking about pure conviction here.
The True “Yes” Signal (Commit Fully)
The card must be Upright, obviously, but here’s the kicker: The energy must feel applied. The woman must appear completely calm, effortlessly controlling the lion. Look at the infinity symbol above her head—does it feel balanced and flowing? If Yes, it means you not only possess the inner resources (strength), but you are currently in a state of grace where applying those resources will be effective and sustainable. This is the green light. Go.
The True “No” Signal (Abort or Reassess)
This is often Reversed, but if it comes Upright, look closer. If the woman’s grip looks tense, or if the overall feeling is strained, that is a NO. It means you have the power, but applying it at this moment will be disastrous. You might have the car, but you don’t have enough gas, or the tires are flat. It’s Strength misused, turning conviction into stubbornness, leading to inevitable burnout. It tells you to wait, gather more data, or change your approach entirely. This is the hard stop.
The Final Determination and Why I Know This Works
I finally used this refined system for the huge career decision that started this whole mess. I pulled the card. Upright. But the woman felt strained, almost leaning too heavily into the lion’s head, and the infinity symbol above her head felt tight, not flowing. The reading was clear: NO. Stop.
What did I do? I ignored it. I was so sure I had the strength that I went against my own damn guide. I quit the job, made the move, and within three months, the decision blew up in my face. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The mess I created trying to force my way through that situation was exactly the kind of costly, chaotic failure the strained Strength card had warned me about.
It wasn’t that I lacked strength; it was that I lacked the wisdom to apply it at the right time. The card was screaming, “You are powerful, but you are not ready for this battlefield yet.”
Since then, I’ve used this brutally honest Strength Yes/No method consistently. It works because it strips away all the fluffy interpretation and forces you to stare at the single truth: Are you truly ready and capable right now, or are you just wishing you were? It’s painful, it’s direct, but it saves you from making the same idiotic mistake I did.
