Curiosity about Life, respect and generosity. Life invites ongoing learning. Progress demands it.
‘Schools out for EVER. School’s out COMPLETELY’…though it never is, or shouldn’t be for anyone with a curiosity greater than an amoeba’s.
Teachers: great ones, good and bad ones, the malevolent or indifferent. The ones I remember with affection, I remember for a variety of reasons.
Gentle bachelor Mr F always wore a salmon pink jumper and taught history. I was in his good books for ever, after asking a guest historian, a Professor David Hampson, what was later termed in my report, as ‘a very perceptive question’…an over-egging of my achievement my family found hilarious.
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Mr F died of cancer quite young, and was remembered by later pupils as prone to violence. But it was the affliction of the tumour in his brain, creating cruel change. He threw blackboard dusters at people.A most gentle person.
It wouldn’t be allowed today.
Big, loud, red-faced Mr W, was Head of Hawk House, of which I was an incumbent and he taught me Maths. You’d hear the roaring from his office after assembly as he dealt with one bully or another.
‘Ohhh,’ he’d roar.’So you think it’s clever to get a little first year lad by his ear, do you? Tell me, how do YOU like it when I do THIS?’
‘Aayaa, ayaa! No sir!’
‘Or this?’
‘Ayaa, ayaa! no sir!’
‘Well, don’t you do it then, or you’ll be back in here for some more.’
It wouldn’t be allowed today.
Meeting me in the corridor at break times he’d press me to the wall with his enormous belly, and, stinking of cigarette smoke, he would bellow good naturedly from his great height. ‘Hello! SILLY WOMAN! How are you diddling?’
I knew, as did my sisters at the same school and as young people immediately do know; he was OK, not even remotely creepy, so we only laughed about it, while avoiding it if we could. I only smile at the memory but…
It wouldn’t be allowed today.
One of my ‘life lessons’ came from an elderly and very gentle science teacher. Mr Vest (yes, really) gently admonished me one day for my untidily presented homework. Embarrassed, I explained that my pen was leaky.
He said, ‘Now Katie, I know you like sayings. What’s the saying for this situation?’
I couldn’t guess which one he might mean.
‘A bad workman blames his tools’ …
An apple for teacher. But our memories are the apples they have given us, crisp and sharp, rosy and polished, maggoty and rotten.
Tarot Goes Shopping in London Town For London Fashion Week
A dowser, from an 18th century French book about superstitions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Recently, my Tarot went to London Fashion Week.
Not literally, alas.
My cards and I stayed here, my behind stuck firmly to a chair in my home, True Tarot Central, in Lancashire.
A regular client – she’s been using my service six or seven years now- owns a boutique where I live. She is a rock and a gem. has been in business more than 20 years and employs a 4-8 staff at any given time. She wanted the Tarot’s inputs as part of planning her buying trip to London Fashion Week.
How did this work?
Tarot had previously forecast a challenging year to come for her business in 2012, with a need to diversify.
Responding to this, a few days ahead of her buying trip to London Fashion Week, the client briefed me with checking out a list of 20 fashion collections which she had shortlisted as buying possibilities.
My brief was to dowse through this list, identifying which collections represented the best buys for her boutique in terms of likely future sales revenue.
How did I set about it?
I carried out card counting spreads in respect of each collection listed. Ithen checked these findings against my pendulum. A clockwise swing of the pendulum was positive corroboration. An anti clockwise swing of the pendulum was a negative which demanded further enquiry for clarification.
Collections getting a positive reading of 6/8 or better were flagged up as Green for BUY
Collections getting a positive reading of 5/8 or 6/8 were flagged as Amber-Green BUY SELECTIVELY
Collections getting a positive reading of 4/8 were flagged as Amber OCCASIONAL PIECES
Collections getting a positive reading of 3/8 were flagged as Amber-Red IF IN DOUBT LEAVE
Collections getting anything below this were flagged as Red. WARNING!
The Tarot offered other comments and suggestions.
It is too soon to verify the sales forecasting.
But a note from my client confirmed that with the Tarot’s help, I had at least accurately anticipated her reactions upon actually seeing the colelctions for herself in person. This reinforced her own instincts and she told me, this reinforcement from another quarter helped her arrive at her decisions more quickly and with confidence.
It afforded her a ‘second opinion’ to draw on when she was unsure. An inside track with no vested interest other than in giving reliable service.
Tarot is at the Questioner’s service. The Questioner is always charge and remains in control of the use he or she chooses to make of the information.
What a business dowser can do, at the least, is offer a virtual psychic companionship, resulting in avoidance of waste, risk and loss through uncertainty in difficult times.
Is it profanity, is it unspiritual to use the Tarot for business, for money making?
Well, is it profane to help people working for their daily bread, who are providing work for others in the process?
It is Life which is sacred, not the 78 pieces of cardstock which comprise in physical terms, the oracle of Tarot.
The Tarot is a portal for reaching inward, then reaching outward, to me, ‘myself’, to ‘you’, to ‘us’, to ‘them’.
Things that go bump in the night. If it’s filmed, I don’t think it’s the ‘real’ aka unreal thing.
Why not? Because such experiences are lonely perceptions of the Amygdala. The eyes see what the brain sees, projecting, not reflecting. This is the vision of the psychic eye. It does not mean that it is not ‘real’. Two or more people may witness it at the same time, but that is unusual.
Reports of reliable sightings of ghosts may be considered suspect for a number of reasons. Not least, motivation. For one thing, they can be good for business-certain businesses. There was an interesting legal situation in the ’90s when a famously haunted Lancashire property, Chingle Hall, was sold at a value to reflect its haunted status with tourist income potential, which did not, em, materialize as substantially as expected.
Article in The Independent Monday 20 June 1994Â :
“A PROFESSOR and his wife were ‘gullible and nave’ when they bought a historic moated manor, dubbed ‘the most haunted house in Britain’, the High Court sitting in Liverpool, heard yesterday.
Plans for the historic Chingle Hall in Lancashire to be a tourist attraction were a ‘pipe dream’, said William George, counsel for a Canadian professor, Trevor Kirkham, and his wife, Judy.
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Professor Kirkham, of Montreal University, and his wife are suing the former owner of Chingle Hall, John Bruce, a barrister, and his solicitors, Hodgson & Sons of Preston.
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They claim they were misled into buying the pounds 420,000 house at Goosnargh, supposedly haunted by a martyr, John Wall, and other spirits.
The couple allege misrepresentation over profit and income from the Grade II listed house and the availability of planning permission.
Mr George said that Professor Kirkham and his wife originally made an unsuccessful offer for the 13th-century house in 1986. Two years later, they were visiting Professor Kirkham’s father near Preston when they again visited Chingle Hall. At that time there was a possession order on the house because Mr Bruce had fallen ‘considerably into arrears with his mortgage payments’, Mr George said.
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‘It is the plaintiffs’ case that they were gullible and nave faced by the first defendant (Mr Bruce) who explained that he was a member of the Bar and also had considerable commercial experience,’ Mr George said.
‘He made many statements about the successes and likely successes of the business being carried out at Chingle Hall as a tourist attraction.’ However, at that time annual losses at the hall – which was open to the public – were in excess of pounds 30,000. Also, plans for the house to be developed further as a tourist attraction were later turned down by the local authority.
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The case continues today. “
This doesn’t mean there aren’t ghosts at Chingle Hall.
But ghosts are not performing seals.
This begs the question, what is a ghost, anyway?
Have I experienced anything of that sort, myself? Yes, on a few occasions.Â
The first occasion was long before I ever thought of learning Tarot, and the full strangeness did not hit me right away or even for some years. I was ‘fetched’ to a scene where a man had just died, and it was the man himself who had done the fetching. There was the body, round the back of M&S in Leicester. There was the ambulance, and the paramedics, trying to resuscitate him. And he was there, close by me, somewhere off to my right. But he was too far gone, too far outside himself, and he was very shocked, poor man. I spoke to him, hoping to reassure him that it was OK, though I have no way of knowing if he could hear me.
There’s the ghost of a small dog on the staircase in my house, just now and then. Â I’ve seen it running down the stairs, fading in and out of view; nothing unpleasant about it whatsoever. I’ve seen it in the kitchen and on the landing, and I’ve seen it run under the dining table. It’s the size of a large terrier with pricked ears and a short dark coat. I see the movement and the shape, not the detail. Il Matrimonio has not seen it. My younger daughter has seen it once, at the top of the stairs.Â
I imagine it’s some kind of energy residue; a print, or a memory of a previous household pet.
Other things I have seen over the years have been altogether sadder, stranger, creepier, and I have not wished to see them.
I’m not asking anyone to ‘believe’ in these things. If you see them, then you see them. If you don’t, you don’t, and many don’t. But I hear a lot of stories, quite matter of fact in presentation, from eminently sensible people who are clearly in perfect possession of their marbles.
TC Lethbridge, psychic researcher and academic with a scientific background said, ‘today’s magic is tomorrow’s science,’ and perhaps he was not far off the mark.
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The world is not only stranger than we know. It is stranger than we CAN know. It is easy to laugh at what we don’t understand. But why should recognizing the possibilities and the limits of our current understanding be raised as a barrier to enquiry?
Tarot, Runes, our dreams, myths and songs, are some of the many boats we sail for exploring these waters. Some prefer to stay in harbour and not explore these things, and they needn’t. But sometimes it’s not a choice and the current pulls us out.
For all our intellectual achievements and aspirations, resistant to ‘superstition’ or not  ‘we’ remain an instinctive animal. We rely on it for our safety. If someone gives you the creeps, then they give you the creeps, and there’ll be a reason. Police, Emergency Services Personnel, the Military, they all rely on good instinct- or else.
What we call psychic is only an extreme manifestation of instinct. This is our nature and our default. Factual truth may also be poetic. Stories come from someone’s experience, and myths and fairy tales from a collective experience. In this sense, however fanciful, even ghost stories contain some essential truth. They do not lie.
‘The hunger for meaning and purpose is nothing less than the human homing instinct — the Fourth Instinct — at work. But in the tangled maze of history, we have been sidetracked; in the long journey home, we forgot our destination. Indeed, we were told that it does not exist.’ Arianna Huffington.
But where is ‘home’, beyond it being the people in your life?
‘There’s that feeling I get, when I look to the west’.’ Led Zeppelin.
‘My sun shall rise in the East, then shall my soul be at peace, ‘ Vangelis.
‘From all points of the compass flock’d birds of all feather.’ Source: Gutenberg. Org
From the beginning, we have been a migratory animal, in some parts of the world, more than others. Several cards in Tarot talk of home, rightly so, as it is a key ingredient of human experience, and a ruling perception. The Ace of Pentacles, Ten of Pentacles, Four of Wands, and Six of Cups all tell stories of a person’s home in a reading.
The Tarot’s Ace of Pentacles, which sometimes talks about food, money, or books, or bricks and mortar says, Earth itself is the nest, the Soul of Man is in the roots of the species. Below is The Ace of Pentacles from The Gilded Tarot, publisher Llewellyn, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.
One Friday at my home in the UK, I was conferring with my cards for comments or advice about Il Matrimonio’s imminent work trip to Boston, and I drew The Tower card, pride of place.
The Tower from The Golden Tarot by Kat Black.
The Tower card signifies upheavals, shocks, crises, falls, collisions, accidents….pride before a fall, miscommunications, The Tower of Babel. A house of cards collapses, figuratively or literally.
The Tower may also refer simply to a Tuesday, or to the weather or other natural events, including seismic and volcanic activity.
Surrounding cards suggested a key weather event attached to Il Matrimonio’s Boston trip.
‘You need to pack your raincoat,’ I said to Il Matrimonio. ‘There’s going to be rain. Maybe storms.’
Perhaps I drew The Knight of Swords nearby, and maybe the Pages of Cups or Swords…cards which could add up to a picture of sudden winds and rain or snow.
‘There is not,’ he said. ‘You’re wrong, you mad bat, you and your cards. Not at this time of year. In Florida maybe. Not in Boston. The weather forecast for next week says 70 odd degrees.’
Actually, though Il Matrimonio is very knowledgeable on matters of geography, and more widely travelled than me, September is hurricane season after all, even if Boston is not often hit.
‘Suit yourself, you stubborn old thick-head, ‘ I said. (One is impervious to a sneer about one’s Tarot. One needs a thick skin in this line of activity, and to be ready to dish it out with the best, and he confers with me about finances, and has not been let down yet, so you’d think he might be more receptive, or just curious, but that’s folk for you) ‘Because I’m seeing it will rain, big style, and even if it doesn’t, it’s a blooming long way to travel without even a raincoat, in September. That’s just common sense, but if you want to behave like a delta brain, you’ve been warned. The Tower’s saying ‘storm.”
Storm indeed. It came next morning around 8 AM. First there was thunder and a downpour. Then we only had a TORNADO.
A twister. It followed the thunder, screaming down our road like a banshee. I’ve never heard anything like it….a great scream of sound.
Down went a neighbours wall. Wheee! crash! went sundry dustbins and garden furniture, and somewhere a cat yowled in terror, and we hoped it wasn’t under the neighbour’s wall (it wasn’t, though maybe it got carried aloft and blown to Fleetwood or Thornton Cleveley.
A tiny twister, being British. It hit no more than half a dozen roads. Extravagance is so vulgar, don’t you think? And I do not want to encounter any twister bigger than tiny.
But what about his trip? Il Matrimonio loved Boston and it was great weather.
Boston surrounded by brilliant autumnal colors (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Beautiful golden sunshine and a hint of crispness in the air. Except that was, for his one free day, poor soul, when he went whale watching on a boat trip out of the harbour, and it was a bit rough, and a Japanese tourist was very sick and threw up on deck, and later on Il Matrimonio thought he saw a fin and something black might have been moving just beneath the surface, possibly a whale, which only one other person spotted, and he was quite pleased about that.
It rained hard all day, he said, and he was so glad he had ignored the weather forecasts and decided to pack his raincoat after all.
2008
One night I dreamed there was an earthquake at the end of my road, and that I was trying to leap a gap that opened up on the pavement. A week later, I had a peculiar day, hard to describe, except to say I was vaguely unsettled, prowling as it were, like a sheep watching out for a wolf. At bed time I double-checked the doors were locked, and the side-gate.
Il Matrimonio was away, it was just me and my fourteen year old daughter at home, her bedroom the other side of my bedroom wall.
Something woke. First of all, a feeling of unaccountable dread and oppression, as if something malign, some hostile entity had entered the room and crept under my bed. Then there was an extraordinary noise through the wall, as if my daughter was pushing her wardrobe across the room, and I shouted to her, what the hell was she doing and got no reply.
I couldn’t just leap out of bed and go to find out, getting out of bed and into a wheelchair was a bit of a manoeuvre, but then furniture started shifting, deeply creepy, and the feeling was so peculiar I thought the bed really might start levitating, true horror film style, when things went quiet again.
My daughter came padding through, ‘what was that?’ she said, ‘that was really scary,’ and climbed in with me.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ I said, ‘a bit of subsidence.’
Our house was built on sand, literally, with sand down in the foundations.
It was the Market Rasen earthquake and the tremors had reached us, travelling east to west across England, all the way to the Lancashire coast. skirting the rock of the southern Pennines.
Wiki- The 2008 Market Rasen earthquake occurred at 00:56:47.8s GMT on 27 February 2008. According to the British Geological Survey the earthquake registered a reading of 5.2 on the Richter scale, with its epicentre 2.5 miles (4 km) north of Market Rasen and 15 miles (24 km) south-west of Grimsby.
It was felt as far afield as Wales, Scotland and London.
What if the dream the week before had not simply been a coincidence, but was physical in origin, the mind’s way of telling me that some change had been detected in the geomagnetic field?
We’re an ancient animal. Not the most ancient by a long chalk. Still, we are pretty ancient, and we are an animal. Birds, and elephants are known to detect tsunamis long before they’re seen. Maybe the earthquake dream was because I physically heard or felt some early warning tremor ahead of the main event, and the distance was short enough, 153 miles by road, shorter directly overland.
Our lives are busy and full of noise and distraction. Fewer distractions in the night. Who can say for definite what is our latent or dormant physical sensory capability, let alone pronounce with finality on the possibilities of the human psychic potential.
I do not give medical advice. But it can’t be helped that sometimes I see illness in the cards, and then I will try to help, within professional and ethical limits. That is what the person has come for, after all, and usually, people with a worry like this are already in medical care. If not, I suggest and refer as appropriate.
What will be will be. Death comes to us all. Of what help can a Tarot reading possibly be faced with this finality? Well, in readying ourselves at every level possible.
I remember a man who came for a reading some years ago. He just wanted a general reading, he said. He had no particular question.
I hear this a lot, but few come for a reading without there being a question. A reading costs time and money. Not a lot, considering the rare and unusual nature, and the scope of the work, but still,  people are investing resources, time, money and energy in coming to see a reader like me. They do not do so idly.
Maybe they sense a Question within themselves, but have not yet arrived at a point where they can articulate it. Then it is my job to help identify the question and get it under the spotlight.
Sometimes people are simply holding back. They want to wait and see what will come through the tarot completely ‘off the cuff’. This is entirely natural and to be expected, and is absolutely fine, if my visitor will then engage with the feedback, and not stonewall me, which wastes time and energy.
To discover this gentleman’s ‘Question’, I laid eight cards out in a general Horseshoe Spread. Click here to read more about Horsehoe Spreads.
The cards which particularly struck me were:
Temperance Reversed. The Temperance card drawn upside down (reversed) suggests a major illness. Another of its meanings is Lack of Time.
The Queen of Cups. A woman, loved by the querent. Wife, partner, friend.
By Kind Permission of US Games: The Moon in Tarot signifies, dreams, creativity, psychism, also lies, infidelity and delusion, nightmare, danger, risks in travel, and certain illnesses, including cancer.
The 9 of Swords. A dark card of fear, grief, mourning.
The Moon card. This tricky card has several meanings, but I have learned to be on alert for an incidence of cancer, particularly the ‘female’ cancers, if I see it in a reading.
The Page of Coins Reversed (a business under performing, folding a small business)
The Three of Coins. Workmanship. A small business. Community Nursing.
I put it to my visitor that he seemed greatly worried about the health of this lady. I asked him if he had a business, selling objects, such as food, crafts, books, and was he wondering how to proceed with the business?
The lady was his wife, she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was a book seller, She helped in his business. she handled telephone queries and marketing. He thought she ought to stop, and he was thinking of selling the business.
‘I think you will continue with the business,’ I said, prompted by the Tarot. ‘The Three of Coins is suggesting this. Tarot is saying it is a good plan, and a helpful plan, and is what your wife will almost certainly want, if you ask her. The business affords routine, structure…normality. If you were to sell for the sake of her health, I see her being more frightened at that, than wearied by working. (Nine of Swotrds) She needs to be busy and she wants you to be busy, not looking at her with fear in your eyes and a clock ticking. I sense community care, now and later (6 of Coins) Is it a hospice I am sensing? It lookslike a good one. I don’t make predictions of death, but the fact of seeing you busy with nursing and books in six months, suggests your wife’s time is not yet imminent. People do often exceed doctor’s predictions. ‘
His response:Â Tarot had answered his question before he asked. He had been debating with himself whether to close the business, but had not discussed it with his wife, being unsure of her reaction. They had recently been referred to a hospice, visited for a look round, and been pleased with what they had seen. It provided a sense of having a back-up, he said.
Recently, via a social and business networking site called Ecademy I became acquainted with an independent financial advisor, George Emsden, ‘The Cancer IFA’, who’s based in London. He specialises in financial advice for people diagnosed with life limiting or terminal illnesses and has experienced cancer himself. Here is a link, with his service information and an accompanying blog which I hope will help someone reading this.
‘Tell The Truth And Shame The Devil’, is a very old saying. Shakespeare used it. Hugh Latimer, one time time Bishop of Worcester, is recorded as having quoted it in 1555, and it was noted then as being already a ‘well known saying.’
But what exactly might have been the sentiment behind it? There are times when common sense, tact, wit, grace and compassion depends on the wriggle room of the Little White Lie. Absolute rigour in truth at all times regardless of circumstances is, to say the least, charmless and socially unskilful.
In a reading, clues alerting me to the fact that the person I am reading for is not telling me the whole truth, while at the same time absolutely expecting me to see clearly on their behalf, are these tarot cards:
The Magician, The Moon, Justice Reversed, Judgement Reversed, The Seven of Swords, and The Devil.
I find people true and sincere in the main. Very movingly so at times, but I’m not likely to forget the reading challenges that the Artful Fibsters pose in a hurry. They want you to see clearly for them, while deliberately throwing dust in your eyes. Could the original meaning of this saying, <b>Tell the Truth and Shame The Devil </b> have been:
See if you can’t put him to shame, by means of your good example? (Is it likely shame is on his menu?)
Make even him cringe with the awfulness of the transgression you’re owning up to?
(You did what?? You didn’t??? I have been outperformed. I’ve come over all faint. Pass me my sulphur’. What brand new wickedness could there be it/s/he hasn’t thought of already?)
I jest, and it’s rare I’ve met a real out and out liar, and not for a long while. I sense trouble now and head those people off now rather than deal with them. But I have met them, in my early days of reading, and what a waste of time and energy it can be. Telling the Truth cuts the Gordion Knot.
I have just returned from a few days in Scotland, visiting family and spending a couple of days in the imposing and handsome Granite City that is Aberdeen.
Looking at my cards two days before we left, I was perturbed to see what looked like news of a death. It looked as though the news was imminent.
I drew:-
The Ace of Swords Reversed (Act of Force, act of law, malign power)
The Emperor Reversed (weakened government, stability, rule of law, fatherhood)
My cards seemed to be saying ‘watch out for news of Death on Monday.’
My first concern was for my brother. He is a police officer (The Emperor can refer to the Police) and had been working extra duties because of the London riots (The Ace of Swords Rev can mean a battle or a riot) though he was not deployed to London itself.
The Emperor Reversed COULD have been indicating an injury, so could the Ace of Swords Reversed.  Drawing more cards to ask myself whether the coming news was connected to my brother, the indications were thankfully no, he was OK, and was going to continue to be OK for the foreseeable future.
Who were the cards ‘seeing’ then? What was the association involving Death, and Monday, and possibly an older man? A certain uncle of my husband came to mind, but I have never met him, and my sense of personal connection to this person is not strong.
I got the answer just before we left home. A client I know well and regard very highly emailed me to say that sadly, her father had passed away a few days earlier.
His funeral was scheduled for Monday.
So the Death card had been pre-empting news of coming obsequies.
I was well aware that my client’s father (The Hermit Reversed) had not been at all well, not really ‘himself’ for a couple of years. He had been sleeping a lot in that time, and had been remote, disinclined to eat, and sometimes confused when awake (Loss of Attention/Focus/Clarity = Ace Of Swords Reversed)
My client’s father’s state of health had appeared many times in my readings for her, reflecting her deep concern, even when I was conducting readings on her behalf on purely business questions. Our thinking and feeling does not recognise compartments, and clearly also, I must feel a strong sense of connection to this lady.
Happily, after his long infirmity, this much loved Emperor had passed away very peacefully. My client emailed me because, without making any outright prediction of death (a tarot reading no-no of the nth degree)  I had all the same seen this coming back in January, and had dropped a hint to the effect that a 2011 business trip in the second half of the year might need a last minute change in plan owing to family circumstances.
She was giving me the feedback that this circumstance had now actually materialised, and that though she was so sad, she was glad and grateful for her father’s peaceful release.
True Tarot Tales 