divination – Page 15 – True Tarot Tales

Spooky Style Money Stuff

The Tarot’s Insights offer a head start on uncertainty. Tarot in the hands of a practically minded Intuitive ot ‘psychic’ can minimise risk and wastage, resulting in savings of time, worry, energy – and money.

Intuition, like instinct, is a natural capability.

It is instinct rising from the gut and finding words. It is a key element of intellect, and is probably, I suspect, actually super-fast reasoning and deduction that’s bypassed conscious processes, simply by virtue of extreme speed. Intuition is not the antithesis of reason. Each is an element of the other. Where their findings meet in the middle, there is an advantage in the face of uncertainty.

Divination is an activity as old as mankind. We’re the species that likes to plan further than a day or two ahead. Mankind is always, by one means or another, from weather forecasting to mineral prospecting, trying to stay ahead of the game. Instinct is about survival first, and decisions great and small are often taken in advance of the proof that fully rationally justifies them. That’s why we say ‘Rather safe than sorry.’

For instance: ‘Roar! Snarl!’

‘Oh noo-ooo. I just KNEW something was wrong, but I couldn’t be sure, without hard evidence. The hair went up on my neck. But I didn’t see it, hear it or, um, smell it. Now here it is , and as a matter of fact (I only deal in the known facts) I am in its jaws right now, and it’s a lion. Sheesh. I wish I had trusted my instincts on this one. Ewwww. It’s slobbering. The evidence is in, I am in a lion’s load of trouble and that’s a fact. Owww! Too late now. Good-bye world!’

Yesterday, and this is not an unusual task, I was asked to clarify a spending figure for a fashion retail client who has been using my service for some years, which I did for her straightaway by Email, pending her upcoming trip to Munich, Paris and London.

Her Question: Should she allocate for Stock Buying For the Season Of Spring/Summer 2012 :-

a) £150 k
b) £170 k
c) £180 k?

Pass the smelling salts. The responsibility of a question remains the client’s, but the reader accepts a responsibility in answering it.

I sat with my cards, spoke the question, shuffled and drew three cards blind and at random.

The £150k option was ‘The Answer.’

How did I arrive at this conclusion?

I drew 2 cards upright out of 3 in respect of this option, and only 1 out of 3 upright in repsect of the other 2.

To me this intuitively calibrated as a ‘yes’ for the 2/3 result, and a ‘no’ for the 1/3 results. In addition those two upright cards were symbolically positive and relevant in respect of the presenting question.

We had the Nine Of Pentacles

The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti

This card shows a woman who works hard, provides for others, and is a lover of fine things. She may be a collector of beautiful objects, and a cultivator of gardens. She often has a good head for business, and is a manager or employer.

I have also come to associate this card with boutiques/beauty salons/related business and services.

And we had the Queen of Wands: a card indicating a consummate saleswoman, with great marketing instinct.

I therefore confirmed the optimal option as £150k. The client was delighted.

She had already decided on this sum herself. She had been ‘testing’ to see if I would arrive at the same conclusion. The fact I did so gave her, an independent sole proprietor for over 20 years, and an employer of several staff, the extra assurance that she was reading her own instinct aright. Now she could proceed with confidence.

The Tarot’s insights and affirmations offer a head start on uncertainty. This in turn can minimise risk and wastage, and result in savings of time, energy – and money.

Until next time 🙂

Tarot Truly Terrible

Not a cheerful tarot tale today, but terrible and sad. Such is life sometimes. But maybe also indicative of something so very much more than that.

On March 2nd, I had the cards out to get a sense of the following day. My husband, Il Matrimonio had flown to the States, and my 16 year old daughter had required a little support in previous days to deal with a nasty little outbreak of attempted bullying. A venomous sneak weasel boy, though this is unfair on weasels which are such attractive animals in many ways.

Looking out in respect of both situations I drew cards which made me feel like I had been hit in the stomach.

Justice Reversed

Knight of Swords Reversed as pictured above

and the Three of Wands.

Justice Reversed with the Knight of Swords Reversed is a seriously unpleasant combo. It brings with it such ideas as a judgement against someone, injustice (but for whom?) attack, violence, anger, ruthlessness, cruelty, murder, sudden violent fatality.

The Knight of Swords Reversed is, I personally feel, the card most to be dreaded of the cards of the Minor Arcana. Upright, it has certain stern but powerful virtues, speed, decisive action, incisive thinking, swift invocation of force, attack, resolute defence, a knight rides out for you full pelt, or you yourself, are that knight.

From The Gilded Tarot: Ciro Marchetti: Llewellyn.

In other words, drawn right way up, the card promises everything you’d howl for if you needed the cavalry. Drawing it reversed I knew a pang of dread.

The three of Wands was the reason I did not think this was not about my daughter. It’s a card of overseas, so now my thoughts switched to Il Matrimonio, and since Swords correlates to the element of air, I thought, what about his flight? Was he having trouble at Immigration? Just then, he rang. No, he was fine, he had landed, very excited at collecting his hire car, (the big baby!)

So what was it? Suddenly the thought came into my mind ‘death sentence.’ Where had that come from? What string had the Tarot plucked to send me such a dire vibration? I went to the computer and, on another impulse Googled ‘death sentence.’

And my eye went straight to a link. I opened it and read a piece that had just been posted, 6 minutes previously, which would have been almost simultaneous upon my drawing of the cards. The item was copyright, but it was in that days news in the States, in particular Alabama.

In short, tragedy. In short, murder. in 2008 a young man, an ex-soldier who had served in Iraq called Courtney Lockhart abducted and killed an 18 year old student called Lauren Burk, shooting her in the back as she tried to escape.

Wednesday 2 Match 2011, and Courtney Lockhart, a man with a daughter of his own, had his earlier sentence reviewed, of prison without parole, and in the presence of Lauren’s grieving family, and in his mother’s presence received a death sentence from the judge who had decided to overrule the jury.

Had this double death-knell then been felt so acutely and at the same time so deeply it’s vibration had crossed the Atlantic to reach an utter and previously completely unaware stranger?

Well, actually, is that so hard to imagine?

If it is possible to read tarot for people at a distance, which it certainly is, why should this not have travelled through the ether to an intuitive who was extra-receptive and ‘facing the right way’ because she was tuning in on her own daughter’s security and was also in a psychic sense ‘facing west’ with a husband flying state-side?

Did this vibration originate with the sentenced man and his family, or the victim’s family? Did it emanate from one of these individuals, or all of them rolled up together in a snowball of agony, a Munchian scream in the ether? Or from the residual energy, the ghost if you like, of the poor little girl herself?

It makes me think yet again that the world, and we, are so very much more than matter which is really energy slowed down. Life isn’t discrete, isn’t so lumpen. It’s more like a vast invisible web, dew drops where the sun catches it, beautiful and ugly. Bluebottles trapped, struggle darkly iridescent.

Pluck any thread, feel a ripple travel.

A ‘Potty’ Psychic

You don’t have to be ‘psychic‘ in order to learn tarot, which is a skill of divination, in which one attempts to uncover hidden or semi-hidden information or understanding. You do have to be interested in symbols and associative thinking, you do have to be receptive, but to be ‘psychic’ helps sometimes, to make the symbolic more precise, and to talk in every day, concrete terms, about specifics.

Am I ‘psychic’? Yes, to an extent, and so probably, are you, but what does it mean?

The word ‘psychic’ may comes from the Greek, ‘psyche’, meaning soul and derived from the word ‘psychikos’ meaning, mental, of the mind. ‘Psychic’ implies soulic knowledge, the soul entering and leaving the body on the breath. The word intuition also refers to an inner knowing, that which is our inner tutor, and which we all possess as an inseparable element of normal human instinct.

So what is the difference between being intuitive and psychic? It’s subtle. Perhaps it’s most simply defined as a matter of precision or degree.

The intuition provides us with impressions, feelings, and reactions. Time being of the essence where safety is an issue, intuitions arrive instantly, in advance of any hard evidence to explain them. Intuition is a courier of super-fast intelligence, bypassing conscious processes. Everyone is intuitive. It is a function of competent, normal intelligence, but not everybody, maybe for cultural or ‘intellectual’ reasons, feels comfortable about acknowledging it.

Some ‘diss it’ by saying they will deal only with ‘proven facts’ or evidence or reason.

Yawn. Well, let them, if they want to limit themselves unnecessarily. But this, it could be argued, is actually anti-intellectual. The mind is a whole, not a pie servable in slices.

Psychic insights come when they come, are instantaneous and specific. Something may be ‘seen’ or ‘heard’ or ‘smelled’ or dreamed of, but it will be particular, unlike the formless but none the less powerful, and even life- saving promptings of the intuition.

papesse-copy papess — Early Tarot Images of La Papesse, or High Priestess.

The High Priestess, pictured above, represents both the Intuition, and the Psyche and psychic promptings, or refers to a person who may be female or male, who works or serves as an advisor, or seer.

Reading for a client one evening, I sensed she was holding something back, and to encourage her, asked her directly about a ‘rude man’ I kept sensing, a bully with a loud voice, fair or ginger, a salesman of some kind? The card triggering this was the King of Wands Reversed.

My client said she knew who this was; a man who had a market stall near hers, but she insisted that she’d come only for advice regarding retirement. Courtesy demanded I take her at her word, and we carried on, but I remained uneasy that she hadn’t shared the real worry, and so I hadn’t had a chance to try and help. Such was my feeling.

After she had gone, I was lying in front of the television with a cup of tea, when I suddenly ‘saw’ her in my mind’s eye. She was holding a big round pot in both hands, and she was mending it, with great care and attention.

Oh! I thought. Well, I had mentioned to her that I could see her taking up pottery (prompted by the appearance of the Page of Coins) But I was struck, the mental picture was so vivid.

Next day she called, but I had someone with me and couldn’t call back straight away. When I returned the call, the phone rang for a long time before I rang off. She called again and at last we spoke. The lady now wanted to tell me what was bugging her about the rude man. He was an unwanted admirer. He’d told her that he’d been to me for a reading, that I had performed psychometry on his wrist watch (psychometry is a psychic reading performed using as a focus an object connected to the person being read through a history of physical contact or at least, proximity) I had predicted, so this man said, that he and this lady were going to marry.

So her real reason for coming to see me had been to check this out. Would I say anything that would correspond with this man’s account?

The gentleman was a fibster. What a lot of porky pies and utter ……

I did not know him, I had not read for him, nor do I offer psychometry readings. Nor would I ever have said such a thing. I do not offer predictions, but forecasts, offering a sense of the odds on a question, but nothing prescriptive, for whom am I to disregard the possibilities of free will or the wild card?

I told her this, we chatted awhile, and as a light hearted way of signing off the call, I mentioned my vision of the night before.

‘ That’s why I couldn’t pick up the phone when you rang!’ she said. ‘That’s why I

had to call you back. I had glue all over my hands, trying to fix a pot I broke yesterday!’

The vision had therefore been an instance of psychic, as opposed to intuitive ‘knowing’.

It’s a matter of record now, I’m as sane as the next person, or at least as sane as any one of us could prove ourselves to be, but I am a ‘potty’ psychic.

Till next time 🙂

The Difference between Intuition and Psychic Ability: explained by Miss Kay San Diego (misskaysandiego.wordpress.com)

Time To Say Goodbye…retirement was on the cards.

I was in good odour with a regular client. In June 2010, a reading indicated that her husband had reason to be hopeful of early retirement with a viable retirement package. He had been wanting to go for some time, but hadn’t found an early way out that he would find acceptable financially.

The cards assessed the chances of an opportunity materialising before the end of 2010 as 6 out of 8, odds I translated as meaning it was highly likely, though not inevitable.

Nothing is inevitable but Death…and taxes, so the saying goes. The future consists of so many complex variables, I find it more meaningful to attach a weighting to ‘predictions’, or forecasts, as I prefer to think of them.

What’s the difference? Well, a prediction is a statement about the future presented as a virtual fact, a done deal. A forecast is an indication of the likelihood that something will happen, leaving space for the workings of undetected random chance and free will. Society uses all manner of forecasting…from the weather to the Stock Exchange. tarot readers just offer another, personalised form, intuitively collected using tarot symbols as tools of assessment and translation, as our equivalent of the gathering and statistical analysis of hard data.

The chief cards I drew indicative of a viable ending coming into view over time’s horizon were The Emperor Reversed, Justice and Judgment.

The Emperor often indicates a man of mature years, or an organisation, generally a large one. His employer was a global defence company.
Justice = Law, contract.
Judgement = as in Judgement Day, in a benign way, a time of reckoning, the right time for completing or ending something.

I heard today he was invited to go in December, as part of a larger redundancy programme and – which will not necessarily the case for all such invitees – he is delighted.

A Robin’s Tarot Tale

A real reading done for a robin, befitting the season.

Image: Public Domain

There are many depictions of animals and birds in the Tarot. They form a great part of the human landscape physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and symbolically. If there’s a heaven, what would it be without them? I wouldn’t mind, personally if mosquitoes, maggots, deadly snakes and komodo dragons didn’t make it. Spiders would be all right as long as they were non-venomous and less than two inches in diameter. However, it’s not me in charge.

The songbird traditionally most associated with Christmas, or to give the winter festival its older name, Yuletide – is the robin redbreast. The cheeky, dumpy little European robin, Erithacus rubecula is a member of the flycatcher family.

Its preferred habitats are woodlands, hedgerows, parks and garden. Its staple diet is worms, seeds, fruits and insects. It will fight over sunflower seeds and it adores mealworms. You can buy these in dried form in lots of outlets including many supermarkets. They look revolting though people used to baiting fish hooks won’t mind them. Robins have been to take mealworms by hand, so irresistibly delicious are they to robin-kind.

Male and female European robins are identical to look at, adults of both sexes having the red breast, while young robins have no red breast, and are a speckled golden brown colour. The lack of red breast in the young defends them from territorial attack by adults. The robin lives a little over one year on average. If it lives beyond 1.1 years it may achieve twelve years and has been known to reach the age of twenty, but long life is rare.

The robin’s endearing appearance belies its feistiness. It’ll fight to the death for its territory, and one in ten die in combat. They have been seen to chase off pigeons much bigger than they are. The one in my garden right now however, is rather timid and will scurry into the rosemary when a pigeon appears. Well, I suppose they are individuals just as we are.

Robin redbreast builds a cup-shaped nest in a hole or hidden in ground cover, and will sing all year round. Click here to hear its song and for other general information from the RSPB:-

The robin received the human pet name of ‘Robin’ in the fifteenth century. It has a special place in the library of legends embedded in the Tarot, and a robin may be observed in some decks, including the King of Pentacles card in the Sacred Circle Tarot Deck.

It belongs there by virtue of the symbolism and superstitions attached to it.

Some older people consider the robin a bird of ill omen, a harbinger of death. It is considered unlucky for a robin to fly into a house as Death is expected to follow. For this reason, a Christmas card with a picture of a robin on it is not always welcome with people aware of this tradition. But compassion and care for the dead is also attributed to the robin. One legend says that it tried to help Christ by pulling off a thorn from the crown Jesus had been made to wear, injuring itself in the process – hence its red breast. Another old tale says that it was a robin who found the bodies of the lost ‘Babes in the Wood‘, and who buried them with a golden coverlet of fallen leaves.

If your robin seems shy, it may be a visitor from Europe. British robins haunt gardens more than their European relatives, are more used to human contact and are bold in comparison with European winter visitors which tend to favour woodlands in their native lands.

All right, you robin.

I’m on my way out with sugared bread (for energy it’s better to give them cake or sugared bread than plain bread) Here are some more of those revolting mealworms, and let’s hang up another half coconut of fat and nuts. But note this, my fine robin friend; this is not just for you, but is for sharing with the blue-tits and coal-tits, the blackbirds, sparrows and the finches.

The North Wind Doth blow

And we shall have snow

And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

He’ll hide in a barn

To keep himself warm

And hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

Let’s see what the robin currently peering out from the safety of the big rosemary bush, will communicate via the Tarot.

Are you a cock or hen robin?

Answer card: The High Priestess. Just to make sure, I pull another card and get the Moon Reversed. Meanings: I am a hen bird. I am solitary right now, I want no mate. This is not the time.

What are you thinking right now?

Answer card: The Empress. Meaning? What have we here? Food! I have discovered a new harvest! Being provided for, I must eat my fill while I can.

I pull another card, just as the robin flies off again…and, strangely enough, the card is The Chariot. The robin has flitted just a short distance to sit on top of the seed feeder hung in the bare branches of the laburnum tree.

Why have you gone to sit there?

Answer card: The Seven of Wands Reversed. Meaning: I am new to this garden and I must be careful. This is a good vantage point from which to spy out enemies and not be taken unawares.

What’s your favourite time of year?

Answer card: The Empress Reversed. Meaning: A time when there are plenty of fruits and seeds, but there are still sheltering leaves on the trees. A time when there are still long hours of light to feed by, and sometimes there’s still warmth…the night is not so bitter, the air does not bite so hard. My legs creak like sticks at first light when I must move for food or die. How I wish it could always be the time of the Empress.

OK, verification may not be an option as with readings done for domestic species. Still, I have done animal readings before, and know intuitive communication can work inter-species. Maybe it would not work with all species, but the tarot affords a means of extending perception beyond the boundaries of self, and living things share common drives and goals. Sentient and sensate beings, whether bare or feathered, scaled or furry, are inextricably subject to vagaries of environment, the common denominator in shared consciousness.

During the severe winter of 1962/63, the UK robin population was worse than decimated, reduced to an estimated 50-60 breeding pairs. Spare a little if you can, for your fellow creatures outside this winter.

Until next time 🙂

Tarot Temperatures Rising…

Well, it has been a white Christmas here where I live by the sea on Lancashire’s usually mild, if sometimes windy Fylde coast. It did not strictly count as white, for anyone who might have placed a bet on it, as no new snow fell, but it looked white all right.

Il Matrimonio, the husband, asked me, thinking of prospects for inter-familial travel, did I see a thaw coming by today, Monday?

I performed a single card reading and drew THE KNIGHT OF WANDS.

The Knight of Wands From The Thoth Tarot: Alesteir Crowley/Frieda Harris c. U.S. Games Systems.

The associations for this card are: speed, change, sudden arrivals and departures, warmth, the south, sultriness.

The Tarot was therefore indicating a thaw that would arrive on or by Monday, which is today.

And here it is, a relenting of the icy grip. Icicles falling off the roof, meltwater rushing out of the drains, a metre wide ribbon of water standing on the road. Drip drip. Plip plip.

A little respite for the birds who are having a tough time of it.

A thaw, yes. Sultry…well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that, but technically, yes, in the sense that the melt is due to warm air coming to us from the south, from the continent.

Keep warm this winter, may you successfully fend off all sniffles.

You may be interested in looking up the medicinal uses of such home use remedies as oregano oil:- http://www.homeremediesweb.com/oil_of_oregano_health_benefits.php

Fire, I’ll Teach You To Burn!

This could have been the theme for tarot blogs in recent unsettled weeks, in the fiery light of the London riots. In fact, I found my cards foreshadowed these events, and the tragedies that followed with the Tower card and the Ace of Swords Reversed. No, this is the story of a personal reading, in which I was struck by a definite theme.

There were Wands cards everywhere:-

Wands in Tarot is the equivalent of Clubs in playing cards and its corresponding element is fire.

The associations of this Tarot suit are: fire, energy. passion, drive, ambition, travel, communications, business, moving house, heading south, summer, speed, and speaking literally, such things as combustion engines, flames, hot foods…

You get the idea…Now, in this reading, we had:-

The 5 of Wands, the Page of Wands (Rev) the Knight of Wands (Rev) the Queen of Wands (Rev) and finally, the King of Wands, Dignified.

It emerged that:

The Five of Wands was flagging up the client’s worries about disruption, gossip in her workplace and was indicating a certain amount of stress, even anger centering on failed communication.

The Page of Wands referred to a move at work that she was not happy about. It also referred to her reservations about a proposed house move. She had not fully realised just how uneasy the idea made her, she said, until she saw it reflected in the cards.

The Knight of Wands Rev. The man in her life had children and he didn’t want any more. She herself had no children. He had initially said he would consider having more, as she was helping look after his children, although they were not married. However, he had lately reconsidered and was saying no. This card spoke therefore of ardour dampened, ignition of new life denied.

The Queen of Wands Reversed referred to the client’s feelings about this situation. Astrologically speaking, she was a Queen of Pentacles, a Taurus queen. She was being shown as a Queen of Wands REv because her impulses were ruling her actions. Her common sense and her need for security, were being overruled by her passionate feelings, both happy and unhappy.

The King of Wands represented the man…an archetypal Wands figure, fun, dynamic, exciting, charismatic, but also, capable of carelessness, ruthlessness and selfishness. He could be chaotic and volatile and she had good reasons to feel cross.

Drawing another card of flames, The Devil I wondered what was her her job?

She couldn’t possibly be attached to the Fire Service, could she?

Yes, she could.

She was a firefighter.

The Devil !

The Devil: The Gilded Tarot

With kind permission from Ciro Marchetti

How was she to manage the flames of this relationship without getting burned? The Tarot’s answer came from the client’s own astrological suit…Pentacles.

The Tarot called for her to build and maintain a firewall of Taurean earth. to be able to enjoy the warmth of the flame in safe bounds.

What might this mean in practical terms?

The Four of Pentacles, the 10 of Pentacles and the Ace all asked her to reconsider begore agreeing to sell her house.

It was her own house, in her sole name, willed to her by a grandparent.

The Tarot could not have issued a louder warning against selling at urging of this man, her partner, without security of marriage.

Would she act on this?

True Tarot was secretly doubtful. Fire scorches earth, earth smothers fire, and what was the glue at work here?

The seductive power that’s also represented by that fiery Devil card. Uh oh. Can it be reasoned with, before it’s burned itself out? Does this golden oldie below remind you of the tarot card illustrated above?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2g-6QGsC8g&feature=related

Practical Tarot:The Chariot

I find a 4 card spread is a neat but comprehensive way of quickly opening a reading, I think of it as ‘taking someone’s temperature’ Tarot-style…

North card. Material Affairs, home, work, health etc

West Card: Relationships, spiritual matters, mood.

South Card: Career, ambitions, passions, energy levels

East Card: Thoughts, intellectual preoccupations, planning.

A central card or simply an extra card placed alongside may be used to identify the question or concern that is the motivation for coming to the reading.

This may or may not be logged in the forefront of the client’s conscious thinking at the reading’s outset and may emerge later. Don’t be put off too much if you’re new to reading, share the meaning of a card and a client refutes it. Don’t argue, accept the rebuttal and wait…very often it will emerge during the reading that the Tarot was right, and the client just needed a little more thinking time or to settle into the conversation first.

In the North I drew The Chariot Reversed. A card of Travel, Transport, Ambition, Partnership, Cohesion, Teamwork, Success achieved through focus and determination. Being drawn Reversed…was he currently experiencing trouble with transport or a sense of dissatisfaction with his job?

Not with transport he said, looking baffled. Yes, to the dissatisfaction at work question. He was a building labourer, a skilled one, and that was OK, he liked the work, but he had a hunger for learning, and a taste in reading and curiosity in metaphysical matters that he found was not readily understood by his work mates.

This formed the greater part of the discussion that followed.

But for now that did not seem to be all of ‘it’…what about his car or van, I asked? This was probably not a serious problem, positive surrounding cards indicated it as a passing concern, but it was lodged in the material and financial department of this small spread.

The MOT was due on it the following week, he said, and he was not looking forward to the bill one bit.

Aha. The Tarot was picking up on basics. And so it should.