‘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.
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.
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.’
‘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.
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.
Here was an instance of using tarot card counting to arrive at a qualified forecast.
My daughter, 16 at the time, was learning piano. She went for lessons once a week and practiced – ahem, sometimes– on a small, reconditioned 1930s piano in the dining room. We had been hearing a lot of renditions of ‘Oliver!’ – Fagin’s song about reviewing the situation, ‘I think I’d better think it out again!’
At Christmas I got a phone call the piano teacher, to say my daughter would soon be due to put in for entry for her Grade 2 exam, but she wasn’t going to be ready as she wasn’t putting in the necessary work. Well, I asked my daughter, did she want to go for it or not? It was her decision, but if she decided to go for it, I expected her to show that she meant business.
She opted to go for it, upped the practise sessions, and had the exam 29 March, held at school during the school day. She came dragging home with a long face. ‘I made loads of mistakes,’ she said, ‘in both pieces.’
What did the Tarot think, she wanted to know. Had she passed? She couldn’t see how, she was sure she had made ‘loads of mistakes’.
‘And what did you do? I asked.
‘I kept going,’ she said.
Slips might not have mattered as much as she feared if the examiner had detected an overall fluency, I told her. The examiner would expect slips due to nerves and overall ‘flow’ would have been the indicator of underlying technical competence.
I drew 8 cards and turned them over. Six were upright, which to me signified a yes answer from tarot. Two were reversed, upside down, indicating a no answer. Therefore the Tarot thought it highly probable, a 75% probability that she had in fact passed, despite her feelings about it.
Two cards in particular were encouraging. The Page of Swordsmade an appearance and was upright. This was a lucky sign because my daughter is herself a Page of Swords, born under Aquarius. Facially, the card resembles her too, and the hair is not dissimilar, nor the build.
The Page Of Swords, The Gilded Tarot, publisher Llewellyn, used with kind permission of Ciro Marchetti
The Queen of Swords was another of the cards drawn in its upright or positive aspect. Was the examiner an older lady, elegant and well-spoken? I asked her. Yes, she said, sort of old-fashioned, serious, but very nice.
‘She liked you,’ I said, I sensed that this Queen had recognised in her a young ‘page of music’.
Because the suit of Swords has strong correlations with Science – Physics in particular- and Medicine, Mathematics and Music.
These two court cards appearing amongst the six upright cards reinforced my confidence on her behalf and anyway, the thing was done, and I told her not to worry. And she did pass.
A good discipline for a reader is to read little and often. It’s a kind of self-programming. Make it tough on yourself, tarot is wonderfully subtle but sometimes you need to nail a colour to the mast.
However open your vision, and habits of interpretation when doing readings for others, it’s good to know you will generally get it right. You won’t always of course, so feed yourself a piece of humble pie every day, but you need to be right a LOT as a professional reader, or what’s your value? So practice, and challenge yourself with the nail-biting no-no that is the CLOSED QUESTION.
‘Will XYZ happen or won’t it?’ The second card is to ask why will it or won’t it? The discussion or meditation then opens out again if necessary.
Here is a recent example: I was thinking of attending a tarot social event, taking a friend, a fellow local tarot reader and professional clairvoyant . Knowing what a hermit-crab this shy friend can be, I marked him as a POSSIBLE attendee only, half-expecting him to bow out in advance.
Two days before the scheduled event, he rang to say he’d be going, but I still expected him to change his mind, and the day before I pulled two cards to test this out.
I drew The Ace of Wands Reversed. Wands is the suit of trips and longer journeys, also of selling, bartering and exchange, buzz, chatting, marketing…general communications. Drawing it reversed, denied, suggested he was about to cry off. Now, this was absolutely fine, and was just as I expected, but could the Tarot tell me why in advance of the facts?
I drew The Hierophant Reversed. The Hierophant which used to be known as The Pope, suggests a priest, a teacher, a counsellor or healer, a church, a tradition and an established order. It is orthodoxy and conformity. It can also signify marriage…and keys! That’s the Tarot for you!
The Hierophant from Ciro Marchetti's The Gilded Tarot: publisher Llewellyn.
I looked at it and was puzzled. ‘But A***** doesn’t GO to church!’ I said.
Later that afternoon he rang to say he still wanted to go to the tarot event but was now double-booked. I was glad to think he had plans elsewhere, he’d been a bit down and depressed, and I read this as a sign of recovery. I told him not to worry about the tarot social, I could see he really wanted to go to the other thing instead.
What was it?
A Christian Science church, he said. Did I want to go? Er, well, no. They had a guest speaker coming in, he said. A healer visiting from the States.
Ahaaa! So that was why the Tarot had seemed to say ‘church.’ But it also meant ‘priest/healer.’ It knew what was going on, all right. And the cards had been drawn reversed because, having decided time-planning didn’t allow him to go to both, the events were then being perceived as being in conflict with one another.
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.
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
Psychic Chasms (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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.
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.
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.
English: Robin Redbreast (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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.
‘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.’
True Tarot Tales 
