prediction – Page 10 – True Tarot Tales

The Tower card, a teeny earthquake and a tiny Tornado

Photo by Ralph W. lambrecht on Pexels.com

2011

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.

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.

Tarot Says The ‘C’ Word (Tsk. No. Not THAT one).

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: 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.

http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/

If there is a God, he/it resides in the Tarot.

Never mind talk of the ‘Devil’s PictureBook.’

Tarot is an oracle for talking to The Human Spirit. For all that is wrong with Humankind, the Human Spirit is a flame and a church.

Until next time 🙂

‘Tell The Truth & Shame The Devil’

‘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.

It cuts the cr*p.

Truth saves Time.

The Passing Of An Emperor

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)

and

The Death card (Endings, symbolic and/or physical)

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 Angel of Death, Evelyn de Morgan

Death can be terrible, but Death can be a delivering angel.

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 Tinkles The Ivories

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 Swords made 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.

gilded page swords — 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 ‘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.