prediction – Page 11 – True Tarot Tales

A Robin’s Tarot Tale

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

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

Oh, Happy Fool!

Last Sunday my older daughter rang to say she had applied for a job at a vet’s practice. She had been considering a move for some time, due to lack of further training prospects at the vet’s she had been with for three years.

Hearing there was a job going, she called the recruiting practice only to found the closing date for applications had already gone. She was downcast, then thought, what the hell, sent her CV and a letter of application anyway and was rewarded for her intiative with an invitation to interview.

Would she be offered the job? I was disinclined to look. I didn’t need the cards to offer suggestions for tackling the interview. I used to work in recruitment amongst other things. Applying for the job was a no-brainer; no help asked or needed from the Tarot on that score. What would be, would be etc.

On Tuesday my mother rang, and we got talking about it. I quickly shuffled the cards while on the telephone, asking to be shown a card connected to the outcome of the interview. I was sneaking a peek with no intention of passing it back, as, whether the outcome looked positive or not, I had no wish to interfere with my daughters own processes.

I drew The Fool card.

rider waite fool — The Fool: Rider-Waite: U.S Games Systems

This card of arrival, reinvention, reincarnation, setting forth, is above all a harbinger of new beginnings. Much energy and enthusiasm attach to it. Notice the dog. My daughter’s special interest is dog training and she has run puppy classes.

The dog in the card represents common sense. The Fool card, when drawn upside down indicates either over-timidity or recklessness, immaturity, irresponsibility, bad timing…and very occasionally, death, because the card is associated with number zero…

Looking at The Fool I remarked to ‘Grandma’ that I felt the prospective employer was going to like her. Being dignified, right way up, this was a great card for job hunting. If she didn’t get this one, she’d be getting another soon. My mother sniffed, unimpressed, declaring that of course they would like her; such a neat and efficient button-like person. A proper grandma is nothing if not loyal.

The interview was on Wednesday. On Friday evening my daughter rang to say she had got it, and though she’s not much ‘into’ what I do, she’s absorbed enough not to have been unduly perplexed at my turn of expression as I congratulated her.

‘Who’s a clever little Fool, then?’ I said.

That’s my girl.

A Devil Of A Tarot Tantrum!

Jung coined a phrase to describe how he thought tarot worked: ‘synchronicity.’ Something in the reader connects with something in the cards. The cards are shuffled blind and drawn at random. However, synchronicity proposes that actually the selection isn’t random;

”[In synchronistic experiences] the perception of wholeness derives not from our ego, our conscious sense of self, but instead from the way in which the meaning unites all of who we are, parts of experience we were unaware of, potentials we have that have lain dormant or underdeveloped, elements of our personality that we didn’t know existed”

One evening a client left after an intense reading, and that day I had been very, very tired. I went upstairs with a cup of tea to lounge with a book. My teenage daughter came in asking me to take a look in the cards for her.

I said, ‘not right now, sweetie, I’m too tired. Give me half an hour’.

She persisted, and as I knew the question, and knew it wasn’t serious, and could wait I became annoyed.

‘If you keep on asking when I’ve said I’m too tired,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you the Devil card! Now then.’

She asked again. Oh, dear.

‘Right!’ I said and whipped the cards out from their cloth and shuffled them furiously.

‘Now see THIS!’ I hissed, pulled a card and brandished it at her, and knock me down with a very small chick feather, it was, it really was THE DEVIL CARD. Look atta ugly mug.

Ooh-er. A Devilish Tarot Tantrum to match my own.

She was I might say, suitably impressed. In fact she ran from the room howling for her dad, who was watching the footie and wasn’t remotely interested in this psychodrama, while I sniggered, feeling better now, peacefully drinking my tea.

Hey, you old Devil… you said it for me, heh heh! Now go away again, thank you.

Devil's Backbone — Devil’s Backbone (Photo credit: pietroizzo)

How about that for synchronicity?

The High Priestess Reversed was a little fish villain….

The High Priestess Reversed was a little fish villain…..

Tarot Marshmallow

Psychic Marshmallows…

Love n light. Well, these are beautiful words and mean beautiful and all important things. But they will take a tarot card reader only so far in delivering meaning and resonance for the other person in a reading.

Readers must aim for meaning and precision, and avoid waffle at all costs. Being ‘psychic’ is one thing. Being a practitioner of a discipline is another. Effective communication is another. Clients want specifics.

They want to know what do the cards MEAN? For them? Right now? In terms they can get hold of and use, should they so choose?

We live in a physical world and must wrestle with ourselves, yes, at times, but so many life challenges focus on matters of practical substance, and this is not the lesser stuff. It is simply temporal, time specific where the metaphysics is the stuff of enduring truths and eternal experiences.

I was doing a reading for a lady who worked as a hypnotherapist, when the Tarot suddenly seemed to suggest it was time to put her cigarette out. This was the feeling I got, drawing The Ace of Wands Reversed, and although it may mean many other things. I put this to her.

‘Why is the Tarot saying stub out that cigarette?’

It is important to emphasize the Tarot wasn’t making any criticism in saying this. It wasn’t presuming to nag the lady about smoking. It was simply sensing something, picking up on some thought that was coming from her.

The Tarot does not judge. It detects and it reflects. The reader might judge but they’d better not presume to do anything of the kind. It will get in the way of the view. It will interfere with their ability to do the truest possible reading, as in, truest to the person being read for, who is the only person who matters in that moment.

The client confirmed that she did smoke. She had taken it up again recently, not feeling settled in her new job. This job situation was the reason for the reading. But just before we got stuck in, and just by the by, something else leapt out at me, looking at the cards laid out before me.

My eye was unaccountably drawn to one card in particular; the Page of Cups.

This card traditionally symbolises offers, gifts, advents and arrivals. It might turn out to mean an invitation, a proposal, a new friendship, or a birth. It may be announcing an engagement or wedding ring, a recovery from illness, or a new creative or spiritual project. I have also come to associate it rather less romantically, with fish oil supplementation, for reasons you’ll guess at, studying the image.

Something about the pink of his sleeves arrested my attention, and before I knew I was going to say it I asked. ‘Do you eat a lot of those pink and white marshmallows. You know, the ones you get in bags?’

She stared at me a moment then said. ‘Oh my God. I absolutely love them. I’ve got a thing about them at the moment. I’ve got some right here in my handbag. How on earth did you know that?’

She reached for her bag and opened it, producing said bag of marshmallows, and offered me one. I declined. I don’t eat or drink while reading, though visitors get a glass of water or a cuppa. Biscuits have been known to manifest.

So. Back to her question. How did I know?

Well, I didn’t ‘know.’ I had a sudden sense of knowing. This may seem an odd or meaningless distinction, but let’s take a second to consider.

I didn’t know. Not as such. How could I? I had a passing thought, and then I came out and said it aloud, even though I did not yet know where that thought had come from.

In this case my thought about marshmallows was triggered by the Page of Cups. It was the look of the card. My eye was drawn to his sleeves and tunic. Lateral thinking based on colour association. it triggered the thought that popped into my head, so I said it whereas as a beginner I might not have dared, for fear of being wrong and looking stupid.

This marshmallow thing was new to me. I have never said it before or since in respect of this same card. This was a purely one off interpretation, and this is not unusual in a reading.

One can study card meanings and they will take you a long, long way in reading for someone, but associative thinking can trigger insights that no book can teach you.

The challenge for a reader is to learn to trust the first thought that comes into your head. This means risking being wrong, but if you’re not ready to take that risk, and don’t share that thought, you won’t be able to validate the accuracy of such insights, and that’s how a reader develops their skills and perhaps their so called psychic capability…by going off-script.

But it started with the card.

Till next time:)

The Tarot and The Tooth.

I had a dental appointment coming up at the hospital. An extraction. Uh Oh.

I was dreading it. But it was another chance to put tarot to the test just for myself.

By law, tarot readers may not offer medical advice to clients. But many cards in the Tarot do relate to physical health as it is such an important part of life.

Readers may use that capability for themselves, may they not.

I asked the cards, was the dentist was going to do a good job me on the appointed date, and I drew the Page of Coins Reversed.

This card, I felt, represented the doomed tooth.

page coins golden tarot — The Page of Coins, The Golden Tarot, Kat Black.

And I drew the King of Swords.

king swords golden tarot — The King of Swords from The Golden Tarot (Kat Black)

This stern king represents the concept of the expert, the authority figure.

He has strong associations with the Law, Science and Maths, Music, and Medicine, especially Surgery.

Thus a King of Swords can represent a doctor or dentist, the Queen of Swords if the doctor or dentist is female.

It was a good card to draw, in the circumstances. This dentist was going to be on good form. I felt reassured.

And how did it go on that occasion? Well, the dentist really was a

King of Swords

He even looked like one, except that he had a beard and smiled a lot. The extraction went smoothly.

What would I have done had I drawn ‘bad’ cards: For example; in this contect, these might have included:

King of Swords Reversed, Page of Swords Reversed, Ace of Swords Reversed, Temperance Reversed, The Moon, Tower etc?

Well, would have looked at it again, to clear the decks of my emotional projection that might be clouding the hard information I was trying to reach. Had I drawn a strong negative response three times in a row, I would have considered changing the appointment day, and hopefully, avert trouble and improve the outcome.

Does this mean I can always avoid a bad experience? Of course not.

On another occasion, I decided not to look in the Tarot. A wisdom tooth had to come out. That was that. I decided not to risk frightening myself. I would just experience it in the normal way and it was a ghastly experience. A nerve was damaged, leaving me with local parasthesia for 18 months. Had I ‘looked’ beforehand, I could have declined the appointment and re-tested with the cards against a new appointment.

But, prescience is not omniscience, Divination is of itself not magic, or magick, and Life is not all roses.

This is the risk of consulting with oracles. You might hear something you don’t like, and wish you had just found out at the time, without the forewarning, and then you wouldn’t have had the worry as well.

‘Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.’ 🙂

But sh*t happens. And you might equally say, ‘forewarned is forearmed.’

3-Rune ‘Day Ahead’ Reading

I use the Tarot as my chief means of divination, but there are other tools and ways of accessing the unconscious mind and one of these is to use Runes, an entire subject in its own right.

Here’s a 3 rune Day Ahead Reading, drawn for mid-morning on Saturday 19 June:

Rune 1 For the morning to come: FEHU…..fee, job, earnings.

Rune 2 For the afternoon to come: a blank rune…no ascribed meaning. Historically, there is no such thing as a blank rune. Rune scholars usually discount them as an invention of the 1980’s. However, this set had one and I drew it and decided to let it be.

Rune 3 For the evening to come: EIHWAZ …Yew…death/regenaration. Yikes, I wondered what form that would take.

I had made no firm plans for the day at this point.

Within half an hour I took a telephone booking for a reading: this explained FEHU.

During the afternoon I crashed out tired from a poor nights sleep and remained comatose for two hours. This would account for my drawing the blank rune – a reasonable pictorial representation of my scondition between 3 and 5!

In the evening, we made what seemed like an impulse decision but actually wasn’t; to visit a family grave in Preston cemetery, taking a rose from our garden.

I had forgotten the rune reading and only realised on Monday, that this had actually been pre-indicated by the Yew rune. A cemetery (death) with yew trees.

The Yew rune must have picked up on an idea that I had not yet consciously formulated…my plan to go was bubbling up to the surface when I would become aware of it, but hadn’t reached it yet.

Alternatively, drawing this rune was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and had acted to remind me that an anniversary was coming up, that I was in the habit of marking with a visit to the cemetery and a rose and that I wouldn’t want to forget.

This year, I wasn’t going to be able to visit on the usual day, 21st, and the rune had served me a wake-up call to go earlier on account of this.

Gutenberg: Yew

The Yew is a tree considered sacred since pre-Celtic times, and is still considered special and mystical today. It’s wood is pliant. It bends but does not break; a living metaphor for resilience. For this reason it was often used in the making of bows in archery. Its berries are toxic and can bring death, but its leaves are evergreen and so, and because of the mature trees majestic and moody appearance, it’s symbolically suited to cemeteries…as a symbol of death with resurrection.

More about the yew and its mystical attributes here:-

http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/articles/yew.htm

A Day Ahead Reading is an excellent way to practice your predictive readings, and develop confidence in predicting (statements about the future detected as virtual fact) or forecasting (detection of trends and future likelihoods)

This applies whether with the Runes or the Tarot. You get the feedback same day and quickly start to amass data on which to assess your predictive ‘hit rate’ while developing predictive capability through the benefits of personalised hindsight study.

You’re welcome to share any of your own experiences of a Day Ahead Tarot Spread or predictive rune readings, clicking on the comment tag below.