Curiosity about Life, respect and generosity. Life invites ongoing learning. Progress demands it.
‘Schools out for EVER. School’s out COMPLETELY’…though it never is, or shouldn’t be for anyone with a curiosity greater than an amoeba’s.
Teachers: great ones, good and bad ones, the malevolent or indifferent. The ones I remember with affection, I remember for a variety of reasons.
Gentle bachelor Mr F always wore a salmon pink jumper and taught history. I was in his good books for ever, after asking a guest historian, a Professor David Hampson, what was later termed in my report, as ‘a very perceptive question’…an over-egging of my achievement my family found hilarious.
.
Mr F died of cancer quite young, and was remembered by later pupils as prone to violence. But it was the affliction of the tumour in his brain, creating cruel change. He threw blackboard dusters at people.A most gentle person.
It wouldn’t be allowed today.
Big, loud, red-faced Mr W, was Head of Hawk House, of which I was an incumbent and he taught me Maths. You’d hear the roaring from his office after assembly as he dealt with one bully or another.
‘Ohhh,’ he’d roar.’So you think it’s clever to get a little first year lad by his ear, do you? Tell me, how do YOU like it when I do THIS?’
‘Aayaa, ayaa! No sir!’
‘Or this?’
‘Ayaa, ayaa! no sir!’
‘Well, don’t you do it then, or you’ll be back in here for some more.’
It wouldn’t be allowed today.
Meeting me in the corridor at break times he’d press me to the wall with his enormous belly, and, stinking of cigarette smoke, he would bellow good naturedly from his great height. ‘Hello! SILLY WOMAN! How are you diddling?’
I knew, as did my sisters at the same school and as young people immediately do know; he was OK, not even remotely creepy, so we only laughed about it, while avoiding it if we could. I only smile at the memory but…
It wouldn’t be allowed today.
One of my ‘life lessons’ came from an elderly and very gentle science teacher. Mr Vest (yes, really) gently admonished me one day for my untidily presented homework. Embarrassed, I explained that my pen was leaky.
He said, ‘Now Katie, I know you like sayings. What’s the saying for this situation?’
I couldn’t guess which one he might mean.
‘A bad workman blames his tools’ …
An apple for teacher. But our memories are the apples they have given us, crisp and sharp, rosy and polished, maggoty and rotten.
Things that go bump in the night. If it’s filmed, I don’t think it’s the ‘real’ aka unreal thing.
Why not? Because such experiences are lonely perceptions of the Amygdala. The eyes see what the brain sees, projecting, not reflecting. This is the vision of the psychic eye. It does not mean that it is not ‘real’. Two or more people may witness it at the same time, but that is unusual.
Reports of reliable sightings of ghosts may be considered suspect for a number of reasons. Not least, motivation. For one thing, they can be good for business-certain businesses. There was an interesting legal situation in the ’90s when a famously haunted Lancashire property, Chingle Hall, was sold at a value to reflect its haunted status with tourist income potential, which did not, em, materialize as substantially as expected.
Article in The Independent Monday 20 June 1994Â :
“A PROFESSOR and his wife were ‘gullible and nave’ when they bought a historic moated manor, dubbed ‘the most haunted house in Britain’, the High Court sitting in Liverpool, heard yesterday.
Plans for the historic Chingle Hall in Lancashire to be a tourist attraction were a ‘pipe dream’, said William George, counsel for a Canadian professor, Trevor Kirkham, and his wife, Judy.
Â
Professor Kirkham, of Montreal University, and his wife are suing the former owner of Chingle Hall, John Bruce, a barrister, and his solicitors, Hodgson & Sons of Preston.
Â
They claim they were misled into buying the pounds 420,000 house at Goosnargh, supposedly haunted by a martyr, John Wall, and other spirits.
The couple allege misrepresentation over profit and income from the Grade II listed house and the availability of planning permission.
Mr George said that Professor Kirkham and his wife originally made an unsuccessful offer for the 13th-century house in 1986. Two years later, they were visiting Professor Kirkham’s father near Preston when they again visited Chingle Hall. At that time there was a possession order on the house because Mr Bruce had fallen ‘considerably into arrears with his mortgage payments’, Mr George said.
Â
‘It is the plaintiffs’ case that they were gullible and nave faced by the first defendant (Mr Bruce) who explained that he was a member of the Bar and also had considerable commercial experience,’ Mr George said.
‘He made many statements about the successes and likely successes of the business being carried out at Chingle Hall as a tourist attraction.’ However, at that time annual losses at the hall – which was open to the public – were in excess of pounds 30,000. Also, plans for the house to be developed further as a tourist attraction were later turned down by the local authority.
Â
The case continues today. “
This doesn’t mean there aren’t ghosts at Chingle Hall.
But ghosts are not performing seals.
This begs the question, what is a ghost, anyway?
Have I experienced anything of that sort, myself? Yes, on a few occasions.Â
The first occasion was long before I ever thought of learning Tarot, and the full strangeness did not hit me right away or even for some years. I was ‘fetched’ to a scene where a man had just died, and it was the man himself who had done the fetching. There was the body, round the back of M&S in Leicester. There was the ambulance, and the paramedics, trying to resuscitate him. And he was there, close by me, somewhere off to my right. But he was too far gone, too far outside himself, and he was very shocked, poor man. I spoke to him, hoping to reassure him that it was OK, though I have no way of knowing if he could hear me.
There’s the ghost of a small dog on the staircase in my house, just now and then. Â I’ve seen it running down the stairs, fading in and out of view; nothing unpleasant about it whatsoever. I’ve seen it in the kitchen and on the landing, and I’ve seen it run under the dining table. It’s the size of a large terrier with pricked ears and a short dark coat. I see the movement and the shape, not the detail. Il Matrimonio has not seen it. My younger daughter has seen it once, at the top of the stairs.Â
I imagine it’s some kind of energy residue; a print, or a memory of a previous household pet.
Other things I have seen over the years have been altogether sadder, stranger, creepier, and I have not wished to see them.
I’m not asking anyone to ‘believe’ in these things. If you see them, then you see them. If you don’t, you don’t, and many don’t. But I hear a lot of stories, quite matter of fact in presentation, from eminently sensible people who are clearly in perfect possession of their marbles.
TC Lethbridge, psychic researcher and academic with a scientific background said, ‘today’s magic is tomorrow’s science,’ and perhaps he was not far off the mark.
Â
The world is not only stranger than we know. It is stranger than we CAN know. It is easy to laugh at what we don’t understand. But why should recognizing the possibilities and the limits of our current understanding be raised as a barrier to enquiry?
Tarot, Runes, our dreams, myths and songs, are some of the many boats we sail for exploring these waters. Some prefer to stay in harbour and not explore these things, and they needn’t. But sometimes it’s not a choice and the current pulls us out.
For all our intellectual achievements and aspirations, resistant to ‘superstition’ or not  ‘we’ remain an instinctive animal. We rely on it for our safety. If someone gives you the creeps, then they give you the creeps, and there’ll be a reason. Police, Emergency Services Personnel, the Military, they all rely on good instinct- or else.
What we call psychic is only an extreme manifestation of instinct. This is our nature and our default. Factual truth may also be poetic. Stories come from someone’s experience, and myths and fairy tales from a collective experience. In this sense, however fanciful, even ghost stories contain some essential truth. They do not lie.
Tarot says ‘Miaow’ A Tarot reading for a cat??? Oh yes. I kid you not.
A few summers ago we had a broken down old patio replaced. Sam, who did the work for us, asked me to look in my tarot cards….on behalf of his cat, Bilbo.
Sam lived alone with his cat, and there were no problems so far as Sam was aware, but he wondered how his cat was doing.
What might Bilbo want to say to him, given an opportunity?
Mini Reading for Bilbo
(Performed In Absentia)
Card One: The 8 of Swords. Entrapment, frustration, chagrin, damp. Swords is a suit referring to sharp things and clear things…like windows.
My feeling about this card prompted me to put it to Sam that Bilbo had a difficulty in getting outside whenever he wanted to. Sam confirmed this to be the case. He lived in a downstairs flat. Bilbo usually had to go in and out by means of the sash window. There were no cat flaps, so if Sam was not there, Bilbo’s options were to be inside or outside.
Card Two: Â The Page of Coins Reversed. This is a card of Earth, and of small amounts of money, while Pages often refer to pets and also small items and objects.
Bilbo seemed to be saying to me he wanted a pot of earth. This prompted me to ask Sam, what were the toilet arrangements for Bilbo? Sam explained that he kept a litter tray in the flat. What was it lined with? Pellets or what? Shredded newspaper. And just outside the flat window, there was a shrub in a pot, which Bilbo liked to sit in and scratch at. There was no garden in front of the flat, only an area of hard standing. I therefore suggested Bilbo might like  some nice deep ‘diggable’ cat litter for his tray, and maybe a ‘play tray’ full of soil outside. Oe more shrubs in pots.
Card Three: The Page of Cups…a card of kindness, and love, and childhood, also love letters or visits.
Bilbo did not think in terms of love, not having the words. Nonetheless, like a baby that cannot yet speak, he loved Sam, and a very little affection in return made him very happy. Just as one would expect, Bilbo lived in the moment. This card also suggested that he was physically in good condition (Cups is a healing suit), and that he was, in general, happy and content. Cups being the water suit, he probably liked fishy tastes (not all cats do, birding is more natural to cats than fishing.) This was confirmed.
I asked, what about these love letters or visits I was sensing?
What about them? Sam wanted to know. I thereupon drew:-
Card Four: The Queen of Cups Reversed. Indicative of a lady with certain qualities of self-indulgence, or to feelings of unhappiness, a lady who did not reciprocate affection?
The reading was for Bilbo and purely complimentary, done over coffee. Therefore in answer to Sam’s question, I confined myself to asking whether a blonde lady visited his flat sometimes? The answer was yes. I then asked, had he noticed that Bilbo made himself scarce when this lady was in the flat? Yes, he had noticed. Bilbo, for whatever reason, did not view this lady with favour. Did this surprise Sam? He thought a moment then said, no.
I heard from him a few weeks later, that Bilbo had a new kind of cat litter now. The lady was unlikely to be around again. What Bilbo had been picking up or reflecting had been Sam’s own feelings about the situation with the lady. This figured, absolutely. It made perfect sense, as pets are sensitive to atmosphere and ‘their’ human’s mood.
Ethically dubious, do you think, reading for the puss cat without his express permission?
Purr-lease.
The Tarot is self regulating. If Bilbo had not wished to be observed or shall we say, eavesdropped on, and the Tarot had therefore not wished to read for him, any feedback obtained would have been nonsensical to Sam.
I’ve learned that the Tarot does not disdain to speak of whatever concerns the person approaching it. The Tarot’s an oracle of the human heart and warmed by human hands.
The image below is of a watercolour drawing I did many years ago, a portrait commission of a cat called Tuppenny.
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 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.Â
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.Â
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.
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.
Updated: A light hearted look at an ‘Option selecting’ reading, and at deploying the tarot as an alternative tool for animal communication. All, hopefully, will become clear…
Our cat Willow was thirteen at the time of this reading. A small black and white moggie, she’s  an introverted, timid and fussy cat. When she’s hungry she trots into the kitchen and meows. Obtaining service, she’ll jump up to sit by the window, a model of composure, looking studiously in another direction, affecting not to notice while you open her food and put it on a saucer.
The food served, Willow’s dignity demands she must not notice it immediately. The trouble is, she often loses interest altogether, jumps down again and stalks off, leaving it to congeal malodorously, so she refuses it later.
She came in meowing and my daughter said. ‘If I feed her, she’ll only turn her nose up, whatever I serve up.’
I knew from previous readings for cats, and other species that the Tarot will sometimes assist, verifiably so, with animal communication. ‘Let’s see if the Tarot knows what she wants,’ I said and drew a card for each of the available options on the menu.
While shuffling I asked the Tarot (ie the portion of the mind that is ‘Tarot’) to ensure the cat’s preference would appear right way up (Dignified) and any she wouldn’t eat would appear upside down (reversed, Ill-Dignified)
I laid out the cards, a row of four and Willow’s selection as translated by the Tarot leapt straight at me, by means of the only upright card amongst the four which was the Queen of Pentacles. The Queen represented the Duck (with courgette) option. Oddly, the colour scheme of the duck pouch matched the green of this Queen’s dress. The Tarot couldn’t quite manage to rustle up a duck, but it did well to produce a peacock.
Image: The Gilded Tarot: By kind permission of Ciro Marchetti, Llewellyn. Buy From Llewellyn or Amazon.
I almost feel I should apologise to this eminently dignified Earth Queen. It hardly seems to do her justice, to summon he rin this fashion,  and yet..if this was too menial a question to put to the Tarot, it begs the question, how low should the bar be set, out of respect for the dignity of the Oracle the Tarot represents? Tarot will talk about the highest things we reach for, also the simplest things. The greatest loves are bound up in simple things, and who is to say what is worthy of another’s attention? Who is to say, what’s simple, just because it appears simple?
The thirteenth century visionary Julian of Norwich said, ‘God does not disdain to serve the body.’ Divinity is in anything, even I suppose in sh… ahem. Pentacles represents all things physical, including crops and animal husbandry and cat food therefore resides absolutely under the jurisdiction of this suit. The Queen of the suit is a Demeter and derives her own happiness in taking care of living things. As a Taurus woman, well over 40, I am represented archetypically in the Tarot as a Queen of Pentacles. Willow is a queen cat and a Virgo subject, so she too, is a Queen of Pentacles in her own right.
No sooner was the duck on the saucer than she gingerly sniffed it, and dived in, leaving two tiny crumbs and not a lick of gravy.
There are implications beyond this, for the using of the Tarot as a sensing device for animal communication, or for people, in sensing whatever might be meant by ‘right choices’. I use this approach quite often in business readings, in order to help identify a target or best strategy.
Dozy old cat. Companion animals roaming our homes.  They help us stay close to our roots. We need their lessons and reminders. The Tarot promotes our innate telepathy.
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…
The Five of Wandswas 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?
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?
!
True Tarot Tales 