I was looking in my cards to help Il Matrimonio. He was due to drive down to Leicester the following day, to meet with a telecom company with a view to a one off contract in Project Management. He wanted to know what hints and tips I might have for him, in consultation with the Tarot, and what was the forecast for the outcome.
I drew The Chariot Reversed, The Six of Pentacles and Judgement. This row of 3 cards represented the story arc and timeline for the next day.
My impressions:
Chariot Rev: Car trouble was possible, hopefully minor. I saw no injury. The following two cards were mitigating factors in deciding the problem was not too serious.
The Six of Pentacles: I felt they might not want to pay the proposed rate of £850 daily. I felt they would offer a rate in the £600’s.
Judgement: I saw a contract, comfortably acceptable as in the best interests of both parties.
I warned him to drive with extra caution and that the daily rate was the obstacle to be negotiated as the man himself did not have the final say on budget for the task, but had to refer it to committee.
There was nothing of sharp practise in respect of this to the best of my ability to detect. The Magician Reversed or the Seven of Swords would have been the signs of that, for me.
As it was a reading for Il Matrimonio I did not have long to wait to know the outcome.
The car problem was the exhaust. It pretty much fell off at Stoke. Fortunately he was not on the motorway at the time, and was able to carry out a temporary repair . He pulled in at a petrol station. He got oil on his shirt cuffs, and it was a bit fraught, but the car behaved thereafter and, getting the call, I booked it in at our local garage for next day.
The company wanted the service but already had a list of preferred suppliers in situ.
A rate of £650 was agreed and paperwork has now been signed with a contract for a few days work initially, perhaps more later. I feel there will be more because the Judgment card is like that. The Two of Swords also represnts a contractual agreement, but Judgement trumps it in terms of scale or longevity.
The Sixes in Tarot are generally indicative of something beneficial:
The Six of Pentacles or Coins is a card of community, charity, schooling, co-operation and the karmic notion, ‘what goes around comes around.’
Do as you would be done to.
I’m still in disgrace of course, for not telling him it was the exhaust. Sorry, hubs. My – er-superhuman Remote Viewing Capability mustn’t have been switched on.
Well, he is the Project Manager round here…he should be keeping his car serviced properly…
St. George and the Dragon by Briton Reviere. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In honour of St George’s day, I’ll try the Tarot out as an interviewing tool, as a Translator across Time and Truth. St George’s Day, April 23rd, is also thought to be the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare.
The Tarot tells no lies, but it stands to reason, factually speaking, there can be no getting at ‘the truth’ of St George. A legend may contain grains of fact, while representing the poetic truth of an amalgam of people or myths. As the poet, Kathleen Raine expressed it, ‘Myth is the Truth of Fact, not Fact the Truth of Myth.’Â
What some call fantastical, or lies, even damned lies, if they don’t apprehend poetic truth, for others is just taking a possibility for a walk, an interesting exercise with judgement in abeyance. Let’s suspend judgement just for a moment, as we enter the Tarot’s Imaginarium.
That poor dragon. Call the RSPCA. Well, that’s another way of looking at it, by way of a change.
George, if I may, if you can hear me, what can you tell us about yourself? The Six of Swords Rx:
I am the other side of The River. I hear you only faintly, your words are not my language, and yet I understand you. There must be a translator somewhere. I have forgotten many things, but I remember I was a traveller. I made long journeys over the sea as well as by land. When I was small I’d go looking for frogs amongst the bullrushes in the pebbled stream, near where I lived. It was good luck to find a frog.
I didn’t read as well as my father wished, I had some letters, taught me by an old Persian with scarred legs – I didn’t know how he’d got those. He knew about numbers and about the stars. Sometimes he would let me sit by him, and show me maps of the sky.
You’re reputed to have killed a dragon. What can you tell us about that? The Queen of Cups/Ace Pentacles Rx.
There was something once, but I wouldn’t call it a dragon. It was a water-drake, a filthy great eel, attacking fishermen, robbing nets some place I stopped off, they saw I was a military man and they offered coin and a night’s lodgings if I would help them hunt and kill it, and they were in difficulties, so I did.
What about the rescued princess?
Queen of Cups Rx
Princess? I don’t know. There was a woman, still beautiful, not young. Nothing to do with the drake. I was passing through, the problem was mentioned, good coin offered (Ace Coins Rx) I went out at night with the fishermen. One guided the boat, I saw the great eel showing silver at the surface, and threw my lance. We had to withdraw and wait. There was no question of pulling the lance out of this thing, or pulling it from the water still alive. Its mistake was in coming so close to the surface when the moon was so bright. I’d never seen one so huge. They said it had taken a child.
Another thing happened that might have become a story of a dragon. A battle chariot came down on us. A huge thing with its horse team decked out in the semblance of a beast, with a beast’s head carving. I flung a spear, it went through the spokes of one of the wheels. My farthest throw ever, they said. Maybe that’s the root of the story. It was that, or the eel. I kept a pine marten once, for a season, but I don’t imagine that will qualify.
What was your profession?
 The King of Swords
(This ties in with known history) Oh, I was ‘miles’, a soldier, I became ‘miles’ after the death of my mother, and I went on to become an officer. A thing to be said for Rome was, it rewarded skill and service, it gave you chances. I wasn’t popular, or perhaps I simply mean, I wasn’t easy and outgoing. I was known for a certain reserve, nothing to do with rank. I was rarely the worse for wear,  I laughed at jokes, but I didn’t make many. But the men didn’t give me a hard time either about getting promotion. I tried hard to be fair, always, didn’t put on airs, and few of them could see further or clearer than I could, or better me with a lance. I had a horse, a grey mare called Usa .
(Reading note: I got this name by  ‘hearing’ it. Sometimes insights come this way in a real life reading. I had to look it up, and I found that ‘Usa’ is not listed as a Roman or Cappadocian name, but it is a Sanskrit name, meaning ‘Dawn’. My surprise was at finding the name actually existed, I hadn’t come across it before.)
What else, George?
Whatever I said I would do, I did. In my life I had two homes, two peoples, two purses and they were sometimes empty. I was always divided. But it was not in my nature to function divided. I looked at this, or I looked at that, the rest went into the background. I think others besides myself might have paid a heavy price for that. I could not see that at the time. Or if I did, I could not, or would not change it.
Is it accurate to say you were a Christian? The Hierophant Rx
The word echoes. I remember that I found myself out of step, dangerously so.
Why was that?
The World.
Perhaps it was just the world I had came into.
What do you remember about leaving Life?
Seven of Wands, Ace of Cups.
There must have been pain and fear. but I don’t remember. I can only see blows coming at me to know it was not gentle. Then I was looking down from a height, the peace of knowing I had escaped and was free. Little else.
Did you have children?
The Three of Swords Rx
I feel I was mourned from afar. A son. I last saw him, before embarking overseas again. He had lately been apprenticed. Tooling of leather, I think. He was enjoying the work. Perhaps he continued to become a craftsman or merchant (3 Wands) I hope Life was good for him, I hope he got what he needed and wanted, but what his life path was like afterwards, I can never know.
So exciting! Well, maybe, if you’re interested in how psychic Tarot reading works. The Tarot’s Eight of Swords talking about…. real life damp and drains.
There is Tarot you learn by book study. Then there is the Tarot you develop through experience, in which you discover or allocate new meanings for the cards via association and your own intuition. An example from my own experience is in readings featuring the Eight of Swords.
The Eight of Swords from The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.
Standard Keywords:Â Frustration, feeling trapped or stuck, being unable to see a way ahead, chagrin, mortification, sometimes melodrama. A drama queen. One may be making a mountain out of a molehill. Passivity, the person is awaiting rescue when she only has to step forward with care and negotiate past the fence of swords, but she lacks focus, or else the nerve to try.
This is what you will read in any Tarot study guide. But sometimes, you look at a card and think, no, that’s not it. Why not? Perhaps it makes no sense in the context of the discussion. What else is the Tarot trying to flag up for attention using the stock of images at its disposal?
Your choices when this happens in a reading, dismiss it as an aberration or try to get to the bottom of it.  Stay relaxed, an idea may present itself.
CASE STUDY ONE: An email reading for a lady I had never read for before:
No background was provided, and Tarot, like Reason likes a context. Nonetheless I decided to try rather than request further clarification first, and I drew The Eight of Swords in a key position.
What I sensed and shared was, ‘no matter where you work, and I sense a kitchen table with negotiated time slots free from family use, the place of work must be free of damp. I see wet feet. Whatever that space is, that’s got the wet feet situation going on, if you recognise it, do not use that room as your workspace.’
Response: She identified herself as a psychic living and working not far from me. My reading had answered the question she had not wished to specify. She had been thinking of converting her shower room, which was in any case old and tired and in need of a revamp, into a room for receiving her own tarot clients in. Now, she was going to reconsider.
Eight of Swords from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
CASE STUDY TWO: A Skype reading for a family member, buying property for the first time in France. Was the flat a sound buy?
The Tarot was rather negative, pointing out all manner of defects, structural and social, some of which she made sense of right away, being aware of them already. Others however, remained to be verified. Drawing the Eight of Swords I suggested the Tarot sniffed something diabolical (The Devil card) down in the basement. Uh oh. Trouble with the drains? This, she said, was not a problem. Nor need it be her problem in any case, as the flat she was after had no basement.
The purchase went ahead, and she was delighted about the new home and remains so. However, the various problems sensed before purchase announced themselves one by one, and the drain problem declared itself almost immediately on moving in , when the floor had to be taken up in the communal entrance hallway to sort them. It didn’t matter, such is life, all the same, she was unaware of the impending work at the point of buying.
One day the Tarot is going to use the Eight of Swords to tell me about someone’s toilet. I just know it. How rip snortingly excitin’, do I hear you say? No? The point is, Tarot is merely a map key of the psyche, tattooed on card stock. Man’s soul may be a butterfly, we’ve got to sweat the nitty gritty of daily life, so the Tarot’s insights will surely go there.
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.
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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.
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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.
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‘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.
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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.
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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.
‘The hunger for meaning and purpose is nothing less than the human homing instinct — the Fourth Instinct — at work. But in the tangled maze of history, we have been sidetracked; in the long journey home, we forgot our destination. Indeed, we were told that it does not exist.’ Arianna Huffington.
But where is ‘home’, beyond it being the people in your life?
‘There’s that feeling I get, when I look to the west’.’ Led Zeppelin.
‘My sun shall rise in the East, then shall my soul be at peace, ‘ Vangelis.
‘From all points of the compass flock’d birds of all feather.’ Source: Gutenberg. Org
From the beginning, we have been a migratory animal, in some parts of the world, more than others. Several cards in Tarot talk of home, rightly so, as it is a key ingredient of human experience, and a ruling perception. The Ace of Pentacles, Ten of Pentacles, Four of Wands, and Six of Cups all tell stories of a person’s home in a reading.
The Tarot’s Ace of Pentacles, which sometimes talks about food, money, or books, or bricks and mortar says, Earth itself is the nest, the Soul of Man is in the roots of the species. Below is The Ace of Pentacles from The Gilded Tarot, publisher Llewellyn, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.
A friend mentioned hair loss. It had begun, he said, the day after he had undergone a surgical procedure involving a general anaesthetic. He wondered if there might be a connection, and wanted me to ask the Tarot.  Instead, I reached for my new oracle deck based on the Periodic Table. Yes.  Mendeleev‘s Periodic Table as remembered from chemistry lessons and beyond. See his portrait, above.
The friend has a background as a research chemist, and in view of the question, being an issue of biology or bio-chemistry, I thought he might be interested in seeing what I would get from this deck.
I shuffled the cards blind, just as I do with my Tarot cards.
What was causing S- ‘s hair to fall out? What was most relevant for him to know?
I drew just one card. It said Potassium = Soundness.
My friend expressed doubt. He was not aware of any particular connection between body levels of Potassium and hair health. Nor was I. I knew it only as a key metabolizer, a crucial part of the body pump that works in tandem with sodium, and that bananas are reputedly a good source.
When I obtain a result psychically that I do not understand in real, physical terms, I use the psychic clue to drive new research. So I searched online, cross referencing ‘potassium‘ with ‘hair loss.’
And found….plenty to suggest that there is a well-known, if not conclusively researched correlation between potassium deficiency ( hypokalemia)  and hair loss.
Use of certain medications, including corticosteroids, can create a state of lowered potassium with associated hair fall.
Potassium is a mineral that helps nerves and muscles function properly and is mainly obtained
from foods. The kidneys help remove excess potassium to maintain proper balance
of the mineral in the body. Having a very low potassium level can be
life-threatening. Lower-than-normal levels of potassium in the blood may be
caused by use of medications such as diuretics, laxatives, certain antibiotics
and insulin, according to PubMedHealth.
Citrus juices, tomatoes, bananas, canteloupes, lima beans, chicken, salmon, nuts and seeds are good dietary sources of potassium. The RDI of potassium is about 4,700 a day of which a banana represents only 450 mg. Care must be used with supplements. Excess potassium is as potentially harmful as low potassium.
There are of course, other possible causes of hair loss. Iron, zinc and copper deficiencies, for instance, may also result in male or female hair loss.
But in a psychic reading, my focus is on the person asking the question.  I am looking for what is particular to them. This is why, unlike some readers, I don’t make generic predictions along the lines of daily columns such as ‘Today’s Tarot Card.’
Whose card would it be? What would be its meaning?
A meaningful reading needs a context.
This one card reading from the Elemental Hexagon Deck is giving me much food for thought.
It is the reader’s mind doing the work in a psychic reading, not the tools, be they cards, rune, dice, pendulums. These tools are translation devices, whose task is to pick up signals being beamed out from the readers unconscious or sub conscious, and to amplify them, so that the reader can consciously articulate them.
I know far less about chemistry than does my friend, but the cards enabled me to ‘point into the wind’, and we both discovered something new…hopefully, the information may even help him.
English: Monument to the periodic table, in front of the Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia. The monument honors Dmitri Mendeleev. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Appearing in a reading right way up, I understand the person I am reading for feels well-supported by their family. They have the security of a sense of belonging.
Drawing the card Reversed, I am sensing a struggle. They may be labouring under a sense of alienation within the family, or wrestling with a sense of injustice, real or perceived, over wills and other inheritance issues.
Or they may feel that their family background is a burden that weighs heavy, rather than a resource supporting them on their way.
Or they may be searching for their family, perhaps following adoption, because they need to know their roots.
The Tarot’s advice to people coming to discuss the disinheriting of difficult children has so far been ‘Justice above all’.Â
This has meant, as the Tarot’s seen it, equal shares between children, no matter what the relationship, no matter what the history. That one does not get on with a child is sad. It is a misfortune in life, and one may not like one’s child, just as a child may not like its parent. It happens.
However, retribution for this clash or misfortune, wielding the power of inheritance as a weapon, is a betrayal of the principle of inheritance.
Because an unjust will is toxic, and can divides families for years to come, perhaps for ever.
You might be the spitting image of a great-great-grandparent. You might be wearing their face reborn, cast to reflect your own spirit. You might have their skills and talents, their voice and intonation, even their mannerisms, when all your life you had thought you were the odd one out in your immediate tree of three generations.
“You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.”
True Tarot Tales 