True Tarot Tales

‘Tarot says, ‘come on, Enger-land!”

Tarot says, ‘come on, Engerland!’

Cover of "The Gilded Tarot" — Cover of The Gilded Tarot

Me sunshine black jumper shrunk

No, it doesn’t, really. The oracle of Tarot would never be so uncouth as to bellow like that, sniff. But I bet you know what’s coming, you bunch of psychics, you.

Yes, I’m talking about last night’s footie: England v Poland and I was in mighty good odour for saying to Il Matrimonio twenty minutes BEFORE kick-off that I thought England would win, though it didn’t look as if they’d have an easy time of it against our Polish friends.

As you may already know, England won 2-0; goals scored by Wayne Rooney in the first half ,and captain Stephen Gerrard in the final moments.
England going one up didn’t stop Il Matrimonio screaming at one point that the goal-mouth was too narrow, in his terror that Poland would manage to equalize.

Poland’s goal-mouth was too narrow, was what he meant. England’s goal-mouth was far too wide, of course.

How did I arrive at this opinion?
I used a 3 card counting spread, giving them a 75% chance of a win. I actually drew the same odds for Poland which made it tricky, but the last card drawn for England was a positive one, and the last card for Poland was drawn upside down.

Poland had a really good supporting crowd, as foreseen by the Six of Pentacles (a strong, supporting community)

So, England has qualified to play in The World Cup in Brazil starting in Sao Paolo, June 2014.

Will they win the World Cup?

Whether I get this right or wrong, is it SAFE to say what I glimpse? : )

If I do, it’s not to try and poop anyone’s party. It’s by testing themselves continually, even if they frighten themselves in the process, that a reader hones their craft, and if you don’t like the answer, just decide it’s wrong, and maybe it will be. What does your instinct tell YOU?

It’s no better than possible they will reach the quarter finals, despite some inspired moments and sterling teamwork. Alas, I see no World card, and in this instance, the card would do what it says on the tin.

I’d better go and hide, before Il Matrimonio sees this…

Mind you, he had decided where he wanted to open an easy access savings account, in which to deposit the proceeds of a recent house sale. He wouldn’t say which of three accounts he had in mind, but asked me to select the best choice for us, using Tarot, to see whether we were in accord. I chose Potential Account A, and put it to him that this was the Option he’d already selected, himself. He confirmed that this was the case. How did I know?

Well,because I drew the supremely numerate King of Swords when looking at Potential Account A, and this, for me, is the card which represents Il Matrimonio, who is a Libra ‘king’, only 3 days shy of Scorpio. The image below is from The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

Not only did my Tarot’s findings accord with his inner accountant, but we were on the same page about the best place to put the money, therefore, no need for shouting or plate throwing, and, it is he, I assure you, who would be the one to throw plates. I only throw fruit bowls.

Pray for me….

Until next time 🙂

A Pendulum Prediction: Tunnel Vision

Depiction of Hannibal and his army crossing th... — Depiction of Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps during the Second Punic War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently returned from an overseas family vacation driving in Europe, marginally more relaxing than crossing the Alps with Hannibal. OK, it was intense, but let’s keep a sense of proportion. It was nothing like marching with Hannibal. I had scrambled eggs for breakfast every day, once with chopped chives. The sun shone all week. It was instructive, it made a change, and my husband, Il Matrimonio, was in seventh heaven; king of the road in his lovely new black shiny car that he, ahem, loves.

Below we have the The Chariot card from The Gilded Tarot, representing progress, teamwork, ambition, and literally, a vehicle. Image by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

chariot card gilded

Yes, it was Chariot time. What else could one do, but belt up, pray not to need the loo in a hurry; no joke if you’re having to use a wheelchair for any reason, and look and learn?

There was plenty to see; Reims Cathedral, the snowy summit of the Eiger, the battlefields of Ypres. No goats in Switzerland. Perhaps because it was still hot, they were still up on the high pastures. No ghosts in Ypres, or in Polygon Wood, where Kiwis, Aussies and Brits lie, all brothers together, though I wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen one, standing waist high in the tall green fields.

No risk of mal- de- mer, we had gone through the Channel Tunnel. Quick and easy, no fuss, sitting, working up our best French, and in some cases, spoof French, to be spat out 25 minutes in La Belle France.

On the return trip, however, there occurred a minor delay. We had made the crossing. The train had slowed right down. We’d had the announcements thanking us for travelling Euro-Tunnel, and were doing up our seat-belts ready to stop and drive off, when abruptly the train stopped, the lights went out and we were trapped in the dark in the belly of this vast tin-can underwater snake.

We heard announcements and apologies to the effect that power had been lost, preventing us from reaching the platform at Ashford, but hopefully it wouldn’t be long before power was restored.

How long would it be, I wondered? My tarot cards were in my suitcase, but I had my pendulum in my handbag. I held the pendulum, suspending it over my lap and asked, ‘how long till we move? Will it be 5 minutes?’

The pendulum dithered, then began to move in a circle, anti-clockwise. For me, that always means ‘no.’

It wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. So what. That’s the risk in consulting oracles.

‘How long till we move?’ I asked again. ‘Will it be 10 minutes?’ The pendulum hesitated, then began to swing clockwise. For me, that always means yes.

‘Only ten more minutes, with any luck,’ I said to Il Matrimonio, as he sat, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, in-between kissing it, or wishing he could.

‘Are we there, yet?’ the teen piped up, stirring it from the back of the car.

Il Matrimonio glanced at his watch, to monitor the prediction, and this is why I am able to tell you, the lights came back on, the power was back, and the train began to move, 9 minutes and 50 seconds later.

Anyone can learn to dowse. It’s not magic. OK, it is. It’s everyday human magic. You won’t always get it right. I don’t, but it’s one of those things you get better at with practice.

There are lots of books on the subject, and plenty of how-to articles on-line. No need to spend money to mobilize this magic. You don’t even need to buy a pendulum. You can use a ring on a string, or even a threaded needle, stuck into a cork. You need a cord or string for there to be that crucial swing, when gravity gets hold of the body twitch, when it comes, that’s the answer needing translation, the non-verbal reply coming from your central nervous system.

What you need to do is decide in advance what movement shall mean ‘yes’, what movement shall mean ‘no’, and what shall represent ‘don’t know’, or ‘ask again later.’

Then ask your question, relax, and trust yourself. Learning to trust yourself, that’s the hardest thing you have to teach yourself, if it doesn’t come naturally. It is the challenge in learning Tarot, it is the challenge in using the insights provided by dreams. It is the challenge in learning to believe yourself, and not beat yourself up when you take an instant ‘unfair’ like or dislike to someone or something. Have you ever felt like that and reasoned yourself out of it, only to come full circle?

Your first feeling is the one to trust. It can save much time, energy, heartache, or even money.

You know more than you know you know. Why don’t they teach this in school?

The use of divinatory tools is largely a means of silencing the counter-arguments of the know-it-all front brain. The conscious attention goes to the tool, creating a tiny oasis of stillness in which to more easily connect with the silent voice of the body’s primary intelligence; instinct.

It trumps tunnel vision, any time. Unless, perhaps, it’s a vision in a tunnel.

Until next time 🙂

Tarot Lotto

From an edition of Boccaccio's De Casibus Viro... — From an edition of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium showing Lady Fortune spinning her wheel. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Has anyone ever foreseen a lottery win with the Tarot? Yes, you will find a link at the bottom of this post, but I haven’t, at least, not yet, for myself or anyone else.

Someone, a friend of a friend whom I don’t know, personally, messaged me via the friend to ask – light-heartedly, this was not a consultation- could I see him winning the Euro Millions Lottery? A big win? Because if I couldn’t, he had apparently said, perhaps he wouldn’t bother to continue buying tickets.

Now, I might not have bothered, but this is a question I have often been asked about. Amongst some readers there is the superstition that this question should not be asked. I can see no ethical or karmic reason why not, so long as you don’t shoot the messenger when you don’t like the answer. Tarot reading is divination, not magic, though Tarot is sometimes used as a magical tool for trying to bring something about.

I understood the man’s question to refer to a BIG win, and I drew three cards,

The Devil Reversed,

the Lovers card, and

The King of Pentacles or Coins, drawn Reversed.

This was a counting spread where I counted to assess the probability of a yes answer. In the spread I used each flanking card represents 25% and the centre card represents 50%.

The odds were therefore 50: 50 ie the odds you would expect, BUT reading the card literally, and since the King of Pentacles suggests a money king, and he had come out upside-down, as seen below in this image from I think, the Radiant Tarot, a Rider-Waite based deck, the odds reduced.

The final card is like turning over the last page in a storybook to get the ending.

I say what I see, no dissing the oracle, and my reply was therefore no, I did not see any significant lottery win, but I saw other good stuff. The Devil Reversed and The Lovers.

I sensed he had a passion about to be fulfilled, maybe to do with music or entertainments, then I learned he was a musician and amateur DJ.

The friend joked that now I was out of favour, telling him this bad news, (sigh, well this goes with the territory)

He asked, could a prediction not be overturned?

Another possible response might have been to say, oh bah. Well, that chimes with my gut, and that’s a few quid saved on buying tickets. But the risk in asking oracles anything, is that you might not like the answer, so the bargain is, not to shoot the messenger should you not win the Tarot Lottery of hearing what you long to hear.

The Emperor Tiberius used to ‘shoot’ his messengers. He had his soothsayers hurled off the cliff tops on Capri, if he did not like their sooth-ing, except for one called Thrasyllus who made him laugh by sooth-ing that he could feel his life was in danger at that very moment. And indeed it was, but Tiberius was so tickled he decided to let him off. I can’t help feeling, that their terror in reading for Tiberius is not likely to have increased their accuracy.

But, in answer to his question, yes, it might be that a prediction can be overturned. The future is subject to change, apart from the certainty of physical death, and readers can misconstrue the cards. I offer forecasts, not predictions.

What’s the difference? A forecast is a sniffing of the air, sensing prevailing and coming weather, an intuiting of trends, and a qualified reckoning of odds, unlike predictions which make flat statements about the future as if it is a done deal.

Therefore, to the friend asking whether my forecast that he will not win the Euro Millions Lottery can be overturned, I’d only say, I see it’s a ‘no’ by all means, chance your arm if you feel you can afford to. You can’t win if you don’t buy tickets (remembering that the original question was, did I see a big win, because if I didn’t, he might not bother to buy tickets.)

What were the chances of him overturning my forecast?

I drew positive cards, but no actual money card. This did not imply future poverty to come, but was a symbolic with-holding of that particular jackpot. The question as stated is the context to stick with.

Hope as they say, springs eternal, and I for one, am not knocking it. There is ALWAYS the chance of the wild card. And that card is the Wheel of Fortune, as illustrated in this newspaper story.

I told him he had good news coming. Not a Lottery win but a lucky break.

His good news was not long in coming. The tarot had given a 50:50 answer for its own good reasons, not just to do with the laws of chance, because in a sense he DID woin the lottery.

A few weeks after this he was made DJ of his very own radio programme.

How about that for a jackpot. AND he had earned it.

Till next time 🙂

And take a look at this news item below:

Lottery winner ‘saw it’ in Tarot

Continue reading “Tarot Lotto”

The Ace of Stoats, Or Maybe Ferrets

Il Matrimonio had gone out, Dad’s taxi service, collecting Brat No 2 from the pictures. Or maybe it was the pub, because 35 minutes later, it had taken a r-ather long time for this errand. What was occurring? I pulled a card from my Gilded Tarot deck and drew The Ace of Pentacles/Coins/Disks.

OK, They were just arriving home, then. And so they were, I heard the front door open at that very moment. We had also, the previous day, returned home from a long trip. You look in the Tarot to find out what you don’t know, but often what you see is what you do know.

The message here is I suppose two- fold. To obtain an accurate reflection of what you already know is to have a benchmark for the accuracy of forecasts. And, you might think you don’t know something, when actually, you do. The answer is just lodged too deep for you to recognize it, and Tarot digs to fetch it out into the light.

The Ace of the Earth suit, signifying or forecasting home, a new home or house, often with a green garden, a new contract or job or other new source of income, is considered a most fortunate card unless it’s drawn reversed. The best things of earthly life. It may also refer specifically to a physical object, I’ve known it flag up a lost ring and a lost briefcase, and in both cases, the items were recovered as foreseen.

There are the book meanings for tarot cards, then there are the meanings you add through working with them, but last night, the Ace was just doing what it says on the tin.

The Ace of Pentacles, The Gilded Tarot, Ciro Marchetti

Shame there was no wild stoat, or ferret, ahhhh. A ferret went to sleep on my arm once, tail hanging down, and it snored nearly as loud as does Il Matrimonio. It was funny when the ferret did it, such is the unfairness of life.

English: Ferret Português: Furão (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Tarot is a cosmic ferret. Great fun to send it down rabbit holes, and hold it when it snores, but it needs handling with care. The teeth are sharp and…. my God it can stink.

Image reproduced by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti. For more about this deck here’s a review from Goodreads:- http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98903.Gilded_Tarot

Until next time 🙂

Tarot’s A Grass

Tarot’s A Grass.

Inheritance

Inheritance is a meeting point of past, present and future, taking many forms, physical and immaterial. Goods, prospects, genes, ideas. How different in character will the legacy you leave differ or depart from the legacies you have inherited?

The Tarot’s card of Inheritance, both material and immaterial: money, property, ancestry, genes, culture, is The Ten of Pentacles/Coins/Disks.

From The Gilded Tarot: By Kind Permission of Ciro Marchetti.

See the harvest mouse, custodian of the family riches. These riches are about far more than money.Appearing in a reading right way up, I am being shown that the person feels well-supported by family. They have the security of a sense of belonging. Reversed, the picture is of someone struggling about this, labouring under a sense of alienation, or injustice over wills and other inheritance issues. Or they may be feeling that their family background has been a burden rather than a resource.

The Tarot’s comment to people coming to discuss the disinheriting of challenging children has so far been Justice above all. 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. One might even love someone, without liking them. It happens.

But it could be argued that retribution through the power of inheritance is a betrayal of the principle of inheritance, that an unjust will is toxic and divides families for many years to come, perhaps for ever.

Where is our ‘true’ well-spring? Without knowing our family history, we’ll probably never know, and no-one can know all of it, but a lot can be guessed because it’s lodged in you somewhere still. 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’.

“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.”

William Stafford (1914-1993)

Psychological Inheritance (russellrichard.com)
Family: Our Inherited Evolutionary Ladder (southweb.org)

Tarot Talks Fee-Fi-Fum-Football.

I have had the cards out on a few football questions recently, out of interest. Not my interest, particularly, but Il Matrimonio’s.

This is such a poisoned chalice. When I get stuff like this right, he’s intrigued and chuffed, but he’s likely to turn round next day and say it was a good guess, or deny I’d told him what I’d told him, the treasonous reptile. If I get it wrong, he’ll jeer, whereupon I beat him back into his vivarium, and would throw a cockroach after him, if I could find one.

I’ll have a go at these questions anyway. I’m not charging for this work, it forms no part of my professional service, not directly. It’s to benefit my own study. How else does may one study the workings of intuition except to test it on those questions where one has no emotional stake?

Recently, he asked me to consult the Tarot re: Wigan Athletic v Manchester City in the FA Cup Final.

I looked and said I thought it was Wigan Athletic to win this match. I assessed their chances as 75% likely to win (but I did not see them winning their next match, I tweeted to this effect, and sadly, they didn’t)

He said this was impossible, that none of the pundits agreed. Why not, I asked? Because, he said, Man City were second in the Premier League, Wigan Athletic were in the bottom three, and Wigan hadn’t scored against Man City since 2007.

His objections to the forecast were based on trend, but a pattern may break at any time. Right or wrong, that was what I saw. The odds were in Wigan’s favour plus, I’d got The Magician as the outcome card, and The Magician is Mastery of Skill.

The Magician from The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

So, how had I decided this?

By means of a counting spread, and by using reversals (allowing upside down cards) as a way of qualifying the odds numerically.

I shuffled (which I do abominably) asking, ‘Wigan Athletic to win?’ Then I drew three cards and laid them out in a row. How many upright (‘dignified’) cards did I have? Two out of three. the middle card counted for 50%, the flanking cards for 25% each. The middle and final cards were upright, and the final card was The Magician. This was a wonderful card in the circumstances. It is the ultimate card of Skill and Mastery.

This forecasting method has proven highly reliable. Not infallible, I ‘m no such thing and would never claim to be, but I’d expect to get it right 90% + of the time and am perplexed till I understand why I miss the mark when it happens.

Today, however, I was asked another football question, and arrived at a response very differently.

Il Matrimonio slithered into the kitchen, hissing, ‘Crystal Palace or Watford?’

This time I did not reach for my cards. I was preparing lunch, I just said ‘wait,’ and paused, knife suspended fatefully over an imperilled avocado.

‘Crystal Palace?’ I said aloud to myself, and upon saying this felt a mild but distinct spasm on the left side of my neck which ran down my left arm into my fingers. It was mildly unpleasant, like the crawls you might get, pedalling your feet in bed at night when you’re low on magnesium or other salts.

Noting this reaction I said, ‘Crystal Palace to win’.

‘They’ve just scored,’ he said. ‘Fifteen minutes to go, let’s see if Watford pull it back,’ and off he wended, sidewinding his way back to the television.

Result: Crystal Palace 1: Watford 0.

So what?

For many it will only be stating the obvious to say that the physical and the psychic are one and the same. The very subtlety and sophistication of the Tarot’s vast reference library may be a weakness as well as a strength; a temptation to intellectualizing, which is NOT what is wanted, in trying to obtain a true result on Divination.

Until next time 🙂

Psychic Tarot Plumbs The Depths

True Tarot Tales

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.

Standard Keywords: 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…

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