True Tarot Tales

Tarot says, Broom Broom Bah! The Chariot Reversed.

The Chariot Card from the Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

I was playing with the cards, no particular question, just a few things on my mind. I pulled The Chariot card, but it was upside-down, Reversed.

I drew it with the Strength card and this was also Reversed but I wasn’t sure of the message. The function of questions in tarot reading is to provide a framework for interpretation. Sometimes though, the challenge is what question to frame, and then, the trick is to just start pulling cards, refine with further questions, or wait for an insight.

The car was behaving itself, so it wasn’t a vehicle malfunction message, which it certainly can be, drawing The Chariot Reversed. I asked my eighteen year old daughter how she was getting on with her driving lessons. She’d only had five lessons, and was loving it, or so I thought, but she replied that she wasn’t enjoying them any more.

I asked why not. She’d had a scare last time, she said, turning left. She’d struggled to steer, the wheel locked, and another driver got impatient. More than that. Furious.

‘Steer!’ the instructor shouted.

‘It won’t turn any further!’

‘Steer!’

She felt shaky afterwards. Other drivers were so aggressive, she said. Tail-gating, gesticulating, sticking their fingers up as they overtake. They could see this was a learner, learning with Mr Pass, in his mini with its big sign on top, and they were learners once.

So, her nerves had been a little rattled. Maternal counselling followed, a small bracer. Keep your mind on what you’re doing, stick your fingers right back up at them. Testosterone twats. They were learners once. We imagined a few scenarios, she began to laugh and concoct in he rimagination enjoyable ways of deliberately causing annoyance, pressing the buttons of the petrol stress-heads. Laughing draws many a sting.

So, what had the Tarot done, here? Nothing unduly dramatic, it had merely waved a flag, causing me to pay attention to something that had been passing under the radar. For her first three lessons she had been eager to go out, and she’d come in whoop-whooping, and now, waiting, she was saying, ‘I’m not in the mood.’

The shine had come off the learning. Now that the Tarot had drawn it to my attention, I could offer perspective and encouragement, the polite word for a gentle kick up the rear.

The Chariot Reversed stood for Driving, negatively aspected. Strength Rev represented the experience of intimidation. She’ ll have to turn Strength right way up, and not let into her emotional space any unmannerly Mr Toad stress-merchant who wants to go at 50mph in a 30 mph zone, and thinks they are an expert and infallible, forgetting respect.

If you’re Mr/Ms Toad. Take it easy. Poop-poop! Remember what happened to Mr Toad. Remember the hare and the tortoise.

English: An original card from the tarot deck ... — English: An original card from the tarot deck of Jean Dodal of Lyon, a classic “Marseilles” deck. The deck dates from 1701-1715. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Until next time 🙂

Pithy Tarot meanings – the Chariot (jamesricklef.wordpress.com)

The Six of Cups: The Great Orme, Planet Playground, and a game of Goat Lottery

The Six of Cups from The Gilded Tarot, Ciro Marchetti, and from The Legacy of the Divine Tarot, also Ciro Marchetti

The Tarot’s Six of Cups is about childhood, children, old friends, memories, nostalgia, old familiar places, people and pets at play. It may be forecasting a return to an old haunt, or the re-appearance of an old friend. Drawn reversed, upside down, it might be saying don’t go back.

The Six of Cups is family holidays, the happy kind, that can feel so long ago.

As LP Hartley said in the opening of his novel, ‘The Go-Between‘…’the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.’

The dramatic limestone headland of the Great Orme separates the largely Edwardian seaside town of Llandudno from the drama of the Conwy Estuary just round the corner, with its stupendous castle and walled town.

The technology pedigree of this area is quite something, from the ancient copper mining, to the Iron Age forts, to Edward I‘s castle, to the building and embarkation of The Mulberry Harbour used in D-Day, and in recent times, the conversion of a railway tunnel at Caernafon that become a road tunnel.

The headland of The Orme is a Viking name meaning Serpent- is like a children’s fantasy wonderland on a sunny day.

It’s all going on! To appreciate the Serpent, drive the 4 kilometres around the base…to Deganwy and Conwy beyond.

But if you peel off left you’ll go up a steep hill, zig-zagging past St Tudno’s chapel on the way up to the summit where cable cars glide overhead, people sit smiling, chugging along on what is surely the shortest train journey ever, from the station the few hundred yards to the stop at the cable car cafe.

There’s a neolithic copper mine in a hollow on the summit. Walk or drive down into it, walk about on wooden bridges, look down into the ancient industrial excavations, put out of business in the Iron Age.

Coming back down from the summit to rejoin the marine drive, the chapel’s churchyard tilts so steeply, you feel the dead might tumble into the sea.

Asian families were out on picnics during one of our visits, celebrating Eid. A small girl dressed in pink and coral, shyly smiling, put her hands in prayer position, and bowed a holiday greeting as we passed.

Those kashmir goats…where would we spot them this time? Driving out again next day at sunset, we had a goat lottery…no prizes, just a guessing game. How many goats would we spot on the marine drive? My husband said 4 goats, Il Matrimonio said 7, and I guessed 11 plus but rounding the very last bend, we still hadn’t potted a single goat and we had never yet seen them at this point on the route, so far round. Not a goat in sight. Oh hang on. Yes! There they were, resting or grazing in the apricot light as they faced the setting sun over Anglesey. 13 goats. Only two pictured here (and not my pic) but what a pair of characters.

“Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with.”- Robert Brault. And I haven’t told you about the toboggan rides yet. There goes my daughter, just arriving at the bottom, and the view out over the bay at Llandudno.

It’s all going on. But there’s a magic. Many echoes. Some are sunny, some are darker. In stormy weather, the light is strange, the echoes speak, and some may be your own.

Birthday tram’s trip back in time (bbc.co.uk)
Trail closed for aggressive goats to reopen Monday (mynorthwest.com)

A Psychic ‘Clanger’

A Tarot Reading to help with a business meeting….

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:

Click here for more:- http://learntarot.com/p6.htm

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…

*cackle*.

: Project Management Lifecycle (Photo credit: IvanWalsh.com)

Until next time 🙂

The Essential Minor Arcana (jameswells.wordpress.com)

The Tarot Interviews St George…

Tarot As A Story Telling Tool: St George

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.’

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.

Raphael: St George and the Dragon: Public Domain

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.

Here Ends The Transmission

Until next time

St George’s Day (feelthebest.wordpress.com)

The Ace of Cups

The Ace of Cups.

The Ace of Cups

For students of Tarot, or the just curious, a few words about The Ace of Cups.

Meanings: Inception, Awakening of Love, Creativity, Vision and the Empowerment of Intuition. It is Beauty. It is The Element of Water, it is The Chalice, The Holy Grail. Sometimes it indicates a coming birth. I have known it accurately indicate healing and recovery from illness or after an accident. It is Grace.

It is known as the Ace of Hearts in a deck of playing cards.

‘My Cup Runneth Over’ is the moment that cannot be surpassed.

Whereas the Ace of Wands, Ace of the South, refers to the primal spark, the fires of Creation, the Ace of Cups, Ace of the West, is the matrix of Life.

The Ace of Cups speaks of Source. Physically, The human body runs primarily on water and minerals. Every physiological process that happens inside the body needs water. The human body is made up of more than 70% water. The blood is more than 85%, the brain more than 80%, muscles more than 75%, and the liver is 96% water.

But beyond the immediate physical, what is our most distant physical story, back to the point of Creation, or as some might prefer to think of it, life’s origin in space, or divinity? Dust from space ultimately cross-reacted making water, an epic of chemistry which made the seas, where Life on Earth began.
We are undines, raised by evolution from the deep.
Sublimis ab unda.

The poem below, for me echoes the deeps contained within the image of The Ace of Cups. It’s from a little known contemporary poet of rare subtlety, yet also directness and integrity.

A poem, like a song, like a picture, a sculpture, a photograph, a smile, a kiss, is a manifestation of the Ace of Cups, of the moment, but eternal.

Here is a Ace within the Ace.

Small Object of Desire

I suppose I should have picked my wedding ring
but that is personal and finite to me
as is my two faced charm on a silver chain
triangular, goldstone, tourmaline

But I chose this, lifted from some shore line,
a smaller bit than I’d found and lost before;
a spindle from a whelkish structured shell
more beautiful than any sculptor’s form.

It gives only a hint of its infinite fetch,
newel staircase, ramp to raise the megaliths,
invasive toxic spirochete to invest my blood,
screw my life force with its sickening brood.

No porcelain is half so fine,
that comes from Meissen’s arcane kiln.
This is the divine, the spiral double helix.
Where else should it be but on a beach?

My small object of desire, refined by tidal pull,
inch long, white and deeply curved,
maths of all dimensions along its reach,
shape and key to life, needs only my breath to live.

Margaret Whyte
The Source
2008

Shared here by kind permission of the author.

Until next time 🙂

Psychic Tarot Plumbs The Depths

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: 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:

HER QUESTION: ‘Where should I work?’

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.

Until next time

Tarot Says Apples For Teachers

Apples For Teachers…It Wouldn’t Be Allowed Today: True Tarot on Teachers

Soon the children will be going back to school.

The Hierophant, the Tarot’s Fifth Major Arcana card, represents the concept of The Teacher but this is the teacher operating within the Establishment

What makes a teacher be a GREAT teacher?

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.

apple for teacher

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.

Until next time 🙂