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.
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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.
Tarot Goes Shopping in London Town For London Fashion Week
A dowser, from an 18th century French book about superstitions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Recently, my Tarot went to London Fashion Week.
Not literally, alas.
My cards and I stayed here, my behind stuck firmly to a chair in my home, True Tarot Central, in Lancashire.
A regular client – she’s been using my service six or seven years now- owns a boutique where I live. She is a rock and a gem. has been in business more than 20 years and employs a 4-8 staff at any given time. She wanted the Tarot’s inputs as part of planning her buying trip to London Fashion Week.
How did this work?
Tarot had previously forecast a challenging year to come for her business in 2012, with a need to diversify.
Responding to this, a few days ahead of her buying trip to London Fashion Week, the client briefed me with checking out a list of 20 fashion collections which she had shortlisted as buying possibilities.
My brief was to dowse through this list, identifying which collections represented the best buys for her boutique in terms of likely future sales revenue.
How did I set about it?
I carried out card counting spreads in respect of each collection listed. Ithen checked these findings against my pendulum. A clockwise swing of the pendulum was positive corroboration. An anti clockwise swing of the pendulum was a negative which demanded further enquiry for clarification.
Collections getting a positive reading of 6/8 or better were flagged up as Green for BUY
Collections getting a positive reading of 5/8 or 6/8 were flagged as Amber-Green BUY SELECTIVELY
Collections getting a positive reading of 4/8 were flagged as Amber OCCASIONAL PIECES
Collections getting a positive reading of 3/8 were flagged as Amber-Red IF IN DOUBT LEAVE
Collections getting anything below this were flagged as Red. WARNING!
The Tarot offered other comments and suggestions.
It is too soon to verify the sales forecasting.
But a note from my client confirmed that with the Tarot’s help, I had at least accurately anticipated her reactions upon actually seeing the colelctions for herself in person. This reinforced her own instincts and she told me, this reinforcement from another quarter helped her arrive at her decisions more quickly and with confidence.
It afforded her a ‘second opinion’ to draw on when she was unsure. An inside track with no vested interest other than in giving reliable service.
Tarot is at the Questioner’s service. The Questioner is always charge and remains in control of the use he or she chooses to make of the information.
What a business dowser can do, at the least, is offer a virtual psychic companionship, resulting in avoidance of waste, risk and loss through uncertainty in difficult times.
Is it profanity, is it unspiritual to use the Tarot for business, for money making?
Well, is it profane to help people working for their daily bread, who are providing work for others in the process?
It is Life which is sacred, not the 78 pieces of cardstock which comprise in physical terms, the oracle of Tarot.
The Tarot is a portal for reaching inward, then reaching outward, to me, ‘myself’, to ‘you’, to ‘us’, to ‘them’.
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.
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.
‘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 