clairvoyant – True Tarot Tales

Evil Walks Abroad. The Devil’s Own Whiff of Sulphur

Last Thursday, July the 14th, I was unsettled at what I saw in my cards. My question to the Tarot was, what kind of day could I expect the following day to be? We were away from home, with a drive next day to see family en-route home again.

Out came The Chariot, drawn reversed, and out also came The Devil.(Universal Rider Waite)

This was a combination that spelled bad news for a partnership, a venture, a vehicle, or a journey. Fear, anger or violence might be attached. I shuffled and drew again. Out they came again, The Chariot Reversed, The Devil, and The Wheel of Fortune Reversed.

Nasty. I felt a lurch in my tummy. I could see it was bad but what did it mean? Not being an all-seeing psychic with remote viewing (it has happened, but rarely. Such acutely specific psychic skills as that are extremely rare if not non-existent) I did what most of us would do, and thought first in terms of the immediate situation.

‘You need to take it extra easy on the road tomorrow’, I said to Il Matrimonio. ‘Maybe inspect the car before we leave the hotel. There’s something here I’m not liking to do with wheels and the parking is tight. I’m seeing tyres.’

The Devil card at at its worst extreme can mean murder. I did NOT think of that, but I was uneasy, deciding we may additionally hear bad news next day concerning family health, and we did hear news that concerned us, about the health of a friend.

Next morning, Friday the 15th…and The Devil is the Tarot’s fifteenth card, we woke to the appalling news from Nice.

The cards had been drawn about an hour ahead of the actual events. This, then, had not been an instance of prediction…but a vague, ominous though with hindsight, apposite foreshadowing. Tyres. Rage. Terror.

Sleep easy, les pauvres.

Vive la France.

How could the Tarot be used to avert disasters? Certainly, a reading may help an individual to avoid trouble if they heed a warning. I have certainly known this happen just as I have known a warning gone unheeded, and the consequences. On a public scale, it would need the right person to ask a reader a closed question such as, what is the risk of.(event X)….happening here (location Y)…at such and such a time/day (Y) And that person would need permission and resources to act on the feedback. Not gonna happen, is it?

Another instance of the Devil card featured in the news in May of this year, when a client told the Tarot reader he had killed someone after she drew the card in front of him. She rang the Police on 999 and was advised to call the non-emergency number which she did, going outside to make the call with the client sitting there. The Police arrived 52 minutes later, and in due course it was discovered that the money had told the tarot reader no more than the simple truth, in response to her drawing the Devil card, the Death card and The Emperor Reversed.

A man lay dead in a pool of blood.

Asking my brother, who is a police officer, what he made of this story, he was horrified that it had not been treated as an emergency. The tarot reader should have been assessed as being at immediate risk, herself, as a witness to a man who might have changed his mind at any time, about allowing himself to be arrested.

The BBC interview here

Usually, thankfully, The Devil does not operate at this horrific level, though the card is rarely, if ever good news in a reading with me unless it comes out drawn reversed. It may mean compulsive drinking, or drug use. Or it may just mean a temper tantrum. Who threw their rattle out of the pram, then?

There is a school of thought that presents the Devil instead as Pan, god of wild things, and some decks portray this alternative interpretation, but for that sense of things, I rely on The Hermit or The Ace of Pentacles.

Changing subject, but not entirely, recent diabolical viewing on the box or DVD has been…next to nil because I stop watching. Occasionally I will shout ‘shaddap!’ or worse if it’s just too inanely squawky but a repeat of ‘Coast’ will always soothe the feathers flat again. It never seems to get old.

‘The Secrets In Their Eyes,’ based on the novel of the same name by Eduardo Sacheri, is a story with the Devil at its heart, but also The Star, The Lovers, Judgement and Justice. It is a story of murder, enduring love, and the search for justice in the face of a corrupted legal system. Above all it’s an epic love story, set in Argentina during the last years of the Junta.

I saw the film first and read the book afterwards. There are a few plot differences but the crux, tone and feel of the story remain true.

It is a story of two heroes, the law man, called Chapparo in the book but Esposito in the movie. He’s a diffident character, not ‘heroic’ in the blockbuster sense, but such is his quality and his charm…you’re rooting for him to get the girl…. and then there is the enduring passion for a murdered wife of the bereaved husband, Morales, who is determined to apply justice when the Law does not, being corrupt and held on a Junta choke- chain.

The grieving husband’s idea of justice is not what you might suppose, and it costs him every chance of a new start, especially in the novel. Faced outright with the wordly power of the Devil he decides that for him, there is only one love, and there is nothing more to live for now but justice. A sad book, a sad film, but The Devil gets a comeuppance, quietly, secretly, at a great cost to the bereaved husband, as the mills turn slow but certain.

The book

The film

I’ll hope not to draw the Devil card again, it’s no use saying never, but not for a long time.

Until next time.

Tarot Synchronicity: The Psychic Hit and the Lucky Guess

Carl Jung speculated that the Tarot works according to the principle of ‘synchronicity’- that psychic insights are triggered by apparently random and yet meaningful co-incidence, which he thought might be explained by Quantum Mechanics.

Tarot Digs Down

In a recent reading the Ace of Pentacles (or Coins or Discs) made two appearances, but drawn reversed. Any card turning up twice is a flag, but I was not satisfied that I had nailed the cause.

The Ace of Pentacles signifies a new home, job or income stream. Finances seemed OK, her work seemed OK. She was thinking of retirement which fitted with this reversed card but she wasn’t thinking of moving house. But there was something. What was it?

Was there an issue to do with gardening? I asked on impulse. I was using the Ace from the Gilded Tarot, shown below by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti. It shows a field rather than a garden. All the same, this Ace, like other cards such as the Empress or the Six of Cups carries the idea of a garden in its repertoire.

The Ace of Pentacles, The Gilded Tarot, Ciro Marchetti

There was a situation, the client said, but really, it was minor. She was feeling unsettled by a neighbour whom she pays to do gardening work, who had promised to do a job before the end of last year, but still had not finished it. But it was nothing, nothing….

It was snagging her energy, however. I was sure of that, because the Ace was negative, reversed or blocked.

‘The truth is,’ I suggested, ‘this makes you….?

‘Fed up’, she said. ‘I am feeling fed up.’

We discussed ways of managing the situation, but people do what sits most naturally with them, and advice does not always help. What to say or do the next time he cried off It had been preying on her mind but not at the forefront. This had been a case of subterranean mental grinding.

The gentle very often do not inherit the earth. Anything but, and my gentle client had entered into a business arrangement with a neighbour who was proving neither particularly business- like nor especially neighbourly, according to an expectation that other people’s standards of professional service were the same as her own.

The Ace of Pentacles says our home is nest and castle, and that includes the earth around it.

Until next time 🙂

The Six of Swords & a choo-choo train to Kew

A friend, also a tarot reader and a gifted clairvoyant; a true ‘Hermit’, had gone unusually quiet since coming round recently to collect a present for his coming birthday and to try out his newest Lenormand deck, doing a reading for me.

Afterwards we sat at the table reading separately, me with tarot cards, he with Lenormand cards, each enquiring about the likely outcome of the EU referendum June 23 to see if we had a consensus. There was. More about that in a future post nearer the time.

But a week later, he hadn’t got back to me after I rang on his birthday. Usually he’s on the phone within a few hours, when he is likely to ask yet again what do I make of David Icke and his theory about the alien reptilian conspiracy for world domination? (He’s been reading a book by David Icke lately, and the Queen is alien reptilian stock, apparently.)

I’ll spare you my usual answer to this question, but for argument’s sake, I’d be more worried about the possibilities for an Alien Insectoid Conspiracy. Chill the reptiles just a teensy bit, they’re too sleepy-byes to get up to very much. The insects too have their limitations but they’d be a far more formidable adversary, terrifyingly industrious, with a far greater population and range…

There has been flu about and he lives alone and has diabetes. I pulled two cards to see if he was OK and drew

The Four of Cups and The Six of Swords.

Well, good, he was OK then. The Four of Cups has a nickname ‘bored boy’ and I decided he had probably got cabin fever. The Six of Swords suggested a reasonably large journey, traditionally over water, but this is the UK and you don’t have to drive far to cross water.

My friend drives but I decided he had probably gone somewhere by train. He is something of a train-spotter and indeed, he rang an hour later to say he was sitting on a train in Euston Station. He had got up at 5 having decided to go down to London to visit Kew Gardens.

I am seeing a lot of Swords cards at present, not least when I enquired about the current steel situation.

I asked, what’s at the root of the problem? First card out, Ace Wands Reversed. The cost of power (fire) A international business ‘Ace’ backfires.

I asked What is the best prospect at this time? First card out. Two Swords. Controls. A state of truce. Diplomacy. Cool the fires but do not stop the fires. Steel is armaments. Duality of legal contract and Protectionism may be implied by this card, possibly for a two year period, while the suit of Swords is associated with the East. I hope it does not mean ‘mothball.’

Bad scene.

PS My friend rang since I posted the above, and I kid you not, asked what I think about ‘the reptilians’. There were dragon statues at Kew….with royal insignia inscribed on them. Evidence.

What insignia, exactly?

Dunno, but royal.

Sigh.

Oh well. He puts up with me…what else do friends do.

Until next time 🙂

www.tacticaltarot.com

All images from The Gilded Tarot by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti

Death, The Diamond Ring And The Mystery of The Missing Diary

I was cackling peaceably into my cauldron as you do, in other words, cooking lunch when Il Matrimonio meandered in, nonchalantly asking; what did it mean if you had lost something, and you asked the Tarot where it was, and you drew the Page of Wands?

I paused in my stirring and asked why. Il Matrimonio does not in general, derive interest from anything Tarot-related, unless he wishes to consult about finances, and touch wood, I have not (as yet) caused him to come a cropper.

His friend Janet X had lost her diary. She is learning Tarot, had looked in her deck of Tarot cards asking where the diary was, and had drawn the Page of Wands but wasn’t sure what it might mean.

page wands gilded — *mage by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti, from The Gilded Tarot.*

In classical terms it means a young person born under one of the Fire signs, Aries, Leo or Sagittarius. A student. It means a trip or a social gathering, or sudden good news, or a sale, or a bright idea for a new business or creative project. On a direct physical level it might mean heat and light, a candle, a torch or a cigarette.

But what did it mean in this particular situation? How could it help to find the missing diary in real, practical, where- the- eff- is- it, terms?

My response, adding a glug of olive oil to the pan, was that her cards seem to suggest she had taken it out with her to some local haunt and left it there.

How did I arrive at this interpretation? Because:

Page = small. Wands = travel.

Additionally…or instead; I suggested, it was somewhere warm or loud, such as a radiator next to a TV, or in the kitchen near the oven.

Why? Wands is the suit of the south, of warmth, of loud music, any place fast moving, lively and colourful.

Il Matrimonio came back saying, Ms X had been adamant she never took the diary out with her, and I remarked that, well, it was between her and her own Tarot, but the Page of Wands suggested she would find it soon and probably nearby.

Ms X shortly afterwards remembered that she had been to the hairdressers earlier that same day. She returned and found the diary was on the arm of a sofa there, next to the stereo. (noise)

OK. Let’s add ‘stereo’ and ‘hairdresser’, then, to the list of vocabulary for the Page of Wands.

The Tarot is a living oracle for use in the modern world. It expands. It evolves.

The Death Card and The Diamond Ring

I once read for an elderly lady,who had mislaid a diamond ring two years previously. It had been a gift from her husband who had died three years previously, and she still missed him desperately. She wanted to know, was the ring still in the apartment, or had it been lost irretrievably?

I used my pendulum to help me refine the possibilities for its current location, and so far as I could work it out, the missing ring seemed to be in the sitting room.

The Tarot said something really quite freaky. The lost ring was in the keeping of the dead, suggested The Death card. And was there a white rose in the sitting room?

The lady, Mrs C, was very definite that the ring had last been seen in the bedroom. It had fallen off her finger and rolled under the bed just as she was leaving for the airport to go on holiday with her daughter. The taxi had arrived, she couldn’t keep the driver waiting, and she had left with every confidence of retrieving the ring immediately upon her return home.

However, much to her bewilderment it wasn’t there on her return, and as time went on, she worried she had inadvertently thrown it out with the rubbish or during a clear out.

But my Tarot seemed pretty clear, yes, the ring was still at home, ‘in the care and keeping of the dead.’ Near a white rose?

The lady insisted there was no white rose.

What more could I say? Whether I was right or wrong, I didn’t know, and all I could say was, well, we can only wait and see.

Mrs C left, but an hour and a half later the phone rang; a very happy and excited lady telling me she had gone home, sat and thought and then had a eureka moment,and fetched a stepladder and found the ring on the top shelf of a furniture unit in the sitting room.

Right next to her beloved husband’s ashes.

She said she had no recollection whatsoever of having put it there.

She also wished me to know, there was a white silk rose in a vase on the mantel piece over the fire.

This is typical of what can happen with the Tarot. The imagery prompt ideas or prods the memory, working via associative thinking in addition to traditional book meanings of the cards.

That’s how we do it. That’s how it’s done, sometimes with fluency, sometimes like pulling teeth. And sometimes of course it fails altogether. My mother lost a favourite ring. The cat took it outside, I ‘saw’ it in a meadow, and I couldn’t provide the clues sufficient to find it in such a wide area of possibilities.

Tarot divination is an on-going study, however long you’ve been doing it.

We can but try to serve.

Until next time 🙂

Tarot Says, Eat Yer Greens!

A client had parted company from a boyfriend . This was indicated by the appearance of the King of Cups Reversed, and Page of Cups Reversed. The lady said it had happened two years previously, and there had been no particular boyfriends since. Two years was a long time for a lovely lady so young. Why was he still showing up in her cards?

I drew the Ten of Swords. Nasty card! and asked her if she was prone to headaches, neck pain or even migraines, and she said, yes, it was a problem sometimes, usually stress related, but she had started taking a targeted multi supplement, and was hopeful of improvements.

Had someone also let her down quite badly, I asked, because the Ten of Swords can indicate a sense of betrayal, as if, you know, a stinker of a headache isn’t enough to be going on with.

The ‘King of Cups Rev’ had done a bit of a cowardly dirty, but when and how might she meet someone new?

The client was in her early twenties, a young professional, and very pleasant as well as of being of a very pleasant appearance. But the cards were full of resistance. Only the Judgement card indicated she would meet someone worth meeting, within the next 20 months, perhaps sooner or later, but 20 months was a long time, and why was this? A few changes seemed to be in order, as suggested by the row of negative cards that were ‘blocking the way.’

There was a lack or loss of confidence, and a high degree of personal integrity by which, naturally, she measured others, combined with a lack of ‘bounce’ which could become a barrier to approach, or to change and opportunity.

The message I got was, here was an excellent girl, deserving of the best but perhaps she needed to ‘lighten up.’ The men most likely to approach her at present were ones she was not likely to fancy, while the ones she might fancy might steer away of a sensed earnestness. Go lightly. Safety first, but then a bit more easy come, easy go. But it is far easier to see this about someone, than for them to see it, and decide they can do something about it.

Tarot thought it might help, to paint a picture of the previous unworthy swain, such that she could let go with a sense of satisfaction, because the terms of parting had been dictated by him not her, and there was a lingering sense of injustice.

‘Anyway’, I told her, as prompted by appearance of the King of Cups Reversed, ‘you were well shot of him. He was boring!’

She looked startled, then began to smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was, a bit!’

I drew The Knight of Pentacles Reversed. The image is from the Gilded Tarot by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

Positive associations: steadfast, patient, reliable, salt of the earth, rooted, industrious, green-fingered, constructive in endeavour, stamina.

Negative Associations: conservative, lazy, lethargic, mean, dull, two speeds; go slow and stop, greedy.

Drawn reversed, in its negative aspects, I felt prompted to say, ‘and he had a thing about not eating his greens.’

She laughed outright, ‘Oh, NO! That’s true. He really didn’t like his greens.’

‘He will get fat while he is still young,’ suggested the Tarot, ‘and quite likely, lose his hair very early. Which wouldn’t matter, if it wasn’t for the rest of it, that he’s boring, introverted and selfish in a quiet way, and a bit sneaky and chicken. And is going to get fat. Completely unworthy of you, in fact, but it doesn’t matter. Time is on your side. It’s all learning.’

‘Oh, you’re GOOD!’ she said, smiling from ear to ear.

Well…good 🙂

A Tarot reader aims to serve. What serves is sometimes whatever acts, in however limited a way, to cut a Gordion Knot.

Until next time 🙂 For more information about readings with me, visit my website HERE