divination – Page 8 – True Tarot Tales

The Death Card: The Angel & The Hamster

Death Card To The Rescue…a true tarot hamster tale.

The Angel of Death, by Evelyn de Morgan.

The Death card has in recent years been distanced from death as a physical event by the Tarot profession. The motivation has largely been so as not to frighten or disempower anyone. The Death card has been repackaged with an emphasis upon its power and value as Transition or Transformation.

There is much to be said in favour of this change of emphasis. Life is full of change and flux. Circumstances change, die, evolve. Winter comes. Sometimes a situation is over-ripe for change, and the appearance of the Death card will identify this as a good time to let go and move on, which is helpful to know if decisions are called for. I often draw it in a guise that the querent finds entirely welcome.

But Death is inescapable. It walks amongst us in Life, and is the agent of much of our greatest grief and fear. It is not our enemy, except as the thief of desires unfulfilled. Nature wants Death. It has engineered it for Life In The Grand Scheme.

But it’s the ultimate gateway to the unknown, perhaps to the extinguishing of our uniqueness, our personality? I think our consciousness survives the moment of bodily death at least for a few days. Where it goes afterwards is not for anyone to know for sure.

In my own experience, the Death card is actually not the sole predictor of human physical death in the Tarot. I tend to see instead multiple and repeated combinations including the Fool Reversed, Tower, Judgement dignified or reversed, 4 Swords, 6 Swords, Ace Swords Reversed, Strength, Star Reversed and the Sun reversed.

But I have seen the Death card in readings where the card has done exactly what it says on the tin, detecting a recent death, or presaging one. Tackling or avoiding these discussions when the cards raise them requires careful judgement. Readers must do no harm, and can get it wrong. Humility is the corollary of respect.

But the Death card can be a friendly angel. One afternoon two summers ago I drew this card, and it appeared to be referring to somebody in a state of childhood (The 6 of Cups)

I immediately got up to go and check on the hamster. I associate the suit of Cups not only with childhood, children, nostagia, happy times, but with animals, who live so pignantly in the moment, asking little.

The hamster had recently had a fall. She did not fall far, she tumbled down the back of the sofa on to a cushion. Her landing was soft and Il Matrimonio laughed because it looked comical but something about the way she picked herself up worried me.

Bam-Bam the Bold, Beautiful and occasionally Bad (a toe nipper in her youth) had been ill two days after this fall, and we had thought she was on her way out. Tears in our eyes, hankies at the ready, spritzing the air with Rescue Remedy we took turns to hold her for more than three hours.

Then ANTICLIMAX. All at once the small personage decided she was better, and scrambled off. She was bright as a button next day, trying to climb the wine rack (that’s my girl) and chomping my Gombrich’s History of Art on the lowest book shelf (in hardback)

We were delighted of course, but puzzled. She was my tenth hamster and I’d never seen such a recovery from prostration. The little things don’t ‘do’ illness.

So now, drawing the Death card ten days after this event, an awful thought struck me. I headed upstairs as fast as I could go to the Hamster Palace and found her in great distress, stumbling about. She tried to evade my hand and knowing she was sexist, as animals often are, I knew she would prefer my husband’s smell, I mean, scent, and went to fetch his pyjama top to use for getting hold of her.

I held her cuddled upright in this for two hours while she rested, unmoving. Later that evening she was sufficiently recovered to eat a small square of brown toast with acacia honey (good for rodents with diarrhea) I offered her cooled chamomile tea, which she first refused at first but later took a real shine to. I had read this would calm her and possibly offer pain relief.

Speaking with the vet on the telephone. I wondered if Bam-Bam might have had a hernia of her diaphragm. If she did, then when it popped out that would explain her struggling to breathe. When it popped back into its rightful position, it would explain why she recovered and why holding her almost vertically against my body produced recovery, gravity doing its work. The vet thought a hernia highly likely after the fall. But he had nothing to offer that would not involve distress for an animal so small. And at 18 months, she was at a classic age for hamster health problems.

The third attack will be her last, I told my husband. (The 3 of Swords)

She left us two weeks later. The Angel of Death took her away in a kindly fashion with nothing of Swords in the manner of it. I was deeply grateful to the Tarot for the forewarning that sent me to her when she was in distress. Even animals who are solitary by nature, will learn to look for company and when she went, she was not alone.

Bam-Bam The Bold is buried under the pink rose in the back garden with her predecessor, the curtain climbing, mighty-for-her-size but ever sweet-tempered Coco the Courageous. There are Dog roses. I say, let there be Ham Roses or any kind of animal roses we want. Only animals? Well, so are we. It’s all Life, and what would a heaven be without them, anyway?

I’ll still swat a mosquito though, as soon as look at it, and think komodo dragons are entirely disgusting, from which I deduce I am not ready for Enlightenment.

Until next time 🙂

3-Rune ‘Day Ahead’ Reading

I use the Tarot as my chief means of divination, but there are other tools and ways of accessing the unconscious mind and one of these is to use Runes, an entire subject in its own right.

Here’s a 3 rune Day Ahead Reading, drawn for mid-morning on Saturday 19 June:

Rune 1 For the morning to come: FEHU…..fee, job, earnings.

Rune 2 For the afternoon to come: a blank rune…no ascribed meaning. Historically, there is no such thing as a blank rune. Rune scholars usually discount them as an invention of the 1980’s. However, this set had one and I drew it and decided to let it be.

Rune 3 For the evening to come: EIHWAZ …Yew…death/regenaration. Yikes, I wondered what form that would take.

I had made no firm plans for the day at this point.

Within half an hour I took a telephone booking for a reading: this explained FEHU.

During the afternoon I crashed out tired from a poor nights sleep and remained comatose for two hours. This would account for my drawing the blank rune – a reasonable pictorial representation of my scondition between 3 and 5!

In the evening, we made what seemed like an impulse decision but actually wasn’t; to visit a family grave in Preston cemetery, taking a rose from our garden.

I had forgotten the rune reading and only realised on Monday, that this had actually been pre-indicated by the Yew rune. A cemetery (death) with yew trees.

The Yew rune must have picked up on an idea that I had not yet consciously formulated…my plan to go was bubbling up to the surface when I would become aware of it, but hadn’t reached it yet.

Alternatively, drawing this rune was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and had acted to remind me that an anniversary was coming up, that I was in the habit of marking with a visit to the cemetery and a rose and that I wouldn’t want to forget.

This year, I wasn’t going to be able to visit on the usual day, 21st, and the rune had served me a wake-up call to go earlier on account of this.

Gutenberg: Yew

The Yew is a tree considered sacred since pre-Celtic times, and is still considered special and mystical today. It’s wood is pliant. It bends but does not break; a living metaphor for resilience. For this reason it was often used in the making of bows in archery. Its berries are toxic and can bring death, but its leaves are evergreen and so, and because of the mature trees majestic and moody appearance, it’s symbolically suited to cemeteries…as a symbol of death with resurrection.

More about the yew and its mystical attributes here:-

http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/articles/yew.htm

A Day Ahead Reading is an excellent way to practice your predictive readings, and develop confidence in predicting (statements about the future detected as virtual fact) or forecasting (detection of trends and future likelihoods)

This applies whether with the Runes or the Tarot. You get the feedback same day and quickly start to amass data on which to assess your predictive ‘hit rate’ while developing predictive capability through the benefits of personalised hindsight study.

You’re welcome to share any of your own experiences of a Day Ahead Tarot Spread or predictive rune readings, clicking on the comment tag below.

Tarot Bites…

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Except, flying home from Spain on Sunday over the Bay of Biscay , it was clear to see the cradle of our summer weather problems….you could look down and see what the jet stream was brewing there, and the head on the beer just went on and on. The account below was written in 2010 and spoke of events in 2009. Our summers have been odd since at least 2008, with the last scorcher in 2006. Implications for the UK Tourist Industry, offset against the effects of recession?

‘The weather was odd at home last year in 2010, and even in N Italy where we went in August 2009…it was very changeable, cool at times, and there were cracking thunderstorms nearly every day. Forked lightening like you could scarcely believe. Now, you can’t see the bites in this photo, taken near Florence that summer, but the Italian for ‘mosquito,’ I can inform you, is zanzara. And the word for a bite is puntura. These are helpful words to know when you need to go to la farmacia.

I had received a warning about the mosquito campaign from the Tarot, fat lot of good it did me. The warning was presented as follows.

The Page of Swords (A Page card in Tarot can mean something small, swords can mean air and something that is sword-like and sharp – like a needle or in this case, a bite or sting)

The Page of Pentacles Reversed (ie in Tarot’s language ‘debased earth’, prefiguring the infection of said bites, round and swollen and red, the opposite of the green associated with pentacles cards, the suit of earth. )

The Page of Cups Reversed. Ahem. Not looking one’s best going round impersonating a human giant measle. The suit of Cups relates to healing, happiness, well-being and beauty. It corresponds with the element of water, and therefore also indicated a need to ensure maintenance of adequate hydration.

I had upon reading this duly armed myself with repellent ( ask for controlgio d’insetti, folks) after our first night there. Did it work? Did it heck. But don’t let that put you off. It might for you.

Then – and perhaps I reacted unusually badly because my immune system was depressed, I tried anti-histamines, hydrocortisone, lavender, tea tree, TCP and finally, a course of antibiotics from a gentle Italian GP who came out 40 minutes after being called. This allowed us the guilty thrill of using that little plastic E111 card for the first time. The service was brilliant though it did cost 25 euros for the call-out, but hey, it was 7.30 on a Saturday evening. We were grateful. Would we have received such a prompt response at home?

We need the Jet Stream to move north. I think we’ll have some better pockets dotted fairly regularly throughout August. Better than June and July, I mean. Another fairly crummy summer so far…but we will never surrender. We will fight it in the garden, and in front of the telly, and in good company, and with a cup of cocoa and….

One of the hottest summers I remember, was two weeks spent on the Appin Peninsula in NW Scotland. And it was sublime. It was glorious, and there were white sands and blue waters to rival the Med any day. The only problem (- there is always a serpent in paradise) was the darn, pesking clouds of mozzies.

I think that’s where I came in…

Ding Dong (Door) Bell…

A client was late in arriving. She had wanted a reading at a Saturday tea-time and now she was 1o minutes late. Hmmm. Was she en-route or was she going to be a no-show? Tarot readers get caught out now and then, just like anybody else. They’re only fallible…

I have a friend, Andrew, who is a very gifted clairvoyant. He will quite often pluck meaningful names out of the ether…very spooky, and when he does there’s nothing hit and miss about it. He did that with me once. ‘Who’s Edward?’ he said. ‘He’s very important to you. He’s a relative isn’t he? Is he your father…no hang on. He isn’t Edward. He’s Ted.’

Correct. And even someone with this spooky ability gets hit by timewasters and importunate sales callers. Even the most super-psychic person in the world could not operate at their highest frequency all the time.

Andrew’s telephone rang one day.

‘I’ll make an appointment,’ the man said. ‘If you can tell me my name.’ Andrew might actually have been able to do so. But there was only one response such ignorance and crassness deserved. How would a reading with such a discourteous client have gone?

‘I think it must be Mr Twat,’ Andrew said. ‘But I’m sorry, I’m all booked up.’

I don’t pursue clients in any way shape or form. Don’t spam, don’t telephone (though I return calls if a message is left.) If they book then don’t show up – which has happened four times in 10 years – without making a cancellation, well, OK. I’ll remember them, and they just won’t get another appointment

So now, with this lady running late, having requested a time that I had accommodated out of goodwill, I asked my cards, was the client en-route?

I drew The Chariot. This card of travel vehicles, speed, progress, ambition and teamwork was an indication that yes, she was on her way over.

The IJJ Tarot’s Chariot

How soon would she be arriving?

I drew the 4 of Cups. This seemed to indicate that she would be arriving in approximately 4 minutes, and that there was probably no particular crisis to be discussed in the reading, but she was in a rut and looking for ways to move ahead.

The lady arrived, apologising, just as I was re-shuffling the cards. It might have been 4 minutes later, more like 2-3. And she was a delight to read for.

Hark the Heralding Agents sing…

The Page of Wands from Kat Black’s beautiful GOLDEN TAROT (U.S Games) See reviews on Llewellyn’s website.

In November I had a telephone call from a young hairdresser I know. Let’s call her Cate. She comes over every six weeks or so and gives everyone a trim, except for the cat and the fish (two tanks of tropicals.)
Cate was ringing to let me know she has had her first child, and that it is a boy. This was not only wonderful news, but a ‘psi’ moment.

In Tarot, the card shown above, the Page of Wands, is one of several strongly associated with birth. Wands is the suit of Fire, of passion and the primal spark.

Dowsing to find out the numbers and sexes of future children is an old wife’s hobby, and there are arguments for not doing it. The surprise is part of the excitement of the arrival of a new baby. But precisely because no-one expects it to be accurate, people still do it, for fun and out of curiosity about their latent psi talent.

I dowsed for Cate when she was a little more than five months along, using a smoky quartz pendulum. Most of my divinatory work is with cards.

Earlier, back in April I asked a young client if she was expecting a baby or thinking of starting a family—seeing a page of wands and the page of cups prompted my question. My client answered that she was not expecting a baby, but then she returned in June and told me that she was three months pregnant, had in fact been pregnant at the time of the April reading, but hadn’t known it herself at the time.

I have had some interesting results with pendulums previously…and a pendulum is sometimes the quickest tool for a short yes or no answer to a question. But whatever divinatory method I am using, I never claim I KNOW anything until a client has confirmed it. That would be hubris. I will only ever say what I feel, always acknowledging the possibility I might be wrong.

So, dowsing for Cate, using the pendulum, I asked the baby if it wished to tell us: was it a boy Yes or No? There was a pause. The chain began to gain momentum and the pendulum began to describe a vigourous clockwise circle. According to my programming with the question, this was a yes, the baby was communicating he was a boy.

I then asked: are you happy to tell us: are you a girl? The pendulum began to describe a vigorous anti-clockwise circle, meaning no. I performed this three times and got the same response each time. Therefore…according to the pendulum, a little boy was on his way.

The baby’s official due date was the 25 October. I felt the baby would beat that date but didn’t say so. I felt the birth would be OK but there might be some tough moments. Again, I didn’t say so. I felt the outcome would be fine and I did share this, because it could do no harm to add to her confidence and strength.

The night of the 23 October, I dreamed I was in a corner shop standing behind two girls talking. One said to the other, ‘did you hear? Cate’s had the baby?’ It was so vivid I made a note in the morning to remember it. I have just been told the labour began on the 23rd, and the baby arrived in the early hours on the 24th. Synchronicity of psi with real time.

So what was happening here? One idea is that dowsing works on the interaction between two detected electro-magnetic fields…when a positively charged field meets a negatively charged one, there is a answering movement in a divining rod, or ring or needle. Worked metal is an obvious conduit but many rock specimens may also possess ‘charge’ and amber which is fossilised resin is also known for possessing charge. Any living thing possesses charge…it’s why we sometimes receive static shocks from hairbrushes or getting out of a car.

I can’t know for sure, but perhaps the crystal on the chain detected the baby’s electro-magnetic field, and I had given it a language for telling me what it was sensing.

The tool itself may be doing little, is another possibility, and its value

is in detecting and exaggerating a twitch or tremor of the dowser’s body. This twitch or tremor is unconscious in origin. It means that the autonomic nervous system has detected information. The ANS has no language, only its ability to transmit chemical and electrical stimuli, resulting in physical movements. It knows something the conscious mind does not, and makes the dowser perform a movement puppet like, by means of electrical impulses travelling from the brain down the spine and ultimatrely to the finger tips. This movement might be so subtle that if it weren’t for the movement of a hazel rod, in the case of dowsing for water, or the swing of a pendulum in other types of dowsing, it would be missed by the naked eye. The movement of the tool amplifies this tiny signal from the brain.

So welcome to this world, little boy. May you stay as long as you like, be amazed as you should be, do and learn plenty with happiness not harm, and may all good luck go with you.