The Scales of Justice and the Claws of The Scorpion
The current Mars in Scorpio transit began 12 October and continues until 24 November. Mars in Scorpio is passionate, intuitive, subtle, cunning, proud, brave, strong and energetic. But may be violent or downright cruel. Vengeful and vindictive. A lot of stuff can get sorted out on a political or personal level, but it is wiser to do it with restraint and respect, or else watch out for the karmic comeback, and that sting in the tail. It may be a long time coming, but come it will.
The Tarot card associated with Mars in Scorpio is the Death card. Other Mars cards are The Tower (shock, storm, cataclysm) and The Emperor (war, government, law and order) Sweet reason and moderation. Desperately needed in the world right now.
But Scorpio steams and bubbles and boils. It is not moderate. It is Life and Death and they are not moderate. It takes a massive surge of energy to get born. It takes a massive release of power to release our hold on life and get ourselves dead, returning to the source or the dreamland from which we have come. Unless we die suddenly, the natural dying process is a job of work, requiring our co-operation. I watched my mother having to work at it, dying with pneumonia that did not respond to three courses of antibiotics.
The fixed water zodiac sign of Scorpio is a metaphor of water (feeling) that bubbles up from deep down, whether this is down on the ocean bed or on land. It emerges under pressure like a geyser.
Such is the power of Scorpio. And the Scorpio native may have healing charisma. But for healing we think more of the Temperance card of Sagittarius or the hopeful Star of Aquarius. It is no coincidence however, the stars that were originally known as the Claws of the cosmic Scorpion, were later made to do double duty as the Scales of Justice in the constellation of Libra next door.
No lasting peace without justice, at home or abroad. We talk about natural justice, but there is no justice in Nature. only natural law is red in tooth and claw. But we are part of nature, so why do we cry out for justice like we do? We’re hardwired for justice. Even small babies have been proven to demonstrate a keen sensitivity to what is fair and what is not, while the Roman writer and poet Manilius apparently observed that a higher than average number of judges in Rome were born under the sun sign of Libra, which had by his time, borrowed, shared or co-opted the stars of the constellation next door. The Claws of the Scorpion were now Libra’s Scales of Justice.
Death in natural. It is deeply painful to lose loved ones. It is frightening to contemplate our own ending. But we can rise to it with a measure of philosophy and poetic understanding. But we can’t do that when we have experienced an injustice. If it is small enough, we may shrug and walk away. But only if it really is small enough. While there may be no justice in Nature, nothing corrodes, nothing eats away at the human heart like Justice denied. It is the sting the corrodes like acid. The sting is pure venom.
Famous Scorpio natives:
Hillary Clinton, politician, born 26 Oct 1947
Dylan Thomas, poet, born 27 Oct 1914
Billy Graham, evangelist, born 7 Nov 1918,
Carl Sagan, astronomer, born 9 Nov 1934
Robert Kennedy, born 20 Nov 1925
King Charles 111, born 14 Nov 1948
Until next time. Thank you for reading True Tarot Tales.
What is the valley of death? We know it as a poetic expression from the Bible, but what might it mean in reality? What is the limit of the definition of reality anyway, when it comes to the imponderables. In algebra, we have to rely on symbolic placeholders too, as in X and Y.
Is the valley of death a poetic description of the end of life experience, a final sensory experience, a vision explainable in terms of a firing-off of neurons by the dying brain, or could it be something more?
I do not advertise as a psychic or clairvoyant or a medium, but tarot readers may get listed as such because there is no separate listing for Tarot in the telephone directory.
But why don’t I advertise as such? Well, Tarot card reading for divination, strategy and support is the service I undertake to guarantee to deliver, as my professional promise, and this is the bottom line and this service depends on acquired skill underpinned by knowledge. OK. But am I psychic? Yes. So are you, most likely, but psychic insights and experiences happen when they happen. Like a wind that ‘bloweth as it listeth’ – psychic insights may be confidently expected, but cannot be guaranteed.
Learning how to read cards, or any other system of divination, although card reading can facilitate them however, as the reader goes down a rabbit-hole, descending into a sort of Hades, seeking to find the ‘right’ interpretation of the cards in any given context. A reader can be asked absolutely anything about anything, and can never prepare, but only prepare to respond.
Every reader has their own story to tell, about how and why they started to learn to do readings. It need not start with a history of psychic experiences. Not at all. But often, it does and in a way, it did with me
‘The Mind has many corridors’ wrote Emily Dickinson. The world is older and stranger, not only than we do imagine, but more than we can imagine.
All animals are pattern seekers, pattern makers or pattern breakers, whether in order to hunt or to hide. Man is hardwired for the power of pattern, and communicating pattern, and the meanings of pattern, and of breaks in pattern, is the eternal task of storytelling. Man – meaning all of Mankind- is a storytelling animal.
‘In the beginning was the Word’.
The Day I met a Dead Man
Many years before I ever so much as opened a pack of Tarot cards, to be grabbed by the art and story telling embedded in them, I met a dead man on the street, a stranger, though we didn’t so much meet. It was more of a case of receiving a summons.
Leicester, 1988. I had just had coffee with a friend I’d used to work with at the Costume Museum in Wygston’s House, now a restaurant. My friend had been the curator at that time and way, way back, the eponymous Roger Wygston had been a wealthy wool merchant and several times Mayor of Leicester.
“Roger Wygston was born about 1430. His father, William, made the family fortune from the wool trade in the first half of the 1400s. Roger was elected chamberlain in 1459 and mayor of Leicester in 1465, 1471 and 1487. He was Member of Parliament for Leicester in 1473 and 1488. He died at Whitsun 1507.” More HERE
I worked in a little room upstairs, putting the Museum’s collection records, index card system on to computers for the first time, and helped put together an exhibition telling the story of hosiery and featuring our star exhibit, a Coptic sock from about AD 400. It had a bifurcated foot and horizontal stripes in red, brown and green.
Wygston’sHouse, Public Domain
I had coffee and a catch up with my friend, and then we said goodbye. I had a legal appointment at the top end of New Walk at 2.00 PM.
There was a time I walked up and down New Walk almost every day, and I worked a short while in the Museum there too. The portico entrance seen here on the right. This one, Wygston’s House and others were all part of the Leicestershire Museums Service run by the County Council.
New Walk and the Museum, Leicester
I was selling a house among other things, with a lot going on at this time, some of it stressful. Anyone reading this may dismiss the following account on those grounds if they feel so inclined. This would be a perfectly reasonable option, if personally somewhat uncomplimentary in relegating the writer to the role of unreliable narrator, but that would certainly be the easiest, least challenging take on it.
Hardly sooner had I set off walking heading off to this appointment than I began to feel peculiar. Not exactly unwell, but certainly not good. There was a crackling in my ears, white noise like an un-tuned radio. Spots started dancing in front of my eyes, fizzing red and black. My body felt weirdly heavy.
I had never fainted in my life to recognize what that felt like, but, thinking maybe I was about to faint, I decided to keep on walking, thinking it would clear my head. But I was unaccountably scrambled, disorientated.
I could not for the life of me, remember or think where I was supposed to be going. I was on autopilot.
My feet took charge, leading me as it were, one step in front of the other until only a few minutes later, I had crossed a busy street.
I followed a small pedestrianized back street round the curved back wall of what was still called Marks & Spencer then, now M & S and then I came to a standstill.
There was a man lying on his back in the narrow street, sprawled across the pavement. A paramedic was attempting resuscitation, another kneeling by them, a small crowd anxiously watching, an ambulance waiting, .
There he lay, defenseless against exposure; an older man, but not exactly elderly, his trousers unbuttoned and unzipped, showing purple underpants, while the paramedics worked on him. His purchases, a few oranges presumably just bought in the market, had rolled out of his striped canvas shopping bag, and into the gutter.
I kept a distance, standing alone, with a blindingly sudden feeling of certainty, a sensation of astonished comprehension, ‘oh, that’s why I came this way. He fetched me.’
The fog rolled back and now I remembered I was on my way to the New Walk. I was by no means far out of my way, but nor would I have naturally thought to come this way.
I knew it was no good them trying to resuscitate him. I remember thinking, ‘he’s not in there anymore’.
I had the feeling, not only was the man not in his body any more, he was standing close beside me, on my right.
I saw nothing, heard nothing and felt nothing in that moment except a pang on his account, but this, with a dissociated neutrality. I think perhaps I was a little shocked, but I wasn’t frightened, only sad, not so much at the suddenness of the man’s death, but that he was caught so unprepared, and was so very frightened, finding himself unable to get back in his body that he had sent an SOS and pulled me off my own path to bring me, a perfect stranger, to where he lay, so abruptly evicted from his own body in a city centre back street on a sunny day.
Maybe it works something like radio waves, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I was tuned in on the right frequency, like the story of the haunted house in my previous post.
I talked to him, and told him he had done the hard bit, and not to try and get back in, that he’d had a most tremendous shock, but it was OK, it was all right, and there was somewhere else he needed to go now, but it was perfectly all right.
Had I thought of it I might have said a prayer. I’m not religious, but words have power across the boundaries of time and space, and who knows what other boundaries.
I reckon that the old Wakes, company, food, alcohol, song, were a wise tradition rooted in this ancient understanding. That the dead might need a bit of time to process what has happened. That they might need encouragement and reassurance before they set off on their lone but universal odyssey once more to greet the rising sun. Read Here about Wakes.
A friend of my mother’s once told her that she had not been close to her father. But after he died and she went to see the body and say goodbye, she thought his face did not look quite right. She felt he looked frightened. The mouth was twisted. She sang to him ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’, and she thought he must have heard her, because his mouth relaxed, and all at once his face looked quite different.
Some go swiftly and easily through the Valley. Others, not so.
The archangels Uriel and Michael are psychopomps; escorting the dead as they ascend back up to the heavens via the Gate of the Gods in the constellation of Capricorn.
In Greek and Roman mythology, the god Hermes or Mercury, would escort the souls to the banks of the River Acheron, or The Styx if you prefer, to wait for Charon the Ferryman and the crossing to the Isle of the Dead and the Fields of Asphodel.
Wiki: Psychopomps (from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός, psychopompós, literally meaning the ‘guide of souls’)[1] are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply to guide them.
23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
But I didn’t think of that. I was young, inexperienced in such things, too astonished and unprepared. So that was all I said to him, and then I went on my way and I put it out of my mind for a long time to come.
But I hope that he did hear me, however inadequate the response, if only to know that yes, he might have left his body, but he still existed and he stil lhad agency.
The living were still trying to help him, and though they could neither bring him back nor accompany him on his forward journey, whatever that might be, still, he had sent out a distress signal, and someone had received it and responded.
Nothing new under the sun? Someone once asked me, did I believe in reincarnation? Well, of course, plenty of people do, around the world. Easter is the great Christian celebration of Resurrection, when Jesus Christ, Yeshua Ben Joseph, was said to have risen from the tomb on the third day following his barbaric crucifixion, signifying the hope of the soul’s eternity for all mankind.
Let’s consider The Yew, Taxus Baccata. The Yew tree is widely viewed as a symbol of resurrection. Why is that? Its branches grow down into the ground to form new stems, which then rise up around the old central growth as separate but linked trunks. After a time, they cannot be distinguished from the original tree.
It is susceptible to death by damage or disease but has been described as the the one living thing on Earth that could, at least in theory, however hypothetically, live indefinitely. It’s thought that there are English yews 4000 years old. Hence its popularity in graveyards, as a symbol of resurrection on Judgement Day.
The old Norse rune Eiwaz represents the yew, and its numinous capacity for regeneration. For this reason, it is considered a good omen for recovery if someone is ill.
Eiwaz
The Memory is supple as the Yew, the Mind as mysterious and it can play strange tricks.
Some years ago, stirring a pan, standing by the stove, I had an oddly vivid experience, a flashback, and I was standing in an entirely different kitchen, sparse, white painted, with a high ceiling and a door to my left. There was sunlight coming in at the open door from which I knew there was a flight of steep, narrow steps leading down to a courtyard, and I was wondering where ‘Pietro’ had got to, and why he was not home yet. I knew this unknown faceless personage Pietro was a husband. NB The name of the present Il Matrimonio is not Pietro or remotely Peter-ish.
Could this have been an ancestral memory? I am Anglo-Irish-Scottish. Not Italian. A vivid daydream then. A snapshot. A picture from a book maybe, or a film? Possibly. I had never had this particular vision or experience before, and have not had it again, but I ‘knew’ at the time, that I was in Siena.
I have to say, I don’t welcome the idea of coming back once I am done and out of here. I’m not keen on the idea of reincarnation, except as recycled material. Life on Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and we are just the current manifestations of it. If Earth is a closed system, in the sense that material may enter through the atmosphere but not leave it, then in that sense, it may seem unscientific NOT to believe in reincarnation, if only in the sense of particle recycling.
But what if particles could retain impressions, memories? Like those stories of people who have heart transplants, and later develop new tastes, and behaviours, subsequently discovered to have been part of the donor’s personality? You don’t have to look far to come across such stories and make up your own minds. Urban legends? A degree of skepticism is sensible and healthy, except when it is of the howling variety, and I heartily mistrust pronouncements on what may not be possible.
I don’t personally welcome the idea of repeating the human experience, and this is not meant as a complaint. I am pretty sure of this much though. Whatever happens, it won’t be my choice.
I first began to study the Tarot at least partly as an effort to make sense of some deeply strange experiences, downright freaky, a few of them, after which it seemed more plausible to me that our consciousness is not extinguished at the time of bodily death. Death is a process, not an event. The brain is not the mind. Our departure from our home in the body is a process that can take days. The tradition of the Wake was a wise one.
I know a lady near me who runs a care home, and when a resident dies she opens the windows, not only for obvious practical reasons, to keep the room cool and fresh, but to help the newly departed soul on its way to wherever it wants to go.
Some years ago I received a request for an email reading, a young lady who wanted to know, was her brother OK? I asked what exactly did she want me to investigate that she could not ask him herself, and she said he was dead. He had committed suicide. She did not tell me more, nor did I ask about the circumstances.
Her questions were:
Where was he now?
How was he now?
A lot of my work is directed at immediately practical matters, home, work, business, money, relationships, family. I do not work as a medium, not at all, but I had previously done other readings focused on deceased loved ones, on occasion with some very surprising feedback.
I sat down to think about this and among other cards, was particularly struck by an appearance of the Sun card from The Golden Tarot, Kat Black.
From The Golden Tarot, Kat Black
The Sun card is life itself, travel, children, health and happiness, success, moments in the sun.
This is a card of innocence and animals. Things in their natural state. You can see this for yourself, looking at this card from The Golden Tarot and in the Rider-Waite decks. In some other decks, those meanings are not necessarily so clear.
The Sun card is a card of birth.
The appearance of this card in particular suggested to me that wherever he was, whatever he was, he was like a child again, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep. He didn’t remember his death, not at all, or the events that drove him to it.
Bless his soul. He was a little boy again. In my mind’s eye, I saw him kicking about in a puddle, not idly kicking, bored, not fed up, but happily, quietly preoccupied. If he had any memories, if he had a consciousness surviving death, if that could be possible, then this was his afterlife.
News of a birth was coming soon, I told the young lady, based on this Sun card. This was a birth close by, probably within the family, and whether it was a boy or girl, the Tarot was suggesting the possibility, however bizarre, that it was her brother being reborn.
Three weeks later I received an email from this young lady, very happy and excited, to say her sister was expecting a baby. Wouldn’t it be weird, she joked, if she was going to be her brother’s auntie this time around?
The returning Star Child from the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey
I would like to think the Tarot’s vision offered this young lady some kind of comfort, however peculiar, for a truly terrible grief, and hope for her brother’s peace. Because not all griefs are equal. Some deaths, as with untimely or violent deaths by suicide or murder, are harder to bear for those who mourn than others.
Reincarnation? I can see it in the genetic sense of the word. Or perhaps I mean epigenetics, and a kind of acquired cell memory. I went through a brief spell at one time of wanting a cup of hot chocolate at night. Not cocoa made with milk in the pan. This was made with water like making an instant coffee, drunk with two cream crackers and a bit of Lancashire cheese. I mentioned this to my mother and she said that was what her father Alfred, my maternal grandfather, always had for supper.
I never knew my grandfather, he died before I was born, of lung cancer, but we share the same birthday. He was a well-known museum curator, who like so many others, took a lengthy leave of absence to serve in the Navy during the war. I worked a short time in Museums after graduating.
Maybe he wanted to send my mother a message, and that was why I wanted his supper. I joked to her that maybe he wanted to say sorry, as he wasn’t always the nicest father he could have been, but she didn’t think that would have been in character.
But where did that very specific temporary new habit come from, I wonder.
Until next time 🙂
Video presentation is a discussion of children’s experiences suggestive of the possibilities of reincarnation with Dr Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia.
Astrology is about the search for meaning on earth as seen in the sky; seeking to understand human behaviour through the influence of planets and other celestial objects, Luna, our Moon being the .
Astrology began as humanity made conscious attempts to measure, record, and predict seasonal changes by paying attention to astronomical cycles.
Early evidence appears as markings on bones and cave walls 25,000 years ago; an early step towards recording the Moon’s influence upon tides and rivers, and towards creating the first calendars.
Symbolically, because it has no light of its own, The Moon represents our shadowy side, our dreams, hidden health, and the impulses that drive our behaviour whether or not we are consciously aware of them.
Why do astrologers study The Moon?
Humans have been studying the Moon since at least 25 000 years ago as the closest celestial body to Earth, exerting a physical gravitational effect on the tides, and on every living thing. Our bodies are largely water, subject to the pull of the tides, and we are no exception.
This affects men and women alike, but is more is readily noticeable in women, through their menstrual cycles.
The Moon in April: The Headlines
There is a lot of lunar drama going on this month, just as there is down here right now during this coronavirus pandemic.
This month’s Full Moon is a Super-moon, a Pink Moon, and it is also the Paschal (Easter) Moon
The Full Moon this month will be in the sign of Libra.
The New Moon this month will be in the sign of Taurus.
The New Moon is the first/last lunar phase when the Moon is located between the Earth and the Sun and the moon is largely invisible, hidden in the sun’s glare.
The Full Moon occurs when the Moon is on the opposite of the Earth from the Sun on the same celestial longitude and we can see the entire illuminated portion of the Moon.
Key Moon phases in April:
1 April First Quarter Moon (waxing moon)
7 April Full Moon (in Libra)
13 April Last Quarter (waning moon)
23 April New Moon (in Taurus)
29 April First Quarter Moon (waxing moon)
What is a Supermoon?
A supermoon is a full moon or a new moon that nearly coincides with perigee—the closest that the Moon comes to the Earth in its elliptic orbit—resulting in a slightly larger-than-usual apparent size as viewed from Earth.
What Is A Paschal Moon?
Easter is observed on the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon, which is the first full Moon that occurs on or after the March equinox.
This year, the March equinox occurs on Thursday, March 19. The first full Moon to occur after that date is 7 April UK time.
So that Easter this year is the first Sunday after 7 April: Sunday, April 12.
What is a Pink Moon?
Historically, full Moon names were used to track the seasons and, for this reason, often relate closely to nature. The Moon names that we use today stem from Native American and Colonial-era sources and apply to the entire lunar month, not only the full Moon itself.
April’s full Moon coincides with the first appearance of the “moss pink,” or ground creeping phlox …early spring flowers.
Public Domain
What does this mean for you and me, personally?
In general terms the New Moon and waxing Moon phase building up to the next Full Moon is the optimum time to make a new plan, to initiate or apply for something, or to grow, make or get something.
A Full Moon is in general the optimum time to take stock and evaluate, or to gather, collect, harvest or cash in on something.
A Waning Moon is the optimum time for ending something, releasing something, or clearing out what’s no longer wanted or needed.
7 April: Full Moon in Libra
The Justice card: Rider- Waite Tarot
This full Moon shines a spotlight on the rule of reason, law and order, fair play, give and take, diplomacy
It can suggest romance in personal relationships, or repairing a disagreement. The sign of Libra, ruled by the planet Venus, is all about creating balance, harmony, and keeping the peace.
Libra is associated with The Justice Card in Tarot, which is about respect and fair play, following procedure, and applying logic and reason to problem-solving.
This is an unsettling time but The Justice card says, above all do not panic.
The Justice card suggests there will be added paperwork or other personal administration for most people one way or another in direct consequence of this situation. This paperwork may be legal in nature, or it may be financial, business or personal administration. It may be related to consumerism and provisioning, online shopping etc.
For small businesses and the self employed, the Justice card suggests special measures put in place in the next few weeks, according to each country’s own national decision-making processes.
The pendulum swings. A degree of disruption and anxiety is natural and inevitable. Uncertainty makes us anxious, but the only real illusion is certainty. Nothing is certain, as the old saying goes, but Death and taxes.
Let’s keep our cool, look out for one another, and pay attention to process, procedure and detail. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s to get the very best we can from this April Full Moon in Libra.
Professor Karol Sikora is Professor of Medicine at the Uni of Buckingham, an oncologist for 50 years, he tweets @ProfKarolSikora:
I can’t tell you how helpful the social distancing is. If we all keep it up, I think a feasible scenario is a return to some normality at the beginning of May. As long as we keep to the rules now, we’ll end up in a much better place after Easter than is feared.Social distancing works. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimate that before the lockdown one positive person would infect 2.6 other people. Now it is 0.62. This means the virus is cornered and will burn out.
23 April: The New Moon in Taurus
The Hierophant: Rider-Waite Tarot
The Hierophant card is associated with Taurus, a warm, earthy but creative, artistic and highly instinctive sign. It is about tradition, sticking with tried and trusted methods, creature comforts, and for many of us, these may have been in short supply, and there has been an unusual degree of extra stress and strain in recent weeks and months, with fire and flood wreaking havoc in 2019, all before Covid-19 showed its ugly face in December, and through its inexorable spread, reminding humanity that we are inextricably interconnected, and distance is no object.
Perhaps afterwards, when things have returned more to normal, as they will, it will be time to review a few of our global, national and personal practices, habits and expectations in respect of animal husbandry and global travel, and perhaps in time there will be some new normalities.
The Hierophant is the card of hospitals, publishers, universities and schools. Possibly things may enter a new phase, and in some cases, start to ease or start to return to normal in these sectors after this date.
In other news
A New Moon in Taurus suggests taking it easy. Don’t complain of boredom. Make an art out of staying home, making and doing new or quiet things, creating as the alternative to consuming.
For losing a little weight without a lot of effort, try working with the Moon, and limit your calorie intake for a 3-day diet once the New Moon begins.
This is also the card of formal studies, traditional crafts and universities and can signify a good time for starting a new study project or recreational group project, such as joining a choir for instance, or an art class.
Taurus is zodiac the sign of mid-spring, and everything alive and green. It is the ultimate zodiac sign of food and agriculture, matched only by the harvest time of Virgo. Why not discover your green fingers, or even experiment with growing a few of your own foodstuffs. You can always start small says the New Moon. A few seeds in a container, and see what happens.
People have been panicking. The supermarkets have been selling out of dried goods, but there will always other ways of doing things, or new recipes, or new ways of cooking or doing things to try out.
We can adapt. We can improvise. What did the Romans do before toilet paper had been invented? They worshipped Hygeia as the goddess of Health. And they had no loo paper, but still, they had ways….
And if that didn’t spoil your ‘bon appétit’, the April New Moon in Taurus says, ‘Eat your greens.’
A friend came to stay recently and brought a present for my birthday. We thought it might be fun for me to try and guess what was inside the packaging using my pendulum and cards. It was roughly cylindrical, not too heavy, rolled in bubble wrap and brown paper.
I held my pendulum over it.
‘Are the contents of this package edible?’ The pendulum span anticlockwise. No.(sob)
‘Are the contents of this package paper?’ No. ‘Ceramic?’ No.’ Wood?’ Yes.
I drew the Three of Pentacles, a card signifying progress in business and pride in one’s work, and from The Gilded Tarot by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.
‘Is it a craft item? I asked my friend.
‘Yes.’ she said, smiling from ear to ear, as ducks suddenly quacked outside on the pond and Il Matrimonio ran to the balcony to see there if there was a fox. There sometimes is. Then I drew the Six of Swords, a card of personal progress, solemn journeys and quests for learning.
Was it something to do with a river or riverbank, I wondered. Was it a little wooden boat? Or a frog? I like frogs.
‘No’. My friend said, smiling, ‘But you are warm. Now open it!
And inside it was – this! A wooden Indian Runner Duck. What a little character.
🙂
Well, I never. No wonder she’d been laughing to herself every time we’d fed the ducks, knowing what she had in store to give me.
Now, that is what I call a friend. And psychically, here was that darn Jungian synchronicity thing at work again.
Good try, Tarot my friend. Not a bull’s eye this time, but a respectable attempt, and this often is how Tarot works in a reading, too, regardless of the classical card meanings, sparking ideas directly off the imagery.
This is how, while Tarot presents a great academic study, anyone can read it, who likes to use associative thinking.
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.
I was once doing a face to face reading, when the focus was the client’s job, and I drew the King of Pentacles or Coins.
The image below is from The Gilded Tarot by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.
This Tarot ‘king’ represents a man who is patient, practical, kind, industrious. He is the salt of the earth. I said to the client that I thought he was a manager, and the work was practical in nature but also involved communication.
I could see that this job demanded utmost precision or the ‘thing’ wouldn’t work. But I didn’t yet quite ‘see’ what his job might be and he wasn’t volunteering. No matter. We are a species of hunter, we card readers. This is part of the fun and fascination of doing a reading.
‘I might get at it though,’ I said, ‘I might now that my ‘computer’ is talking directly to your ‘computer’.’
What I meant by this was, I felt we were on the same wavelength.
His reply?
‘But that IS my job! I work for the government. That’s what I do…I make computers talk to other computers.’
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.
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.
I recommend inquirers to visit my website before booking. This is for their benefit, to make sure I’m the right kind of reader for them. Not every reader offers the same kind of service, and I would far rather lose a booking than disappoint a client’s expectation.
I once took an enquiry over the telephone from an unusually cagey enquirer. He had heard a colleague talking about a recent reading with me, and he wanted a reading, too. I later realized, putting two and two together, this new enquirer had been a police officer. I recommended that he also check out my website, and he did not book at that point, but called again some weeks later, and was startled that I remembered him, greeting him by the first name he had given (which was not, I sensed, his real name)
The client arrived and was polite but continued cagey to the point where it threatened to become counter-productive. I drew The Emperor card confirming what I had already suspected, and asked if he worked for the Government, was he is the civil service, Armed Forces or Police? He replied with some reluctance that he was in the Police, while a further card, the Seven of Swords, elicited that he worked in Fraud investigating.
I’ve read for a few police officers (purely off-duty) and had no problems. This was like pulling teeth, except I’ve never pulled a tooth. It was like pulling up a dandelion, or getting Il Matrimonio to tidy his clothes away.
The Emperor from The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti
I asked if he had visited the website, as I had suggested, to know how I conducted readings. He had not had time, he said, and I reminded him of what I had said on the phone, that I start readings cold, and expect to deliver ‘psychic’ insights but thereafter, a reading works as a dialogue, and this is how I am able to deliver a useful reading, drilling down on precise particulars.
‘You’re doing OK. Carry on,’ he said smiling, then stonewalled me, leaning back on his chair with his arms folded, letting me know he was alert to my ‘techniques.’
Please do not do this to your reader. Of course any reader with half a brain will tap into social cues when doing readings. Why ever is this considered the sign of a charlatan? A reader with poor observation skills is a social munchkin and unlikely to deliver a meaningful psychic reading either.
I sensed he was hoping for a bit of help, but would not value whatever was not delivered cold. I had already sensed disquiet attached to his marital situation, and said so, but he had so far declined to verify this.
Now I drew the Page of Swords Reversed and said, ‘I sense a legal issue. An unwelcome communication. A letter, an email. Have you received it or are you sending it?
He smiled. ‘Suppose you tell me?’
There was a pause while I drew more cards. I was not at ease. Stonewalling is socially hostile and I needed to make sure my own discomfort did not skew my impressions about the card.
The Page of Swords Reversed may indicate a minor stress as well as a legal document, potentially. (It can also mean a minor surgical procedure, a minor injury with acute pain, a spy or a young person born under an Air sign: Aquarius Gemini or Libra)
From the Universal Waite, by kind permission of US Games
I pulled The Hierophant reversed (marriage problem) and the Seven of Swords Reversed (a card of plain speaking or alternatively; surveillance and covert research)
I had a ‘ping’ moment, took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes or No? Have you, or have you not, recently visited a solicitor with a view to asking about a divorce, but without telling your wife?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and the Tarot proceeded to share its insights surrounding this event and its ramifications past, present and possible future.
That might seem a reasonably specific psychic hit for someone who does not advertise as a clairvoyant (though I am sometimes, and sometimes clairaudient) but he remained unresponsive, politely thanking me for my time when we finished.
It is your time and money, and the reader’s time and energy. Research their service.
True Tarot Tales 