Saturday, July 29, 2006

I Love Life!

Does that have anything to do with Tarot? For me, "Love and Life" is what matters, and also what can be illuminated with Tarot. So yes, I love tarot, I love life, and right now that seems relevant. I also love having a blog, because I can say whatever I want.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Tarot Cards - What's so special about them?

Some people are very attached to their particular method of divination, while others are comfortable with many different techniques and tools. When we use tools such as Tarot, the I-Ching, a crystal ball, a pendulum, candle flames, runes, tea leaves, or any type of oracle, we are using a shield or barrier to help us filter out the information that is not relevant and focus on the information that is, just the same way we use a radio to pick a particular frequency out of the air, isolating it so that we don’t hear a nonsensical combination of every broadcast at once.

Now for something really strange: anything can be used as a divination tool. Chicken bones, water, grass clippings, driveway gravel, license plate numbers of cars driving by... anything that you can make some kind of sense of. Some tools have risen in popularity because they lend themselves especially well to isolating and identifying the kind of information that matters to most people. Tarot is one of these tools. It is particularly valuable not just for its use in isolating information, but for its value in assisting the reader in the translation of information that is being received psychically or subconsciously. Remember, we can not access the subconscious directly, so the images and symbols on the Tarot cards help us translate the information from a place of knowledge we can’t describe from to a place of knowledge we can describe from. Some people don’t need shields or tools. Some people are averse to using shields or tools. I ,for one, appreciate the barrier that Tarot provides between the world we are familiar with and the worlds we are not familiar with.

Friday, July 21, 2006

What Does it Mean to be Psychic?

When discussing Tarot, often the topic of psychic ability comes up. Many of us believe that everyone is psychic, and anyone who has ever had a “gut feeling” or had their intuition guide them understands this sense of the word. Often, the word “psychic” carries a connotation of an amazing power to read minds, correctly guess lottery numbers, and see events in the future as if they were on a videotape that could be cued to the moment of interest and dissected for detail. That sense of the word is usually the one that skeptics have in mind when they are inclined to criticize Tarot, or any form of divination, as “fake.” People who tend to believe in “psychic” ability tend to think of it as the intuitive, gut feeling sort of sense that develops in its reliability the more you listen to it and pay attention to it. There are other names for this, perhaps prayer is one way of looking at it as well. How fascinating that we have different names for our feelings, and for our “sixth sense,” depending on what framework we are coming from. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we were all taking about the same thing?