Love and Life Tarot

Psychic Rant

2008-03-03T10:12:00.000-08:00

If you spend time on the internet, you know there are whackjobs at every turn ready to say something ridiculous. It's a fact of internet life, and being online means accepting that.

Nevertheless, every once in a while you come across something that strikes a nerve, so today I am elaborating on an exchange that took place regarding a psychic.

Some random internet person was in the middle of discussing something when he broke to express his outrage - outrage I tell you! - over a psychic who some friends consulted after their son had died. They were vulnerable, he said, and this psychic told them he had a special place in heaven taking care of animals. Typical bullcrap, he says.

his emotionally vulnerable parents went to a similar psychic who used the same method of collecting information before the "reading" and filled in the rest with the kind of crap you would expect from a horoscope. He told them that their son had a special place in heaven taking care of all the animals because he was so kind to them while he was on Earth. Who doesn't like to think of their departed loved ones as being kind to animals?

The unmitigated nerve. The raw audacity. How. Dare. They.

My response:

Are you really angry at the psychic your friend's parents went to for this? Psychics are legally prevented in most places from making claims about psychic ability. They have legal disclaimers stating "for entertainment purposes only." When someone in crisis goes to a professional psychic, what to you expect them to say?

People go to psychics because they want to believe something they have no proof of. They want confirmation of their hopes and protection from their fears. Are you angry at the psychic for telling them what they wanted to hear? What would have been the alternative? To say:

"I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. - but this psychic stuff is crap and you can forget about exploring any belief that will bring you peace. Some exceptions may or may not apply to officially sanctioned religions. Have a nice day."

People get so angry at psychics. Maybe psychics should just pull the "faith" card once and for all. If your friends had gone to a priest, a rabbi, etc who said the exact same things- or if Montel had one on his show, there wouldn't be so much umbrage.

Can you imagine? My priest told me my son was with God! How DARE he say that to a grieving parent?

This exchange highlights a number of issues with the nature and role of psychics that need elaboration, but right now there is a cat that WILL NOT get off the keyboard and so I'll have to do this in two parts.

Do Tarot Card Readings Actually Work?

2007-11-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

Tarot does “work,” if by working we mean that about 80-85 percent of the time, the cards accurately describe specific details of the life or activities of a person in question. There is some healthy room for error, which I estimate on the high side up to 15 or even 20 percent (hence the 80 - 85 percent estimation of accuracy), depending on the skills of the reader. Some readers close this gap very tightly, but I don’t think anyone is dead on all the time about anything, and this includes Tarot readers.

How can this be? How can it possibly be that Tarot Readers can gather specific, accurate details through merely reading cards? The answer is simply that no one knows. This is precisely what has so many of us hooked. Once you try reading, you may start to believe that psychic powers do exist, and that you yourself posses them. Many readers believe that everyone is “psychic,” because they have seen it for themselves. Virtually no one believes that the cards themselves are magic, though the decks are treated with the care with which one might treat any favored object.

The experience, however, of accurately reading other people’s situations is so powerful that we do have a respect for the practice. Although no one knows why, or how, Tarot cards work, we can still come up with some theories. What follows are some of mine. First, however, some context is necessary. Tarot is just one method of divination, and divination is just one practice in a large number of practices involving psychic ability. Before specifically addressing Tarot, we must touch on some of the qualities of psychic ability, and also divination, in general before discussing Tarot in particular.

Some elements of psychic ability do seem clearer than others. The first and most notable is that whatever part of our mind is able to connect to information from outside of our physical environment can not do so without the cooperation of the intentional part of our mind. To put this more succinctly, our conscious mind, or ego, sends signals that control our subconscious mind, or id. We can not directly control our subconscious, so we must “manage” it through our conscious mind. This means that if we are saying or thinking, “this is stupid,” or “this is fake,”
our subconscious mind gets the message and responds accordingly by working in a way that will fulfill this intention. Recent scientific studies have indicated that positive thinking in athletes creates a physiological reaction that includes increased endorphins to the body, allowing an athlete to overcome pain and push harder, further, and faster. Negative thinking, on the other hand, inhibits these endorphins and the physical body is not capable of as much.

This was all true before anyone knew it was true. It was true before anyone even knew what an endorphin was. Whatever turns out to be true about the psychic process is likewise true today, even though we don’t have an observable explanation. It is essential to make peace with this idea if you would like to experience psychic ability for yourself. This can be more challenging for some than others, so a few notes may be useful before we move on to divination.

If you struggle with the idea that only what is measurable, observable, and tangible can be “real” or “true,” consider this. Love, religious faith, and emotions are all real and true, and we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether it is all just “fake” just because we can’t verify it through the scientific method. Do some people fake their love, religious faith, and emotions? Of course, as some people fake their psychic ability. What this means is not that everyone doesn’t have the capacity for love, religious faith, a particular emotion, or psychic ability, but that we are not connected to it and congruent with it at the time we claim to be so. Most people, however, don’t need to fake any of these things. These are realities that come from inside a person. It is absolutely true that logical explanations and consistent observations confirm our reality, but reality itself is not dependent on our ability to perceive it in a way that makes sense to us.

There is a reason why we use the scientific method when studying fossils or testing the effects of a medication on the human body, but the scientific model is just one model. Religious models,legal models, organizational models, and conflict resolution models are all models that simply don’t apply to science. Likewise, the scientific model, or scientific method as it is called, does not apply to all situations. It doesn’t apply to conflict resolution, marriage counseling, or the so called “paranormal.” That is why we have different models for different areas in the first place. We are physical beings, our lives are tied inextricably to our human bodies, and we live here in this physical world. That doesn’t mean that the observable physical world is the only possible realm of reality. Such an assumption makes the same mistake that we made centuries ago when we insisted that the sun went around the earth, because to assume that we were not at the center of the universe was an affront to God himself.

So is there a “psychic model” that applies to the area of psychic ability in the way that other models apply to other areas? If we can take a step back out of our frameworks and models, we can make room for something new to come in that is unlike anything we have previously experienced. Suspension of disbelief is key. Inability to suspend disbelief is the number one obstacle to developing psychic ability. We suspend disbelief constantly to watch TV or a movie. If you think about it, every time we see a movie we have to instantly adjust to, and accept, the laws of the world the movie exists in so that we may enjoy it without constantly being bothered by the idea that horses can’t talk, or that a car won’t really explode with the force of a firebomb if someone flicks a lit cigarette onto it. Suspension of disbelief stops the conscious mind from sending signals to the subconscious mind that it should ignore and disregard all incoming messages that do not have the approval of the conscious mind.

There are many ways in which people use their psychic ability, and it is beyond the scope of this post to provide even an abbreviated overview. Simply, psychic ability can be defined as the ability to send or receive information directly, without the intervention or assistance of sight, sound, touch, taste, or scent. Divination refers to the practice of seeking specific information by means of a particular psychic method, usually involving tools, of which Tarot cards are one example. Some people who do this may not use the words “divination” or “ psychic,” for example a person who prays to God asking for an answer, who listens to an inner voice or feeling to tell them the information they asked for. Nevertheless, regardless of what we call it, we are all taking about the same thing.

We finally arrive at our original question - do Tarot card readings actually work? Yes, they do, provided that we understand that Tarot cards don’t “do” anything. They are a very effective tool that a reader can use to translate information coming through on a psychic level into information that is expressed in words.

Tarot Plateau

2007-11-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

As with all creative endeavors, sometimes Tarot "sight" goes into hibernation. Around the time I became pregnant with my daughter a year ago, I had a dream.

I was somewhere far from home and I needed to leave. I had unfinished business there, I had not fulfilled my obligations yet, and a woman with short dark hair wanted to know how she could be assured that I would come back. I gave her my cards. I told her - "now you know I'll be back because I won't leave my cards without coming back for them."

I woke up and my cards were gone.

Now, I'd like to emphasize here that people do not *lose* their Tarot Cards like you would lose your keys! Never, ever in my life have I asked myself - "now where did I put that deck?" But they are gone, nowhere around. The bag they were in has turned up, but not the cards. I have thought about this many times in a waking state since it happened, but I have not been able to have that dream again and get the cards back.

I was using the RWS deck for a long time, quite happily. Eventually, when the cards didn't come back I accepted this as a sign that I needed to move on. I bought a Marseilles deck and looked forward to a new endeavor. The deck came with a King of Cups, but within the hour it had vanished somewhere between my porch and my neighbor's house. I scoured everything, retraced my steps, and finally concluded that my pregnancy was incompatible with reading Tarot.

Flash forward to a few weeks ago. My daughter is a month old, and I am loading her stroller into the car for the hundredth time in four weeks. My trunk has been emptied, filled, emptied again and filled again in the last several months, and my Marseilles cards were never in the car after the deck was opened, but I open the trunk to put the stroller back in after taking it inside the bank, and there is the King of Cups, sitting on TOP of the items in the trunk.

Don't you just love it? My cards have winked out of this dimension, and one, at least, has come back to me.

So it's time to start back up - clearly! Although I see that I've got to move beyond the RWS before I'll get my missing deck back.

Tonight is Nov. 2, All Souls Day if you are Christian, and the day after the traditional "Witch's New Year," or Samhain, if you are not.

New year, New start, and the Tarot Plateau has run its course.

I Love Life!

2006-07-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Tarot Cards - What's so special about them?

2006-07-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

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.

What Does it Mean to be Psychic?

2006-07-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

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?

Tarot, Fear, and the Public Sphere

2006-06-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

To those of us who read Tarot cards, Tarot is a positive, enlightening, non threatening window into forces that are not usually obvious to us. Of those who don't read, some see it as an opportunity to have the exiting personal experience of a reading; others view it as harmless superstitious nonsense. Still others, however, seem to regard Tarot as both "real" and "dangerous," perhaps even anti Christian or evil. A new movie features a Tarot card reader as the arch villian. Everyone remembers the Washington D.C. area sniper that left a Tarot card in the woods as a "clue" to play cat and mouse with the police who were hunting for him.

Any Tarot reader can tell you that, bizarre as it may sound, we all experience discrimination from time to time. We are told that we can't read cards for our organization's fundraiser, we can't have cards in the break lounge at work, or some such concern that somehow doesn't apply to knitting, reading, or anything others are doing in the same circumstances.

What is a reader to do? Some of our collegues say "suck it up and go somewhere where you are welcome." These tend to be fellow readers who have never had to deal with "real" discrimination in other areas of their lives, and perceive the answer to be as easy as slipping in and out of your identity as the need arises. Others of us, women and minorities who know what it is to be unable to change who you are, are more reluctant to do this because it reminds us of the awful choice of selling out who we are as people in order to fit in, out of necessity, at a job, school, or in a social environment.

Sure, Tarot is something we can show or hide as we see fit. What remains unanswered is, what is the right thing to do? Is it a show of respect to the greater community to stifle those parts of ourselves that others have prejudices against, or is this a disrespect and a disservice to those that are like us? Even more convoluted is the religious issue. Tarot isn't my "religion," but if another person is discriminating against me because they perceive it as such, it becomes religious discrimination on the grounds that I am perceived to be part of a protected category, and discriminated aginst for that reason. Now what is the right and proper response? What is best for the good of the entire community?

Either way , there is a price to be paid. I can "raise a stink," appear to be over sensitive and antagonistic, and contribute even more negatively to the image of Tarot readers. Or I can slink away, try to accomodate, apoplogize as if there is something wrong, and contribute to the establishment of the idea that Tarot, and Tarot readers, have no rightful place wherever it is that people have misconceptions about us.

I don't have "Tarot reader" stamped on my forehead, but if nothing else, there is value in having an appreciation for the impossible position that anyone facing true discrimination is faced with - a catch 22 that no one should be burdened with.

Happy Birthday to Bub (Dave)

2006-06-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

Today is my brother's birthday and I have not been able to reach him on the phone. I would like to wish him a happy birthday on his actual birthday, but I suppose I'll settle for a happy birthday post- and tarot reading, of course.

I haven't spoken to Bub in quite a while, so I'm not sure what's going on in his life, but suffice it to say that there is some ambivalence right now about what you will have to give up in order to make a change that involves leaving behind something that you have put some work into and really built up a good foundation with. Go with your instincts, since change is happening either way, but be aware that it might not end up being much fun, to put it gently. I understand the recent frustration of waiting for something you were sure was coming but never did. Be cautious though, that you don't in your haste make a decision that will put you in an even worse spot.

Are you taking yourself too seriously with regards to this issue? Perhaps you just know that you are "right," and if that isn't being recognized or appreciated it is time to move on. Your unique gifts may well be invisible to someone else right now. Try not to take it personally.

If you are worried about your car, now is definately the time to get it checked. Since this is a birthday reading, I will emphasize that this goes for the next 12 months especially - don't let anything wait on it, keep it in good shape and watch out for other people on the road.

There is also a message here about family/community life. It's going to be simplified- some things that don't matter as much will be taking up less of your time.

Let me emphasize that as a birthday reading, this reading is relevant for the entire year ahead.

I had to do this quickly because my son needs attention, but I wanted to do it ON June 3. I'll be revisiting and adding to this.

(cards = 8 of cups reversed, the Moon, 8 of wands, 3 of wands reversed, ten of swords, Death, the Hierophant, page of cups reversed, the Chariot, 10 of pentacles reversed. Numerology: x,x,3,x,5,x,7,8/8,x,10/10,x,x,13

Net Neutrality Reading

2006-06-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

Today I am posting my promised reading on Net Neutrality - the present situation regarding efforts by Congress to hand over control of internet information to a small handful of heavy hitter (and heavy polital contributor) telecom corporations.

Basically, what I see here is very painful, and runs deeper than it appears. First we have a picture of someone pretending that everything is just fine, but he sits in front of an enormous curtain that is hiding more than he is saying. This curtain is held in place by an image of prosperity, nine cups (nine of cups).

The card underneath this one, the truth behind the curtain, is that we are not under the thumb of this authority, we just think we are. We can change this situation, but we don't realize it (eight of swords)

In the past, we did not have an internet. The internet has given us unprecedented access to what we never could have accessed before (High Priestess reversed).

More recently, the internet has continued to pick up speed, literally (The Chariot). Very shortly, we will leap without looking into unknown territory (the Fool). I am inclined to interpret this as bad news because I am personally in favor of the status quo on this issue.

Internet users are happy and naive right now about how good they have it (6 of cups).

Congress and the telecom companies would really just like to skewer the heart of this beast of free, uncensored, information that they can not present or withold as they see fit. If they can impale the heart of this monster, they can defeat it (WOW!) (three of hearts).

Their hope is to nip this thing in the bud. It is also our fear. (ace of wands)

The future? I see choices taken away, (4 of cups reversed), and two miserable figures left out in the cold. I don't want to come to this conclusion, but the cards don't lie. Internet users will lose, democracy will lose, and the holy temple of Big Money will be erected on the site of our internet. (five of pentacles).

Interstingly, I had to try eight or nine times to even post this because I kept getting a message saying "the page was reset while it was loading." It took about 45 minutes. I thought that was an interesting sign. This type of message will not be welcome in the new era.

I have to say, though, that there are signs throghout this reading that we will be defeated only because we have been tricked into fooling ourselves. I think that means that the vast majority of internet users do not understand the internet enough to understand the implications. They also don't understand democracy enough to understand the political significance of something like this. The internet is the last bastion of our democracy that has been untouched by corruption. The playing field is 100% equal. How horrifying that this is now on the chopping block.

Death and the Devil?

2006-06-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's post got a little deep, so today I am going to share my thoughts on some "scary" cards - the ones that people get nervous about when they come up in a reading. The cards with the greatest fear factor are by far Death and The Devil, although there are others that make people uneasy on sight - but let's stay focused on these two.

Death - Death does not really mean "Death," although depending on the surrounding cards a physical death is one potential meaning. Death means "change," and when you think of change, someone dying isn't really the first thing that comes to mind, is it? The Death card is about the death of old habits, old patterns, old ways of doing things, perhaps the end of a friendship or relationship, but the Death card indicates that you will be moving on - and often, you will be moving on up! When you see this card, it is a good sign, so you can relax.

The Devil - Lordy, lordy, I have had people refuse to even touch the deck because the "Devil" was depicted in it. These tend to be the same people who refuse to make deviled eggs until someone suggests they can call them "glory eggs" and be done with it (Actually, I could seriously go for some "glory eggs" right now). Nevertheless, any religion that incorporates Tarot, which is going to be some form of Pagan religion - does NOT even recognize the Devil as real. In fact, when referring to the idea of the Devil they will speak of "The Christian Devil" because the Devil really only exists for Christians.

During the rise of Christianity, the Cathilic Church had to deal with the traditional Pagan religions of the people they were converting. Local fertility goddesses became different incarnations of the Virgin Mary, but the fertility god, or "horned god," represented almost universally as a Pan type half goat/half man, was problematic. There was no suitable way for him to be incorporated, so he was quite literally demonized. His image became attributed to Satan, so that any further worship of such a god would be entirely out of the question, not to mention punishable by death. Pagans are painfully aware of this history, and recognize the Christian Devil as a perversion of a Pagan god, and the image of a horned beast as the "Devil" to be completely an invention of the Catholic Church.

So what is the Christian Devil doing here? He is serving as a symbol of addiction, co-dependency, or anything else that our minds can be "enslaved" to. When he comes up in a reading about relationships, possible interpretations include that two people are tied together by obligations, or fear, or bills, but not love. It could mean an unhealthy dependence that they have on each other. It could just mean a very unhealthy relationship. No Christian Devil. No "evil." No "hell." None of that at all.

Encoded Messages

2006-05-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of May - and my first spread for this blog. There are no questions here, I'm just looking for messages. If my descriptions are too esoteric, scroll down for a summary.

I have two rows of three cards each- the top card represents a hidden aspect of the bottom card.

1st row: 5 of cups reversed/hidden aspect= seven of wands

2nd row: The Magician/hidden aspect= Queen of wands

3rd row: King of Pentacles/hidden aspect= nine of cups

My first observation, from a numerological perspective, is that this group of six cards includes exactly three numbered minor arcana cards. I've been up at night reading Papus (check him out here:)
Tarot of The Bohemians
and the 7, 5, and 9 immediately stand out as the yod, he, vau. The Magician, the Major Arcana #1, is so clearly the second he that it gives me goosebumps.

What does that mean? I haven't gotten that far! But regardless of what the rest of the book says, here is the name of God, the Queen of Fire (The He of Yod) and the King of Earth (The Yod of the second He)! It is a message of unity and wholeness, which in these troubled times we need.

On to the cards:
The five of cups reversed represents recovery and healing from loss, but the seven of wands represents the lasting scars of anger and bitterness. The Magician, making a great display of his power, does not act alone, but rather the Queen of wands represents the strenght and light of the female energy that guides his endeavors. Finally, the King of Pentacles seems as though he has everything anyone could ever want - but he's hiding something. Money can't buy happiness.

There are three lessons here, and a message imbedded in them that these lessons are three crucial pillars on the path to the source, the light, God, call it whatever you want.

1) Do not try to deal with your losses by pretending that they were not as bad as they really were. Do NOT try to force other people who are suffering to "snap out of it" or "move on" for their own good. Loss needs to be recognized fully for what it is, and experienced for what it is, or we are only moving ourselves, and perhaps others, backwards on the path.

2) No part of your success, no person, influence, or part of yourself that has created your power, can ever be denied or dimissed. Thoughts or statements such as "Well, my mother didn't help me that much, I could have done it on my own if she wasn't there," will decrease the power you have built up. You will be knocking the stones of the foundation out from under yourself.

3)Everyone "knows" what is important in life, that love means more than money, friends mean more than power and financial success. If we suddenly found ourselves filling out a multiple choice test on Judgement Day, everyone would get those questions "right." Is there something that we are waiting for? Live what you know to be true!

And one sentence is coming to me- "It's all for a reason." There's a purpose to all of it.

(5 minutes later)
....Um, ok, what was THAT all about? When I get into the "zone," I need a little distance to make sense of it all myself. That was a little more heavy handed than I expected, almost like a warning.

Save the Internet!

2006-05-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

I just started this blog today but already the "real world" needs our help. As an official "blogger" now, I must spread the word about a Congressional effort to destroy what has become known as "Net Neutrality." Basically, gigantic telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress to change the internet so that they can control the information we receive by determining which sites will load easily on our computers (the sites that can pay them obscene amounts of money, to be specific). Click here:

savetheinternet.com

to find out more, sign Moveon's petition (and if you don't think much of them, the Christian Coalition is co-sponsoring!)

civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet

and please call your Congressional representative! If you don't know who that is, you can find your representative's name here:

progressivepunch

I'll do a reading about this in another post...
(edited 6/2/2006) Which is here: Net Neutrality Reading

Hello and Welcome

2006-05-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

This blog is about my experiences with Tarot, and how it illuminates both life and love. I will be posting spreads, musings, correspondences, and new avenues of study, while trying to keep it light enough to share and hopefully spread the depth of my enthusiasm.

I have been a Rider Waite Smith fan for the most part (My first deck was the Aquarian), but recently I have been developing a deeper interest in numerology and have become more and more curious about the Marseille decks, which had never appealed to me before. I still have a long way to go before Crowley's Thoth gets a hold of me, but fortunately there is plenty to do in the meantime.

Another Tarot angle that I have been delving into more and more lately is past life regression. Along with scrying and other psychic meditation, I am standing over a vortex of sorts these days, so I feel compelled to reach out via this blog.