Please be aware of a rather nasty scam in London involving people who call themselves tarot readers. They will offer a very cheap reading (around £10), probably giving some accurate information, but then will say you’ve been cursed by someone. They’ll offer to lift the curse and say prayers for your wellbeing – if you pay for it. The price I was told about for this ‘service’ was £350!!

As a professional tarot reader, I wouldn’t usually deal with curse-lifting, though I would certainly be able to see from the cards whether there actually was some dark energy around. Lifting a (real) curse would be carried out by a reputable ritual magician, and would never cost that much – at most it would be around £50-£75 for a session.

The person I heard this from was sure it was a scam, but was naturally still a little concerned, so she came along for a reading to double-check. She was a lovely, outgoing woman who looked like she would have a very successful, creative life. She took a Deva card to see what the higher levels around her were, and was very happy when she got the Archangel Michael: the warrior angel, he would be all the protection she needed!

TAROT SCAM is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

TAROT SCAM is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

The Tarot Association of the British Isles is having their 10th Anniversary Conference in Birmingham, England, on the 23rd and 24th July. Cilla Conway will be doing the opening talk on how to read with tarot and oracle decks simultaneously, Emma Sunerton Burl will provide a workshop called ‘Intuition with the Thoth’, which will be a workshop exploring a meditation technique to access the information contained within a Thoth card. John Matthews will talk about the Wildwood Tarot, Mary Collins draws both strands of her highly successful career together to demonstrate how to make your Tarot business as successful as possible, and finally Emma Sunerton-Burl provides a second workshop to explore key counselling skills that will lift your Tarot skills to new levels. Places are still available, if you’d like to attend. Check out the Conference link...

Tarot Conference is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Conference is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Like everyone else, I’ve been watching the news recently with interest. At the moment attention is split primarily between Japan and Libya, so I decided to draw some cards about the situation.

First, Libya: Asking about the outcome for the Libyans – Eight of Discs.

That looks fairly good to me – the card of the apprentice, of carrying out the work you love. So here we have the Libyan people realising what their role is to be – maybe in the outside world. They’ll have to learn how to function in such a new set-up, so I wonder if this is militarily or diplomatically – but the card itself looks positive. I have to say at the moment only the NATO intervention is keeping them afloat.

Outcome for Colonel Gadaffi – the Knight of Cups reversed.

A surprising card, but one that makes a good deal of sense. Up to now Gadaffi seems to be doing relatively well in the different battles raging up and down the coast, and has been reported as blustery, self-justified, and full of denial. The reversed Knight of Cups is self-indulgent to a fault, looks for support and whines when he doesn’t get his own way. He may look impressive and strong when you first meet him but he’s really a broken reed. Today’s news (10th April) reveals him sending a letter to Hilary Clinton calling the President ‘our son’, and ‘his excellency’, and asking what Obama would do if he found Al Qaida controlling American cities – ‘tell me, so I can follow your example’. Whatever else, he should know that sarcasm is the lowest form of diplomacy.

Japan:

The outcome here is a bit problematic. This is the card of creativity, with someone looking at this wonderful object they’ve made. Out of this beautiful object comes the double-helix of life. But this reversal blocks the energy. Japan itself must be the beautiful creative object, but its energy is being blocked at the moment through fear or concern. Some of the stories coming out of Japan over the last few weeks – of how people have helped each other, and the heroes fighting to keep the nuclear reactors from melt-down – show that humanity is at its best when faced with survival issues. On the surface I wouldn’t have called it a particularly creative situation, but in the longer-term maybe it will change things for Japan which has been in a fairly confused state for a while, both politically and economically.

The Two of Discs reversed – some choices to be made that presumably aren’t being made because of unspecified difficulties. (Again, a slightly surprising card. With the scale of the tragedy I’d have thought some Major Arcana cards would have been more appropriate.) Still, the tarot seems to be concerned with practical stuff here so maybe this is more about the relief effort, clearing up, still looking for the living and the dead, attempting to get food and water in. The situation with the reactors and leaking radioactivity has stabilised – even with the latest earthquake danger, but there is still a real need for practical help, and apparently the rest of the world has been less forthcoming with assistance than with previous disasters.

The Ring of Fire:

Here’s where we get the big guns coming in.

A month or so ago a Youtube clip showed a scientist predicting another quake, this time on the west coast of California. (Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQXDt4VdS0E) The point was that earthquakes often seem to be galvanised by the moon, and given the ‘Supermoon’ and our satellite’s proximity to Earth, the Ring of Fire could well be gearing itself up for some more action. With a sequence of New Zealand and Japan the scientist saw the instability moving around clockwise, and of course that’s the San Andreas Fault. So far, that prediction has been incorrect; there was a small earthquake near Thailand and we’ve had another tremor near Japan, so I’m not sure about the accuracy of these two cards…

The Tower is the lightning strike of God, destroying outworn forms – the towers falling, and the interpretation is a traumatic event that seems to offer no resolution or light – and failure of vision that leads to undoing. I can’t help feeling our present lack of vision and over-concern with the material are leading to disaster. There’s not much we can do to prevent earthquakes and tsunami, but our blindness and greed don’t help. The Nine of Swords shows depression, the mind overset with problems, loss and despair.

In both cases, though, I would tend to read the reversals as lightening the darkness. Sometimes The Tower reversed is about dismantling a situation rather than having it destroyed. Perhaps forewarned is forearmed: buildings in San Francisco, for instance, are built to withstand earthquakes, and the effect on Tokyo was also quite limited. What else can be done? With the Nine of Swords, the reversal is about acceptance in the face of pain, a gradual return to the world. If these disasters cause us to revise – revision – our priorities, and force us to realise that we are custodians of our beautiful planet rather than exploiters, that will be a major turning point.

Predictions… is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Predictions… is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot reading still has a slightly disreputable reputation. Readers are often seen as charlatans, without adequate training or quality control. As for the idea that bits of coloured card can give people an accurate glimpse into their lives and future is illogical, even a little crazy.

That’s the left-brained, rational, scientific view. Or – is it?

Einstein, one of the greatest scientists ever, was wonderfully open-minded. He understood the role intuition could play, and was awake to the marvelous. In his wake, quantum physicists are proving that the impossible is, in fact, probable, and questioning everything we think of as ‘reality’. They’re even beginning to explain consciousness and the mind through quantum physics, as well as other strange phenomena such as ghosts, telepathy, mediumship, psychic power etc.

This strange, illogical science can probably explain how the tarot works – watch this space for more articles on tarot and quantum physics.

But the intermediaries, the mediums, the psychics, and the tarot readers – their ability, or lack thereof, are what gave tarot its difficult reputation. Having said that, all the readers I know have high ethical standards and wouldn’t dream of cheating, lying, or carrying on a reading when it’s obvious they’re not getting anything right.

But, unfortunately, there are readers who do lie, cheat, say they can lift curses, etc. I heard one at a psychic fayre piling on the flattery so thickly I was amazed that the client didn’t burst out laughing. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she repeated the same thing to the next one. And there were people lining up to see her! Perhaps bad tarot readers just attract bad clients, the sort that want to be buttered up and told that everything is going to be fine…

Talking of bad clients – one gay man pulled out a wad of money from his pocket and began peeling off ten pound notes, placing them on the table. He indicated that this was a bonus for me. I smiled sweetly and continued reading the cards, which were basically saying that he’d treated all his boyfriends really badly and needed to make reparation. When I got round to that, he said, ‘You’re going to be really angry with me now.’ ‘Why?’ I asked, curiously. ‘Because you’re not going to follow any of my advice?’

‘No,’ he replied, picking up all the money he’d placed on the table. ‘Because I’m going to take back my money.’ And at that he got up and left. I was in hysterics, figuring that the tenners must have been a bribe to tell him what he wanted to hear!

If the cards appear just too good to be true, they probably are. Perhaps the reader is flanneling and trying to tell you what you want to hear (without a bribe), or lying about their meanings for some reason – perhaps because they aren’t very good readers! There is one other alternative which I’ve experienced only a couple of times in the forty years I’ve been reading: that you yourself are psychically powerful and are somehow influencing the cards to say what you want to hear.

Back to bad tarot readers. If the cards (or interpretations) are completely wrong, a bad tarot reader will carry on regardless, ignoring the fact that the energy between you is mismatched or missing. A good reader will say ‘this doesn’t seem to be working, is it’ and give you the option to continue, or return your money.

A quick point about being asked questions. Clients often think that the reader is trying to pump you for information if s/he asks questions. But the cards only offer a general landscape, not a specific landmark, so the questions are to see whether different aspects of the card meaning would be more appropriate to your circumstances. However, there are exceptions: I was shocked recently to hear about a reader in the west of London who spent the whole reading attempting to get the client to interpret the cards, instead of doing it herself. Apparently she charged a fair amount for her readings, too. I find this rather strange – if she couldn’t make head or tail of the reading, perhaps she should have offered a refund.

Finally, the reading is about you, no-one else. A reader who starts talking about her- or himself is bad news. You may get a reader illustrating a point from something they’ve experienced themselves, fair enough; but it should be kept to a minimum.

So what makes a good tarot reader? Someone who uses their psychic gifts to intuit through the cards what is going on for you, and what possible futures you have in store; someone who listens to anything you have to say; can put their ego to one side and concentrate totally on you for an hour or so; someone with good life experience and perception. Tarot readers are counsellors, not predictors, who use their cards as a window through which to gaze on your possible future/s. Your job is to walk out into those future landscapes, using the tarot reading to ensure you notice the opportunities to blossom and grow.

What Makes a Bad Tarot Reader? is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

What Makes a Bad Tarot Reader? is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

This very early fresco by Agostino da Vaprio (born around 1457, possibly in Pavia) shows five obviously well-born (and slightly overdressed) members of the nobility playing Tarocchi, an early card game. The shape and size of these cards show them to be tarot cards (though whether they included what we called the Majors or not is an open question). The first written rules of Tarocchi appear in a manuscript written by Martiano da Tortona well before 1425 (we know cards had appeared by 1377, as a sermon was preached against them in Bern that year).
The original painting is quite large, as shown below:

According to Tarot Passages, this fresco is at the Palazzo Borromeo in Milan. It was shown in the catalogue accompanying an exhibit of early Tarot art in 1999 at the Pinacoteca di Brera museum in Milan. There is also a reproduction in the Encyclopaedia of Tarot II (Stuart Kaplan), with a few changes – for instance, there are cards on the table in the version shown in the Encyclopaedia.
I have recently produced an egg-tempera version using animal hide as a base. I’ve used the more familiar aspect of the painting, focusing on the players and omitting the background. This is not complete, I hasten to add – I’ll repost once it’s finished.

The Tarocchi Players is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

The Tarocchi Players is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

There seems to be a feeling that you must either use a tarot deck or an oracle deck in your readings. But why is it either/or? Why not both?

Since I completed the Devas of Creation – an oracle deck of higher-level energies (Devas are the Shining Ones of Sanskrit tradition, like angelics but more primordial) – I use the tarot for the basic spread as usual, and every now and again I draw a Deva card to look at the higher-level energies around the person, or what will be coming in to help or challenge. It helps that I’m using two decks I painted myself – The Intuitive Tarot and Devas of Creation, because I know them so well, but at the College of Psychic Studies tarot seminar in July, Emily Carding used her Transparent Tarot and Transparent Oracle in a similar way; I’ve also used the Mirror Cards and the Intuitive Tarot together.

The information / clarification that comes from this multi-dimensional approach is usually very helpful – sometimes astonishingly so. For instance, a client drew the 3 Swords which I see as confusion or being split.

She was disinclined to admit she was running away from the problem – until she drew the Deva card I call Storm Crow, which is about splitting / denial.

Another example: the tarot Moon appeared for the client’s son. I sometimes see the Moon as crossing over from sanity to insanity and it certainly is about the deep unconscious intruding into everyday life. I said that it looked like her son was wandering into the Otherworld of the unconscious.

But when I asked for the Devas to clarify what was going on for him, the Moon of the Devas also appeared.

This double whammy indicated to me that he had made a choice to stay in that realm. (Most people see this realm as insanity. I personally think if we had a more enlightened approach to the conscious and unconscious mind, we would be able to help many return from ‘insanity’. The so-called primitive shamans can move at will between these realms; but we have no idea how this works. We say it’s all mumbo-jumbo, and leave the lost souls to wander around between the worlds, never mind that the world needs their insights.)

Still, this is way off the subject, so let’s return to using an oracle deck in tandem with the tarot.

In readings for people who are psychic or very self-aware, I often switch the emphasis to use the Devas as the main deck, with the tarot as clarification. Here the tarot gives the more mundane focus of every-day issues as counterpoint to the spiritual level of the Devas. Obviously, other Oracle decks might have a different focus – the Mirror Cards I mentioned above would concentrate more on relationship issues. And of course it’s possible to do full readings just with an Oracle deck, though you need to know the meanings well in order to do it.

Try it out. Any oracle will work with your tarot deck, it’s really what works for you and what you feel comfortable with. If you have any questions, post them and I’ll do my best to answer.

Oracles vs Tarot is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Oracles vs Tarot is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

I gave a talk at the College of Psychic Studies recently on the art of tarot, which barely scratched the surface of what is a fascinating subject. Who was the first tarot artist? Who came up with the concept of the Major Arcana or triomfi (triumphs) first?

Where did the artist get his inspiration, the one who first produced the Triumphs (the Majors)? The medieval mind had no problems thinking symbolically. Mystery plays were performed regularly, immense tableaux with music and floats. The plays could last for days and usually featured biblical scenes or morality plays. They were staged by various guilds and the morality plays, particularly, would have featured allegorical, moral characters; like the Emperor, the Chariot, Justice, Death and so on. Perhaps one of the artists involved with these mystery plays have produced a series of symbolic images to trump the suits, in the new card game of tarocchi being played. Perhaps it took shape in a conversation in a tavern one evening. Or, perhaps, one of the city-state princes had been brought a pack from the Moorish lands and commissioned his court artist to add to it. However it happened, the triomfi appeared, beautiful, exotic, and powerful, and took the population by storm.

In the records of Charles VI’s treasurer in 1392, we find this intriguing reference: ‘paid to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards, gilded, coloured, and ornamented with various designs, for the amusement of our lord the king, 56 sols of Paris’. Were these a beautiful set of what we now think of as the Minor Arcana, painted for Charles VI, or did they include the Majors? Unfortunately – as usual with the tarot, we’ll never know unless someone invents a time machine, as none of the cards survive. If these were the triomfi, was Gringonneur the inventor of the Major Arcana?

Scholars now consider that playing cards were brought into Europe, probably through Venice, from the Mamluk empire. There was a long tradition of card-making in Egypt (cards have been found dating to the late 12th century), but this does not mean that the images of the tarot Majors originated in the Egyptian Book of the Death (one of the myths of tarot created by Court de Gébelin, a French Mason and occultist, in the late 18th century). However, in medieval times there were direct trade links with Muslim countries, and an inventory of the Duke of Orleans’ possessions (1408) details a ‘Saracen card deck’. Juzzo da Coveluzzo specifically refers to the cards as a ‘Saracen invention’.

The images of the Major Arcana, which are thought to have appeared separately and a little later than the Minors, clearly derive from the European medieval mind-set, although with a few interesting touches. The Papess, for example, was based on the story of a female pope (Pope Joan). The Hanged Man is now seen as a pagan reference to Odin gaining wisdom by hanging himself on the world tree, or gods such as Attis, sacrificed each year to ensure fertility. However, in medieval times thieves or traitors were sometimes hung upside down, and one or two decks show money falling from his pockets. Here we see the Hanged Man grasping two money-bags which are presumably his ill-gotten gains. An alternative suggestion is that this represents Judas.

The Wheel of Fortune was a favourite medieval reference. You could be a king one day and a pauper the next: medieval people tended to have a healthy respect for fate, given that they were often at the receiving end of power-hungry princes. Internecine wars were frequent, and the princes might ride high for a while and then lose their war with a consequent loss of prosperity for the population.

Unfortunately these tiny images cannot display the artistry of the earliest extant cards, which were produced mainly for the Visconti family. There are 239 cards in total produced for the Viscontis, which may comprise eleven distinct groups of cards. The Cary-Yale Visconti tarot, from which I’ve drawn these images, is a particularly fine set which unusually has four extra female knights.

The first decks could have been roughly drawn on card, copied from the ‘Saracen’ examples. Later when the aristocracy discovered them, they would have been commissioned from artists like Bembo or Gringonneur. These first tarot artists were probably illuminators, rather than mural artists; used to working with miniatures and gilding. Most of them were probably Italian, and must have been craftsmen (or women) rather than monks. The early decks were used for gaming (which is presumably why the church objected, which it did, strenuously and regularly – and, ironically, these objections are the only evidence we have regarding the first appearance of the tarot).

(to be continued)

The Art of Tarot is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

The Art of Tarot is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Following their successful Foundations of Tarot last year, Hilde Liesens and Cilla Conway are running A Journey through the Major Arcana on the 21st August 2010. They will look at the origins, myths, history and lore of the tarot, while guided visualisations allow you to vividly experience the myths and archetypes of the Major Arcana as an initiatory journey through life. Practical demonstrations, exercises, and experiential practice will demonstrate how you can start to read the Tarot for wise guidance and insight into life’s challenges. People are always astonished at how accurate their tarot reading can be, using these methods.

The second workshop, on the Minor Arcana, will be held in September, allowing you to practice and get to know the cards. Then, using elemental correspondences, numerology, and the traditional meanings, Hilde and Cilla will offer practical methods to familiarise yourself with readings, spreads, reversals etc. Exercises and story-telling, drama and role play will enable you to read well without having to learn the meanings by rote.

Venue: Atlantis Bookshop, 49a Museum St., London WC1 (nearest tube Holborn or Totterham Court Road)

Date: 21st August 2010

Time: 10.30 for 11 a.m. – 5.30 a.m. with breaks for lunch and tea (biscuits, coffee and tea provided)

Cost: £50 for each workshop, £90 for both if paid in advance

To book: Atlantis Bookshop – 020 7405 2120

Tarot workshop is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot workshop is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

My experience has been that the tarot does not deal in polarities. It makes no value judgments about right or wrong. Although it suggests ways through the various dilemmas of life, it has no agenda. You can move on or stay where you are; you can be enlightened or at the beginning of your journey; either way, the tarot will help.

People, however, are less equitable. A client I had a while back was struggling with judgements based on polarities. In the reading the tarot made it obvious that it was the right time to manifest her dreams, and she said she had already begun a new healing practice. However, she added, her old work kept growing leaving no space for the new. That is usually a sign that for some reason you aren’t ready to move on. As the reading progressed, I realised that the main issue was an inner struggle between light and dark. The client considered herself very much a light worker and, while she did not deny the presence of the shadow, she saw it in traditional terms – dark = evil, temptation, vs. light = good, purity.

The problem came sharply into focus when she drew the Deva card Kali Dance. This is a card of power – and shadow – indicating a huge amount of energy that is not being expressed creatively, in which case it can often turn back on you. Illness, obstacles, psychological issues can ensue. She then told me about her various encounters with the Shadow, and I could empathise completely – if you feel something is evil and a threat, your unconscious will comply, giving you images that are terrifying and dangerous. It is difficult – if not impossible – to change that perception.

My work with the tarot and The Devas of Creation has confirmed time and again that having such fixed views on the different polarities can be very damaging. The shadow (the dark) may well be demonic but, unless our actions make it so, it is not evil. Anger, fear, envy, jealousy, rage – these are all natural feelings that need to be honoured, their origins questioned rather than suppressed. In fact, if you journey into those feelings and dialogue with the shadow, you’ll often discover that the challenge they contain is to expand your perceptions. By ignoring the challenge, you become rigid, fearful, and limited. By acknowledging it and taking it on, however, the Shadow becomes your Ally, which enables you to integrate it. Thus you become more conscious and more unified – surely the goal of anyone interested in spiritual development.

It seemed to me that my client was holding back on making a commitment to her new work – her soul’s calling – because she had stayed with just one poliarity, the light worker consciousness. The unification was missing. It would take a leap of faith – and a lot of work – to get there.

Courageously, she asked what would happen if she did somehow manage to take on both aspects of herself.

The tarot card she drew for this question was the 7 of Cups – the card of vision and dreams, the culmination of the Grail Quest – which again emphasizes the amalgamation of light and dark. The Deva energy was Emergence. There seems little doubt that if she can let go of this very polarised way of thinking, the blocks preventing her new work will lift and she’ll be able to channel a far greater degree of energy.

.

Does the Tarot deal in Polarities? is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Does the Tarot deal in Polarities? is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

The way intuition works is weird. It is definitely like something other that kicks in. Normally with tarot you work with a low-level intuition – i.e., the base meanings are mostly the same but in each reading they may change slightly; you get a slightly different sense of what the card may mean to this person; or you find yourself saying – or seeing – something that you haven’t said or seen before. So for example, with the Lovers: with one reading the card will be about change, about growth, and about becoming mature. For another reading, it might be about a relationship that has become too stifling and the client needs to move away into the big world.

But as I say, that’s all low-level intuition. Sometimes, though, something else kicks in. The client is often someone who has done a lot of work on themselves so is very aware; or they are pretty psychic themselves. And then, it’s like a path opens up onto a different plane altogether, and information floods through. It’s not INFORMATION like writing on the wall (although it might be for some people); with me, it’s quite subtle and sometimes sounds a bit crazy – but if I trust it, it usually opens up all sorts of avenues for the client.

The trouble with it is that it is so ‘other’. It doesn’t feel like thinking usually does. Trying to explain it is almost impossible, but when I was trying I wrote ‘it comes through’ or ‘something opens up’. Is this opening up to the right brain, or to some other dimension? Who knows? I think this question is one I must put to other tarot readers and psychics to discover how they see it. Meanwhile, if you have any thoughts on this, please send them in!

Strange thing, intuition is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Strange thing, intuition is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today