Lately I have been undertaking a series of workshops with the wonderfully talented Andrea Kaldy that explores some of the psychic tools that exist and how they can be utilized. So far we have worked though Pendulums, Remote Viewing and – last week – Tarot Cards.
I have always had a great amount of respect for Tarot – or Gypsy – cards as a tool. Even going so far as to get my own deck and begin structured reading when I was in high school.
I never really got that far though. The cards I used to draw never really made sense with the little book that came in the box. I simply put them away, thinking that I still had much to learn… and they stayed in my sock draw for almost 5 years.
I don’t know where most of the deck is now. During the past 6 moves I have gone through the deck has been split and lost to the nether.
It was a Vampire tarot (I seem to gravitate towards the darker decks), and I still remember my favourite cards: The Magician and The Fool.
The Magician was a Vampire with a Native American twist. Clad in a black robe, bare-chested, and with feathers in his long red hair he had the most intense look on his face, looking at the reader with a spiderweb of suits behind him and the symbol for infinity over his head.
I also felt a strong connection with The Fool card in my Vampire deck. Nothing like my infatuation was the Magician. More a morbid fascination.
He was dressed in a motley of brown crudely-stitched leather, also naked from the waist up. The Fool was perhaps the most violent-looking card in the deck; his hands and fingers were covered in blood (he didn’t bite his enemies, he tore them apart) and he was grinning impishly at the reader as he licked his fingers with a pointed tongue.
Needless to say, my newest deck that I invested in was also a dark deck – the Alchemy 1977 England Tarot – and I have already made a connection with it.
The Hierophant seems to be ‘my’ card from this deck. When I first took it out of the box he fell out into my lap. I also drew it as first card in my first spread to ‘warm myself up’ to the deck, and also popped up when I was practicing a reading for my fiancé.
It’s a beautiful card. The Hierophant is surrounded by so much learning, so many books and work, stuck at his desk with a quill with his chin in one hand gazing dreamily at a black rose. He has a pentacle over his head on the back of his chair – a symbol of knowledge and wholeness – but still would prefer to gaze at the rose, temporal and fragile.
Ironic that the card I feel most drawn to from this deck is a writer and a scholar. He has his job, with its rules and demands, but is yearning for something more aesthetic, more fulfilling… and it’s taking his time away from his work.
Hmmm… sounds familiar…
What differs so much this time around whilst learning about the tarot is that we are being taught to read intuitively, rather than structured. We throw out the little book in the box and focus on what the cards are saying to us.
This makes sense to me. After all, the cards are only supposed to be a tool that conveys the messages of the universe to us in a way in which we can understand… so how could they possibly be constrained under set definitions and ‘rules’ when each person will see what they “want” to see?
I imagine anyone looking at my decks would be a little disturbed, though there may be others that see what I see, and others that see something completely different.
This is what I love about learning to use psychic tools. It is dependant on you… the inner you. We are taught to rely on that little voice inside us called ‘intuition’ that we usually beat into submission with a blunt stick called ‘logic’.
To quote Andrea when she was instructing me on the Phasmophobia set – “Just go with it!”
Time and time again, over the last 6 months, I have sat down and listened to this little voice in my head… and it’s been shockingly accurate. Not just “Oh my goodness, how funny!” accurate, but “I need to sit down and process this for a moment” accurate.
Perhaps the best example I could think of was the cards that I drew this afternoon. I recently discovered that I was successful in applying for a job that is – perhaps – the best job in my life so far. Financial stability, small chance of retrenching, less stress, closer to home and – best of all – I would be working with two of my closest friends.
The downside of this is that I would be leaving a pretty tight-knit – and, um, unique? – group of people in the business that I currently work for. Not only that, but we are already short-staffed… and I would be making it worse. I know that my leaving would be mostly viewed with negativity.
In writing my resignation letter, signing my paperwork for my new job at the same time, I was suddenly at odds of how to go about the situation. Should I wait for tomorrow, when I am actually at work? Should I hand it in to my superior? Or to my manager? Most of all… what should I avoid? What should I NOT do? The last thing I wanted to do was to make things worse!
In a sudden fit of insight, I dug out my new deck of tarot cards for guidance. As I was shuffling them I asked “How should I conduct myself today? What will happen?”.
No sooner had I closed my mouth than a card fell out of the deck – mostly due to my crappy shuffling.
The Hermit.
I took one look at my card and scolded my deck. Honestly I did!
“Now that’s just being cheeky!” I said, “But thankyou.”
The Hermit in my deck is a cheeky little imp holding a quill that dresses in red and sits on an inkwell embossed with a scull and crossbones. Dressing in the colour for passion, anger and – sometimes – embarrassment, whilst sitting on a poisonous inkwell seemed appropriate. I had just finished typing a letter that I did – at times – almost let my emotions slip into. I knew that this letter may cause trouble… and the cheeky smirk on his face seemed to mirror the little devil on my shoulder that had been whispering words into my ear as I typed.
When I formally drew a card (that was, I actually pulled a card from the deck) it was The Fool.
This very smug fellow has his back turned to all of the other people in the room. Important (the King and the Lady) and not-so-important people are all watching him out of the corner of their eyes. To them, he is below them. To him? They are not important… but they see everything that he does and would be more than willing to laugh at him should he give them a reason.
I took this as a “What not to do” card. I had important things to say and I didn’t want to blow my chances of being taken seriously. I had to be very mindful of what I said and what I did even though I would feel like making a mess of things and dancing away laughing as the place burned down around my ears.
It was at this time that I looked down in my tarot box – don’t ask me why. I was intending to draw another card from the deck when I suddenly looked at the box, and there was a card still sitting in the box, hiding from me.
It was The Sun.
This powerful lady has just finished what she started (probably a night filled with the feasting of blood) and is looking at the eclipse. Eclipses are usually associated with change in our lives, reminding us that no matter what happens; the sun will always rise and the day will begin anew. Whatever negativity or events are behind me will be forgotten in the light of the sun and we will emerge, changed, but ready to face the new day. It was a positive card that gave me an amount of comfort.
At the end of the day, using my tarot cards simply externalized what my internal voices had been chattering about for the last week: write my letter, ruffle some feathers, but don’t let it ruin my reputation. Act cautiously in how I conduct myself within the next two weeks and I will emerge unscathed to face a new chapter in my life.
In reality, I probably didn’t need my cards to know this. It was basically a reiteration of common sense… but then I guess that is the intention of most tarot readings. We already know the answer, but seeing it staring us in the face in our cards will bring it to the surface and help us listen to that little voice in our heads that is whispering good advice.
Until next time, I will retreat to my conclave of books and writings, whilst staring at exquisite temporal beauty in the form of black roses 🙂
TGW
The Ghost Writer 