Let me see what the cards tell me...

I read this review of mine recently where the person wrote of the great lengths she went to, to keep anonymous, giving me a false name,  creating a new email,  all so that I wouldn’t be able to google her, and I wouldn’t know anything about her before we met.  She was thinking that I might research her to trick her…  

Sometimes other people email me and their automatic signature has links to their blogs or websites.  I never look at them.  If people write to tell me about their situations, I try not to read it.  I prefer to know nothing about people before they come and see me. The more I know, the less magic you feel.  It’s when I know nothing, and the cards reveal real and true information, that the reading is exciting.  When I do the cold reading,  I can tell the truth the cards tell me, without having to color my information, and if I know too much,  then it interferes with that.

Of course, once I have read for you a few times, a new way of reading the cards develops. I begin to see patterns of similar cards appearing,  or moving from future to past and new cards emerging.  But again,  when people come to see me again,  I always start by saying,  don’t tell me anything,  let me see what the cards tell me…   

Powerful images by Dina Sierra

Death and Butterflies

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
Richard Bach

When people draw the quite scary death card, I always assure them that the Tarot, which is fundamentally optimistic, sees Death not as an ending but as a transformative experience - the death of the caterpillar to become the butterfly.  But of course, when we are caterpillars it’s hard to imagine that such a transformation can take place, and anyways, once it does, we won’t be caterpillars any more..  

Or as George Carlin puts it - The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.  Of course the essential question is, how does one become a butterfly? “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar,” writes Trina Paulus. All deep change involves some loss… at the end we know it is worth it, but I know it’s hard to let go of the caterpillar sometimes.

What do Reversals mean in Tarot?

When the card in a reading comes out upside down, it’s called a reversed card.  So what do those reversals mean?  Firstly, you can fill a book with that answer, so this won’t be the complete answer;   but essentially, reversals take the meaning of the upright card and twist it a little…  I often call reversals the shadow side of the cards, taking their worst or suppressed qualities and emphasizing them.  

The sadder or more negative cards often hold their meaning no matter which they are spun – 5 ofcups, 8 swords,  – it means you are sadder,  or feeling really trapped, but doesn’t change the essential meaning.  However with the more positive cards, for e.g. the 9 of cups, it can move you from contentment to discontentment…  not feeling your cups overflowing but feeling them emptying…

Showing once again that reading the cards is as much art as science,  it also depends on context – how many of the cards are reversed,  what are the reversed cards next to,  how do they affect each other…   all these affect how the cards are read.

These beautiful images can all be found on artduh on etsy...