How do the cards know?

Recently a client came to see me, whom I had not seen for several years.  Three years is a long time,  the old cards would no longer be relevant,  but I looked them up anyway (I used to make notes,  I now make a postcard of every reading,  photograph it and give it to you,  so you have a copy of all the cards you drew and so do I.) 

The old cards were all about work, she was at a career junction then.  This time, there were no work cards at all,  and she was ‘a little freaked’ in her own words,  to see the 3 of swords at her core,  and a scattering of swords throughout her reading.  How did the cards know?  she asked me.  Last time they were so sunny and optimistic about work (and accurate, she landed a great job) and now it’s all about heartache and pain, how did they know that? 

I said that’s what the cards do: they reflect your energy, where you are at right now.  People sometimes say to me,  well the cards will say that about anyone, and I say no,  if your love life is great, you draw great love cards,  if your work is awful your cards show that too.  The cards really do shift according to what is going on in your life at this point in time. 

For those worried about her future – she drew the Ace of Cups, the current relationship was no good,  but love is not far away for her!

Reflections

I’ve had a bit of trouble writing up the 6 of cups and I realized I felt locked in.  I want to stress that while all the cards have stand alone meanings, it’s when find their place in the layout that their true significance comes out. I’ve read the 6 of cups in so many different ways, depending on where it was placed and which cards were sitting next to it, and that is true of all the cards.  I love sending these links to people after a reading,  but sometimes what I've said to them,  and what the blog says,  are subtly different.

So that’s what I want to write about today – that while I explore meanings here, it’s really how the cards blend, how they reflect upon each other that affects the reading. I’ve had cards come up in what I think of as ‘common distributions’ - situations that I've seen before. And then I’ve had cards come up in pairings I’ve never seen before, which makes me look really deeply at what the cards are trying to tell me. So, like the beams of light falling on each other, causing different colors to appear, the cards reflect against each other, giving different shades of meaning.