Intuition

What is intuition? 

A knowing without knowing how you know.  A sense about something without being able to qualify it.  

When I was a university we learnt about something called the Cocktail party Effect.  Basically if you are in a noisy environment,  and can't make out individual conversations,  you can still turn when someone says your name.  You are cued to hear your name and can make it out even though you would have said you couldn't hear what people were saying. Also, once you hear your name, you can zero in on that conversation and then hear what they are saying.

Essentially,  it's about filtration.  There is too much stimuli in this world,  especially in New York City,  and you can't pay attention to all of it,  so you filter.  But all it means is that you are listening to everything and then sweeping it away as not important, not worth giving energy to. But you are listening,  to see if it is important.  This actually works with all your senses. For example, this works with visual cues as well,  you are driving and can't look at everything, but you are still seeing things to assess if they are important or not,  and then letting go of what isn't important right now.  

And Intuition is when all the stimuli you swept away still gives you information. And when something else comes up,  all of a sudden that information that had been heard but not given attention, can be drawn up again.  

So the information/stimuli that was observed but not acted on,  is still there.  And you call it intuition when you get that stimuli says,  wait, this was important,  listen now.  And you don't know what it was, but if you listen to yourself,  you can start to tease it out.  And really, more often than not,  you are right.  It was worth listening to and you did need to pay attention. 

A tarot session gives you a moment of stillness,  to see the information and to make intuitive leaps. 

What if the cards give me bad news...

A question I get frequently is what if they cards give me bad news? What if they tell me something I don't want to hear. 

And I say the cards say what they say.  And at times I have felt like Cassandra from Ancient Greek myth,  who was cursed to always tell the truth and not be believed.  

But usually,  when I do a reading,  the other person is nodding their heads,  yes,  I knew this,  I didn't want this outcome,  but I can see it.  And so can a stranger with 78 pieces of cardboard.  It's not that I tell you unbelievable things,  it's that I tell you what you know,  without knowing you at all. 

People come to me in times of flux - it's why they want the reading in the first place.  And during the reading they get their intuition confirmed. I didn't want X to happen,  but I can see what the cards are saying.  Even if the news is not what you want,  talking about it, figuring out what's going on,  can give you understanding, give you back some power and help shift the situation. 

Everyone has psychic moments

All day today,  I was humming a song that I couldn't quite get out...

If you could read my mind,  love, what a tale my thoughts could tell...

And my husband said,  oh you heard.

Heard what?

It's just been announced that Gordon Lightfoot died. 

I didn't know at all... but I've been singing him all morning.

I think lots of people have those 'witchy' moments,  where you know something you shouldn't,  see something that wasn't there,  intuit something on no information at all.  Everyone has psychic moments.  

I didn't think I had such a particular relationship with Gordon Lightfoot,  and yet here I was,  unusually humming him all morning, only to hear of his passing... 

An interview with a tarot reader...

One of my clients interviewed me for an article she was writing about tarot and therapy.  And here it is! 

I was very pleased to be included in such clever company... 

And in case you only want to read the bit about me (but the other stuff is super interesting too!) or can't open the link,  here is her part about our discussions:-

Liat Silberman, MA, was first introduced to the tarot as a teenager. She was visiting her grandmother, a rummy player. “I shuffled like a card shark,” Silberman recalls. One of her grandmother’s friends told her, “‘You have an affinity for the cards; you should learn tarot.’ And what teenage girl doesn’t want magic powers?” Silberman laughs.

So Silberman bought a copy of Rachel Pollack’s 1980 classic 78 Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness (Weiser Books), and a deck of tarot cards. She studied independently for years, learning that “the interplay between the cards is as important as the cards themselves. You look at what’s present and what’s absent, and how the cards talk to each other.”

Meanwhile, Silberman became a psychotherapist. She worked in both England and her native Australia before moving to the U.S. with her family in 2002; they returned to Sydney in 2016. She has read tarot cards professionally on a full-time basis since 2003. (Full disclosure: Silberman is my tarot card reader.)

Unlike Goldberg and Dr. Rosengarten, Silberman never incorporated tarot cards into her psychotherapy practice, possibly because her readings are often predictive. That said, “I have done therapy sessions where I’ve thought, ‘I really wish I could pull out the cards!’” she admits. “I’ve always said, and I really feel, that a good tarot session can cut through six months of therapy.”

Silberman doesn’t think her abilities are particularly unusual. She likens her aptitude to musical talent, noting that while some people are gifted musicians and others have tin ears, “most people can carry a tune.” Similarly, “I think most people have some kind of psychic ability. I think I’m intuitive, and I use the cards to amplify that.” More importantly, she believes these abilities can be developed: “You can practice your intuition.”

“I think people are searching for stuff in their lives, generally speaking,” Silberman notes. “Some people find it in church or by being busy, and some people find it in a quiet hour… I 100 percent believe ‘one river, many wells.’ I don’t believe that one well is better, I think one well is more accessible to one person than another. That’s how I feel about psychic things—whatever enriches and nourishes you is a good thing.”

Disasters and Intuition

I’m so saddened by the appalling shootings in Colorado last week. My thoughts and prayers go out to all those harmed...   

There was one detail I couldn’t get out of my mind.  Jessica Ghawi who kept a blog under the name Jessica Redfield, was one of the people who were senselessly murdered at that movie theatre.  But she had been in a similar situation this very year.  In June 2012 she had been a tourist in Canada, at the Eaton Centre and had left the food court at 6.20, driven out by a strong feeling of doom and discomfort.  The shootings there started at 6.23.

I remember years ago reading about the terrible fire at Kings Cross station in London and one survivor saying that people who turned right lived, and those who turned left died and how random that was and he didn’t know why he had known to turn the correct way, but he had.

Andy Cherwick,  the Courage Tree

All I can take from these terrible stories is that if your intuition tells you something – listen to it!  Your brain takes in 10,000 pieces of information and filters it to let you know the 100 or so that are important.  But the other 9,900 pieces are lurking somewhere and while we don’t have conscious awareness of them, our unconscious can still be dealing with that material.  So our intuition is often the real data that we have filtered out, still giving us information.  It’s rarely a matter of life or death, but our intuition, our gut feelings, the things we know without consciously knowing how or why, they often speak the truth to us…

Learning by moonlight

The Moon (18)

It’s funny, as I look around the net for images of cards that speak to me, some cards definitely get more love than others. There are hundreds of beautiful moon cards out there, all with interesting, personal interpretations. I guess the moon cards is a card that speaks to Tarot readers…



The moon is cyclical, it waxes and wanes... It's a 21st century mantra that change is the only constant, and the moon proves that. It gets fat and happy and we want life to stay that way and then it gets thin... but we have to remember that it will get round again... We also struggle with what we can change and what is the moon, changing on its own cycles, nothing to do with us...



I like the Cinderella theme in the inner child card - it's about needing someone else to rescue you, longing for a magical intercessor, and then seeing the image of your destiny in the magical moonlight.