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...

Card Images

I find images all over the place and I can't always credit them,  because I don't always know where they came from - perhaps the site I found them on didn't credit them,  or they are all over the place and I can't figure out where the original source was... 

A dear client sent me this today -  a kickstarter project for an urban tarot deck based on New York and as I looked at the images I realized that I had already selected quite a few,  and loved most of the others.   

I really like this project by Robert Scott.  So I've kickstarted him for a tarot deck and perhaps I'll read from it one day for you...

The cards just know...

People often ask me how I can be so sure of the cards,  and I say it’s because I see it every day… 

The other day a woman came to me,  we did the cold reading, where I don't know anything about her,   and there were some troublesome cards there – 10 of swords,  justice reversed,  page of swords.  But when I mentioned them she just shrugged and said they didn’t apply to her.  She was here to talk about whether to have a second child.  Her marriage was in a good space and she was worried that a second baby would change things, but it was the right time… so we talked about that for a while but the cards gave it no traction.  They were not interested in that topic at all. 

Finally we drew some cards on her marriage, and there was the tower.  And I looked at her and I hate to say this to people - if they think their marriage is in a good space, who I am to tell them any different? - but these cards were really clear. So I said there was something destructive going on, and until that was cleared,  I couldn’t get any other information.

And she looked at me,  and her eyes teared up and she said,  I didn’t want to talk about this,  this is not what I came here to discuss… and then she told me of her 3 year affair and how it has ended recently because he has married someone else.  

This is not something I could have known or suspected, but this is something the cards saw very clearly, and no decision about whether to have another child could be made without taking it into account…

All these beautiful images are by Andy Cherewick

Time

Today we lose an hour,  in that mystic way.  I'm Australian and on my flights home,  I always lose a day,  which is disconcerting (I gain it on the way back,  but still it's weird,  how times and days change on you)

Of course a few hundred years ago,  no one really knew the time or that dates changed according to where you were on the planet.  Every place had it's own 'local time' according to where the sun was in their sky.  There is this wonderful story that time zones in the US were created by the railroad - they wanted their trains to come on time, and in order to that,  they had to standardize times. (I'm a geek when it comes to that sort of trivia)

When people call to see me,  there is something going on in their lives now, maybe even this moment.  But I can't see you now.  Today I am seeing people who booked in January and when you call me,  I will offer you a place in a month or two.   People ask about cancellation lists,  but I have maybe one cancellation a week (thank you, thank you to all my clients being so reliable!) and there are usually 7 or so people on the list,  so waiting there doesn't often help. 

And yet,  when I email out my available times,  I tell people that that date will come sooner than they think,  and most people agree with me. While it seemed far away,  it came sooner than they thought it would,  and often they say they are grateful that their energy had time to settle so the reading can see more clearly,  rather than them seeing me when they felt more urgent.

Looking forward to seeing you soon,

warmly,

Liat

Do I do events

Every so often I get a sweet voiced query asking me whether I do events, either large or small. I don’t do events or parties, for a variety of reasons. For me, Tarot is something intimate and deep, and events are something light and social, and the two don’t actually mix very well.

With no disrespect to people who do events, they do what I think of entertaining. What I’m doing is so different from that, they have nothing in common. I often tell people things they don’t want to hear, and then spend some time with them dealing with that. And I never read for people who are drunk, because the energy is all askew, and it’s very hard to read them clearly.

So while I do occasionally do readings back to back, when intimate friends want to sit in on each other’s readings, I never do more than that. I find even doing 5 readings in one day can wipe me out energetically. I only do 3 readings a day and I'm fresh and focused for each one.

Lots of Kings

I’ve gone through what every individual card means in this blog, (just type it into the upper left hand corner near the b symbol and it should appear) Now I am at the end of going through what clusters of cards mean… What does it mean if you have lots of kings in your reading? Again, I have to put in the caveat that the court cards are amongst the most complex of the tarot cards and need sensitive interpretation.

If you draw 2- 4 kings, for one thing there is a lot of adult male energy in your life. It can mean anything, from working in a male dominated environment, to having lots of men interested in you. It can mean being experienced in relationships, having mainly male friends, or feeling overwhelmed by men and their energy (remember, cards always need context) One woman kept drawing kings and when I said you must have a lot of men in your life, she sighed and said yes, five brothers.

The kings are the apex of their suit, so drawing lots of kings can also mean that there is something powerful going on in your life - they don’t come in the humdrum easy days… If you draw lots of kings there is something you are in the process of mastering, something you are seeking to control.