Tarot and divination

Tarot and divination

In our front garden (which was more of a meadow than anything else) my step-brother put a small caravan when I was about 13. It kind of became our clubhouse/retreat/rainyday hang out.

One of my best friends when I was growing up was a girl called Rosie. Her Dad was my step-brother (yes big age gap). Anyway her Mum was rather odd (even by our standards) yet the one thing I knew was that she was a gypsy, or had been a gypsy until she had settled in a house in a village near by.

I don't know how it happened, I just remember her being there on a warmish day and I would have been about 14, in our caravan. It would not have been unusual for Rosie to be there, but S wasn't usually. She and R had a stormy ex-relationship even by Welsh standards. Yet I clearly remember her sat at the table with a pack of playing cards teaching us all to read them.

We were all pretty good.

Yet the unspoken irritation of my sister and the unspoken awe of everyone else was that I was the best.

That summer and the years that followed I would read anyone any chance I got. Mostly other friends.

S had told me some of the 4's mean this and 9's mean the other, that the face cards were people and so on. Yet I could see patterns, what was happening, and what had happened and what might happen, even if I didn't want to believe it.

That was the only schooling in reading I ever got. 

Yet the lessons kept coming.

I remember reading my friends cards over and over and seeing a baby coming into her life. Over and over. I saw it but I could not believe that it would be my friend. Yet it happened. At 17 after not being able to see each other for a few weeks (doing a play wrecks your social life) she had dumped her boyfriend of two years, met someone else and was pregnant.

This revelation, that I had been on the money but wrong made me so mad I didn't pick the cards up for almost a six months.

That was the lesson that seeing it doesn't make you believe it. That emotion often blinds you was one I learned too.

Then next lesson happened months later. I was doing a lot of readings, and I do mean a lot for folks at college, still with playing cards. I insisted on some kind of payment by then. Most stuff from the vending machine. Most of my clients were on the same B-Tech, I knew them but not well.  I did a reading and I absolutely spoke what saw. I saw a cheating partner and a new job. Talk about table flip! I got called all the names under the sun. I was mortified.

Until a day later he came back and wanted another reading because his boyfriend had indeed been cheating and now he wanted to know more about his job...

At this point I went through this weirdness of seeing things (especially bad things) and worrying I might have been making them happen. This was just rubbish but the fear gnawed at me. When I saw a friend again tell me she was pregnant and I only saw death I said nothing and smiled. As the weeks passed by I told myself I had been wrong. The first time I saw her after the miscarriage, she looked at me and said "You knew!" and I burst into tears and we stood their holding each other sobbing. The relief she wasn't angry with me was amazing. 

I was doing three to five readings a day, sometimes more. I was meditating daily, sitting in circle three times a week, channeling and crossing over the restless dead too.

As I began to channel more I stopped using the cards and just spoke what I saw. I remember doing a cold reading for a friend of a friend (either he had bet him or it was a dare) and just having the words pouring out of my mouth at this stranger and his face draining of all colour and the guy storming off.

Only with permission (though in this case it had been) was my lesson there. This self appointed rule cost me dearly over the years where people have screwed me over because I respected their privacy. 

I was at Uni next and I got my first real tarot deck. A gift from my evil-ex. Second hand, beautiful and they smelt like incense. I have the same deck now (but new). I learnt to read again, this time with a whole host of new faces. Yet the patterns were the same.

I did readings through Uni. They paid in money now instead of food. Yet I always felt weird about the money part.

A wizard friend of mine noticed this uncomfortableness and told me if I did not value what I did certainly no-one else would.

I gave readings in a booth in central Manchester when someone far more famous was on holiday through a referral. It was odd but good.

I did readings in pubs after Uni (so I could eat) and had people give me large sums of money (for me) at the time. Only a couple of months.

People wanted my readings, and to my surprise the most often clients were other readers.

I worked with other readers and learned that you charge your minimum or the average of the room so as not to over charge or undercut the other readers. I also learned that "fluff" readers are despised by those with the gift like me. I watched con artists talk shit and expect people to pay for it.  This taught me well for when I started to psychic fairs (more for fun than for money) for a while. Yet the toll of travel and nine or ten readings back to back made me sick for up to four days. I did parties and private readings too. I much preferred one on one than drunk women crying and so on.

There was always plenty of crying. Most people have a damn good reason for coming for a reading. They are lost or trying to find a solution. The simple act of seeing someone without the bullshit is emotional. Placing someones life before them in all it's horror and glory is not a fun pastime and is deeply moving for me as well as for the client.

This is the reason I won't do tarot parties anymore. I got offered a hen party gig (a permanent job more or less) but turned it down. Truthful emotional exposure and alcohol around weddings is NOT a good idea, regardless of what I see!

I have taught people to read cards over the years but most of what I know I can't put into words.

The cards are permission to read someone. They are pieces of broken mirror reflecting the other person to me and back at them selves. It is the truth, not also a reflection. Subject to change and choice more strongly than destiny. 

Tarot has taught me how much choice and power people have and how most often they won't use their choices. Yet sometimes they do and it is amazing.

Bright Blessings xxx