Lost Dogs

In the episode of Gene Simmons Family Jewels I saw last night, Gene consulted a psychic in the hopes of finding his missing dog. Although the psychic was able to correctly deduce that a family member was missing, and that the family member was female and a dog, she wasn’t able to tell Gene where his dog was or how to find her. Gene’s response? “For $300, that’s all I get?”

This made me think. The current fashion in tarot circles seems to be that (good and responsible) tarot readings should focus less on predicting the future and pulling seemingly unknowable information out of the air, and more on helping the client understand what’s going on in their lives and what they can do about it. Check out the Ethics page on any (good and responsible) tarot reader’s website and you’re bound to find something along the lines of “Readings aim to help the client to take charge of their own life”. (I stole that from TABI’s website). You’ll also find the word ‘empowerment’ mentioned a lot.

All of which is generally accepted as good practice. Predicting the future – or fortune-telling, to give it it’s dirty, old-fashioned name – is frowned upon but tarot-guided counselling is the bees knees. As far as most tarot readers are concerned anyway.

But what about the clients? Which do they want? As a tarot reader myself, if I consult another tarot reader I tend to ask what I can do about the given situation…I ask for empowerment. But that’s just a reflection of my tarot upbringing – it’s what I’ve had drummed into me over and over again for the past five years. If Joe or Josephine Public consult a tarot reader, what do they want to know? A lot of the time they want to know the unknowable – the future, or the hidden present. (You can tell this is true by all the effort tarot readers have to put into making sure their clients ask the right questions.) Why else would they go to the trouble of seeking out a tarot reader? Or to put it another way: why on earth would they hand over their hard-earned money to hear something they could figure out for themselves without the aid of a divination specialist?

So maybe the reason so many good, ethical, professional tarot readers are unable to make a living from their skills is that they just don’t offer what Mr and Mrs Public are looking for. And maybe the reason so many seemingly dodgy, unethical, 100% accurate tarot readers continue to thrive is that they do.

What this means I don’t know. And maybe it’s all in my head anyway. I’ve made some sweeping generalisations in this post – that is, that all ‘fortune-telling’ tarot readers are unethical and unprofessional, and all ‘good’ tarot readers can’t find lost dogs. I disagree with myself emphatically on both points. But at the very least it’s food for thought.

The real question is: as tarot readers, are we giving our clients what they want, or are we giving them what we think they need? And which is right?

Shining Tribe – 10 of Birds

I took out my Shining Tribe today and the card on top was the 10 of Birds (the 10 of Swords in old money). To me, this is Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’, a film I’ve never seen but I must have seen a clip somewhere along the line. I look at this card and hear the noise – the cold callous crowing, the scrabbling of claws and sharp hammering of beaks – and get those wild crash zooms of black beady eyes and the heroine, her face drawn in horror and fear, her hands raised to shield herself.

In Rachel Pollack’s card, a woman in a green dress has her hands up to her face. Is she covering her eyes or just clapping her mouth in horror? She’s got her back to us, so it’s hard to say. Maybe she’s come home to find these giant birds nesting all over her house and she’s thinking ‘oh my, how am I ever going to clean up all that guano?’

Yet there’s this one bird amongst all the others that is different. It stands on a rock suspended in the middle of the sky (that in itself should be a clue that this bird is special) and it has a human face, a golden body and broad wings, strangely reminiscent of an…Hey, wait a minute! That’s not a bird, it’s an angel!

Wow. Seeing an angel in the midst of all this chaos, uncertainty and fear? That’s got to be a good sign. It sure don’t look like the Angel of Death anyway. Maybe everything’s going to be all right after all. Maybe all the woman in the green dress needs is a scarecrow (or some tinfoil dishes tied to sticks) and some good strong detergent. Huh. I guess things aren’t as bad as they first seemed.

(I probably shouldn’t go and watch ‘The Birds’ now, in case there isn’t a happy ending.)

Blank

The reason I have been quiet here recently is, simply, that I have had nothing to say. It’s a very strange sensation. In early April I found out I was pregnant with our first child and since then, my interest in tarot has flagged. For the first trimester I went off it completely – didn’t want to think about it, talk about it, or write about it. It was like tarot was a food that I just suddenly didn’t like the taste of anymore.

Fortunately, that feeling did pass. I’m convinced it was a pregnancy thing. As I entered the 13th and 14th weeks, I gradually felt my interest in tarot return. But it hasn’t been the same. Perhaps that’s to be expected. Having a baby is a major life change and there are lots of things to look forward to and also to be anxious about. Between hospital appointments, excited grandparents and panic attacks, there hasn’t been much room left for tarot.

I am absolutely thrilled to have a baby on the way, and to be honest, I haven’t really missed tarot that much. But when I do think about it, I can’t help feeling a little sad. I had a plan, a passion, a purpose. This blog, the book I’d started working on, and various other pies-in-the-sky, were my bread and butter. (Pies = bread and butter? But of course.) All those things have since faded into the very distant background.

I’m objective enough to recognize that this is probably all just a phase, and probably a necessary one at that. I can’t expect to have my head buried in tarot for nine months and then all of a sudden adjust to the arrival of a new baby. I need time to prepare myself – mentally, physically, and emotionally. So I guess tarot will return to me…or rather, I to it, when the time is right.

In the meantime, I haven’t completely lost touch. Last month I treated myself to another copy of the large German edition of the Haindl, which is now borderless and beautiful. And then I used that as an excuse to order a custom-made bag from Sulis. It’s purple velvet with silver silk lining and it’s gorgeous.

Apart from that, it’s all quiet on the tarot front. So please excuse me for my Hermititude. I’m going to try and do a bit more taroting over the coming months (hence the new look), but I’m not going to force anything.