YouandTheTarot

We read about it all the time: the "it." That is a mass shooting which seems to have no obvious motivation. And it's all too human to assume that will always be somewhere else. To remain sane and going about your lives you have to assume a sense of safety. Well, this evening about 5:30 PM in what is my new hometown - Toledo, Ohio - there was the "it."  So serious was the "it" that it made national and international news. UK publication Daily Mail reports: "Multiple people have been shot near an annual historic festival [Old West Festival] in [Toledo]  Ohio sparking a huge emergency response and sending people running for their lives."  Details remain sketchy, including the number of victims and the extent of the injuries. The suspect hasn't been caught. This reinforces the tarot fundamental that life is uncertain. That's symbolized by the Wheel of Fortune card. And with the current geopolitical situation, AI, upheaval in the Law of ...

  The Fool card is the first in the tarot deck. It represents the importance of taking wise risks. Isn't that what life is all about. And the mystical tarot is about putting together the best life for yourself. Do that right - that is taking smart risks - and the odds are you will get much of what you want - and almost magically. Do that carelessly and you can lose it all, including second chances. In 2026, with so much uncertainty and change it's increasingly difficult to calculate risk. For example, you haven't received a pay raise or promotion. Typical in current times. But connecting the dots on whether to take another job or do a startup is filled with info holes. Moreover, at your age, what is current stomach for risk.  But there is one type of risk which is easier to assess. That's the decision to matriculate for an academic degree beyond the BA/BS. The intel on the peril of that - especially low ROI - goes way back in time to The Wall Street Journal's expose...

  Memories of dealing with roommates, for financial reasons. Bunking with a spouse or lover as the relationship yielded diminishing returns. Those offspring hanging on at home. Bearing witness to friends who are stuck co-living. And, oh, that first 18 years of life with family before fleeing to college where even dorm life wasn't as bad. Having to no longer put up with any of that has been a blessing for a growing number of my over-50 clients. Their deep satisfaction is symbolized in the tarot deck by The World Card.  To achieve it usually they have made sacrifices.  Common was pulling up roots in a High Cost of Living (HCOL) area to a Low Cost of Living (LCOL) in order to afford their own habitat. Another was continuing to work to pay the differential single people have to live with. A third was investing the energy into reaching out to build social support systems.  However, such a content state of being isn't universal. In Debbie-Downer manner, The Wall Street Jou...

  Silence. Meditation/Prayer. Simple daily routines. Those are the defining elements of  monasticism , a lifestyle more and more in America are embracing.   Those new monastics include Nicholas Cage . Recently he began to crow about his personal shift from the fast social lane to a monk-life existence.  But before my exhausted clients go that route I warn them: If you need to earn a good living you need to be very out there, connecting.  When I deliver that lesson, now I can leverage the example of Cage: He already has developed big-time name recognition and built wealth. That gives him the ability to do less connecting and more monk-like stuff. Call the mandatory combination of monasticism and connection The Wonderful Double Life. Classic is the tragedy of an eight-year associate in a large law firm. He continually would tell his wife and close friends, "It's like being a monk. That's what I do 14 hours a day." Well, he should have invested some of th...

 "Efficiency." That's the word dominating the films depicting the Nazi era in Germany. Free streaming platform Tubi is hosting those movies, including the 2021 "The Auschwitz Report. " Efficiency also dominated the Industrial Revolution.  Human dignity was erased.  That was how the Nazi controlled prisoners in the camps. In his novels, Charles Dickens showcased that inhumanity to man as machines in factories replaced craftspeople laboring in their cottages. Currently, despite its shameful uses in earlier centuries, the concept of efficiency is embedded in best practices for business.  It was in 2023 that Meta launched "The Year of Efficiency." But the massive layoffs kicked in a year earlier. By the end of 2023, 21,000 humans lost their jobs. Perhaps those were the lower-value humans Standard Chartered Bill Winters will also lay off in the next few years. Meanwhile, this week Meta cut another 8,000 humans. With human dignity erased the rest of the huma...

  "But, what is sin?" That's the question I threw out at a Saturday evening bible-study class at a Roman Catholic Church in Toledo, Ohio. A one-time academic I was used to bumping up against the boundaries of accepted knowledge.  Shock. I hadn't opened a discussion. A few members of the group responded with some version of this: "Sin is what the Ten Commandments said it is." That was it.  I never returned to the group.  My concern about the nature of sin comes out of the kinds of wrongdoing seemingly done to the clients of my tarot-reading sessions. The most serious of those sins are the ones which erode the human dignity of work.  Can it be defined as "sin" how the deciders are imposing cost-efficiency, AI and offshoring to wipe out not only individual jobs but the collective employability of whole sectors such as content-creation or accounting or design? And did the designated protectors of culture such as former Harvard poetry professor Elisa Ne...