YouandTheTarot

  That's what it is, I realized yesterday, when I went to a small city in Ohio to do tarot readings: an economic pall hovering over the whole community.  Of course, that shaped the tone and content of the actual readings. What was needed was highly customized guidance on coping with what was, is and could be. That is, reassurance that they could navigate their way through the darkness. Not a gush of inspirational anythings. That might be the way overall to size up where most humans are around much of the world. CNBC published about a woman who overcomes a rare disease to be able to run the Boston Marathon. So? Instead of being inspired, aren't we annoyed that the media is out of touch. In overwhelm about financial uncertainty most don't welcome that sort of content. No emotional/spiritual uplift here. How can anyone sleep when bills are due? The card that keeps coming up is the Nine of Wands. Symbolized are confusion, lack of direction, loss of confidence. Isn't the b...

  Floating inches, maybe feet off the ground capitalism planted us on. That's "groundlessness." Sometimes it's achieved during deep mediation, as tonight at the Buddhist temple. Or, just in desperation amid so much uncertainty. And that's the magical state of being open to a fresh look at the overwhelm. There's a letting go. In the tarot that's symbolized by The Chariot card. But that's not what "they" hammered into us. We were supposed to keep our feet on the ground. Always have a strategy. Push. Stay with it. Be in charge.  And the majority of suffering human beings coming to me for a tarot reading have been caught up chasing after jobs which no longer exist. Embedded in relationships which they've long ago outgrown. Spending money on a lifestyle which brings stress, not joy. Another way of understanding groundlessness is the "sacred pause."  Caught in a situation which we can't control or not being able to get a handle o...

Prayers Spells Potions Icons. All are for "protection." But those in the loop rarely explain that the entity we humans most need protection from is our very selves. Usually that reality manifests itself after we have been through the wringer. Then, we have those Ah-Ha moments. We unleashed our own destruction. Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous Bill W. and Dr. Bob, who certainly had been through the wringer, recognized how dangerous they were. Part of their mission was to protect the fledging organization from their own foibles. For example, they could have made the simple program complex. They could have imposed control on what was structured to be peer-to-peer healing. In tarot readings I attempt to open the suffering to discern their part in creating, nurturing and escalating the pain. Throughout civilization the great thinkers have steered us to recognize our self-destructive default. They include authors of the Old Testament of the Bible, William Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud...

Even in a simpler time - 1998, before the 21st-century upheavals - a common fantasy was: to be able to have the lifestyle of Unabomber Ted Kacyznski . In the 1970s, along with his brother, he built a 120 square-foot cabin off the grid outside of Lincoln, Montana. He went on to not needing to go to work. He could be lost in thought. Read all he wanted. He hung out at the public library.  Unlike other Harvard graduates Kaczynski wasn't chasing professional success. At that time too many of us were. That was because opportunity was still abundant. Inputs such as investing in a graduate or professional degree generated predictable outcomes such as increased upward mobility.   Obviously, that's not the situation today. Actually, it's cartoonish that  Harvard undergraduates now are balking about a proposed cap on the number of A grades. Smirk, even a few years ago the A grades would have put them on a wonderful linear career path. For example, you could get into a top law ...

The juice is with consciousness.  That applies to everything from communicating with those who have passed over to wondering if chat bots have consciousness. If your ears have been perked you've probably been hearing less and less about energy. Without realizing it, I myself have ditched the term in tarot readings. The latest resource in this exploding focus on consciousness is Michael Pollan's "A World Appears."  On Amazon it ranks 150. Three days ago The New York Times posted a podcast interview with Pollan. Pollan doesn't provide a tidy definition of "consciousness." Instead, he frames it as a subjective experience. That represents the continuum of what it feels like (and the book has a major chapter on feeling) to perceive, to be aware and to regard ourselves as constituting a self. Well after engaging with Pollan's book no one will laugh anymore about those such as King Charles III who commune with plants. In the Sentience chapter there's pl...

"Crushed." That's how a tarot-reading client described how they felt after confiding slow business to someone on their network.  No, that someone didn't rejoice at their misfortune. But they did soundly scold my client for not doing better.  This represented the all-too-common mistake of relying on a professional network for what's needed emotionally/spiritually.  Networks operate on the basis of the Favor Bank. Keep putting in big deposits and refrain from making large withdrawals and you'll probably maintain the ability to request business referrals, jump ahead of the line for a license and be granted a loan. If heading the network is a twisted creature like Jeffrey Epstein you might also gain access to sex, tax guidance and lux gifts.  A support system is different. It's noncommercial. Those on it are, well, "your people." They are there for you in a totally human way.  Even if they have to be firm in guiding you out of a pickle there will be ...