YouandTheTarot

 "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...

  What do people want?  The Talker research found that the majority yearned for the feeling of financial security. We usually label that "peace of mind." The opposite is confusion coming from not having control. In the tarot that's symbolized by the Nine of Wands. But most won't find it. That's because they are approaching the dream in terms of numbers. If you have ever got to know the wealthy you get it that many experience profound insecurity about their funds. The joke is that there is no one more in angst with their financial situation than the rich.  No surprise to us tarot readers, the Talker study also found that achieving peace of mind is an inside job. That comes from learning to regulate our thoughts. We develop the habit of coping with financial matters.  Such coping is not much in evidence on professional anonymous networks Reddit, Fishbowl, Blind and Glassdoor.  Instead too many of the posters seem to bellow like wounded animals in the jungle. Ther...

One of the blessings of being a tarot-reader is that we acquire insider access to the human heart and mind. And with Mother's Day coming up it's overdue that I share what I'm observing. Essentially, as expected, there are extreme generational differences in how women reflect on being mothers. Or having opted-out. Boomers tend to just be grateful they and their offspring have made it this far. The memory of exhaustion is all too common. Most caved to the pressure of marrying young and bearing children before investing enough in a career. They realize they paid heavily in terms of sacrificing earning power and where they wound up on the totem pole. Most wound up having to go to work.  For mothers in midlife there tends to be resentment about, in addition to having a family, there was pressure to be all they could be. Not a girlboss? Why not. Meanwhile, there was the brutal reality of their salary or income from their enterprise being necessary to pay the bills. Exhaustion isn...

Former history teacher at Miss Hall's private school Matthew Rutledge has been indicted on three counts of rape. The alleged victims were his students.  From clients still having flashbacks of those kinds of schoolgirl encounters I have been able to identify what kind of young person winds up in that traumatic connection. She's not a loser.  In fact, she has the intellectual push to explore beyond the classroom. The instructor encourages that. Private tutorials are part of the grooming.  But she, like most of us, also needs to "feel special." Not just another student.  In addition, supposedly having an intimate relationship with an authority figure opens a peculiar rite of passage. There's that premature crossing of the line over to adulthood. Let the rest of the classmates be stuck in the seeming arrested development of being controlled in the protected category of being a mere student. How can parents head this off? Obviously, if the daughter gushes a bit too mu...

The joy of acceptance. That's after years of insecurities about belonging, or even deserving to take in oxygen on planet earth. And, that's what I found drives human beings to wind up in cults. The odds are that they don't even know they're being controlled, exploited and with no easy exit - Those represent the essence of cult dynamics.  The extremes are the Charles Manson or Jim Jones kind of hold on people. More common is the cult-like. For example, the splendid institution of Big Law.  The routine work, never mind what it takes to get ahead, is so demanding of time and thought that the only way to remain a member in good standing is to do a total buy-in. Yes, the dynamic is a type of brainwashing that this is such a desirable pursuit. Who wouldn't want to be let in! Dissent can get you shunned. Don't question. Fit in perfectly. Otherwise, the power structure won't assign work. If that comes into play you will suffer extreme mental torment. There's a...