YouandTheTarot

  Of course, during this holiday season there is the poignant ramping up of calls to me for tarot readings to deal with the lack of connection. Eventually the solution could be not talking it out but talking directly to an AI soulmate. And that's that for the need for intimacy and companionship. Bloomberg News points out that kind of relationship is already possible. Those who develop an AI love connection are even getting married to that avatar.  The beef about embracing such an approach to connection is that it can prevent creating human connections. Typical is the warning from tech big wigs : "Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that artificial intelligence chatbots could increase loneliness among young men who prefer AI-powered 'perfect girlfriends.'” However, relationships via AI are not necessarily mutually exclusive. During the AI interactions the humans can boost their own Emotional Intelligence to the point that it is possible to add on a conventional conn...

For those blessed with the ability to let the career go, semiretirement can be a time of emotional and spiritual abundance. If you play it smart in the labor market it can also provide a sense of financial security - at least as long as you continue to bring in income from work. That's the semiretirement dynamic: ensuring the continual inflow of revenue from laboring at something, anything.  That is symbolized in the tarot by the Seven of Cups. The card represents the new access to almost limitless choice. The world has opened to you in unexpected ways. The abundance can happen because you are empowered to transform back into the human being who might have lost so much control during what a career can do to you. In some Native American tribes there is this belief: Trauma or even simple adversity takes away a piece of you. If you are willing to surrender to an awareness of that loss the part can be grafted back on. Again you are whole + there is the gift of having learned important ...

  "This time, finally you are working for income on your own terms (more or less)." That's what I explain to the semiretired during tarot readings.  All too often, though, they are stuck in the Five of Cups Mindset: regretting supposed mistakes back in their former career days. That preoccupation with the past or crying over Spilled Milk - cups symbolize emotion - can extend from when they chose a line of work after high school/major in college to strategic decisions on the job/operating their own business.  Obviously, they are not in the now, being there to enjoy finally earning income more on their own terms. For instance, they are free to ditch that job or stop operating that small online business and take up another way to bring in some money. Yet, they don't own that new stress-free state of being. Actually they tend "apologize" for no longer being on a career track. They obsessively talk about what they used to do when at the peak of their earning year...

  "He's a nice guy." or "She's such a good human being." That's how the typical tarot reading starts out if the person in pain is struggling with the decision to end the romantic relationship.  At least that's what's typical in America. That's not what is standard in a number of other countries in which I conduct tarot sessions.  See, in America too many can "afford" to rule out most of the pragmatic issues when it comes to matters of the heart. Those can extend to what is accepted as loyalties supposedly due in friendship and even in the office.  In less affluent economies pragmatism dominates. It has to. That takes the actual form of being aspirational, as in "Where will this take me?" At the very least, that means survival. But it can be linked to hopes of getting beyond just getting by.  Usually in America the unease about a relationship sets in when A) Adversity hits or B) Success begins to happen. Then, there is the ...

The award-winner "Close to You" puts it out there that family, even the most well-intentioned, may block not only growth but the basic survival instinct.  When being part of his family of mother, father and three siblings, as a female, in a small town in Canada now-male-Sam had been frozen into sadness. His father feared finding her dead. Four years later he has found himself as he transitioned into a male in a large city in Canada where he lives a little life with a roommate. With dread but willingness he returns home for his father's birthday.  That is a disaster and he leaves during the birthday dinner.  But before he does he reconnects with the disabled woman (deaf) he once loved back in high school even when he was a female. Later they consummate that love in a brief and temporary encounter. This Sam has found quiet self-acceptance. He is no activist.  His family only knows how to provide a ham-handed version of liberal acceptance. Not deep understanding and con...

You are caught up in a crisis.   The usual next is a pause - a period of intense self-reflection.  In the Tarot that's symbolized by the Four of Swords card. Swords stand for thought processes.  To make that investment in a self-audit useful, be gentle with yourself. It will be counterproductive to heap upon yourself harsh and unforgiving judgment.  The great thinkers have all had the same message: Human beings are profoundly flawed. Therefore, it is inevitable that we will make many mistakes. The only next step is self-forgiveness.  Then go on to change our thinking and behavior.  Those thinkers include Buddha, Jesus Christ, William Shakespeare, Carl Jung and Dr. Bob/Bill Wilson who had founded Alcoholics Anonymous.  The American legal system also gives the right to "sinners" to seek out the best outcomes for themselves. That's through being represented by defense law firms such as Skadden, Kirkland & Ellis and Paul Weiss.  The worst res...

  Spirituality, prayer, even psychotherapy. Often that's too abstract and too isolating for those in pain.  That's why some of us tarot readers have been writing "social prescriptions." Those are very concrete social approaches to transcend suffering.  "A social prescription is officially defined as a nonmedical resource or activity that aims to improve a person's health and strengthen their community connections." That's what Julia Hotz writes in her 2024 book "The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Service and Belonging." And the prescription is nothing new.  For decades psychiatrists, ministers and community "shamans" have been recommending to widows in grief to get a job in a crafts store or animal shelter. When there were book stores the number-one suggestion was there. For the depressed join a gym. No, don't purchase equipment to use at home. For those who had lost that big job help with the re...

The Roman Catholic Church, William Shakespeare, Carl Jung and the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous all made it clear: We humans have a dark side.  The art world has run with that.  Novelist Ian McEwan, for example, published "Atonement" which was made into a film. There  has been the recent streamer on Paramount "The Whale." The central characters in both had done acts they deeply regretted. All that eats at them. Charlie in "The Whale," who ditched his family for a male lover, literally eats himself to death.  Of course, this deep shame about behavior comes up during Tarot readings. That includes a resistance against self-forgiveness. That wrench in the works is the assumption that what they did is so awful that they don't "deserve" forgiveness. Yet that's reverse narcissism: the total preoccupation with the self, the shutting out of the realities of what it means to be human.  A central Zen belief is that to be a human is to be prof...