YouandTheTarot

  Folks don't come for a tarot-card reading because everything is great. No, they're troubled. Most of the time it's because they feel they have been shut out from life's goodies. And so I get to study why their wheel of fortune is moving in the wrong direction. That is, they're not lucky. What I have found is that, sure, some luck is a given. That goes by the crude phrase "the lucky sperm club."  Because your father was ABC and not XYZ you have access to the advantages of the upper classes, including healthy nutrition, braces for that bright smile, enlightened medical care, decent education, coaching in presentation of self and a gold-plated network. However, as we bear witness with the Reiner family that doesn't necessarily play out as expected. More dependable and actually an entity you create is what's known as "encounter luck."  That entails setting yourself up to be, well, lucky. In the 2005 Woody Allen film "Match Point" ...

In the $6.6 billion global sex doll industry you can customize your purchase to be the perfect fit for your needs. Yes, the perfect face, the perfect body, the perfect personality traits. On Doll Forum   you can research your options. And, if your notions of what's ideal change, there is a brisk sales/trade-in market.  Obviously, this growing sector is a sign of our post-social times. Atrophying are the skills required to have a committed human love relationship.  No, those were never easy. In the tarot those obstacles are represented by The Lovers card.  Notice right away that there's a disconnect. The curse of being separate kicks in at birth. To the left is the bad-guy snake, always up to stirring up trouble in relationships. The water, which symbolizes emotion, is turbulent. As the dramas of William Shakespeare hammer, the course of true love never runs smooth. So, why even bother?  In the 21st century, as The Atlantic documents, it's become acceptable to...

  The term is coming back.  Yes, Forbes  explicitly tells job searchers "character" gives them the edge in getting hired. That can override the usual credentials on your resume.  More often, though, what we Boomers used to refer to as "character" goes by labels, documents the Express Employment Professionals - Harris poll  such as: Reliability Honesty  Self-motivation Adaptability. Okay then, how do hiring managers screen you for those traits?  Well, it likely won't be within the formal interview process. Most often they pick up if you have character in: How you treat administrative personnel at their workplace. That goes back to the culture fundamental of interacting with the boss' assistants with deference.  What comes out in small talk. What do you really care about? Instead of framing the data center issue in your community in abstractions, you show concern for the electric/water bills of those living there. You're protective of animals. ...

  Almost 40% of you will relocate when you retire. Given longevity, you might then  move multiple times , even every five years. As a tarot reader I hear all too often from disappointed retirees that what drives that second or third relocation is not a budget issue. No, it's soul-sickness. You are unable to break in socially.  So, I guide clients to explore before the move how resistant a community might be in allowing newcomers "in." By "in," I mean having a shot at close friendships. There is the familiar dynamic: So and so are friendly, polite. But those conversations in the grocery store or at the gym never lead to an invitation to have a drink or a cup of coffee.  That's usually because in that community what count are the bonds formed over the years. They begin in grade school. The groups have bulging collective memory banks. How to find out, before you move, the openness of the residents? Chat bots will be straight with you. Describe yourself. For ex...

  "So what does Penelope symbolize in 'The Odyssey.'"  That lesson in an infinite number of English courses was really about how, along the evolutionary path, the human species came to see the world through a prism of meaning. Entities and events weren't stand-alones. They represented an abstraction.  Philosopher Ernst Cassirer gave us an erudite summary of that transformational process. In "A Clue to the Nature of Man: the symbol," he explains: "No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe." And that seems to be the universe in which Luigi Mangione operated. The Wall Street Journal reports on the content of his notebooks: "One entry said 'the target is insurance' because it checks every box,' and another described an intent to 'wack' an insurance chief executive at the investor conference ..." Recently, as the world knows...

  "Those five months going to XYZ support group lifted my clinical depression." That's what a client for a tarot reading told me. The World Card had come up, considered by some to be the best card in the deck. But what drove that improvement was not what is usually given as a benefit of support groups. What the client got out of it was weekly evidence that they had a lot more going for them than most of the other members. For example, despite some reversals in their investments and the loss of a few accounts, they were not in debt. Or homeless. Or on the verge of losing their home. Obviously, what was going on was the adage: Count your blessings. Eventually the power of the attitude of gratitude also woke them up to the realization that they could be doing lots more with their time than "listening to all those sad stories." They quit the group.  Of course, this whole mindset has been kept under wraps. The code of the support group is peer interaction. We are all...

  "The whole first 35 minutes of my college reunion was visually and emotionally reaching back through the years. I was reconstructing how they used to look." They continued: "It took going to a bar afterward to settle down my head in the now. That's when the ROI kicked in for that expensive trip back to New Haven, Connecticut. We shared insights what we had learned about life since graduation." That's how a 50-something client for a tarot reading described their pain. The event had been three weeks ago. But the shock of coming close up to a group's aging remained traumatic. It was downright irrelevant to them how those aging classmates had fared professionally. In our reading, no surprise, the Wheel of Fortune card didn't come up. What did emerge was The Chariot card.  Its message is: Radical Acceptance. Obviously, aging is embedded in a life. The pain comes from not the reality per se. Its source is resistance to that reality. Gently I tutored the...

 The live mediums back in June 1953 were radio and television. Those announced on June 19th that 1) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been executed and 2) Their young sons Robby and Michael were being taken care of.  That was the second time in our little lives that we, the oldest of the Boomers, were shaken to the core with fear: Would we too lose our parents? Would some dark-suited tall men come in the early morning and take our parents away? Who would comb my hair for school? The first time was around 1951. That's w hen we hid under our desks practicing safety for when the bad guys during the Cold War would bomb us. But the teachers never addressed our questions about would our parents also be safe at home when the bombs came. They had no desks to hide under.  Yet, those same mediums depicted us as Happy-Clappy, always smiling in our Cowgirl/Cowboy outfits. In tarot readings I hear a lot about the remaining undercurrent of Boomer angst, as well as rage. Our interior lives...

  Off to the slammer. That's where visionaries Elizabeth Holmes, who was going to upend healthcare, and Bernie Madoff, who heralded that for investing, wound up. They were false prophets whose fraud could have impinged on your retirement. And now after those disclosures, you might wonder if the bad guys you have to watch out for will include the front lines of AI. That's especially if the bots go rogue and plunder civilization as we know it. Good lawyers, as with the fatal contamination of peanut butter, can put business leaders in prison. What did they know and when did they know it? Lots to think about. But the current reality is that we have more to fear from how the world is changing on its own. Maybe mankind did get that started, as with urban density and fossil fuels. But the universe is running with the consequences of all that on its own. In the tarot that is symbolized by the Tower card. This has become a pressing issue for the aging like you. The majority of my tarot...

  "That colleague blocked me. No conversation why." A new client told me that. But the lament wasn't new to me. This is "cut-off culture."  No longer do people feel the responsibility or the need to talk about why they're exiting your life. The client was intuitive. So they had a hunch that this particular former friend sized them up as "stuck." In this fast-moving world in which just about everyone has to scramble for an edge, being perceived as stuck is right up there with being known as unethical or hostile. As we proceeded in the tarot reading I picked up that this client wasn't stuck. They were changing. The reality, though, is that they weren't doing that fast enough. At least, not what it takes to be in synch with 2026. Instead of taking concrete steps in a reset in how to earn a good living, they remained in the limbo of emotionally gearing up. Obviously, that was being held against them.  The focus of the reading shifted to what wa...

Euphoric, Brad Karp drove from college to the hospital to show his dying father the acceptance letter from Harvard Law School.  But, in addition, Karp told his mother he would go to Yale Law School, where he was also accepted, to be located close enough to help her out. She turned down the offer.  That was 45 years ago. Back then this now partner at Paul, Weiss was ready to do what adult children did at the time: sacrifice to care for a vulnerable parent. Now, that value is being questioned. Often, with great confusion, plus seething resentment and some guilt.  More and more in tarot readings clients are essentially asking "permission" to ask if they "have to" be responsible for their parents as they age. That ranges from hands-on care to any legalities. In the tarot that internal turmoil is depicted by the Tower card. Those askers are in their 40s. They're spotting decline in parents. Vividly they're also having flashbacks from childhoods which weren't ...

  "I helped a colleague. Why did I do that?" In our professional lives we tend to learn the most from hands-on client situations.  Over and over it has come up recently in tarot readings that both females and supposedly hard-nosed males were thrown for a loop. They assisted a "drowning" or at least vulnerable co-worker. The aid was not reciprocated. Now and then those helped even turned on them. This interpretation of those dynamics won't get me friends. But it resonates with clients. Immediately, they identify.  Long story short: Christianity socializes us to reach out to the weaker. Classic is Luke 10:25. That's the parable of Good Samaritan.  The meme is selfless reaching out to help, even when that might fit with dominant social norms. Actually, that whole mindset is the antithesis of capitalism, an individualistic economic system. It is the individual, not the system, who is responsible for success and for failure.  In its rawest form it mandates moving...

It was a version of "Karen" which blew up the alleged sexual misconduct at Fox.  Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit contending that was the standard MO of Fox founder Roger Ailes. Soon enough the Murdoch brothers called in law firm Paul, Weiss to investigate. That was the end of the Ailes era. Yet, the concept of a Karen carries so much negative baggage. If you are a white middle age female who reports suspected wrongdoing or subpar service you risk being type-cast as obnoxious. For example, your server brings the steak well-done, not rare. After you complain, everyone in the kitchen laughs and rolls their eyes about your being a Karen. You bet, you can feel the vibes. So, chastened you might tend to surrender your ability to change a snippet of the world as we know it. In tarot reading the Karen Effect is symbolized by the World Card.  It exudes possibility. Life opens, even in the midst of obstacles. On free streaming platform Tubi, featured are film genres about the SS'...

The slow-moving minimalist 2016 film "The Interrogation" is extraordinary. All the moving parts push us to actually have sympathy for former commander of Auschwitz Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoss. The movie is now playing on free streaming platform Tubi. Essentially the plot is about Polish Judge Albert's assignment to get a confession from Hoss. Albert, although young, has been successful in the past. He is at this too. But what is disclosed creates questions about the justice of the coming death penalty for Hoss as well as some other SS members. What Hoss feels is his real crime was his lack of courage. Himmler forced the Auschwitz "mission" on him. Quickly Hoss sized up that he didn't have it in him to say, no, I can't handle this. That's because he also sized up what that could cost him professionally. The rest is history.  Later, when on the job, Hoss also couldn't summon the courage to allow anyone to see that he experienced compassion for th...

  There we oldest of the Boomers were: jumping through the system's hoops to get into the college of our choice and simultaneously embracing as our hero teen rebel Holden Caufield from "Catcher in the Rye."  We ran around eager to denounce among ourselves the phonies. Of course, we didn't share that bit of subversion with authority.  Well now hitting 80, we're back. This time we have very little to risk fingering the phonies in very public ways. Since we're now more worldly we can expand the category beyond people to ideas and institutions. But unlike the zest with which we did that as high school juniors and seniors it's with sadness. In the tarot that's captured in the Five of Cups card. You bet, we regret how we might have been duped for more than half a century.  At the top of the list is our hefty consumption of higher education. The mindset was: The more education the better. Only the non-ambitious stopped at the BA/BS.  We scramblers after succe...

In 2024, at the Academy Awards,  Robert Downey Jr. thanked his unhappy childhood when accepting the award for best supporting actor. Pop culture writer Molly Jong-Fast got a bestseller "How to Lose Your Mother"  from growing up with self-absorbed problem-drinker Erica Jong as primary caretaker.  And Eminem, Gloria Steinem and myself are among those in creative/activist professions who had mentally ill mothers. Mine committed suicide. The research , expert opinion and observations about how a crappy childhood can generate unique professional success are piling up. Those include: No Hallmark/Disney world view, later to be shaken off when reality intrudes. From the get-go, the gestalt is that life is tough and survival is up to us. Problem-solving is embedded early. Mine was to ace high school in order to get a scholarship to an out-of-state college, away from the crazy family.  Raw resilience. With instability the norm so is the necessity to continually regroup. We ...

Was that blood in dog Bentley's stool? Or just traces of dye from treats? I could have done a cold search among Google links for information. Instead, since I also needed to be calmed down and comforted, I keyed in a prompt on a free version of ChatGPT. No, it wasn't s a specialized AI mental-health app such as Abby and Ash . Instead, it was the old trusty free ChatGPT I have been using since November 2022 when OpenAI released the chat bot.  I was not disappointed. The tone was empathetic. Also since ChatGPT has a memory feature it could customize the response. For instance, it factored in that Bentley was an older dog - more than 10 years old. In addition, the chat bot understood that I tend to worry and over-react. So, essentially the takeaway was what we in Buddhism call the "sacred pause" : Wait and see, hold off planning, with specifications about how long. As usual, the bot pointed me in the right direction, along with providing emotional support. The symptom va...

  Several   years from now will the new cultural power structure be laughing hilariously at Meta, VW and more which boasted how efficient they are and how more efficient they would become.  Actually, even in its heyday - that is right now - the efficiency mandate seemed comically overwrought. The ethos reminds us of all those back-seat drivers who insisted Route A was the most efficient. Verboten was taking the scenic one that treated us to the serene snippets of cows and horses grazing, ghost towns and general stores.  In the tarot the anti-efficiency card is The Chariot. The journey is being determined by natural contours. Yeah, let it be. Don't hold tight to the reins.  The biggest successes in my career emerged when I was off the efficiency game. Beyond burnt out to deep fried, I had left methodically chasing revenue through ghostwriting/speechwriting. I fell into dabbling in blogging, often staying up all night playing around in that new medium in 2004....

  Hardened with regret, lumbering with age and excess weight Helga Bahlmann arrives at a hotel to conduct on-film a reconciliation session.  Back in 1942, as the 2026 movie "Aryan Papers" depicts, she was a youthful enthusiast of the Nazi regime. That prompted her to participate in the Lebensborn, a breeding program for Aryan babies. During that time, she took it upon herself to murder Jews and others she found lacking the right views.  From the get-go in the reconciliation process, Helga has to confront the question: How can she forgive the younger so misguided, so cruel self. Initially she distances herself from that entity, referring to that self in the third person. Then she comes around to owning that monster was her. "Aryan Papers" is currently available on free streaming platform Tubi . Just key in the title in the search bar. With humans living longer more are "doing a Helga." They are forced to dredge up a self that is so incongruent with who th...

  If you were young in the 1950s, lower middle class (or even lower) and based in the New York Metro area you probably grew up much like Jeffrey Epstein.  Today The New York Times captures the details of how it was for all of us back then. And, as the entries from his pals from those days for his 50th Birthday Book testify, there was (and is) great nostalgia for how it was. Essentially the defining characteristic of that unique childhood and our teenage years was this, reports the NYT: "the unwatched way they grew up."  Families were too overwhelmed financially surviving to supervise us.  The Catholics among us had too many kids to seem to be able to keep track of the ever-increasing number.  And the recent immigrants were preoccupied with chaos within the home such as drinking problems.  My gallows humor years later was that if my sisters and I hadn't come home for several days no one would even notice.  Unwatched by adults, we were formed by our frie...