bar fight...

This gave me a chuckle. You will probably recognise the images as being from the Rider-Waite deck of tarot - but the panel was put together by Janet Boyer of www.tarotpals.com.

I've followed Janet on twitter and Facebook for a while. She's a hoot! I love to see other readers who don't take themselves too seriously.


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the mysterious other ...

I've been reading tarot for thirty years now and it's an activity that I come to love more and more as time goes by.

To me, a tarot reading is a process that takes place between two people, a deck of cards and some mysterious Other. Some readers call will it God. Some call it angels and some guides. There are as many explanations as there are readers.

So, what do I think that Other is?

Well. Hmmm. Um.

I'm sorry to disappoint you but I have no idea! Oh, I suppose that's not strictly true. Of course after all this time, I have some ideas about what happens during the profoundly mysterious process of a successful tarot reading but I will never know for sure whether I'm right or not until after I go to The Big Reading Room in the sky.

All I really know is that a person, often a stranger, comes to me and we take a small amount of time to tune into each other by each shuffling the cards in silence. I do have a couple of mental rituals that I go through while I shuffle but these rituals are not noticeable to the person I'm reading for and are much closer to meditation than they are to magic. I simply try to clear my mind to allow whatever intuition is released by the spread of the cards to come through more clearly.

The amazing thing to me is not when I am proven wrong - and I freely admit there are such times - but that the information I get through these mysterious means is so often right. Why should it be so?

Most readers use a combination of academic knowledge and intuition. That is, they have studied the meanings of the cards and can get a general meaning from any tarot spread. But once the cards are out, intuition overlays another level of interpretation.

Intuition is information that comes to you through a channel other than your average five senses. Intuition works for me the same way as trying to remember the details of a movie you saw a long time ago; you've got the general gist of it - but it's not completely clear.

It's like someone is prompting you to remember it, giving you little hints, and you're saying, 'Oh, right! Yeah, there's a guy, isn't there? - but I'm not sure what colour his hair is. Oh, hold on - wasn't it black? And yeah, I think he was tall. Wasn't he? And good looking too! Oh, right - it's coming back to me now! He saw this girl he'd never met before and...

And that, is approximately the process that leads a reader to pronounce those infamous words: You are going to meet a tall dark stranger.

I've spent thirty years learning the meanings of the cards, how they relate to each other and how to read the story they are trying to tell me - which is, of course, the life story of the person I'm reading for. I believe we all have fascinating lives which contain meaning beyond that which we can see, hear or understand through everyday means. I believe that pretty much all of us want to do what's right and best for ourselves and those we car about. I believe the journey depicted in the tarot offers us all guidance on how to best live our lives to our own greatest fulfilment.

But you know, after all this time, I'm still no closer to understanding the nature of that mysterious Other, present in all helpful readings, which steers us in the best direction for our future success.


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build yourself an altar...

Okay. I admit it. Building an altar sounds kooky and well, maybe it is - but I don’t care because it’s REALLY fun!

It’s no news that many of us focus too much on the negative in our lives as we get older – the wrinkles, the money worries, the inadequacies of our spouse - and forget that there are a few decided advantages to the passing years as well; wisdom, experience, discipline and the richness of a lifetime of relationships to mention a just a few.

Setting up an altar helps you focus on those great things and harness the energy of a life well lived. 

I made my altar fifteen years ago after reading about the potent symbolism of having a physical representation of focus at the spiritual centre of your home.

This is a place where you gather your energy. You put your important stuff here, the things that give you strength in life; letters from those you love, photos of everyone who is important to you, physical evidence of your achievements - education certificates, house deeds, references.

When you set a goal, place a written copy of it on your altar. In this way, you tie your future achievements to your past ones. Considering both of them in the same place gives you confidence and strengthens your resolve. You have evidence of all you achieved in the past and therefore know you can achieve this time as well.

How do you build an altar? Any damn way you please! It can be a low table that you can sit cross legged in front of to meditate with your special little treasures arranged on top or it can be a set of drawers with a table cloth your Grandma crocheted covering it while you keep your treasures in the privacy of the drawers.


I bought mine, shown in the picture above, from a second hand shop for about fifty bucks. It's a glass top table made of bamboo and that suits me very well; both transparent and flexible. On it, I keep likenesses of Ganesh and Buddha, photos of loved ones, things my girls made for me, gifts from friends and so on. When I first made it, I asked those who are important to me if there was something small I could have to  put on it. My father gave me a small silver pony he'd owned for fifty years. My mother gave me my grandfather's Waterside Worker's badge. 

One thing I absolutely insist on though; it should be beautiful and it should smell nice. It should be something that gives you pleasure just to look at it. Clean and dust it regularly – it’s a powerful symbol of taking care of your life when you take the time to care for the special items you have accumulated on your altar.

As you wipe each one, consider its importance to you, think about the loved one who gave it to you, think about the time you received it and why you decided that this item of all the other mementoes you have of them was the one you placed here. If you focus on your body sensations, you will feel a warm and gentle power build in your belly as you go through this ritual. 

It’s not enough to look after ourselves physically. We are three-fold beings; we need to look after ourselves spiritually and mentally as well. Building an altar to your Higher Self is a great start on the spiritual part.

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magical duet

Some things just lift your spirits whether you like bluegrass music or not. If you don't love the sound of banjo in the morning, go straight to 1:32 to see something that you have to smile about. 

I love bluegrass and I love flannel shirts and I love dorky looking rangas with crooked smiles. All this goes together to make me think Josh Williams is a bit cute. 

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The Symbolic Language of the Tarot

Why is a tarot reading by a competent experienced reader so helpful to many of us?

Well. I have my opinions, of course  - an ex-boyfriend or two might even claim I have too many of them! But having read professionally for thirty years, I think I have something to offer to the debate.

The tarot, along with astrology and other such tools for intutive guidance, play perfectly into the human mind’s preference for symbolic thinking. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychiatry, identified this trait in the 1800s and began to treat clients with intractable mental problems by decoding the symbols that their minds used to hide painful information from their conscious selves.

The world is a scary place and almost all of us go through traumatic experiences that we don’t want to face. Sometimes, it’s not even a case of not wanting to face things, it’s more that if we want to be able to function on a conscious level in everyday life, we have to push the pain and fear deep into our unconscious  and just get on with it. But those experiences don’t go away; they are like bogey men, hiding in the closet, waiting to jump out at the most inconvenient time to scare hell out of us.

For instance, you might have had a terrifying relationship with a stalker when you were fifteen years old. The stalker’s name might be Bob and his effect on your life was such that you had to move towns.  This is traumatic and your mind cannot deal with it properly and get you off to school everyday.

So it pushes the experience deep into the unconscious so that your conscious mind can continue to function and files it away safely under the label ‘Bob’. The word Bob soon becomes the symbol in your unconscious for Danger! Run away as fast as you can!

The file evolves over time and also becomes the place where your mind stores all of its disappointments about men in general - it’s a matter of convenience really. Why make new folder and a new symbol for ‘Problems with Men’ when you already have a perfectly good one with plenty of room in there for new stuff?

And look - none of this matters one little bit. Well. Not until twenty years have passed and you’ve been married and divorced, you have a couple of kids to bring up largely on your own, and you still haven’t found the time or space to excavate and deal with all that old trauma Bob the Stalker caused you when you were fifteen.

But what happens when you meet a great guy who sincerely wants to love you and your kids but you just can’t trust him no matter how perfect he seems? Why? Why can’t you trust him when he’s done nothing wrong by you?

It’s simple really - can you guess why you look at this poor guy like he's Charles Manson every time he moves too fast around you? The poor guy’s name is Bob, of course, and he’s paying not only for the sins of Bob the Stalker but for every other guy who ever stood you up and every cad who didn’t call when he said he would.

Symbols are a like a filing system for our emotions and humans can be very easily manipulated via their identification with symbols. Flags and national anthems for instance, as symbols for the love of country, have always been used to lead young men into wars. If we don’t decode and keep which symbols work in our favour rather than against us, they can be very destructive.

One of the many things that the symbols of the tarot deck help us to do , is bring your own personal symbols to consciousness and unlock past traumas that are still affecting our lives and decisions at a conscious level. The process of bringing these painful things to consciousness is one of the most important things we do in our personal growth. Until you have shed light on your shadow selves, they will remain frightening ghosts you cannot hope to defeat.


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Nobody's Perfect

If I had to put it into one sentence, I would say that the purpose of tarot reading is this: To help you find your path in life again, no matter how long it is since you lost your way. 

I always wanted to write a self help book titled Nobody's Perfect. 

So many of us think we've made too many mistakes to ever be happy, that we've squandered our chance at a great life, that because of past actions, we can never deserve to be really content.

Wrong, wrong and, let me think about that last one for a moment... Hmmm, yep, that one's wrong as well.

My favourite movie with a spiritual theme is Groundhog Day. A lot of people scoff when I say that. A lot of people see Groundhog Day as just another hilarious Bill Murray performance in an amusing but impossible set of circumstances. A lot of people are wrong about that.

What if you kept living the same day over and over again with no explanation and no real escape from your issues, no matter how hard you try?

Oh. My. God! That's my life! Well, some days anyhow.

Groundhog Day was first written by Danny Rubin as a way to make the concepts of Buddhism and spiritual growth through reincarnation more accessible to a mainstream audience. When the story begins, Phil is an obnoxious, sexist, self-centred ... well, arsehole. But through some mysterious blessing, he is trapped in a single day, in a town he hates, for eternity, or so it seems, and is forced to repeat that one boring day over and over until he learns it doesn't matter where he lives, who he loves or what he thinks, many of his life's events are out of his hands and the only control he has over anything is how he responds to it.

In the beginning Phil responds to everything in life with contempt and superiority but through his many mistakes, he eventually learns to respond with grace, patience, love and humour. Most of all, he learns humility. To see his journey from puffed up ego-monster whom everyone hates to humble but effective man about town whom everyone loves is both fun and inspiring.

In one of my favourite scenes, Phil explains to Rita that he is A god, not THE god.

We are all imperfect. We are all just trying to find the best path towards our purpose. By the end of Groundhog Day, Phil is still imperfect, of course, but he has been busted out of that awful lonely cycle that we, as humans, can get into, of cowering behind our egos, hiding our wounds and fears. We either try to pretend that we are perfect or we beat ourselves up for our shortfalls - as if somewhere out there, if we just try hard enough, if we just sweat and hate on ourselves enough, if we just worry and obsess enough, we will someday BE PERFECT.

We won't be. We can't be. It is literally impossible on every level of being you can imagine to ever be perfect.

Nobody is perfect. Why can't we get that through our heads? Nobody is perfect! Why do we persist in beating ourselves up when we discover some new imperfection in ourselves?

Why not just acknowledge the latest in our many many imperfections, resolve to try to do better next time and continue our journey, glad to be alive and in the fine company of an entire world full of imperfect beings?


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what the tarot says about trust issues...

Tarot art by Emily Balivet

Like all cards, The Fool has several meanings - one of my favourites is Radical Trust. Trust in The Universe. Trust in the future. Trust in those you love.

I seem to be doing a lot of readings that revolve around the issues of trust and privacy lately  - both people who invade their partner's privacy and people whose privacy has been invaded.

Some clients will ask me if they should leave their partner because they can no longer trust them; either because the partner has been through their purse or their phone,  or because of what they found when they themselves went through their partner's purse or phone. Do invasions of privacy necessarily mean the invader can't never be trusted again? Does it mean that the invader necessarily doesn't trust the invadee in the first place? When is the invasion of privacy a ticket to ride and when can it be forgiven?

Like every issue within a relationship, only those within that intimate circle of two can really make those decisions. The cards won't tell you what to do; they can only help to clarify the issues and point the best direction for you to proceed to get to where you need to be in your life's journey.

But personally, I have to say, I do think that sometimes there is a little hysteria regarding these matters nowadays. Let's face it, privacy is a luxury that came into being very late in the evolutionary scheme of things. It is still a reality for only about 1% of the world's population*

Privacy is a by-product of wealth - you need to have enough money to buy space just for yourself.
Now, I know that most of us who are just working johnnies don't consider ourselves wealthy - but if you have a drawer with a lock on it, you are richer than much of the rest of the world. If you have an email account on your own computer to protect, you are rich beyond the dreams of the vast majority of the world.

I would argue that trust and privacy have very little to do with each other; trust is far older than privacy and has been inextricably entwined with our evolution. For instance, as we evolved, group members needed to trust other group members to find and kill food on a daily basis in order to survive. As they became farmers, they needed to trust that the rains would come. When their countries went to war, they needed to trust that soldiers wouldn't rampage through their village in the dead of night to burn their homes and kill their sons so they could never grow up into soldiers.

Needless to say, that trust was, and still is, being broken everyday in a thousand places around the world. And yet, those people get up in the morning and try to trust all over again. Everyday. Because humans cannot survive without a certain amount of trust in the future. If you love someone who was temporarily overcome with insecurity enough to go through your things and they demonstrate that they are sorry, suck it up.

Get up in the morning and try to go on. Come on, you can do it! Did you never sneak a peek at something you shouldn't have?

Life's short. Trust hard.

* statistic completely fabricated in order to demonstrate a point


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The Universe sends Townsville tarot reader a message of peace and joy...

I did a nice pre-breakfast reading for one of my favourite regulars in London - Hi Karen! xx -  via Skype this morning. How about this world we're living in, huh? The miles don't mean anything any more.

But that's not why I'm writing this.

After the reading, I took my lovely daughter out for a very posh breakfast at a very suave establishment. Okay. So, it was actually MacDonald's. There. I confess. I drink Macca's coffee and I'm not ashamed to tell the world.

But that's not why I'm writing this either.

I'm writing this because I wanted to share with you the fact that the Universe sent me a very cheery Have a nice day! message with my coffee this morning. I took the lid off and laid it on my free newspaper and here is what I saw:

Of course, I was quick to notice the bikini clad woman who appeared to be leaping out of my coffee lid smiley face because of the position of the newspaper and so decided it was time to have a little fun with her. 

And so, The Coffee Lid Showgirl was born.

You have a nice day now too!

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no, I can't read your mind...

Something I have always found a little disconcerting is the number of people who think that I must  be all-knowing if I’m an effective card reader/spiritual counsellor.

Recently, I went to my hairdresser and after I’d been there a while, a woman and her sixteen-ish daughter came in. My hairdresser - Tanya, God bless ‘er - runs a very successful home business from a cosy room under her house and when other clients come in, everyone talks to everyone else. It’s like a tea party only with one very chatty woman wielding scissors.

So, everyone was talking to everyone else - except for Ms Sixteen. She was NOT talking to me. In fact, she was noticeably uncomfortable and refused to meet my eyes, though she seemed quite fine with everyone else.

After a while, she began to relax and then someone mentioned my car which has my logo - a big pair of eyes with That Tarot Lady written above them - out and proud for all the world to see parked in front of the house. I told them that I’d decided to apply modern marketing methods to my work as a reader.

This opened a whole lot of questions from our little tea party.

Did I think that commercialising in this way goes against the spiritual principles of helping others? In a word - no!

Do people stare at my car? In a word - yes!

But, as always, it’s from out of the mouths of babes that the most honest questions and answers come. Ms Sixteen, with her facial piercings and her purple hair, leaned towards me suddenly and said, ‘Can you read my mind?’

I laughed and looked at her for a long moment as I decided whether to screw with her head or not, and then said, ‘No, I can’t read your mind.’

‘Are you sure?’ she said suspiciously.

I laughed again. ‘I’m sure. And you’ll find that most other successful card readers can’t either.’

She looked relieved. I’m used to that. Some people think that even if I could read minds, I’d have nothing better to do with my time than to invade the privacy of their head-space.

Look, the honest fact is - I don’t want to read your mind. I have enough trouble with my own crazy thoughts without yours and those of every other passing Tom, Dick and Harry as well, thank you very much!

I said to Ms Sixteen, ‘Think about it - how on earth would I be able to function normally if I was going down the street hearing everybody else’s thoughts as well as my own? I’d be a basket case!’

I explained to her that we humans come with a built-in sanctuary that is ours and ours alone. No-one else can go there without our permission. It’s called our own mind. You will notice that most readers take the time to ‘tune in’ to their client one way or another at the beginning of a reading. For me, it is while I’m shuffling the cards. 

I believe that the increased intuition common in successful readers is a result of the ability to lower our own guards rather than the ability to penetrate the guards of others. I like it that way! Imagine shopping and being able to hear the check-out chick think about the great sex she had with her boyfriend the night before or the guy in front of you thinking about how much he hates his wife.

There are some people who are so sensitive and their psychic boundaries so minimal that they can in fact ‘read thoughts’ - but the truth is this state of receptivity is often so painful and frightening that they find it difficult to function in the real world where they are constantly bombarded by the troubles and sadness of everyone they meet.

A good reader has many skills at their disposal - intuition is just one of them. There are also empathy, experience, humility and a full knowledge of what the cards mean so that you can interpret what serendipity is trying to tell you instead of imposing your own opinions onto the reading.

But I guess the main thing I want you to understand here is that you really really don’t have to worry about your privacy during your average reading - I don’t know what you got up to last week at the office party and I don’t want to know in graphic detail; that’s between you and the photo-copier. 

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Where to keep tarot cards

I've always liked to have something special to carry my tarot cards in.

For years, it was a carved wooden box made of some lovely smelly wood that my sister in law gave me for Christmas. Whenever I'd take my cards out of the box, we'd get a puff of perfume to start the reading. Now my daughter has made me - with her own clever little hands - a fluffy royal blue knitted pouch for them so unfortunately, the box has now been retired.

A friend gave me a silk scarf many years ago and my cards are always wrapped in that before being put to bed. Wrapping tarot cards in silk is a fairly traditional way of keeping them - it's said that a natural fibre helps cleanse the cards of the energy of the last reading.

Meh. I don't know about that. I just like traditions for tradition's sake really - I keep my cards stored in the silk scarf mainly because my friend gave it to me and it's nice to have something that you always do with them when you finish a reading.

I admit to being quite territorial about my cards. I left them at work one day and someone used them without even asking!

:O

I was kind of put out about that. Not that I think it means my cards aren 't going to work anymore; it's just rude. Cards are, to most readers, like a favourite shirt. You buy them because you love the design. You know that one day they will wear out and you're sad when that day comes. You wouldn't borrow someone's favourite shirt without asking and I wouldn't pick up someone else's cards either.


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just the cards, ma'am...

When I do a tarot reading, the client will sometimes ask if I'm clairvoyant or if I 'just read the cards'.

Just read the the cards!?! Hmph! If I was a more sensitive soul, I might get a little put out by that!

No, I'm just kidding. But there's a lot of misunderstanding out there about exactly what tarot is and how it can help. I myself will often say to a client who seems to have very high expectations that I 'just read the cards' as opposed to famous people in related fields such as John Edward or Alison Du Bois who talk to dead people and appear to know everything about everyone they meet.

They don't - and if you read their own words, they don't claim to. Sure, television is necessarily edited in such a fashion to make readings appear easier than they really are; like any live TV show, they cut out the boring bits. Sceptics claim this as a great deception. 'It's all edited to make it look better,' some say, with a great sense of betrayal.

Oh, really? As opposed to all those TV shows that aren't edited to cut out the dull bits?

My point, however, got a little lost there! Just read the cards?

Yes, I just read the cards. There are 78 of them and each one has myriad meanings depending on which cards it is surrounded by and what area of the client's life it refers to; the six of pentancles will have a different meaning in a question about money than it does in one about relationships or work and there is a lot of intuition involved in discovering which meaning is right in the present reading.

You need to be able to focus on both the many meanings of each card and the process of listening to your gut instinct at the same time. It's kind of like patting your head and rubbing you tummy; it takes skill but you can look a bit silly while you're doing it.

I've been to readers who close their eyes or stare up at the ceiling or nod as though they are listening to someone who is not with us in body. I am definitely not knocking them; everyone has their own process and if it works, excellent! But I try not to do any of that stuff - it makes most people uncomfortable and therefore creates a barrier between the reader and the readee. More than anything, I believe that at its best, tarot reading is an exchange between two people. It is not a situation where one person tells another what will happen to them; it's a little circle of two into which you invite a third Mysterious Other (intuition, gods, dead people - I don't know) and from where you can uncover the information you need to best travel forward in life.


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