Can tarot readers see the future, read minds, cast spells, or, in short, are we psychic? Maybe a little. Some psychics read tarot, but not all tarot readers can tell you what you will be having for breakfast next Tuesday. I've had clients ask me if I can "see" their energy and if I could see it, can I rid them of "bad energy?" Um. From over here? With tarot cards? Maybe if I spread them into a fan, and if you're sitting across from me you might feel a breeze, but that's about it.Personally, I feel that most if not all people are "psychic." Since we ordinarily only tap into about a tenth of our brain's capacity and my Western society has all but thrown intuition and divination into the same useless pile as alien abductions, old wives tales (which, by the way, is an excruciatingly sexist term, but that's another post for another day...or maybe today...I'm not sure yet), belief in Santa Claus and the rantings of fools, we're probably all walking around with the latent skills of telepathy and telekenesis, but it's probably a good thing because what a mess THAT would be if that little secret got out. Think they had it bad in The Omen? Imagine that little shit multiplied by millions. I kinda like my spoon handles straight, thank you.
The cards are rich in archetypal symbolism, not unlike magical sigils, and can be used in the practice of spellcasting and magick, if one so desires, but so can many other common household items, well...I don't know many households with eye of newt in the pantry, but you know what I mean. Art itself is rich in symbolism and even my very cursory understanding of art history and symbolism tells me that tarot card art is, while not always very good, is in fact simply drawing on age-old symbolic forms, shapes, and colors to convey meaning. But the cards themselves have no more power or magic in them than 78 pictures cut from a magazine and laid out on a table. The mystery, the magic, the power lies in my, yes MY, brain. And yours too. Crank that brain power up to, say, twelve percent and see what happens.
Tarot is a great tool for digging around the cobwebbed parts of your subconscious. It can reveal your own assiness to yourself as well as remind you of dreams you've tucked in long forgotten drawers. One of my favorite cards of the Major Arcana is the High Priestess or Papesse who literally means the subconscious, the secrets of the divine feminine. She is intuition personified and when she appears in the reading she gives you That Look. The one that says, "You know." And I, being thick-headed, usually argue and say, "No, I don't. If I did do you think I'd be asking you?" At which point the cards usually get very assy and start calling out random things until I walk away disgusted with the whole exercise.
It's not easy getting those rusty brain parts working, much less to run smoothly. It's like using muscles you never knew you had, or take for granted. You never realize how much you depend on your pinky toe until it gets broken and every step is a reminder it really wasn't a useless prod of an appendage all this time, it actually serves the function of keeping you balanced! Who knew? So with those fleeting thoughts, those internal nudges and hunches. You'll be looking at a card and something catches your eye, the butterfly in the upper right corner, the flower wilting to the left of the central figure, and suddenly a thought blinks in: "shrinking violet...shed your cocoon..." and then you dare to speak these nonsensical babblings and that's when the magic happens! The person on the other side of the cards sits up, eyes widening, and they say, "How did you know?"
"Know what?"
"That my father, he always used to say that. He used to call me his "Shrinking Violet" because I was so shy and he used to tell me that one day, I would see, one day I would come out of my cocoon and spread my wings like the butterflies he used to attract to his garden, he loved butterfly bushes, well...all kinds of flowers and he knew the names of all of them. And I used to love spending time with my dad in the garden, he would tell me all about the flowers and the insects that helped to bring life to his beautiful "children" he'd call them, his flowering plants...."
"Well, here the eight of swords shows that what is holding you back are your own thoughts that hem you in and make you feel like you can't get anywhere, see?" as I point to the card, "there you are, in the midst of all your own naysaying."
"You're right. I'm always talking myself out of doing things I actually want to do."
And so it goes, the connections are made, from the cards, to me, to them, and back again, as we put the pieces together.
So, where do those impressions come from? Psychic powers? Telepathy? Tapping into a "universal consciousness?" Shhhhh....don't pick at mysteries. Magic is meant to be experienced not dissected under a microscope in a sterile lab.
I'll get back to the sexism thing another time. Intuition and the exercise thereof has been routinely dismissed through history as silly woman stuff and the disparagement of older women and their wisdom is part and parcel of all of that...but that's a rant for another day.
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