Contemplations about Tarot: Introduction

Originally published on my blogspot 20.2.2014. I offer this series here as it was written and published then, with some minor grammatical corrections and edits in formatting and change in accompanying images. Enjoy.

I don't think there is much I can say about the standard way of reading tarot cards, that hasn't been said a hundred times over in numerous ways and I'm sure most of those are credible one way or the other.

What I want to talk about is the way I personally do it. Not that I believe there is anything special about my way of reading - some might even call me intuitive. Except that I'm not, not really.

I abandoned the traditional style of doing readings almost ten years ago. It was hard and I always felt it is difficult to apply to the usual kind of question one might have with so many ways to combine, multiply, subtract and then intuit the right answer out of the myriad of possible outcomes for a spread. Sorry, not good enough and not something that would have me giving any guarantees, only to have to recalculate later and say: "Yeah, that was also a possibility, because this card and that."

Nah-ah.

The abandonment came with me leaving tarot behind all together, discouraged and frustrated. I picked back up a year or two later incidentally while being drunk in a pub shouting: "Who wants a reading, that ought to be fun!"

I realized what I have done and the position I put myself in, only after I had a spread of cards in front of me and an acquaintance across from me waiting to know if her relationship with another acquaintance of mine would last. Crap! I'm not gonna lie out right and sure as hell I will not admit I think I am crap at something.

So I took a deep breath and genuinely tried to see what the cards meant for her. I'm not sure how it happened, maybe it has the alcohol lowering my inhibitions and releasing the floodgates, but I was talking. Even to this day, I remember most of the cards that were on that table that night and I'm pretty sure their meanings had nothing to do with the the actual things that were coming out of my mouth.  I had no idea where the information came from, what validity it had for me to actually voice it. But I did. Later I found out it came true.

This sense developed over time, like someone whispering things into my ear. It grew stronger, more powerful. Today it is at the point where I see the results of the spread even while shuffling cards, I have visions, I hear words and sentences. I feel things.

I'd like this post to grow into a series on a different way of divining using different kinds of cards, because I feel there might be others with the same predicament and not enough information. To be continued...