Tarot Talks update

Its getting close to my talk on Tarot and Astrology at the London School of Astrology next Saturday 19th May, and I am really looking forward to it. Astrology is the neglected ugly sister in Tarot that nobody wants to know, but actually if you don’t know even the basics of astrology it is extremely difficult to make predictions. As well as all the other great speakers on the day there will be a Q&A session, and I will have signed copies of my books for sale.

Coming up is a talk I am doing at Occulture in Brighton on July 6th. Not sure exactly what I am going to talk about, but I have so many new ideas at the moment. What is for certain is that I will be doing Free Tarot readings for people in the audience.

The Gypsy Tarot reading that wasn’t

The other day a middle-aged woman walked into my office, and she was surprised to see me – “Oh, I expected a woman…”. The conversation quickly got onto Gypsies, scarfs, ear-rings and all. No cliches were omitted. I pointed out that Gypsy style readings using the passive fatalistic style (“This will happen… that will happen”) went out with the ark, and from my point of view are incredibly boring to do. I steered her towards the modern style, and she seemed happy with that.

Straight away, I said that she was depressed (and I could feel it); she dissembled, not really depression, but she felt flat, and it was only today. Yeah, right. Normal thing to do is try to find out what caused the ephemeral non-existent depression, and she was not comfortable. There was a bit of to and froing, and then she said, “Look, I just want you to tell me things, and so far you have told me two things”, which she proceeded to count on her fingers.

Things degenerated after that. I could have done what she wanted and took the money, but I ended up telling her to go and find a Gypsy who would do that kind of reading.

The problem is that rather than face her situation she was totting up the things I was saying – it was always going to be my fault for her situation. Quantity is always better than quality, and since that is an open-ended equation, I knew I was onto a loser.

The bottom line is that I should have realised soon after she arrived that that was what she wanted. Just being told things is akin to a bedtime story. As Tarot readers the uncertainty we experience about events is often a reflection on the uncertainty in our clients lives. Apart from death and taxes everything else is uncertainty anyway.

I am sure there are plenty of readers out there who read in the passive fatalistic way, but I am not one of them.

Significance of death for the Death tarot card?

The Death card is one of the most feared cards… by tarot readers, and they try to dissemble when it appears in a reading, and say, “it doesn’t always mean death, it means change”.

The problem is that the way Tarot is generally taught is all about the meanings of the cards, there is an obsession that is entirely unhealthy, so that when Tarot readers have problems remembering the divinatory meanings, they worry, thinking that something is wrong with them. Unfortunately, remembering the primary meaning of the Death card is rarely a problem.

We all have issues with death – where we go when we die; do we get punished or rewarded? Maybe we saw someone close to us die in a painful way. Divorcing ourselves from these perceptions and experiences is not easy.

As if that was bad enough, the Tarot community has seriously shot itself in the foot with its fondness for one particular kind of spread, the Celtic Cross spread. Why is that a problem? When the Death card appears in a Celtic Cross reading, the Tarot reader will try to smoosh over it in an attempt to reduce its significance. Oh the illogicality of it all. Why? By definition the Celtic Cross spread (and other positional spreads) seek to increase the significance of the cards by only using the first ten cards off the top of the deck – all the other cards are ignored. If the Death card is in the top ten it is very significant, while if it is in the the ignored, covered up, and hidden other 68 cards, then it has no significance.

The same applies to any card, such as the Tower, 9 and 10 of Swords, 10 of Wands, etc that is awkward for the tarot reader.

There is also a problem with the so-called positive cards – let’s say that the Empress and the Lovers appear in the Celtic Cross spread – what a wonderful combination! A fruitful relationship… with the distinct possibility that there will be a baby soon! But what if the client was a mother desperately worried about her under-age daughter’s relationship with an older man?

No wonder so many tarot readers lack confidence – they leave themselves in the permanent quandry of desperately trying to find significance in the divinatory meanings and then having to backtrack when the difficult cards turn up.

Do I have this problem? Nope! I use the Opening of the Key spread, which utilizes all 78 cards – the Death card will always appear somewhere, and I have the luxury of looking at the context of that card in relationship to the cards around it. In the Celtic Cross spread, it is easy for the client to see that tricky card in all its glory, while in the Opening of the Key spread, unless it is on the top of any of the four piles, it is tucked away, and the client may not even notice it. As a Tarot reader, I have the choice, I have the luxury, I have the option of drawing attention to the Death card, on my terms.

Try doing that with the Celtic Cross spread.

John Dee’s Birthday

Today, 13th July is the birthday of John Dee, my favourite magus, polymath, patriotic Englishman, even though he was Welsh.

John Dee came to prominence when he calculated the optimum time for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the First. It was a time when England was bankrupt, surrounded by enemies, and fearful of religious fanatics. Sound familiar?

By the end of her reign, England was the richest, most powerful country, which went on to create the British Commonwealth, a term coined by John Dee.

John Dee worked for the British Secret Service, headed by Walsingham. His code number was 007. Quite what Dee thought about the shenanigans around phone hacking we will probably never know. Oh for someone of his authority and stature – England needs him.

Tarot talk at Brighton University

As a favour for a friend of a friend I gave a tarot talk yesterday at Brighton University as part of Simon Ward’s MA on Critical Art.

I was expecting a bunch of bored students in the audience who knew nothing about Tarot, but actually everyone were Occulture veterans, so it was more like a reunion. Some were at my debut talk in the Hanbury Arms in 2002, so they got to hear the same talk again, but hopefully a lot more polished, and without the stage fright I experienced the first time round. Continue reading