The Cards Never Shut Up
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Welcome to the Mabon Tarot Blog Hop, in celebration of the Autumnal Equinox.
Almost thirty tarot bloggers have agreed to write on the same topic at the same time. When you finish here, proceed forward to Leeza Robertson at TarotScapes, or work backward to Joanna Ash at Sun Goddess Tarot.
If you find a break in the chain, visit the Master List.
Our wrangler this turn of the Wheel is Morgan Drake Eckstein. His task for us is deceptively simple. Morgan has asked us each to share a specific experience in our development as a tarot reader when our understanding of tarot or our tarot reading skill took a giant leap forward.
Any tarotist will tell you that tarot is full of aha moments. I think that’s what keeps most of us hooked. Over twenty-one years as a professional reader my reading style has gone through a lot of changes. I’d like to think my skills are always improving.
Can I isolate one moment, one class, one reading, or one profound experience with the cards, which thrust me forward? Certainly there are many. Let me share one that came very early in my tarot journey.
The thing that constantly amazes me about the cards is their ability to be repetitive. That the same poignant card will show up over and over again has always been an indicator of tarot’s efficacy for me. I could tell many stories about specific cards which constantly appeared for me over a period of time to guide me through a difficult journey or drive a specific unwelcome-but-necessary message home.
My discovery of tarot’s ability to make one card appear frequently in a person’s life is the quantum leap story I will add to our blog hop collection.
It started when I was first learning tarot, back in the mid-1980s in New Haven, Connecticut. I had a Rider Waite Smith in the yellow box, A Motherpeace Round Tarot, a book by Vicki Noble and a book by Eden Gray. I took four classes at the local New Age shop, The Elements of Life on State Street, now long gone. I don’t remember the name of my teacher, but obviously, she was good at what she did.
At the time I was living in student apartments in the Yale-dominated East Rock neighborhood. There were people constantly coming and going; I had four housemates and plenty of friends.
Everyone was willing to let me practice my new skill on them, even the one with a secret to hide.
One of our housemates had some really erratic behavior. We all loved her, but we were all concerned. Why was she behaving so strangely?
She was happy to let me practice tarot on her. I did, with great regularity. Each and every time, no matter the question or the deck, the Seven of Swords figured prominently. There was definitely a fox in the chicken coop.
The third time I saw the Seven of Swords come up for her, I called her on it. I knew she had been lying to all of us. She smiled the way children do with their hand in the cookie jar, but she said nothing.
At that point, I was a dog with a bone. I continued to ask questions, not of my housemate querent, but of the cards themselves. Eventually I had my answer, and she had to acknowledge its truth.
My housemate was a full-blown crack addict. That solved a few mysteries!
We often hear that “The cards never lie.” It’s also true that, until the truth comes out, the cards never shut up.
The realization that the same card would insistently present itself over and over again made it easy to more fully trust the wisdom of the cards. The power of those repetitive cards caused me to organically develop a reading style that allows for multiple appearances of the same card even in a single reading.
Over time I saw that a card which appeared insistently over a period of weeks or months would suddenly disappear when a situation resolved. That same card might reappear years later, or in a reading for another person, to denote a similar situation.
Those repetitive cards helped me develop a personal relationship with, and understanding of, each card.
Over the years, repetitive cards in self-reading have marked the significant events of my own life, from the development of my tarot business (Queen of Wands) to the death of my mother (Six of Cups), and beyond.
Repetitive cards help to build relationships with clients and students as we discover together the profound depth of a single card as it appears over a period of time.
As a tarot professional on a journey of spiritual growth, my quantum leaps in tarot advance me both professionally and personally.
May all your tarot leaps be joyous, and may you have a blessed turn of the Wheel.
Now don’t stop here! Make your own leap to the next blog in the chain!
