Oracular Anomalies

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When Readings Go Rogue

Welcome to the 2015 Imbolc Tarot Blog Hop. Imbolc is a Fire holiday that celebrates creativity, and the coming spring. For this round of the Blog Hop our wrangler, Karen Sealey, of Pure Blessed Tarot, is really working our creativity!

She has asked us each to discuss a time where we noticed something off, or unexpected, in our divinatory work, an “oracular anomaly”. This is a topic I write on often, and I can’t wait to see what my fellow bloggers have to say.

After more than twenty years as a full time tarot professional, I have seen my share of strange cards and stranger readings. Like all tarot readers, I have seen the cards come up in ways so poignant they make me cry, and my client with me. Also, like all tarot readers, I’ve missed things, and had a few things turn out differently than I had expectedly.

Since I care a great deal about customer service, I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over what went wrong on those few occasions where I’ve missed something that should have been obvious.

After all these years, I still believe the cards never lie. However, I know the reader sometimes gets it wrong.

For my contribution to this anthology that is the Tarot Blog Hop, here are three of the reasons tarot readings go rogue, and some possible fixes.

1.       Experience makes a difference.

There are some great young readers out there. Heck, some of us were young readers once. However, readers, like all professionals, learn from their mistakes. It’s easier for more experienced readers to sniff out important subtleties. Sometimes the difference between the energy of a new couple being excited about meeting each other and the energy of everlasting love may be hard to distinguish, for instance.
A seasoned reader has a better chance of detecting, either by nuances in the cards or their perception of the energy, these important differences. That’s because we got it wrong a few times, and learned from our mistakes.
Unfortunately, there’s no fix for this one, except time and patience.

2.       Degrees are hard to detect.

I’ve seen the Tower come up to predict a terrorist attack, and I’ve seen it come up to indicate coming down with a cold. Sometimes we see dark cards, or get a bad feeling, because tragedy really is looming. Sometimes those same cards and feeling indicate an inconvenience, or a momentary discomfort.
The fix for this is to read further. Ask more questions of the cards, either by interpreting further or by pulling more cards. Try to narrow down the nature of the approaching problem, and the degree of severity. Ask questions, too, about possible approaches, and ways to best get through or around the impending difficulty. Don’t get so hung up by the intense nature of the card that you neglect to dig deeper into its meaning.

3.       Sometimes people don’t want us to see the truth.

There are reasons you may not see that your client’s new girlfriend is keeping devastating secrets. Some people really are good liars. Basically, if they believe their own BS, the cards might reflect their confidence more strongly than their deceit.
If your client feels no reason to be suspicious, you might not pursue the matter, even if a card like the Seven of Swords gives you reason for concern. Often, as readers, we don’t want to upset our clients. If they assure us everything is fine, it’s hard for us to push the point. Generally, I think it is a mistake to let our clients railroad us. On the other hand, no one appreciates or benefits from a doom-and-gloom psychic.
The key here is, if you get the feeling that something is off, or that the client may not have the whole story, ask more questions of the cards. You can even ask questions silently, pull cards and reflect on them before speaking about them to the client. This gives you an opportunity to pursue possibilities to which your client might be resistant, or about which you may be hazy due to the energy of the person or situation. This way, you have an opportunity to get the full picture, even if someone doesn’t want you to see it.
Sometimes, too, our clients are just not ready to hear and accept what's coming. I think sometimes the Universe gives the client the comfort they need at the moment - not by lying about the ultimate outcome, but by minimizing the discomfort of the path to get there.

Overall, the cure for rogue tarot readings is to read more – more cards, more introspection, more time, more focus, and more intuition.

We can become frustrated, insecure and confused when, after a series of hits, we have a miss. Often our clients forgive us more easily than we forgive ourselves.
Nothing – no system, no tool and no person, is perfect. Imperfection is the nature of the human experience that is so perfectly expressed in tarot.

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Oddball Card, Deep Truth

Tarot is a language of images, symbols and archetypes. Often, in a tarot reading, the cards speak clearly of the situation at hand. In a positioned tarot spread, each card in each position is easily relatable and understood.

Sometimes it happens that a typical interpretation for a card in a particular position (or in answer to a particular question) just doesn’t make sense. I call these “oddball cards.”

This happened to me in a reading recently. In my eleven-card Celtic Cross spread, the card in the crossing position represents the biggest challenge. In this particular reading, the card in that position was the Two of Cups.

Typically, the Two of Cups in the crossing position would indicate a problem within a current relationship, or a current problem regarding matters of love and romance. However, in this client’s life, there were two significant factors standing in the way of this rote interpretation.

First, the client was in a good relationship. Second, going in to the reading knew that the client’s biggest concern was an undiagnosed health issue.

Typically, when a card in a larger spread doesn’t makes sense, it’s easy to gloss over it and focus on the cards that do make sense. There are many times when it’s better to take time to dig deeply into these “oddball cards”.

I invited the client to process the card with me. I told her the usual interpretations, and she agreed that her relationship was better than ever, and her biggest worry was her health. She also felt, as I did, that this card represented something vital about her health situation.

I was using my trusty Waite-Smith deck, and so the caduceus caught my eye. Today, we associate the Rod of Hermes with medicine. Since the Two of Cups is a card of partnership (usually romantic), I began to understand that the partnership that was her biggest challenge was with medicine, that is, her health care professionals!

Digging deeper as I looked at the surrounding cards, I saw another partnership that was affecting her health; her ability to be a good partner to herself.

The gift, and challenge, of her illness was this. She had to learn to stand up for herself, honor her needs, and advocate for herself with her health care professionals. She had been lacking in self-care for years. She had never been good at getting her needs met.  This illness was her opportunity to change that.

The next time you get an oddball card, take the time to dip deeply, and find the profound truth within it. No matter how strange the card may seem, the truth is always in there somewhere.

Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen: A Groundbreaking Achievement

Holistic Tarot
Benebell Wen
Published by North Atlantic Books
Review by Christiana Gaudet

Whether or not you plan to read all 874 pages of Benebell Wen’s ambitious first book, “Holistic Tarot,” you will be happy to have this well researched (and soon to be well-loved) tome in your library. It’s available in paperback and electronic versions, from North Atlantic Books.

In a world where everyone who matters publishes, the challenge is to add something new and needed to the tarot bookshelf.  Benebell Wen has done exactly that.

Wen is no stranger to achievement. Like a surprising number of tarotists, Wen is well educated and working in the corporate world. Benebell Wen is her tarot name. I am sure the same discipline and drive that fuels her success in business helped fuel this impressive manual.

Of course, length does not a great book make. “Holistic Tarot” is extremely lengthy, but is it any good? Yes, it is! “Holistic Tarot” is well written and painstakingly researched. For the first time in the history of tarot, there exists a near-comprehensive tarot resource.

Included in “Holistic Tarot” are thirty-three chapters, an inclusive index, lists of chapter notes, and a helpful appendix. Unlike most tarot books, “Holistic Tarot” adheres to the same standards as any academic work.

It would be easier to make a list of what is not included in this tarot resource than what is. Wen has assembled an entire history of tarot; but not only a history of when, why and where the cards emerged. This is a history of the art and practice of tarot divination, written from a scholarly perspective that manages to be personable and relevant, rather than dry and dull.

The one piece some tarotists may find missing is that Wen, like me, is a Waite-Smith girl. A Crowley-Harris-Thoth reader or a Marseille reader will be less excited about this book than I am. However, they should get the book anyway, because there are plenty of useful bits for everyone in this book!

Many of the chapters include sample readings to help demonstrate techniques, easy-to-understand tables and charts, and both new and classic tarot spreads and techniques. A beginning tarot reader will find an answer to virtually every question they have. An experienced reader will find challenges that will bring a new dimension to their understanding and operation of tarot.

We tarot readers often choose a style or tradition that works for us. We are aware of other techniques and traditions, but we tend to stick with what we know. “Holistic Tarot” nudges you out of your box, and makes it easy to try different ways of working with and understanding tarot.

Over my two decades of fulltime professional tarot reading, I’ve noticed that tarot thinking sometimes divides between traditionalism, and a more modern approach. Sometimes that division pits old-fashioned fortune telling against a spiritual and psychological approach.

What is fascinating to me about Wen’s book is that it so clearly and respectfully teaches time-honored techniques; while at the same time demonstrates the evolution of tarot as a tool for healing. In fact, the subtitle of “Holistic Tarot” is “An Integrative Approach to Using Tarot for Personal Growth.”

“Holistic Tarot” gives us exactly what the subtitle promises, and so much more. “Holistic Tarot” is a monumental achievement in tarot, and will be an essential addition to every tarotists’ toolbox.

To get a glimpse inside the book, watch the video!

Christiana Gaudet Reviews Holistic Tarot

Video of Christiana Gaudet Reviews Holistic Tarot

The Page of Swords and Holiday Truths

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Welcome to the Yule Tarot Blog Hop 2014. For this turn of the Wheel, or wrangler, Arwen, has asked us all to perform the same spread with the deck of our choice, and share our results.

The spread Arwen designed is about the gift-giving nature of the winter festival season, regardless of the holiday or holidays you celebrate.

Each blog hop participant (there are twenty-four of us this time around) will perform the same spread, and share their results here, for the blog hop. You can try the spread, too!

The Joy of Gifting

1. What gift would you give the world if you could?
2. What gift would you want from the world?
3. What gift have you gotten that has brought you joy?
4. What gift have you given that has brought you joy?
5. What is one last thing you would like to share about this season

I’m using Ciro Marchetti’s Gilded Royale Tarot for this reading.

When doing this sort of reading, two things can happen. One possibility is that every card will make sense, and the reading will be immediately accurate and understandable. The other possibility is the cards drawn won’t easily fit the question. What do you do when the Three of Swords comes up to describe a gift you’ve given that brought you joy, for instance? When these things happen, the cards aren’t wrong, they just require you to dig a little deeper to understand their message.

Happily, my reading is of the first variety. The five cards I received fit the questions so amazingly it is hard to believe they came up at random.

The gift I would give the world if I could is the Knight of Cups.  Yes, I want to give every person on the planet the ability to know love, to feel loved, to be empowered by love and to understand the nature of love. That, indeed, would be my gift to the world.

The gift I would want from the world is a gift I have already received. That is the Three of Pentacles, the ability to work at my chosen craft, along with the skill and tools to do it well and receive recognition for my work.  My desire for the future is to keep receiving this gift for as long as I breathe!

The Nine of Cups is the traditional “Wish Card”, and appears to describe a gift I have gotten that has brought me joy. To me, this does not describe a particular tangible gift as much as it describes my general satisfaction and gratitude for the many, many blessings in my life. I will say, though, that one Yule I wished for a guitar. That guitar has brought me years of joy!

The gift I have given that brought me joy is the Knight of Wands. Outside of traditional holiday giving, the gift I give most regularly is the teaching of tarot. I hope that the Knight of Wands indicates that I am able to inspire other tarotists, and to nurture their passion. This brings me a great deal of joy.

The final card is meant to describe one last thing I would like to share about the season. The card I received is the Page of Swords. To me, the Page of Swords is the messenger of the truth. What truth would I like to share about this season?

The Page of Swords can refer to a smart child. Christmas is, in many ways, a children’s holiday. I don’t like that we celebrate this holiday by lying to children. The spirit of Santa, the energy of Santa, holiday miracles – these are all real, true things. Why do we have to darken them with a lie, when the myth and the truth of the holiday spirit would certainly suffice?

My children wrote letters to Santa, received gifts from Santa, and baked cookies for Santa. Never did they think Santa was a real person, and never did that make Yule any less special to them. As soon as they were old enough, they got to be Santa, too. We had wonderful holidays, and I never had to lie to them.

When I perform a tarot spread, I always like to look at the trends present in the cards. You will notice there are no Major Arcana cards. That doesn’t surprise me. As much as I like the holidays, now my kids are grown, the season is not as big a deal as it once was. Frankly, that’s a relief. I am happy to keep my holidays Minor Arcana style.

Of the five cards, three of them are young Court cards, two Knights and a Page. That really reminds me of my own precious childhood memories of the holidays. I’m pleased we were able to give our own kids some great holiday memories, too.

I think, too, the greatest gift of the holidays is spending time with friends and family, the people around us. It doesn’t surprise me that three of the five holiday cards are “people” cards.

Now let’s see how the other bloggers’ holiday readings went. If you are working backwards, visit Machelle Earley and wish her a happy holiday. Or, follow along to visit  Arwen's blog, and see how her reading unfolded.

Happy holidays, and thanks for stopping by.  We’ll see you at the next turn of the Wheel, for another Tarot Blog Hop!

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Don’t Let Your Past Dictate You Future!

Here’s a conversation that seems to happen a great deal.

You: “I am sure I will never meet someone to have a relationship with.
Me: “What makes you sure about that?”
You: “I haven’t met anyone yet.”

There are other versions of that conversation, too, including the one that goes like this.

You: “I know I will never have a good love relationship.”
Me: “How do you know that?”
Client: “Because I never have.”

It’s true that sometimes when we want different results, we have to do different things. Nonetheless, it feels dangerous to assume that whatever has been true about our past will also be true about our future.

The dichotomy is this. It’s human nature to fear change. So if we want something different in the future than we had in the past, we have to be open to change, and willing to make change.

We can learn from the past. We can allow the past to create a foundation for the future. We can make changes, so we don’t repeat the past.

We don’t have to let our past dictate, or predict, our future.