I’ll place the moon within your heart

So I read the cards for Kari yesterday.

It’s not the same as having your querant right in front of you, shuffling the cards and lending their own energy to the reading.  But it’s just as effective really, whether or not there’s an ocean between Kari and me.  So I cut the cards and shuffled them, laying them out on the kitchen table next to the quietly humming laptop.

The wonderfully infuriating thing about Kari is that she has absolute faith in my readings for her…and yet, she feels like questioning what I say every. single. damn. sentence.  Yeah, my friend is a walking collection of contradictions, I’m still getting used to that.  (And just between you and me, it’s one of the things I miss the most about her.)

When I describe a card and what it says, Kari always has to ask which card is representing that thought.  And then she says, “THAT SO DOES NOT SAY THAT.  HOW DOES IT SAY THAT?”  This is because I once tried to teach Kari how to read the tarot, so she has an inkling of how each of the 78 cards have their own specific meaning.

Initially, that may be how the Tarot works.  You have a card that has three main meanings maybe.  Depending on what type of spread you use, the cards that fall in certain positions also tell you something.  (For instance, one position may mean, “your recent past” while another could be “near future”, etc).  Then you take into account things like, is the card from the major or minor arcana?  Are all the suits represented, or is there something missing in the spread? (suits being wands, swords, pentacles, and cups).

But there’s a point where all of that comes together naturally, without any conscious effort on your part.  It definitely wasn’t like that in the beginning (I spent a fair amount of time referring to the book of meanings constantly), but after a while, it all starts to flow effortlessly.  The tarot really is just a tool, holding archetypes and symbols and universal truths, that help you unlock that intuition.  But that intuition, or inner guide, really is just a higher truth that flows through everyone, that all connects in the same place.

So when Kari asks me, “Where does it say that?” it’s impossible to point it out.  When I talk through my readings, it’s as if there’s a string that’s connecting my heart to the heart of the universe.  When I look at a card, there’s an energy that plucks at that string, and the music that comes from it is that intuition.

What I just described is both incredibly metaphorical and absolutely true.  I have no other words for it.

This could be partly why I get slightly exasperated (and at times annoyed) when people ask if I’m psychic.  It’s not about being “psychic” at all.  I’m sure that it can’t be helped, as tarot has the reputation it does.  But it just feels so innate, so stripped of the cinematic theatrics.  (I get practically livid when some religion-blinded nut “informs” me that I am pandering with the devil, and even have their own “personal experience” to back up such a claim, but I will not go into that.  It would be justifying insanity if I tried to defend Tarot in that regard).

And to think that I’ve only been actively reading the cards for almost three years now.  There’s still so much to learn, so much to experience, so much more room to grow in.  And it all feels like I’m simply relearning all of this, as if tarot reading is something that is so familiar and natural.  Perhaps like how Gibran described it, “The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.”