Tarot: another source of information

I rarely use Tarot Cards. That’s mainly because they are so damned spookily accurate! They make me nervous. There was a spell when Kal was using the cards regularly, for himself and for others, and he found the same. He told me how it was useful for obtaining the kind of information about a situation that couldn’t be obtained (or would take a very long time to narrow down) with dowsing. So, I gave it a go. I learned a single layout, and then I used a couple of reference books to interpret the cards. One word – accurate. Those of you who may have tried this will know what I mean. This is not your “Sun Sign Astrology” tabloid newspaper kind of accurate. This is the “are you reading my mind?” type of accurate.

Of course Tarot cards are symbols, symbols of some human psychology, and there are levels of interpretation required to make something meaningful come out of a reading. Yet, whenever I have done it, and I can count the number of times still on one hand, I have been flabbergasted, nay overwhelmed by the pertinence, the serendipity, the degree of coincidence, however you want to term it. It was spot on. Whether for me, or for someone else. I have been told that I “have the gift” with the cards. Well, so did Solitaire (Jane Seymour) in the James Bond film “Live and Let Die” and look what happened to her! (Actually, what did happen to her, I can’t remember….?)

Why Druids should use Tarot

Good question. Sounds like a statement but it’s also a question – why should druids use Tarot, or any method of divination? Well, the druid revivalist culture seems to purport that there is some historical precedence for a link between forms of augury or divination and the druid class. The Romans (and where would we be without the Romans, with their aqueducts, laws, sewage systems….etc) included instances in their reports of Britain about the scrying and divining abilities of the druids.

Don’t let history (even if it was dubious political history) be your only guide, however. There are other sound reasons to adopt a form of divination. Is dowsing not a form of scrying, of obtaining knowledge from a gnostic source, that can easily be turned towards divination tasks too? Indeed it can. The humble dowsing rod can be used for many purposes, but the further away from dowsing in connection with the land the less credible the results feel to me. This may be a personal thing, however, because I admit to having used dowsing for divination, even if the results have always seemed less reliable and more likely to change. But then, that’s the future for you – always changing!

I use tarot card when I need a bit more information about a subject than I could sensibly get by dowsing. For example, if I wanted to know about the intentions of a particular Nature spirit I could begin to formulate a whole list of dowsing questions, or I could try to commune with the spirit in order to see if I could obtain some images that might help me decide on that. A far safer, more reliable and much faster way would be to hold the idea in my mind and draw some tarot cards to help me form a picture about the subject.

Let it be said, however, that tarot and other forms of divination are powerful tools. They should only be used sparingly. Over-use leads to a strange way of thinking, and I have met people who think they are just short of divine themselves because they can use these tools. Or they won’t step outside their house in the morning until they have done a layout to determine whether it’s going to be a good or bad day for them. This is clearly madness. But that’s how power affects some people. Use powerful objects sparingly and with a certain trepidation called respect.

A Case Study

I did a reading for someone recently (under protest – I have hardly ever done this because it frightens me to get involved in other people’s lives). I made sure that I knew nothing at all about the situation, only that there were two people involved directly, and that an intolerable situation had developed. That was all I knew. When I had dealt the cards I took them away to write up my reading of the way they had come out.

When I delivered it the person who I was reading for was startled – they said it was very very accurate indeed.  The person involved came back to me after a few days saying how accurate everyone who knew of the circumstances considered the reading, and the interpretation to be. This included a friend of theirs who was someone well-versed in the Tarot (you wonder why they were not approached for a reading instead!). This was quite nice because Tarot readings are not something I do regularly, only when required or cajoled.

Doing the reading seems to have really made a positive difference to this person’s life quite quickly by affirming things that friends have been advising for a long time, and the person looks visibly relieved to be working through the situation with new insights. This made the whole thing worthwhile. I probably won’t do that again until next year now.

More resources

Here are some links to useful tarot resources that I have discovered. There are many more, these are just some I have used myself. Take them, leave them, disbelieve them – up to you.

1. This explanation of the Celtic Cross layout was useful to me
2. This set of cards is standard, and recommended for a plain reading with no ‘slant’ : Rider Waite cards
3. The Druidcraft Tarot is a set I find useful for dowsing myself or druidry-related subjects.
4. A page that explains the basic meanings of all the card in a typical pack

I am trying to make this fit into my current task of “making magic manifest” and I think it qualifies. Do I get an extra credit? 😉

Gwas.