A Tarot Testimonial
I am a big believer in the ability of tarot to help clear our minds of any static and focus on the issue at hand. This article in Salon magazine highlights all of the benefits of tarot in building clarity and even creating a stronger communication between people.
Tarot helped me take advice from my mother
Our relationship hasn't always been easy. For a long time, tarot was one more thing I didn't understand about her
By Meryl Phair
My mom deals out the next three months of my life from a stack of blue cards. She flips over the line of cards one by one revealing five of cups, ace of cups, eight of wands, the Emperor, two of cups, the World upside down, and three of pentacles upside down. She examines the cards, pausing on the upside-down World. Her fingers trace the wreathed oval. She picks it up. "That's what you have to know about the cards," she said. "If it's upside down it doesn't necessarily mean it's negative."
My relationship with my mom hasn't always been easy. For the longest time, tarot was one more thing I thought I would never understand about her. Tarot is a mystical guiding system that has been used throughout history for fortune telling. The cards first emerged in Europe in the 15th century and were used simply for card games. The use of tarot cards in divination came into usage during the 1700s and have since been connected to the occult and mysticism around the world. Recently, tarot and astrology have become popular with millennials, along with other New Age spiritual practices.
When my mother first got into tarot, I kept my distance. I believed there was no realistic explanation for predicting someone's life through a deck of cards. Then one day, during the pandemic, driven half out of boredom and half out of the certainty nothing could be weirder than what we were already living through, I asked my mom to give me a reading. It was startlingly accurate. Over the course of the next year and a half, I asked her for readings on a regular basis. She predicted the outcome of various periods of time in my life and gave me advice based on her readings, which were not only accurate but insightful.
In a tarot reading, the participant asks a question, and the reader will flip over a series of cards, interpreting an answer based on each card's meaning. Usually, I ask for a three-month overview of what is in store for me. My mom examines the cards, pointing out their meanings as she works to build the overarching message in response. After reading the cards and evaluating the relationships they have with each other, she fits the message into the context of my life.