Okay so this is more than just a FB post can handle. I hopped back into Blogger. I've not been online in YEARS. I probably have 4 blogs that were running all the time, then one, then nothing. This one ... I think you'll like so let's jump right in here into the meat and potatoes!
How'd You Get Into Tarot?
It's been something that, since birth, I've known was natural and normal for me. I've always heard things, seen things or felt things. I firmly believe a lot of people, if not everyone also feels these things but the refuse to admit it out of fear. Some of the stories written about divination, particularly in the bible, mislead you into believing people who use divination are somehow evil and against God. Yet other parts of the bible speak about divination in a positive tone as well. This, in my opinion, is because the bible was not written by God or by Jesus but by man who interpreted their versions of the stories told over hundreds/thousands of years and then was re-written with chapters removed and things added. That's a whole other post so I digress.
Aside from feeling this was who I am from the get-go, I got into Tarot and Divination in three different ways :
- - Spiritual discussions amongst my family (all on my mother's side). As a child my mother told me about the spirits that inhabited our house. When I was born, mom rocked me in the wooden rocking chair that I still have and felt the hand of her grandmother, Mammie, on her shoulder and heard, "You did good, baby". Mammie passed away before mom found out she was pregnant but it was something she wanted to share with her. (Side note, mom had been previously married and in a rage her husband beat her until she lost the 7 mo fetus she carried. It scarred her and they told her she'd never have kids. She and my dad had been married for about 7 years when she was surprised with me and thereafter my sister.)
- I was told stories about how when meeting my dad, mom saw visions in gold of a home with the man she met while helping her aunt and uncle shop for a bed in the next town over. Dad loved her very much and would walk the 30 miles to see her after work some evenings and would hitchhike here and there to make the journey shorter. When he had a car he'd drive to see her and once as they were driving they saw a man on the side of the road who looked like he might be in trouble. They looked in the rear view to see if he was waving for them to stop and he was gone. They circled around but he was no where to be found.
- As for our home, my grandfather had gotten that part of land way out in the country from my grandmother's parents upon their passing. He cleared the land himself but left a lot of trees. When building the house and all around the immediate area he found hundreds of arrowheads. Being that it was about 200 feet or so from a creek, down in a hollow, we assume that it was a spot that Native Americans had lived and perhaps traded. While I've never seen or felt their presence, my aunt saw a man where they had raised chickens. He appeared as a Native American who was just watching over her. She looked again and he was gone. Nearly everyone in the family home had stories of my great grandfather, who loved to tickle them with the end of his long beard as kids. They'd feel his beard scratching their cheek or their toes. Never menacing, just playful.
- I personally saw my great grandmother at the foot of my bed as a kid. She just watched me as I slept. She turned and started toward my grandmother's room and I pretended to be asleep for a minute then bolted to my mom's room. In the morning my gran asked, "Well why didn't you come get me?" I said, "DUH she was GOING that way, I wasn't."
- The final stories I'll share is when my grandfather was a week or so from passing in our home, the home he built for us, he said, "Someone should let that woman in." When they asked what woman, he said, "Well that woman in the white dress there on the porch. Let her in." They opened the door but there was no one on the porch, of course, and shortly after Hospice was called in. When my grandmother passed in the hospital she asked my aunt to go get my uncle because he was outside her window. He wasn't there, he was flying in from TX at the time. We speculate she saw papa but didn't know who it was. She passed a day or so later. - Bibliomancy : My grandmother was very Christian (both were actually but I'm still referring to my mother's side). She didn't believe in ghosts. She was in church every Sunday and some Wednesdays. We had bibles in nearly every room. I only knew my grandfather for a short time but he became Christian later in life when God came to him as he laid in bed with a fever one evening while gran was at church. Skipping ahead to after his passing, my mom and gran told me about a bible under gran's bed. The bible belonging to her mother. The bible with the key. It was passed down to them in stories that if you placed the string on a particular page in the bible, the string was tied like a necklace with the key at the other end, you hold the key on your finger allowing the bible to dangle and read a particular verse (letting the bible stay stationary), you could learn the first initial of your future spouse. You would read the verse and say a letter in the alphabet. If it did not spin on it's own, you would repeat reading the verse with each letter of the alphabet until it did. *It was not a light bible and it would really suck if your future spouse was Zander or Zella.
Sounded silly. I thought it was only something our family had done. Turns out it's much larger. There are stories about Bibliomancy and different uses of it that go back to books publicized in the 1500s describing how keys were used with bibles for yes/no questions as we do now with pendulums. And working with keys as pendulums were used to determine the sex of babies before birth, among other things. I know kids use to do that as well with apple peels cut in a circular motion and tossed over the shoulder. It was supposed to curl into the letter of your future mate. Or just be an apple peel. - Papyromancy : Or better known as the above photo depicts so hilariously, the Paper Fortune Teller. I've also seen "Cootie Catcher", paper finger game and origami fortune teller. As kids we'd use it with silly pranks or whatever. You choose a color, choose a number and write some silly thing inside like who someone will marry or how many kids they'll have. You only have 8 choices, in the end, written by kids who still eat glue and pick their noses. Hardly actual divination but you get my point.
Leviticus 19:26-31
‘You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying.
You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard.
You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.
Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot, so that the land will not fall to harlotry and the land become full of lewdness.
You shall keep My sabbaths and revere My sanctuary; I am the Lord.
Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.'
They see what they want to see of Leviticus because there are 37 actual Laws of God from Moses, who himself was a prophet that most Christians look up to and kinda write off the fact that at one point he grew horns and taxed his people with giving him offerings of food but that's a whole other post as well.
Throughout the bible God sent angels and spirits to people to relay messages. These were written. Then in later sections they tell you that you are defiled if you have seen, heard or gone to anyone that relays messages. In my opinion, that's man talking. Not God. Also you will notice in these verses it says not to eat meat, you are not to trim your hair or your beard, you are not to cut or tattoo your body and certainly not in remembrance for the dead ... And yet Jesus, himself, turned loaves of bread into fish that was a meat that once held blood, and no depiction of Jesus shows him accurately with dark skin and long flowing beard or hair that in his 30s he certainly would have had. (Every image with long hair/beard appears trimmed which according to Moses and Leviticus would also be Jesus defying God.) Again, writings of man and not of God.
I firmly believe Faith is not that of a religion. A religion is something man made up to gather and talk about their Faith. That is not a good or bad thing, it is just a thing.
As I mentioned above, my grandfather was not saved until later in his life. This was not because his family didn't go to church, they did, he just never felt called by the Lord. That's Faith. As children my mom and uncle were saved and baptized. Not because they felt called but because they were of the age my grandmother believed they should be saved so the devil wouldn't get them and be baptized like Christ was by John in a river. That's religion, not Faith. Til the day she died my mother was a Faithful person but did not follow her mom's religion. She was also deathly afraid of water. She showered in less than 4 minutes flat and if she took a bath it was in NO MORE than 2 or so inches of water. My uncle couldn't possibly be more New Age and my aunt is open to learning. That's Faith.
For myself, I believe in God and I believe in Jesus. I believe some of the stories written in the bible as many other bibles have in them the same stories and list of people, though some of the names and stories differ slightly. I believe that if you have Faith and speak with your higher powers, they will lead you in the right direction. Things that are good, things that are brought to you the way they were intended with the Law of Attraction, the most natural and most basic of laws. Some things were written for you, some things you choose before you get here and some things you choose as you go. Your path is ever changing.
What is Tarot to YOU?
To me, Tarot is another in the long line of divination tools that have been used since the beginning.
Cleromancy, or Bone Throwing, Stick Throwing, Runes, I Ching
Scrying, or using a Crystal Ball, mirror or water with a glass like surface
Radiesthesia, Vibrational Physics or using Dowsing Rods / Pendulums / Keys on strings
Cartomancy, using any sort of cards to tell fortunes or read the future
I could also include the use of Astrology, Spirit Boards (or Ouija) and Seances but those are a whole other ... I'm not going into those in this post.
Divination is the basic use of energy from within you and that which surrounds you to guide you on your journey. Contrary to some beliefs it does not tell you who you will marry, what color car you should buy, why your sister is being a bitch or where you put your keys. I feel our spirit guides help us raise our energies and connect them so that if we can be in the ballpark of what is going on and help possibly answer some questions or guide someone to the right answers, we will.
Tarot allows you to use card definitions/imagery as well as energies to help others. Sometimes you will see things you don't want to see and feel things you don't want to feel but you can only be honest and tell someone. Some of it can be spot on and some of it isn't for them, it's another energy. Energy has to be cleared before and after a reading because that stuff hangs around. Again, another post...
There's a lot of ... I don't want to call them myths because people believe and stand by them but I don't want to call them superstitions either.
Things I've heard :
- You can only use one deck
- You can't let anyone touch your cards during a reading
- You have to let them touch your cards to do a reading
- You can only read if someone is with you
- You can only do a read if you quote the cards
- You have to use this type of crystal, this type of incense, this type of salt to cleanse energy
- You can't read for yourself
- You can't read for people about medical/job/love related things
- You can only read for those things
- You can only shuffle 3 times
- You can only shuffle in this direction
- You have to mix the cards and read in upright and reverse
- You have to put cards back if they pop out and only pull in a straight row from the top, never in a fan or from the bottom
I'm sure there's more. I don't follow these but others do.
I have, currently, 2 Tarot decks and 3 Oracle decks. I have one in my Amazon cart and Lisa Williams has a deck and Affirmation cards that I want and she's announced 2 new decks coming this year. I need a second job to afford all this. BTW I absolutely adore Lisa and HIGHLY recommend her to anyone and everyone. She helps you get in touch with your inner self, with the real you. She's an absolute blessing.
For me regarding the Tarot, conditions are things we place upon ourselves and I rarely place conditions. Be stretchy, be flexible. Read a book about it, take a course about it on Udemy or on youtube. You can get the information and use it to benefit others. It is never to further yourself with the lottery or to harm others. Just ... information.
The connection is energy. I cleanse the area I'm using and ask that God and my spirit guides help me find the answers or the path a person/client should take to bring them to a positive end goal. I block negative energies and have my crystals around me or close by to help absorb any negative energies that may try to come in. It's harder reading or dousing for yourself as you worry if you're projecting your thoughts out there and pretending they are sent to you. If you cleanse properly, however feels best for you, and keep your thoughts and energy clear then you'll still get the path you're looking for. I write down a lot of my readings or take photos of the spread. The spread changes to what I feel is necessary for the questions I am asking but I do standard spreads sometimes as well.
And I'm learning to listen. Your spirit guides will whisper things. Not just thoughts you'd come up with. I mean anyone can pull a 3 of Swords and say "Oh gurl he's cheating on you" ... which btw don't ever do that ... but you may hear a voice in the back of your mind that says, "This isn't about 'is he cheating', this feels bigger" and feel because you may feel or see things in your mind like "I feel like she's not really getting what she wants from the relationship. She's placed ultimatums and he's not stepping out but he's not stepping up to what she wanted either." Then just be honest with what you feel/hear. When you are done, give thanks to the spirit guides and God for allowing some sort of healing for the other person. Saying Good Bye and Thank You is important because they don't have to be there to help you but they are so show gratitude as if you would if they were in the physical world helping you. Clear the energies.
That is what Tarot is to me. Tarot is a helper for those on a path. It doesn't tell you your path but it helps you understand more about how you see the things around you. Your path is ever changing. The future is fluid and in motion. This doesn't try to change it. It doesn't try to sway you or pull you from your religion. It's a guide.
It is not Witchcraft or Devil Worship (which, side note, while there are some in witchcraft that dabble in the dark arts, Harm None Do As Ye Will is the Wiccan Rede of Witches and most who use Witchcraft. You can be a witch and not be Wiccan and no Wiccans are devil worshipers). There is nothing evil about it. If there is, you're doing it wrong.
I feel like anyone or everyone could have an Oracle Deck and once a day ask through morning prayer or whatever, "What can I learn today" or "What can I focus more toward today/this week" and pull an Oracle Card. The Soul's Journey Lesson Cards by James Van Praagh (Which IS an affiliate link but I've had this for years and only made about 7 cents) is a fantastic started deck. You may shuffle the deck and pull the ABUNDANCE card, "I am a limitless being, and I can manifest whatever I desire in this physical reality". That is no different than Ask and Ye Shall Receive. It's just called something different.
So now, after a book has been written in a blog post, what are your thoughts?
What questions do you have?
What experiences would you like to share with others?
I hope to do more of these because this started out as a silly image that got me blogging again and I feel fantastic! ;) Have a blessed day!
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