Divi-Nation

So I'm going to take some time out here from complaining about our country 'tis of Me, and go off in my own little biodiesel sidecar to the land of Esoterica, with my Ohio State scarf merrily flapping in the freezing cold gray air of Northeastern Ohio in November.

I want to talk a little about the Tarot. A lot of people say they don't believe in the Tarot, or psychics, or whatever, and as I said in a former blog, I am down with that. One, there are so many phonies out there; two, it's hard to believe that if the Spirits DID have something to communicate, they would say it to me as opposed to, well, Oprah.

The fact is, if we are talking about people who have passed on, or have yet to be born, we are talking one heck of a lot of spirits. They can't all talk to Oprah. There is probably a long line. Therefore, it follows that some of them would have time to sit around in my basement with me and shoot the shit.

And that is how I personally look at the Tarot. It's more a friendly pointing out of things that I missed, or showing me things in a different light, than saying, "The Money is buried under the Old Oak Tree," or, "Your truck is up for an oil change."

The other thing I want to point out is that not all spirits are created equal. You might get great input one day, and lousy input the next day. Just consider the fact that one day we will all be spirits. Your next-door neighbor, your best friend, the cashier at Wal-mart--as Tom Lehrer said, "We will all go together when we go." So you never really know whose input you're getting, meaning, take it with a grain of salt, but take it.

I, personally, will listen to anyone once. Not only will I, I actually want to, which is part of why I speak a lot of languages. I feel like there is something to learn from everyone. The second time, I try to only listen to people who have something to say, which is not a heck of a lot of people. Many people have just one tale to tell, and they tell it ad nauseum, i.e. "I am a poor victim," or, "I know it all," or, "I am a really good person," or "I am tired of listening" or whatever. I do this myself, so this is not a blanket condemnation of Everybody Else.

I think the first step in breaking free of this addiction to our personal self-hypnosis is the ability to ask questions and listen to the answers, and the Tarot can be helpful with that, because you're not getting the answers you want to hear, which you've trained your friends to give you. You're getting answers that, even if dictated by complete chance, if you think the Tarot are just cards, at least make you think, "What if?"

One of the hardest things to accept about the Tarot is the so-called bad cards. There are certain cards that people hate, and with good reason. The Devil, the Hanged Man, the Tower, and a lot of the Minor Arcana, when you see them turn up in a spread, you just want to set fire to the whole pack.

This has led to the creation of a lot of decks where there are no bad cards. There are a lot of decks like The Faery Tarot or whatever where everything has been transformed into a good card. I can completely understand that instinct, just like my fingers always itch to turn good cards right side up when they show up on their heads, but it kind of leads you astray.

I mean, yes, it's all good, but at the same time, the manifestations of that are not always a walk in the park.

So what I want to do now, since this is My Blog and I can do whatever I want, is talk about the cards of the Major Arcana in a way that is relevant and hopefully, helpful.