Spirit Guides

This morning's meditation was awesome to say the least. I raised my vibration as much as I could, and asked to be contacted by guides who serve the Light as well as humanity. Three beings of light and colour appeared.

The first one was a long-time friend, Zohar. He first appeared about 5 years ago, and I have been aware of his presence in my life every now and again ever since, even though we have not, as yet, established a proper working relationship. Zohar appears as a golden flame of Spirit.

When the other two appeared before me in rapid succession, I was taken aback by the magnificence of these three beings, and felt that I had perhaps bitten off more than I could chew. 'I'm early, aren't I?' I sheepishly said to them telepathically. I could almost hear them chuckle as they affirmed that I was early but that they were happy to introduce themselves.

The second light-being was purple and introduced himself as Azok. The third, beautiful and gentle turquoise being of light said her name was Mitra. They told me they would start working with me when the time was right.

As soon as I came out of meditation, I wrote their names down. I had already googled Zohar's name five years ago, when he first appeared, and learned that his name means illumination/brightness in Hebrew. Googling Azok and Mitra respectively, I found that they meant their (Hungarian) and ally (Hindi) respectively. Illumination (is) their ally. Z.A.M. Wow!

Here were the servants of the Light that I had asked for. Trust me, I speak none of the languages mentioned above, and I'm absolutely blown away by the clarity with which I heard their names.

I wanted to know if It would be possible to communicate with them via the Tarot, and I received an affirmative answer from the Tarot.

I pulled two cards. The first one, Strength, represent what they can do for me. The second, 10 of Pentacles, represents what I can do for them. I used the Tarot of the Spirit, since this deck works well for questions of a more spiritual nature, and I believe the cards above speak for themselves.

I realise that still have work to do in the 'getting over myself' department before we can truly begin working together, but it won't be too much longer now... I can feel it in my bones :)

Legacy of the Divine Tarot by Ciro Marchetti

Ciro Marchetti's third (and final?) tarot deck is now ready for preorder on Amazon. The Legacy of the Divine Tarot is an absolute stunner!

A recap of our first Tarot study group meetup...

...can be found HERE, along with loads of links to Tarot learning resources and fun online!

Enjoy!

A different Ace of Swords

Today's card, the Ace of Swords from the Circle of Life Tarot, is not your normal average Ace of Swords. Swords deal with intellectual thought process, logic and communcation. Aces deal with beginnings. I've never seen anoher Ace of Swords that depicts pregnancy, but it feels apt somehow.

New thought is being born... and maybe a new way of communicating.

We can't see the face of the pregnant young woman in the card, but her body language seems to convey that she is excited about the baby that is growing inside her.

She doesn't have any human friends around to share her thoughts with... Is she talking to the beetle suspended in mid air? And what is the significance of the pumpkin next to her?

She's not wearing any clothes - a symbol of 'the naked truth'?

There is a sense of vulnerability and innocense, but also of strength and trust. She doesn't know what being a mother will be like, and for now she can only hope and pray that the baby will be born healthy... Yet she remains optimistic.

She's in a dream... or maybe I'm in her dream - projecting optimism, willing her to be optmistic in spite of the immensity of it all...

Tarot Myths

· You have to be given your deck to be able to use it for divination

Absolutely not true. Back in the day when a deck cost a small fortune, it might have been difficult justifying buying your own - especially if you were a mother with a brood of hungry children about. There is no reason (spiritually or logically) why you shouldn't be able to pick out and buy your own deck. Try manifesting one through cosmic ordering if you're struggling financially at the moment. The Universe has wonderful ways of providing.

· It has to be wrapped in a black silk cloth and/or be kept in a wooden box to work

While it's good to protect your deck from damp by wrapping it in cloth, there's no reason why you couldn't use cotton or other colours than black. The wooden box is also a great idea, for keeping your deck safe from bugs, damp, dirt etc as well as for creating a nice display of your metaphysical treasures... Go ahead, bung a few cleansing crystals in the box while you're at it, but don't let anyone ever tell you that you have to keep your decks a certain way. There are fabulous readers out there who keep their decks together with a rubber band. Enough said.

· Some cards are ‘bad’ – others are ‘good’

Nope. There is neither good nor bad, there is only change. It's what we learn from our experiences (and our Tarot cards) that makes all the difference. Some lessons are more difficult... I'm still learning not to cringe at the appearance of certain cards, but deep down I know that it's the difficult lessons that bring the biggest growth spurts.

· The Death card means physical death

I'm not going to lie. It can mean physical death. It's a card of endings but also a card of rebirth, transformation and regeneration - just like physical death, which is only the ending for the physical body; the soul lives on (duh). However, most *ethical* tarot readers choose not to do readings on fated events that cannot be changed because it's not very empowering for the client. Have a chat with your god(s)/goddess(es)/higher Self and your cards, and come to some sort of agreement on your ethical viewpoint on foretelling death. Be clear on your policy and let your client know what it is before you start the reading. Whatever you do, don't lay the cards out, spot the Death card (in a position/card combo that means physical death) and quickly gather the cards while mumbling some kind of half-baked white lie about why you can't do a reading at the moment.

· You have to be clairvoyant/psychic to read the tarot cards

No. You're learning a new language when you study the Tarot - the language of symbols. This language is the soul's natural language and your birthright. Any human can learn it because all humans have intuition. You don't need to 'see' things clairvoyantly or have some ghostie whisper things into your ears in order to make sense of the messages once you've made a personal connections with the symbols and visual clues contained in the cards. However, working with symbols is likely to open you up psychically... Pretty cool, huh?

· Nobody but you can handle your cards (also known as Metaphysical OCD)

Hey, to each their own. If you believe that other peoples' energies will contaminate your cards, your cards will no doubt become contaminated. The power of our thoughts is amazing. That's why it's so important to NOT be superstitious about things like that. The cards are a tool, and like any tool they can do with a good cleansing every now and again, but not after each time someone checks out your latest deck or cuts a deck during a reading. If you're that concerned about contamination, it's probably safer for you to stop breathing.

Summary of the history of the Tarot

Historically, the Tarot is a deck of playing cards, which differs from modern playing cards deck in that it has an extra court card in each of the four suites and 22 trumps (i.e. a total of 78 rather than 52 cards). The name ‘Tarot’ comes from the Italian Tarocchi which refers to the card game thought to have been invented in the Taro river area in Italy during the Renaissance.

· The oldest nearly complete deck still in existence is the Visconti Sforza deck which dates back to circa 1450 and was created as a wedding gift to celebrate the marriage between two powerful Milanese families, the Viscontis and the Sforzas. Only two of the trumps in the modern tarot deck are missing: the Tower and the Devil, but these have recently been skilfully reconstructed, and it is now possible to buy a complete facsimile of this gilded renaissance beauty.

· With the invention of the printing press, the French Marseille deck became the most popular deck back in the 1600’s. By this time, the number and order of the trumps had been firmly established.

· The occultist/mystery school connection with the Tarot wasn’t established until the late 1700’s with the writings of the French protestant pastor and freemason, Antoine Court de Gébelin. Since he discovered some blatantly esoteric symbols in the Marseilles Tarot, he rushed to make a connection with Egyptian mysticism, which has been disproved by modern historians and Tarot scholars. Court de Gébelin was also the first person to make the connection with Kabbalah and the Hebrew alphabet, which considering his claim to Egyptian origins, seems a bit odd.

· There are references to the use of the tarot deck as a divination tool which predates the writings of Court de Gébelin. As with normal playing cards, these were edicts against the use for gambling as well as divination purposes made by the authorities.

· Thanks to the Romantic Movement and a return to pre-Christian values in the 1800’s, hermetic societies like the Golden Dawn flourished. They were fascinated with the pre-Christian symbology of the Tarot trumps. Drawing heavily on the writings of Court de Gébelin and other occultists such as Etteila and Eliphas Levi, two of the adepts of the Golden Dawn went on to create Tarot decks which came to change the face of the Tarot forever: the Smith-Waite Tarot and the Thoth Tarot.

· The ever-changing face of modern Tarot is a highly subjective love affair between western mysticism and numinous experience. There are literally thousands of tarot decks, each with their own interpretation of the archetypal spaces that each of the cards in the Tarot deck have come to represent.

Nighty Night - Tarot Reading