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| Fortune Teller. Albert Anker 1880 |
I
had always thought my profession would be a good one for me as an older woman,
because fortune-tellers are more often than not portrayed as old wizened
witches. Age then becomes part of the mystique of Reading and is good for
business. Furthermore as long as I can see and talk, I can do my work. In fact
being a tarot reader is one of the few jobs when being older becomes a badge of
respect and not a reason for redundancy.
And
now I am an elder I find it liberating to observe myself as a grumpy old woman
living on the edges of the global village, dispensing wisdom gleaned from
experience and of course like any witch worth her salt, raging against the
dying of the light.
Yet
what is it that I as a fortune-teller actually do? The quick answer is telling
peoples’ fortunes from a pack of picture cards and a horoscope. But If I invoke
The High Priestess – one of Tarot’s Arcana – here is her response.
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| Deviant Moon Tarot |
The High Priestess as Tarot Reader
As
a tarot reader and astrologer I give readings for people. Yet that word reading is ambiguous and one of those
slippery words that the English language is full of. It has multiple meanings that
depend on context for definition.
St
Augustine when musing on the nature of time said ”I know what it is, but when you ask me I don’t know anymore.”
What
does it mean to read? What happens when we read? The experience is
qualitatively different when we read a newspaper, a scientific treatise, a
novel, or poem. It’s different when we read out loud than when we read silently
“in our heads”. When we give a tarot or astrological reading we are sharing the
reading aloud with someone else – telling the story. But a tarot reader can
read the cards for her/himself silently too as a meditation.
Lately
I have been calling myself a symbologist because symbols are my stock and
trade. So a tarot reader is someone who interprets a symbolic language. Working
with pictures is still ‘reading’ in much the same way as we read a dream. What
is the nature of this interpretive experience?
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| Oswald Wirth |
Reading
in an interpretative way for self or other is different to the kind of reading
we do in our daily lives, which is usually primarily directed towards
information gathering. Normally the words on the page are meant to be taken
literally – they are tools to get the job done and accomplish the business of
the marketplace etc.
Then there’s the kind of reading I do heaps of – reading novels, biographies, poetry. It is then we come across the transformative power of words which have a much more spacious meaning.
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| Egyptian Priestess. John Weguelin 19th Century |
Stepping
into a poem or a novel is a bit like the pagan Priestess entering into a temple
to conduct her divinations. The poem once entered becomes a kind of sacred
space where extraordinary things are bound to happen.
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| Roman Priestess. 1519 Antonio da Correggio. San Paolo, Parma |
As soon as the frontier
of the poem– its literal meaning - is crossed, the reader gains entry to a
place that is no place – vast in extent and signals are registered directly on
the heart.
“There is no Frigate
like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like
a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the
poorest take
Without oppress of
Toll –
How frugal is the
Chariot
That bears the Human
soul.”
Emily
Dickinson c1873
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| Emily Dickinson |
There’s
a non-verbal aspect of reading which just can’t be expressed in words even
though words take you there. When we read, the mind and heart join together
with the imagination taking us into an ineffable zone.
Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke observes “most events
are inexpressible taking place in a realm where no word has entered”.
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| Rainer Maria Rilke |
To
add to the paradox the words a poem utilizes are no different from the words in
a newspaper. The same ones appear in both places and the same dictionary
definitions apply. How then can we account for the difference between a poem
and what is not a poem?
Confusion
reigns around this paradox especially in religious texts like the Bible or the
Koran which are taken as “god’s word” .These books are by nature poetic and
enigmatic, nevertheless many readers insist on taking them literally as if
reading a newspaper.
I
think astrology and tarot are like a form of poetry – astrology employs glyphs,
correspondences to the natural world and mythology, while tarot uses the visual
codes of art. But both use words to work the patterns. If practiced
successfully, these symbolic languages represent a way of knowing that is
totally “other” than that of the scientific method which is itself steeped in
literalism.
Astrology/tarot work with consciousness operating under a different
set of rules than the literalist and technologist culture we live in.
Most
importantly, astrology and tarot like all oracles are oral languages.
“A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”
Emily
Dickinson c1872
Tarot
readers are part of an aural and oral tradition, and belong to a long lineage
of oracular workers. Fortune-tellers are certainly one of the oldest
professions in the world – and are aligned with the harlot who has taken that
phrase as her own. Indeed, the act of prostitution in many ways imitates a
tarot reading in its intimacy between strangers.
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| Tarot of Delphi |
A
reader, like a Priestess is an Oracle – a word that means ‘to speak’ (oraca). An
oracle was considered the voice of god - the gods - and through the oracle we
heard the divine word. Temples
in the ancient world were always a place of oracles and divination. Dream
interpretations and trance mediums were normal ways to receive the word of the
divine = divination. For thousands of years, oracles were consulted on all
important affairs of state in the ancient world.
Oracles
are ambiguous and can be interpreted in more than one way.
An
adage of the ancient Greeks was;-
“Words of an oracle are like a seed. They are
densely packed, filled with meaning. They contain inner dimensions which become
apparent only in the course of time.”
Interestingly
foresight and hindsight are inter-related and we often only understand an oracle’s
power in hindsight.
The
tarot card of the High Priestess embraces meanings related to both seeing into
the future as well as holding memory and wisdom from the past. She sits in a
space between time.
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| Sybil |
The
Delphic Oracle’s adage “Know Thyself”
is vital for a Priestess and tarot reader. An oracle must come through a clear
channel which requires self-understanding. A seeker attempts to watch and
listen, aligning her/himself with the cosmos in which everything is alive and
has meaning (is sacred). The belief behind tarot reading is that the universe
and self are one; tarot reading is a practical expression of this belief. We
have to “read” or divine the meaning of the cosmos, rather like a sacred
weather forecaster.
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| Wildwood Tarot |
My
job as an astrologer and tarot reader allows me the privilege of considering
other people’s private and subjective lives. (consider is a word whose root source meant ‘at one with the stars’). Inner and outer space are aligned and the
cards or the horoscope are a mirror that reflects both.
My
role is similar to that of a confessor and server of absolution just like the
local priest - or witch dispensing folk therapy.
There
is a performance aspect of being a reader – I invite the client to cross the
threshold into sacred space. Just as in a theatre of church/temple, readers
encourage through our rituals, the “other realm”. We promote a suspension of
disbelief’ so some kind of carthasis or
healing can take place.
I
know I act at times as a healer, shifting or clearing energy. I hold and
support a transcendence process that at times can ease grief or even offer
redemption. When secrets are told that have lain hidden and toxic for ages, I
act as an intermediary or channel for the client and as an agent of and for
change. A reader is a psychic midwife.
Other
roles I play are:-
Lost
Property Officer – finding lost objects lost pets, lost property, lost souls.
Complaints
Dept.
Professional
Friend
Counsellor,
Therapist.
Guide
to appropriate social services such as Citizens Advice Bureau or Sexual Abuse
Survivors Support.
Coach,
motivator, mentor.
A
tarot Reader is a facilitator of creative processes in oneself and in others,
for we are adept at uncovering creative potential and facilitating
consciousness- raising.
The
beauty of using the symbolic language of astrology or tarot is that it acts as
a meditative tool for support on a spiritual path or in developing one’s own
intuitive faculties.
Yet
it is practical too and encourages decision-making and problem solving.
One
of its side-effects of course, and maybe what the greater public thinks of its
main raison d’etre, is prediction. I think a reader is doing the same kind of
job as an economic or weather forecaster – predicting the emotional financial
or political weather for an individual or event.
Astrology
and tarot are navigational tools for time travel through the past, present and
future.
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| Delphi |
I
proudly practice one of the Oldest Professions, despite being still seen as the
harlot by the social arbitrators and gatekeepers of the mainstream of
modernity, such as the media, the scientists and rationalists/sceptics.
Like
a whore, readers are now practicing in a marginally safer climate than we have
occupied previously for hundreds of years. However that safety is still
tentative.
Presently
in NZ as workers we do have our own classification under the Entertainment
Industry and we are protected by Statute for legal and tax purposes. Yet it still
feels as if we kind of live under the radar, on the edges.
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| The Fortune Teller. Maccari |
When
looking at the role I play in my professional life as a tarot reader and the
lifestyle it engenders - especially vis a vis the mainstream culture – I do feel
very much within the tradition of the oldest profession.
I
feel like an old witch on the outskirts of the village, peering into my crystal
ball of prediction at fairgrounds or at the corporate parties or within the
homes of private citizens having a party (I’m the Entertainment and often
costumed to reflect that role). I am as cloistered as any nun whether I’m
working from home or from the local Community Centre.
The
media rings me up and wants statements they won’t pay for about the state of
the nation, and if they do report me it’s garbled or distorted or badly edited.
I’m treated like a heretic and excommunicated from society’s institutions such
as University, locked out financially as well as from discoursing
intellectually on a level playing ground.
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| Minoan Tarot |
As
a tarot reader I am working with the picture stories of my European culture’s
heritage and its treasury of symbols in encoded form. I work in an oral and
aural tradition which belongs to the story-teller, the old wife telling her
tales, the keeper of old stories.
I
use tarot like a story that is a medicine which strengthens and supports the
individual and the community.
Us
High Priestesses/tarot readers are modern storytellers and are the descendants
of an immense and ancient community of holy people, troubadours, bards, cantors
travelling poets, bums, hags and crazy people.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes who wrote Women Who Run with the Wolves writes she
once dreamt she was telling stories and felt someone patting her foot in
encouragement. She looked down and saw she was standing on the shoulders of an
old woman who was steadying her ankles and smiling up at her.
She
said to the old woman “no, no come and stand on my shoulders for you are old and I am young”.
“No,
no” she insisted, “this is the way it is supposed to be.”
Clarissa
saw then that the old lady stood on the shoulders of a woman far older than
she, who stood on the shoulders of a woman even older, who stood on the
shoulders of a woman in robes, who stood on the shoulders of another soul, who
stood on the shoulders…..
Clarissa
believed the old dream-woman about the way it was supposed to be.
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| Clarissa Pinkola Estes |
The
nurture for telling or hearing stories comes from those who have gone before.
We draw our power from a towering column of humanity joined to one another across
time and space, elaborately dressed in rags or robes or nakedness of their time
and filled to bursting with life still being lived.
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| Songs For The Journey Home |
‘to cure sometimes to help often, to comfort
always
16th
Century French Proverb
Next
post I shall look at the High Priestess’s history and mythology.
Bibliography
John P. O’Grady in The Mountain Astrologer p49 Issue Aug/Sept
08
Clarissa Pinkola
Estes Women Who Run with the Wolves
