To the Reader

Shadows danced across the wall. Miriam followed the hunched old woman down the hall, to a cramped, dark, smelly little chamber. A fire was crackling in the grate. From the ceiling, strange roots and weird bundles of nostrums hung rfrom the wall. A round table sat in the center of the darkness. The old woman sat herself at the table. Her great, weird, yellowish gaze looked out from above her hooked, warty nose. In this lighting, thought Miriam, her flesh seems to be the color of old, green cheese.

In the center of the table was a round crystal ball on a little tripod. The table was covered by a threadbare old cloth, and before the woman, were a selection of cards.

"These," proclaimed the old hag, "are the ancient symbols of the Tarot. Sacred before Egypt was born. A person gifted with the second sight can use them to see that which was, and that which is, and that WHICH IS YET TO BE."

Miriam shuddered. She had come here to learn the future, what was to be, for her , for her family, and for her betrothed. Was she prepared to know the truth, even if that truth be painful? Even if it be frightening and BAD?

"I must warn you," said the old prophetess. "Those that peer into the future with eager eyes, often, are blinded by that which they desire to see, rather than that which is. I may speak of many things; some good, some bad, some merely the daily ins and outs of your life. But, it is up to you to heed the warnings that I give. to take them seriously; to act on them, whenever it seems most prudent. Even if what I tell you should bring you not hope , but fear. Otherwise, there could be dire consequences!"

Miriam shuddered again, suddenly feeling a cold chill creep up her spine. She gazed into the glassy eye of the fearsome-looking old crone. They looked, all of a sudden, as black, as bottomless, as the pits of Hades. She was silent for a moment. Then she said, "I-I'm not afraid."

To this the old woman simply chuckled. She picked up her deck of cards with long, withered , wrinkled old fingers, glittering with her weird rings. She then said, "Shall we begin?"

***

The above scene could be taken straight from the opening of some bad movie, perhaps one playing on a late-night cable channel to insomniacs looking for a few cheap thrills before Morphia, God of Sleep, finally takes them. It's the stereotypical idea of what going to a "fortune teller" or Tarot reader is, for those that have never done so. Of course, in our modern, space-age era, a psychic reading or Tarot reading is as close as a few keyboard strokes or a Google search away. There are no end to psychic phone lines and internet chat services offering those with a credit card and a strong fascination with the unknown, a much hoped-for glimpse into the future.

And much of this psychic voyaging involves the use of those enigmatic and mysterious, some even think frightening, pack of seventy-seven cards, the Tarot deck. It is a game that some claim is as old as time. Others say it developed during the Renaissance, in ancient Italy, out of a regular card game popular among Florentine nobility. When the Roma people, those commonly and traditionally referred to as "Gypsies," began using it for fortune-telling purposes, is unknown. The first scholars of the field bore names such as Etteilla, and Court de Gébeline; the first accessible Tarot deck was the Tarot of Marseilles. Its images have little changed since its creation: they are reflected in what is undoubtedly the most famous Tarot deck of all time: the Rider-Waite Tarot, whose seventy-seven images were commissioned by Tarot scholar and occultist Arthur Edward Waite, and painted for the benefit of all time by the mysterious, pixieish Pamela Coleman Smith. It is this Tarot which is the iconic deck used in motion pictures and television programs, in books, and on popular merchandise. And it is these images which are what is commonly referred to when someone mentions Tarot at all.

This deck was created for us, by dint of a massive gift from Spirit, in the Good Year 1911. It consists of the twenty-two cards of the "Major Arcana," archetypal images bristling with esoteric significance, each one representing a character important to medieval life, and brimming with occult significance; which, by the way, can be read as deeply as one is expert in such symbology. Additionally, there are fifty-five "Minor Arcana" cards, divided into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. Of these, four are categorized as "Court Cards," as they correspond to titled personages that might have been a part of the medieval court: King, Queen, Knight, and Page (or "Messenger"). A fifth card, typically seen to have an arm issuing from a cloud with the respective symbol of its suit grasped firmly in hand, are the Aces, the perfect gifts from a benevolent cosmos (alternately, when "badly dignified" or reversed in the reading, these upside-down cards can represent ill-omens of occurrences in the future that may not be so bright as all that.

We will touch on the arcane aspects of Tarot here and there; but, for the purposes of this small book, esoteric meanings and that which does NOT pertain, strictly, to the use of the Tarot as a tool for divination, will not concern us. Thus, we may be forgiven for dispensing with occult meanderings and long-winded discourses on the arcanum of salamanders, water, fire, ships, crosses, roses, birds and lilies, etc.

Instead, we will offer a practical little guidebook on how YOU, the reader, can become proficient in the ancient, sacred art of the Tarot, a time-honored tradition which will put you in the same league as seers and prophets, gypsies and soothsayers past and present. (And, of course, future, too!)

The author of this book, Mr. Tom Baker, has had half a decade of experience reading Tarot every night of the week for clients on the internet and telephone. He has had some wild clients, some obviously quite strange and even comical; some obviously crazier than a bedbug. All of them, however, were united in that one, all-defining hope that someone on the end of the line could read, in the Microcosm (i.e. the random layout of a particular group of images on a deck of playing cards), the Will of the Macrocosm; the "Will of God," the doings of Fate, so to speak; the larger reality.

And, perhaps they can. And, perhaps YOU can TOO.

We shall see.

One final thing: Tarot is NOT simply, finally, just interpreting the faces of cards in a particular pattern, like some sort of robot. It is an interplay between the Reader and the Querent, or Questioner, and between the intuitive powers of the Reader, his grasp of the images, and his ability to use his psychic awareness (and occasionally, the literal voice of Spirit, and sometimes even the "miscalled Dead," or those in the spirit realm) to tell the inter-playing narratives of a person's life. The psychic faculty of reading Tarot will manifest with time, or may come all at once. But it should be remembered that it is the integral aspect of the undertaking, in any event.

Glory: A Little Handbook of the Psychic Life by Tom Baker (Ebook) Click link below.