Tarot Cards

We went to Joanne's birthday party last night. Her partner Alison hired a Tarot Card reader for our entertainment. Those of us brave enough to submit to the mystery of it all disappeared one at a time for a private candle-lit reading. Afterwards, she also read palms.

I've only seen Tarot readings in scary movies and in the strange HBO series "Carnivale." The spirits channel themselves through the reader to communicate your fate.

But that's not how I interpreted it last night. Ruby was a cheerful woman in her sixites who did not dress up in a gypsy costume. She had me shuffle the deck a few times and we went through several rounds of laying out the cards. She gave a tentative interpretation, then depending on how I reacted, she built upon it.

"Oh, I can see you're very intuitive!" she started off.

"I am?" I said skeptically. "Most people would say I'm more analytical, the academic type, think too much."

But my thought to myself was this: "Hmmm... maybe I'm more intuitive than I give myself credit for." An ass of a man where I used to work would say to me "Oh, Susan, you're so intuitive. You should have a round table in your office." It was his way of putting me down, his way of telling me I wasn't the tough businessman he was. "Artsy" as insult. But then my boss would say, "He's wrong, Susan, you're not intuitive at all. You're analytical." But I suppose that was his way of putting me down, telling me that I didn't belong in the ranks of social workers (who are all such intuitive geniuses).

So, I thought last night, maybe I should give myself permission to be "intuitive" (whatever that actually means) and decide whether it's part of or distinct from my geek self.

I'm thinking the Tarot reading was more like one of those creativity exercises. The spirits aren't visiting you from the other side. You're simply reshuffling the deck of how you think about yourself and maybe seeing the hand life dealt you a little differently.

My palm reading was more straightforward: long life in good health; sexy; worry too much about everything; spiritual; a new path in old age. I can go with that.

10.14.07

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