Tarot readings you've received

Mais ou sont les neiges d' antan ?
-- Francois Villon c. 1461

(Where are the snows of yesteryear ?)

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I first posted this in a thread with a similar title before the great crash which wiped out Aeclectic Tarot, back maybe in about '01. Solandia and everyone worked so hard to put it all back together.

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She was an ancient crone, wearing what looked like a black nighty. Smoke from her thin black cigarillo hung in the air like the incense wafting from a fire at the town dump. The only light came from two candles. High on a shelf behind her a one-eyed black cat licked a paw and watched us disdainfully as the reader turned over the card.

I'd crossed her palm with silver to the tune of thirty-five smackeroos -- for this !

The heavy gold bobbles, bangles and beads she wore clattered as she leaned forward, peering at me with her glittery black eyes. She tapped the card three times with a horny yellow fingernail. The background music struck an ominous chord.

She didn't have to tell me. I saw that card. I knew.

"Fortune," she said in an ancient, cracked voice: "Danger !"

I parted the bead curtains and left, going out into the mean streets of the city at night. I turned up the collar of my trenchcoat and snapped the brim of my hat down over my eyes against the mist of dirty rain. Down the block the neon sign from a bar reflected on the wet street like the illusion of all lost hopes. I heard the wild wail of a saxaphone. I knew what the music meant. I wrapped my mitt around the butt of a pistol in my pocket.

Danger is my business.

~ Talisman

She didn't look like my young idea of a tarot reader. She looked like a thin, tatty hausfrau, rather timid. I went on the recommendation of another young woman, one of the few I had met in this city strange to me.

I had just started to read tarot, and truthfully the cards did not yet mean that much to me. Since moving, and feeling completely ungrounded (though I did not yet know that word), I had tried having my tea leaves read and I think another card reading. Very general and disappointing. Knowing what I know now, not especially good readers.

This woman kept speaking of things that seemed impossible. That I was going to move. That I was going to be in love. Neither seemed remotely likely. She had a large crystal ball and she picked it up, and gasped. She looked at me and exclaimed "It's hot!" She then asked me if I were in love. I said that no, I didn't even have any prospects. She shook her head, "well, soon then, and it is going to be intense".

Within 6 weeks I was suddenly and forcibly transferred from Vancouver (on Canada's west coast) to Whitehorse (in Canada's north). Within 8 weeks I had met my future husband. And it was intense.

Now that was a memorable reading.

Did you ever meet that lady again?

No, I didn't get back to Vancouver for almost 25 years. By then I didn't even remember how to contact her.

I went to quite an older lady in Niagara Falls, Ontario... many years ago.
I was very young, the lady told me I would be married under another flag. I was, we were married in Detroit quite a few years later. At the time she told me I would be a bridesmaid way up North and I was as my sister was married in Chicoutimi, Quebec. Certainly wish I had written it all down and also that I could speak with her now ! She was just an older lady, living with another, in a small clean house. Not at all spooky.

Oh yes, another thing I remember, my Mother had a friend who used to come to stay with us in the summer. She was a friend and really an amusing lady. At nights sometimes she would make the table levitate for us and being a kid I could never catch her with her knee doing it. She used to laugh and laugh.
Good memories. She used to have a little boston bull dog named Bettsieboop. When she was watching and I patted the dog it was happy. If she was not watching it would nip me ! Smart dog as well ! Maybe it was her familiar LOL.

Not necessarily Tarot

I never received a reading, preferring to keep it all hush-hush my obsession with the cards until I booked an appointment with someone who read palms and did numerology readings. Well, that sounded interesting so I kept the appointment. Now this had to be 25-26 years ago. I am glad I kept her readings because I am dealing with issues NOW that were told to me back then by her.

Later on, in life, like about six-seven months ago, I befriended a professional tarot reader, who was doing her gig at a mall nearby where I lived. I talked with her about various things; cards, mantras, you know the usual small talk we engage in here. She took me over to her table and proceeded to give me a reading that verified alot of the stuff the numerologist read. But what was unique was that she kept telling me that I have a great gift and I should be using it and why aren't I at least to help me on my journey of knowledge? I freaked alittle bit, and left the table, but came back because I knew in my gut what she was telling me was so right.

Later, when I decided to read again and called her to tell her so, she told me that she had been waiting for the phonecall, to come over because she had a gift for me, which was a deck of tarot RW. I have not looked back since.

Baroli

Some reading !

'Lo all,

What prompted the original post in this thead was a story a woman told about her first -- and what may have been her last for all I know -- Tarot reading.

She lived in a large city, New York City I think, and was excited about an appointment to go for her first Tarot reading.

Only when she arrived at the apartment, the woman who was to do the reading was not there. Instead, the door was answered by the reader's mother, an old woman wearing a bathrobe and a hairnet. In broken English the crone said her daughter was not there, but insisted she could do the reading.

Reluctantly and with great hesistation, the poster parted with thirty-five dollars. The crone, who chain-smoked cigarettes throughout, pulled some cards from a deck and laid them out on the kitchen table.

As she turned each card over, she'd tap it and say, "You a good girl." Next card, tap tap, "You a good girl." That was pretty much the substance of the whole reading.

The poster was bitterly upset, but she described the whole affair so vividly it made a great story.

(Gosh, if anyone's got thrity-five bucks and wants to be told they are a good girl, I think I could manage that. The rest of you will have to wait for the book, "Tarot reading made simple. Real simple.")

~ Talisman