Umbrae
Son of The Process Returns: Reading – The Event
Elf put down the tea, I pulled out the baklava; hot and strong, and drippy and sweet. The light was dimming, the rooftops silhouetted in the late setting sun. Dome of the Rock shining to our east, to the north, just beyond the dome of The Church of St John the Baptist stands the Mosque of Omar. The call for the faithful is taken up by the muezzin, last prayrer, and from mosque to mosque the cry is taken up and spreads like wildfire across old and new city alike.
After licking some honey off her thumb Elf took a sip of tea. “Last night I was the Tarot reader at a Spa Party. It’s a monthly event, where pretty much the same women from Princeton Massachusetts get together, drink wine, eat food and line up for glycolic peels, pedicures, manicures, Reiki and massages, and new last night, Tarot readings with Moi.” She looked across the table where I was rolling a cigarette.
“Hey, I’m not going to smoke it, but I can roll it for later can’t I?”
“So, I’m in the middle of reading #5, I'm sitting there thinking, "what am I saying? I don't know what the hell I'm doing, I can't read Tarot, why Am I HERE???" Suddenly the cards are just cards and I'm looking at them with an impending feeling of anxiety mounting. Then I say, get hold of yourself; buck up girl and kept going.”
"So how were the readings going up until that point?”
Elf gazed off over the silver dome of Church of St John the Baptist, “The women loved the readings, I was ‘on’, but then, the women were telling me loads of stuff, filling in all kinds of details, and I'm thinking, ‘Am I doing anything here at all other than being a cheaply paid private confidant for a bunch of slightly buzzing bored housewives?’ Is this the blank spot you describe?”
“I got this from a Palistinian guy down on David street, his is the best. The blank spot can hit in a couple of ways. Self-doubt is the big one. The other is just staring at the cards going ‘what does it mean?’ which then turns into self-doubt. But yeah, THAT is the blank spot! That's the hump. The one ya gotta get over...The self-doubt is the killer.
Like me...thirty years later and sometimes I find myself looking at a card and going, "Uh...four of cups...uh..." or I start giving a bit on the reading and going on and I look down...and it's not the Queen of Wands, it's the Page of Wands (really happened_...and you know what? Ain't no amount of study will help you with this).
There is a thing that happens when you read. Some would call it (the reading) an event. That’s correct.
It’s also a relationship, an occasion of rapport.
It’s reading, and reading - aint' found in books. No author tells you how to read for others.
This is where meaning don't matter.
If your inner being is telling you to talk about the Queen of Wands and its not the Queen of Wands, you better keep going on the Queen of Wands - cuz ONE...you're correct...two, you look like an idiot. There is a reason you (or in my case I) started rambling on about the Queen of Wands...”
As I pulled the cigarette from behind my ear, Elf kinda flashed her eyes and I slid it back up over the right ear.
I continued, “I sometimes like to read with the cards face down rather than all face up. I turn them as I get to them. It helps keep control of the reading. You don't have the client sitting there worried to death about death staring at her from the last position....
“It minimizes the blank spot..."Oh my gawd!!! The Three of Hedgehogs? What am I going to do?"
“This is where you really have to listen to the voices in your own head. Not the ones filling you with self-doubt, the other ones - the ones that say nonsense...listen for the aroma of oranges (that just came to me) or a sound or smell or a word or visual queue that makes zero sense in context with your gathering...verbalize the drek. Believe it or not...you'll start getting huge hits...don't try to still the voices of self-doubt, just listen to what they are obscuring...” I rolled into a fit of laughter.
Elf took another sip of the steaming tea, “You do go on. So what is this really, is it just me realizing I need more study? Both? Neither? Why is the blank spot so important? I would think that self-doubt is the mind killer; and yet you are congratulating me for hitting it! Is it like a benchmark for putting down/aside ego? That we really don't always know, but we still move forward and somehow, the answer comes, but the knowing remains elusive...but you can still work and not know...I don't know, am I making any sense?”
A quiet was descending over Al Quds. “Look at the stars. They are the same ones we see from home, but shifted. Polaris is still where its supposed to be, just lower in the northern sky. The blank spot – on one hand it is ego fighting you. ‘What if I’m ‘wrong’?’ Self-doubt is the mind-killer (it’s another side of fear). However you cannot move through it and reign over it until you recognize ego as the block. That’s the benchmark.
“And that’s the beauty. Ego says to know, we must have proof.
The soul says we must have faith…there’s a can of worms…and from there comes that listening that I often rant on about, that reading is listening – listening to the spaces between the cards, listening to that which speaks without a voice, and I know that some folks think I’m wacked, but oh well…So you’re right. We don’t know. We don’t HAVE to know. We move forward, and will be shown the proofs.
“The jump from knowledge to faith is a difficult one. But one you only enjoy if you hit the blank spot. And once you follow through, you’ll understand why I ask folks, “Why do you read tarot (for others)?” So tell me about the rest of the night.”
“You get loud when you get going, you know that? Good tea. Well, I kept going. Had to or I felt I would have been the laughingstock of the Spa party. Umbrae, all I can say is that I love reading Tarot.
“I feel as if everything I've ever done has prepared me for the moment when I'm sitting opposite a stranger and they want me to tell them they are special. Ultimately it all comes down to that.” Elf continued.
“That the person connects to knowing that they really aren't alone and that somewhere in the Universe is something that Knows them, because I obviously do not! I'm a housewife from a small farm town! What do I know?” Elf looked over towards the Dome of the Rock. “That call for last prayer was wonderful, and strange…it made my neck hairs stand on end.
“I love the readings, the messages; I love trying to bring it home to the people sitting across from me.
“The hardest part for me is seeing something that might hurt someone, or seeing that I'm giving the reading 150% and the person across from me is not taking it in. They are not ready for the information, and they don't want it. That happened at the Spa party. A young woman wanted to know about her relationship with her 4 month old. (I could have told her that with out the cards!)
“The reading was all about a new business she could be doing or launching. Everything was there for her to just step into. She admitted that she had two ideas for businesses, and that she could launch either but didn't want to hear anything I was saying. I finally ended the reading because I was saying the same things over and over...and her eyes were just dead. Dead, dead, dead.
“I felt very bad for her, but I didn't talk to her about her dead eyes or her inability to hear me. Just said goodnight. I feel a little bad about it now. But sometimes I think I'm being shown stuff that isn't necessarily for the sitter.”
I began to roll another cigarette for my left ear. “Tough one when you are trying to tell them to switch gears. Kinda like the ignored or forgotten cups in the four and five of cups.”
“What do you think? Is everything for them? Should I have told her somehow about the part of herself that she should visit and get to know, because if she didn't it would just get darker?”
“You try. You do the best you can. We show them possibilities. Not everyone wants possibilities.”
“But I’m beginning to understand that there is whole aspect of Tarot that isn’t discussed. And I think I understand some of what you’re saying about reading. That’s scary.
‘I feel like every time out reading some new revelation just blows me away, and I can't believe that I thought I was a reader when I used to sit with the book and the deck and be flipping cards and pages....wow.”
“I know what you mean. A book and a deck don’t make you a reader. Reading makes you a reader. When you discover that the sitters are people, they have expectations, they have lives, and they are very real. And we have a deck of cards…”
”That was the panic that set in that night. I just felt like how could I be telling people things when I don't know so much about Tarot. I don't know all the correspondences or the zodiacal signs...but I do know that I just really want to read cards. So I do.”
“What’s a correspondence…? Zodiac? That’s a kind of inflatable boat. Listen, take everything I’ve ever said – boil away the rhetoric. What remains is this. To read, and read well, we have to get out of our own way, of our reading. Reading ain’t about us. It’s not about how good I am or how smart I am or if I’m published or how many people I’ve taught or my Gucci shoes or style or fashion, it’s nothing about religion – Christian or Pagan, it’s not about me. Reading is not about me. It’s not about you.
“In fact, reading is not about the cards at all. It’s about rapport. It’s about the sitter, their lives, their needs, wants, and expectations. Nope, ain’t nobody gonna wanna talk about that…”
Darkness and silence descended on Al Quds.
Elf put down the tea, I pulled out the baklava; hot and strong, and drippy and sweet. The light was dimming, the rooftops silhouetted in the late setting sun. Dome of the Rock shining to our east, to the north, just beyond the dome of The Church of St John the Baptist stands the Mosque of Omar. The call for the faithful is taken up by the muezzin, last prayrer, and from mosque to mosque the cry is taken up and spreads like wildfire across old and new city alike.
After licking some honey off her thumb Elf took a sip of tea. “Last night I was the Tarot reader at a Spa Party. It’s a monthly event, where pretty much the same women from Princeton Massachusetts get together, drink wine, eat food and line up for glycolic peels, pedicures, manicures, Reiki and massages, and new last night, Tarot readings with Moi.” She looked across the table where I was rolling a cigarette.
“Hey, I’m not going to smoke it, but I can roll it for later can’t I?”
“So, I’m in the middle of reading #5, I'm sitting there thinking, "what am I saying? I don't know what the hell I'm doing, I can't read Tarot, why Am I HERE???" Suddenly the cards are just cards and I'm looking at them with an impending feeling of anxiety mounting. Then I say, get hold of yourself; buck up girl and kept going.”
"So how were the readings going up until that point?”
Elf gazed off over the silver dome of Church of St John the Baptist, “The women loved the readings, I was ‘on’, but then, the women were telling me loads of stuff, filling in all kinds of details, and I'm thinking, ‘Am I doing anything here at all other than being a cheaply paid private confidant for a bunch of slightly buzzing bored housewives?’ Is this the blank spot you describe?”
“I got this from a Palistinian guy down on David street, his is the best. The blank spot can hit in a couple of ways. Self-doubt is the big one. The other is just staring at the cards going ‘what does it mean?’ which then turns into self-doubt. But yeah, THAT is the blank spot! That's the hump. The one ya gotta get over...The self-doubt is the killer.
Like me...thirty years later and sometimes I find myself looking at a card and going, "Uh...four of cups...uh..." or I start giving a bit on the reading and going on and I look down...and it's not the Queen of Wands, it's the Page of Wands (really happened_...and you know what? Ain't no amount of study will help you with this).
There is a thing that happens when you read. Some would call it (the reading) an event. That’s correct.
It’s also a relationship, an occasion of rapport.
It’s reading, and reading - aint' found in books. No author tells you how to read for others.
This is where meaning don't matter.
If your inner being is telling you to talk about the Queen of Wands and its not the Queen of Wands, you better keep going on the Queen of Wands - cuz ONE...you're correct...two, you look like an idiot. There is a reason you (or in my case I) started rambling on about the Queen of Wands...”
As I pulled the cigarette from behind my ear, Elf kinda flashed her eyes and I slid it back up over the right ear.
I continued, “I sometimes like to read with the cards face down rather than all face up. I turn them as I get to them. It helps keep control of the reading. You don't have the client sitting there worried to death about death staring at her from the last position....
“It minimizes the blank spot..."Oh my gawd!!! The Three of Hedgehogs? What am I going to do?"
“This is where you really have to listen to the voices in your own head. Not the ones filling you with self-doubt, the other ones - the ones that say nonsense...listen for the aroma of oranges (that just came to me) or a sound or smell or a word or visual queue that makes zero sense in context with your gathering...verbalize the drek. Believe it or not...you'll start getting huge hits...don't try to still the voices of self-doubt, just listen to what they are obscuring...” I rolled into a fit of laughter.
Elf took another sip of the steaming tea, “You do go on. So what is this really, is it just me realizing I need more study? Both? Neither? Why is the blank spot so important? I would think that self-doubt is the mind killer; and yet you are congratulating me for hitting it! Is it like a benchmark for putting down/aside ego? That we really don't always know, but we still move forward and somehow, the answer comes, but the knowing remains elusive...but you can still work and not know...I don't know, am I making any sense?”
A quiet was descending over Al Quds. “Look at the stars. They are the same ones we see from home, but shifted. Polaris is still where its supposed to be, just lower in the northern sky. The blank spot – on one hand it is ego fighting you. ‘What if I’m ‘wrong’?’ Self-doubt is the mind-killer (it’s another side of fear). However you cannot move through it and reign over it until you recognize ego as the block. That’s the benchmark.
“And that’s the beauty. Ego says to know, we must have proof.
The soul says we must have faith…there’s a can of worms…and from there comes that listening that I often rant on about, that reading is listening – listening to the spaces between the cards, listening to that which speaks without a voice, and I know that some folks think I’m wacked, but oh well…So you’re right. We don’t know. We don’t HAVE to know. We move forward, and will be shown the proofs.
“The jump from knowledge to faith is a difficult one. But one you only enjoy if you hit the blank spot. And once you follow through, you’ll understand why I ask folks, “Why do you read tarot (for others)?” So tell me about the rest of the night.”
“You get loud when you get going, you know that? Good tea. Well, I kept going. Had to or I felt I would have been the laughingstock of the Spa party. Umbrae, all I can say is that I love reading Tarot.
“I feel as if everything I've ever done has prepared me for the moment when I'm sitting opposite a stranger and they want me to tell them they are special. Ultimately it all comes down to that.” Elf continued.
“That the person connects to knowing that they really aren't alone and that somewhere in the Universe is something that Knows them, because I obviously do not! I'm a housewife from a small farm town! What do I know?” Elf looked over towards the Dome of the Rock. “That call for last prayer was wonderful, and strange…it made my neck hairs stand on end.
“I love the readings, the messages; I love trying to bring it home to the people sitting across from me.
“The hardest part for me is seeing something that might hurt someone, or seeing that I'm giving the reading 150% and the person across from me is not taking it in. They are not ready for the information, and they don't want it. That happened at the Spa party. A young woman wanted to know about her relationship with her 4 month old. (I could have told her that with out the cards!)
“The reading was all about a new business she could be doing or launching. Everything was there for her to just step into. She admitted that she had two ideas for businesses, and that she could launch either but didn't want to hear anything I was saying. I finally ended the reading because I was saying the same things over and over...and her eyes were just dead. Dead, dead, dead.
“I felt very bad for her, but I didn't talk to her about her dead eyes or her inability to hear me. Just said goodnight. I feel a little bad about it now. But sometimes I think I'm being shown stuff that isn't necessarily for the sitter.”
I began to roll another cigarette for my left ear. “Tough one when you are trying to tell them to switch gears. Kinda like the ignored or forgotten cups in the four and five of cups.”
“What do you think? Is everything for them? Should I have told her somehow about the part of herself that she should visit and get to know, because if she didn't it would just get darker?”
“You try. You do the best you can. We show them possibilities. Not everyone wants possibilities.”
“But I’m beginning to understand that there is whole aspect of Tarot that isn’t discussed. And I think I understand some of what you’re saying about reading. That’s scary.
‘I feel like every time out reading some new revelation just blows me away, and I can't believe that I thought I was a reader when I used to sit with the book and the deck and be flipping cards and pages....wow.”
“I know what you mean. A book and a deck don’t make you a reader. Reading makes you a reader. When you discover that the sitters are people, they have expectations, they have lives, and they are very real. And we have a deck of cards…”
”That was the panic that set in that night. I just felt like how could I be telling people things when I don't know so much about Tarot. I don't know all the correspondences or the zodiacal signs...but I do know that I just really want to read cards. So I do.”
“What’s a correspondence…? Zodiac? That’s a kind of inflatable boat. Listen, take everything I’ve ever said – boil away the rhetoric. What remains is this. To read, and read well, we have to get out of our own way, of our reading. Reading ain’t about us. It’s not about how good I am or how smart I am or if I’m published or how many people I’ve taught or my Gucci shoes or style or fashion, it’s nothing about religion – Christian or Pagan, it’s not about me. Reading is not about me. It’s not about you.
“In fact, reading is not about the cards at all. It’s about rapport. It’s about the sitter, their lives, their needs, wants, and expectations. Nope, ain’t nobody gonna wanna talk about that…”
Darkness and silence descended on Al Quds.
but I have read some of the process threads, read about the Blank Spot, and was pretty floored to have something occur during a string of readings that seemed like It, the Blank Spot.
