: Psychic-Tymes

Although I am a regular visitor to the Pagan Federation conference, I spend most of my time attending various lectures in the two big halls. This year I decided to attend a workshop, given by Gabriella Chowdhury and Peter Wood, the Woodland Wizard, demonstrating divination with the tarot. Gabriella believes whole-heartedly in people finding their own interpretations for the symbols in the pack.

Gabriella gave us a short history of her own foray into the world of divination. She started using the tarot in her teens. Her background is Hungarian [but do not whisper the word Transylvania – her own words] and she speaks with a delightful foreign accent. Her outfit for the occasion was a flamboyant red flowing dress with bell-like sleeves – a modern interpretation of medieval costume. Gabriella stated that she was a maverick and a witch [not much of a surprise, give this was a Pagan conference], but what was more interesting to me was that she was a teacher by profession. So many of the Pagan Federation lectures and workshops suffer because those giving them may have the knowledge, but have no idea of how to share it, so Gabriella’s professional skills were an asset.

Interestingly Gabriella maintains that she is not a medium and does not use that gift when she gives readings. She stated that with a bit of study any person could get a 50% hit rate when reading the Tarot. If you add that to a bit of ‘god given’ intuition – called the sixth sense [say perhaps an additional 20% hit rate] – plus a bit of experience [add another 10%] a person could get as much as 80% accurate with a tarot reading. She went on to qualify the ‘bit of experience’ as being more in the region of ten years rather than ten weeks – she explained that she had taught tarot reading at a psychic college in London, and felt unhappy about the fact that some of her students may have set up business as a professional tarot reader without any real understanding or experience.

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She explained that she only used the major arcana of the tarot for divination. They represent Jungian archetypes, and are enough in themselves without adding the rest of the deck to the proceedings. She also explained that she used different tarot decks for different types of divination. This is a fascinating concept: she uses the Greek Mythic Tarot deck for more mundane questions [life, love etc.], the Vision Quest deck for ‘heavy questions’ [finance], the Wicca Pack was used for religious questions, and the Goddess Pack to help with the ‘next step’ questions [meditation, one’s personal path and inner learning].

Gabriella went on to say that we needed to use other layouts as well as the standard Celtic Cross. To use that particular layout for light and fluffy questions is like bludgeoning an ant with a mallet [my words not hers] She even encouraged us to devise our own layouts, perhaps only to draw out three cards for simple questions.

She explained that a good tarot reader needs a lot of experience so that he or she can interact with the client to their benefit. Instead of blurting out what the cards show, the information can be given in a way that will not cause problems. She went on to illustrate this point with a couple of her own experiences. One instance was when she explained to a client, who she thought would be able to handle it due to her controlled manner, that her mother was ill and it was terminal. The client became verbally abusive. She discovered later that the client’s mother did, indeed, die some six months later. At the point of the reading, her client was holding fast to the belief that her mother was not dying and could not accept that this might be so. Gabriella freely admitted that she had misread the client, not the cards.

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Sometimes the cards can give very deep messages. She told us of a reading she gave to a friend of hers who was always running away from committing himself in a relationship, and who had a deep fear of having children. The reading indicated a past life where he had killed children during a war – the guilt from that action had stayed with him so that he could not commit to a situation where he might bring children into this world and harm them.

She also stated that although a reading may say something might happen in the future, the client can still avoid that future happening by taking heed and making suitable avoidance actions. You have the choice of avoiding a potentially bad ‘destiny’ if you pay attention to the message.

Gabriella went on to encourage us to use the tarot for meditation as well as readings. This point lead us to the second speaker at this workshop, the Woodland Wizard, Peter Wood. He too was delightfully dressed in psuedo-medieval garb – a leather jerkin, a wide-sleeved white shirt, dark trousers and a leather belt purse. He had a luxuriant beard to go with it. He was going to share with us information on the other uses we could put the tarot to, such as magic.

Peter explained that we could use the symbols of the card to invoke the power of archetypes. You could use a card to invoke the quarters. You can use them in dream work, by placing a card you wished to use under your pillow before sleeping. The tarot helped initiates ‘turn into’ archetypes.

He stressed that before we went down that road we really needed to understand if we were prepared to be able to handle the result of our actions. Taking on an archetype can be a life-altering experience. You would have both the good and the bad aspects of it to contend with. If you were not prepared life could go very wrong very quickly indeed.

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Like Gabriella, he emphasized that different packs have different potentials for magic and dream-work. He used packs for readings, meditation and ritual magic. What he did not do is mix them up, he would not use his ritual magic deck for readings, and vice versa; an interesting point that brings home the thought that we might need to have more than one deck for personal use.

They were both interesting speakers, and both good tarot teachers that encouraged you to use your own inner relationship with the tarot in divination – and other – practices. They also taught you to walk before you can run – a wise, and probably unpopular, stance to take with tarot students. Gabriella mentioned that there was a book in the works – keep an eye out for it, I know I will.