What Is Magic?

When we look at the evolution of the magician card in the tarot, it presents an important question. What is magic?

The earliest tarot decks portrayed the magician as a stage magician, one who makes his living by his wits. Many of us have seen stage magicians like David Blaine, Doug Henning, Criss Angel, Penn &
Teller or David Copperfield and we wonder how that trick was done. Sometimes we get an opportunity to see it real up close and personal like a magician who comes to our table in a restaurant or does tricks at a bar where we are having a drink. Even though this person is right there in front of us, we still cannot figure out where he pulled that coin from, or how he knew what card we would draw. These are practiced skills, and at the root of it, we can say that the magician is someone who makes things happen.

The magician is very creative and very willful. The magician is always an active force, a catalyst. He is also a free spirit who takes his show on the road. Have you changed careers or relationships several times in your life? Have you reinvented yourself? Have you dropped old habits or hobbies or taken up new ones? Then you have made changes in your life according to your will. you have used magic to transform from what you were to what you are.

Now as we see the magician transformed in more recent decks to a ceremonial magician, he uses esoteric and arcane symbols to signal the changes about to come, some of which may be invisible. And this magician also lives by his wits, although in a different way than the stage magician. However, there are other modern decks in which the magician is a shaman, where again magic is afoot, but in a different way. The shaman might affect healing and divination from something from his small bag of herbs, or a simple tool, like his staff, drum, chanting, dancing or casting stones. His stuff is more natural than a magic wand or a chalice. Still, the common thread is there. He makes things happen. We invoke the magician when we want a change.

What is magic? What is real? What can you do? Is it time for you to discover what kind of magician you are? What kind of magician do you want to be?

When we say a person lives by his or her wits, this implies that they are exerting all of their energy and all of their resources to do what they can to make changes in their world, right in front of our eyes. Something is transformed, whether we can see it or not.

We are the magician in our own life. What will we do next?

Transition Point Readings

Transition points are our moments of greatest aliveness. Without challenges we may never discover what we are capable of. What we see as setbacks and failures may in fact hold the seeds of our triumph.

Ever heard of someone who lost their job and thought that it was the most terrible thing that ever happened to them, but later on found some other type of work and are now much happier doing that? Ever known someone who was devastated by the end of their marriage or long term relationship, then subsequently found themselves in a wonderful relationship with a different person? Ever know someone who went bankrupt but then started another business which became a great success? Ever know someone who had a serious life threatening illness or injury but then recovered and found whole new sources of joy in their life?

The biggest motivator for people wanting readings I have noticed over my many years of experience is that they seek out second or third opinions when they reach a change point in their life.

When a person gets laid off their job, when they are thinking of taking a new career direction, when they are ending a relationship, beginning a new relationship, when they face serious illness, when someone close to them dies, when they have an unexpected, mysterious psychic or spiritual experience, at the time of a birthday or significant anniversary.

Sometimes when a person has a spontaneous awakening, they do not know what to make of this event. One of the differences between such a person, an amateur and a professional is that a professional has experience in handling or interpreting spiritual and psychic awakenings and helping a person to integrate them.

These are times when a person who might not ordinarily seek out the services of a reader, these life altering experiences are so profound that the person simply chooses to get an outsider's opinion even if they think that such things are really out there.

We have all had experiences where the input we are getting from family, friends or other professionals may seem to be lacking something, but then something that a reader tells them suddenly clicks, it resonates and make sense in a way that nothing else does.

Years ago, when I was new at this, I used to wonder why total strangers would come to me to ask such profound questions. Then I realized that the objective viewpoint of someone who is not intimately involved in their life is exactly why a neutral party like a professional reader is a good one to seek out as a source of a second opinion.

Your friends and relatives may already have strong opinions about who you should marry, what job you should take, where you should live or other matters, but you may still feel that this does not sync with your own gut feelings, your own soul resonance. The reader may then be serving the purpose of validating your feelings. This is your choice but others were urging you to make a different choice and the reader is one who is encouraging you to be true to yourself.

Transition points are our moments of greatest aliveness. Today's tragedy or disappointment can contain the seeds of transformation and growth.

The forest fires that devour mature trees also provide the heat that open seed pods and nourish the blossoming of the following years.

In the tarot deck, the Tower is frequently depicted as a building knocked down by a lightning bolt. That building may have needed to be knocked down to make way for a new building. Some artists draw the tower in the shape of a person's head or profile. This signifies that sometimes we have too much invested in what was and we need to let go of that to make room for what we will do next.

Make good use of your transition points and let a reader help you see the path forward. You will be glad that you did. People confirm this for me all the time. Transition points can be your power points, your moment of great magic.Don't miss the opportunity to make good use of it.

Spiritual But Not Religious

You have to keep in mind that popes are elected. That means that they have done enough politicking over the years to line up allies and votes. Voting among bishops is just as political as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The age thing is relative in some respects. People are living longer now. How many people have we read about recently who were great authors, musicians, actors, etc who died when they were in their early 90s? When I was a kid, I thought that 60 was the age close to death, but now my mother still has an active life and is near 90, although her parents died in their 60s and early 70s. I don't think the Catholic Church will change, and they will continue to lose members in Europe and America. Why? People have been leaving for years over the policies regarding birth control and divorce. As long as they hold their positions on those issues, people will either quit going to church or go to other religions. If they won't budge on those issues, don't hold your breath waiting for approval of gay marriage. There are also other scandals looming, including one about the Vatican Bank. Membership continues to increase in those parts of the world where couples continue to have lots of kids. Hence, choosing a pope from the growth market.

Spiritual people are probably uncomfortable with the fact that papal elections are still about politics. They like the symbology of the new pope naming himself after St. Francis because they like the ideas that Francis represents. 

But the rift still exists. Those who love the best ideals represented in Catholic theology but do practice birth control and have been divorced will still drop out and go their own way. 

Many people started drifting when the church gave up all their high rituals like the Latin Mass, Gregorian chants and so on. People were enchanted by the mysteries of the high magic. When you entered into one of those old churches and smelled the frankincense and beeswax candles, heard the chanting, participated in the ritual movements and responses led by the ritually robed priests, you knew you were in a special place. That is why so many people, even non-Catholics were captivated about the news of the process of selecting a new pope. Their attention was drawn into the rituals. This week even non-Catholics could be heard conversing about the cardinals being locked in until the election was final, black smoke, white smoke, the ringing of the bell, the announcement "Habeus Papam" and the significance of his choice of name.

This whole process is a great example of the contrast between what is meant when a person says that they are spiritual but not religious. They may not want someone telling them how to have sex or who to have it with, and they may not want to tithe, but they still love the magic of an otherworldly ritual. Ritual still has the power to move them spiritually, even if the policies of the organization do not.

Evolving Practice

At the beginning, I was just curious to check out if there was anything to the cards or I Ching, so I just kept using them and noticing the results. 

Over time, my attention kept being draw to cards and I noticed that sometimes things would just pop into my head that sort of sprang from looking at the cards, but was not exactly just an interpretation of them. I have learned that just meditating on the images triggers the connections to my spirit guides and I have learned that when I get an instinct that a message is coming through not to second guess myself for any reason. 

The cards are gateways that open the portals to other knowing. I also use other tools such as pendulums and runes, and I find it there too. In tackling something more open ended, like psychometry, clairvoyance and clairaudience, you really blow the doors off the toolbox, because in those contexts you are not even using a tool, you become the tool. The experience of moving from using tools to being the tool is the biggest revelation, although having favorite tools available is a comfortable way to open the channels for both me and the client.

With all metaphysical teaching, the idea is to become more capable and independent, whether you have a teacher or you are using tools to teach yourself. 

Readings & Free Will Choices

In my readings, I always like to remind people that the reading can reveal energies at work in their life right now, but that the final choice is always up to them.

So, for example, when a person is looking at the possibilities of relationships with two different individuals, she has a choice. In some cases, the reading encourages the seeker to make their best choices.

For example, recently a woman was asking about a reading and the only bright card on the table was the one representing herself. The bright card was one that indicated that she was successful in business, well grounded and able to manage her affair well. It also indicated that she was a very sensuous person and was on the verge of entering into a relationship with a well matched man. All the others were the kind of cards that would indicate that the relationship she had been in had run its course, that there was nothing more to be gained from it and no future in pursuing it, and that it was time to extract the lesson from the experience and move on.

When presented with this information, the seeker told me that she had been in a relationship with a man for over a year, and that she was frustrated because she really felt that there was a special connection with him, but that he lived far away in another state, and he had no intention of moving here, and she had no intention of moving there. She also revealed that she had not seen him for about seven months and that he was very lax about even responding to her emails and phone calls.

I responded that I got that he was not well grounded, not really closely connected to her and would not make a good partner for her. She responded by revealing that she was aware that he had been diagnosed as bipolar and that he frequently chose not to take his medicines.

I also noted from the cards she drew that I picked up that she was very good in business and has a lot of creative energy in her work. She revealed that she has been very successful in a highly creative business and now she was thinking of starting her own business.

She was hesitating in both of these key areas in her life. I suggested that she could break through both of these logjams at once and that the energy unleashed by going ahead and launching her own business would also be the catalyst that would set other energies in motion and would lead to her meeting a new love interest who would be a better match for her.

She thanked me for giving her encouragement and noted that she had been thinking about breaking off the dysfunctional relationship for a while and during this same period she had delayed her business progress as well.

In recognizing the power of choice and exercising her will to really put the law of attraction to work for herself and draw in greater success in both areas of life, she left the reading with a much brighter outlook and a determination to put things in motion that would benefit her, shaking off the doldrums she had allowed to hold her back.

The reading helped her to see that there were no circumstances holding her back, no good reasons why she could not be more successful in both her love life and business life, and she left the reading with uplifted spirits and a renewed sense of purpose and determination.

This is a good example of how a reading can help a person see clearly so that they can make choices that really serve their own best interests.