Summer Magic and Spiritual Refreshment

It is summer and the time when many of us break from our routines to enjoy entertainments that refresh our spirits. Summer vacations and activities are meant to lighten us up and let the joy of the season bring a lighthearted break from work. 

One of the most popular plays of all time is Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, which is about the characters slipping in and out of different versions of reality, traveling in alternate universes to the delight and amusement of audiences.  

 Do you think that is worth a few moments of consideration?

For example, we often ask ourselves questions about our life's purpose and why we have taken on some of the patterns we have in our work and our love life. Many of us have changed our religious and spiritual practices. Some of us have also included new activities in our lives, especially creative activities that we had put off and now decided to finally use to express ourselves and give ourselves a creative outlet. New joy and energy come into us when we finally decide to quit thinking about something and do it. When we dance, make music, art, start writing or just go for more walks, we suddenly feel the flow of joy and healing.

What are these other dimensions? They could be parallel worlds where things seem to operate differently.

Consider the distance or closeness you have in various aspects of your life. Do you feel sometimes that you are an observer here? That your point of view is fluid? This often happens when we are in a major transition, and has everything to do with our progress in adjusting, changing or verifying the path that we are on.

We are spirits having a human experience rather than humans having a spiritual experience. Have you given any thought to the ramifications of this concept? How do you view your life? 

If you would like to talk about this, give me a call. 

Dreams do come true and the experience of fluidly moving between dimensions can be as magical for us as it is for Shakespeare's characters.  

Everybody Dies, But Not Everybody Lives

When we put off doing something we really feel a connection to, it can suck the life out of us. If there is something you have felt compelled to do, that may be part of your destiny.

So when that happens, that you keep on pushing something that keeps coming to mind to the back burner, you may feel drained of energy because spirit keeps sending you messages and showing you omens and you keep ignoring them.

Of course, we can always exercise our free will and say that other things are a priority for us now. We can always decide that the idea that seemed great some time in the past is no longer as vibrant or powerful a motivator for us.

If that is true and we are really ready to let go of the old idea, we need to send a clear, conscious communication to spirit and to our selves. A good way to do that is to create a ritual to let go of the old dreams, the old ideas, and clear the space to make way for the new, for what is important to us now. Then we will no longer carry around the baggage of intentions that are not sincere, not acted on, and we let go of those things and move to the front burner that which we really are going to do.

When I was getting out of the advertising business, I gave my portfolio to another freelancer so that she could use the actual display case and try and get business from any of my former customers. I took all my suits and ties to a Goodwill store. I have never had a need for a suit and tie again in all the years since then. When decided to no longer play the sports I used to play, I sold all that equipment. It was very cathartic to do these things.

Another guy I knew burned a drawing of a planned real estate development he had been working on when he got out of the real estate business.

When I used to teach creative writing, people used to sign up for my classes all the time because they had been thinking about writing, but in many cases, not doing it. Actually coming to a class where they had to bring in something they wrote every week created the opportunity to either do it or drop out and forget about it.

I have seen people who changed their spiritual path, so they reorganized their personal library to reflect the path they were currently on, and traded in their old books to used book stores, so that what they had at homes was very focused and supportive of their new direction.

The actions we take reflect what is really going on within us. When we do a personal ritual of transition, we free up our energies to move more swiftly along in the direction we are going.

Let us not live a life of regrets. Let us live a life that reflects our aliveness and the fulfillment of our destiny. If we are not clear on the direction we will take next, we can also do a personal ceremony to ask for direction.

Returns

When we find ourselves wondering what happened, the answer is probably that you did ask for this, even if you didn't know it.

You see, when you decide you want something, there may be more to it that you hadn't thought about. So here it is, with all of its parts, and you are surprised.

This phenomenon turns up in many ways. Sometimes when people come to me for a reading, the reading tells them everything they wanted to know and they go on their way. Some people come back for more readings because the reading may have raised more questions in their mind and now they want to ask about that.

There are also returns when we ask one question and the answer seems to answer a different question, but that answer goes to the real root of the problem.

Often we have to return to the questions that we are asking to see what it is we are really asking. The surprise when we realize that we were asking something one thing when we thought we were asking something else might give us a jolt, one of those enlivening wake up calls to our self.

Return to the question and ask, what is it I really want to know? Validation of the choices you have already made is also a good result, because it answers your question when others who are not attached to the outcome are confirming your decisions.

When the cards are turned over, what you see is the answer to your question. You just have to look at it with different eyes.

Gathering Energy on the Yin Side

It is a luxury to be off for a few days and not have to get up at any particular time. To be able to just read books and watch movies, to listen to music and just let new ideas percolate through my system. To enjoy a leisurely bath. And a cup of tea.

Just cooking some simple, healthy meals and getting plenty of rest is a good enough way to spend the day. When I feel like getting active again, I will be ready to get moving again.

Sometimes you just need to recharge your battery. During my busy seasons, I can sometimes work for weeks without getting a day off, and since I enjoy doing my reading and healing work, I am happy to work as much as possible.

There are some things I need to schedule right after New Year's, and then get everything off to a high energy start.

I am enjoying the yin side of the equation right now, staying in with the heat keeping everything cozy, nestled in with a book on the history of cards, some music for a winter evening and snacking on some delicious home made bread that a client just dropped off.

What else would make this an even better evening? Only one thing. If you think you know what that is, call or email, and you could be the winner of..........................I will tell you when you call.

Surrounded by Symbols

This season, more than the rest of the year, is more laden with evocative symbols than any other time.

How familiar are we with evergreen trees, holly wreaths, mistletoe? What about the New Year's symbols of the baby and the grim reaper? The witch at Halloween? The cornucopia at Thanksgiving?

We speak in this shorthand all the time. We know that a red diagonal line through anything means no. We know that thumbs up means yes. We know that a person who opens their arms is welcoming us and one who crosses their arms is not. We know that a colon and a half parenthesis is a smile. :)

Symbols have been part of our lives since before we had fully formed language. Primal ones that we have found, like the ancient cave paintings, are as emotive as many more finely drawn paintings, and carry a powerful amount of energy in a few spare lines.

There are systems to symbols, and some, like the runes or the I Ching hexagrams have an interesting way of fitting together and interlocking visually.

Others, like the system of tarot, have a way of interlocking conceptually, and although they are visual in themselves, they cannot be as compact as abstract forms like runes, or the hexagrams of the I Ching.

Some symbols are so emotionally charged that their mere appearance sends chills or rushes of joy, depending on the sign, without anyone saying anything or any accompanying literature.

Obviously, some symbols are references to ancient beliefs and feelings and some are purely modern inventions of convenience which may or may not last. With some symbols we have near universal agreement, but with others not.

We bring our own interpretations to symbols as well as recognizing traditional meanings. This is why two people can look at the same picture and have two very different experiences of it.

And this is also why this is such an emotional time of year for so many people. We are surrounded by symbols and they can convey a host of messages to us faster than we can digest them.

Some of Us Are Slow Learners

If you sometimes feel like you are a slow learner, don't be disappointed. Why do you think that we are given more than one lifetime to get the important lessons?

Lessons can look different if we regard them as totally new, but when we look through a longer perspective we see the patterns and that helps us get clarity and recognize where we are at a faster pace and see the things that we repeat.

In this way, past life recall can accelerate our movement forward, ironic as that may seem.

As we review stories from our past, we are offered the opportunity to recognize how or why we may have chosen the work we have in this lifetime, our lovers and spouses in this lifetime. Viewing past life stories can also explain aspects of difficult family relationships.

Remember, however, that we always have free will, so we can choose to be stubborn and not learn lessons as well as the possibility of learning them faster.

Nobody said we had to be fast learners.

Dancing Omens

Omens come in many forms. When something comes to your attention at least three times, you are being advised to take action by your spirit guides. This is an example of how it worked for me to get busy dancing again.

Earlier this year while I was reading at a festival, a couple who I used to see at dancing came to me for a reading. They asked me why I quit dancing. They reminded me that I have to do what feeds my soul.

One day last month at the rec center, I saw a familiar looking woman on the track. It took me a moment to recognize her. She asked me if I used to go contra dancing, and I said that I did. She asked me why I quit dancing. She said that was too bad and wondered if I would come back.

When I went dancing in one of the bars the other night, I ran into a healer I know from working fairs, and I know that she always liked to dance a lot. She talked to me a bit and so I decided to stay and dance. Until that moment, I wasn't quite sure if I would stay or go.

I was having dinner with a woman the other night and mentioned dancing to her and she encouraged me to go back to it, and said that she would like to go and see what it is like too.

Dancing was the first exercise I got besides walking after my heart attack 10 years ago. I feel like it helped me recover. They say that if you are going to have a relapse and another heart attack, it will happen within one or two years. I was dancing through that whole period, with no relapse.

It took me a month to be able to walk around the block for a half hour after my heart surgery. About four to six months later (can't remember exactly), I was introduced to contra dancing, and I was able to dance for three hours a night every week.

I could not believe that it took that much effort to get back on my feet at first, then later, I found myself wanting to dance at every opportunity. I am sure that dancing did me good. During that period, I never lifted any weights or walked on any treadmill. Just danced.

So I am being prompted to dance again. When you pay attention, omens help you choose. My spirit guides are clearly saying that this is part of my path for now.

Reading Within, Reading Without

Today, I was thinking of a situation and was going to draw some cards to read on the matter, but then I remembered I did not have my cards with me. So I did what came to me automatically, and just focused on the subject and let the answer come.

Of course, I have done this before, and it is always part of my readings that what comes through is not always what exactly is on the cards. Many people understand that the cards are gateways through which messages can come. Some people see them as visual prompts, focal points for the person requesting the reading to focus on and let their mind start to work on their issues even before the reader speaks.

There are times when I tell a person something, they ask me what cards told me that, and sometimes the answer is that it was not coming from any card, but rather from one of my spirit guides who told me to give you this message. Of course, there are also times when the literal interpretations of the cards do convey exactly the right message for this person at this time.

I have noticed recently that more people are asking me questions that do not require the cards, and in fact, for some answers, the cards are not needed at all.

Of course, you know that there are many psychics who do not use cards, runes, pendulums, I Ching, crystal balls or any other kinds of tools to connect with spirit and relay messages to clients. Mediums, channelers and straight psychics are other names for working this way. When messages come through touch, it is called clairsentient, when it comes through hearing, it is called clairaudient, and when it comes through seeing it is called clairvoyant.

Our comfort with using tools is both for the comfort of the client who might like to think that there is a logic and methodology to what we do. And there is to a degree, but there is also a lot coming through that psychic connection, which is not about logic, and is more deeply rooted in an ability to feel or sense.

The more we attune ourselves to be the tools, the more reliable our connections to our sources. For the reader, the tools are often familiar props that serve to set the stage until the senses connect and take over.

We go within in order to go without. I always affirm before a reading that I will bring through something that is useful for this person at this time.

For readers, learning to work within and without is part of the necessary development of really being a reader. It takes practice and it is not always easy to learn, but if you truly want to be able to do good readings, it is essential to learn. Like every other talent or skill, some will be born with more than others, but for the most part, it is the refinement of the skill through practice that brings the readings to life.

You have to read within in order to read without.

Written in Stone?

Last night I was listening to an interview on the radio with John Anthony West who has done a lot of controversial research on ancient cultures. For example, he says that the sphinx was actually created by some civilization the preceded the Egyptians and that the erosion on its exterior was done by water, not wind. Of course, people who have a vested interest in their theory of the past don't even want to discuss this.

This type of reaction is not new. I was raised in the Catholic church and went to Catholic schools. We were taught that Catholicism became as big as it did because whenever people were introduced to it, they regarded it as so superior to whatever came before it, that they just abandoned those old ways and joined it. Of course, later in life when I read other history books, I discovered that this was not actually how it all happened.

Göbekli Tepe, located in Turkey, is the site I heard them discussing, so I looked it up and saw the photos. It appears to have been an ancient temple made of stone pillars 10-15 tons each, carved in raised relief with figures of various animals and people. Ground penetrating radar shows that there may be 18 more similar structures adjacent to the one that is unearthed. They estimate these sites to be older than the pyramids of Egypt or Stonehenge. Much of this work was done under the direction of the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt.

Such a huge endeavor had to be organized and directed by a powerful person. A powerful vision must have been behind this work, and either the people agreed with this vision and worked toward it, or they were forced to work on it. The other obvious fact the stones give us is that these people had to be very skilled to carve raised relief figures into the stone columns at a time when other historians and archaeologists would not credit people with having tools to do such work.

Now the next amazing thing about this site is that someone then buried it under tons of dirt, which actually helped preserve it.

So the question we are facing is this. Why would people spend the immense amount of time and energy necessary to build such a complex, and then cover it over with dirt and abandon it?

A possible explanation could be this. Perhaps the political or religious structure that caused its creation later fell out of favor and people moved on.

Compare that to the structural changes in our society right now. At the beginning of the US, everyone was a farmer, craftsman, merchant or trader. Cottage industries were how most people made their living.

That was until the industrial age, when factories became the major employers and people quit working on farms or in home based businesses to go to work for the large employers. And that structure stayed in place until our present time.

However, as we now see major corporations closing down their US factories and offices in order to hire cheaper labor in other countries, the US workers are now left to create new ways of making a living.

Some people have gone back to farming, some in specialized organic farms or farms that raise heirloom varieties of plants that can command higher prices. Other people are inventing and marketing their own products. Others are creating specialized services that they can personally offer.

Although some people may be forced into these roles because they cannot get other employment comparable to what they used to have, it is, in essence the return of cottage industries, or home based businesses. Self employment and small businesses will be the wave of our future.

In a way, this may be like the ancient people covering up their old constructions once they have decided that they have moved beyond that model. Just a short time ago, people in the US grew up thinking that getting a job working in a large corporation was their career, their livelihood. Now people are looking at creating their own work, their own business, as their path in life.

Religions are following the same path as many of the churches which used to be full to capacity are now being shut down for lack of attendance, or hobbling along with a fraction of what they used to have. Meanwhile, although there are new megachurches replacing some of these, there is an increasing percentage of the population that chooses to not to belong to any organized religion, as many as one quarter of the population according to some surveys. There too, as individuals no longer are part of large organizations, their spiritual path or religion may be a self directed, home based activity.

These archaeological finds, contrasted with our current situation suggests that human history and the evolution of our societies and civilizations has been more of a rise and fall than a steady forward march. These excavations clearly show that humans were capable of great feats during the time of hunter gatherers, predating the rise of agricultural societies and the changes they engendered. Then after demonstrating they could do such things, people chose to abandon them.

We are now riding the cusp of another rise and fall era. Old structures are falling and new ones are rising. How we proceed from here will be the result of millions of individual decisions, which may look more organized to people looking back on us many years from now.

We can choose to ride this cusp coming from either love or fear. Be aware of what motivates your choices. We are already inhabiting new forms. Can you feel it? How are you navigating this ride?

Reading Consciousness

After reading at events, the altered state that fills my consciousness stays with me in the evening. There is a certain feeling that stays until the next day.

You can get an experience of what is happening when you do one reading and your mind starts spinning as the cards come out of the pack and the images set many inputs into motion, overloading and sorting, then flowing.

Hours later, that state of consciousness is still intact and operating forming a sort of aura around the reader that touches vision, imagination, perception and heightened awareness in a gentle way.

There is abundant energy that pulses through my body and the reading state of mind is still in place all through the evening.

I always affirm before I do a reading for someone that what I bring through will be useful to this person at this time. So in some way, it seems that in addition to something useful for them, something incredible happens that is useful to me as well.

This same state of consciousness is not the same as the one that comes with meditation or alcohol or smoke. It is something far different, useful because the ordinary mind processes are reconfigured.

Stuck in an awful traffic jam on the way home from the fair yesterday, the mellow feeling just kept the ordinary stress associated with such a situation at bay.

It was easy to just let my mind flow while we waited for the traffic to flow itself.

Getting into that reading state of mind is useful and, for me, desirable.

At the beginning of my learning to read, I did not know that it could lead to this. So here is another example of something that sounds simple but has profound results, and at the beginning, the process looked like what it was about was finding meanings to pictures that were constantly changing positions and evoking great varieties of meanings through the motions of shuffling and rearranging.

Yes, every picture tells a story, and every set of pictures tells a different story and every day spent interpreting these stories invokes an altered state created to serve the community of people who need or want readings, much as the shaman in primal tribes and villages invoked the altered state to read for their people who wanted or needed readings. They expected him or her to be somewhere out there in order to bring back useful information.

Sometimes healing comes through pictures when I read. Sometimes flashes of illumination. Sometimes confirmation. Sometimes insight, wisdom or humor. You never know. It all depends on the cards that come up and who is asking for the reading. It all comes into play. The asking of the question is part of answering the question.

It is still true. I go somewhere out there to bring back something for you.

Where the Fires Were

Today I took a ride up into Sunshine Canyon to see what it looked like now that the fires were out. There were whole mountainsides that looked like charcoal.

Then there were the places where the earth was scorched but some trees still stood and some even still had pine needles, although the needles were brown instead of green.

Two weeks ago you could see the night sky tinted orange above the mountains and in the daytime, smoke obscured the ridgelines, obliterating the usual profile against the sky.

It is funny the way the fire works. There was one house on top of a charred ridge that was made of wood, and it was not burned or even marred by smudge. Yet, just around the bend, there was just the remnants of a brick wall where another house once stood. There were odd contrasts like this all over, where the house on one side of the road was not burned and on the other side of the road, maybe a washer and drier and maybe a piece of the roof by the chimney was still there.

Was it that some guardian energy protected those that did not get burned? Was it prayer that saved some, not others? Was it a sudden shift in the wind that made the fire burn all the way up to a house, but not take the house? Was it luck?

Or was it simply that there was some invisible grid line in nature that said to the fire "You can burn up to here, but do not cross this line."

The fire crossed stone and water and consumed whole large areas of earth, grasses, shrubs and trees, but then there were stands of trees that are still standing, still green.

The forces of nature can work in mysterious ways. It was fascinating to see where the fires were.

Structures from Silence

Often, there is so much noise in the world that it is hard for us to digest the changes that we are encountering. Courage is required for our progress in uncertain times. There are times when we feel compelled to act quickly.

Then there are times when our best next move is to be silent, sense our feelings toward our next choice and let our intuition guide us toward the choice that is best for us.

In that silence we will sense our next best move, our best position, and we gather our strength to take the next step. As we look at each option in our mind's eye, we will be able to feel which one is stronger, and that is the one that is signaling us to come forward.

Quiet contemplation allows our spirit guides to work with us better. If an idea keeps coming back to us, that is one sign. If we keep getting a yes when we hold it in our inner vision, there is a warmth that illuminates our path and ignites our passion.

The silence is the breath that we blow on an ember to coax it to burst into flames and renew our light, our heat, our desire, our vision. Once that fire has warmed us, our next breath is the fuel that sets us in motion.

Helpful Spirits

We often see what we expect to see. People who expect to see angels as people with wings will have that vision. People who expect to see demons who look like giant lizards will have those visions.

There are other ways to see spirit guides, and these are worth considering. This is why ancient people could divine messages from the flight of birds, from meditating with trees, from fumes coming from fissures in the earth.

Is it not a blessing to find shade on a hot summer day? Is this a gift when you are hot and tired?

When you are walking and suddenly flowers are there along your path, and these flowers prompt feelings of gratitude and joy, are these not messages that lift your spirits?

When you ingest plants for healing, whether as tea, tincture, salve, bath salts, incense, or as seasoning in foods, are these not messengers from the earth, healing spirits come to us in solid form?

When you have a rapport with animals and you can communicate with them gently, is this not a spiritual bridge between different life forms?

Why wouldn't helpful spirits manifest as plants, animals or stones as well as people with wings?

Order out of Chaos

The question people like to ask is how decks of cards work. It is order out of chaos and the synchronicity of the appearance of cards that mirror what is going on affirms that there are no coincidences in life, only patterns we have not yet seen.

The cards contain images and ideas, each one different. When they are shuffled, there is no order. It is random.

So when a person selects some of the cards from the deck, they are extracting order from the chaos, and the flow of the cards they have chosen tells a story that is useful for them to hear at this time.

Why did they pull these cards now? Synchonicity. There must be some reason why they have come up now. It is ironic how the presence of the cards and the stories they tell intersect with what is happening in our life at this time.

There are no accidents in the universe, only patterns that we do not recognize until we step back and see them from a distance.

The random draw of the cards at this time provides the distance to examine the energies at work. Bringing them to the surface, exposed on the table top, both the subtle energies and the subconscious energies are suddenly made visible.

Our world is full of energies and movements that ripple beneath the surface, at moments visible, but largely invisible until our very motion, our free will of selecting cards, brings a sense of organization to our vision.

Each reading is a lens for examining our relationship to the chaos and how it appears as order in our life.

Each of our lives is a perfect example of making order out of chaos. The energies shape our perceptions and inform our free will choices when we see them.

Yes, there are things that are all around us that we will never see until we are ready. Yes, there are things that will never reveal themselves until we draw cards from the shuffled stack, and bring order from chaos.

Yes, this is how it works. When we choose to read, we choose to look at what is going on in our life. Chaos is always changing, and by our free will, we are always bringing order from it.

Dealing with a New Deck

Since I had to start using another deck after the theft of my favorite, I decided to try something different. I do have a second copy of my favorite, but it just felt like making a change was the right thing to do. Learning to work with a new deck would stretch me, challenge me.

It is true that if you know how to read tarot, with a strong grounding in the basics of the methodology, that you can read with any deck. Of course, each artist that designs their own deck adds some touches that may offer new insights and new possibilities for interpretation. Some tarot art is simply a refinement of the familiar images, with perhaps more finely drawn pictures, perhaps more crudely drawn images, more intense coloring, more pastel coloring, so in other words, different pictures, but still very familiar imagery and patterns.

Then there are some changes in the art that are philosophical, such as changing the magician from a juggler or slight of hand trickster to a ritual magician or a shaman. Or changing the Pope to the Heirophant, or a Buddha, or a character who looks like a monk or priest. With such changes there are not only changes in art, there are changes in interpretations and meanings.

So I always find that it expands my abilities and opens my mind to new possibilities when I use different decks.

There is also another factor that seems important to mention. The deck that was stolen from me I had been using for more than 10 years. Opening a fresh pack of the same deck just isn't the same as shuffling the deck that has been used in thousands of readings before.

That feeling of connection to your tools or other frequently used items is a tangible one. In the case of an heirloom, there is that sense of connection with the person who gave it to you. In the case of a tool which is very familiar, there is that feeling of familiarity with that tool and how it works. It is the energetic connection between a person and the things they use frequently.

When things like this happen, we just have to recognize the change and move on. The new deck worked well and customers commented on how beautiful it is and how much they enjoyed getting their reading with it.

Although I still feel like I lost an old friend with the disappearance of my old deck I do feel that I was both pleased with and challenged by the new deck. After a long weekend of handling it, I began to feel like this would be a good new tool for me to work with. It is one of those growing experiences that we are all dealt from time to time, whether we want it or not.

The Cards on the Table

You have probably heard some strange stories before, but here is a new one.

This weekend, I am doing tarot readings at a big three day festival in Boulder. Booths are very expensive, so I share the tent with two other readers to make the cost reasonable. As we have done in the past, we took what we need to work down there the night before the festival opened and set up the tent. Then we leave it for the night. This is common practice for outdoor festivals.

This morning, when we arrived, we found that someone had gotten into our tent and went through all of our bags. That's odd. All three of us keep very busy schedules and sites like this are usually secure.

Oddly, the only thing they took was the tarot deck which I have been using for years doing public readings. I had it in my bag at the festival site so that I would be all ready to go. In the suitcase with it was a brand new deck still in the shrink wrap that I am offering for sale. It is a very strange perp who would take the deck that is well worn and in a rather simple bag, rather than a brand new deck still in the factory wrap.

So I pulled out a couple of other decks that I have been getting familiar with and did my readings with them. That was no problem, because once you have many years of reading experience, you can read with any deck, with of course, some adjustments for variances different artists create.

I had been so connected to the old deck that I was beginning to feel that I needed to change for a while just to stretch my mind. When you go back and forth with different decks, it helps to sharpen your wits and open to additional insights. But of course, I never would have gotten rid of that deck, just brought out others more often.

So there you have it. Another strange but true story of weird criminals. And another amazing chapter in the life of this tarot deck. This is the same deck that gale force winds blew off my table last year, but a couple of other people helped me get all the cards back. So either the deck is now being used by the person who stole it or it was passed on to someone else. Or perhaps they just threw the cards away and kept the bag. Who knows? If this is the biography of a tarot deck, it is quite a story and quite a journey it is on.

Of course, there is one other possibility. Perhaps the person who stole it will start to think about the fact that it is a very well worn deck and start to feel a strange compulsion to return it. We will see.

The Private Eye

One of the detective shows that was popular years ago always opened with the line as an aerial shot swooped over New York: "There are millions of stories in the naked city. This is just one of them."

I always wondered, being young and never having been there, if everybody in New York really walked around naked. It was a stunning thought. I wanted to see that.

All these years later, I still have no idea what that opening meant, but it still is a mesmerizing line.

This was early on, long before I became familiar with Pan and his cohorts. Long before I ever visited what they now call a clothing optional resort. Long before I ever attended one of those come as you are parties where people left their clothing at the door. I am sure that I was not the only one sitting there wide eyed, trying to imagine a naked city.

The jargon from those days was confusing to say the least. When you are in the naked city, how can you have any private dicks?

A detective show, full of naked people? What's there to uncover?

This was one of my early lessons in language and how it is sometimes used to confuse and obscure, and how sometimes, it can reveal.

Actually, if you ever watched that show there was never anybody naked in Naked City. But I am sure that a lot of us kept hoping.

Back in those days, there were a lot of things you could not say or do on TV. I guess they were afraid we might get ideas. Thing is, by the way they didn't say or show many things, made me even more curious.

As I see it now, there were other interpretations of Naked City, things that never would have occurred to me back then. You see, after many years of detective work myself, I have discovered that we are all naked under our clothes.

Tarot Symbols and Their Uses

The design of the Rider Waite Smith Tarot deck expressed such a powerful vision that it changed both the way of reading cards and influenced the design of new decks for 100 years now.

Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of it was that it put a picture on every card in the deck, and every picture unleashes ideas, taps into the subconscious and participates in the telling of a story to the person who is requesting the reading, or through the reader to the person requesting the reading.

In the original design, the author, Arthur Edward Waite, and the artist, Pamela Colman Smith, incorporated many metaphysical symbols to add layers of meaning to the use of the cards. These provide guidance and advice of a spiritual nature and address the essence of issues portrayed in the images. They form part, not the whole of the meanings behind the pictures. Usually the central image will bring some insight or understanding to light all by itself, and it is not always necessary to understand all of the reasons behind various details. That is part of the genius of the design; there are plenty of clues there, and intuition guides us in picking up on them and making a whole and useful narrative.

Many artists, authors and designers have followed the patterns created by Waite and Smith, and so when people are learning about tarot, this deck is still a jumping off point for understanding a deck and how to work with it, providing a valuable frame of reference that aids in understanding the process.

However, in recent years, many excellent artists and designers have proven that a great deck can be made from all kinds of images, from abstract or representational paintings to black and white drawings to photographs to computer enhanced images to reproductions of great art to fantasy stories to great literature. And these can be effective even without incorporating the metaphysical symbology included in the RWS because the choice of imagery can cover a tremendous amount of territory on its own.

Other types of symbols such as numbers and colors are more universal and accessible, and these two elements are found in nearly every deck, except, for example, decks designed in black and white or without numbers.

Even though some concepts may be changed by design, the essence usually remains. Changing Judgment to Karma, Devil to Temptation, Death to Transformation, Fool to Seeker, World to Universe and so on, simply makes the concept more gentle or more palatable to some people.

Any collection of images can make a good deck to read with, including some non-tarot oracle decks, such as the Soul Cards, Psy Cards, Medicine Cards, Angel Cards, Faery Cards, Titania's Fortune Cards or Madame Endora's Fortune Cards, which do not use suits, major and minor arcana, court cards or numbers as methods of organization. Randomness characterizes their design as well as their use.

Tarot is special because there is a progression in the story lines, an organization of the images, a flow between both intuition and logic, or as many people might say, between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, the creativity and chaos and the order and principles.

Images are a rich and nuanced way of addressing consciousness at multiple levels simultaneously. A person can have one of these experiences looking through a bunch of old family photos, or a book of art or photography, although the family photos might be too limiting because there are too many personal references, whereas the universal symbology of a tarot deck is open to everyone, and a book will always present things in the same order, where shuffling a deck can present virtually unlimited juxtapositions of images together, which varies the messages and their impact.

The creation of the tarot deck is one of the most powerful tools we can use, not simply as a fortune telling device, but as a self teaching tool or meditational device in the same way a mandala works.

One old tarot reader always maintained that if a person did not have any other books, and if they were simply locked in a room for a month with nothing to read or look at but a tarot deck, that at the end of that month, they would have keys to all the important life lessons in their hands, and the cards could help them unlock the mysteries of the universe.

True, it takes most people far longer than a month to learn to use a deck of cards, and even those of us who have been using them for years are never done learning from them, as layer after layer reveals new secrets to us. It is amazing how you can look at a picture hundreds of times or thousands of times and still find something you never realized before or never noticed before. They were designed that way, and that is the genius of the deck.

Full Moon Reflections

Full moons have always held special significance to people because it is such an obvious sign of the cycles of nature, the cycles of life. It comes in a way that we can see with the naked eye and it comes frequently enough that we can remember the entire cycle and notice how it affects us.

By comparison, we sometimes have trouble remembering things that happened years ago. We have to stretch our minds to calculate what year that was we had the bigger than average snowfall, or the year that the drought was especially bad.

We sometimes forget when that was when we moved, if we have moved several times. We have to think hard to remember when we changed careers or jobs if we have done that several times.

So many things elude our easy recall. Not only that, but if we try to extract the important life lessons from many of our experiences and relationships, one memory always seems to lead to another, and we recall things in some seemingly random way.

Our lives often seem to be bursting at the seems with things to do, tasks to prioritize, things to sort out.

Then once a month, the night sky is lit, silently, sweetly, with the full moon that we watch steadily grow, then recede again, until it is hidden in the dark. Waxing, waning, presenting herself in her full glory, reminding us of the comings and goings of life, the things we have intended to do, and the things we have done, from month to month.

Her reminders are gentle. She simply appears and disappears, and we reflect on the natural beauty of the world we live in, both seen and unseen.

We are here for a while to shed our light. We share our selves and our time, for how ever many seasons and cycles we have. Our energy ebbs and flows, the seeds we plant, grow. Sweetness is more often quiet than loud. The light that glows from within is how. We see our way by feeling, with a universe of possibilities as never ending as the luminous night sky.

And the full moon visits us once a month, her mysteries in plain sight.

Senses and Psychic Ability

Psychic abilities are often extensions of our senses. Clairvoyance is another name for second sight. Clairaudience is the ability to pick up messages through what we hear. Calirsentience is the ability to read through the sense of touch.

Our psychic abilities are developed when we open our senses to a fuller use.

Have you tried just relaxing and opening your ears to hear the sounds from all around? Do you ever hear messages in those sounds? Are there patterns that emerge from what you hear besides the obvious?

Do you ever let your mind relax and look farther afield? You might think of this as imagination. What happens when you look ahead in time or to some distant place? Can you picture events playing out from the present energy?

When you pick up a random object, whether it is a stone, a personal object like a pen or a piece of jewelry, can you sense anything about the people who have had possession of this object or came into contact with it?

Psychic ability is an awakening to a higher level of awareness. We can increase our sensitivity to it through sight, hearing and touch.

You can mark down your impressions in a notebook and then verify them later. These exercises can help you start to make the connections.