Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
The spooky rerun
The first day back at work is always a bitch, and today was no exception. It could have been an easy day, but I had to take one of my patients back for post-op bleeding, so everything ended well past 5 when it should have ended around 2:30. No trip to the gym for me, only a hurried visit to the supermarket to scrounge some heat-uppable food for my family. Oh, and toilet paper. Gotta have toilet paper.
And there you have it, my excuse to rerun an old favorite of mine: fatigue! I’m always griping about fatigue, I know, I know. Maybe if I weren’t so damned tired, I wouldn’t gripe about it so much.
Anyway, this memory got jostled today. The old gf and I write one another, as some of you know, and she was creeping out over the fact a friend of hers was following the advice of a psychic. That reminded me of how negative she was about my tarot-reading shtick back in the old days. I think she even made me swear never to touch them again, but we broke up soon after, so you can guess how well I honored that promise.
In my email today, I finally (after 25 years) told her the story below. Of course, I told y’all the story nearly two years ago, which means she could have read it two years ago if she would read my blog, which she doesn’t. Go figure.
But before story time, I want ALL of my Iowa readers to make it to the caucus tomorrow.
And now: Wheel of Fortune, originally posted here, in case you want to read the comment thread. It was a good one.
Before it became a showcase for the talent of Vanna White, the Wheel of Fortune was a tarot card symbolizing change, luck, the whimsy of fate. Great card if it’s dealt in the standard position (as shown), the pits if reversed (upside down). That’s Fate for you — a strict 50-50, like the coin flip of Batman’s nemesis, Harvey Dent. Heads, you win the lottery. Tails, you’re blindsided by a trucker asleep at the wheel of his semi.
I bought my first tarot deck, one of the classic Rider-Waite decks, my first quarter at Berkeley. Old-timers here at Balls and Walnuts will remember that I had a spooky period — read lots of Castaneda, futzed with my dreams, wandered the Berkeley streets at night like I was on some kind of vision quest. Tarot was part of it.
How does a chemistry major reconcile something as obviously bogus as fortune telling? My theory of tarot, circa 1984, posited that folks reveal far more in their body language than they do with their words. I might not understand what their body language had to say, but my subconscious did. Using the tarot as a sort of Universal Translator, I could free-associate my way through a reading, blathering on and on, wandering from one card to the next and then back again, generating hypotheses, testing for internal consistency, and ultimately arriving at a coherent story.
I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Yah, that’s how all the charlatans work. They throw out a million darts, hoping one or two will be bullseyes.” The trouble with that theory is, I never asked the recipient of the reading for verbal feedback. If he even spoke, I’d interrupt: “Don’t feed the reader. I don’t want you to say a word.” I was reading their body language, you see, and the cards merely catalyzed the process.
My girlfriend back home had a problem with this. She wanted me to throw the deck away, and she wouldn’t let me do a reading for her. I never did throw that deck away (I gave it away, but that’s another story), and when we broke up a year later, I began doing readings in earnest. Always great for a party gag — “Hey, Floppy! Bring your deck!”
Floppy, by the way, refers to my double-jointedness, so don’t get any ideas.
It tickled me to give readings to science majors. My readings dealt with the present more than anything else — I wasn’t interested in divination — and I daresay my accuracy ran at 70 to 80 percent. The scientists had trouble with this, and we had more than a few “WTF?” moments. These guys and gals couldn’t bring themselves to believe in cartomancy. After letting them flail a bit, I’d trot out my theory of tarot and they would nod sagely, safe again in their empirical worlds.
I suppose I should mention that while most of the cards have their good and bad aspects, some, like the Ace of Cups, are unequivocally good, while others, like The Tower, are unequivocally bad. Death, despite what you might think, is not necessarily a bad card. It indicates transformation, a passage from one phase of life to another. You know the only movie to ever get that right? Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs. Watch it (the relevant scene comes at the beginning) and you’ll have a good sense of how I conducted my readings.
Flash forward a couple years. On one of my courting treks to Karen’s apartment, I brought along my deck to entertain her and her two roommates. Karen the Vulcan, Empress of Logic, would be great for this. I looked forward to seeing her get all flustered as I read her life back to her.
If you’ve never had a reading, here’s how it goes. You have to handle the cards yourself — shuffle, mess ’em up, cut the deck until you’re satisfied. I take no part in this, except to remove one card from the deck which signifies YOU. After shuffling, you hand me back the deck, and then I lay the spread, a Celtic Cross.
This covers you.
This crosses you.
This is beneath you.
This is behind you.
This crowns you.
This is before you.
And so forth. To my horror, I saw nearly every possible bad card show up in Karen’s spread, including The Tower,
and the Ten of Swords.
“This is bullshit,” I said, and rapidly scrambled all the cards. I threw the rest of the deck into the pile and messed them up, and then I gave it back to Karen so that she could do the same.
There are 78 cards in a tarot deck, ten cards (not counting the signifier) in a Celtic Cross. In Karen’s second spread, at least six of the cards were identical to the first, including The Tower and the Ten of Swords.
At that point, I put the deck away. This wasn’t fun anymore. I didn’t need to go through the motions on this; no matter how I handled it, the reading would be the same. Crash and burn.
Karen developed multiple sclerosis about a year later. No need to belabor the point; the next few years were harrowing for both of us.
But we made it through, and we’re both still here to laugh about it. Karen will sometimes say, “Remember those two tarot readings? Pretty weird.”
Yup. Pretty weird.
D.
I played around with Tarot to, a very long time ago. I think that your general hypothesis is correct: it works by giving the reader a framework in which to interpret clues subtle and broad.
If you try to get too specific, it won’t work. The sitter has to provide the second part of the interpretation. You can’t look at the cards and say ‘a car accident’ or ‘a scholarship’.
I don’t remember the technical names of the phenomena associated with this, but they are
– cold reading, which is what you are doing whether you realize it or not
– retrofitting, where the readee provides the interpretation, whether or not they agree with or believe in fortune-telling
– selective memory, in which you forget the spreads that only sort of worked, and remember the ‘spooky’ ones
These are subtle and powerful human traits. I believe that they are deeply ingrained, aspects of the social code in our DNA. All fortune-telling taps into them, some more egregiously than others (Sylvia Browne or John Edward, for example). Tarot is interesting because of the symbolism and mythic qualities.
Pretty much every reading I’ve ever had boils down to –
You’re a sweet person
You’re very creative
Potential for change is all around you
You’re afraid to grasp it
Your inner life is fucked up.
Indecision rules the day.
In a nutshell, that’s what I always get.
And, um, it’s pretty accurate. 😉
Oh!
Yes, I’m caucusing, never you worry. The kid is caucusing too, and we’re both caucusing for different candidates. Bill, however, is not.
Dean, yup, my readings were strictly cold. I had no interest in the other guy’s interpretation of my reading. I didn’t want it to taint the process.
Tam, I hope you do a post about caucusing. I, for one, would be very interested in your take on things.
I’ll try to remember to take my camera. It’s… a unique experience and I expect a madhouse.
You’d be happy, I’m standing up for Edwards. 🙂
Woot! Go Edwards! I’m so proud of him tonight — outspent by Obama and Clinton, distant third in almost all of the polls, and yet he comes in second. And did you catch his speech? Not the speech of a loser. Obama and Edwards both gave great speeches. Clinton? Meh. Yawn.
I was very happy with Edwards clear through. In our caucus, there were 103 for Edwards, 67 for Clinton, 48 for Obama and 39 for Richardson. We had 7 delegates total.
Edwards got 3 delegates
Clinton 2 delegates
Obama and Richardson 1 each.
It was a very uplifting way to spend the evening and I keep waiting for someone, anyone to point out that Third Place isn’t the ‘inevitable win’ she supposedly held.
I only saw part of Edwards’ speech, but what I saw was an excited “We did it, and we did it with integrity and we’re going to keep doing it.”
Hillary, tho, I went and did something else after a while. It wasn’t a post-tally speech, it was the same old stump crud she’s been spewing. I bet she’s spitting nails. I hope she gets put in her place in New Hampshire, too.
And, yeah, I like Obama a lot and think he’ll do a wonderful job, should he win the nomination. 🙂
I have a couple of tarot decks and find they are great for helping remove mental blocks, or freeing up the mind to recieve new ideas. I can create stories from the spread of the cards. I’ve never been one for doing readings, although if anyone ever spied them in my bag they’d immediately ask for a reading. I’d never proclaim to be a great reader, but everyone said “Yes! Yes! That’s so true!” which I think bares more about the recipient than anything.
Your story made me want to see Carmen, but I’m glad your story has a happier ending.
UK news is reporting heavy on Clinton, but I noticed some of the American reporters simply call her “Clinton” which I think confuses folks into associating her politics with Bill’s. It’s interesting to see how the rest of the world watches and anticipates these outcomes for their own political needs.
Stephen Wright once said, “One time I played poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.”
Lyvvie: Carmen? Whaaaat?
Pat: good one! I love that guy.
Tam: interesting. I take it your daughter got her choice last night?
Late, as usual right now. My understanding of the tower is not universal badness- more an unavoidable change. Lani Diane Rich uses it as a theme in her book The Fortune Quilt.
From http://www.aeclectic.net:
“It is however one of the clearest cards when it comes to meaning. False structures, false institutions, false beliefs are going to come tumbling down, suddenly, violently and all at once. What’s important to remember as a tarot reader is that the one you’re reading for likely does not know that something is false. Not yet. To the contrary, they probably believe that their lover is being faithful, that their religious beliefs are true and right, that there are no problems in their family structure, that everything is fine at work…oh, and that they’re fine. Just fine, really.
Alas, they’re about to get a very rude awakening. Shaken up, torn down, blown asunder. And all a reader can really do to soften the blow is assure the Querent that it is for the best. Nothing built on a lie, on falsehoods, can remain standing for long. Better to tear it all down and rebuild on the truth. It is not going to be pleasant or painless or easy, but it will be for the best.”
Sometimes, I think this is the tarot card that most represents my life.
Tarot! Haven’t done that in years! I wonder if I still have the gear… I always took the same approach and greatly enjoyed trying to fit the meanings of the various cards together into a coherent thread.
And, yes, creepy about the reading.
Do you remember that story? I think you and Suzie were there that afternoon.