Answering Creativity's Call
By
Rebecca Brents

Planets in Retrograde -- The Basics
By
Rebecca Brents

Real People
Real Lives
Real Ambitions
Real Questions

Our Premium Members
Get
Real Answers
Real Direction
Real Information
Real Advantages

Become a
Premium Member
today!!

The Biology Of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Matter And Miracles
By
Bruce H. Lipton

Astrology Coaching
Live Your Life by Divine Design

Astrology Coaching puts YOU in control of the life you were born to live!!

Take a journey through your birth chart as never before.

Real Astrology ...
for people who take
their lives seriously.

Enroll in
Astrology Coaching
TODAY!!

	Me and the Tarot Sharing a Special History by Rebecca Brents
Astrology, Tarot, and Self Improvement for the New Age.

Me and the Tarot
Sharing a Special History
by Rebecca Brents

I was young and wanted to know about the future. By young, I mean I was in my early teens -- and the future stretched mysterious and frightening before me, a misty, chilly place with a heart of darkness I didn't understand. I could feel it though. A chaotic turbulence rumbling like distant thunder. It was the dawn of the 1960s.

Television programs contained the simplicity and silliness of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, Bonanza and Gunsmoke. Real life, dead ahead, contained much more sobering themes -- for the world and for me personally. In my bones, I knew it ... and wanted some warning, some preparation on what to expect.

That's when I first hit upon the notion of learning to read the Tarot. I expected a lot from 78 pieces of cardboard, and I was absolutely certain it could tell me the things I wanted to know ... if I could just find the key -- or the knowledge -- to unlock their secrets. Odd how that conviction never faltered, even when I could find absolutely nothing in the way of books or study material to help me in my quest. Perhaps you can hear the irony when I admit I needed the teacher I have become today -- back then ... when I was young and life was different.

Maybe that's how it happens. The New Age aphorism blithely states, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." By that standard, it was many years before I was ready. And maybe that's just as well. In hindsight, from what I know now about those times that were a'changin', that may have been one distinct instance where ignorance of what the future held was a blessing. Sometimes I wonder what the cards would have told me -- back then -- about the immediate future -- and how much of that wrenching time, politically and personally, was already set in stone.

Maybe the Tarot in its wisdom -- and occasional mercy -- would have fed me glimpses of the truth in little bites. From where I am today, I can say I was probably better off not knowing. When the surprises exploded into the calm fabric of my familiar world, they were indeed unexpected. I didn't have to spend months -- or years -- brooding about the story I'd seen unfold in the cartoon images and garish colors of the Tarots that were commercially available -- back then.

(Is there anything that looks less imposing to the novice, more childishly game-like than the crude art in the Rider-Waite deck? To this day it makes me shudder. I am so glad I never actually owned one.) Seeking to learn the Tarot, I found books that didn't agree with each other, books that contradicted each other, books that talked in riddles. Books that made no sense. There was nothing systematic around which to organize my education. There was almost nothing logical about the cards themselves. I gave up, finally, almost as ignorant as when I started. I figured there had to be a better way. It took me over thirty years to find it.

I don't remember when I bought my first Tarot. I just recall a deep relief that I had a choice of something other than that R-W monstrosity. It was the Aquarian Tarot by David Palladini. Now out of print. The books weren't any better though -- for a long time. Every time I did a reading, I struggled to interpret the cards in their prescribed pattern on the table. I had about four books I consulted for each and every meaning -- and between them I'd come to some conclusion that kind of blended them all together.

Life in those thirty years taught me lots of things that would eventually be useful as my education in several occult studies lurched forward in fits and starts, unsteady at the best of times. They came in lessons as far removed from a formal study of Tarot as you can imagine. Maturity and a significant collection of years helped me put them together -- when the time came. Eventually. I still needed a teacher ... and this time, apparently because I was ready, she did, indeed appear.

She taught me enough in our time together that I could -- and did -- become that teacher I needed. I can't begin to say that the way I learned -- and now teach Tarot is a fabulous way for anyone else to take. But I've been told by a number of people that the way I lay things out is logical and lucid, and that, yes indeed, it makes sense to them now, too. Finally. I'm not the only one, it seems, who wrestled many years with turgid and terrible material. The way I teach it today ... well, it sure can't be any worse than what I slogged through -- in my time.

And in that baffling way Life has of coming full circle, winding back on itself and restating old themes you can't recognize until you've heard them many times, the very knowledge Life saved me from when I was a wide-eyed teen-ager looking to leverage open the Pandora's box of my future, became the thing that saved my sanity as I moved into another series of sad and awful years. Right on schedule with Saturn passing through my 4th House ... once again.

It was during that time, and with much relentless practice, I learned the Tarot -- almost effortlessly. I ran through so many questions, so many layouts, so many readings -- seeking answers.

I learned what the cards meant because I saw them so often. Right side up. Upside down. Weaving on the one hand, stories I could hardly believe. Weaving on the other stories I was desperate to count on. It was Crazy Time ... and the Tarot was my companion. It comforted me like the voice of God in season after season where there was no one else to turn to. No one else to trust. And no other human soul who cared at all knew what was happening ... or why.

It helped me make decisions whose outcomes could have been catastrophic if I'd done what I desperately wanted to do ... and take the easy way out. It rarely told me what I wanted to hear. It rarely cut me much slack through months -- and then years -- of stress I am convinced would have killed some women. Scares me, in fact, to think how close I came.

Maybe in the end it didn't matter whether I read Tarot cards or flipped a coin in the choices I made. After a while I was that fried and that looney. I wasn't quite at the stage of walking into walls ... but not far off it. Like soldiers in a war whose common experiences build a foundation for friendship no one else can share, no one else can understand, the Tarot and I bonded during that time.

I came to know it intimately -- and in the same way, it seemed to know me. I do understand why that is now. Back then though, it was a life-saver. Literally. And I know friendships like that are rare and sacred. Deeper maybe than anything possible with another person. That intimacy factor. It's still there. It's still special. And so is the vehicle that contained it. Ok ... it was sure a long time coming. But it arrived in the nick of time. And now, for sure, it's here to stay.

(c) 2009 Rebecca Brents and Enchanted Spirit, Inc., All rights reserved.

Go to: Tarot, Beginning Tarot Class, Tarot Articles, Tarot Lectures, The Tarot Blog, New Age Blogs, Ruby Tuesday's Tarot Blog, Ruminations and Reflections on Tarot

Rebecca Brents writes on a wide variety of spiritual and new age subjects, including astrology, tarot, feng shui, alternative health, metaphysics, and self-improvement. She publishes an extensive array of information on her website, Enchanted Spirit, and offers numerous new age online lectures and new age classes in these various fields.

She publishes detailed accurate astrology predictions, readings and forecasts in Ezines for Premium Members. She also provides astrology readings, tarot readings, and personal consultations through The Enchanted Spirit Metaphysical Source Shop. Stop by and subscribe to her free new age ezine, New Age-New Horizons. See her books and classes at Catweasel Ink Publishing.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
~ W. H. Auden ~
Born February 21, 1907

Please click on the titles to visit these fine areas of Enchanted Spirit

---

	PO Box 711 McIntosh · NM · 87032

Enchanted Spirit is a non-denominational spiritual center of healing, support, self-improvement, personal guidance, education and writing. We publish multi-media works of New Age thought and information to encourage serenity and growth in individual life choices, advance the universal search for life's meaning, and promote tolerance for positive ideas from all philosophies and religious traditions, believing as we do that truth is where you find it.

---

This site is hosted and maintained for Enchanted Spirit by

Catweasel Ink

Copyright © 1999 - 2010 by Enchanted Spirit and Catweasel Ink.
Contributed works copyright by their respective authors. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction specifically prohibited.

Last updated May 7th, 2009

Interpreting Tarot -- Reading the Book of Life
By
Rebecca Brents

Astrology and Karma?
Sure!

Your Horoscope holds important keys to why you are here, what you came to contribute, who you came here to be.

Get direction.
Get information.

Put your life on course as never before!! Real Astrology ...
for people who take
their lives seriously.

Order a
Karma and Destiny Reading
TODAY!!

Emotionally Free : Letting Go of the Past to Live in the Moment
By
David Viscott