The new Tarot Card Reading book ‘Experiencing Tarot’ by Roopa Patel is first of its kind as there is no known book on Tarot written by an Indian Tarotologist.
The book explains rationally how Tarot works, its history and how it connects with other new age sciences. There is so much cloud around Tarot which needs to be cleared and it is hoped that the book will help the cause of spirituality and alternative healing. . There are some real life stories which have a great human interest. It is something that should generate public interest and intellectual debate.
Read an excerpt of the book:
Talking About Tarot: An Introduction
The world that we face today is a chaotic and confusing one. Older values have collapsed and new ones are not enduring enough-we are groping in the dark, looking for something to give us respite and peace. What we need is some guidance, a solution, some help on a deeper level. It is here that Tarot touches. It is here that Tarot heals.
In the times that we live in, it is important that we heal the myriad scars that mark our psyche if we are to be happy and bring some sanity into this world. You are the world and the world is you. Unless we heal ourselves, we cannot do anything for anyone else, for we are impacting the world and the world is impacting us. All the trauma, violence, acts of terror and cruelty, and ills exist in the world because of accumulated pain that has not been addressed or healed. The pain knots into a hard ball and then explodes. It is vital that we do not allow our pain to harden and then distort and destroy us and the whole world.
What we need to learn from Tarot are techniques to help us understand the self, to know our strengths and weaknesses, who we are and what our path is. We need to learn ways of healing and ways of improving our lives. It is from this understanding that change can happen. An awareness is generated that will ease our pain-only we can turn our lives around, but we will need to take responsibility and work for this change. If we go that way, then Tarot and other esoteric sciences will alleviate the pain in human lives and help create a better world.
Section I: My Journey
Tarot just happened to me. Many years ago, knowing about my interest in unusual things, friends holidaying abroad brought me a deck of Tarot cards as a gift. In the early 1980s, Tarot was unheard of in India. Very few people knew what the cards even looked like. I had some vague, nebulous idea of what Tarot meant but nothing more, and yet I felt drawn towards the cards. I guess there was nothing really strange about that. The pictures, the symbols and the colours would fascinate anyone who saw the Tarot cards for the first time, and I was no exception. They came at a convenient time, when I had just completed my postgraduation and was thinking about my career path.
My desire to know more about the cards impelled me to write to my relatives in other parts of the world. They sent me a lot of material on Tarot, such as workbooks, interpretations, meditation exercises, philosophical meanings and esoteric resolutions of Tarot. What started as a curiosity became a passion as I read everything I could find on the subject.
What fascinated me was the idea that the cards could form a bridge between the conscious and the subconscious mind and convey messages that could guide and help one to live a better and more meaningful life. These were strange ideas and I knew I could not accept them without questioning their veracity and experiencing their truth myself. I come from a family where we had the intellectual freedom to think and believe what we wanted to, but we had to justify our thoughts and beliefs on the altar of reason. My father, a man of intellect and an admirer of J. Krishnamurti, the great spiritual teacher, constantly challenged our thoughts and encouraged us to question every aspect of the world around us. My mother is a woman of faith. Our dinner table conversations usually centred on the topic of bhakti marg versus gyan marg or faith versus reason. Therefore, I questioned the truth of Tarot, not once but many times, but I was not fully satisfied with the answers. There was something that I could not put my finger on, and that was my fascination with Tarot. The more I probed, the more questions I had and the fascination persisted. There was something about the cards that affected me deeply. I felt connected to them-I was intrigued.
My search led me to explore various alleys, many books and exercises, until finally I felt ready to experiment with the cards in the areas of divination and guidance. I did three to four spreads (a specific layout of cards in a pattern is called a spread) for myself, asking questions pertaining to different areas of my life. But whatever question is posed to the oracle, it was answered by the same card, the card of ill health. I was perplexed, irritated and finally convinced that the cards were not in any way connecting to my questions. I put them away, thinking that I had come to the end of the journey. I was in perfect health and there was absolutely no reason for that card to appear.
You can imagine my shock when within a month, I found myself in the intensive care Unit of the Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai! We lived in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, and I had to be brought to Mumbai under medical supervision. I was almost unconscious and seriously ill. A low-grade fever, which had been completely undetected, had developed into a major illness called miliary tuberculosis.
For over a week, I lived in the twilight zone of delirium and high fever, but then, very slowly, I recovered. The first thought that came to me when my head cleared was-how did the cards know that I was going to fall ill? What were they trying to tell me? What would have been the result had I taken the warning of the cards seriously and had got myself medically examined? Would I have avoided this suffering and ill health? All these questions raged in my mind.
The experience affected me greatly and I started looking at Tarot with new eyes. Still, I had to understand the way it worked. I had to find my own vocabulary to express its essence. I had experienced something unusual but it was essential to know more about it. I did Tarot readings and noted down the cards that appeared. I also noted down the guidance each card offered and went back to it later to see how it had worked out. The Tarot cards came up with rare insights, startling perceptions and simple solutions to problems posed to them. I started doing Tarot readings for friends and people who came through friends and slowly, the word about my interpretations spread. Somehow, a newspaper got wind of it and their journalist Carol Andrade, did a story on me in the Afternoon. Soon, I was flooded with requests for Tarot readings.
The logbook that I kept helped a lot in my research. I entered each reading that I gave seekers and requested them to give me feedback and tell me how it worked. Almost seventy to seventy-five per cent of the feedback showed that Tarot had amazing results. For instance, a retired high court judge from Dehradun, who came to Mumbai for a hernia operation, had an amazing experience with Tarot. Then there was a beautician with a startling yet beautiful story. There are several such examples which showed how uncannily Tarot worked, stories which I have narrated in the third chapter of this book.
There are also some instances when Tarot did not work. When someone tried to hide the truth, the cards that appeared were disconnected. If someone tried to trip the oracle by asking false questions, the cards did not reveal anything. I recall a woman who actually wanted to ask about her extramarital affair, but pretended that her lover was her cousin, and another woman asking about her illegitimate child, but saying the child was her husband’s. The cards that came up had no pattern, no sense and no story to tell. They were random cards with no meaning. It was only when these people confessed that the cards changed dramatically.
I have discovered that Tarot works best when you approach the cards objectively, with respect and an open mind, with neither belief nor disbelief. All you need to have is a sincere desire for knowledge.
Source ibnlive.in.com
The new Tarot Card Reading book “Experiencing Tarot” is available on Amazon and other online book sellers.
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