by Natalie Czarra
The mental image that comes to mind when the words “tarot cards” are said is universal: a woman in Bohemian clothing with rings on every finger and jangling jewelry hanging from her wrists, neck, and ears, a dimly lit and heavily aromatic room, and an odd feeling that this might be a scam. Tarot cards are a deck of seventy-eight cards divided into the major arcana and the minor arcana. There were twenty-one cards added to the standard deck of fifty-two, all beautifully illustrated instead of wearing suits. Tarots were adopted into fortune telling in the eighteenth century, but they were around long before then because their original purpose was much different.
Tarot cards were added as a fifth suit to the standard deck of cards. They were called “triumphs” and the odd one out was called “the fool”. They were more beautiful and artistic in comparison to the other four suits because they were meant to trump them in the game. The game was called Triumph, similar to bridge. Tarot cards were adopted into occult use for fortune telling in the eighteenth century in France. The psychics of the time saw the illustrations on these cards and saw that they had a deeper meaning than just of a game. As standard deck of tarot cards contains seventy-eight cards, twenty-two triumphs and fifty-six of the minor arcana. The triumphs are the major arcana and they are the most artistic. They behold portrayals of characters that appeared in medieval Roman stories. The minor arcana resemble the standard deck of playing cards with four suits: wands, cups, swords, and coins. They each have a king, queen, knight, and jack as well as ten number cards. It is difficult to believe that tarot cards, as mystical as they look, were initially created as a simple card game. There were people in the late eighteenth century who claimed that the ide of tarot cames came from Egyptian mysticism, as well as those who made a connection between the twenty-two triumph cards and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Even though these cards do not seem to be mystical in the slightest, the people of the eighteenth century–who already viewed tarot cards with an air of divinity–wanted to find a biblical or magical reason for how these cards came to exist and that the people who created them hid deeper meanings in the illustrations.
The major arcana includes: I Juggler, II Papess, III Empress, IV Emperor, V Pope, VI Lovers, VII Justice, IX Hermit, X Wheel of Fortune, XI Strength, XII Hanged Man, XIII Death, XIV Temperance, XV Devil, XVI Lightning-Struck Tower, XVII Star, XVIII Moon, XIX Sun, XX Last Judgement, XXI World, and then the unnumbered Fool. In fortune telling, they are the most important cards of the deck, representing significant issues in the life of the person being read, such as life and death, ethical dilemmas, spirituality, and interactions with other people. While the major arcana deals with the more serious issues, the minor arcana deal with more mundane issues. The four suits are associated with different aspects: the cups with emotions, the swords with intellectual activity, wands with career, and coins with money and materials. Tarot readings are specific to the person being read, but psychics can generalize the reading to make it apply to more people. For example, there are numerous psychics all around the world who post videos on YouTube of readings. Jodie Teresa Tarot Reader is a spiritual medium in southern England. She has been reading tea leaves, tarot, angel card, and rune stones for 23 years and she has traveled all over the world to give readings to people from all different backgrounds. She films weekly and monthly readings for all Zodiac signs and posts them on her YouTube channel, but she also does private readings. For her private readings, she will email a confirmation and then once the person has responded, she will film a personal reading and send the person a private YouTube link that they can keep forever.
As a skeptic, I browsed her website with mixed emotions. It wasn’t until I actually watched one of her videos that I let my guard down. I didn’t believe a single word she spoke for the first few minutes of the video (because who would readily believe something off the internet?!) but I began to think about my aunt, who has been to many psychics and how she predicted that my sister and I would fall into a pool when we were children and would need to be rescued. If a psychic can predict something that has happened, why not keep an open mind? She explained every card that surfaced from the deck in two or three different ways and kept reminding the viewer that the cards will apply differently to different people. She was talking to the viewer, to herself, and to some unseen entity as well, who seemed to be pulling the cards out at random. With every word she spoke, I felt more open-minded about clairvoyance.
Irene Richardson is a medium from Brooklyn, New York, originally from San Francisco, and she lives in Frederick, Maryland. “I actually don’t do tarot anymore, but I used to. I started when I was fourteen years old and continued all the way through high school, through my time in the army, and up until I had my second child.” Her office is off of a little promenade along Carroll Creek in Downtown Frederick. It’s a little room, next to a hair salon, decorated with pictures of angels, diagrams of hands, and spiritual quotes. I could smell the white sage wafting from the space before I even stepped inside. “After I had my second child, a spirit guide contacted me and told me that I would be able to contact spirits from now on.” A spirit guide is an entity of energy that everyone chooses before they are born into this life. They guide us through life by visiting us in dreams and visions, but they otherwise operate behind a curtain. “My spirit guide would talk to me every nightat ten o’clock at my kitchen table after the kids and husband were asleep.” Richardson has had claircognizance for as long as she can remember, which means she knows things instantly with little to no explanation. When she said this, I thought of Jodie speaking to an unseen entity while shuffling her cards, asking for clarification.
As I walked out of Ms. Richardson’s office after being read, I began to think about what she told me and what Jodie Teresa told me. They all told me a mixture of things that they couldn’t have known without asking me. Jodie’s was more generalized, but Irene had mentioned some things that gave me chills. I compared the recording I received from Irene to the video I had watched of Jodie, and they weren’t the same, but there were parallels. Irene had met me before, and Jodie doesn’t know I exist, but the spirits must be trying to tell me something, and it’s up to me to listen to them.