Messages from The Beyond

I was around for the first real surge into new age mysticism -- crystals, harmonic convergence, etc. I have several book shelves stacked with a lot of that stuff.

At the time I became very interested in tarot cards. I own two sets. From an academic point of view, a deck of tarot cards is a very complex text that can be shuffled and when laid out in several different patterns can tell very interesting stories. Let's just say that I'm an educated man and that with that education comes some skepticism. That said I have enough experience with the supernatural to have some belief.

I've only had one professional tarot reading. It was in the late '80's in Lakeview and the woman told me that I was going to be very sick. She told me that she could sell me a potion that would prevent it. A month later I developed hepatitis A and was laid up for six weeks.

OK, a gay man in Lakeview in the late '80's getting very sick. What are the odds, right?

However, I have a distant friend who is psychic. She consults her guides and guardian angels for everything. One day about fifteen years ago we had gone to lunch when my friend stopped everything and told me that she had something that the guides and guardian angels had to tell me. She told me that my mother (whom my friend had never met) was going away. My sister nor I would know where she'd gone, but that we didn't need to worry. She would be taken care of. My friend said she couldn't see too much because there was a lot of fog. She told me it would be a very difficult time, but that everything would be all right.

Three months later my mother disappeared. She experienced a stress-induced dissociative episode and got in her car in a parking lot in Des Moines and surfaced two months later in a shelter in Boston. She had no knowledge or memory of how that happened. All completely true story.

So, I have a healthy respect for the occult. In times of stress I won't say that I turn to my tarot cards for comfort and guidance. What I've found is that my tarot decks are good meditative tools and if used properly can help keep me in a positive frame of mind.

If you're interested in tarot, I've found this website, which I find entertaining. Some computer somewhere generates a reading for you. Of course it's completely silly, but the thing I find interesting is that all of the cards that come up for me are talking about jobs and travel. Jobs and travel and rapid change. And all in a very positive way. Check it out. See if it generates something relevant for you...