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| Image Source: Google |
Everything I know about divination comes from a family
source, it comes from my ancestors and a
path of history I’m proudly akin to. My earliest memory of divination comes
from when I was roughly 3 years old and a naturally curious child as most 3
year olds are. So little and in many cases sneaky, I stood by the hallway in
the late hours of the night and watched my mother work her beautiful blend of
magick. I was mesmerised, the dense smoke from the censer curled out of a red
hot piece of raw coal as more and more incense was added. A crystal placed poignantly
by the side of the censor twinkled in the flame of her working candle. The
energy in the room felt thick enough to run your fingers through, to this day
that is what magick feels like to me.
There I watched her lay out card after card, her brow
furrowed with concentration and every now and then she would pause and rest her
chin on her hand as though she were considering a proposal. Then more cards
would be laid out. It was soothing to watch her and I remember thinking, one
day that will be me.
It was around that same time that I began connecting deeply with
symbolism and interpreting them in weird and wonderfully childish ways. I would
press leafy offerings into damp soil, preferably mud and from there I would
divine what both leaf and earth was kind enough to show me. Then it was
concrete and after that clouds and after that flame. Each method presenting itself organically, in
fact it wasn’t until my induction into the blood mysteries that divination was
explained to me in its divine entirety and once it had, I was hooked.
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| Image source: Google |
Under the guise of my beloved grandmother, I began exploring
the tarot; I so wanted to be like my mother and was confident that if I spent
the time, the cards would soon speak to me like the leaf and mud, like the
clouds. Well... they didn't when they didn't I felt
gutted. I could not for the life of me understand why and my grandmother, mother and older sister
weren't permitted to tell me. I remember feeling deeply frustrated and
irritated and when I voiced my feeling asking my grandmother why it was that
she wouldn’t help me and why no one seemed to care that this was upsetting me….
All she said was “these are the old way”. This response was not well received
by a hormone charged, suborn and temperamental teenager, in fact I remember
thinking that if the “old ways” were a person, then I would very much like to punch
said “old ways” in the face lol.
You see, in my tradition, divination is the journey of
highest vibration, it comes from a divine source and as such it is the source
that must guide, offering someone help in this area is forbidden as it is seen
as interfering with the flow of the divine. And while the principals of tarot
and the fools journey were explained to me in detail, the connection, the
feeling, well that was up to me to both attain and decipher. “They will speak
to you” said my mother, “you’ll see the message in your mind’s eye, and you may
even here the whisper in your ear”. Well
needless to say, I didn’t.
In the end, it was my little sister who bought me the
answer…. And answer wrapped in dark silk. It was the cards, the deck that I had
been using; they were not speaking to me. They were not mine even though they
were mine, our friendship had not properly formed because we didn’t really
enjoy the others energy and in the end these cards went to someone else who
uses them to this day.
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| Image source: http://religions.unian.net/ukr/detail/13253 |
When I discuss this with others I’m comfortable speaking to
about such things, I’m often asked if I have tried oracle cards. My answer is
always “no, they are not for me” because I have always found oracle cards to be
shallow when compared to tarot lacking both history and depth. And then 6 days
ago, as I stood in my local new age shop, I picked up a deck of oracle called “The
Golden Path” and there it was, that feeling,
a connectedness unlike any I had felt prior to any deck I had ever touched. It
filled me with a warm comfortable feeling that was akin to trust, I felt my subtle
body ripple, allowing them in so to
speak, it was so strange, so welcome and yet I immediately put them back on
the shelf out of pure stubbornness, truth be told I felt embarrassed to buy
them, especially after holding such a negative opinion of oracle cards for so
long.
For the next week they haunted me, their image, that feeling
so I went back to visit them again and still I left without buying them. And
then, I had started dreaming about them so I went back a third time, this time
with my father. I bought a little bronze statue of Venus of Willendorf and a
tarot bag. Whilst there I said hello to
the deck of oracle and as I held them in my hand my dear old dad leaned over my
shoulder and said “what have you got there”. I explained to him it was the deck
that had been practically haunting me but that I didn’t like oracle cards and
refused to buy them. I then paid for my goods and left the store to answer a
phone call. When dad finally caught up with me a minute or two later, he handed
me a package, it was the bloody oracle cards, I couldn’t believe it. I had to
laugh, especially when he said “The art work really spoke to me, very beautiful”
he continued.
And so began my
induction into oracle cards and while they are entertaining me at the moment,
my search for the deck of tarot truly meant for me continues. I have come close
a few times; to this day I am unable to go as deep with my reading as my mother
does with hers. I have a sneaking suspicion that the one deck meant for me is
actually hers.
Blessings, Karen
