Learning Tarot
Prompt: A character visits a tarot reader and the third card they flip is not one the reader has seen before. The cahracter has seen the image on it. The reader abruptly ends the session.
Entry: Happy people don’t turn to tarot cards. Or at least that was her assumption. Why would you need to look for connection to a higher power or ask questions about your choices and future if life is going swimmingly. And that was why tarot had never been part of her life, until now.
She’d been dabbling a little, finding apps and sites that offered free random tarot pulls and interpretations. That had been fun and comforting for a while, until she started to notice a simplistic pattern in all the readings. Promises of love, of success, reminders of strength. When she stepped back to look at the readings objectively, they all seemed to say “the person or thing you’re waiting for is just around the bend, be patient and strong and you will be successful,” which is kind of just general life advice for someone in a bad place. There had to be more.
So she got a deck for herself, picked out with fumbling consideration at the local Barnes and Noble, and sat on the floor of her living room googling spreads with the deck piled neatly in front of her. It was only after she’d decided on a Celtic cross and shuffled that she realized the cards meant nothing if she couldn’t interpret them. Pulling cards and referring to the included manual just didn’t have the same pizzazz as watching card meanings float across a digital screen with blind, ignoration faith that it was truly all for you. How did one find that balance of knowing the cards were pulled for you and understanding what they say?
You go to a reader.
That was the decision that led her to this moment, sitting in a dusty curio shop twenty minutes from her apartment, waiting to be called to the back room for her 3:00 appointment. She had some hope that she was getting closer to understanding what the dominoes of her life meant. At least she could ask this woman how she had learned tarot and start becoming a reader herself. Never mind that she could be applying that same brain power to concrete self growth and introspection. No, it’s much easier to let someone else call the shots. And that way, when the dominoes fall, at least you weren’t responsible for setting them up.
The shop was located in a tired part of the city, few commuters and fewer tourists. She’d found it by looking up cultures that practiced tarot and then finding their district downtown. She called the local shops to ask if anyone practiced and would be willing to see her. It was quick work. She was directed to an antique shop run by an old Romani woman and her grown son. Her son answered the phone and, after some name dropping of local acquaintances, agreed to set up an appointment for the following day.
He was friendly enough when she arrived, if a little cold. One of the women she spoke to on the phone yesterday warned that readings are not typically done for Gadjo and she should expect to be turned away. After hearing her story, the woman gave her the right number to call.
