Tarot BasicsWritten by Lisa Lamont
A Tarot card deck typically consists of 78 colorful cards imprinted with what many deem fascinating and curious images. The cards, each filled with a particular meaning and portent, most often come somewhat larger than ordinary playing cards and make an impressive display when ritually laid out. This deck of special cards can be used by a trained “reader” for glimpsing into his or her own future or that of another person for whom cards are read. The Tarot deck, divided into Major Arcana and Minor Arcana, contains 22 symbolic cards and 56 suit cards – wands, swords, cups, and pentacles – interestingly also called “pip” cards.Many types and styles of Tarot cards exist, and a breakdown of even more common Tarot card deck reads like a mysterious journey into occult – and perhaps it is! The Major Arcana includes magician, high priestess, empress, emperor, hierophant (a sage or wise man), lovers, chariot, strength, hermit, wheel, justice, hanged man, death, temperance, devil, tower, star, moon, sun, judgment, world. The Minor Arcana (the suits) consists of aces, twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights, nines, tens, court cards, pages, knights, queens, and kings – all in above-mentioned suits. The key to successfully reading Tarot deck, however, does not lie only in what cards mean, but in how to interpret them. A gifted Tarot reader can sometimes create a huge following by accurately predicting futures of friends, family – even strangers who call on him or her for a reading. “Tarot” comes from Italian word "Tarocchi,” a French card game originally termed “carte da trionfi” – “cards with trumps.” It has been theorized that name was shortened from “Tarocchi” to “Taro” and thus evolved over time into “Tarot” by French. The definition of Tarot goes hand in hand with origin of name because Tarot is considered to be a tool of divination by believers, and roots of name explain, in part, how this came to be so, though we may never know complete story, since its complete origins have been lost in passage of time.
| | I Drank Tea in DecemberWritten by Arthur Zulu
The two writers laughed aloud as I ended story. Not that it was kind of thing that one likes to hear in morning. Some would quickly go on their knees and pray that “cup” passes next door. But pray as they might, it is a “cup” that we all must drink from. By cup, I am not referring to cups of tea in our hands that we now resumed to enjoy after telling them story. DD Phil, romance writer who ladies like to call Filemon, with a stress on last syllable, was looking dreamily. Sitting with his right hand supporting his chin, his left on chair, and suspended tea cup on table, one would have thought that he was plotting a scene in his next fantasy novel. Of course, story that I was telling them was more fantasy than real. What is real again in this world? For Val K poet, sitting with all cares in this world—his legs wide apart as poles—everything (and that includes life) is poetry. It is no wonder that someone says, “Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyways.” Whether story was a comedy or a tragedy is another matter. But it was a story about life. And whether life stories are sweet or bitter is for you to judge. Look at verdict of these people. A chief of King Edwin says: “The present life of man is like a sparrow.” Apostle James, a Bible writer, calls it “a mist that appears for a while and then disappears.” But story was more about equivocations—double tongues. And is life not a tale of equivocations? So, after I finished story, we resumed our tea drinking and compared story with other equivocal tales. The first to come to mind was King Croesus who went to consult oracle before embarking on a major military expedition. He was assured that if he went to war, a mighty empire would fall. He believed and went to do battle. But empire that fell was his! And then there was Macbeth who was thoroughly deceived by witches. He didn’t think that tress “move” and he never believed that there was any man not “born” of a woman. But he was dead wrong. Equivocation did both people in. The best of such double tongues, however, was that of great hinter who was warned that he was to be killed by an animal on a certain day. So finicky hunter refused to step into bush on that day. But lying in his room, head of one animals that he had killed which he had suspended on a rafter, got loose and landed a death-blow on his head! When I got message to proceed to country with God speed, however, first thing that came to my mind was not a word that began with letter E. And then message became more incessant: You must come home in December. I refused invitation. Yet, my people sent an emissary who spoilt case for not explaining why I was wanted back home. So I tarried in city, waiting for war of cyclpos.
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