Talking tarot

By By Liz Nartowicz

Thursday, April 6, 2006

In high school, Alysse Doane, McClouth sophomore, started planning her week with tarot cards. Every Sunday afternoon, sitting cross-legged in her room, Doane would shuffle and cut her deck of cards. Selecting five cards by their “vibrations,” Doane would eagerly flip them over to see what her week had in store.

For Doane, tarot card reading is less a practice of psychic powers and more a form of entertainment and family tradition. Tracing a tradition of Tarot readings as far back as her great-grandmother, Doane and her family have turned regularly to the cards for fun and direction.

“It’s more for guidance than fortune telling,” Doane says.

The ancient art of tarot — interpreting 72 cards depicting vices, virtues and other vital forces — is shrouded in misconceptions. Blaming religion and television, psychics deny rumors of witchcraft, scam artists and the idea of a fixed destiny. Instead, these specialists claim Tarot is about counseling and personal progress. But because this card-related custom is so diversified and personalized, its true purpose and powers ultimately are left to the individual to decide.

Miss Cleo, the late-night infomercial psychic-found-fraud, was not the first blow to Tarot’s credit. From the beginning, bad publicity has plagued Tarot, says Dawn Rothwell, card reader and owner of the Sacred Sword Spiritual Center, 732 Massachusetts St. Created during the Renaissance to help uncover life’s hidden truths, Tarot soon became a scapegoat for the Christian church. To deter people from seeking questions like the meaning of life, the church quickly launched a campaign that connected Tarot to witchery, Rothwell says.

While the demonic association has faded, recent incidents like Miss Cleo’s have once again jeopardized the credibility of Tarot. Swindlers and television are responsible for perpetuating psychic scams says Arachne, a psychic counselor in Merriam. Swindlers are not tarot readers, Arachne says; they are intimidators who continuously predict doom. By always reporting that a customer has a curse, swindlers cheat people out of money by offering to remove this fake hex, Arachne says.

As for public figures, Arachne says televised psychics such as Sylvia Brown and John Edwards hurt the psychic community through indistinctness and recklessness. They ask vague questions and give ambiguous answers, she says. They don’t care about the consequences of their predictions, she says. Instead, Arachne says, they’re in it for the money rather than setting the person on the right path.

Setting people on the right path is the true meaning of Tarot, says Lori Healy-Reed, an alternative healer in California. Because most people turn to Tarot to find out why negative things are continually happening to them, Tarot analyzes a person’s patterns and helps change them. Tarot does not reveal an unchangeable future, Healy-Reed says, it only shows the direction a person’s patterns are leading them.

Because of this, Tarot is more a means of meditation than fortunetelling. Tarot helps people see where they’re at and help them decide if they want to be there, Healy-Reeds says.

“It gives them the power to change,” she says. “Each time is a learning experience that enables you to know yourself better.”

But Tarot does not guarantee change, says Oma Lacey, psychic reader in Topeka. Because everyone has free will, people can choose not to change. Tarot, she says, is just the “kick in the butt” to encourage people to change and start on a path of improvement. And if that path is taken, improvement in decision-making skills, emotional states and relationships will follow, Lacey says.

As a form of healing, Tarot allows people to deal with past emotions such as anger or grief, Lacey says. Tarot perks up one’s emotional state by addressing unresolved issues still affecting their current situation.

“We’re not telling you anything you didn’t already know,” Lacey says. “We’re just helping you come to grips with it.”

Lacey says practicing Tarot also increases perceptiveness, which will strengthen relationships.

But not everyone believes in the healing powers of Tarot. Not even the frequent customers.

Erin Harveth, Tulsa junior, has had her cards read 12 times across the globe and says the best part of the readings is having exclusive attention for 30 minutes.

Caroline Malakis, Preveza, Greece, freshman, whose tarot hobby bordered on addiction, says it’s mostly fantasy and not worth placing faith in.

Yet, the power and purpose of the cards are still debated. As Doane says, if you have to put faith in something, why not Tarot?

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