An Infant in the Palm of the Universe

(This was a hard post for me to write, and I hope it makes sense, and also apologize if anything appears sloppy! One note - while this topic is relevant to all divination, I am specifically speaking about my learning experiences with the Lenormand system in this post)

One thing I've been wondering about lately is….our ethics as readers in terms of telling the truth of what we see, no matter what. Who are we to withhold information? This is sticky territory - what if I think I see something, but I'm not absolutely positive, so I don't act on it? What if I'm wrong? 

But what if I'm right? 

Yesterday on one of the Lenormand boards, a deck creator was giving away a free deck. In order to join the competition, you had to choose one out of the 36 cards. Once 36 people were signed up, the creator would randomly pick a card, and the person connected to that card would win. I chose Tree. I had a feeling I wasn't going to win. I decided to do a 3 card Lenormand draw on the very superficial question: "Will I win the deck?" I drew: Cross - Mice - Tree.  It couldn't have been clearer. NO WAY, NOT GONNA HAPPEN! Actually it was SO clear that I burst out laughing.  So then I decided to draw a card asking which would be the winner. I drew the Lily, and left it at that. An hour or so later I dropped back in to the forum and the winner had been chosen. And guess what? It was the LILY!!! I could not get over it. I was having all sorts of chills and tingles, I was so excited. Seriously? Out of 36 cards, my deck told me exactly who the winner would be. I still can't believe it, kind of. I feel confident in the quality and accuracy of my readings, but something about the odds, or the predictive nature of this experience really shocked me. I really didn't believe it would be the Lily. And it was.

So then I started thinking about predictions, and about the future. We often say, as readers, that the "future is set in sand." It can be tricky to accurately see what's to come because there are often so many factors that influence what will happen, and even if we foresee a particular event, there's always a chance it may not come to pass. And I do believe that. Most of our life situations are far more complicated than "which card will win the deck?" Nevertheless, I started to wonder just how much of the future is fairly pre-determined, and how much is open to being manipulated or altered.  I believe in Free Will, and I also believe that some things aren't meant to be known (when this happens I often pull the High Priestess, or even sometimes the Wheel of Fortune). 

Now onto something more serious. I did a Lenormand GT for a family member around Christmas time, a sort of "year ahead" kind of predictive outlook. I saw his mother becoming very ill, I saw his sister perhaps knowing of the illness but not being forthcoming with the information, and I saw my loved one taking a sudden trip home due to this issue. I saw a pretty dire set of circumstances. I didn't say anything about it because…what if I was wrong? I can't pass on this kind of news! I said nothing to him, though I did mention it to my mother at the time, in confidence.

Time passed and I became busy with other things. A reader friend of mine is studying a new divination method using cards and just last night offered to read for me for practice. I happily obliged, and asked her some questions about work. When she finished she sent me the results and said "Olivia, I hate to say this, but I didn't see a lot about work - I saw that someone in your family is going through a hard time, and there may be an serious illness coming up really soon." I sighed, and told her about the GT, though as of yesterday there were no signs of any developments in this regard. I decided that today I would do some investigating, send an email to my family member's sister to check things out. I never had the chance. My dear loved one sent me a message this afternoon informing me that his sister just called to report that his mother is ill and he is planning a sudden trip home. 

What control do we have, or should we have, as readers, regarding the information we see? Maybe I could have been wrong, maybe my reader friend could have been wrong. But we weren't. What if I had told my loved one of this possibility at Christmas time? He might have been able to prepare, even financially, for this turn of events. But what if I had been wrong? What if I had told him and caused undue worry and concern? Do I have a responsibility to say what I see, even if I fear I might be wrong? Or is that I'm afraid I might be right? Who am I to see something and choose not to report it? I am really just an infant in the palm of the universe. 

There are a lot of questions I'm pondering now, and I don't have answers for any of them. Maybe we *could* have been wrong, but we were not wrong. We sometimes doubt ourselves - doubt our ability, doubt our interpretations, doubt the permanency of the messages we see when high-stakes issues are on the table. What is our responsibility? 

This is something I'll be turning over and over in the days to come.

Determining Timing: Yea or Nay?

This post is NOT about how to determine time-frames using the cards - there are plenty of great resources online and in print for those interested in experimenting. The intent of this post is to discuss whether providing time-frames is truly beneficial to people in the long run (and I, for the most part, feel that it is not).

This issue of timing has come up a lot in social networking forums recently. Is determining time-frames possible? Is it accurate? Is it appropriate? There are a million different "tried and true" methods that various readers swear by. Some may be more calibrated than others, some may show higher levels of accuracy. I'd say that most competent readers will say that it can be difficult to pin down precise timing in some cases - the future simply may not be that precisely pre-destined. (And isn't that something of a relief?)  I thought I'd outline my own thoughts about it, which explain why I find "when" questions to be unhelpful most of the time:

1) What if the topic of the "when" question never occurs? Once I received this question: "When will my future music videos make it to national television?" This question was posed by a young college student who wasn't actively engaged in music in any tangible way. Maybe the student would never end up in music at all. Maybe the student would never create music videos, let alone have the opportunity to publicize them via television. This is something of an extreme example, but the point is there, I hope. Perhaps a better question would be "What do I need to know about going into the music industry?" Questions like this make a lot of implicit assumptions about the future, which is problematic.

2) What if the client feels the event is predestined, and therefore doesn't put in the effort to manifest it? Example: a woman wants to know when she'll find a job, and the cards indicate a time frame. She now expects that the job will appear before her at a given point in time, and stops looking for work or submitting her resumes. Consequently she doesn't have any job prospects at all, and feels the reading was wrong. In this sense I feel that doing timings can serve to disempower clients by leading them to believe that their actions don't impact their future.

3) What if the client finds the determined time-frame to be highly discouraging? A man wants to know when he'll find the perfect girl to marry - he's ready to go, can't wait to have a family of his own…he just needs that ideal lady.  The cards determine that he will likely marry an excellent woman…in about 10 years. Instead of feeling excited, he's now forlorn at the thought of having to wait so long. How many important relationships might he give up, believing that none of them could be the "right" girl? What if he would have met the lady in one year, developed a wonderful partnership, and then decided not to marry for another 9 years? Who knows? They may not like the time-frame they're given, and it could have detrimental impact on the course of their future (not to mention the time-frame could be off!).

When potential clients ask me a "when" question, I encourage them to change their focus: perhaps to determine likelihoods of the event occurring, to a focus on how they can best prepare themselves, or even what perspectives or energies will be the greatest help to them moving forward. In rare instances I'm willing to give general time frames, usually qualified with a brief summary of the points listed above. I am okay with, and practice, many forms of predictive divination, however I feel at times that when questions are exclusively predictive or even more importantly, exclusively time-based, they tend to side-step the greatest gift that Tarot and other card systems have to offer - a way to understand yourself better, and to improve your life in a way that nurtures your power of self-determination and choice.

In the end I don't believe this issue revolves as much around whether timing is possible (it can be, and it can also be accurate), as it does around the potential impact, and unintended negative consequences, on clients' lives, which is an ethical consideration first and foremost.