What’s
the best way to learn the meanings of the cards?
To be
honest, that’s a trick question.
In our study group, we read, compare decks, and discuss endless
variations in the ways people interpret each triumph. Contemplation, intuition, and time
spent all play a role in learning the Tarot. Ultimately, though, there’s no substitute for personal
experience. Take the story of the
devil dog, for example.
Devil Dog
came to me when he was a year old.
“He’s half-Pug!” my friend Vicki said excitedly, describing the foster she’d just
brought home from the dog park.
He’d already been adopted from the Humane Society, she explained, but
apparently it didn’t work out.
“He’s really cute. I wonder why that
man was going to take him back?” she mused. “His name is Diablo.”
When I
met the devil dog I was immediately smitten, sucker for one of the cutest faces
I’ve ever seen, and optimistically changed his name to Shadow when I adopted
him. That was Vicki’s idea,
actually. “It sounds sort of the
same at the end, so it should be an easy transition for him,” she advised. “And it’s not so dark.”
As it
turns out, Shadow’s other half appears to be Beelzebub. He’s my own small version of “the World’s Worst Dog” from the book “Marley And Me” by John Grogan. He will eat your dinner right off your
plate, pulls food off the counter, and knows how to open the refrigerator
door. He bursts out the front door
every chance he gets, and is sociopathically reactive to large dogs,
particularly German Sheperds. Once
on a walk, he tried to attack a Seeing Eye dog.
I know
what you’re thinking. “It’s never
the dog, it’s always the owner” is something I believed, too, until I met
Shadow. But let’s not quibble. The point is what happened recently
after The Sun turned up for me as the outcome in a quick four-card reading for
the day.
Shadow
has given me the slip in a variety of ways over the past five years. One of the most dramatic was his escape
from a Pug Halloween party over or through a six-foot fence, while the other
seventeen (real) Pugs in attendance clustered around their people in hopes of
food. A search of the grounds had
just started up in earnest when I got a call from a neighbor three blocks down
the street. “He trotted into my
apartment like he owns the place,” the woman told me. Through the kindness of strangers and the foresight of a pet
ID tag, the devil dog has been rescued on various occasions after dashing into
traffic, running away on Thanksgiving, and popping in uninvited at the group
home down the street. Shadow loves
people and will gladly allow any friendly stranger to detain him, so he’s
happily hopped into people’s cars or in one case, been carried home upside down
like a baby. (When I saw them
approach, he wasn’t even squirming.)
The one thing the devil dog will not do if he is on the loose, however,
is to allow me to come within three feet of him.
I pulled
The Sun one morning last week before going to work. It was the fourth card in a series of four, representing the
way my day would ultimately manifest.
By 5:30, however, my feet hurt, my back was sore, a customer had shaken
a box of candied fruit in my face because she felt the price was too high, and
my nerves were on their last jangle.
What had happened to the happy, blessed day I’d felt so entitled to
after turning up The Sun?
It only
took a moment after arriving home for the devil dog to set that idea
straight. Although I joke about
it, I know that if Shadow keeps getting away from me like that, one of these
escapades will most likely be his last.
So when he unexpectedly pushed between my legs as I came in the door (a
move he’d never made before), my heart rose up into my throat. Instantly the pitch-black Shadow
vanished into the dark and I ran after him in despair, knowing I’d never catch
him. Intervention was my only
hope. I caught a glimpse of the
devil dog rounding the corner ahead, and tried to hurry up. Suddenly I heard a voice.
“I’ve got
him!” Vicki was calling. Sure
enough, as I made the turn, there was Shadow, sitting politely at my neighbor's feet. Help was there exactly when
and where I needed it that evening.
Before that, I would have associated that kind of fortuitous coincidence
only with the Wheel of Fortune.
Now, my understanding of The Sun will forever embrace the idea of
Serendipity.
That’s
how you learn the meaning of the cards.
You live them.
