Your Tarot Predictions for 2015

III. Tarot as a Counsellor and a way to spiritual enhancement

This third and last element of Tarot is something I have acquired over the years of practice and experience, my personal contribution to enhancing Tarot readings and their potential to guide lives. Tarot doesn’t necessarily play a direct role of counsellor or a guide to spirituality but it does so indirectly, through me. When I started doing Tarot initially it was only limited to the above two elements, a medium to predict the future and to change your destiny by showing you the way forward. As I grew in my experience as a Tarot card reader I realised that most of my clients kept coming back to me to be healed and, most often, just to open up and pour out their heart to me. Most of my experiences revolved around helping clients battle their life ahead through constant motivational talks and strategies to help them create a better life.

This led me to study ‘Psychotherapy and Counselling’. I did my masters while I was practising Tarot and it helped me immensely to shape my clients’ lives for the better. The scientific understanding of human psychology enabled me to come up with interesting behavioural therapies, methods of psychotherapy and various ways of counselling. Sometimes I deployed assertive therapy, sometimes aggressive therapy, and sometimes plain pep talk therapy. My intervention as a Counsellor started making huge positive changes in my clients’ lives. They developed a more positive and healthy lifestyle and started achieving more out of themselves.

This art of positive reinforcement and scientific intervention was initiated through Tarot in my life. It helped me become an expert at reading the mind and heart and guiding my clients on the basis of these enhanced readings. I struck the right chords of intuition and scientific intervention to heal my patrons. This brought about a phenomenal change in my own perspective of life and a 360 degree shift in my outlook. I started seeing things differently. This is also the time Vipassana happened to me.

Vipassana is an art of self realisation, a way to Nirvana, the method practised and preached by Gautama Buddha. This further enlightened me and opened the door to spirituality. I dedicated a lot of time to studying spirituality and ways to attain self realisation through meditation. During this time I came upon various forms of meditation to heal my clients by helping them reduce stress related problems, address interpersonal issues, and guide them towards self realisation.

Self-realisation is an overwhelming concept or perhaps it is the perception that makes it so. Hence I will dwell a little more on its details to give you a brief understanding of what this concept truly means with respect to Tarot and how each of these three benefits that you derive from Tarot are interrelated.

Nirvana/Self Realisation/Liberation

In my understanding, self-realisation is synonymous with Liberation which is synonymous with Nirvana. Nirvana was the term coined by Gautama Buddha during his phase of actualisation and realisation. Self-realisation as such means your inner realisation where you discover the true essence of your inner being. To be more precise, it is an awakening of the being within. The process of self realisation leads to the answer of the biggest ever rhetorical question ‘Who Am I’?

It may sound untrue if I say you are more than your skin, more than your present body, more than your achievements and are far greater than time. In all honesty and reality, you are. You are a soul who has travelled hundreds of births to achieve this human form. Hence do not let this human form go in vain. The sole purpose of your human form is a blessing, an opportunity to establish oneness with the Universe. When I say oneness I mean harmony, peace and realisation. In a lay man’s terms, realisation is the process of taming the human mind, humankind’s most formidable opponent. This opponent lives within and conquering it delicately and gently is your biggest challenge. This can be done through meditational techniques listed down in the chapter ‘Author’s Note’. You can use the technique listed in the particular volume for your Zodiac sign or read through the rest and choose the one form of meditational technique that suits you the most. I perform the Vipassana meditation. It has become a way of life for me. Vipassana is a simple technique which promises remarkable results. It is a tried and tested technique strongly recommended for achieving glimpses of spiritual enlightenment. I am confident that once you start meditation and see the positive results, you won’t stop what you started. As the saying goes, unless you fall in love, you won’t know what love is.

In our modern times, we are busy with achieving material and emotional gains. This larger purpose is completely lost and you thus lose the purpose of your birth. The sooner you realise that your greatest achievement rests in establishing oneness with the universe and not going against it, the better it will be for you. Now you may ask, why should I even be discussing realisation when I am already happy and content within or without? If this question plays in your mind, I have the answer to it.

Why should I realise?

You may not know what success is unless you have tasted it. You may not know what chocolate is unless you have eaten it. You may not know what love is unless you have felt it. So it is with self-realisation. You may not know what you are missing out on unless you have had a glimpse of it. These glimpses I have had through my study, belief and open mindedness to accept spirituality. You won’t know how beautiful it is, how happy one feels by being in this state, how simple detachment seems, which is probably the main reason for our misery, unless you have had glimpses of realisation. To achieve this and to help you get on with it I have introduced Spirituality readings in this book.

When it comes to liberation I am not there yet, but my attempt is to help with whatever I have studied and understood about the Body, Mind and Spirit. ‘Your Spiritual Reading’ for the year ahead is a special chapter in this book that arose from this understanding and experience through Tarot. It informs you about where you stand spiritually and helps you take the first step towards your ultimate purpose—self-realisation, to get in close contact with the real Being in you.

I have also created a final chapter in each book—the ‘Author’s Note’—which will guide you towards improving your life. This chapter has two exercises, one to read and one to perform. Both are goal-oriented and will help you achieve your dream, desires and eventually self-realisation.

These three benefits of Tarot—future predictions, the concept of change, and ultimately spiritual enlightenment—are inter-related. These three levels of life—the physical level (Predictions), the mental level (the power and control to change your life) and the Spiritual level (the realisation)—are like the three corners of a triangle. As you achieve one, the next will follow. This book aims to give you a glimpse of all three and I only hope you use it your fullest advantage and restore oneness with the Universal energy.

How is Tarot Different From Numerology and Astrology

If you have ever wondered how Tarot predictions are different from Astrology and Numerology, let us unravel this mystery now. In most cases, you would have your own preference for Astrology or Numerology. In picking up this book, you are giving Tarot a chance and I am sure you will not be disappointed.

Astrology is the study of planetary positions in relation to your birth date and time. Through this celestial study an astrologer can predict your personality, strengths and weakness, and past and future events. In Astrology, the Sun and the Moon’s positions play an important role in the celestial chart that reveals a person’s destiny. As these planets revolve and change their positions, so does an individual’s fate.

Numerology is a symbolic study of numbers and reveals one’s characteristic traits. This study of an individual’s characteristics helps us in understanding his strengths and weaknesses which can then be applied to various aspects of life like work, love, or health to get the best out of them. This study is done through the frequency of energy emitted by these numbers within the physical Universe. Birth date plays an important role as most Numerological predictions are based on it.

Tarot is a set of cards used to predict one’s future. Tarot Reading is not just about the cards but also about the Reader’s intuitive skills. Every individual possesses what we call a sixth sense, but only a few develop it to reach a point where it can become a power, beyond the understanding of normal consciousness. This intuition, when combined with the mystical Tarot cards, becomes a perfect tool to predict your destiny. Tarot is thus very different from Astrology and Numerology. It isn’t scientific as the other two mediums but it is definitely metaphysical.

What is this Metaphysics? It is the branch of science or Philosophical Science which studies the less explicable concepts, like the existence of God, the study of what is there and what isn’t, what is cause and what effect, what exists, why and how. It is the study of all reality, visible and invisible, natural and supernatural; for instance our belief in the existence of spirits whether evil or benign, or of the origin of the Universe, which despite all the scientific reasoning and explanation, still retains a tiny seed of mysticism. Another such example is the belief in life on other planets—we haven’t discovered this but we do believe or at least argue on the existence of Aliens and their UFO’s. One may not have seen God or experienced divine presence, but the belief in God’s existence is strong. You may even want to consider the human soul; it has no form, no colour, but we believe that it exists. In my experience, intuition too belongs to such an area of study and exploration. How can one explain the sixth sense, the intuition that something will happen or it may not, the intuition that guides me to predict your destiny which is unexplainable but with results that are acceptable and believable? This is the place where Tarot fits in perfectly. It is inexplicable yet remarkably accurate.

Tarot predicts everything that you may want to know about your life. You just need to find the right Reader. Therefore the accuracy of Tarot cards entirely depends on the skill set of the Reader. A reader develops this skill with great effort by deploying techniques of meditation, patience and constant study. The knowledge of these tools makes the Reader sound in her intuition, thereby helping her relate better with her deck of Tarot cards and providing a prediction that is unmistakably precise and accurate. Astrology and Numerology lack the mystical divinity which a Tarot reader brings through her intuition. The cards whisper your destiny into the Reader’s mind and enable forecasts for your life.

Astrology uses planetary positions and Numerology the science of numbers to foretell your Future. Tarot uses a set of colourful vibrant cards. Let me explain how these cards work.

All the 78 cards in the deck I use belong to one of the four Universal elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Fire denotes passion, Water emotions, Air knowledge and thought process, and Earth all the worldly goods like wealth and health. Tarot comprises of Major Arcana (major cards which predict characteristic traits and distant future) and Minor Arcana (small cards which predict recent developments in one’s life). Like in a normal card deck, Tarot also has four suits—Wands represent Fire (passion and work), Cups represent Water (emotions), Swords represent Air (the mind) and Pentacles represents Earth (wealth and health).

Unlike Astrology and Numerology, Tarot predictions are dynamic and are subject to change depending upon the efforts you put in to change the future. This dynamism makes Tarot magical and intriguing. Tarot is the only form of occult which gives you the power to change your destiny.

My Tarot readings for your future, as detailed in this book, are based on the 12 Zodiac signs, the mystical Tarot cards, and my own trained and unerring intuitive abilities. The categorized sections have been designed to make it simpler for you to relate with your future as predicted in this book. Limitation in performing individual readings has led me to this segregation which is convenient as it clearly separates you from the rest in a specific Zodiac sign. Tarot is most definitely intriguing and brings in a refreshing perspective and serves more as a guideline than purely a medium to predict one’s future. Besides just predicting the future, it offers solutions, warnings, and guidance for what is to come.

These 78 colourful cards talk to me about your destiny. Come, find out what’s in store for you in 2015.