Nov 21

 Better, worse, better, meh. All in one day. Ok. Wonderful.

Moving on.

This weekend a new Tarot deck arrived in the post.

Yeah. A Tarot deck. Judging from the reaction of two people I know to this fact, this might be surprising. The immediate follow up question is then.

Do you believe in it ?

Define believe. Do I believe it's a supernatural source of information and wisdom ? No. Do I believe it's a condensed form of the human condition, hedge witch proto psychiatry in the long ages before we came up with psychiatry ? Yes.

But really, I don't pick up Tarot decks for any special reason. Very very rarely I get the impulse to get one. And "do a few readings" for people, just as a bit of fun. I love the art on them - well, the ones I like. I love the aesthetics and the vibe and the witchiness of them. It's cool. In the same way I like the aesthetics of Halloween. If you're being that way, you might also suggest it's my Lee genes coming out. My 1/4 roma gypsy wanting some Tarot cards to flick through. Can't take the gypsy out of the boy.

Having had the discussion about Tarot at length with some hardcore realist frends, in a way they are like a form of therapy or group therapy. The cards represent a topic or aspect of your life that is then discussed. Which absolutely forms part of a cornerstone of therapy. Just about all the cards relate to an individual. That's their clever condensed knowledgeset secret from hundreds of years of likely switched on people. Pull the death card. For sure everyone understands death. Their own mortality. Others around them. The lovers. Everyone gets this. Fortune. Fame. Lack of it. Anxiety. Family. And on. And on. They are all, so very relatable. Personally.

But there are other touchy feely aspects of it too.

Getting through someones formidable defenses can be more than half the battle. The prickly skin they wear from others truly seeing their inner thoughts, their inner selves, the insecurities, the flaws, the desires. There are certain places or ways you can get these to lower. In the presence of a therapist, some people, but definitely not all, will feel more inclined to share their personal head space. A safe place. That term, a safe place, is often wheeled out amongst the counselling fraternity. 

Bottom line. There is a curious complex psychological dance that needs to go on, to get someone to feel comfortable enough where they dont have six feet of walls between them and everyone else. The depth of these walls can vary depending how close you are to them, the level of trust, but also paradoxically, the further away someone is - some can find it easier to discuss stuff with a complete stranger than someone they know.

So we circle back to the Tarot.

This in itself can be a powerful way to make people drop their pretences. They are not being judged. This is not another person trying to compete with them. Or do them harm. It's a deck of cards. It's a messenger from the ether. Whatever it is.

Dealers in such things know their schtick. They will often lean into this heavily. Set the mood. Set the scene. The environment. All to give that person a real feeling of Other. An altered state. Hence all the witchy accoutrements.

In fact. We start to tread the halls of magic itself. Arthur C Clarke once said, that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic. Very true. He was a technologist however. So. I think he missed a point which is this. It's not just technology. Any sufficiently advanced ANYTHING is indistinguishable from magic. Knowledge itself. Someone explaining atoms and electrons and neutrons and quarks to a caveman would be viewed as deranged or a sorceror ( depending on whether or not they could back up their bizarre words with something practical.. like a lightbulb ). We encounter this everyday. Stage magic is the art of deception. At such a level that it is literally mistaken for magic. We know its not truly magic. But we can't tell. There are also clever psychological tricks that do the same thing. That lean into an advanced understanding of how we work. Optical illusions especially. Our brains do a lot of smudging and making up of shit to fill in the blanks. If you know this. They are exploitable.

In the same way I think, dealers of Tarot pull together a lot of different skills, adept reading of body language, hyperattentiveness, charisma, manipulation of aesthetics, space, et al to create a real effect. One which is hard to explain and write down because it encompasses a lot of shit. Just like it's hard to simply explain the presence of an electron without a whole discourse on other shit. What you're left with is indistinguishable from magic.

People do not go through the rigours of processing it all. The easier and far more human simple conclusion is that indeed. It's just magic.

It is magic. Which just means. Doing something you can't really easily grasp.

Roger Federer belting out a zillion aces, in its own way, is also magic. You certainly cant do it. And the control he has over the ball is .. other worldly.

When you think about it. Magic is just a belief set where you take things at face value, live in the moment, rather than trying to analyse something to death and come up with the exact formula, mechanisms et al that makes something work. The more science dominates the world - the more explanations and working out there is, the more magic diminishes. And vice versa. Really. It's just a measure of education about something. 

Magic is simply the expression of something we observe that we cannot explain. Simple as.

In any case.

Wick away all the extras, you're left with a tool to discuss aspects of a persons life. And depending on the dealer of such things. An ability to manipulate and influence. Like many things, tools can be used for good and evil. Taken in that light, a shrink does nothing but manipulate and influence via a subtle dance of questions, listening and insight, nudging their patient to a better place. But it doesn't have to be that path. You could do the reverse. And sometimes, they do.

So anywho.

New Tarot deck. It's sexy. I did a run through of the cards, some of them are a little tricky to make out. The problem with artsy fartsy Tarot cards is they start to lessen the communciation of the card in favour of aesthetics of the art. I mean. Lovely art. But what the fuck is squiggle splash of light supposed to be ? Oh. Ok. It's the queen of cups. Apparently.

Elsewise.

One of my good friends left me an angry message about mocking her on a facebook post. At first I was absolutely confused. What ? Was this message intended for someone else ? Slowly it clicked. Oh. My reply.

She had posted an article about keeping warm in the winter - in light of the miserable state of energy prices and everyone struggling. The way she worded it, keeping warm at the end, sounded very much to me like, keeping warm At The End. Of all things. Which is a theme I have been floating around of late. I posted my own how to help with heating bills this winter meme myself, turn down the thermostat, warm drinks, warm clothes, a guillotine. Referring to the fact that yeah, whilst coping with the problem first hand is cool, theres also the aspect of coping with the root of the problem. The elites and the bullshit. And giving them the chop.

My comment on her post queried - I thought jokingly - the meaning of the end. The end times. The post apocalypse ? In such climes a warm hat is a good idea.. and so is an axe. Ha ha.

Or apparently not ha ha. The comment was seen to be mocking her.

I apologised and said it was not mocking her. And didn't say much else.

The whole prices of energy malarkey has been a talking point for me and some friends lately. Back in the summer it had been mentioned that the Winter was something to be watched. A storm of pressures that could cause real unrest.

And here we are. I calculated my own bill the other day. I am running at least at 3.5k a year for energy. Which is. Stupid money. And I am somewhat worried myself. I made the point to friends that if I am worried about it, how the hell does it look to those without any money at all. Big yikes. Also. That things seemed to be reaching a tipping point. A real end of times thing. Our taxes et all march upwards inexorably, whilst our income lags behind. My council tax has increased way above inflation every single year, for 20 years. You can quickly work out that this is not a tenable situation. You can't keep on increasing shit beyond inflation. At some point it inflates to consume everything there is. But we've tripped along this path going on in some happy la la state that it can continue forever. A bit like our reliance on fossil fuels and everything.

So. I do think. We are reaching something of a crisis point all round. Heating bills. Cost of stuff. This whole "hard period" I think may prove to be a breaking point. And it wont be pretty. But time will tell I guess.

My friends are in agreement. Things seem... grim. Late stage capitalism devouring itself. People struggling to afford heating bills. Elon Musk splaffing oodles of money over a vanity / tantrum purchase.

Hmmm.

Off with their heads indeed. I stand by my guillotine meme.

And hopefully my friend sees that I was not mocking her. I was railing at our end of times.

Tricky. She is going through some very tough times at the moment. Life. Is hard. And shit can be doubly hard to deal with or keep a lid on when you're screaming internally. Difficult.

Oh well. Life, for the moment, goes on.

In the meantime. Would you like a Tarot reading ? Heheh.