i have been betrayed...

I have been betrayed… how many of us have the courage to make such a statement about ourselves. Say it out loud… Not easy. But I find that in the event of a betrayal that is just the thing to do, so much so that unless you accept this undeniable event you cannot move beyond it or cope with it. My last two posts have been truly cathartic for me and this one is primarily reminiscent in nature. Rumination about my own and others experiences….

Most psychological experiences of betrayal follow a grief cycle (Kubler Ross) and acceptance only comes at the end of the series of reactions. Shock or immobilization followed by denial that this cannot happen to me, anger, bargaining, depression, testing & acceptance. As always I will attempt to explain this through an experience I am uploading a video of a giraffe stuck in quicksand to explain this - do see to understand.



Inquiring about a cheating spouse/partner or lover constitutes a large majority of the reasons for requesting a tarot reading – the simplest and the most obvious of all betrayals. I say simplest because the betrayal stares you in the face and is possible to fathom. The psychological reactions may be complex but betrayal has the same ramifications as coping with the finality of death, allowing you the right to grieve. This becomes harder if the relationship is clandestine and you have to put on a brave front to hide the true extent of misery.

Just as an illustration – a woman once told me that she had discovered some emails from her partner to another woman and was having a hard time believing that this was possible. So what’s so new about it? Frankly nothing except that as a tarot reader I have learnt to respect that each person’s reaction/experience of the same circumstance is unique and it is your responsibility to help them figure out what to do to help them move beyond this heart breaking event.

If we look at the grief cycle it clearly outlines 5-6 stages of experience. Shock & denial, anger, depression, bargaining & testing and finally acceptance, I have found that in all my readings with various persons, the tarots have their own combination's to indicate the stages that a person may be at:

Situation 1
As in my example the cards revealed the tower, the 7 of swords, and the devil. Definitely stage 1: shock & denial. The woman had just discovered that her partner was unfaithful and the tower represented the shock she had experienced when the carpet was pulled from under her feet. She had hitherto believed herself to be secure in her trust for her partner and now the scales of power were completely turned upside down with the act of betrayal (7 of swords – fleeing from a dishonorable act).

The devil shows the image of a man and a woman chained to the devil; in other words controlled by inhibitions, fears and phobias. It indicates that the woman is so completely controlled by her fear, that instead of looking her circumstance in the eye she would rather be controlled by the Jungian shadow, or at part to ourselves we would rather not face. However the devil also carries the message – ‘out of apparent evil, good shall come’ a message of hope that if fears are faced, the woman will be able to free herself from the fears and grow into a more complete human being.

Situation 2
My own experience with betrayal has always been a very short if not nonexistent stage of shock & denial, and an overly elongated period of anger, my most favorite emotion. Some years back I found that a childhood friend had completely betrayed my confidence and turned out to be someone my blinded eyes had not seen. Despite the number of years I had to question, the proof of betrayal stared me in the face so sharply that I could not entertain the luxury of being in denial. I transited into anger rather fast and found myself eating out of control as a form of self abuse. Severe anxiety which is the flip side of anger resulted in allergic conditions and asthma; I found hard to control.

The cards then advised me through the chariot, the card of victory over conflict and struggle. The card shows a charioteer trying to keep the black and the white sphinxes under control. A simple message – it is out of conflict that creative change occurs. If there is a conflict of interests and a struggle, victory is certainly possible but a fight for self assertion would be necessary. Clear advice – I needed to assert my right to be angry and not give in to the conflicting manipulations of the friend.

Situation 3
A woman once asked me to find out whether she should stay with her husband or not. The cards indicated that her spouse was really not interested in her. Even though she was very young, right from the beginning of their married life he had shown disinterest and disengagement. She had tried in vain for several years to make the relationship work but was unable to find any involvement from him. She said that she had accepted that he was perhaps forced into marrying her, but did not know which action to take… The cards were very clear – the 5 of cups and 3 of swords – abject grief. She needed to grieve over her loss. Just ignoring the fact that she was experiencing an extreme sense of loss was not going to help her move beyond it. She was unable to take the decision due to the fact that at some level she had not grieved for her loss enough to allow herself to move on.

The cards were followed by death indicative that change was imminent – she could not possibly hang on to an already moribund relationship in the hope of what was not. The faster she accepted this, the less the pain she would experience. In fact accepting grief and the resulting change is a corner stone to moving beyond a betraying circumstance. The depression stage of grief is absolutely necessary for you to allow yourself to experience death of the earlier way of being and to embrace a renewal.

Situation 4
Bargaining and testing: Haven’t you found yourself talking constantly about a betraying circumstance – going over and over it again and again, in the hope of making sense of what happened, how it happened and what you have to learn from it. This is your mind's way of making sense of your betrayal and trying to adjust the reality to explain itself. As a young person whenever a friend had broken up with a boyfriend, someone had snitched behind my back or someone was trying to manipulate me – I found us – a group of friends discussing the circumstance turning it upside down in an attempt to analyze it. Extremely important – it is just your mind’s way of reaching out to others to validate your experiences and to figure out an alternate reality.

The card that often appears for a person who is in this stage is the hanged man, telling the story of the Greek god Odin who hung himself upside down from Yggdrasil (ash) tree to rejuvenate himself. As he waited for people to bring him water and food to quench his hunger & thirst he noticed an alternate reality of the world. In these repeated discussions with the world post betrayal, the tarots say that “you have already lost what there is to lose now there is nothing worse that can happen, your soul is now free to look at the world from an alternate perspective and find a reality that was hitherto unseen”. As Jung says the conscious mind need to dies for the unconscious mind to provide alternate solutions.

Situation 5
It’s been a long journey, from the devil, the chariot, death and the hanged man – several daunting milestones have been passed. You are finally in the presence of a blessing. Acceptance – the way forward exemplified by judgment in the tarots – a complete renewal. The judgment card uses the Indian concept of Karma – a balancing of the accounts of life. In this arduous journey in handling betrayal, you discover parts to yourself that did not earlier exist. It is time for self appraisal for accepting oneself and the circumstance and the resolutions that have been found for inner conflict. It is also the time to appreciate one’s strength and realize that while we condemn those who puff themselves with their own praise – we also condemn those that sell themselves short. SO gather these parts to you and set a future plan for yourself – a resurrection for a new beginning. It is a time for rejoicing and renewal.

Beautifully summed up by the tarots, however one small hitch. We tend to get stuck at one stage or the other mostly denial or long drawn anger. If you find yourself in these situations remember – the lessons of the devil and the chariot – unchain yourself from your inhibitions and phobia and take action to self assert in the face of a conflict. (refer my posts on coping with anger) Another obstacle, we can cycle from bargaining back to anger and denial – this means that not enough time was spent in rooting yourself out of denial – maybe there are some devious fears left unturned – a time for self examination again.

The grief cycle is just so clear and self explanatory but it is not the obvious betrayal which we have a license to grieve over that’s hard – on the contrary it is the subtle betrayals of life that are the harder one’s to map. For example – after the first few years of your marriage you discover your spouse’s feet of clay and experience a betrayal of promises earlier delivered. Another example – when faced with a conflict in the family you married into and your spouse does not stand up for you and no one hears your voice. In your family of origin a sibling is favored over you and you find yourself at the receiving end of unfair dealings – far more insidious forms of betrayal that are just so hard to map on the Kubler Ross cycle. But only because you find it hard to classify these as betrayal. Remember for you to cope with it - you have to say it out loud - i have been betrayed.

The solution is simple stand by yourself – an unshakable belief in your own reality is the one and only way to withstand betrayal and make the journey of grief to towards a rejoicing and renewal.

power games - take 1

What if you are feeling targeted and the in the vortex of an onslaught from an extremely aggressive person? What if you have grown up to be a person who is dumbfounded in the face of this onslaught? What do you do at such times to wrest power back within your grip? Do the cards have anything to say about this?

Sure as always they give ready advice to you. Separate yourself from the person. In situations like these we tend to become one with the perpetrator, his words become reality, his judgments take on a dimension larger than your own meek voice and his opinions about you become much larger in proportion than the vision of your own self. Such is the power of onslaught. Draw inwards like the hermit – and think through who you are – are you a creative person, are you fair, sensitive, loving, intelligent and effervescent? How do you describe yourself? Does your own description match the messages that the perpetrator is giving you, or is it just the force of impact that drives you away from standing by yourself? Ask yourself these questions… In just the act of asking you will find that you are able to connect with who you are and distance the negative messages reaching out to you.

Next figure out - why are you being attacked? Is it something you did or is it the inner experience of the other person to an event that he could not resolve for himself? The answer lies in the five’s – the 5 of wands and the 5 of swords. Extreme jealousy & competition is prevalent in the environment making the perpetrator furiously angry with the circumstance. More than the anger being directed at you – it is his powerlessness that drives him to attack. Ha… a situation which had its beginning in making you powerless is actually insidiously about the attacker’s own helplessness and dis-empowerment.

The cards conclude their advice to you with the strength and death. Both cards teach forbearance – and patience. It is not the weak that walk the path of restraint and acceptance. This path less traveled is for the higher souls. Not a song sung in a eulogy for you, just because you were at the receiving end but the truth. It is easier to retaliate and get the better or worse of the other person. Worse still it is simpler to give in to the onslaught and abandon yourself completely. It is far harder to control your own demons and accept that this is a painful circumstance but one to be dealt with complete submission because the more you push against the factors that demand this change from you the more likely you are to be in pain. Silence is a powerful weapon it can fell a fierce adversary far better than words can. Accept it and bear it.

In such situations you will find that the perpetrator is backed by others whose insidious maneuvers are far more lethal than the ‘in your face’ ones. Same emotions (jealousy & conflict of the 5’s) can be portrayed by a quieter less aggressive person who can easily victimize you without appearing in the wrong. The fact – an aggressive person accepts responsibility for being the wrong doer the quiet manipulator doesn’t. SO the recipient of aggression in the second case walks away with an equal amount of damage as in the first case, without knowing what or who to blame. The blame will in most of these situation turn on your own self.

Cards yet again preach the same process as the first.

1. Separate yourself
2. Ask yourself why are you being attacked?
3. Forbearance & acceptance

With one minor difference… DO not stay silent because such a person needs to be told that you are on to them and you will not allow their machinations to get the better of you… Surely but quietly, using the strength card, let the Machiavellian manipulator know that you know what he is saying but do not agree with it. Do not be the fall guy for other people’s poor motivations.

The tarot teaches lessons which allow us to grow as people. This growth is ALWAYS about learning that the same weapon cannot work in all forms of combat – As the earthly emperor you have to learn that real power is about knowing who you are and standing firmly for yourself and those that you love. Power can never be taken away from you by the aggressive perpetrator or the manipulator if you can hear the voice of your soul.

All things in life come in a balance. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the loving & the hated so on and so forth. So do the powerful and the powerless – it’s all about seeing it the right way –If you are powerful within your own self no earthly maneuverings can wrest that from you. You will even have the affirmations that your wronged soul looks for once you have stopped craving for them.

I guess today I was at the receiving end, hence such insight into how it works… or is it just another way of unraveling an emotional knot for myself.

our earthly mother, the empress

Our generation grew up singing songs like “mother of mine, you gave to me…” , a song sung in eulogy of the mothers in our lives, ensuring that the power distance between us and them remained so. Today many of us as mothers are striving to be ‘friends’ with our children a euphemism to ensure that they keep talking to us. A very scathing opinion given by one of my lady friends who came for a reading. To cut a long story short she came to examine the difficult relationship she and her daughter shared. The daughter as all teenagers do felt her privacy threatened by her overbearing mother and the mother was battling with her insecurities regarding safety, moral character and future prospects of her progeny.

The empress in their reading came as a sign of need for self nurturing – contrary to popular beliefs the empress in my readings almost always signifies a need to nurture your own self (not others), to rejuvenate your spirits, tap into your creative side and extend love and understanding that you would as a mother to your anxious child to yourself. This powerful card is timeless and sends us a clear message – ‘the mother daughter relationship can only be successful if both parties feel nurtured, understood and accepted’. In other words if you want to heal a relationship which has gone rocky, first and foremost, accept your own weakness and forgive yourself. Only in extending compassion to your own self can you be kind to others.

The empress, the bearer of a harvest and creative abundance, teaches us to embrace all that is productive within us.

In my early years as a tarot reader a young person asked me about when they would get married and whether they would at all. Every which way the cards said one and the same thing… marriage seemed a definite yes – the earthly mother has appeared signifying the reign of fertility along with a relationship in the person’s near future. A few months later she came back to me and stated that contrary to what we had discussed she was really far from marriage in fact she had broken off with an already married man and ended up handling an unwanted pregnancy. I was aghast _ I obviously had overlooked the card for its meaning – Fertility. In fact the Tarots tell a very simple story – so what can seemingly appear as marriage just because I read the empress as marriage, since the enquirer asked about marriage, can actually mean motherhood and fertility.

An important lesson – allow yourself to listen to the messages from the cards without getting influenced by what the seeker wants. You will be able to hear the cards loud and clear if you focus on the person rather than what he/she speaks, asks and wishes. Think about the person and submit to the complete belief that what you will hear will be true.

The empress has always been extremely fascinating for me – maybe because my own rocky relationship with my mother had a huge impact on the way I think and negotiate relationships. In fact the rockier the relationship the harder it is to separate your mother’s voice in your head from your own. I have found that when you do grow up you become a harsher critic of your own actions than your mother ever was. Therefore, despite all the work I have done to change the way I think, I have finally found solace in the fact that you cannot change the fact that you love your mother, their opinion does matter but at the same time you can choose to forgive yourself if your actions do not always match up to her expectations.

the why and the wow of the tarots

I was talking to my nieces today about starting this blog and the first question they asked, as all young people do, was 'Why?' followed by the next most favorite 'Wow'. If you really think about it that almost completely sums up my need for this. The eternal and unending 'whys' that face the 40+ gang like mine and the wide eyed delightful 'wows' that surround every new experience of the younger people.

I believe most brilliant things in life are simple - therefore I believe that everyone can read the tarots and there really is no complex science to it. So my goal is also simple - to help people learn what I know about tarots and an insidious objective of helping people find what they are looking for.

I began reading tarots at 24 and today at 42 I am still a learner as I think I always will be. In all these years I have believed that in sharing with others you will get some answers to the Whys and experience some of the Wows. When one is younger everything is beautiful and wondrous - every experience opens your mind to the gazillion possibilities that exist in any situation. I think as a Tarot reader you have to continue to remain in touch with that wonder and experience it every single time you see something new in the cards. The newness may come from remembering a new meaning to any card or it may come from the reaction of the person you are reading for. I think the simplest way to lose it is to become so blasé that you assume you know what the other person is experiencing. A little like if the love of my life leaves me I may be furiously angry and contemplate violence whereas someone else in the same circumstance may actually feel heartbroken, saddened and hopeless, a completely different reaction to the same situation.

I have found that most people go to astrologers, palmists and tarot readers to find an answer to various types of whys. Even those like me who choose to become tarot readers are seeking an answer to our whys, but perhaps want a little more control over getting those answers. The truth is there is no absolute answer - each card has at least 2-3 shades or meanings and the permutations and combinations of the flanking cards can create unending possibilities.

Any card has several dimensions - a feeling quotient, a sense of time, an unfolding of an event and a direction/path/guidance attached to it.

Let's take the five of pentacles - a visual image of the poor freezing outside the church - a distinct sense of getting lost but at the same time a sense of the wanderer. I typically associate it with a feeling of lacking a sense of belonging to any place/person but as an event unfolding it also means that despite the fact that your home is staring you in the face you are not able to make a connect with it. This card has appeared in my reading when someone is in a rocky relationship, when they have just started a new project/job and they have not as yet found their groove, just before an impending important exam or when you have just got married and are yet adjusting to your new home. I believe that if it comes in your own spread the cards are telling you to look for answers within you as it is highly likely that the answers to the "why" you are looking for are probably staring you in the face and cannot be seen because of the overriding anxiety you experience at that moment. So to gain objectivity, ask your closest friend to state the obvious and you will have your answer pat. Once again the five of pentacles is a fleeting card and will last only as long as you allow it to.

I think I am writing this today because I had the opportunity to be touched by the enthusiasm and joy of youth and it left me wondering that why life is such a paradox. The wonder (wow) that you need to be a tarot reader is best within your grasp when you are young but strangely enough you are only able to let yourself hear the answers to whys when experience teaches you to stop judging yourself. So if you aspire to be a tarot reader the 2nd lesson is learn to forgive yourself...

you know your own future

I have been reading tarots now for 15 years with improving confidence. People say I am good - I guess that means I can foretell the future accurately. Still every time one of my friends reports such "bang-on" accuracy I only feel incredulous and of course wonderous. Incredulous because it is not me, in fact it has little to do with me - I truly just am the telephone that helps them hear - and frankly they believe they need the telephone when actually they are only hearing themselves. I think I will always be wondrous of the way all this works - that yet again I heard the truth and chose to believe in it.

Tarots are such a passion today but over the years I have learnt that all it takes is belief - the unshakable and absolute belief that what I am seeing/experiencing is true. Once an aunt asked me when will I be able to tell the future - and I remember telling her that you can already, you just don't let yourself - you are afraid to let go. If you allow the disquiet of doubt, uncertainty and anxiety to silence itself you will have your answers loud and clear...

So here's to all the tarot reading aspirants - before you learn the meanings of cards and the spreads, focus on learning to believe - believe your own self.