>>>it can also be seen in times when 'look before you leap' can be applied.<<<

One of the first principles I learned is that every card can be read in a positive or a negative sense depending on the context of the entire spread. That's why I don't use reversed cards in reading. The emphasis should be obvious from the context and the reader's intuition.

>>>Not sure if there's any truth in that. What are your thoughts on such things?<<<

The lack of reliable evidence leaves me skeptical on reincarnation, though it makes sense to me on some level. I've done past life regressions with vivid results, but I tend to follow Crowley's advice that such things are more valuable for what they tell us about issues in our present life rather than for anything about previous lives.

As for tarot study, I don't know. For most of my life since high school, I have kept a deck or six around just for study and meditation. After a while, people would hear that I owned a deck and would ask for a reading. Since I didn't feel qualified to read the cards and considered such things mere superstition to begin with, I would try to refuse, but they would insist until it was easier to give it a try than to get them to shut up and go away. Then I would find it particularly annoying that they seemed to find my readings accurate and useful. Bah!

Eventually, some of my friends insisted that I should come along with them to attend a Tarot class that would be using my favorite deck, the Thoth Tarot. I figured that it might be interesting, wouldn't do much harm and that I could just coast through the practice readings. That was until it became apparent that I was a much better reader than anyone else in the class, including the teacher. I did a reading for a guy in class from a spread that nobody including the teacher could figure out. When I pointed out the key to the spread, the teacher insisted that I come up to the front and do the reading. The victim--pardon me, the client agreed with everything I told him, often blushing bright red at the time and all the people in class who knew him were happy to chime in that, yes, I had nailed his personality perfectly.

Forgive the boasting, as I say, I found the whole thing irritating. Later I went to the teacher and confessed that I had always thought tarot reading was primitive superstition. She smiled and answered, "Of course. That's why you're so good at it. The best readers are always skeptics--or start out as skeptics. It's the true believers that never seem to be able to get the hang of it."

This was a serious shocker. And later when I had a spiritual reading from a Brazilian Candomble priestess, she told me that the Orisha who holds my head is Orunla, the patron of divination. Oddly, a few days later, I visited an occult shop on the other side of town and when I walked in, one of the clerks, an acquaintance of mine said, "Hi, Bob. Orunla huh? Well that would explain why you're so much better at Tarot reading than anyone else" Since he had never seen me read for anybody, it struck me then that my reputation must be a lot better than I would have thought. I still don't claim to understand why everyone seems to think I'm so good at it. And I still find it a bit annoying.

This is some of my past experience with the cards. I remember they were of great help in learning the Tree of Life and the associations of the Hebrew letters to the tree and the cards. They also helped with astronomy and alchemy. After a bit, it all begins to tie together. I try my best not to take any of it too seriously, but there have been too many unusual incidents to ignore tarot completely. And it has been so valuable in seeking those spiritual insights that keep life so fascinating.

With love under will,

Bob, Adastra,
The Wizzard of Jacksonville