Tales of the Occult - My Encounter with a Tarot Card Reader

To break from the happy happy joyful funtime that is this blog, I have decided to spend a week telling stories of the deranged and disturbed. That’s right, this week is Tales of the Occult here on this blog. Each story of the occult will SHOCK and TERRORIZE if it doesn’t totally BLOW YOUR MIND!

Today’s story – the last story in this series – Encounters with a Tarot Card reader!

I pretty much outgrew the whole Tarot card thing years ago. I sold all of my sets on eBay to help pay for my wedding - including the one designed by Dave McKean that single-handedly paid for my Groom’s cake and about five dozen chocolate-dipped strawberries. (It was a limited 1st edition.)

But we found ourselves at a party one time with a guy I have affectionately nicknamed Mr. McSkuzzy. Mr. McSkuzzy had a deck of Tarot cards and he would sidle up to you and perform free Tarot card readings if you were 1) female and 2) pretty.

I think in some circumstances that Tarot cards can be effective. If you have something on your mind, a problem or interpersonal situation, that you need to clarify and articulate, they provide a great way to do so. They work like Rorschach tests – there is no inherent meaning to the pattern, but it is easy for you to project your own inherent meaning into the mess. They do not predict the future and do not give the person dealing the cards any insight or control over the person for whom the cards are being dealt.

This was apparently news for Mr. McSkuzzy, who seemed to claim that only he truly understood the cards and only he could use the cards to tell you what your problems were and you had to truly open yourself completely and totally to him and his energies for the cards to work.


And he would go from pretty woman to pretty woman, saying things like, “The cards tell me that you have issues with your parents.”

“Wow! It is like they can see right through me!”

“The cards also say you have some credit card debt.”

“It is so true! It is eerie how it is so true!”

“The cards also say you hate your job.”

“Those cards are amazing!”

While watching this I leaned over to the Mrs. And calmly explained what was going on here. “This dude is scamming these women. This is totally ridiculous.”

“I’ll handle it,” said the Mrs.

She turned her head ever so slightly to Mr. McSkuzzy and batted a single eyelash.

BOOOM! Mr. McSkuzzy was right there across the table from her, a carton cloud in the space where he once stood.

“Care to have your cards read, beautiful?”

“Sure.”

“Whoa. It looks like you got The Wheel. You must have a lot of credit card debt, huh?”


“No. We’re pretty responsible with our money. In fact, our investment portfolio is doing very well.”

“Are you sure? Because the cards say financial problems.”

“They may say that, but our brokers say something else.”

“Yes. Um…. Hurm… Looks like your next card is the Empress. You must have some mother issues.”


“I have a mother, if that is what you mean. No, we get along fine. In fact, we’re going shopping together this weekend.”

“Are you really focusing on the cards? I mean really focusing and opening yourself up to the energies here?”

“I’m trying, sure.”

“Because it doesn’t work if you don’t believe.”

“You mean, like a pyramid scheme?”

And with that he picked up his cards and walked away, leaving the score Mister McSkuzzy 0, The Mrs. 1.


Duh dah DAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

Your mind is blown. Your nerves are shocked and all of your senses are now terrorized! And now we have concluded our series - Tales of the Occult!

Tales of the Occult - My Obsession with Tarot Cards and Psychology!

To break from the happy happy joyful funtime that is this blog, I have decided to spend a week telling stories of the deranged and disturbed. That’s right, this week is Tales of the Occult here on this blog. Each story of the occult will SHOCK and TERRORIZE if it doesn’t totally BLOW YOUR MIND!

Today’s story – Adventures with Carl Jung and Tarot cards!

Long before I found the current state of wedded bliss which I live in now, I was a mess. I was in a relationship I considered a loving one, and opened my heart to another person. The downside about opening your heart completely to love is that you also open your heart completely to pain.

And much like a high-pressure hose forcefully disconnected from a socket, a completely flowing love tends to twist and wither the moment it separates, gushing gush gush as it does so. It is difficult to shut off this flow, so what most people do is just reconnect it somewhere else as quickly as possible. Hence, the rebound relationship or, in my case, the compulsive hobby.

During a breakup, you reach out and cling to anything that seems stable and supportive. In my case, I reached out to Carl Jung. Jung is great for break-ups, and I heartily recommend reading his work discussing way people relate to each other. You know that line from Jerry McGuire, that “You complete me” line? Totally stolen from Jung.


If you allow me to digress for a second, both Freud and Jung developed theories that were in no way scientific. They may be interesting hypotheses, but they cannot be tested in laboratory conditions to prove their validity. I assume someone could do a focus group or a mall survey to see if people do really want to kill their fathers and marry their mothers, but surveys and statistics have dubious scientific merit, too.


Most serious psychologists and psychiatrists who like to think the study of the mind should be a scientific study treat Freud and Jung as a pair of wacky old uncles who lived in an apartment filled with newspapers and cat pee. Yes, they did great things but they essentially they were kooks with no real bearing on the serious world of science.

Professors in English departments, however, are not put off by this lack of scientific integrity and dance around both Freud and Jung and consider what they have to say very insightful, even if it can never be scientifically proven.


But that is totally beside the point. The point is that Jung was into some really wacked-out stuff. He believed in UFOs and the occult. He followed astrology and talked at length about the dawning of the Age of Aquarius (that song also totally ripped off Jung). And, after reading his essays about archetypal images and dream interpretation, I decided to invest in about three different sets of Tarot cards. You know, to help me understand archetypal images and interpret my dreams.

Tarot cards do not predict the future. They present a set of archetypal images to the person who then adds meaning to the mix. Much like the Rorschach inkblot test, it can be a diverting parlor game, but the scientific methods behind it are just as dubious as those of Jungian psychology proper. But this does not change the fact that they are pretty neat and some of the artwork on them is really compelling.


So for a few months I would read the works of Carl Jung and then play with Tarot cards. I would ask the cards such deep and ponderous questions like, “Should I order my pizza with sausage and pepperoni?” and the cards would give me images like The Fool and Death – images I interpreted as “No. You should stick with the Veggie Lover’s. It will be kinder to your digestive tract.”

This fooling around with the occult all came to a head one evening when I was playing a little game of Spider Solitaire with my Tarot cards. I shuffled the deck, cut it and then played the first card. The first card is supposed to represent you and how you see yourself. In this case the card that came up first was The Hanged Man.


Anyone who knows me very well knows that if I don’t like how things are going in a game, I will try to do whatever possible to start over. My favorite word when losing in poker is “misdeal.” And I felt the same thing here with the Tarot cards.

“I am not the Hanged Man,” I said, “Misdeal!” And then I promptly reshuffled, recut, and redealt the cards. I flipped up the first card.

It was The Hanged Man.


I scooped it up, reshuffled, recut, and redealt the cards one more time.

It was The Hanged Man again!


Frustrated, I scooped up the cards and reshuffled them once more. I looked at the deck from the side and noticed that one of the cards was bent and that whenever I cut the cards, this card in particular would always come out on top.

To my horror...

I discovered...

The bent card was...

The Hanged Man!


Duh dah DAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

Your mind is blown. Your nerves are shocked and all of your senses are now terrorized! Join us next time for more Tales of the Occult!