How many of us have “started over” in our lifetimes? Transition and change is what we as “spiritual beings having a human experience” are all about. Starting over can be both exhilarating and scary. I asked the tarot for guidance about starting over; the results, not surprisingly, were penetrating and wise.

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  How many of us have “started over” in our lifetimes? Transition and change is what we as “spiritual beings having a human experience” are all about. Starting over can be both exhilarating and scary. I asked the tarot for guidance about starting over; the results, not surprisingly, were penetrating and wise.

  The first card that I drew from the deck was The Fool.

  This Fool is all about “starting over” as he is the “wise innocent” making his way through the world. If you ask most Tarot readers about The Fool, they will speak of The Fool’s spontaneity and freedom. When pulled from the deck, this card evokes innocence and joy. It is uplifting and gives us a sense of hope. However, there is another side to The Fool as symbolized in the Visconti and Marseille tarot, a that of The Fool as the homeless person, seen as crazy and driven from place to place in society by his/her own delusions. In both the Visconti and Marseille decks, you do not see a joyous or adventurous image but one that is dazed and bedraggled.

  An excellent example of the essence of The Fool card, in both its forms, came for me as a part of a deep and lasting friendship with a woman who kept moving between Austin, TX and Boulder, CO. She did this move so often that I joked with her that buying a mobile home would have been less expensive. Each time she would leave it would be with a “skip in her step” and a “hopefulness in her heart.” Within the year, I would get the call that she was returning to the area in CO where I lived, and how happy she would be to “get her life back.” She promised that we had to “do lunch” and catch up. After years of therapy, she realized that “wherever you go, there you are!” Her childhood, which had not been a happy one, had been in Austin, TX and her failed marriage, also an unpleasant circumstance, took place in Boulder, CO. My friend was literally going back and forth in search of answers in both of these areas of her life.

I   often quote one of my favorite authors, Rachel Pollack, and in one of her many books on Tarot she suggests that the “beauty of The Fool is that he has no identity of his own. “To be free of a fixed identity, of the illusion that our social personality is somehow the truth of who we are is to achieve spiritual freedom.” Sometimes, we need to be “The Fool,” in the literal sense, like my friend who kept moving in order to find her way back to her authentic self. Even if that self is not a fixed identity!

• Have you made changes in your life that have not made sense on a practical level, but have made sense on a spiritual level, such as a move? 
• How have you grown from choices you have made, and are you free of the past? 
• Do you need to be “The Fool” for a while in order to get back to knowing who you really are?

  Starting over is not always joyful; oftentimes, it can be painful. Change can be embraced or it can be feared. Even if we are miserable in life, the “status quo” can feel safe and so we accept it. I queried the deck once again for guidance about how to deal with the conflicting emotions, like change and fear that arise when we attempt to start over.

  The second card that I drew from the deck was the Five of Cups.

  In this card, we see a figure looking forlornly at three spilled cups, which can represent emotion and dwelling on the past, specifically on past hurts. This figure is, as facial expression shows, experiencing pain. There is likely to be no one reading this column that hasn’t been there, and there is most probably no one reading this who will not be in that place again at some point in life. In advanced tarot, the Five of Cups sits on the Tree of Life at “Gevurah” which carries a force that is difficult and painful. Gevurah means severity, strength: it means judgment and is related to the left hand of God. It forces us to deal with the judgment we need to exercise in our own lives, and the “fall out” when we use bad judgment.

  Many of my clients are unable to shake the “ghosts of relationships” past. They blame or judge themselves for not “seeing the signs” of infidelity or of not being “good enough” or “having enough.” They want to know why things in their lives have happened as they have, and they lament past choices. Sometimes there are reasons that can be explored with a therapist, and then moving on becomes easier. Other times, it needs to be “good enough” to just accept that the past is the past and move forward trying to make better choices for the future. If you look closely into the Five of Cups, you will notice two full cups behind the figure. The message being, if you take a moment to look beyond your immediate circumstance, you might notice there is, indeed, something more to be found in the world, in life, in your situation.

• Where do you need to let go of judgments about yourself and the past? 
• Are you allowing yourself the joy of the future if you refuse to start over? 
• How can you use the symbolism in the card to move forward in a more positive manner?

  The final card I drew from my Tarot Deck was the Death Card.

  I interpreted this to mean that the Tarot, in its wisdom, was addressing the most difficult part of starting over: Transformation. We can see this as a literal death of a loved one, as in when we have lost a loved one to death we are in great pain and oftentimes denial. Or, we can see this as the death of how we have perceived our life up to a point and accept that change, big change, will come whether we are ready to embrace it or not.

  Again the Tarot challenges us to begin anew! We can choose to see the freedom that our loved one may have now that they are no longer concerned with the trials and tribulations of this world. It has been said that “perspective is everything” and so it is also true of the wisdom that the Tarot gives us to contemplate when the unthinkable happens in life.

• Where in your life do you need to completely transform your way of thinking? 
• How has complete transformation made you stronger as a spiritual being?

  We can choose to dwell in the past like the Five of Cups, or like The Fool we can choose to re-make ourselves in the image of the divine. If we embrace the transformation that the Death card brings, we can remain ever hopeful and willing to see that no matter the circumstances, all things happen for our soul’s growth and purpose.

With Blessings from Spirit, 
Namaste~ Karen

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Karen Hollis is one of Connecticut’s most highly regarded professional psychics. She is a sought-after Master Tarot reader who has over 25 years experience both reading and teaching the Tarot. A former marketing executive, Karen leads dynamic workshops throughout New England. Karen is also the Lead Psychic/Medium Investigator with Ghosts of New England Research Society (a.k.a. G.O.N.E.R.S.) She has been featured on The Discovery Channel’s “A Haunting,” and has studied under International mediums, James Van Praagh, Tony Stockwell, Jose Gosschalk, and John Holland. 

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   The winter solstice (December 21, 2012) marks the longest day of the year in terms of daylight hours for those living south of the equator, and many prophecies about the end of the world have surrounded this date as it corresponds with the last day of the Mayan calendar in 2012. It is an eerie coincidence, although I personally have not felt that this date should be feared in any way. As always, I was curious as to what the tarot would say about the subject.

Read more: The winter solstice

Holistic healers and Naturopaths have suggested to me that the energy that we are made up of is derived from the quality of the food that we consume, which makes perfect sense. Wouldn’t it be wise of us to be as concerned with our inner essence and we are with our outer appearance?

If a person is inclined to consult the tarot for guidance in their daily life, they might also ask for guidance on staying healthy. I queried the tarot as to its wisdom with regard to health and well-being. The first card that I drew from the deck was The Star Card.

Read more: Tarot Wisdom

In this fast paced world where there is instant access to everything, people are still searching for something more, something that will show them the way. Though never quite sure exactly what it is, but certain it is “out there”—this deeper, more symbolic something that will guide them. There appears to be a hunger to be “initiated” into something much greater than conventional religious or church communities. In the book Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them by Ed Stetzer, Richie Stanley, and Jason Hayes, the authors report that 73% of 20-29 year old Americans consider themselves “spiritual” because they want to know more about a higher consciousness or a supreme being. Consequently, we have become comfortable with looking to an unseen world that includes angels, oracles and spirits for this guidance. This does not surprise me because I hear the same sentiment from my clients on almost a daily basis. People want to “touch the divine” and they yearn for initiation into meaningful spiritual connection.

Read more: Tarot as Tool for Initiation into the World of Spirit

Both the young and the elder generations are mired in economic strife that affects not only our ability to meet basic costs for living—shelter, food, safety, education, health and well care—it is affecting how we evolve spiritually. For both generations, prior to the economic crash of 2008, the world was a very different place. A soaring stock market in the late 1990’s allowed most Americans the ability to afford not only what they needed, they could spend money on things they simply “wanted.” High school seniors had a good chance for affording the cost of a higher education. They could be confident they would find a good paying job—if not their dream job—soon after graduation. Retirees, members of the Baby Boom generation, had nest eggs they could count on hatching for travel and leisure in the ‘second prime of life.’ Economically and energetically, the world, indeed, has changed. 

Read more: Tarot Reveals Solutions to Intergenerational Needs in a Changing Economy