Strange But True Tales of Tarot #1

The Friend Who Went to Paris

"Yeah, it's all crap, but it's still kind of interesting." Isn't that what we all say when we first get into tarot? We don't really believe in it, but you know...

Here is the strange but ABSOLUTELY TRUE story of the reading that made me believe.

Very early on in my tarot reading career, I had a friend who went to study art in Paris. There she met...yep, you guessed it, a guy. A fabulous, artistic type guy who was madly in love with her. She had hit the romantic jackpot. She came back to America and announced to her parents that she was quitting school and going to live with the love of her life.

Needless to say, mom and dad were not thrilled. But my friend said tant pis, I'm going anyway.

So the week before she left, we decided to do a tarot reading for her future in France. Laying out the cards, I fully expected a reading full of passion, art, and lots and lots of sex.

Instead, this was, without question, the WORST reading I had ever seen. Death Reversed was in her future. The final outcome card was the Devil. Strife, misery, false hopes, and deception everywhere you looked.

Frantically, we tried to interpret the reading positively. Death, well, that meant a new life. And the Devil, well, maybe that was the lingering effect of her parents' disapproval. It wasn't that we questioned the cards; we just thought we were reading them wrong. Because she was going to go to Paris and live happily ever after, right?

Well, her first clue that maybe the cards were right and we were wrong was when she arrived at the apartment of her beloved, she found another woman already living there.

Pas de problem, said her beloved. She's just a friend.

Needless to say, he was telling his "friend" the exact same thing about my friend. A month passed before the two "friends" decided to compare notes. And that was just the beginning of the ugliness...

Two months later, she returned to America a sadder, wiser woman.

And ever since then, I have never once said it's all crap.