We lead busy lives, always going somewhere, having to do something. It's stressful. No wonder the sad array of rages - air rage, road rage, queue rage, you-name-it rage, even phone rage.

It's time to have life occurring differently for us, more fulfilling, more harmonious, an okay-dom in the world. Or so it seems, and why not?

Sometimes it is good to contrast one divinatory practice or modality with another. I am thinking here of the tarot and the Runes.

So we have on the one hand, a picturesque, often lavishly illustrated deck of tarot cards rich in symbolism and imagery. On the other hand, we have the Runes, sharp-edged, a series of lines rearranged in a sequence to form a magical alphabet and system of understanding about the world, seen and unseen.

Again, colourful tarot cards, and then runes as symbols and letters simply etched on stone or wood.

And of course, you can buy Rune sets which have been illustrated and turned into cards, and powerful and beautiful ones, too, such as Silver Ravenwolf's.

Wonder.

It's an enticing word. When I say the word here I mean wonder as wondrous, marvellous, full of marvel. There's a less inspiring use of the word wonder too, where it appears in speech as slightly cynical or derogatory. for instance, it's a wonder he or she does anything! It's not that use of the word that I am referring to here.

To return to wonder as marvel.

How might we apply that to the study of tarot cards, to tarot card readings and even divinatory practices in general?

Just as acupuncture introduces us to a majestic world of balances, often poetically named, so too the tarot invites us into a world of pageantry, wisdom and wonder.

Thus the DruidCraft tarot calls the major Arcana the world of the 'inner mysteries'. It's at once a title or metaphor which beckons, making special and transformative what might otherwise be missed in the daily experience of life.

Sure, tarot card readings are about how things will appear for us in the future, and that's clearly important and the reason why we seek guidance.

The final tarot card in the major Arcana of the tarot is the World card.

It's the apogee of attainment, the completion of the journey, the successful outcome of whatever it is we have pursued in our lives.

Traditionally this tarot card shows either a female or hermaphrodite figure, naked and dancing and at the centre of egg or oval shape. Sometimes that is a wreath. Often there are symbols of the four elements at each corner of the four directions. And the central figure may hold a wand.

It's a tarot card which is exuberant, inviting, fresh and vital.

The twentieth tarot card in the major Arcana of the tarot is the Judgment card.

It's one which traditionally shows the Archangel Gabriel blowing a trumpet. This clarion call has several people leave their coffins in response to the divine music they hear from this instrument.

It's a time of rebirth, of realization, as the Tarot of the Four Elements terms it.

The judgment is not the type of judging and assessing of people and ourselves that we all do, where we make ourselves and usually others, wrong.

This is a looking upwards, an hearkening to higher values, to the higher vibrations of life.

In his fascinating account of postmodern theory in counselling and therapy, Alan Parry quotes Friedrich Nietzsche as saying: 'if we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how'.(Parry, A. Story Re-visions :Narrative Therapy in the Postmodern World, p.1)

Underlying much of what we say when we ask, how is my future going to be? is often an unspoken why? Why does my life go the way it does? My relationships fall into a pattern?

Sometimes it takes some distance to see - and hear - that.

At other times it needs the presence of another person.

And, too, all too often it can also become a series of bemoaning, why, why, why, where we get stuck in looking for reasons, apparently, when we may basically be throwing a tantrum. Why does life do this TO me, that type of exclamation. Probably we are all familiar with it. I know I am.

A story brings together several elements: plot, characters, events, narrative, dialogue, context or setting.

Tarot card readings make sense because there are boundaries placed on them.

One of Arthur Frank's books is titled, The Renewal of Generosity.

Dr Frank suggests that what can underlie medicine are two simple yet profound virtues: generosity and gratitude.

While his account is about medicine, healing and illness, and the stories that interweave through all three, there's something there which can be transposed to the study of the tarot and tarot card readings.

Sometimes reading tarot card is a hymn to praise.

Tarot cards can be a colourful place of delight.

There are many tarot decks available these days, and they can appeal to a wide section of society.

Historical, cultural, multi-cultural, whimsical, thematic, fantastic, you name it, there's a tarot set that will be it. Recently, even cities such as Paris and Prague now have tarot card sets based on them.

Tarot card readings call us to account: what are we to make of our lives, relationships, futures?

What sort of future do we wish to live into? What calls us forward in life? What holds us back? Where do we hide?

In his fascinating book, Maps & Dreams, Hugh Brody talks about the learning and 'unlearning' he had to undertake and experience in order to accomplish his task involved in projects about resources in the Canadian interior.

It's a book about two distinct cultures and how each goes about understanding the world and trying to understand the other. the one pre-industrial, the other western, industrial, linear thinking.

Each uses different maps, as it were, to explain the world.

So how does this fit with a piece on tarot card readings?

If life is a journey, then it certainly helps to have a map.

What maps do we use?

Where do we find them?

How do we even recognize them as maps, and then maps of life? Are there maps of life?

Tarot card readings can be a great form of self help.

The color, vibrance and vitality of many tarot decks can't help but lift the spirits anyway.

The theme of life as a journey, which lies at the heart of most tarot card sets, also helps place whatever predicament we may be facing in a context of change and possibility.

Shuffling tarot cards in a tarot card reading is more than something we just do because that's what people do. It mimics creation. It is a mixing of the elements.

After all, the four suits of the minor Arcana -wands, coins, swords and cups - symbolize the four elements of fire, earth, air and water respectively.

Add to those the twenty two cards of the major Arcana, which represent the archetypal forces of life and consciousness, and we've got the basis of all life.

So it's good to pause awhile before either having or doing a tarot card reading.

Tarot card readings invite us into a place or space called choice. Ultimately, that's what underlies tarot card readings. Choice, hope, possibility.

The three inter link.

We often come to a tarot card reading expectant, worried, confused, anxious, hopeful. There's usually a mixture of feelings and concerns. Will my relationship last? Is this person the right person? How will my work go? Finances? What's the new year going to be like? All those sorts of questions, natural questions in the course of our daily lives.

And we expect the tarot reader and psychic to be able to work through with guides to the right answers, or obtain clearer answers for us. Again, that's natural.

Yet we can also consider that a tarot card reading is a dual process, a place of interaction between reader and querant (person requesting the reading).

It's not a one way street.

The Sun card is a great tarot card with which to work.

It's full of energy, it's positive, and it's colourful. We can't help but be uplifted, unless, of course, we are in a particularly dour mood and in a state of mind where we don't trust anything that appears to be 'too good to be true'.

It's handy, when working with tarot cards, and taking on reading tarot cards, to reverse them.

Inverting the Sun card can give us more insight into what makes it such a nourishing and powerful tarot card.

When the tarot card the Sun appears in a tarot card reading it signifies victory, success, and perhaps more importantly, joy.

There's something unbounded here about the expression of joy, even though, ironically, some tarot decks such as the Marseilles show two children, a boy and a girl, at play in a walled garden.

At the heart of tarot is hope.

Hope for the future, hope for something better.

We all look for that, let's face it, we want to know how things will go in the future, whether what we want will turn out. That's as natural as glancing in the mirror.

And that is there in the tarot, and all forms of divination.

But there's something more.

The story of the tarot, of tarot cards and reading tarot card, is a story about transformation.

Transformation is both the context and the 'sinews' of tarot cards.

The nineteenth card in the major Arcana of the tarot is the Sun card.

It's often a vibrant, cheery card, colorful, expressive, showing a young naked boy like the Divine child golden in his vitality and effervescence. Sometimes the boy is seated on a white horse.

The Moon tarot card is a beautifully complex tarot card.

From its rather droll appearance in the Rider Waite to the pungently colorful yet subdued hues of the Tarot of the Four Elements, it's a tarot card which in a tarot card reading would invite us to pause and dwell carefully on its meaning.

In many of the earth-based spiritual traditions around the world the Moon is celebrated as a symbol of the feminine, as another form of the Goddess in her many guises.

In the Moon tarot card She is shown in one of her deepest, most mysterious forms.

We see that most in the Tarot of the Four Elements.

Paul Krafel, in his wonderful, hypnotically rich book, Seeing Nature : Deliberate encounters with the visible world, writes that he can wander without a map through country without a trail'.

He tells us he does this by understanding the gradients, by navigating by 'slope, streambed, and drainage'. For he knows, that wherever he roams, 'flowing water has already made its path'. (p 47, 1999 edn).

The Moon card in the tarot is an evocation of that path.

It calls upon the terrain of that path, so to speak, to describe a way.

The eighteenth Tarot card in the major Arcana is the Moon.

Considering that we are all made up of a lot of fluid, it's a crucial tarot card in the story of the Fool's journey through life. People can survive a month or more without food. No liquid, no water, not long for life. It's a simple fact.

So how have tarot authors and illustrators portrayed this most fundamental of tarot cards?

In the DruidCraft Tarot deck, the Star tarot card shows a naked woman pouring water from two jugs onto a pool and onto the land, variously.

In the background we see an old stone circle, and above that, in the sky, the moon like a quiet arc, and the constellation, Ursa Minor.

Stones, person, tree, pool, sky, stars, it's a quietly peaceful, powerful, healing card.

It suggests balance, poise, freshness and renewal.

At the forefront of any tarot card reading is hope.

Sometimes, it's the hope of hope. Sometimes it's disguised and appears as something else, ambition, perhaps, or hurt and upsets. But it's there.

One of the wonderful strengths of tarot cards is that hope is always there, even in the worst and most difficult looking cards.

Reading tarot card is a step into hope.

The Star card in the major Arcana of the tarot is a prime, and wonderful example.

The Star tarot card is the seventeenth card in the major Arcana of the tarot.

It's often an enticingly beautiful tarot card, especially after the major challenges of the Tower.

Traditionally it shows a younger woman, naked, pouring water from two jugs, the one into a pool, the other onto the land. One of her feet rests on the earth, the other seems to rest over the pool, much like the archangel figure in the Temperance card.

In some ways, the Star card brings us back to the earth- gently.

When you come to think of it, a tower, such as the one in the Tower card in the major Arcana of the tarot, 'towers' over the scenery.

Towers are usually signs of power.

They are visual representations of authority. And, in being fortress-like, they are not readily accessible.

Moreover, they're usually built to last. And lastly, they become targets in themselves.

Having just said lastly, there's one more metaphor that comes to mind. Ivory towers, living in 'ivory towers'.