Tarot cards are, in essence, cards of great moment and healing.

They're visual metaphors which elicit within us another layer or level of story.

What gives meaning to metaphors is the context in which they appear and are heard.

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So if you live in the UK and wish to ring direct for a reading paid for by credit card, you can call us on 08 004 04 9901.

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All the best
Keith MacNider

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Keywords: Tarot Card readings, Reading Tarot Card, Tarot, Tarot reading, Tarot card, Keith MacNider.

Symbols become words of balm and hope in the mouth of a skilled reader and healer.

They are a tonic for the soul.

So in working with tarot cards, being present to the world of symbols means becoming open to the power and presence of the word in creative form.

I read today in the local paper that an area near Brachina Gorge in the Flinders Ranges, north of Adelaide in South Australia, has now been recognized scientifically as a site of the oldest geological era on earth. Oldest!

No wonder the call of such an area! This vast continent with its ancient speak. It is an area which includes the 'earliest known forms of marine animals' as well as the 'first ancestors to animals with backbones'. (Sunday Mail, 17th April, 2005).

Its' history is momentous, a place of the beginnings of transformation of life on this planet.

It's an interesting metaphor, too, a place where backbone developed.

Sometimes I like to work with the back of a tarot card. It can give me another sense of the energy of the tarot card when I know what is on the front.

Some tarot decks have fabulous designs on the back, and these can be used to add 'flavour' to the content, as it were.

Sometimes I like to work with the back of a tarot card. It can give me another sense of the energy of the tarot card when I know what is on the front.

Some tarot decks have fabulous designs on the back, and these can be used to add 'flavour' to the content, as it were.

The other day I went into a shop in Adelaide to buy some chocolates for a colleague. It's a small shop and there were at least six customers in there. My immediate thought was 'half of Adelaide's in there, I don't want to go in'.

Half of Adelaide? what an exaggeration.

Where's that coming from, I wondered?

So later that day - having gone into the shop and bought the chocolate, but not before some indecision and hesitation and mulling around outside - I drew a tarot card to see what might have been at work in my concerns.

Tarot card readings, as a layout, provide a snapshot what's happening to us in relation to the particular question we may have asked of the tarot cards.

Shuffling the tarot cards is an act of creation, mixing up the elements which go to compose our lives.

In a way, we enter the world of the cauldron, the Celtic mix. What we draw out of that cauldron, the shuffle, is what is then on offer in our lives for our viewing.

Tarot card readings can open up how we view what's happening for us in our lives.

Our concerns, worries, fears can create a tunnel vision of things. We can be catastrophists and not really know it. You know the feeling? Something doesn't go right so that automatically means nothing will ever go right, ever. And sometimes there's a 'so there' appended to that statement too!

Or we may be dulling ourselves into a life of reasonableness, where what we really want is quietly forgotten or put away under layers of covert bitterness and regret.

The permutations are many.

A final piece on words as originally poems.

It makes me think: what if we saw each tarot card as originally a poem, not so much in terms of the structure and cadence of a poem, but as an exploration and enunciation of a metaphor?

The minor Arcana in a tarot card reading will show us the challenges of our daily lives. They are the footprints of our path, but not the path itself.

Every word once a poem - I have returned to that thought.

It's such an invitation to think differently about life, to let the sound of words be a place of inspiration and devotion and not debasement and the obfuscation all too often found in, for instance, political circles.

It reminds me of Joseph Bruchac recalling a speech by Tom Porter when Porter spoke some words in Mohawk. Porter described a woman's dress - blue - as being the colour of sky.

There's a different reference point there, a link between colours, fabric, sky. (Our Stories Remember, p32).

When we enter the world of tarot, of tart card readings and tarot cards, we enter a world where symbols, images, titles are poems and metaphors.

Ralph Waldo Emerson many years ago wrote, that 'every word was once a poem'.

It's a lyrical challenge succinctly put: view the world differently, evocatively, almost inherently. to remember the origins of things, speech, our senses.

How might that apply to tarot card readings, tarot cards and the tarot?

The Ace of Swords in the DruidCraft tarot is a beautiful tarot card.

It shows the sword of Excalibur held straight aloft out of the rippling green waters on a cloudy day. Birch trees frame the tarot card, and in the distance there are mountains edging the lake, like the trunks of huge trees.

It's an engaging scene, water, trees, a magical sword and mythical hand and arm, the clouds, the cresting light.

One way of working with tarot cards to facilitate your skills in doing tarot card readings is to follow a particular symbol, theme or element through the tarot deck you use.

For instance, think of water and how it is portrayed in the major Arcana of the tarot as well as the minor Arcana.