Reviewing Last Year’s Tarot Reading
A little over a year ago, a fortune teller at the exhibition Overmorrow in Berlin’s Salon der Wilden Renate told me my future. Today I wanna evaluate how much of it came true.
The layout I received was, in her words, pretty catastrophic and possibly life-changing – but also full of potential. If you wanna read about the whole experience you can check out the full article here. Since I learned how to read tarot shortly after I can show you the layout with my own beloved deck (The Light Seer’s Tarot):
First, everything will go to hell…
I had three Major Arcana cards (the ‘big players’ in tarot) in the first row: The Sun, The Tower, Death & Rebirth. These cards show – in some variation and form – that there is a lot of change coming. While The upside-down Sun reflects the change to happen as soon as it gets colder, The Tower symbolizes something breaking apart (often painfully) that needs to be put back together. Similarly, Death & Rebirth is a card that symbolizes change with a potential positive outcome. The problem is, however, that all of these cards were drawn upside-down. This can be interpreted in a number of ways but I remember her telling me that these energies were blocked and it would take a lot of focus, strength and clarity (if Vera is reading this: haha) to overcome these hurdles.
… and get better later on
More challenges are shown by the impact of the Knight of Swords as well as the 9 of Swords. However, all this pain was supposedly going to be worth it for some of the biggest beauty the universe holds – as depicted by the 9 of Cups. Since two of the cards had the number 9 in them, the fortune-teller also suggested it was gonna take around 9 months until the phase of change and instability was going to be over.
Self-Fulfillment
Of course, when having your Tarot read during a pandemic you could easily say that things were gonna go bad for a while, d’uh. The intensity and the whole aura my fortune-teller, however, gave this whole experience a different outlook.
Reviewing the past year, I feel like I did have a LOT of bad karma. I struggled with my physical as well as my mental health, first-hand was reminded of how a depressive episode feels, went through a weird and indescribable non-breakup that seriously scarred me. I coped by working a lot and doing creative projects to fill my time. I believe the long winter lockdown of 2020 was one of my most intense creative moments yet.
Somewhere around Christmas, I decided that I needed a break and moved back in with my parents for a little over a week. It was a lovely time in which I got to enjoy both the solitude of living in the countryside during the winter but also the companion and love of my parents. It was also very harmonious which I wasn’t expecting. During this time, I started my journey of Zen Buddhism and decided to turn to spirituality. Later on, I added self-care apps to the mix and eventually decided to go back to Hypnosis psychotherapy.
One project of the winter lockdown: FRACTURES
A personal journey
In the midst of my unhappiness and discontent, the universe (or more precisely: Grindr) sent me Prof. Fisherman, a Brazilian guy who had come to Austria in the middle of the pandemic for a research project. This period of time was such a lovely and unexpected break from all the bad stuff that had happened and I will cherish the memories we have created forever. As good as these couple of weeks were, they ended almost as fast as they had begun as he had to go back to his home country early.
After that, there seems to be a hole in my memory, probably because nothing had happened (or too much alcohol happened, who knows!). It took months for the Corona situation to better and things started to go back to normal in early summer. Around that time, nine months had already passed since I had seen the fortune teller. Work was going well, I had just turned 30 without having a panic attack, I went on a really adventurous vacation with my best friend and things were OK.
But the big tremendous LIFE-CHANGING STROKE OF HAPPINESS the fortune-teller had promised, did not appear. Well, maybe she was wrong, I thought back in August when I almost started writing this article (and didn’t because summer). And then, I moved to Berlin for the rest of the summer. As soon as I arrived, I felt at home and content. Cruising the streets of Berlin, I knew I was completely right where I was. And even work was exploding as Jacqueline and my comic series was getting featured by Kleine Zeitung as well as PAGE magazine! I felt so joyful, untroubled and carefree and started thinking about the fortune teller. This was definitely the time she was talking about!
My Review
So, would I say that the fortune teller was right? Yes and No. What she told me did not reflect the entirety of the past year. I made some good memories even in times when everything sucked. However, thinking of the bigger picture, she did summarize the year I’ve had pretty well. Overall, I was so impressed with her that I later decided to learn how to read the Tarot myself. Studying Tarot, I found out that many people see it as a mostly therapeutic life lesson. To them, it is less important if everything comes true but rather focus on what the things you ‘see’ in the cards trigger within you. What feels right and what feels wrong says a lot about you. Sometimes more than you care to admit.
BenLeander
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Sam "Goldie" Kirk
How did you feel after the read? Were you more cautious about things because you were worried about the bad things to happen? Or were you riskier to prove the reading wrong? I never got one and I’m not sure if I would, if presented with the opportunity. I’m not a big fan of things that can mess with my head.
Ben Leander
I’m not sure I wasn’t really eager to prove it wrong, I think because of Corona many of the ‘bad’ things were more self-fulfilling prophecies but I was still pretty impressed with how much I could identify with the reading. However, one could always argue that you find things in your life that work accordingly to the reading. I’m not sure! If you want a reading, I can do one for you 😉