Tarot Mystery (side A)

Divided this into two sides, as it deals with the same time frame.

I began writing this around Christmas time. Between now and then there were some nasty developments. This account starts to feel less fluent around the halfway mark, due to heavy emotions at the time. In retrospect the tarot, a divination tool, became symbolic to me of timing. I'd rather not disclose what I do, but my job is seasonal. Fortunately I was off work during the month of March.

When I first joined YGS I was surprised to find how similar and common some seemingly innocuous details are. One such is the tarot deck and its apparent ability to show up unannounced. But why and how? There has to be reasons and methods for this to happen time and time again to people the world over. This is my tarot what the heckness which began back in 2000.

I was born into and raised on hippy culture. Tarot cards were part of an array of alternative household items which I deemed 'normal' as a child. I would look at the card pictures as a youngster. Then, as a teen, I started doing readings. Just taking this general sort of thing more seriously. Things like crystals, white witchcraft and, of course, the tarot. There was nothing terribly unique about my foray into alternative thinking and nothing abnormal occurred with the tarot until I was 18, almost 19.

In 2000 my maternal Grandmother passed away. She passed peacefully in her sleep at her home. The same home my Mum grew up in. In the months after she passed, the family took it in shifts to clear out her house. It was a large old fashioned house full of antiques. It took months to sort everything out. But everyone enjoyed doing so.

One afternoon I was in 'that room under the house' sorting stuff out. That room under the house was, I guess, a bungalow. It was one room with a concrete floor and an overhead light. Everyone referred to the 'bungalow' as 'that room under the house'.

Well, this bungalow room thing was filled with all sorts of forgotten treasures which I was sorting into piles. One for definite keepsakes, one for Goodwill, one for obvious rubbish, one for unsure. The unsure pile was stuff that belonged to my aunty or uncles and this pile was staying in the room for them to sort through later. This is where and when I found a tarot deck.

I was looking forward to clearing out the room under the house and no one else wanted to do it. So it was untouched. The main reason I was looking forward to this was because there was a life-sized harlequin clown down there whom I was determined to save. This clown freaked many people out but not my Gran, so I guess it was down there in exile or something. The clown lived there for years. When it wasn't in the room under the house, it was in my Gran's bedroom.

My aunty is a total neat freak and for some reason would get a bee in her bonnet about Gran's house and take it upon herself to have a 'clear out' every so often. Over the years my aunt took a lot of Gran's antiques to the tip [insert swear words here]. This used to freak Gran out and she would often hide things, like the clown, in her bedroom to save such things from the tip. I love my aunty but she's the biggest busybody ever. She means well but she's a bloody idiot with antiques, not to mention a blatant disregard for the stress and upset this caused Gran! I could never understand their dynamic.

Well, the clown was nowhere to be found. No prizes for guessing why. Man, was I heartbroken. Right where the clown would sit in that room under the house was a tarot deck. It looked identical to Mum's tarot deck, except it was in mint condition. Mum's had her tarot deck since before she had me. She still uses the same deck and it looks all shabby and well loved. But this one was mint. I figured this was one Mum must have bought years ago, so I put it near my bag.

Mum was up in the main house. When she came down I told her I found her cards. But she said she only ever bought that one deck and this deck must belong to one of my uncles. I thought this was exceptionally out of character for either of my uncles, but I put the cards in the 'unsure' pile for them. Also Gran was not the sort of person to ever be interested in tarot. So I was confused as to who these cards belonged to.

Now, this deck on this day was the Rider Waite deck in a blue box with 'The World' card on the front. Exactly the same as Mum's well loved deck. We finished up and went home shortly after.

When we got home I took my bag to my room, as I always did. Shock, horror! On my messy never made bed was the tarot deck I'm sure I left in the unsure pile back at Gran's. Mum said I must have put them in my bag without thinking and they'd fallen out onto my bed. I was pretty sure that was impossible. But, because of the bizarreness of it all, I conceded that must explain it.

Well, nothing happened for years. I think I put the mint deck on my bookshelf right then and there. In any case it stayed on my bookshelf for years. I kept my tarot deck (which is the 'goddess' deck) on my desk. I've had the same goddess tarot deck since I was a teenager and still use it. But the mint clone of Mum's Rider Waite deck was always kept separate. Don't know why I kept them separate, I'm not superstitious.

To date nothing abnormal has ever occurred with either my goddess deck or Mum's Rider Waite deck. Any weirdness has only ever occurred with this mystery Rider Waite deck which no one can account for.

In about 2002 or 2003 the mint 'clone RW' deck turned up on my desk one day. I never kept a journal about these types of things back then so the details are sketchy. Pretty sure it showed up on the desk in the afternoon. No one had put it there and this was another bizarre moment that went by the wayside. I never used the clone RW deck, but for a couple of times out of interest, nothing memorable about that either.

Around the time this deck showed up on my desk, I was moving. But still had a lot of my stuff at Mum's. I've noticed this tarot weirdness seems to happen around a move. But because moving sucks, the tarot weirdness gets pushed to the side of 'low priority concerns'. I seem to remember the clone deck showing up on either the desk or my bed on another day around this time, but I really can't be sure.

No weirdness for a few years. The mystery cards stayed at Mum's place, in my old room on that same bookshelf.

Then in early 2007 Mum had to move. Mum's always rented. In late 2006 I was sorting some stuff from my old room and throwing a lot away. Over the next couple weeks I helped with her move. During this time that same tarot deck kept showing up on either the kitchen table or my old desk. Now, I maintain moving sucks, it turns regular people into gibbering idiots. So it's possible that anyone who came through the house, including me, could have moved the tarot deck around at this time causing much confusion in the process.

In 2007, a couple days after settling into her new home, that tarot deck showed up on top of a box of books. I packed that box, carried it into the car, drove it to the house one afternoon and plonked it, among other things, in her new house before the big moving day. I didn't once notice that tarot deck on the top. Intriguingly I don't remember packing the cards and Mum's sure she didn't pack them either, only her own cards which were packed separately.

This was the time I stopped making excuses for these mystery reoccurring cards. Then nothing for years. The mystery tarot deck lived on the same bookshelf in Mum's new home.

To date, I'm always the one who finds these cards, never anyone else. On the day they were on the box of books I'd been transporting pot plants from the other house to the new one, truly a happening for it's practically a nursery worth of plants. Later that afternoon, with all plants moved, I took a look out a back room window at how all the plants looked from this angle. However, before I did this, was distracted by the mystery tarot on that box, in this room.

Fast forward to 2015, Mum's rental home was put up for sale. After about six months of the house sitting on the market, Mum received a notice to vacate, and had to move. (Mum's always been a long term tenant and all the moves mentioned happened in succession.)

Oh, God almighty this is a circus right here. Alright ya'll have got to understand something about my Mum. She's great, super sensitive to all things ghostly, super wise and compassionate. But when it comes to physical world matters she can be, at times, a COMPLETE CHILD. Which results in much stress. It's hard describing my Mum to people, she's great but I guess it's her unique talent for denial which befalls her discord.

I stay with her over Christmas and this year was no different. However, I grew very concerned about her house situation. It became clear Mum would be homeless unless I step in and save the day. (Yes, it was that serious. I've lost count how many times I've bailed her out of crap like this.)

Meanwhile the energy in her house was absolute chaos, very restless. Mum warned me that the furniture kept shifting, the doing of an unknown ghost. It happened pretty much every day and night I was there. I never saw it happen, only heard it. Particularly while in bed, and sometimes during the day. Almost every morning a couple of chairs and the coffee table were slightly out of place. One particularly heavy chair kept being moved away from the wall for some reason.

I feel also the nature spirits were extremely agitated. I'll have to write about all this in another submission, I want to keep this on topic for the tarot. Point is, crap was hitting the fan from every which direction. The negativity was coming from the physical world in the form of deception from an estate agent and Mum's big time denial. I didn't get a bad feeling about the restless spirits, only that they were frustrated and felt threatened by negativity.

While there one night I was up late watching DVDs, when along came a spider and sat down beside her. It was a white tip. Australians know they're bad news and they're roamers. No web dwelling for white tips. If you spot one you squash it. So I took a shoe and squished the turd into the wall. Except I must have missed because the turd ran behind a large mirror when I removed the shoe. No fly spray in the house either, great. I waited for the spider to come out, it didn't. Well crap, I'm definitely not sleeping in here tonight.

Mum doesn't have a couch so I pushed two arm chairs together and slept in the lounge with the furniture mover (told you this was a bloody circus). I asked any furniture moving ghost present NOT to move the two chairs while I slept on them. It all ran smoothly.

I heard someone invisible whoosh past and sounded like they sat on another chair as I was drifting off to sleep. So I spoke aloud, in case they didn't hear my first message, I said, "I'm sleeping out here 'cause there's a f---ing nasty spider in the other room." I went to sleep. Then later woke to the sound of the kitchen drawers opening or closing (this was one of the furniture movers regular activities). But the coffee table and all the chairs in the lounge remained stationary that night. Thank goodness.

While I was there, with Mum's impending move on my mind and inspired by tarot tales from Val, Rook and others, I looked for the mystery tarot deck. Which was suspiciously no where to be found. Mum didn't know where it was and said she hadn't seen it for years.

I went home and hoped against hell Mum would move out already. She didn't. By late February I was making arrangements to go BACK to Mum's and save her from impending eviction. I had already, over Christmas, contacted emergency housing services, storage facilities, spoke to a lawyer, a hoard of other people and had a worse case scenario plan in place. Like I said, I've done this crap before, but it's never got to this point.

Me doing this stressed her out so much she made herself sick, coughing and dizzy spells. She went to the GP who told her she had low blood pressure, anxiety, bronchitis and an ear infection.

I went back to Mum's in early March. I hadn't been there more than two days. In the wee hours of the morning I was having a lucid dream where I kept opening my eyes, but I was asleep. I kept seeing black and white static, like from a detuned TV. I also kept hearing static, like from a TV. When I opened my eyes I could see something white and fast fly past circling the bed. I'll write about this odd entity another time, or we'll be here all year. It was as if this entity was interfering with my sleep in a way that was keeping me alert to physical surroundings, without being completely awake. Not scary just different.

BANG

Suddenly the floor shook, sounded like something dropped in the kitchen from a great height. The clang and clatter of vibrating dishes and so forth. With this I broke through the static and was wide awake. Complete silence. Looked around, no light under the door, maybe it was a possum, or part of that noisy static dream thing. I lay back down and started to doze. I could feel my guardian in the room and felt a faint pressure like he was holding my hand. He's really not the touchy feely type to go 'there there'. This felt anchoring with a general warning of 'stay here', so I did.

After around 20 minutes of light dozing I heard noises in the kitchen like someone walking around heavily. Only this time there was light coming under the door. I could feel this urgency to get up, the mood in the room had changed completely. So I got up.

The kitchen light was on. As I rounded the corner I met with Mum who was staggering against the wall. She slurred "I just woke up on the kitchen floor." Immediate fear set in and I knew what the bang was. I helped her back to bed and called an ambulance. Against Mum's insistence she didn't need one. She was not a healthy colour at all, could barely walk and I was afraid she was injured. I asked her a million questions about the position she woke in and exactly where in the kitchen she woke in and what was the last thing she remembers. The details of the bang I heard and where she woke etc were consistent with her having collapsed at the sink, into the bench opposite.

Shock does weird things, can you believe I capered about for minutes looking for the phone books to find the ambulance phone number? In Australia it's 000 for emergencies, everyone knows this, I know this. Well, that's shock for you.

The paramedics got there in no time and stayed for about half an hour. They insisted on taking her to hospital for further tests and indeed one nicely refused to leave until she agreed to go with them. It was about six in the morning by the time they took her to hospital. They told me not to worry and that everything seemed okay, but for possible concussion and concerns over the cause of low blood pressure.

Coincidentally this happened on the same day she was supposed to move out by. Later on I phoned the hospital and spoke to Mum who was very groggy but feeling better. They were keeping her overnight. Turned out she had pneumonia, in lower chest, which had lowered her sodium levels. The ear infection didn't help but the low sodium levels were the culprit for low blood pressure, dizzy spells and eventual collapse. She had a bunch of scans and tests because of the fall and everything checked out fine. She was put on heavy duty antibiotics and remained on a drip for sodium for a day and a half.

Mum loved the hospital, said it was like a holiday resort. But she's restless and couldn't wait to leave at the same time.

While in hospital she had a ghostly encounter, which she gave me the go ahead to share. The doctors didn't want her to leave until her sodium levels reached a certain level, not to mention she had to wait for a few test results. She'd been inquiring about when she could leave but was so tired she fell asleep. She was in a comfortable sleep when someone slammed a fist or something on her bed and yelled: "DON'T LEAVE!" She woke up with a start, there was no one there. She asked the guy in the next bed "What was that?" to which he calmly replied "I've got no idea". Mum's not sure if the guy heard or saw anything, or if he was 'playing along' thinking she was bonkers. He was reading, preoccupied, so who knows.

No idea who this ghost was, but I'm glad they yelled at her, cause she listened and stayed!

Believe it or not everything felt serene and calm during this time. Okay, you know how there are times in life where the birds sing, planets align or whatever and everything syncs perfection up to 11? Like that.

There was a rental Mum really liked but had been too ill to inspect. I spoke to the property manager who had dealt with Mum before. This woman remembered Mum, said she was the best tenant she'd ever had and convinced the owners to take her on. After a few phone calls back and forth all that was left to do was for Mum to inspect it and fill the application.

Crisis diverted. I cried for a good while, tears of relief and everything else. I really can't express how much stress this has caused for the past freaking year and it all came to this enormously dramatic pinnacle.

The next day Mum checked herself out of hospital a few hours before the doctors, and that ghost, would have liked. She was still a bit seedy but heaps better and glad to be up and about.

The next week was spent driving stuff over to the new house. The first time I went to the house I took a wrong turn and had to back track. When I drove back the right way, I passed Mum's current house again, and as I did I had to wait at the lights. I was stationary looking at the house, and I could feel something going on in there. Jesus, there's ALWAYS something going on at Mum's place, but this felt heavier with significance

Next day I was looking for a removalist phone number. Looked in a desk cupboard and blow me down if a tarot deck wasn't smack bang in the middle of this cupboard. It was a Rider Waite deck, in mint condition again, but this time it was in a yellow box with 'The Magician' card on the front. I repeated 'No way' for a good 30 seconds. Mum said she had no idea where they'd come from and they were definitely not there before. I know they weren't there too because I'd used that cupboard the day before. Mum was running late for a GP follow up so she dashed off. Leaving me alone with an apparent new box of tarot cards.

I thought about the moment at the lights when I sensed significant activity. Wondered if the cards were this activity and why a different deck now? The other blue 'clone deck' of Mum's cards didn't turn up, or at least they haven't, maybe they will.

I promised myself if the tarot turned up I would drop everything and do a reading. So true to this, I prepared for a reading. When I opened the box there were ten cards separated from the rest of the deck by the accompanying booklet. So, figuring these ten might be an intended message from 'beyond', I placed them in the Celtic cross spread in the exact order they were found.

Here's the reading:

SUBJECT King of Cups

OBSTACLES 4 of Pentacles

WORKING TOWARDS Strength

WORKING WITH 3 of Pentacles (reversed)

PAST OR COMING TO PASS Ace of Pentacles

COMING TO BE 6 of Wands

QUERENT'S ATTITUDE Lovers (reversed)

SURROUNDING PEOPLE/CIRCUMSTANCES 5 of Wands

HOPES AND/OR FEARS The Devil

OUTCOME OF CURRENT PATH TAKEN The Last Judgement

Intriguingly the desk cupboard this new yellow boxed deck showed up in used to live at my Gran's in the room under the house, and it's on this desk the clown used to sit. When I entered that room back in 2000, found the clown missing and a blue boxed tarot deck in it's place, it was on this very desk. (Not my old desk, a different one.) This desk was moved to Mum's place weeks after the blue boxed tarot showed up on my bed the first time. I don't know what this detail could mean, but it seems mighty significant now. Which brings me back to the 4 ft life sized harlequin clown and why I probably shouldn't gloss over it.

Gran owned and ran a florist shop. Mum worked there part time and did most of the flower deliveries. However, back in the day florists sold all kinds of knickknacks, as well as flowers. So Gran's shop was full of fancy furniture, fancy ornaments, you name it. Her rep, who supplied her with fancy and sometimes antique stock, was who and how she got the clown. The clown was a window dressing prop and was never for sale. Also the clown was new at the time, not an antique.

When I wasn't at creche and later kindergarten, I was out on flower deliveries with Mum, or mucking around in the shop with the clown. That clown and me were like best buds. When she wasn't fulfilling her duty as window dressing she was upstairs in the store room. This became the location of many a make believe game with the clown.

When Gran sold the business I used to play with the clown at her place. As I got older I always said hi to the clown.

Well, I've never connected the clown with the desk and the tarot weirdness before but typing all these details out has made me wonder if it's all connected.

I've since taken the yellow boxed Rider Waite deck home with me and have been using it. The energy is quite intense with this deck, as opposed to my Goddess deck which always feels calm.

I'd love to know why tarot deck weirdness happens to people. Why the tarot deck, what's the significance? Who's behind it?

Thanks for reading and, I don't normally say this but, sorry for the length AND the information overload!

It just occurred to me this absolute circus of an account is complete with clowns.