Nobody Panic - Still Panicking: How to Read Tarot (with Caroline O’Donoghue)

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Still Panicking: This spooky week we look back on the best Autumnal and Halloween How Tos.To honour the spooky season Stevie and Tessa got friend of the podcast and author of ‘All Our Hidden Gifts�� Caroline O’Donoghue to explain tarot! We learn about how pentacles are all about the admin, how 5s are always a bit of a downer and Stevie is moved to buy another pack because her tarot mainly depicts hogs with their butts out. Want to support Nobody Panic? You can make a one-off donation at https://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanicRecorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true, Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. it. Welcome to Nobody Panic. Oh! Oh, what else is a cracker of an episode we've got?

Oh, this one's going to be so good and spooky, but not spooky, just spells and bits and this is Halloween. Tessa likes Halloween. Specifically, it's how to read your tarot or tarot. It's tarot. Or somebody else's tarot, not even your own. Oh my God, somebody else's tarot. How to read tarot. In general, with our great witch friend.

Hello, Caroline. Are we all feeling very spookacular? We're feeling very sputacular. We're very excited. We've all got our cards clutched in our little paws. We're really excited to learn. So this is a friend of the podcast, Caroline O'Donohue, author, extraordinaire, podcast owner herself.

Please go and check out sentimental garbage. And you may know her from Sentimental in the City. the award-winning Sex and the City podcast. And she has also written a number of books for adults and now for the young adults. The second one is out. Second one is coming in February. The first one is called All Our Hidden Gifts.

The second book is called The Gifts that Bind Us. Which are they? You have to read the book. And if you were a teenage girl, remember being a teenage girl, were a teenager of any kind, have ever felt what it is to lose a friend, make a friend, not be included, be too included, be the coolest kid in school for a bit and not know how to hold on to it, and or tarot cards,

this is your bag. God, the whole gamut of the human race, I think, is what's happening there. Before we sort of get into the tarot, we're not going to do an adult thing this week because we want to just focus on reading of the cards. Caroline, what's the most adult thing you've done this week, though? Do you know what? I thought I would, like, tacitly include Tessa in the adult thing. A few months ago, me and Tessa were in a nightclub.

In the club. We were in the club. And in this particular club, there was a pole in it. And Tessa said something to me that I'll never forget. And she said, we all know a poll is coming. We all go through life knowing that about once a year we're going to run into a pole in like a public nightclub space. And everyone's going to get a bit pissed and have a go. And don't we want to be prepared?

And I was like, yeah, I wish I was prepared. And now in any other circumstance with any other friend, I think we would just let that go as being a fun bit. And then every now and then, every six months, bring up the idea that we might learn pole dancing. But me and Tessa went to a pole dancing class last week. Oh, yeah. And the adult thing, I think, is that I think both of us are,

well, I don't know, I'm not going to speak for you, actually. For me, I was very unsporty as a kid, felt very alienated by all of that. was like very much the person who was constantly faking cramps so they didn't have to do anything ever. And like I hated acknowledging having a body at all. I just wanted to be a brain in a jar with the book. And so doing anything physical in front of people, I find so overwhelming. For me, the adult thing was, I don't know about you, test, but like breaking the embarrassment sort of glass ceiling of being the worst in the class. Like there was one other, like, what we found out was

that it was a beginner class, but like a beginner in this context is not someone who knows nothing. It's someone who's done less than 15 classes. Oh, Lord. And all these other women were like dancers and fitness instructors and they were all just like the beautiful, large, glistening muscles. In Tessa, we're basically like this French and Saunders act in the corner of being like, just like flopping and slopping around. I think Tessa, Tessa, you described, because I was with Tess the next.

day doing the audio book and you were telling me about it. And she described it as it was like a fish being thrown at a pole. And then we decided you were both the emoji, you know, the little fish emoji on the pole that is actually, yeah. That's all you were both as you too, both trying to pole dance. Just flopping around. But we did get somewhere. And after an hour and a half, we were like, okay, I'm not doing anything impressive, but I have grasped it a bit mentally. And yeah, you've held the pole in your hand.

I felt the pole. Will you go back? Yeah, I think we will go back. And with that level of confidence, of simply trying things out, of not worrying about how it goes, let's get deep into tarot cards. And I think if everybody could attempt to say their own personal history, very quickly, with a little bit of the history of tarot cards, much like their origins in 15th century, Italy, as I would have been introduced by the court fortune teller.

I was introduced to it by our good friend Caroline in a Greek tavernor in London and I'd never had someone read my cards before and it blew my mind and I took pictures of each one and it really, really stuck with me and I felt very profoundly affected by it and I went straight home and bought the same pack that she had which if you're listening and you're like, what hell is this? I don't know how to get into tarot. My starter pack was the Byzantine tarot. It cost about 1199 online.

It comes with very, very nice tarot cards and also a book. And I do think the book is very important. And then you can also get the original rider weight, which is the classic one. But then there's also all kinds of novelty ones. And I'm sat here with Game of Thrones Tarot. And I also have the Tarot of Sexual Magic, which is so sexy that I'm not even going to show you. They are truly rude. And that's my journey into tarot cards.

Stevie. Like the word tarot, which derives from the German taroc and the Italian tarotchi, I arrived at tarot, not through Germany or Italy. When I was 13, I was very much a full wicken. I had an altar in my bedroom. My parents were sort of beside themselves, quite frankly. I used to keep stealing herbs from the kitchen. And they were like, we now can't make Spag Bowl, because you've taken all the Basel.

Or whatever. Asked for my 14th birthday. Asked for a mortar and pestle. Didn't get it. Oh, we're breaking where hard seems. I've never had one. That stopped when I went to university and discovered to drinking. I'm not even joking.

It was like, oh, I spend my nights getting pissed rather than doing sun salutations and singing songs to the moon, which I genuinely, my dad found me singing a song to the moon in the garden at like one in the morning. Anyway, then got very heavily into horoscopes in the year of 2012 when I didn't have a job or a home and got dumped. Very helpful horoscopes told me I would be published and I wanted to be a writer at that point. I was like, oh my God. And that led me onto tarot. That year I also found a pack of tarot cards in a tube station

and was like, it's fate that I found them. Electric. I don't know what they... I honestly couldn't tell you what type they are, but they're sort of Swiss. They're just called tarot classic. and the pictures on them are absolutely dire. Like, just, so there's one where there's a woman, she's pissing on herself.

They're like woodcuts. And all of the people look like pigs. And there's one pig with its butt out. And it's totally another pig's tit. And that's judgment. So, um, that's just a little, but what I do is I will basically, yeah, if I'm having a bad day every sort of once, every few months, I'll read tarot.

I'll Google all of the meanings. I'll get very, confused about it when I get my reading for myself, I'll sort of be like, oh, I probably did it wrong, and then I, and then I hate myself. So that's, that's my tarot journey. Now, Caroline, what's, what's your tarot journey? Well, I wouldn't say I was as fully wicking as, as you were. I didn't have an altar, but I was definitely, like, super, super, super interested. And I got my first pack, like a kind of Irish version of The Works, like an outlet shop kind of thing for rejected, non-pulped books and I was on holidays with my family and yeah I just bought it with my holiday money sort of a

guide but obviously didn't really understand it at all tried to kind of teach myself and I brought it into I was definitely in primary school at the time I brought it into school and was reading everyone's taro or whatever and like completely just making it up as I went along but like just sort of hooked on the power of the dynamic yes yes and I had like you know my mom's holiday scarf you know how like your mom always had like one turquoisey-beaded. Oh my God. You've just, also my, the moment he said holiday, holiday scarf, I thought, oh yeah, my mom does have a turquoise and black holiday scarf.

Turquoise. Turquoise. I used to take them into school, like wrapped up in the scarf with ribbon around it. Oh my God. And then I would open it up on the table and then just have it all. And then people would come to me and like, yeah, but I had absolutely, I even, I kind of saw myself as a charlatan. I was like, he-he.

I'm coming in with my snake oil for the good deep currency of attention. But then years later, when I was about 24, 25, my boyfriend got me a set, that same set, the Byzantine set that Tessa mentioned for a Christmas present as kind of a gag gift. And then I just got really, really into them. And my friend Jen County, who's now basically a professional tarot reader, she got into them around the same time. Yeah, we just sort of like taught each other. she went to courses and I read books and like we would just sort of meet up and drink wine

and read each of us taro and then we started just reading it for more of our friends, which is, that was like me and Tesla, we've known to it for a long time, but I think that's when we started becoming quite close was around that time. It was taro. It was taro. It was like every time I saw you, it was like a six hour dinner in a restaurant with tarot. And it's just such a lovely way to just start conversations with people and all that. I think the mum's holiday scarf thing, while not present in our readings, the spirit of the scarf was very much there. And there was the same, like, here are the cards.

And I'm going to do your reading. There was this real showmanship to it, which you're calling charlatanism. And I would say is just absolutely part and parcel of the whole thing and part of what you're buying into. Because I think people are like, yeah, but like, they're just pieces of paper. You're like, yeah, sure.

Everybody gets that. But like, we're all buying into the idea of it. And the moment that you do a reading for somebody and you describe the card or whatever, and they are like, yeah, that's me. Like, I'm up that tree. And they, for whatever reason, find a connection to the thing or take some hope from it or be like, okay, I'm going to leave my job or, okay, yeah, this. You know, it's like, okay, like, they are, they are cool, you know, they're really.

And you're helping them make connections. I think people that have never chatted to friends. about tarot or had tarot read by friends and they've only like maybe at most gone to like a some sort of tarot tent in a fairground and that's it or never even thought about them you go oh the power that you have you know what if you draw the death card is a very negative and it's like no but none of the cards are like you will die and that is the end like all the cards are it's more about the question you're asking and it's more about what it brings out of you and then you look at that and go oh it turns out I did really want to leave my job because at the moment the job of

had I made that connection. Or it turns out I asked about my career, I asked about my relationship. Why am I asking that? And like you say, it must be a very nice way to chat because it opens people up and it makes people think about their own lives

in a way that when you're just having a conversation, people might not feel comfortable talking about that or not know how to bring that up. It really is. I think the greatest mistake that people make about taro is that they wanted to be like a literal magic trick. And they'll either go to a friend who's interested or maybe someone in a tent.

or whatever. What they want is they want to sit down and they want to come away with one anecdote to tell their friend so they can be like, oh, okay. And she, I sat down and she said, oh, how's George doing? And I'm like, oh, how did she know that my boyfriend's name is George? They want this sort of like kind of spiritual, magical dog and pony show that they can then sort of trade on or they want to be, they want to prove that the whole exercise is full of shit. and it's just the worst energy to go into anything like that with because what I think they are primarily, as you said CB, they're like this tool for conversation, they're this tool for introspection and there will always be, I mean, there's this term that people use a lot

called cold reading, which is the idea that somebody, you know, your sort of presentation is giving a reader certain clues like what, you know, what you're wearing, how you're carrying yourself, you know, maybe you've got dark circles around your eyes, maybe you're on screens a lot. There's lots of things people can tell from your appearance. And a lot of that, a reader will take into the advice and the interpretations they give you when they're reading your cards. But just because those observations are based on just the naked eye and not necessarily a deep, you know, internal magic, it doesn't mean they're not true and it doesn't mean they're worthless. Like, because what cold reading is is just someone paying close attention to you.

And I'm always like, is that worth nothing? I think it's worth a lot, you know? Yeah, that's such a good point. Let's take it to something more specific in terms of Caroline. So say we've got a listener who's like, well, I've got some tarot, but not for me. I don't know how to do it. So let's assume we're all holding our cards. We're all listening in.

We're absolutely chomping at the bit. Where do we go from here, Caroline? What do we? Here we are. Here we are. So, okay. as we just said, these are conversation prompts, they can be highly interpretive, and sometimes you're just like, sometimes you just know that people want to talk. But there's also, like,

a formal system with which these cards work. And the thing is, when you just deal out a few cards and you see like, oh God, the five of cups and the star and the king of ones, and you're like, what? Like, it does feel like a different language, really. But there is, like, a system of learning and a system with which these kinds interact with each other, that is actually, once you break it down, like learning any new language, break it down to a sort of root verbs, is actually very understandable and very easy to learn very quickly.

So, shall I go through the basics? Please. Oh my God, yes, I'm hooked already. I feel alive, yeah. All right. So within tarot, there are seven, when I'm dealing here with the rider way to taro, there are other kinds of decks,

there are angel cards, which I think lots of people will have grown up with that generally have the meaning written on them. There's the Thoth deck, which was created by Arster Crowley, which I am less into. But the main tarot is based on the Rider-Waithsmith cards and that most decks will derive from them. And this deck has 78 cards, and that is sort of built of three parts. The first part is the Major Arcana. And the Major Arcana are the sort of big feelings cards.

They're the big energies that sort of make up both our internal lives and the world around us. And they're also the cards that you will recognize. So that's death, the lovers, all those. They're movie stars, right? They are the Merrill Streep's. They are the Emma Stones of the Tarot. Those cards are actually very easy to guess. Yes, there's a lot of reading you can do it on Tarot.

There's lots of books you can read. But you can actually just sit with those cards and most of the cards, really, and just look at how they're presented, look at how they make you feel. Like, we all know when we see judgment that we can just use our own. you know, interpretive skills to be like, am I judging myself? Am I judging others? You know, that's quite easy. You know, the wheel of fortune sort of makes us think very naturally about, like, chance and how maybe all the good things that somebody has is just their week for it to be their good thing, and maybe next week you'll have your good thing, and these things are constantly changing

and constantly moving. So when it comes to learning, they're the easiest ones to get acquainted with first. If you're trying to learn the tarot, just jot down on a piece of paper, what they make you feel, what they make you think. And then, like, a fun thing, cross-reference that with a book or an online resource and be like, oh, I was right. And that's quite fun. Then we have the suits, which are the minor arcana. And if the major archana were the Merrill Streeps, the minor archana are like the Stanley Tootis,

like they're the character actors who really bring a movie to life, you know. And they're made up of four suits, which is the wands or the rons, which heard these long sticks, the pentacles or the coins which are generally represented by stars that are within a circle, the cups, which are just cups, they kind of look like wine goblets most of the time, and the swords, which are just swords. And that's obviously intimidating, but, you know, it's the same as playing cards with hearts and spades and all of that. A really interesting way, though, I always find helpful of remembering what those suits actually

mean because they all represent something. is two kind of like a head, shoulders, knees, and toes trick. So the head is swords. So everything to do with swords is to do with the mind. It's to do with mental anguish. It can be a really heavy suit. Generally, if someone's getting a lot of swords in their reading, it's like a time to hold hands because they are going through it.

It's generally, it's anxiety, it's depression. It's wanting to get out of something but not knowing how. It's the mental knots you tie yourself in. when it's the kind of thing where when people go to you, just quit your job, you don't like it. And you're like, I can't because there's no another one. And then they have no, it's like that. It's that level of like internal fraslement.

Then we go down to the heart, that's cups. So cups are kind of the suit of water. And this, it's this thing of love and friendship and this constantly recuperating and flowing resource. And generally when a lot of cups come up in a reading, it's because somebody's thinking a lot about their relationships or generally one specific relationship or their love life can often be the deal there. Down to the loins.

So it's like heads, heart, loins and feet. Is that how this is working? Oh, yes. We have the ones or the rods. I bet you do. Yeah, you do. Think rods. Think dicks.

Rons are the suit of fire and animus and drive and creativity and like getting stuff done and like writing your play, putting on a show in the old barn. like that that vibe and generally where's your play being put on? Thank you. Thank you, so much. Is that way of it?

No, put on a show in the old barn. Okay. Just bear a minute. Have you ever been that expression? It's the hottest, the hottest venue in town, okay. Put on your play in the hot,

the old barn, everyone. You know, there's like, Julie Garland, in these Julie Garland movies used to always be like, well, shoot, if we can't put on a show in the theater,

we'll put one on in the old barn. I see, gorgeous. Yes. They do that. Like in white, Christmas, they put that big show on in the old barn. It's massive. And then finally is the suit nobody likes. It's the pentacles or the feet. Nobody likes it because it feels very counterintuitive to the tarot because everything to do with the pentacles is just like the suit of Excel spreadsheets. It's the suit of like, are you checking your banking app every day? Are you being responsible with your money? Are you, you know, you've reached a place of new prosperity. Are you, you use a place of new prosperity? Are you, you use. using that wealth to help other people? Are you hoarding it to yourself? Do you know that the opposite of poverty isn't abundance? It's contentment. It's like learning those lessons about material goods,

which like when you want to have a witchy time, getting the four of pentacles is just like, this is boring. Like I don't want to like fucking download the plum app, you know. I'm drunk and it's 3 a.m. Come on. I mean, while your friends are getting like the devil and the lovers and all this. And then the sort of like the minor arcana sort of part two is the court cards which generally for people who are learning the tarot. It's the most

difficult I think because they're figures they're people. It's like the page the knight, the queen and the king and pages are people who are generally young and new and they want to learn everything but they don't know anything yet and they're enthusiastic and childlike.

Knights are people who like they're sort of the kind of the ex-boyfriend card all the time where it's like people who are charismatic and gifted but they think they know too much and they sort of like they leap before they look and that kind of thing and they often break a lot of hearts in the way and then the queen and the king are kind of quite binary in that they're the female and male energies of that suit and by and it's like you know it's quite gender stereotypical the female energy is supposed to be more internal more caring more nurturing and then the male energy is supposed to be more authoritative, more presidential, almost.

And when you draw a page, a queen and under king, usually it's about somebody that the reader is thinking about, or is it the person you're reading for is thinking about, or is it then? Or does it depend? It really depends. It can be either, really. And like, I think that's why they throw people, because this is what I was like anyway. Instead of engaging with the card and the message of the card. I was like, oh, who's the king of cups in my life? Is it? Yes. You know, and that's, and that was like more distracting. It's a bit like, you know, how in a dream, everyone in the dream is you. That's kind of the same thing, really. Everyone in the cards is you. It really doesn't, the cards doesn't know anything about anybody else apart from how you feel about them. And like,

where something appears in the spread, so people know spreads like past, present, future and that kind of stuff. When you lay a spread, you can make up what each card means. So you could be like, well, this card, whatever goes in this place is going to be my goal. And this one is going to be my problem. I didn't make up a spread. I've always been frightened of spread. So I've always done past, present future, because I've always been like, oh, it's too much. So the idea of like, that's a lovely thing as well, I suppose, because there's a lot of chat when you try and, you know, when you read a book about taro or you go on an article and there's a lot of chat about, you know, getting to know your cards.

Don't read books. Just know, and it's, and that's actually put me off because it's like, well, I don't back myself for any of the things. I'm looking at it. I mean, what does this make me feel?

I mean, I've just picked out the instruction card. Okay, what does it make me feel? It's the page of ones. Well, I don't know. He's just a man. He's holding a bit of grass. I don't know what that means.

So I also like to know and like to really, but the idea that you can make your own spreads would be helpful for someone like me, for example, who is very, like, prescriptive and wants to make sure they're doing the right thing,

because that's a good like gateway into bonding with your own cards and like bonding with how you read tarot without jumping straight in with make up your own meanings if you're frightened of that for example. Yeah. Yeah. A reading I used to always do when, when me and Tessa were first reading together was like it was kind of like a hero's journey or basically like a movie where like every movie is basically laid out in the same way where it's like here's the main character as we have him. here's the first barrier, here's the first friend, here's the, you know, second act thing, whatever. I would use that storytelling to take somebody through whatever problem they were going through in their life and almost treat their life like a movie, which is how people think about

their lives anyway, you know? That's why we like movies because we're like, ah, yes, the way the world is. So we were doing this reading myself and my friend Jen, where the Queen of Cups came up and in the position she was in, we had decided that that was like going to be, What is blocking Caroline right now? What's going on? And the Queen of Cops, what she sort of means is a kind of a character who is like endless empathy. She's always like a listening ear.

She's got like, she loves her friends and that kind of stuff. And because she came up in that blocking area, Jensar said to me, she's like, like, do you feel like that you sometimes give too much space to friends and lovers and family and that maybe there's nothing left over for you at the end of the day? and I just burst into tears. And they're like, yes. So, like, you end up having these sort of, like, very deep relationships with the cards over time. And they mean different things to you as you go on, you know? To put myself in it for a second, last night,

I felt profoundly jealous of something very specific that one day, perhaps I will share. But not now. And I was quite cross about it. And I got my tarot cards out, which tells you how cross I was, because I hadn't used them for ages. And I read them and it was the king of pentacles and the ten of ones, which as we've learned, is the ones, the loins, the bits, the stuff.

And it's a man carrying all these ones. You can't see his face. He's just like charging, he's charging carrying way too many stuff. But he's like, he's on the go. And then the king of pentacles. So initially I was like, okay, like money, I guess. And like, oh, don't worry. The king is coming.

It's what I took from it. Don't worry. The king is coming. And the other one has got too many wands, too many rods. But what I take from it, what I take from it now, listening to you, explain it, is like, do the fucking work. Like, do the work. If your thing is like, oh, you're jealous of this thing, it's like, well, pick up your own ones then, for God's sake. And do your king of pentacles, which is like simply, it's the feat.

Like, just start walking. It's not a sort of like, oh, things. It's like, yeah, they're coming. But only if you walk towards them, like, you idiot, you've got loads of stuff. Here's all your ideas, you idiots. You've got too many of them. Put them in your big bundle of twigs and set off. 10 of 1s is such a

I get that card a lot as well because it's a card of creative martyrdom it's such a thing of being like I've got all these projects on the go but none of them are doing anything Nobody wants any of my sticks Yeah exactly And like obviously the answer to that is like

Maybe put down some sticks And obviously put some down Show someone your stick Sometimes as well you just walk around all these sticks No one's even seen you've got them So obviously when you're reading the card, well, that's fun. That spread that you said about doing it like a film

and making up your own spread, maybe you could go online and look at some other spreads for inspiration and then like make your own up and stuff. The thing that always used to stop me from like reading them and then until I was like, oh, just do it, was I always feel like, well, I can't read them until I know without even having to look anything up. It's like, well, it's okay to look stuff up, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. God. Yeah, you need to. Yeah, like, definitely, like, finding a good tarot book. Because a lot, like, sometimes you get really lucky and, like, a lot of the cards come with its own little instructional booklet. And some of them are really well written, but a lot of them are not.

A lot of them are just like, a tiny, like a matchbook size little booklet and it'll just be like... It's shit. And it just says, all it says is, look, I've lost it. Okay, so, so little about it. But it just has one word. Yeah. Oh, right. What does that mean then?

Yeah, I would say that if anyone is listening and you have your cards and you have been struggling, get a book, a proper big book, because this little, the little matchbook I've just found here in my thing, I'm like, this is incoherent. And if I try to read from this, it's like, the seven, exceedingly contradictory, end. You're like, what the use is that? What book would you recommend, Caroline, for a beginner? The book I recommend to everybody is Modern Tarot by Michelle T.

But the thing about Michelle Tee, she's been a tarot reader. I think she's in her 50s now. She's been a tarot reader since her early 20. so professionally. But she writes about it in this really, really friendly way and she uses anecdotes from her own life to explain, like, oh, this was a time where, you know, I was very two of cups or something.

And it's like when someone is like, you know, and she's a memoir writer as well, someone is willing to give you that level of information, it sort of, and give you a story, it really helps you remember them better and understand them better as well. Feeling very cupy. But also it's useful to know that,

like if you're somebody who like wants to memorize this stuff and like just have to have it down quickly and then sort of do more reading later, there's kind of the new there's a numerical system within that one to ten within those minor account of cards that goes across all of them. So you can kind of just learn what one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten means in each suit. And you can kind of apply. You're like, okay, if fives are always about struggle and then this is the five of cups. then obviously that's going to be some kind of deep struggle of the heart. And so you can learn these sort of things.

I already was like, it's going to be a big struggle with your feet. Because I got it wrong. That's the pentacles. But I'm getting there. You're getting there. Feet are the pentacles. Heart is the cups. Loins is the ones.

I only remember the rod loins. I know. I know. And the swords, because I thought, beheading yourself. It's about your mind. It was like, I'm not very nice where I think of them. Saw through the head. But that's it's its worries of the mind.

So are the fives always about struggle? across the board. Yeah, fives are never good. And ones? Basically, go through one to 10 and give us a word. Yeah, really quickly. One. Okay, this is going to be hard because I'm rusty. But, um, so ones are, like, think of the ace in playing cards. So they're the purest energy of that card. So if you get, if you get the sort of one, the, are the ace, rather, the ace of ones. Oh, sorry. Are there no ones? No, he's aces is just like, oh, sorry. Yeah, the pure energy of whatever that is. If it's the ace of cups, it means that you have like so much love an affection that's sort of brimming over and needs to go somewhere, it needs to be channeled into a

river. If it's the ace of swords, it can often mean that you need clarity and decision making and you need to have a cool, swift blades just like cutting through all your mental bullshit. If you're pentacles, you've got too many feet and you need to have two feet. Too many. Lose one. Twos, three, four. Tos are generally about either like two things coming together, which is very easy to remember. It's often about unity. I'm using cups and swords a lot because they tend to be the most passionate ones and the most extreme cards. But like the two of Cups is like two people coming together and it's almost like the lovers. It's like, oh, it can be about friendship, but it can all, it's, it's mostly about just like feeling perfect harmony with another person and it's a really

romantic card. Threes are generally, I could be, this may not apply across all four suits, but for me they generally means about including others. The three, the three of Cups is like a very famous card because it's about, it's like three women just dancing, holding cups together, looking like they're having a hand do. It's, you know, that bit in, in about a boy at the very end where he says, oh, I used to think, you know, that you need two people. And then I thought you need three people. And actually, you need much more than that. It's like, it tends to be that kind of thing. Oh, lovely. But then, conversely, the three of swords can be what it's like when people, when you let people in and they fucking hurt you. It's that three sort of three swords.

You have you're sort in your mind. Yeah. So you've got your fours? Fours tends to be you've hit your first real dilemma. Like you've hit your first sort of block on the road, your first little struggle. And then fives are about fighting that fight, fighting that little fight and coming out, right? And then you come out onto your six and you're like, right, I've done it. I'm getting a bit knackered.

Like sixes tend to be like you've survived something, you've gone through something. there's some pain, there are some scratches, there are reasons to retreat. Seven tends to be about sort of strategizing, planning your next move. Eights tend to be about rallying your strengths. And then like nines are generally this real triumph moment of being like, you did it, you've done it, or you've almost done it or whatever. It works kind of like a movie. It does like any kind of hero's journey does.

And then by 10, 10 is a really interesting one because it's like you've got to the end of the story, You know, for 10 of Cups, it's often like a person depicted with their loving family, but then for 10 of swords, it's a person with 10 swords in their back. Good Lord. It's a really hard card to get. But when you deal it with someone, and here's the thing, part of me believes that these are just conversational tools and they are printed in board game factories and they are just sort of therapy cards.

But also, sometimes I'm like, this is real magic because I, I have never dealt the Ten of Swords to anybody who didn't know exactly why they were getting 10 of swords because they've had the, maybe they've had a really difficult year or like a miscarriage or like something really awful, pain that we cannot imagine. And the Ten of Swords is there to tell you to sympathize that like that was awful, but it doesn't, it will not get any worse. And the cycle will begin again. Because we're already at, we're at 10. There's nowhere to go from here. There's 10 swords in your back. Yeah, there ain't no more swords in the deck, you know? It's ace from here, you know?

Yeah, exactly. It's ace from here. And so generally, even though that card is so brutal, people, once you expect them, are really happy to see it because it's like, it's going to end, you know? It's going to end. We went down to the bottom. We're at the bottom of that sort of hero's journey,

Dark Night of the Soul. Yes. We're at it. And then it's, we're returning to the, we're returning. Oh, yes, please. We're very nearly at the end. I feel there's so much more to talk about, but we have to finish,

but I think it brings us so beautifully. to a really important thing, which is both like, these can be really real and so important to people. This sort of has to be a very private thing if people want to do it. Like you truly, if people say, like, let's do it at a party and it's like in front of everybody, like, unless you really trust everybody, this isn't going to be an exciting experience. It has to be a sort of personal and I'm ready to tell you the truth when you say the Ten of Sources come up, like what's going on. And you have to be honest. And it isn't something you can really do on camera for lolls because it's really, really private because it's got to be really honest.

So I think that's a really important thing is like either it's personal that's just you doing on your own or it's you with one person who is really bought into the experience, who is for every reason. It's like, yeah, I'm, I'm in and I'm prepared to do this. And I think, you know, there's lots to be said for sort of candles and there being time and nobody being in a rush and the sort of and salt and cleansing the area and basil in your pestle and mortar and rolling out the holiday scarf that's just like we're committing to this experience and being honest because what's the point of it if it isn't really honest,

you know? The cards can't show up for you if you don't show up for the cards. Yes. Yes. Very good. Very good. I hope if you are beginning your tarot journey or you're stuck in the middle of it or you've never even thought about it, you're open to the idea and it's helped you even if you're, I mean, I've got eight packs in front of me and I didn't know half of that stuff. So I'm really excited. And thank you so much, Caroline, for giving us your expertise and your time and your knowledge. And happy bloody Halloween, everyone. Where would you like people to follow you, Caroline? But I'm at Zara Online on Instagram and my podcast, sentimental garbage. And also I want to add that my book, all are hidden gifts, even though it is for teenagers and maybe not everyone is comfortable

reading a book for teenagers, it's basically also a guide to tarot. A lot of what I've just said is also in there somewhere because the main character Maeve learns tarot throughout the book. Oh, great. So that's all in there. And one final push for Caroline, really, I'm tooting your horn today. Her first two grown-up books, promising young women and scenes of a graphic nature are also out and also fantastic. And if you prefer to listen as opposed to read and you'd like to listen to the audiobook,

it's me reading it. Promising young women, not scenes for graphic nature, they chose an Irish lady. An Irish asshole. An Irish asshole. But the first one is me. Yeah, thank you so much. And thank you all for listening. Join us.

So is next week. Some more business. Happy Halloween, everybody. Happy Halloween. I think it's pronounced Sewine or something, isn't it? And that's the place to end on, I reckon. Salwin. Okay.

Brilliant. Okay, bye. Okay, bye.