A Divine Day in March

A Divine Day in March - Deborah Oak

Somewhere in the early years of A Fool’s Journey, we began to do what we called “A Divination Bordello” to raise money for scholarships to our retreat. Why a bordello? Certainly my rambling and sensually decorated Victorian can evoke that aesthetic. Join that to meeting up in the living room to pick which of us would take you to one of the many rooms,  read your cards, chart the stars, or decipher your dreams, and abracadabra you have a divination bordello. The funk trunk, with its eclectic finery for sale just added spice to the fun.

Given COVID, now Divination Day occurs in the open garage, the roofed  patio, the backyard, and the carriage house. Even outside, the house manages to have magical nooks and crannies.  It’s lost the bordello vibe, but it still continues to be full of delight and surprise. Who knows what you will find in the funk trunk and what will be divined from the cards or other divinatory tools?

To divine means to discover by intuition or insight. The tarot is  particularly good at activating intuition and is a central path to insight on The Fool’s Journey. Some people look to tarot readings to foretell the future. Some tarot readers oblige and give predictions. And some of us don’t. When I read for myself or others, I’m looking for a reflection of life as it is at the moment. What challenges are occurring, what energies are available for support? No future is set in stone, but a good reading can reveal what we need to do to avert or bring about an outcome the cards are saying is in motion.

No future is set in stone, and no two readers will give exactly the same reading. To me, this is the beauty and the fun of Divination Day. I suggest getting  two readings by two different readers, asking the same question. There are sure to be two different answers, but usually complementary. Tarot readings don’t necessarily give a direct answer, but they do expand on possibilities.   

My son at an early age learned to  charge friends and family for readings. He did not learn this from me. It was some higher or lower power.  As he said when running for treasurer in 7th grade, “I’ve always been interested in money”. I’m pretty sure readings from the tarot and his animal oracle deck were the first time he made money. He was and is a good reader.  Way back then he’d say to me privately, “I’m just making it up”. Exactly. He’d grown up with the cards and although never read a book or looked up a meaning, he knew how to look at the cards and come up with a story. He understood intuitively how to make meaning from where the cards fell and how they interconnected. Learning the history behind the cards can certainly deepen our understanding, but essentially a good reader doesn’t compute the symbols in front of them, they divine them.

Part of the magic of the day inevitably is having someone who has never given a reading do so for the first time. There are always a variety of tarot decks and divinatory tools available.  Taking that leap and doing something for the first time is particularly sacred to the Fool’s Journey. I believe fools to have direct access to the divine and as such can be able to divine sometimes better than those of us who’ve been doing this for decades.  

Divination Day is Saturday, March 18th this year. It’s a day A Fool’s Journey embraces my son’s interest in money. And the tarot. The hope is that enough money can be made to make scholarships available for the retreat in June.  The spirits of my home particularly sing on Divination Day, loving the energy, feeling the divine in the divining. I love it too.

I hope I see you there!