A little over 60 winters ago . . .

. . . on a snowy day, late in 1943, my mother handed me a deck of playing cards to amuse myself with. I fell into a fascination, that has not diminished to this day.

I soon learned the names of the "pretty people," as I called them. Looking back it seems so appropriate that my favourite card should be the holdover from the Major Arcana, 0 The Fool, the brightly coloured Joker. I was beginning what was to become a lifelong journey of seeking knowledge from the cards.

Numbers took on meaning for me as I learned to count from the cards. My uncle tried to teach me addition by teaching me to play cribbage. After World War II ended, life became stable and predictable. The adults around me were less worried.    Although money was still tight, Mother loved to shop at the big Eaton's store in downtown Toronto. There was a wonderful dining room at the top of the store where we would go for tea. It was a huge expanse of thick carpeting with big round tables set with crisp white table cloths draping almost to the floor, and sparkling silver tableware, weighing heavy in my hand. Adding to this wonderland was the resident tea-leaf reader. I listened spellbound as she told my mother of things to come.

In the summer of 1949 I was allowed to visit my grandfather and his sister, my great-aunt. Both in their seventies, they shared a house together in Peterborough, Ontario.

My Aunt Edie was a maiden Victorian lady who did card and tea-leaf readings. The dining room was off limits from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to children, grandfathers and dogs.

Born in 1879, Aunt Edie was a woman of wit and charm who had worked tirelessly in the suffragette movement before World War One. She was very psychic and believed that we are all born psychic. Thus, she encouraged me to be in tune with "the all," as she described it.

Too young to doubt, this early exposure to the psychic world set in motion my own awareness. As I grew up, I came to realize that being able to tap into a psychic awareness was not something that many people accepted. I wanted to "fit in" and so I didn't speak openly about my premonitions and insights unless I was with Aunt Edie. She understood, and when I was 15 she tutored me in card and tea-leaf readings. I served my apprenticeship at her dining room table.

Being a normal teenager, dating, dancing and movies soon took precedence over quiet summers spent in Peterborough. I saw Aunt Edie at family gatherings, Christmas and such, but after my fifteenth summer I didn't stay with her again. Soon I was married and busy with children of my own. We kept in touch as families do, and my oldest son has fond memories of Aunt Edie teaching him to play checkers as a little boy. Great-aunt Edie passed into the Summerland December 5, 1974. She was 95 years old.

In the early sixties we moved to a small village in Eastern Ontario. I became the librarian at the local Public Library and it was there that I discovered the Tarot cards in the book The Pursuit of Destiny by Muriel Hasbrouck. Based on the Tarot deck, Ms. Hasbrouck constructed a ten-day birth cycle formula. This slim volume opened new doors for me. In the Author's Notes and Introductory chapters I first read of Carl Gustav Jung and the Kabala as well as the Tarot cards themselves. In the chapter, The Pack of Cards, which tantalized with a short history of the cards, Ms. Hasbrouck was clever to include the fact that the final t in Tarot is silent. Here too, I first read about Papus, and his book, The Tarot of the Bohemians, which I subsequently found in 1976.

I continued giving card and tea leaf readings to neighbours, but I longed for a Tarot deck. Fate would have it that I had to wait a few years before I found my first deck. In late February of 1966 I had the opportunity to go to Toronto for a weekend visit. There, in a small boutique on Yorkville Avenue I found a Rider-Waite Tarot deck. The price was a week's groceries. I hovered over that deck. I picked it up, put it down, and picked it up again trying to decide if I could really afford to spend $35.00 on a deck of cards. With a thumping heart and wondering what my husband would say to this extravagance, I bought the deck. At that price I figured I'd better treat them like gold. I thought I'd never find another deck or much less afford it if I did. A bit dog-eared with a few tea stains, it resides today in its own special oak box, wrapped in silk.

I continued to use playing cards for my readings while I studied my Rider-Waite deck. Although I loved the beautiful pictures, it took a nearly a year for me to understand the symbolism on the cards. Even today I will study a new deck for a period of months before using it in readings. The cards have to speak to me before I will use them. Psychics who read intuitively must first have an intimate knowledge of their deck. This knowledge goes beyond the general meanings of the cards and, what each individual artist has interpreted in them.

I gave my first Tarot card reading for my friend Gloria in July of 1967. This reading gave me the confidence to continue using the Tarot and I am forever grateful to Gloria for insisting that I use the Tarot cards for her reading. After giving this first Tarot reading, I put away the playing cards and never again used them as a reading tool.

In the early eighties, after a move to Toronto, I was able to expand my knowledge of both the Tarot and Wicca. My older son was given Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot deck, my younger son bought David Pallidini's Aquarian Tarot and I acquired a 22-card Major Arcana deck, The Tarot of Frown Strong. The cards and their mysteries intrigued us and we sought to find new and hidden meanings within them.

In The Tarot of Frown Strong, we found an international theme. Between us we assigned to the cards various countries, regions and major world influences. By doing this we were able to predict with astounding accuracy future world events, including the Gulf War. I consult this deck each year at Beltane for a look at the world's political year ahead. In Tarot Card Studies which follows, you will find, The World Political Predictions Spread  I created in 1983. The Interpretations Chart with it is taken from our original handwritten notes.

Over the years I have been fortunate to acquire many Tarot decks. I believe that if you are to have something  for a time, it will come to you. This is what happened when I was offered for sale, five old decks by a very elegant French lady. Of the six decks that had belonged to her grandmother in France, she wanted to keep only one, a Tarot of Marseilles deck. She said that she felt that I was the one to have the others, that I would care for them. Dating from the late eighteen-hundreds to a 1936-39 deck, they have become the outstanding treasures of my Tarot card collection.

Today, my husband and I work many Psychic Fairs and other venues throughout Ontario. How little I realized on that July afternoon thirty-eight years ago how far my journey with the Tarot would take me. I feel humbled by the knowledge that this deck of cards, that appears so deceptively simple, has given me. In each of its many guises it  contains the depths of a wisdom that is ancient and true. I have learned that to master the Tarot, one must be ever its pupil.

We are working on . . .