Online Guide to Tarot

Here is a great article by Ken Malborough about the the tarot cards. Interesting therefore I share it with all.

Tarot cards possibly originated in Europe in the 1100s, and the earliest known specimens of tarot card decks are said to be from North Italy. These could go back to the early-to-mid-15th century. These were called carte da trionfi or "cards of the triumph' and were later used to play a game called 'Tarocchi.' These could have been derived from playing cards that came into Christian Europe between 1375 and 1380. First discovered in China, these cards probably came through the Arabic route to Islamic Spain and then spread across Europe. These were similar to the 52-card pack in use today.

There are usually 78 cards in a deck of tarot cards. Special motifs were assigned to cards, taken from different ideas in philosophy, poetry, and astronomy. They were also borrowed from Roman, Greek and Babylonian mythology.

The two main types of tarot cards are the major arcana and the minor arcana. The major arcana have 21 trump cards along with a fool card. The minor arcana have 56 cards, going up from the ace to 10. There have four different suits - the wand, cup, sword and the pentacle. There are also four court cards: the page, knight, king and queen.

Tarot cards are connected to the occult and divination. Tarot card readers tried to divine a person's past, present and future. Some of the earliest known tarot card readers were Etteilla, Marie-Anne Le Normand and Antoine Court de Gebelin.

Etteilla was a French occultist who lived before the French revolution. His actual name was Alliette, but it was with this changed name that he became famous as a seer and card diviner. The first set of cryptic symbols were designed by him. Many of these were a derivation of the Marseille designs.

The Hermetic Revival in the 1840s made tarot readings more popular. Eliphas Levi is attributed with using the cards as a mystical key to see the future. He is also considered the real founder of the true Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie or the Transcendental Magic school of tarot. These interpretations are also linked to the Kabbala. In 1910, the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot came up with symbolic imagery with divine meanings, increasing the popularity of tarot card divination. There are many who consider modern day tarot cards more interesting as these have grown and evolved through centuries of interpretations.

Today there are special symbols for feminists, cat lovers, computer specialists in Silicon Valley, baseball players and many other groups of people in modern life.

Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist and psychologist, used tarot cards to help patients. He was probably interested in the archetypes that the tarot cards represented. It is still used by some psychiatrists who might ask a patient to choose a card representing himself or someone else. It is based on the fact that essentially symbols are archetypes.

Tarot cards have inspired many stories and films. The tarot practiced by witches has been used in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die. T.S Eliot used it extensively in his poem The Waste Land. The video game 'March of the Black Queen' has tarot cards woven into the game. In this age of hi-tech science, there is still a place for the magic of tarot!

Tarot provides detailed information on Tarot, Free Tarot Readings, Tarot Reading, Tarot Cards and more. Tarot is affiliated with Reading Tarot Cards.

Breakfast with my friend, Duang

I had a breakfast with one of my colleagues today at a coffeeshop near my working place at Kelana Jaya. We are buddies in the company and we both work in the same department as project executives.

Duang told me while he sipped his coffee that he noticed I had somehow changed to be more cheerful and initiative recently. He said previously I like to complain a lot about the vagaries of life and the politickings within the company, but now instead of criticising, I always looked to the bright side and offered solutions rather than making a mountain out of a molehill. I smiled.

While we are best of pals, I have never told him I employ the services of a psychic to advise me on the future directives of my life because I think it will shock him as he is a person who really does not believe in such things but always like to try to control his own destiny.

Now that he asked me this question, I candidly told him I bought the services of Marie Callas and she had offered me an insight into my life and family. Her guidance and advices even brought me luck as I won quite a sum recently. I also told him besides being strong mentally and physically, spiritual wellness is very crucial in the overall development of a person's life and character too. From his expression, I could tell that he was flabbergasted and how come I have become so holy like a preacher.

I think I will do my best to tell him more about Marie Callas and maybe refer her services to him if he were keen to find out how to even better manage his own destiny.

The talk of the Town

Do you know what 'Eye on Malaysia' is?

It is the talk of the Town at this moment and it generated some sort of national pride especially those people staying near KL area. It is the new tourist attraction and it is a 60 metre tall ferris wheel. Record indicates that it is the world's largest mobile ferris wheel and there are 42 air conditioned gondolas. A ride takes about 12 minutes and you can view nearly 20km of the cityscape when you are near the top of the circle.

This is part of the plans for Visit Malaysia Year 2007 campaign and was launched by Prime Minister sometime last Sunday. With the assurance and guidance Marie Callas has given me recently, I am now living my life with a cheerful, positive and compassionate outlook, therefore I brought my kids to the place for some fun and to experience the hustle bustle of the location. The weather was cool that day and it made our moods even better. However we were shocked to see the queue was very long and kind of a disappointed. I talked to someone near the front and he told me he had queued for more than 2 hour! It looks like Malaysians like to queue too, not just Singaporeans. Also the traffic near Taman Tasik Titiwangsa was quite bad.

As the night was setting in, I have to consoled my kids because I told them we would not be riding one today but another time. In the end I took a night shot across the lake and I shall post it here.

My Testimony for Marie Callas

I shall copy and paste to you my testimony about my good experience with Marie Callas. I have sent her this letter because she had made me won some money in a lottery. That happened sometime in September 2006. Since then Marie had helped me further by purging my bad luck and I won more prize money in last 2 months for a total of about RM34,500.

Dear Marie Callas,

Firstly, I would like to wish many thanks for your kindness in helping me solving my financial problem.

Lately, the seven digit numbers which were given to me as per your schedule dated 25th September 2006, i.e. 01, 07, 16, 19, 29, 34 and 38 almost striked and I missed being a millionaire by two numbers.

However, I had won four plus one where out of seven numbers only two were missed. I had won a sum of RM2,660 as a result.

Please help me as I am have a lot of debts and many legal actions have been taken against me by various parties and that require a lot of money to solve my problem. I hope you can pray hard for me.

Therefore, I enclosed a Malaysian Money Order amount to RM216.00 as part of my contribution for your goodself.

Thank you for your attention.

Yours Truly.

L. Suppiah

Hope on Marie Callas

After the form was sent out, I waited in anticipation and kept wondering if this was the right thing to do. I wondered too how long it would get back. I waited for a few weeks and it seemed that I wouldn't be hearing any replies. In fact, I had totally forgotten I had sent it out in the first place.

About 4 to 5 weeks later in the afternoon, I had a surprise I because I had received the envelop from Marie Callas. It was her reply! I was quite ecstatic. I looked through it and smiled wryly because I knew what to do next.

The next day, I proceeded to the lotto counter near my house. You can say many Asians are habitual punters and gamblers so do I. You will be surprised gambling industry is big here in Malaysia whether legally or illegally. I never had much luck with the numbers before in fact. Every week, I bet in several local lotteries hoping to recoup the losses I have accumulated over the years. It is a sad state because people know it is bad to indulgent in such activities yet many continue to be stuck in this mire. My current financial situation can be partially attributed to some excessive puntings that is why I clang on to the hope Marie Callas had given me in her letter and I hope she would be someone to change the bad luck.

Story

Why this blog's title is called Marie Callas? For your information, she is not the great opera singer Maria Callas. I am not even an opera fan but I am sad to know Maria left the world in 1977.

The blog name is simply called Marie Callas because Marie may be considered as the kind soul who has a big influence in my life. Marie had taught me to be more positive and how to live a fuller, happier and better life. This is even though I have never seen her before.

It was on that day when flipped through the Astro TV guide and I saw Marie Callas' full page advertisement. Her claims were certainly to the point of being boastful. This type of claims to some people may be arrogant and downright disrespectful. As for me, I was rather disbelieving of it too and it sounded fictitious and imaginary.

For those who know, we Malaysians are naturally entrepreneurial as we don't depend on the directions of the government. There are many opportunities if you get to know the right person or the right connection and are in the right time. There are so many MLM opportunities, all sorts of 'skims', online or offline, and home businesses like F&B can be set up easily. Of course, some of them are not honest hence some of us have become very careful of things like those of Marie Callas.

A few days later, I was flipping through the TV guide again and I saw the advertisement. The gut in me told me to give it a try so that I may have a chance to improve my luck in number games like 3D, 4D, 5D or Toto which I am fond of. I filled up the information on the form and sent it out the next day to the Singapore address listed.


To be continued...

First Post

Hello, my name is L. Suppiah and I am from Malaysia, a nice country of nearly 27 million people in Southeast Asia.