Tarot As Entertainment

When I used to work in the Renaissance Fair, Tarot readers were classified as entertainers, along with the musicians, actors, jugglers, dancers and clowns. That did not offend me. I love to meet people and read for them in any circumstance, and if it is a festive one, that is fine with me.

Over the years, I have also been hired to entertain guests at parties in people's homes, at company events, as well as festivals and fairs. I am not offended at all if people want to think of Tarot as a form of entertainment. After all, their is pretty convincing evidence that Tarot originated as a set of playing cards with the part of the deck containing the more obviously spiritual references added some time later.

Today, Tarot and playing cards are considered two different things, although there are readers who can read with playing cards, and some people who play games with Tarot. It is fine if people want to be skeptical about what they get from a reading and it serves as a conversation starter among a group of guests. That still serves a useful purpose. And more than one skeptical person has come back to me later to confide that something that came up in a reading that they thought was irrelevant or incorrect later turned out to have a lot of validity.

Just like the court jesters, sometimes truth is easier digested when the reader mixes it in with an adventurous story, a dash of humor or some beautiful art.

After all, are we not the main characters in our own stories, the stories of our lives? Wherever certain events and characters fall on the scale of things between happy, sad, tantalizing or heroic, looking at the possibilities is always entertaining. Bear in mind that some people may prefer scary entertainment, erotic entertainment, foolish entertainment and mysterious entertainment as well as mythic and adventurous entertainment.

It's all in the cards.