The exotically decorated cards of the tarot have always carried with them an overlay of slightly sinister mystery. For centuries, practitioners of the occult and students of the esoteric arts have been insisting that the tarot is a special kind of repository for a vast amount of ancient, secret lore, all compressed into codes and symbols that only the fully initiated, and the very learned, can begin to unravel.

Part of this mysterious reputation comes from the fact that no-one can be sure where or when the tarot first came into existence. The puzzle of its origin has led some occultists to claim that it goes all the way back to the sorcery-steeped priests of ancient Egypt, or ancient Babylon, or ancient Tibet - or even, some have said. ancient and lost Atlantis. But other people have been in no doubt about the tarot s inspiration, if not its origin, when they have labeled it "the devil's picture-book."

Devils and mysteries aside, what is certain about the tarot is that it made its first recorded appearance in medieval France, in about 1390. And it is possible that the cards evolved as part of the secret folklore of the Romany peoples (gypsies) and came to Europe with them during their westward migrations centuries ago.

Nor did it stop evolving, even after its use spread beyond the Romanies. The ordinary deck of cards that we use today for bridge or poker grew out of the tarot, and many modern occultists have redesigned the tarot cards, omitting some and changing the basic nature of others, to create more up-to-date or more personalized sets. But the traditional tarot of Europe, which became more or less fixed and standardized by the eighteenth century, remains the most impressively decorative, and the most richly furnished with shadowy symbolism. It is not difficult to acquire tarot cards. If the place w^here you live does not have a shop that specializes in such esoteric merchandise, you can probably get them by mail order through an advertisement in one of the more popular occult or fortune-telling magazines. It is considerably more difficult, however, to acquire the ability to use the tarot. Each card has, of course, its own essential "meaning," its basic area of symbolic reference, explained on the following pages. But knowing those basics is like knowing how to move the pieces on a chess board: you can participate, but there is much more to know before you can become accomplished.

Mediumship is best likened to the role of interpreter or go-between. Using a variety of methods from self hypnosis to hyper-sensitizing of the subconscious mind, a medium is able to offer him/herself as a receptor for spirit, and although a lot of myth surrounds the practice, the truth is that if spirit have nothing to say, then nothing will be heard by the medium. Nor has the medium any ability to demand the presence of a particular spirit. They may express a preference as to who they wish to communicate with, but it is incredibly pretentious of the majority of mediums to claim they can call upon a specific spirit and have them obey.

Other myths around general spirit predictions include death. NO spirit will predict the death of yourself or someone close to you UNLESS IT IS AVOIDABLE. Just stop and think about it, would you consider it the practice of a "friendly" spirit to predict a parent’s death in three month’s time and leave you to suffer three months of total mental torture??? If you ever find yourself at a reading where a death is predicted to someone close, then disregard the comment, insist on your money back (if you’ve paid) and leave! Mediumship is a very specialized art, and is probably the most difficult to master.

Ribbons are basically a refined form of colour reading. Whereas with conventional colour reading, large swathes of coloured cloth or pieces of coloured paper or card are used, with ribbon the client selects from a series of coloured ribbons. Because the ribbons are relatively thin, the conscious mind puts less emphasis on the client’s favorite colours opting instead for a more subtle, subconscious and hence accurate portrayal. As our mind associates certain songs or smells or tastes with certain events in our lives, so it is with colour, only colours are one of the first sensory stimulations we face as babies, and their secrets are deep routed and their meanings valuable.

Clairvoyants have no need of the apparatus and symbolism required by other fortune tellers: their foreknowledge comes in the form of waking visions that can be actively and consciously summoned when they are wanted.

Shamans, soothsayers, witch doctors, seers, oracles, and prophets throughout the world have always relied on their clairvoyant talents. And while many of history's most famous clairvoyants are now more or less legendary figures (like Cassandra, who was given the gift of sight by Apollo, who also ordained that her prophecies should never be believed), there are still a great many people alive today whose foreseeings have often proved startlingly accurate. The best-known modern clairvoyant is probably the American, Jeane Dixon, who predicted the assassination of President Kennedy. Although she has quite a high failure rate, she has been correct in her predictions often enough to take her statistically beyond the level of mere chance.

Developing clairvoyance It is generally assumed that either you have the gift of clairvoyance or you do not. Some people seem to have clairvoyant powers instantly at their command, while the rest of us seem to have no insight into the future at all.

But many authorities now believe that clairvoyant ability is a widespread human potential. They place it in the same mental area as intuition, and suggest that everyone has it to some extent, even if it is latent and lying undiscovered. They remind us of the many well-attested cases of ordinary people with no previous history of psychic ability who have had precognitive experiences at moments of unusual stress. Many clairvoyants assert that these latent abilities can be activated. They suggest deep forms of meditation to relax the mind, to shed the restrictions of rationalist and materialist thinking, and to put you in touch with the deeper levels of your psyche.

Palmistry is a misleading name, for a great deal more than the palm of the hand is considered in this type of prediction. The experts prefer more resonantly impressive terms like "chirognomy," "chirology," or even "chiromancy," from the Greek word cheir, meaning hand. But whatever you choose to call it, it remains a process rooted in the belief that you literally hold your future in your hands. People have always been fascinated by the markings on their hands - palm prints have even been discovered in Stone Age cave paintings. Although no physical evidence exists to support their theories, some practitioners have claimed that the origins of palmistry lie far back with the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Sumerians, or Babylonians.

It seems likely that palmistry began in the east and spread to the west, perhaps carried by the Romany peoples. The earliest verifiable references to the art seem to be in Indian literature of the Vedic period (c.2000BC) in the east, and in the works of Aristotle (384-322BC) in the west -but both these bear witness to a rich history of oral tradition on the subject. Palmistry has had a checkered history: in the seventeenth century it was taught at the universities of Leipzig and Halle in Germany, while at the same time it was being outlawed in England as a form of witchcraft.

But why read hands? There are thousands of nerve endings in your hands which are in direct contact with your brain, and so there is a constant two-way traffic of impulses along the nerves. Because of this traffic, the lines and marks on your hands are supposed to show a reflection of your personality, to mirror your physical and emotional condition. Palmists have always known this intuitively: today's scientists are finding evidence to support the theory, and some geneticists and psychiatrists already use hand analysis to assist them in the diagnosis of a variety of physical and mental illnesses.

The proper place to begin both the study of palmistry and any specific reading is with the whole hand. Or, in fact, both hands, since your left hand is said to indicate the potentialities that you were born with, and your right hand to reveal your individual nature as it is now, and what its future may be - unless you are left-handed, when the reverse applies. The differences can be usefully revealing of the directions the subject has taken through life, and of the effect of the years on the subject.

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