The Biology of Tarot

How biology is learning what readers have said all along.

If you’ve ever had a reading you might have had this experience: All is going well, a nice rapport is being built and you feel much lighter than when you first came in, then your reader says something puzzling…that second of awkward silence mixed with the frozen disbelief. You can sense the rapport you had built slipping, you are trying to go back to the feeling of understanding right before you what they said just now. Well, what on earth did they say?

It probably went along the lines of:

“If you want to fix ______ you´d better stop ignoring _____. You’ve got work to do”

That´s all it takes. Why? because for you those two things are as connected as candy to politics. You might be looking to get that elusive promotion, move to a new city or find a special someone and when it’s suggested that to achieve it you need to go back and finally make peace with your brother….  you are, understandably, puzzled… wait what? yep, really. That might be what it takes. They are connected.

Just like the Yellowstone wolves story.

goodwpPosted on Feb/2014 and narrated by our famous George Monbiot. This video titled “How wolves can change rivers” uses the reintroduction of wolves into the Yellowstone park to illustrate the concept of “trophic cascades”. Which is sort of like an ecological version of the game ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’. In this video its shown how after 70 years of absence the reintroduction of wolves to the park causes drastic and unexpected changes.

Elk herds react by drastically avoiding certain areas of the park, even thought only a few wolves had been reintroduced. Those areas were then able to regenerate at rapid speeds. Song and migratory birds populated those areas. As did beavers, and with them an array of smaller animals.

Wolves also killed coyotes, which allowed mice and rats to multiply. This attracted foxes, weasels and hawks. While eagles and bears benefited from the carcasses left by wolves. So far the connection between wolves and beavers and weasels is impressive…but maybe not jaw-dropping. Not like that frozen moment we talked about in the beginning. But what happens next is.

The rivers changed in response to the wolves. As the narrator goes on to explain “The wolves, small in number, transformed not just the ecosystem of the Yellowstone National Park but also its physical geography” through a milliard of small domino reactions wolves altered the composition of the soil and with it the health and behavior of rivers.

The reason why the extent of this trophic cascade was impossible to predict is because we had no previous knowledge of the extent of the relation of the wolves with their environment. We didn’t know its possibilities, and its the same with the ecosystem of your life.

The relationship between events, opportunities and relationships can as obscure yet it is real. That conversation with your brother might resurrect a forgotten memory, which makes you question the way you think about yourself, after considerable introspection and healing you ends up behaving differently at your workplace and being noticed for that next promotion. Bingo. Like I said the link is obscure but, based in my ten years as a card reader, I can confidently say its there.

So the next time you get a card reading and you notice that awkward moment of silence, please:

#1 Remember what you are being asked to do

#2 Give it a shot

#3 Notice what feelings and ideas come up.

#4 Think how they relate to the area you wanted to shift

Chances are you are now several degrees closer in your own trophic cascade.
