Category: A Tarot Guide

Chapter One – 1 – The Magician

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

There was only one place that I could think of going. I still didn’t know if it was sensible. I knew he was bad for me, and maybe that was part of the attraction.

I had known Shades before, when I used to come and visit my brother. He had stayed in the shelters and couch surfed and lived off the streets. They had become his home for a while, and he was completely himself there. More than that, we didn’t have the influences of our parents who liked to pit us against each other. All parents do this when there is a divorce; mostly, it’s just happenstance.

My brother and I were our complete selves on the streets.

Everyone mistook me for him. It was hard not to what with us being identical mirror image twins. Each time someone asked if I was him, I felt a sense of pride. I was proud of what my brother had created here. He had made room to fit in and what’s more, he had made room for me.

Even back then when I was just visiting the streets, Shade had an alure about him. He had a chiseled jaw that was always covered in stubble and dirty blond hair that he always wore pushed back. His blue eyes made you feel like you were really being seen. He was such a man, and yet there was an attraction even then, all those years before. He would always be able to charm someone for money and my brother and I would sit with him in numerous coffee shops of Nickels Diner. There was one diner that I’ve forgotten the name of. I know that there was checkered floors, red and white striped walls and green booths. We would go there and get coffee and smoke, choose songs at random on the jukebox. The light would hit his face, and it looked as if it were drawn out of shadows.

When my stepfather kicked me out of my home, I went right to Shades. It was the only place I could think of going. Shades was so enthralling to me. I lost all sense around him. Part of the reason that I got kicked out of home was that I had started seeing Shades. It was only fitting that he provide me with safety in some way, even though I knew he was anything but safe. That was part of his allure.

He could spin the story, work the trick, make the magic, but there was nothing safe about him. That was part of his allure and what drew me to him. I had been the smart boy for so long, the good son. I was desperate to rebel in every way possible.

I didn’t even know which apartment he lived in. I stood in the alleyway and threw small rocks up at his window. Shades opened it and looked down. I didn’t know what else to say, but though that honest probably was best.

“I had nowhere else to go,” I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

            He looked down at me, his blond hair flashing in the half light of the alleyway. “I’ll be right down,” he said.

I stood there in the dark and thought that he might not show, that he would hide from me inside of his room, the light shining out into the cerulean blue of the night sky. The air was so thick with summer heat and the want of my own body.

Then there were his footsteps, and I knew that I would be okay, at least for now. He took my hand in his and we raced up the stairs to his room. He let go of my hand when we entered the apartment. It had three bedrooms, a common room, bathroom and kitchenette. The other people there were like him, trying to find a place to call home.

“This is my friend,” he said as we walked toward his room. That was the only explanation he gave them, and they didn’t ask for more details. When he closed the door behind him, he shucked of his shirt and we sat there in the summer heat so warm against our skin, listening to his old radio as it played old rock and roll and breathing in the smell of each others sweat.

It wasn’t home, but it was in its own way a beginning.

Prologue – 0 – The Fool

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

“You need to leave,” he said.

I looked at my stepfather. It was like I was seeing him for the first time. He stood there in my bedroom door with his arms crossed, trying to look intimidating and doing a very good job of it. He was a slight man, but he thrived on fear.

“Where am I going to go?” I asked, trying to make sure that my voice sounded rebellious and brave but it conflicted with the hot feeling of absolute fear that was in the pit of my stomach.

“I don’t care where you go. You just need to get out of here. You can’t abide by my rules, do what I say, you need to leave. This is no longer your home.”

I had rebelled too late in life. Normally, you rebel in your early teens, but I was too busy with my nose in a book, playing the good son. It was what came naturally to me. Eventually though, I yearned for freedom and my actions started to show that: staying out late, not following rules, destroying bridges to find my own way. I was seventeen. I had left one home a year earlier, and I was being asked to leave another.

He stood there glaring at me. He motioned towards my belongings. “Go on, fill a bag and get out.” He threw my purple backpack on to my bed, and it landed looking like a gaping mouth, waiting to be filled.

“So, that’s it? We’re not going to talk about this? Where the fuck am I going to go?”

“I don’t care where you go just as long as its not here,” he said.

I wondered how one person could hold themselves so tightly. It’s a wonder my stepfather didn’t just crack into a handful of pieces and fall to the ground. He had never hit me, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t hurt me. It would take me a long time to discover the scars that he had left on my skin.

I knew where I would go. I had no choice if I was to have shelter tonight. I shoved some clothes, my alarm clock, a few books and my toiletries into my bag. It looked plump and full of promise as opposed to the gaping hold it had been before. I wondered if what I had gathered would sum up my entire life, but I knew they wouldn’t. I took my time, thinking that he would relent. I should have known better; once he made up his mind about something, my stepfather’s mind could not and would not be changed.

I went around the house gathering the other things that I wanted to take with me: a handful of talismans, and my tarot deck. I made sure to never be without that. I gathered it to me and held it for a moment finding comfort in the faded velvet of the bag and the wisdom that it held. I placed those in my bag and stood in front of the door. My mother stood like a silent spectre. She had tear marks that had stained her cheeks. I tried to communicate everything that I couldn’t say because of the rage that filled me at the moment, and she nodded. I knew that she understood the words that she could see in my eyes for they mirrored her own.

“You have your shit, quit stalling.” He said. He had followed me down the stairs as if I were some sort of burglar instead of his stepson.

“Can’t I say goodbye to my mother?”

“You’ve had plenty of opportunity to do that.”

I ignored him and went to my mother, took comfort from her arms that wrapped around me and squeezed, trying to communicate so much without words. I could feel her shaking and tried to remain calm so that she would know I would be okay.

“Okay, enough pleasantries,” he said. “Get out. Get the fuck out of my house.”

He very nearly pushed me out into the hot summer night. I felt the air almost pushed me down the steps as he slammed the door behind me.  

Before

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

My brother gave me my first deck of tarot cards.

We hadn’t spoken a lot since he had been kicked out of home. Truthfully, we hadn’t spoken a lot before that either. There was a wedge between us, even then. Looking at us, you wouldn’t be able to see it, but we felt it. It was a physical presence in our lives. I’m not sure it we put it there to keep us safe, or if my parents placed it between us for our safety.

I was still living at home. My brother had been kicked out for stealing, or getting into a fight, or mouthing off. My brother was a rebel, and I don’t think he knew how much I looked up to him. He’s my older brother by fifteen minutes. I joke about how my order was fucked up and I ended up with him, as if having him in my life is some kind of mistake.

The truth that I’ve been coming to terms with lately is that I didn’t talk to my brother often enough in the end. We existed in two different worlds. We had our own language growing up, but now, we don’t even speak to each other. The irony isn’t lost on me.

I don’t know what he did to end up in the shelter, but at least he was staying somewhere this time. Normally, he just disappeared, and I didn’t hear from him. It felt like a piece of me was missing. He would come back eventually, he always did. It was those times that I was left on my own that I was most afraid. My brother had a way of looking at life that I admired. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t need to.

To me, it looked like my brother was free.

I know that this isn’t completely true. He was free spirited, but there were secrets he carried, too. We may have had an ocean of unspoken words that swam between us, but he had grown up in the same house I did. I went within and Robert would explode outwards, his actions and interests his way of escaping and speaking without words.

I remember phone call. My father and stepmother had been out. Robert knew when they would be at work. I remember his voice on the phone and it sounded like him, but calmer. Hearing his voice was like a breath of fresh air in the cloud filled world which I lived in. His voice parted the smoke and fog that surrounded me. If I remained in the fog, I wouldn’t be seen. Hearing Robert’s voice made me want to be seen again.

“Come on over and see me,” he said. I remember this part, but not how I found the shelter or if I looked up the address first. I don’t remember how I got there, but I do know that I went to find him. I remember the blue drawer, the darkness within the room punctuated by a single light.

I remember Robert gathering the tarot cards off the floor. I don’t even remember if this is true, or if he had the cards gathered in his hand. I remember seeing flashes of colour and the hieroglyphics that covered the card backs.

“Someone gave these to me,” he said. “I think they’re meant for you, Jamie.”

I remember taking the cards and the book that was falling apart. They had been loved, these cards, whether by him or someone else. I wasn’t sure how he had come by them, but I knew that I was more than intrigued. I didn’t have the words to describe what I was seeing yet. Those words would come eventually, but for now there were the pictures.

Robert had given me a copy of The Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett. Robert had been the one to find the first Ankh that I wore. I wore an ankh all the time as a teenager, and he knew how much I loved anything Egyptian. I remember flipping through the cards, wondering what kind of interactive book this was to come with a set of cards.

I remember taking the book out and reading it on the bus back home. I would take the cards out again when I was alone, but for now, I read what I learned was the guidebook and let Clive tell me a story. I thought what it must be like living in a shelter or on the streets. It seemed a tough way of living, but Robert was free in a way. 

I had no idea that a few years later, I would learn what that was like firsthand.