My parents got their first jobs as college professors during the hippie-dippy sixties, right around the infamous Summer of Love. Since they had a bit of trouble finding babysitters, they’d sometimes tow me along to their evening classes and expect me to sit quietly in the back of the classroom. When I was around six or seven, one of their student assistants, Sarah, would sit with me in my dad’s office while he taught; she wore John Lennon glasses and a bandanna and a hand- woven poncho, and instead of toys or picture books, she’d entertain me with her tarot cards.

I loved the tarot cards; they were colorful and mysterious and full of hidden meanings that were just out of my grasp. Sarah read the cards like an expert, knowing the meanings of each and every one. By the time I was ten or eleven, I’d cajoled my parents into buying me a deck of my very own, and I loved looking at the images and laying out the cards in the patterns that Sarah had used. Yet I never really heard the cards in the same way Sarah did. Reading them was, for me, a laborious experience in which I’d have to look up every image in my little handbook, then try to figure out how each little fortune cookie-like message melded with where the card sat in the layout.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I found another divinatory method that actually worked for me–the Russian Gypsy Fortunetelling Cards.

They’re utterly unlike anything I’d ever seen, and I took to them instantly. Okay, picture this: Russian Gypsy Fortunetelling cards are square instead of rectangular. Broad black borders crisscross each one from corner to corner, forming a big X. In each of the four triangular sections of all twenty-five cards is half a diamond-shaped image of an icon of Russian Gypsy folklore–animals, symbols of nature, and Christian symbols. All of them are highly intuitive images.

Now you’ve got that image in your head, click here for some
examples.

In every session, the reader lays out all twenty-five cards in a five-by-five grid, until it resembles a patchwork quilt or a rich tapestry. It really is breathtaking!

Now, while most of the joined halves of the cards will be mismatched, in every reading there are usually anywhere from three to seven completed images where the halves match up. They’ll either be right-side-up, upside-down, or lying on one of their sides. As in the tarot, the position they’re in will have an effect on the reading. For me, though, the placement of the whole images within the layout have a meaning as well; for example, whole images closest to me are in the near future, while those at the back are further on the horizon.

I love the cards because not only do the meanings and the intuitive layout make sense to me, but the readings are often highly accurate.

I’ve offered readings with the cards as contest prizes on both my web sites (I have two–www.naomineale.com, and my www.naominash.com for my young adult audience), and consistently I’ve been told by prize winners how much they enjoyed getting them and how insightful they are. Last month I even had one contest winner from waaaaaay back write and tell me exactly how her reading had come true over the last two years!

But you don’t have to enter a contest to get a reading! Leave an enthusiastic comment on this entry tonight, and tomorrow and Thursday I’ll pick two lucky people at random, lay out their cards, and then post my interpretations for everyone to see. I’m hoping it might spark some interest in this little-known method of divination, because it’s been a fun and insightful way for me to see where I’ve been headed and how I’ve gotten there.

Leave some comments if you’d like a chance to win, and I’ll talk to you all tomorrow!

Naomi Neale
THE MILE HIGH HAIR CLUB, Still available!
I WENT TO VASSAR FOR THIS?, 5/06