Filed under: Religion | Tags: Cards, Fourtune telling, Mystical, tarrot, Wite Dove
Sitting quietly at the back of a small shop in Camden I strained to hear my reader over the sound of meditation music and trickling, from the stone water feature. “Are you pregnant?” he repeated. “No, definitely not”, I replied slightly too loudly. “You will be in about 12 months,” my reader responded. This was not the fortune I was hoping to hear. “Are you sure?” I said, “It’s not me who is telling you, it’s the cards,” he smiled.
My tarot card reader, Steve, from Germany, also known as White Dove, fitted well into the modern stereotype of the mystical tarot reader. He was dressed in white floor length robes, which were slightly grubby around the bottom, had bare feet and long un-kept grey hair.
The card reading session was supposed to last 30 minutes but actually ended up lasting over an hour. White Dove only charged me for a 30 minute session, explaining the discount was due to creating good karma. At the start of the session no questions were asked, except for my date of birth. I was told to shuffle the pack of tarot cards before giving them back to White Dove. He then held the pack of cards in his hands, closed his eyes and silently muttered something under his breath. It was hard to work out if he was chanting my date of birth or some kind of prayer. At this point I began to feel quite nervous and wondered if the decision to let a stranger tell me my future was a big mistake.
Instructed by White Dove, I pulled 15 cards from the well-used pack, which he then positioned to make a four legged shape in the centre of the stone table. I was then talked through the cards and my future was revealed. In a nutshell, White Dote told me I would be going on a long journey overseas in July where I would meet my unconditional love and my career would flourish.
Awkwardly I questioned the meeting of my unconditional love and revealed that I was indeed planning on taking a trip abroad, but not to meet my unconditional love, with my unconditional love and that he had made a mistake.
At this point I was instructed to pull more cards from the pack. Examining the additional five cards, White Dove told me the man in my life was indeed my unconditional love and soul mate. He then started to make pregnancy accusations, followed by an unprompted lesson in what it means to have unconditional love.
It was slightly confusing how my cards were reinterpreted so drastically. The sudden change in the direction of my fortune left me feeling dubious towards the strength of White Dove’s tarot reading abilities.
Filed under: Religion | Tags: Arab, Conflict, Israel, Neve Shalom, Peace, Religion
Neve Shalom is a charity working to achieve peace in conflict ridden Israel. Gillian Gruder explains how:
In the UK the Royal Family still do not have the right to a civil partnership. Read More
Filed under: Religion | Tags: Birth control, Catholic, contraception, Pope Paul VI, Safe sex, Teenagers
Last week Pope Paul VI re-asserted the Catholic intolerance to contraception of all kinds. Instead Catholic teenagers are instructed to use abstinence as a form of birth control.
Unfortunately chastity can be a dangerous risk to the health and well being of teenagers. Medical research highlights that adoption of an abstinence only approach has a negative effect on teenage pregnancy rates and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
A study by Columbia University showed that belonging to an abstinence group delayed the start of sexual activity, but if the teenager gave into temptation, they were one third less likely to use a condom. Further research published in the British Medical Journal showed that the partners of boys in an abstinence programme were more likely to get pregnant.
The UK has the highest teen birth rate in Europe and one in ten British teenagers have had a sexually transmitted disease. Surely a more open and realistic approach is needed, and not one that is likely to make an already terrible situation worse.
