Tarot Cards as Alternative Therapy

Whether we admit or not, most of us have quaint notions of what tarot cards are.

On the surface, they are merely a deck of illustrated cards used in predictions, while the tarot card reader is an eccentric person dressed in robes seated behind the fortune-telling booth in the town fair. This image of tarot cards is, of course, clichd, and yet we'd rather feel comfortable with its familiarity than dig deeper. We resort to the more convenient explanation rather than actually investigate the sometimes unpleasant yet gratifying truth of tarot cards.

Perhaps, the most famous among the tarot cards is the Death Card, a card quite unfairly invested with too much negative meanings and energies behind it, so much so that we usually think of tarot cards as tools of the occult, vehicles of evil even. While we can't deny the fact that indeed tarot can be used for such purposes, tarot cards can also be perfectly well-intentioned and can be actually used for good causes.

As a matter of fact, the earliest use of tarot cards in fifteenth century Italy was as a game, much like a deck of regular playing cards but with the addition of trump cards. It wasn't until late 17th or 18th century that tarot cards began to take on a more serious role in divination.

Over the years, the pictures in the tarot cards, their rich symbolisms, procedures, purposes, and meanings evolved in such a way that the characters portrayed in them have come to mirror all our follies, fears, strengths, and hopes. By stringing them together into a tale, we are able to retell and uncover the past as we would have liked it unfold, as well as get a sense of a manageable future we can feel safe with.

A radical and inevitable shift indeed for tarot cards from a simple game to life-changing therapy.

Carl Jung, a world renowned psychologist has always considered tarot as an alternative psychotherapy. By utilising the rich imagery encapsulated in every tarot card, we are able to voice out our concerns, look into our past, and prepare for the future. In some cases, children who don't yet know how to speak can use the images and characters in the tarot deck to piece together their thoughts and tell their story. Tarot cards then offer an alternative language system through which we can bring our Unconscious up to the light.

Jung explains that tarot cards represent different archetypes of human personality and situations. The Death Card then is not just simplistically a dreary card foretelling iretractable death to the querent (person who asks questions in a tarot card reading). Rather, the death card can be seen as the death, an end of something inside us: a vice, long standing pain, bad habits, sorrow, signaling rebirth.

We do not just blindly pick out cards from the tarot deck. Every moment of our lives we are armed with choices, choices that spell out and define our fate. It's not just what you keep out from your life that matters; it's also what you allow to make a difference. Even if they're just a deck of tarot cards.

Neoli Lance Marcos writes for PsychicGuild: online provider of daily horoscope, dream interpretation and tarot card readings.

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Plant, Food and Mineral Therapies-Herbalism

Therapies involving plants, foods, and nutritional elements are some of the oldest and perhaps easiest to understand of all the therapies available to us. Over the last decades, we in the West have been encouraged to believe in "a pill for all ills," and we take comfort in medical treatment that can be taken orally and that appears to be prescribed in a conventional manner.

Almost every culture has a history of herbalism, each depending on the local flora or vegetation to nourish and to heal. Herbalists were, in the past, dealers and collectors of herbs; we refer to them as herbal therapists or medicinal herbalists, to make clear the distinction. Much of modern medicine is based upon early herbal practices; indeed, most conventional drugs contain synthesized extracts and essences of herbs and plants. The active constituents of many ancient natural remedies are the key ingredients of many proprietary drugs. The tradition of herbalism is best established in North America and the Far East, and it was these cultures that encouraged the development of our modern-day herbal medicine.

Plant Essences Herbalism and aromatherapy and homeopathy use the pure essences of plants to treat illness and disease, and find that this prevents side effects and provides a more effective form of treatment.

Each of these disciplines uses different types of plant in different forms, and, therefore, the technical terminology within herbalism and the plant- and food-based therapies varies widely; for eample, homeopathic, remedies include a dilution quotient, and herbal remedies and aromatherapy use the Latin taxonomic term for the plant, with or without additional descriptions. Herbalism may sound complicated, but everyone cat grow herbs and experience the profound effect they have on the body.

Food and Nutrition Food and nutrition are fundamental to all life, and the therapies that have evolved around the implementation of diet and the elements of nutrition to address health problems are correspondingly essential to most kinds of treatment conventional or complementary. Diet has always played an important role, both spiritually (diets for religious purposes) and physiologically (diets for medical purposes), and as an understanding of nutrition has evolved, that role has become more, defined. Nutritional therapy focuses on tailoring diet toj the person, examining the individual condition and treating accordingly. Through it, diet has become more than the sum of its parts; it has become a tool for living.

Finally, the wide-ranging and holistic disciplines of homeopathy and flower and plant essences have become more popular than ever, promoting good health and wellbeing by gently encouraging the body's own life force in order that it may heal itself. All flower and tree remedies are based on herbal sources, as are many, homeopathic medicines.

The power of plants and their extracts is only just beginning to be understood and recognized; their interaction with the human body provides scope for some of the most exciting developments in modern medicine.

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