Compassionate Tarot Companion – Book Overview

Front Cover

The paperback for sale ….. {-here-}
My other paperbacks are also shown.

Free complete pdf file …. {-here-}
It will open in your browser,
140 pages including the covers.

The book’s chapters in blog posts .… {-here-}
Most of the chapters will be included; also
two chapters are in this post below.
A menu of posts will appear.

Other related blog posts …. {-here-}
Posts about the book that i wrote since
publishing it, or while writing it.
A menu of them will appear.

= My Other Tarot Book =
“Documents For The Reader”
This book focuses specifically on Tarot, rather
than seeing Tarot in worldwide context. And
this version of it is 38 letter size pages,
convenient for home printing.
Free pdf file ….. {-here-}

~~ THE TEXT ON THE BACK COVER ~~

Compassionate Tarot Companion
Stone Riley
Written in the crisis year 2022.

Divination: Practical advice, theory, memoir, and politics
of it; by an expert with unique skills and experience.

New England, USA has strong traditions of both
liberal democracy and fortunetelling. The author
is both a leading teacher of fortunetelling
there, and a veteran democracy activist;
– plus an essayist, novelist, and poet.

Beautiful Stories of today and ancient times,
taking you deep beneath the surface, and very
far beyond the bounds, of familiar divination
books, connecting today’s Tarot with ancient
Greece, Oriental spirituality, modern science,
worldwide Shamanism, and the universal
freedom of the human mind.

Do you enjoy a good read? Do you have some
interest in psychic phenomena? If so, you’ll
probably like this compact little book.

Numerous illustrations by the author.

Cover painting: “Seeking Wisdom” by Stone Riley

( End of the back cover text )

~~ THE BEGINNING OF CHAPTER 1 ~~


J Is For Jack in Singing
Fish Tarot; equals The
Fool in most decks

Chapter 1: Hello

In America in the late 1970’s thru early 1980’s,
it was the decade i escaped alive from the Army
Medical Corps, escaped alive from a month in Army
Jail, signed up for a leadership role among the
Neo-Pagans, and made a Tarot deck as activist
equipment. I have felt myself to be a
Soldier Of The Lady ever since.

Now grown old, i have become a poet blogger
too, and from that blog these pages are emerging.

It’s all largely in opposition to this brutal
civili­zation we live in, but that opposition
led me to the love of Humankind.

My earliest memory of feeling the fullness
of my love was in a Neo-Pagan introductory
class. Students were asked to list differences
between our religion and the Christianity
around us. I thought and wrote:
“We are pro-human.”

I had been a non-commissioned officer
in the medical corps. I had led my field
ambulance squad into pacifist resistance
against the godawful racist class­ist imperial
war, and the army found a way to kill one of my
guys for it. Of course that was in my mind when
i wrote “We are pro-human.”

In that decade and those since, i’ve created
lots of poems and 3 Tarot decks, much
of it as activist equip­ment.

( End of the beginning of Chapter 1 )

~~ THE ENTIRE LAST CHAPTER ~~


Page Of Wands
from Simple Tarot

Chapter 38:
Postscript:
So-Called Magnetic Senses

Dear Reader, with difficulty, I’m finally admit­ting
that truthfully saying I “see”, “hear”, and “feel”
things you pro­bably never see, hear, and feel,
altho this is my real life,
may seem preposterous to you.

Do you see the colors in someone’s mind,
or hear the things they didn’t say,
or feel their future?
Why not?

Right away, I might seem ridiculous to use
the word “magnetic” for the psychic senses.
Do you think I’m
ignorant of its common meaning?
That use of the word is centuries old,
for it
DESCRIBES THE SENSA­TION.

But with no clearer English language
alternative, I will use the word “magnetic”.
At least it’s vivid.

After all, I’m convinced these senses
operate thru Quan­tum Physics, as I explained
in the book more than once.
But I don’t understand Quantum Physics
any more than you do.

Then how am I to make a clear and vivid
explanation?

For nearly two weeks I left
the manuscript alone, hoping it would
be complete without a better expla­nation,
but lately I’ve been writing a summary,
and this morning I admitted
it doesn’t work.

Without it, chapters like “Troubles”,
and “Being Many Voices”, and “Sunflowers”,
and others, are either unbelievable
or incomprehensible to you.
You must think i’m an obvious fraud.
The problem is language.

This “hearing” and “seeing” and “feeling”
resemble Yoga; in fact, they’re strengthened
by my Yoga practice.
Can’t I just explain i’m a Western Yogi,
which I AM?
No,
because I don’t have that scholarly language.

The classic South Asian language
Yoga scholars use for explaining Yoga
surely explains these senses too, but
its way of making words for complex concepts
resembles German or Polynesian.
That doesn’t help.

But wait:
With the worldwide melding of cultures
in this age, many Shamanic concepts have
been given clear vivid English words.

So can I use those Shamanic terms
to explain the psychic senses? Plus
whatever scraps of Quantum Physics
you and I think we know?
Why not?

Can it be convincing too?
I’ll try:

Our species has a rich treasure of complex
instinc­tive roles, gifts from our ancestors
and other species among whom we evolved.

Some of our roles – Shaman, Artist, others –
evolved an awareness of Quantum Physics.

The Shamanic Landscape, populated with
a myriad of weird beings, is such a human’s
visualization of the universe,

which is full of quantum-physical con­scious
substances, which talk inter-psychically
and trans-chro­no­logically by
touch­ing mentally.

Such things as cards, conscious too,
can tell us of things faraway in space and
time, and beyond apparent boundaries,
by sharing touch with those substances.

My friend, fare well on your journey!

( End of the last chapter. )

(- Here is the end of this blog post.-)

A Little Cavity Of Soil

“Earth Gyre”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

I will tell you something about Yoga.

Well then …

First you must understand that later I would head­long flee into the holy comfort of the embracing arms of Yoga, flee there totally, but when did I do that?

Immediately when released from my six most-active years of soldiering, with all those years’ heartbreak and activism finally wrapped up enough to soothe my con­science, understand that I would flee headlong to Yoga later, as I’ve said.

But this prior incident was first …

The last spring of Germany for me, my last US. Army soldiering spring, by then relieved of my proper rightful duties as a foot-soldiers’ mud-field mini-ambu­lance guy, me relieved of that good duty, after the month in Mannheim Jail which was almost at the end of my gov­ernment military service, me involuntarily removed from the good and righteous mud-field ambulance duty.

Yes, the last maneuver training summer ever in my life.

I had a mystifying Yoga experience in a piece of military-maneuver woods one spring day, a damp summer day really, inside a small cavity in the soil, which taught me much for later.

I knew enough to lay down when I was really hurting.

The aches and sprains and staunching of occasion­al small bleeding wounds, and the very serious winter cold dangers, of foot soldiers without proper winter equipment, often going out on maneuvers on difficult land, in the steep foothills of the Alps, my fellow soldiers had taught me that, taught me laying down when you’re really hurting is very good.

And this upland damp forest was unspeakably beautiful, as Korea taught me to see.

Nowadays I am an American Pagan, an unusual Hindu-Euro enthusiasm first gone west from the ancient Mystical East toward Stonehenge in very old times.

So I’m saying my American Pagan religion it is an old Hindu-Euro thing involving thinking like Hellen­istic Greek Alchemy did in fact think, in case you’re interested in anything like that, and I’m quite enthusiastic about it really.

But the point is, in our religion generally we see Yoga as the most simple and direct form of the Arts Of Spirit, speaking from our point of view.

On principle that Yoga consults the wisdom you have in all realms of your existence, which Alchemy en­livens, in case you’re interested in things like that.

And so, that’s how this small depression in the deep leafy dirt, a sponge nest same size as my body coin­ci­dent­ally, over there a dappled shady few yards off the forest path, me walking up over a small wooded ridge top.

Me with army gear of some kind on my shoulder I was humping over to somewhere it wasn’t yet, explains how a small soft depression in the forest ground over there was calling me.

Calling to me as tho thru ears I didn’t know I had.

No wonder then, obviously I went over there, spied about to check the place was well enough concealed, drop­ped whatever it was, stupid object of the army.

And laid my self down, and sank in immediately like soft butter into cream, and felt connections open. And so I closed my eyes, opening inner eyes to unfam­iliar visions.

A strange, powerful, beautiful, empowering first experience of Yoga.

A first step on the road to Divination.

(- Here is the end of this poem.-)

Impressions Of A Good Divination Session

“Island Of Time”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

Ordinary chat,
third cousin over coffee or
a stranger on a train, if chatting
and person tells you real-life troubles,
any chat has vivid thoughts and honesty,

you may reach quite high levels of
heart-sympathy.
Real divination happens there.

But suppose you’ve got only just the same few
fleeting minutes as a simple hair cut, or
a nice nail polish, no more minutes than that.

Furthermore: Pretend you claim to be “professional”
at this, even claim you help people by doing this.
Well so now you’re stuck.

You need a nice card deck or such to crawl into.
Good thing you’ve had some practice.

Quantum Information Theory, part of Quantum
Physics, in this chat of honest vivid thought and
longing, probably explains …

Why your eye and hand …
fall on exactly the right cards
in good divination reading,
but the scientific understanding is poor.

On the other hand,
We surely know what good divination
feels like, for we’ve been doing it
doubtless thru all human history.
Cards, pebbles, bones,
voice of wind, flight of birds,
humming of the bees, etc.,
it feels Divine.

Apparently it really is,
that broad plain of heart-sympathy,
is a Divine Realm, or maybe
is the infinite space instinct calls Divine,

for it looks boundless and you feel purified
somehow, focused, by your honesty to find
and say the truth.

Plus you’re made courageous by the work.

(- Here is the end of this poem.-)

Awaking In A Dream

“Awaking In A Dream”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

Audio of the author reading the poem … {-here-}

A Poem Of Cosmic Telepathy

There are many tales, of course, of Lao Tzu who,
accord­ing to the legends, wrote
The Watercourse Way,
a little book of nature poetry,
upon which other thinkers
then built up the lean, beautiful and tough
spiritual philosophy of Taoism.
Here’s one of them.

The story flies us to the early morning of a day
when our hero was a bright but sorrowful young man.

He was a bureau­cratic junior clerk in the palace
of a rich and brutal warlord prince.

The sparkling morning and the budding springtime
garden grounds through which he trod to work
belied the torment in the young man’s soul.

This day’s duty was to be an awful deed which
no one with an open heart could ever wish.

The garden path led on across a footbridge
on a lovely brook and, setting foot onto
the rising boards, his paces further slacked.

His gaze was beckoned to the sparkling water.

On the arch’s highest little height the now
unconscious footsteps stopped and
– mind, heart and soul –
he found himself drawn out
into the clear deep rippling stream.

This was the moment when a human
asks of “there” and “here”.

As another poet wrote,
do I dream the butterfly
or does the butterfly dream me?
Gazing deep into the world I see only
countless things which mirror me.

So: What are “you” and “I”
and what am “I” to do?

But in this young man’s mind no riddle
of that sort found any weight.

The doubtless fundamental knowledge that this
clarity exists would henceforth lure and guide
his thoughts and steps.

The beauty of reality had possessed Lao Tzu
and he was struck with lifelong love.

(-Here is the end of this poem.-)

An Eagle’s Mighty Flight

“Eagle’s World”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

I was on a religious retreat one time, at a camp­ground in the New England woods, and it was a time when I was very troubled about some personal issues. Really it all came down to a question of courage and a question of which way to go.

Now, as you may know, the bald eagle is very sacred in North America and I knew this in a theoretical way, just like I knew that various species are seen by humans as great sacred animals all over the world. But bald eagles are very rare in New England these days, and every other place where I had ever lived, and I had never seen one flying free.

Well, I went out walking in the woods that morning in a very prayerful state. I was not communing with any specific deity, you understand, but striving to open my being as a whole to the Universe as it was manifesting there where I was in that region of physical existence. And I was offering a request for specifically useful wisdom.

I had stopped to sing some chants along the way, and such as that, and then came to the big open meadow where our rituals and celebrations were done on that retreat. Of course I paused in the shadows of the forest edge to stand and gaze on this sunlit place, empty of other humans there so far that morning, but a space where a human community lived consciously inside of Nature.

And I was opening myself again and sending forth my yearning prayer again as I had done in several other scenes along a wandering path.

A mighty eagle rose from the treetops of the farther verge, absolutely in the center of my right eye’s vision.

It was huge, exactly spanning all the breadth of my right eye’s vision.

Up it rose with mighty wing beats, but only high enough to easily clear the tallest trees, facing straight away from me, and beat its way straight ahead of me until it disappeared beyond that close dark green horizon.

Should I explain the meaning that I immediately gained from this or can you read the omen?

There is a little more. Some months passed, another year, a different summer.

A lady friend and I drove up to a big public fair they’re having annually in Maine. This big do is a folk­life festival, natural agriculture exposition, left wing poli­tical convention, free speech venue, handicraft shopping outlet and down-home tourist attraction rolled up into one, with definite overtones of Nature veneration.

For example, I bought myself a really far-out hippie magic hat for use when doing children’s story­telling. A useful item and excellently crafted.

But along the way to that, before the tent where they were selling these unusual hats, my lady friend and I walked into a big tent that was reserved for Native American endeavors.

The air was somber. This was not a merry day for them. But still, from the earth I had a sense of some­thing waiting.

We threaded through among the nearly silent shif­ting crowd in the labyrinthine paths between the laden tables of the merchants, artisans and activist associa­tions, there in that deeply shadowed grassy hall.

Then finally, not quite to the sunny open door at the farther corner, I came upon a little family camp defended by a barricade of tables. That is the only apt description, unless one were to say the family huddled there were on a boat adrift, the tables being gunwales and the shifting crowd a sea.

A man, his son, the young man’s pregnant woman. A look near desperation on the father’s face, he standing, gazing on the son who sat, the woman in his arms, on a blanket on the grassy earth, she looking worried, resolute, and very young, the boy in some confusion.

The eagle’s gift was now to be repaid.

The father and the son were fine carvers in wood, the man a master of that art, the son apprentice. Beautiful pieces of their work were set out on the tables, statuettes of beasts and birds, implements that must be sacred to any needing hand. There was an album of photographs of more through which I leafed in hopes that clarity would come before the moment came to speak.

But then the father looked at me, resentful of my looming psychic presence, and so I must at once snatch off my Druid’s kind of cap and lean upon my tall Druidic walking staff in a very modest and apologetic bow for the interruption and let the words flow how they would.

With the woolen cap held to my heart, I heard this from my mouth: “Good morning, sir.” I gulped a breath. I shrug­ged. “I don’t know your people’s ways; I follow Celtic ways myself.”

The father let me have an impatient but accept­ing nod.

“But if I can take a minute of your time, there’s a story I’m supposed to tell.”

Astonishment came to his face almost as if – I have to say – this meeting was foretold. That felt to be the obvious impression.

And blink! The boy was on his feet, pressed to the father’s side just like a brother would have been, and with astonishment written on him too.

And so I rose into it then, an open gesture with an out­stretched hand, but then a gawker from the crowd perked up, a smile stuck on his silly face as if to see the show, so I must bring a curtain down and there we stood as if it were indeed a camp with darkness all around and I a stranger from the dark­ness come to tell a tale.

I told it briefly, the man still nodding with impa­tience, now straining toward the story’s end as if that were the only thing he didn’t know already. The morning of my walking prayer for guidance from the land, the mea­dow field, trees beyond, Mighty Eagle rising. It filled my right eye and flew ahead.

And the lesson I had read in it: I said, “I under­stood from this that I should go Strongly! Forward!”

I paused.

He nodded, quite as though to say my reading was obvious enough and obviously correct, but he waited for the rest.

I said, “And now today, although I don’t know why, I felt that I should tell this to your son.”

I shot the lad a look.

A gasp from them. A startlement beyond before, and to each other’s eyes they turned, and deep into each other’s heart they gazed. And in that space the light arose.

There was a story there I have no wish to pene­trate, a privacy I do not want to understand.

With humble thanks and bows, unheard, unseen by them, I took my leave.

We went and found a magic hat.

( Here is the end of this memoir.-)

Opening To Compassion

“Flowers On A Shelf”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

I recommend compassion. What is the meaning of this peculiar word com-passion? It is a passion with- and not about- our fellows. And a passion is a feeling, deep beyond our other feelings, which we know we must trust and obey.

Compassion is a knowledge that there is no blame because, beneath all outward circumstances, there is only simply innocence.

The deepest stirrings in our soul, when we gaze clearly into our soul, are the same forces felt by all our fellow beings. So forgive­ness is a wiser choice, a choice with more truth in it, a choice with more understanding of ourselves in it, than blame.

If in clear judgment we must act for other’s rights, speak truth to haughty power for the future’s sake, or call injustice by its name so cruel greed will stand unmasked before the world, and justice done, then we will do all that indeed with all our strength, but we will do all that for love and not for hate.

There is a strange transformation in our sense of beauty too, in our instinctive judgments, during moments while we hold to compassion.

Perhaps that is because beauty and ugliness seem microscopically mingled throughout everything, so that their ten­sion becomes a source of infinite wonder.

We may, like Van Gogh, weep at the drama of a worn out pair of shoes; or, like Dr. King, sincerely preach respect for the humanity inside evil-doing people. For compassion is the sublime convic­tion that it is always ME there.

And compassion is natural for human beings. This is a state of mind our human race evolved by living all together here on Earth, not a state of mind only for saints and geniuses.

Compassion has immense value for us all because it lets us make peace with one another, just by accepting and believing a vast reality which stands outside our self-protection.

Logically, that shows that it is deeply realistic.

For indeed, the tremendous fascinating mystery which we can easily see each time we look out at this world, looks back at us too, and it beholds us with an infinite number of eyes.

From all of this, I think we must strive toward justice with humility.

(- Here is the end of this blog post.-)

Creativity From Within

“The Poet Speaks”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

We step out in new directions. We turn our minds and hands to new tasks that we choose for ourselves and we choose work that is hard.

Now suddenly this is another way to seek the truth for this is work that blossoms from our inner selves and shows us to our selves, yet also presses out against the boundaries of what is real, to tell us about the world.

May I describe a piece of video? I saw it once. A short documentary, very rare, an anthropology field res­earch recording really, about twenty minutes, observing two spirit doctors in Central America. Very interesting. This is true.

The soundtrack and color are poor. Occasionally we hear some English from a local translator who is on-screen now and then, or from the anthropologist who is managing the camera and therefore invisible to us, a sort of ghostly presence.

We find ourselves in a tiny village, very old, been there for ages, quite traditional, in a thickly wooded valley.

As we quickly learn, there is a branch of medical care that’s still done here by normal human practice. Every­one is going to act like everything we’re going to see is very normal and commonplace.

Nothing is surprising except perhaps a few things near the end.

Spirit doctor #1, with a patient, inside a dark but spacious hut. A tiny fire is thinly veiling the wide dark room with smoke. The female patient lies on a blanket on the earthen floor, attentive but silent and as profoundly calm as if this were a Reiki session.

The practitioner, a shaman, in this case an active wiry man in middle age, devotes himself to dancing round the patient, shuffling really, making music with a rattle and his voice. He has a slow rhythmic insistent repeti­tious song. It’s obviously a powerful tool for deep hyp­nosis and he behaves as though in ecstasy.

Outdoors now. Time has passed.

Arrives now doctor #2, actually at this time a young man seeking the vocation, a stranger from a distant place, walked for miles on forest tracks to introduce himself quite cautiously to #1 who is frankly skeptical and am­used. He’s not a doctor yet but has come here in hopes to get himself changed into one. They talk.

In the forest: #1 and a couple of merry sidekicks, maybe sons or nephews, have got #2 tied up to a tree. His elbows are pulled around behind and he’s asking if this really is all necessary.

The old gent assures him that it is, oh yes oh yes oh yes, so the butterflies will come during the night and teach him his song.

The fellow seems a little reassured but then appar­ently there’s a kind of giant ant in those parts and at the old guy’s demonstration these two laughing side­kicks start picking up these big insects off the ground and pinch­ing them very carefully in fingertips so their jaws will open and they’re hanging these venomous little poison clamps on the fellow’s tender flesh.

The old guy does one nipple first and soon we see they’ve got these things hanging off his nipples, lips, ears and eyelids even. There’s about a dozen of them. It’s apparently a psychoactive drug but the lack of any quick intoxication leads me to guess this divination actually requires the diviner’s ability to self-induce a trance.

The fellow’s squirming now with gritted teeth so the old gent takes a serious approach and assures him very seriously, oh yes oh yes oh yes, now the butterflies will come during the night and teach him his song. Watch for the butterflies, he says in parting.

Cut to morning. Young #2 seems quite refreshed. The sidekicks are taking off his rope and he limbers up. The old gent asks a little fearfully if the butterflies came.

The fellow frankly seems a trifle bitter at the ques­tion; No, he says, it was the toucan birds. Toucan birds? the old guy asks in some surprise. The fellow only grunts in answer.

I looked it up and toucan birds are said to croak like frogs.

Back in the treatment room. Wide dark space again thinly veiled with smoke. Again the total calm except that now there is an energy and pride in the old man’s steps we did not see before as he dances chanting round his patient.

There is another patient on the earthen floor, over there, and there the new shaman takes his rattle from a leather bag and now begins his version of the usual rou­tine, in utter easy confidence, with a different song.

That is creativity from within.

(- Here is the end of this blog post.-)

Talking With Song Birds – In Compassionate Tarot Companion

“Elemental Altar”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

Note: Another version of this piece, published on
the Singing Fish Help Sheet, is … {-here-}

Here’s a very ancient method of enriching your divination skills and your shamanism.

Of course I mean having brief back-and-forth con­ver­sa­tions in their language.

And of course you need to live ­where song birds live; then if you devote the time to gain this skill, you will. And this magic will grow your psychic powers like it’s done ever since our human species’ early times.

For we and song birds evol­ved together. And altho primate mouths can make a wider range of song, and primate hands can make flutes, drums and violins, we learned music from them. And the emotions we feel from music are Song Bird Language.

So you must be honest with them; On your first visit to them, you declare a Bird Name that must truly describe you.

Then be patient. Me, I went out to them an hour per day, many days of most weeks, three cycles of spring, summer, autumn. I nourished plants that feed them. Once when a pred­a­tory bird appeared, it was I who cried the alarm. The last fall, to my great joy, they let me watch them raise their babies.

So how to start? Let’s suppose you have a house, like I did then, where the backyard is a forest meadow.

Going out there, bring a chair so you’re obvi­ously human. It’s good to bring a walk­ing stick because they’re interested in sticks. Consider wearing a good hat in case of sneak attack by squirrels throwing acorns. Bring water to wet your mouth.

Your first time, be very quiet and still till you’re ready to shout your Bird Name. When you’re ready, shout it out above the forest as they often do with theirs.

But what should it be, and in what voice?

Picture the interior shape of their mouths; With your tongue and lips form that cavity in the front of your mouth; In your Soul find a cry that, thru your guilt, shouts truly: “I am harmless!” We’re all harmless somewhere.

Shout and chitter and squeak your Soul’s cry thru the bird’s mouth you made, shouting to the forest, as a promise of what you’ll be here. And that will be your Bird Name.

As is their cus­tom, say it loud and often. “A human with a name!” they’ll think, look you in the eye from up in a tree, then speak to you. And you’ll speak back.

From then on, it’s up to you to be a good neighbor, to keep watch for hawks, to nurture the tangled raspberry vines, with their beds of leaf litter full of small green worms, that will feed the Song Birds and their babies.

And now that you listen like you belong there, you will hear the life of the forest as you did not hear it before. So your psychic senses will expand.

Another thing about their customs: Feel free to imitate what they say, maybe with a curlicue of notes attached, for in the noisy woods it’s just a way to say you’re listening.

And much or most of what they say will be simply check­ing in. They’re out for baby food and shouting to their mate, “Don’t worry; I’m over here.”

Open your psychic senses, pay very close attention, remember what their lives are like, and you’ll figure it out.

But the HUGE expansion of your psychic senses is this: You map the forest! You won’t be the same after that.

Map the forest by the bird cries! See-with­out-seeing the news: What’s going on behind the hills?

That’s what you evolved to do, for it is recorded in your Shamanic Instinct.

(- Here is the end of this blog post.-)

Ambulance Ride

“The God At Noon”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

Mental telepathy is real, usually safe,
and often profound.

I want to just tell a little story,
involving Mental Telepathy,
that’s one of my Army Adventures,
and scarcely believable to me at that time,
which i feel makes this point of
Safe and Profound.

One night me and a New Guy in the Ambu­lance Squad,
me being Corporal, we two saved a soldier from freezing,
by finding the soldier and delivering to hospital efficiently,
in chal­len­ging conditions,
up on a vast mountainous Military Maneuver Range.

Well, driving back thru the night, to our assigned position,
a long bumpy ride on blacked-out roads of frozen rutted mud,
we had a penetrating and profound telepathic conversation,

New Guy and Corporal Me,

that i, so physically absorbed into the wheel, throttle, clutch,
and so emotionally uplifted by our very excellent achievement,
and so intel­lectually committed to a rookie fresh out of training,
and my senses so open to the deadly night,
to find our way,

and the vehicle so poorly heated,

all like a floating dream,
yet i knew it was some­thing unexplained and very real.

Somehow, New Guy didn’t talk, or hardly ever,
while, for sure sounding like an idle disjointed rambling chat,
i felt i answered every comment of his before he spoke,
while my Inner Vision beheld, far off, new vistas of Wisdom.

My Soul was expanded, very TENSE
and AWAKE;

So i made every turn, and brought us back safe,
and the Sun came up in time to thaw our bones.

Nowadays, any thought this wasn’t Real is very long gone.
Actually that skill, Hearing What’s ALMOST Said,
you can be sure for me it happens regularly now,
at some point of almost every divination session,
even persisting a bit after­ward, talking with others.

Here’s how i understand this:

Rather like a Wheelbarrow of Story,
or a Movie full of Intimacies,
when someone has a Bucket of Words,
if it is intended for you,
they might project and you might receive.

So, is it true Mental Telepathy’s often Profound?

For my favorite exposition, from Experience,
of How This Works, What It Feels Like,
and Why It Can Find VAST WISDOM,
please see a later chapter;
It involves Song Birds.

So, why say Telepathy’s only “usually” Safe?:

The Corrupt Entertainment Stars,
Horrible Hypnotic Fascist Politicians,
Glorious Commanders of Patriotic Wars,
all the Random Abusive Psychopaths as well,
all make use of whatever telepathic skills they have,
and we all know too very well, what horrors they can wreak.

Well, see you later.

(- Here is the end of this poem.-)

Withdrawal Of Consent

“Weathered Board” (photograph)

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

Here is the desperate struggle
for freedom of mind.

Around nineteen-eighty:
Back then, we were in a time of lies,
lies on a very wide yet pervasively intimate scale,
as though lies were the air you breathed.
I’ll tell you one example of those times that
infuriated me:

My fellow citizens
were mostly still in love with
our US. National Propaganda Lies, and so there
was a NONSENSE QUESTION you could ask.
You could ask Ms or Mister Citizen this:

“Do you think America
is the greatest country in the world?”
Nonsense on its face of course.

To rationally reply, just to start,
they must apply some greatness score
to every country in the world.

Then if this is somehow done, and
if US. wins the tip top score,
still, how to reach the actual meaning?

For we know what is meant:
America is good and noble by its nature,
and good inherently in the world’s nature.
So how that?

But if the citizen shall judge
this inference is done,
the logic leads to
MARVELOUS CONCLUSIONS.

For if the logic can be proved, or is assumed,
then it confirms a pleasant feeling dawning
temptingly as the preferred conclusion
is approached.

For the climax of the thought is this:
Them and their nation
righteously dreaming, forcefully leading,
sunshiny gleaming, envy of the world;

And by encanting this, they feel themselves
now standing with
MASTERFUL SUNSHINY GENEROUS GODS.

So every American I asked …
“Do you think America
is the greatest country in the world?”
with very rare exception,
would actually do exactly this:
Listen to my question,
Think momentarily,
and see the difficulties of the question,

cravenly
DECIDE TO ABANDON THOUGHT,
(and shrug often,)
and answer:

“Yes, I think America is the
greatest country in the world.”

Too frail
to dare traverse
a shadow of a doubt,
these my fellow citizens.

They were doing this even after the horrors
of the very horrid Vietnam War that were
just recently gone by,
VAST horrors done
by OUR soldiers from the very start of it,
and repeated con­stantly with increasing
pitch of desperation right to the end;

Horrors done mostly by public order of our generals,
in fulfillment of our government’s public policies,
and constantly reported clearly in the daily news;

Yes it was even then after those long recent years
of vast and quite intentional EVIL,
that enormous spasm of pointless furious
insane destruction,
it was then in nineteen-eighty,

And I was finding most Americans still somehow
clung to their cherished lie that our country,
unlike most other countries,
IS NOBLE AND DOES GOOD;
My fellow citizens.

(And one among the dead a friend.
We men young together there were waiting;
He among us chosen
of the war machine and carried to the perpetration;
He the murdered by the war machine,
promptly murdered;
Us friends waiting; Us one letter
back from him, full of scribbled horrors;
Then he’s dead.

That long ago by then;
Dead in summer nineteen-seventy.)

FAST FORWARD: TWENTY-ELEVEN;
Thirty years more or less,
and every one of them a year of startling surprises.

TWO THOUSAND AND ELEVEN.
Me. Night.
A city night.
An electric glaring night of shadowed darkness
here behind us where we stand,
but blazing penetrating light across the street.

We standing here – a large but unknown number of us
– stood far out to left and right, all three ranks deep,
but crowding close to hold each other up
against the blaring light
– are, in military fact, actually
a voluntary UNARMED citizen militia,
well disci­plined by our ideals and ready; Waiting.

Our drummers drumming loud and fast.
Food and water being passed;
Waiting for the Boston Police
to cross the street in line abreast,
and take the park.

The park, the Occupy encampment.
The tiny liberated zone.
The tiny zone of real democracy,
of real news,
real educa­tion;
The zone of reality and courage.

Me a visitor tonight. Me with others
come racing in a car tonight to make this muster;
Come racing from our smaller city’s camp
where we are fully occupied
with our own version of the struggle.

ME OLD MAN BY THEN,
but out in front to show some leadership,
waiting crouching on the curb;
But a squad of drummers shove in here,
so I fade back behind the line,
and find some other duty.

ME, I TAKE UP CHATTING;
Chatting.

Our fellow citizens, some of them,
have come to stroll
about behind our line
and they want chatting.

I hail one: “Hi”.
This one a man the age
that I once was.

In that electric shadowed,
thrumming, rhythm dark
he does approach;
Is not shy,
But can’t find words.

Youngish, so-called white;
Clean and warmly dressed
this cool night.

He is not shy but fuddled, confused;
trying seriously to think,
but can’t find terms.
Clearly sees the movement of these souls,
clearly sympathizes,
but yet cannot see why.
He seems to seem to himself:

Cloudy, drifty, and opaque.

ME, I GUESS I’LL CLARIFY HIM.

Me, i guess i’ll put the question.
“Can i ask you something?”
(Sarcastically?) (Ironically?)

Uncertainly: “? OKAY ?”

“Do you think America is .. ..
the greatest country in the world?”

Mister US. Citizen:
He hesitates;
He hems and haws, haws and hems,
almost makes a little dance,
offers something,
takes it back.

Then, at last, finally his countenance at last,
his countenance portrays as if perhaps,
as if a useful thought has found him.

So now at last
at long long weary last
PRAISE ANY GOD YOU WISH
FINALLY:

He does not answer.

In a dharma gate.

(- Here is the end of this poem.-)