Tarot

“Carry on.”

He turned over the third card, and the strangeness barometer went up a few more notches. The card without a number. The Green Man of the Celts. The Fool stared up at us, wearing the horns of Bacchus. The moment of divine consciousness.

Beers were raised. Throats were cooled. We both studied the scene in front of us.

It was possible that the cards were completely meaningless. A random series of draws, just pieces of card laid out in a pattern. Toss a coin often enough and heads will match tails eventually. Or – the popular alternative – maybe they were actually trying to tell us something, and we just weren’t getting the message. Or – the only other option – this was all some kind of game.

“Assuming that you’re not fucking with me,” I said, slowly, “what the hell does this mean?”

Rafael had turned pale in the moonlight. No longer smirking, no more laughing, he was playing his part to the hilt.

“Four major arcana, West? When we’re looking for places and times? You’re out of your depth.”

My turn to laugh. “Right. Now you see why I’ve never liked divination. Bunch of old women scaring the crap out of each other.”

“Are you going to take this seriously?”

I looked at him from a couple of feet away, trying to decipher the look in his eyes. From the tiny bits of his eyes I could see behind the fringe of black hair that covered the top half of his face. They’d always had a manic look about them. A darkness. But a playful darkness. A lunatic playfulness. But a reasonably functional lunacy. Except for the time we’d tried playing chess after smoking buttons. Not to be recommended.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.