Love is one of the most profound emotions known to human beings. There are many kinds of love, but many people seek its expression in a romantic relationship with a compatible partner (or partners). For these individuals, romantic relationships comprise one of the most meaningful aspects of life and are a source of deep fulfillment.While the need for human connection appears to be innate, the ability to form healthy, loving relationships is learned. Some evidence suggests that the ability to form a stable relationship starts to form in infancy, in a child's earliest experiences with a caregiver who reliably meets the infant's needs for food, care, warmth, protection, stimulation, and social contact. Such relationships are not destiny, but they are theorized to establish deeply ingrained patterns of relating to others. The end of a relationship, however, is often a source of great psychological anguish.How to Build a Healthy RelationshipMaintaining a strong relationship requires constant care and communication, and certain traits have been shown to be especially important for fostering healthy relationships. Each individual should, for starters, feel confident that their partner is willing to devote time and attention to the other. They must both also be committed to accommodating their differences, even as those change over time.In the 21st century, good relationships are generally marked by emotional and physical fairness, particularly in the distribution of chores necessary to maintain a household. Partners in strong relationships also feel grateful for one another, openly provide and receive affection, and engage in honest discussions about sex.In good relationships, partners try to afford their partner the benefit of the doubt, which creates a sense of being on the same team. This feeling, maintained over the long term, can help couples overcome the challenges they will inevitably face together.How to Find LoveFinding a partner with whom to share a life is a wonderful but frequently difficult process. Whether it's conducted online or in-person, the search will likely push an individual into unfamiliar settings to encounter potential partners. To be successful, it is often necessary to go outside of one's comfort zone.Determining whether a particular person is suitable as a potential mate and whether a connection reflects temporary infatuation or true love, can challenging, but research suggests that there are revealing clues in behavior. One possibly counterintuitive indicator of a potential match is one's sense of self. Someone who would make a good partner may push an individual to discover new activities or beliefs that expand their own self-concept. Another early signifier may be stress: Repeatedly interacting with someone whose impression matters deeply to us can fuel anxiety. Other positive indicators include being highly motivated to see the person and investing a significant amount of time, emotion, and energy into the budding relationship.How Relationships FailEvery relationship represents a leap of faith for at least one partner, and even in the happiest couples, the very traits that once attracted them to each other can eventually become annoyances that drive them apart. Acquiring the skills to make a connection last is hard work, and threats may spring up without notice.In short-term, casual relationships, neither partner may see a truly viable long-term future together, but often the only one takes action, in some cases ghosting the other, walking out of their lives with no communication, not even a text. For some couples, infidelity is both the first and last straw, but a surprising number of relationships survive betrayal, some only to have their connection upended by everyday threats such as a loss of interest in physical intimacy, or a waning of positive feeling in the wake of constant criticism, contempt, or defensiveness.Even staying together for decades is no guarantee that a couple will remain connected: The divorce rate for couples over 50 has doubled since 1990. Some people can walk away from years of marriage and instantly feel unburdened. For others, the end of a relationship that lasted just a few dates can trigger emotional trauma that lingers for years. However a breakup plays out, it can be a major stressor with an effect on ego and self-esteem that cannot be ignored.

Tarot reading is an ancient divination practice imbued with arcane wisdom and astrological significance.Only when you start reading the Tarot, do you realize the power of its messages to strike at the right time. Having done thousands of card readings over the last 14 years, I know that the cards have a voice and each one has a personality; its own vibration, and story to tell. The role of storytelling in Tarot is as important as the route on a map, it gets you from A to B: from question to answer for the person you’re reading for. The most important story that you’ll need to learn if you want to read Tarot is The Fool’s Journey. This cyclical tale of expansion and contraction is what allows us to understand the point we’re at on our own journey, or where we’ll be arriving in the near future.The Fool’s Journey is the chronological structure that has been woven through the 22 Major Arcana cards to represent –important stages of our lifelessons which have a profound impact on usand junctures that have the potential to completely change our pathBy understanding the 22 steps of The Fool’s Journey, you can understand your own past, present, and future through any Major Arcana cards which show up for you.It begins with The Fool (0) starting off on a new journey feeling excited, inspired, and free. However, he has no experience yet, so he’s unaware of the fact that he could be about to walk off the edge of a cliff! He is naive when it comes to this new pursuit, but his energy is high and he’s full of good intentions.He feels like he has a new opportunity and he’s hopeful about his ability to create anything that he wants. He steps into a new mindset of being The Magician (1) of his own life, using everything that he has available to him (a cup, pentacle, sword, and wand) to create his dream reality. He believes in magic and knows that by co-creating with the Universe, anything is possible.Through this exploration of his metaphysical ability, he meets The High Priestess (2) who shows up in our journey when we start to discover the physical and spiritual world on a deeper level. She is the gatekeeper of our intuition, and she welcomes The Fool into a world of esoteric knowledge and Divine wisdom. She teaches him that not everything which is real can be seen.As he starts to question his path, his mother shows up as The Empress (3). She represents our connection with Mother Earth and embodies everything to do with our own fertility, nurturing ability, and abundance. His father then appears as The Emperor (4) who sets rules and regulations to ensure that his path is safe and stable. He reminds The Fool of the importance of traditions and structures which can stand the test of time and help to keep him grounded while he navigates this new level of spiritual awakening.The Fool looks for teachers who have gone before him to learn about spirituality in a more structured way, which is when he encounters The Hierophant (5). He starts being influenced by external cultures, societies, and religions; and he is shaped by the teachers that he’s now learning from. After so long alone, he craves someone to go on this journey with and starts looking for a partnership. He discovers all of the joy that can come from a union as The Lovers (6), which is where he learns how to cooperate and find a balance between his own masculine and feminine energies.With everything The Fool has learned so far, he now understands how to be successful using willpower and discipline. He rides The Chariot (7) towards his goals and knows that he can achieve anything he wants with enough ambition and drive. He now possesses inner Strength (8) through the courage that he has developed over time on his journey. Through this strength he learns to tame the unfettered ambition that he had on The Chariot, knowing that sometimes battles are long; he grows more mature and starts to value self-control. Having learned so much already, The Fool seeks solitude in order to go within and reflect on everything he has seen so far. He becomes The Hermit (9) and retreats to try and understand the meaning of why the world works this way. From his time away in isolation as The Hermit, he sees that everything connects and is divinely planned by the Universe.He realizes that the Wheel of Fortune (10) means things will happen exactly when they’re meant to and that we’re all subject to fate. This can be good or bad depending on which way the wheel turns. However, he also knows that the Universe will bring balance to every action and that there will always be Justice (11). He learns to act with integrity because his actions will always have consequences. Justice brings balance into situations and resolution to legal matters; there is always the divine retribution of karma.With this support system around him, he feels like he can surrender and pause. As The Hanged Man (12), he is safe to explore the world from different points of view because he knows that the Universe is always there to catch him. At this important stage, he experiences an ego Death (13) where the person that he thought he was falling away. His slate is wiped clean and he enters a whole new phase of his existence where new, more aligned opportunities have space to enter. After everything has been washed away, there is silence and peace. With Temperance (14), he learns to be patient and to find balance without constantly needing to pursue new things. There is not always a need for immediate action.Following this pause, he tries to start moving forward again only to realize that he’s still shackled to his past – emotionally, physically, or financially. This is limiting his expansion, so The Devil (15) forces him to look at where he is holding himself back and resisting letting go of what no longer serves him. The Tower (16) assists The Fool by shaking him loose from these attachments, using external forces out of his control. This feels terrifying – like the rug is being pulled out from under him – but it’s in his best interest! It’s a favor from the Universe to help set him free.The light that illuminates this for him is The Star (17) which provides hope and a sense of renewal; this is the light at the end of the tunnel. The Fool feels inspired to start shining as his true self. However, its opposite – The Moon (18) – represents any fears and subconscious programming that may prevent him from enjoying this new state of bliss. Light casts a shadow and the shadow, in this case, is the old anxiety and fears which may rise to the surface when attempting to shine brightly as The Star.Once he has worked through this old fear energy, his light expands and he becomes The Sun (19). He is completely renewed and in touch with his original soul’s purpose. He has nothing to hide from the world and he is not hiding anything from himself. He is in total alignment and illuminating the path forward for others as a result. As his old ego-self is now completely shed, he can see his purpose clearly and knows what he is meant to be doing on Earth. Like a final Judgement (20), there’s no room for illusions or false identities. At last, he is rising up and answering his soul’s calling.This is the end of the road for The Fool. He has mastered The World (21) and completed his journey. So many lessons have been learned and this chapter is closing once and for all. This is an amazing chance to celebrate all of his victories and everything that he’s accomplished, but like any cycle which closes fully – a whole new one begins and a new journey starts!

TAROT . . .The “great philosophical machine.” The “key to the secrets of the ages.” The “infallible instrument which foretells the future.” Is it any of these? All of them? What is the Tarot, anyway? If a random sample were taken — say, stopping people on the streets and asking them, “What do you think the Tarot is?” — most people would probably say something like “It’s a set of pasteboard cards used for fortunetelling.”And that is true.But the truth must obviously be much deeper, for over the centuries there have been many popular approaches to “fortunetelling,” but none has inspired so much interest. Not only for practitioners of divination, but also among scholars, artists, poets, and students of consciousness.To understand the complex appeal of the Tarot, one must begin where the Tarot itself begins — in the realm of the imagination. Imagination is the human faculty that allows us to experience the immaterial. Ordinary perception operates through the senses, and so is confined entirely to the experience of the material world. But imagination is not bound by the rules of space and time that govern materiality.Through the mode of imagination, it is possible to travel instantaneously into the past or future, to other lands, beyond the earth, and even to realms that don’t exist in the material dimension.Imaginatively, people encounter things they’ve never seen — flying dinosaurs, the dark side of the moon — and things that never can be seen — the colors of feelings, for example, or a landscape of pure crystalline forms.Precisely because the imagination is so vast and powerful, its domain so different from the solid, sensible world of the material . . . whatever reflects and invites imagination can be both seductive and frightening.Maps and VoyagesHuman beings have a great yearning to adventure in imaginary realms. But at the same time, they recognize the fact that explorers occasionally get lost there and can’t find their way back to “reality.” So people look for ways to journey imaginatively without getting too far away from familiar landmarks. They surrender themselves to horror movies, for example. But they have one hand in the bag of popcorn, to serve as a comforting reminder of reality; they play at the Ouija board, but if it begins to seem too real, someone quickly turns on the lights. When people journey into the imagination, they commonly keep themselves on a tether held by the conscious mind. And for some people, the tether is so short that they never venture far from the literal world of facts and matter. But there are also those who travel on a tether that is daringly long, and they are the ones we depend on for what might be called “imaginary reconnaissance.”An important way of keeping safe in imaginative terrain, after all, is to civilize this wild place, and some brave souls must go first. These explorers — poets, shamans, mystics, artists, and such — venture into the imagination, make notes and sketches, put up signs, layout paths, and create maps that will guide the rest of us safely on our journeys. Tarot is just such a map, made by unknown explorers. And not coincidentally, it is given to us in a form similar to that of medieval maps, where far-off lands are marked with pictures of the various marvels to be found there.Simply put: Tarot images are pictures of the things, people, events, ideas, and emotions that shape and populate the imagination. These same things, people, events, ideas, and emotions are recorded in many other works of the creative mind — in fairy tales and dreams, in soap operas and sitcoms, in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, in history books, movies, and music videos — for they make up the stock characters and plots, the predictable crises, the inevitable conflicts, and the familiar emotions of human life. From the “other woman” to the idea of God, from the rite of passage to the traveling flimflam man, all the constant figures and themes of experience are essentially just continuing variations on a group of basic forms — forms that come as standard equipment with every human imagination. These devices of the imagination have been christened archetypes (from the Greek, meaning “first forms”), and they are found in all times and places and modes of expression, though their outward manifestations differ. One useful approach to understanding the Tarot is to think of it as an illustrated map of the archetypal realm. But that is only one perspective.Another approach to understanding the nature of the Tarot is to think of it as a language — a language composed of symbolic representations, like Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese pictographs. Yet a third way is to conceive of the Tarot images as notes in a musical scale, each one having a different effect on the nervous system. And we may also envision the Tarot as chapters in an enormous book, where the parts can be read in any order, and each story will be complete and true.There are many ways of approaching the Tarot, and each person must decide which way (or combination of ways) makes the most sense, feels most comfortable, works most effectively. But for the purpose of common communication, we can expand the basic definition a little further: Tarot is a set of seventy-eight images which, taken together, depict all the forces that affect human life, along with all the characters, events, emotions, and ideas that provide the material of which human life is composed.The Tarot DeckTo really understand the nature of the Tarot, it is important to separate the Tarot images from the Tarot cards. Tarot is first and foremost an imaginative system, totally apart from any tangible medium. The images exist in a nonspatial, nontemporal relationship to each other, and it is possible to memorize them and use them entirely mentally. But Tarot images may also be put into material forms, such as drawings or paintings — and, in this way, Tarot cards can be created.Once the images are placed on cards, it is possible cither to isolate one image from all the others, or to arrange the images in different sequences, whether purposefully or “randomly” (by shuffling). Also, once actualized on cards, the images become capable of achieving spatial and temporal relationships, so that they can be part of material life; in this way, they can provide an interface between the realm of imagination and the material level of existence. When the Tarot images are actualized on cards and organized in a group, we have a Tarot deck or pack. And the conventional deck consists of two parts.The Major ArcanaFirst, there are twenty-two cards with full-sized pictures, each usually bearing both a name (The Chariot, The Hanged Man, and so forth) and a number, from zero to twenty-one. This group is the major arcana (which means “greater secrets”), and its cards are called “trumps,” “keys,” or sometimes “atouts.” The major arcana images are individual archetypal units, all of them well-known in art, literature, in mythology. Each image is complete in itself, and each has its own richness and resonance. The Empress, for example, is the archetypal mother — fertile, nurturing, enveloping, and (on the darker side) perhaps smothering. Look for her in such diverse representations as:Demeter, the mothering Greek goddess who wouldn’t let go of her daughter PersephoneThe Biblical character Esther, who took Ruth to her bosomSnow White, with her irrepressible nurturing of the Seven Dwarfs.The High Priestess, on the other hand, is the mysterious, the cool, the hidden side of femininity (the Mona Lisa); she is the eternal virgin, who seduces and yet remains untouchable (Marilyn Monroe); she is the woman of intuitive knowledge and power (the Sibylline Oracle). The Empress and The High Priestess capture essential but different aspects of the feminine —while The Emperor and The Hierophant serve the same purpose for the masculine. The union of masculine and feminine is represented directly by the Lovers, and indirectly by complementary structures that run throughout the deck.The Minor ArcanaThe second part of the Tarot is called the minor arcana (“lesser secrets”), and its purpose is to represent the day-to-day events and concerns of human life. The minor arcana has fifty-six cards, which are divided into four suits: Cups, Wands (or Batons), Swords, and Pentacles (or Discs/Coins). Each suite in the minor arcana contains fourteen cards: four court cards (King, Queen, Knight, and Page) and ten pips, or number cards, which run Ace through Ten. The various figures in the court cards have distinct qualities that allow them to designate sex, general age, temperament, and position in life, so almost any person can be effectively represented by one of the court cards. The four suits, like the traditional four elements, arc related to the great categories of human experience: Pentacles refer to the material aspect of life (earth), Wands to the creative and energetic (fire). Cups to the emotional and relational (water), and Swords to the mental, abstract aspect of life (air). The special nature of each suit is captured in the ace, which represents the initiation of that suit’s distinctive energy.SynergyThe twenty-two major arcana cards are generally considered to be more powerful and more universal than the other cards in the Tarot deck, but they are not necessarily more important. Here’s an illustration of the relationship between major and minor arcana:The major arcana card called The Star represents the principle of hope. It symbolizes the power of hopefulness, and also that part of a person’s nature that looks beyond the present and seeks greater things.The minor arcana card Nine of Cups also deals with hopefulness — but in another way, representing the fulfillment of actual, specific wishes a person may have. A second minor arcana card, the Seven of Cups, is concerned with hopefulness too — but, this time, in the form of imagined possibilities, desires, ideas.All three of those cards deal with the same quality, but the major arcana card does so on the level of character and destiny, while the minor arcana cards operate on the level of circumstance and behavior. Since our lives are shaped by the interaction of these two levels — the level of impersonal forces and the level of personal choices — one of the greatest strengths of the Tarot deck is the fact that it can not only represent both levels but also illustrate their interaction. Of course, this two-part scheme still doesn’t provide a complete operational picture of human life. There remains a third shaping element: the influence of other people as they act out their own combinations of character and circumstance. Here again, the two parts of the deck work together. Tarot uses the court cards to portray other people in their mundane or everyday aspects, while there are trump cards (The Magician, The Hermit, or The Hanged Man, for example) to represent the archetypal energies that other people bring into a situation.To Summarize . . .The Tarot provides a storehouse of images from which can be assembled a symbolic representation of almost any human story — from Beowulf, Hamlet or Cinderella, right through to one’s own life. These images are organized by two primary structures — the major and minor ananas; one of these structures, the minor arcana, has four “superstructures” (the suits) and three “substructures” — the court, the pips, and the aces. The major arcana cards express aspects of fate and character, while the minor arcana cards depict matters of circumstance and behavior. People are symbolized by the court cards, mundane events by the pip cards, and spheres of influence by the aces. If you actually wanted to use the Tarot to symbolize Hamlet, for example, the structures outlined above would help you find what you need quickly, much as you might use the index in a reference book . . .First you would analyze the major forces at work in the story — violence, love, loyalty, indecision — and select cards from the major arcana to represent them.Then you could look among the court cards for representations of the characters, and among the pip cards for the events (Ophelia’s death, the stabbing of Polonius, the visit to the graveyard, and so on).And soon, presto! Hamlet in pictures.Which is all well and good when you already know the story. But of course, the purpose of the Tarot isn’t to create shorthand versions of famous plays. What, then, is the “purpose” — the significance — of the Tarot? The answer to that question is as complex as the Tarot itself, for the Tarot takes many forms, and lends itself to many uses. The cards may very well record secret knowledge; they may provide a process for attaining higher consciousness; they may hold magical powers. They may do all these things … and more.