Renaissance. A rather splendid word, meaning rebirth.
Some centuries ago, in Florence, a great many curious people began looking afresh at a world they had been assured was settled. Old questions were reopened and new possibilities imagined, usually to the considerable inconvenience of the established order.
We understand the appeal. We send our young people to Florence in the hope of polish, and now and then receive them back with opinions.
Perhaps a little Renaissance is available to each of us.
Over a lifetime, thoughts become habits.
Habits become assumptions.
Assumptions become rules.
And the rules, quite naturally, begin to pour into the only mould to hand: the one labelled This Is Who I Am. There, given time, they set like cement.
Nobody does this on purpose. It is simply what becomes of a mind in daily use.
But it is about now that you may hear yourself say, alone in your thoughts or over tea with friends:
I don’t know what to do, I feel stuck.
What if the cement is not quite as permanent as it looks?
A friend has suggested a visit to a rather well-known psychic in Chelsea, where the artists live and no one raises an eyebrow. She reads the tarot.
Absolute nonsense, you say.
A perfectly respectable view, your friend allows. But have you ever had a reading?
Good heavens, no. I don’t believe in such things.
Then, says your friend, you have an excellent reason to go.
Not because the cards foretell your future, nor because you must believe a word of it. Simply for the experience, and the chance of an idea you had not previously entertained.
Your friend proffers you a card. You take it.
The following week, you are standing outside the psychic’s doorway. You go in.
A table beneath a velvet shawl. A lamp turned low. A woman of unhurried manner, a very large emerald upon one finger, and a spread of beautifully painted cards.
You may leave entirely unconvinced. But you will have stepped outside a belief that, until then, decided what you would and would not consider.
A little flexibility, practised somewhere inconsequential, may prove surprisingly useful somewhere that matters rather more.
There are, of course, countless ways to enquire. A conversation. A journey. A book. Something unfamiliar, or something entirely familiar, seen from the other side of the room.
No prescribed route. No correct method. No particular destination.
What works wonders for one person will do nothing whatever for another. And that is rather the point.
The Reader, meanwhile, has been waiting.
She lays one last card at the centre of the cloth. A doorway, standing open. Beyond it, a warm light, and nothing more specific than that. It appears in no deck you have seen. She places her finger on the card.
You stand at a threshold. The choice is yours, the Reader says.
She offers no prediction. No instructions. Not so much as a recommendation.
She simply looks across the table. At you.
The choice, after all, was never hers to make.
Follow your nose! 👃🏻
