Tarot cards from the world

I encourage people to be open to receiving tarot cards from the world, in the form of symbolic pop-ups and coincidences. Sometimes it's rather hard not to see this playing out, as when on my morning walk I found part of a deck of Bicycle playing cards abandoned on my street just a few doors up from my house. Most of the cards were face-down, but four presented themselves as a possible reading for the day, in this order: 10 of Clubs, Queen of Diamonds, 8 of Clubs, 9 of Diamonds.
     The Clubs in a deck of playing cards correspond to the Wands of tarot; the Diamonds to Disks or Pentacles. So, in the abandoned Bicycle cards, sodden and soiled under the rain, I found myself looking into a tarot mirror and a possible story for the day. The Ten of Wands, for me, cautions about a great energy confined in too narrow a space; a creative outlet is required for all that passion and fire! The Queen of Disks, whether an aspect of me or a woman in my life, brings the grounding and earthy approach that I often require to balance my energies. The Eight of Wands, for me, is a great card for rapid and effective communication, an invitation to connect with others through all available media. The Nine of Disks, as an outcome card, can hardly be beat, suggesting a powerful forward movement into abundance and physical manifestation.
    Not a bad bunch. As I smile at myself for spending these moments reflecting on the possible tarot attributions of a few cards abandoned on the sidewalk, I am reminded of an entertaining thought expressed by Papus (Gerard Encausse) in his otherwise tedious 19th century book The Tarot of the Bohemians. Giving his own twist to the legend that tarot is originally an Egyptian book of wisdom, Papus  dreamed up the story of an Egyptian priest who, “observing that virtue is a most fragile thing, and most difficult to find, proposed to confide the scientific traditions to vice. The latter, he said, would never fail completely, and through it we are sure of a long and durable presentation of our principles." So he invented a card game to perpetuate the secret wisdom while hiding it from the understanding of the uninitiated. "The game chosen as a vice was adopted. Since then the players have transmitted this tarot from generation to generation far better than the most virtuous men ever could have done.”