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I pulled a card.
The Tower again.
Coincidence?
Probably not.
“All right,” I said aloud. Sometimes I liked to talk to the universe that way, as if somewhere deep down, I thought it might hear me better if I spoke rather than merely thought. “Clearly, I need a change. What’s your suggestion?”
Leaving the Tower card down where I’d placed it on the table, I waited for a few seconds, then withdrew another card from the deck.
The World.
Hmm. That card could mean completion, accomplishment…or it could mean travel. And if I really was going to turn tail and run, then I supposed relocation would include travel. But where?
I picked up the two cards and shuffled them back into the deck. And shuffled. And shuffled. I figured if the Tower came up again, then clearly it meant I was supposed to throw myself off one, since I didn’t have many other options.
But I didn’t pull the Tower. No, this time, my repeat card was The World.
“Okay,” I told the universe. “I get it. You think I’ve completed my run here in L.A. and it’s time to move on. Some help on exactly where would be useful.”
Another shuffle, another card pull.
The World.
All right, this was getting ridiculous. Maybe it was time to try something else.
I took a few sips of tea, then got up from the sofa and went to the cabinet where I stored my pendulum and my divining cloth, which basically looked much like a Ouija board, with the alphabet printed on it, along with “yes” and “no” and the four cardinal directions as well. Both items in hand, I walked over to the dining room table and spread the cloth out on it, then waited for a moment, the fluorite pendulum clutched in one palm in order to pick up more of its vibrations.
“Where am I going?” I asked, then dangled the pendulum over the tabletop.
It swung idly back and forth, moving from the letter “A” to the letter “Z.” And kept swinging, much longer than it should have. A to Z, Z to A.
Flummoxed, I could only stare at it. “Somewhere between A and Z?” I asked aloud. “Could you be a little more specific?”
It described one more arc between the A and the Z, and then moved, picking out a series of letters.
G-L-O-B-E.
The pendulum stopped then, hanging still above the printed mat I used for divinations.
Globe. Was that another way of saying “the World”? Was it referencing the Greater Arcana card I had pulled a few minutes earlier?
In which case, I’d come full circle and still hadn’t learned a damn thing of any use.
For a few seconds, I stood there, the pendulum dangling from my hand. Should I try asking again?
Like that had done any good when I was pulling Tarot cards.
A sudden thought popped into my mind. On a shelf in the second bedroom, the one I’d turned into an office, sat the globe I’d used when I was in grade school. Why I’d hung onto it through all those years and multiple moves, I had no idea, but maybe the universe was telling me I needed to use the globe to find the place where I’d be traveling. The theory made just about as much sense as anything else.
I set the pendulum down on the tabletop, then hurried back to my office. Yes, there was the globe, pushed all the way into the back corner, nearly obscured by a file box. Going on my tiptoes, I reached up for the globe and wrapped my fingers around the base. It teetered precipitously as I pulled it toward me, and I had to grab for it with both hands to avoid getting smacked in the head as it slipped off the edge of the shelf.
Careful,I scolded myself,or your next “journey” is going to be to the emergency room.
But since I hadn’t gotten hit on the head by the thing, I carried it over to the desk where my laptop sat. I pushed the computer out of the way to give myself more room, then set down the globe and regarded it warily for a moment. What happened next could decide my future. And yes, I knew that some people would think it was crazy to make huge, life-changing decisions based on a flip of a card or the swing of a pendulum…or a rotation of a child’s globe…but I actually thought it was crazier to ignore such things. The universe was always sending us messages; the big problem was that most people tended to ignore those signals.
I pulled in a breath and then spun the globe lightly with my hand. The old kid’s game — spin the globe and see where you’re going to go. Only in this case, it really wasn’t a game.
