Yellowknife (Oct 01/04) - The noise, distractions and an uncovered wooden table prevent Patricia Sherman from giving a tarot card reading on this day.

As she lays out an 11-card Celtic Cross formation, the most popular of the hundreds of different spreads, Sherman explains the mystique of the tarot cards.

Patricia Sherman, who teaches tarot card reading, considers a three-card spread. - Alex Glancy/NNSL photo

"It is not fortune telling," she says with emphasis. "The cards do not, in any way, predict what is going to happen."

"What a reading consists of is opening up the subconscious. What you're doing is giving the client choices, giving them space to find their own way."

Sherman said she is a practising witch and tarot card instructor who teaches a course on tarot reading through the City of Yellowknife's recreational program.

She explains that tarot cards date from 15th century Italy, although some argue they originated in Egypt hundreds of years before. Sherman -- Ursula Matria is one of her witch names -- has been reading tarot cards for over 25 years and teaching for 15.

She is self-taught, having read "dozens upon dozens" of books.

There are 78 cards in a deck, divided into two sub-decks. The first is a 22-card deck known as the Major Arcana: these are the archetypes, like the hermit, emperor, high priestess and magician. The Minor Arcana, the remaining 56, are "very like a deck of cards" and are divided into four suits of 14.

Tarot involves reading both the card itself and its relationship to the others around it. Even the way in which the card is drawn, and whether it appears upside-down or not, affects the meaning.

A reader must also tap into the aura of the client, study them and analyze them as much as possible. The conditions for this include those which prevent a reading today, as well as the requirement that Sherman sits next to or at a right angle to the client.

Tarot reading generally sets out to answer one major question for the client, but as Sherman explains, the question need not be stated. Often, a reading makes no immediate sense because the person has not been forthright in their questioning. The cards respond to the pressing question, the big issue in the client's mind.

Psychic vampires

"Sometimes you get a brilliant reading and everything clicks," she says. "Other times it appears to make no sense, it's too hard, but I've had people come back to me saying it actually made sense."

Sherman says she doesn't remember anything after a reading.

The worst thing a tarot reader can face is a "psychic vampire," says Sherman, which is "someone who comes in to test you, which is the most cruel thing you can do to a reader."

Sherman said that while skeptics are in general harder to read, a psychic vampire can actually make a reader physically ill.

It's happened to her twice, although the second time she stopped the reading.

"They draw the energy out of a reader because readers are focusing so hard, concentrating so intently."

Sherman's class is full this semester, according to city program co-ordinator Alecia Callahan, who added those classes have always been very popular.

There is a waiting list for the eight-person classes, which run for two hours in seven sessions.