Counterparts

Since we've gotten our household as in order as seems likely any time in the near future, I've been spending some time sitting down with a Tarot deck, something I haven't done for a while. I've also been meaning to go digging up my old notes on the Tarot, wherever they have wandered off to. All this is interesting in light of Tabatha's abilities. Doing Tarot readings for a medium is never easy at best, as you can never tell quite who the people that may pop up in the reading actually are, alive or dead. However, the one plus in this is that the people that pop up are rarely random- they appear there for a purpose, usually with some information to impart. The difficulty in this is that the medium may not understand the message the deceased is conveying, and may not know who to deliver it to.
I can't say I can communicate with the dead, although I have heard tell of communication with other forms of being- there are quite a surprising number, such as dragons and giants, as well as elemental spirits. I once stumbled across an undine, and spent an interesting few minutes in conversation with it. (I don't assign gender here because I'm not sure exactly how that figures into an undine's makeup. Undines are generally the most favorably disposed towards humans, although they may appear a little deranged to our thinking. This is simply because they are not human, and do not think or act as humans do. My son has seen a house spirit, living at the time with my parents, identifying only as Tom- he (my son) claims to have seen a short human figure lean around a corner then duck back, describing him as wearing a mask looking like a skull, apparently holding it to his face in a comical manner.
But back to topic- I lack Tabatha's ability to see, but am a little more useful in other areas, mainly interpretation and reflection. I realized that just maybe we could work together, me using what I know of the Tarot to interpret and clarify the occasional messages she receives. This is no small task, however, and I do on occasion question whether I'm "that good", and can successfully extrapolate meaning from her experiences. However, Tarot relies on the inherent pattern and order of the universe, so if the dead do in fact have access to knowledge we ourselves do not, it should be a simple task of looking at the pattern.
In its mechanism, it's not unlike a Mandelbrot set- that is, an equation that produces a non-linear pattern. A linear equation produces a line- that is, something like y=(2x) would produce a line sloping upwards to the right. A Mandelbrot set does not- however, it posesses a unique set of characteristics- one, that whatever scale you look at it on, say, take 5 numbers or 5,000,000,000 for x and you will find the exact same pattern repeating itself over and over again. Want to know what it would look like across 50 million iterations? Just take a smaller set of numbers, and you'll have the pattern right there with much less work. Basically, this allows us to see on a much larger scale than the limited one we have with our eyes and minds. This is how Tarot works- it picks out that pattern and shows you what the forest looks like while you are limited to seeing the few trees in front of your eyes. Another example was driving on a road- that is, you can tell what is likely to happen if you continue along the road- that is, there's a toll booth three miles ahead, and you'll encounter it if you continue along this road. You may not be able to see three miles down the road, but if you know what the pattern is, you can make a pretty solid guess that there will be a toll booth up the road.
So all this really does is point to what's already there, but may be hidden or clouded. Can this be applied to confusing information? I believe so. The only question is, what do we do with this information? Ideally, use the Tarot with an eye to the information and important symbols we receive, and figure out why these people took the trouble to contact us in the first place. I'll have to track exactly how successful we are in this, and hopefully in so doing will be able to provide some help to those who may need it.