The promise of the cards
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The Mandarin Bangkok's Oriental Spa offers combined tarot-healing sessions
Mark Karlsson is a healer, a tarot card reader and a reiki master, but most of all he is a life coach. Whether he has the tarot deck in his hands or different-coloured stones placed strategically around the body, his job is to guide people through life. His underlying goals are to get people to accept who they are and, as a result, experience self-love.
Karlsson reckons that people today are so overwhelmed by the pressures society puts on them that they no longer listen to their inner being. We have become the “walking dead”, unable to live a real life.
“We’re told what to do by our families, by authorities, so that our passions and needs are constantly pushed away,” he says. In order to break that pattern, Karlsson says, we must “kill our parents and our masters” – not literally, of course. The way to do that is to “become who we are”, and one of the media he chooses to help people do that is the tarot cards.
Karlsson, 50, has been reading tarot cards for 25 years. At an “Entertainment with Tarot” workshop at the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, he explains that the cards are separated into the major and minor “arcanas”. The wands depicted on some of them represent the actions that we take in life, while swords stand for the mental aspects, cups symbolise the emotions, and pentacles represent business and money.
By interpreting the combinations of symbols, Karlsson gets us to listen to ourselves. The cards are one of the ways to get into the unconscious, which can reveal and guide us to the inner world of our being.
While most tarot-card readers tell the future or even sometimes offer a foreboding warning, Karlsson is reassuring and, like a professional psychotherapist, he guides you to the steps you need to take in life. He is, however, not a psychotherapist, but a life coach.
The big difference is that, while a therapist lets you find the answers to your problems by talking and looking at the minute details of your life, a life coach recommends strategic points that can help you get back on your feet.
Before my tarot-card session I briefly tell Karlsson my situation. I’m not sure about my job or what I really want to do with my life. Before he reads my cards, he gave a short lecture on meditation, which is also a requirement for all of his clients, because it helps them understand more about themselves and feel more connected to their inner world.
The first card that keeps cropping up is the two of swords. Karlsson points out the blindfolded female figure with swords crossed on her chest and the waxing moon behind. In a calm voice he explains that the card represents “the feminine part of you that needs to stay in balance and doesn’t need to know yet”. He advises me to repeat to myself frequently, “I don’t know and it’s okay.” I breathe a sigh of relief.
Another card shows a man with a sword who’s looking behind him at two other men who have dropped their swords in submission – the card of betrayal. I explain that I frequently feel I’ve let many people down.
Karlsson retains his soothing voice. “You’re doing what you need to do, and that’s what you need to continue doing. Even if people don’t appreciate what you’re doing, you must follow your own heart. As you mature it’s more and more important that you follow your heart.”
As he finishes my reading, Karlsson does a healing session, in which he claims he knows the source of the energy on earth – in the trees and oceans. As I lie on my back he puts a hand over my head, then on top of my hand resting on my heart, then my stomach, transferring positive energy that is supposed to help me open my heart and lessen my tendency to use my head too much.
At one point, when Karlsson has his hands on my stomach, I feel a tumultuous resistance, which he explains later might mean I have “daddy issues”.
Nevertheless, after the session, I feel so relaxed that when I get back home I sleep for two days straight. I ask him what he did to me, and he says I should just go with what my body says – which is great for me, because I really need that sleep.
SHUFFLE THE DECK
<< Mark Karlsson is conducting combined readings and healing sessions today through March 15 at the Mandarin Bangkok’s Oriental Spa. They cost Bt7,000 for 90 minutes.
<< A meditation session is Bt4,000, a life-force energy-healing on its own Bt5,000, and a tarot reading on its own Bt6,000, each lasting one hour. A 90-minute Quantum Chakra Balancing session costs Bt7,000.
<< Find out more at (02) 659 9000 extension 7440, or |[email protected].
