By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
When Jeanne Fiorini asks you to pick a card – any card – from the deck spread out on her dining room table, it’s not because she has a trick up her sleeve. As a Tarot practitioner and teacher, Fiorini wants to help reveal your hidden truth.
    From her South Portland home, where she runs her business, TarotWorks, Fiorini likens herself to a personal coach and says Tarot is one of her tools. Many times people will come to her for a personal reading when they are feeling unhappy or confused.
    “The cards give us something tangible to talk about,” Fiorini says. “How can I be happier? How can I feel like I’m genuinely in my life? Part of my job is to encourage you in your authenticity. I don’t know what that is. I’m just here to talk to you about it. It’s not a fix-it sort of thing. It’s a chance to sit and talk about your life.”
    For some 16 years, Fiorini has been offering individual and group readings, classes and workshops centered on Tarot and self-awareness.
    Fiorini says to better understand Tarot, I have to witness a reading so I sit down at her dining room table as she unwraps the deck from a piece of cloth. Fiorini tells me to spread the 78-card deck across the surface of the table. I draw three cards and set them off to the side, face down. Fiorini flips them over to reveal “The Seven of Wands,” “The Three of Pentacles,” which happens to be upside down, and “The Star.” Before I leave, she asks me to draw another card and I pull “The Lovers.” The cards show although I have worked hard to accomplish an initial goal, how secure am I? “The Star” shows I have the ability to reinvent myself and follow my passion. Fiorini correctly suggests I have a tendency to talk myself out of taking action.
    “There really isn’t such a thing as a good card or a bad card,” Fiorini says. “There’s a bigger picture perspective there that’s important for us to see.”
    A typical Tarot deck consists of 22 major arcana cards or archetypes that represent forces beyond the personality such as the passage of time and 56 minor arcana cards or suits similar to playing cards. Each card also has a connection to one or more of the four elements: earth, wind, water and fire.
    “Cups are water and that has to do with relationships, connections, emotions, connecting to the unconscious and dreams,” Fiorini says. “Pentacles are the practical – that’s the earth element – [and represent] how grounded you are [and] how secure you feel. Wands [are] your fire element and that has to do with initiative, creativity, drive and competitiveness. Swords [are] your head and your thoughts. It’s about communications, perceptions, ideas and matters of right and wrong.”
    The origins of Tarot date back to middle Europe and the Renaissance and the cards are believed to have evolved from the 14th Century Italian card game, Tarocchi, Fiorini says. During a time of exploration in astronomy, astrology and alchemy, some believe Tarot was a system of passing information in a secret, hidden way, Fiorini says.
    The cards spread out on Fiorini’s table make up the traditional Rider-Waite Tarot deck, first published in 1910, Fiorini says. Arthur Edward Waite, a member of the occult society, Order of the Golden Dawn, designed the cards. The English society explored consciousness, personal power and the connection between the spiritual and the physical, Fiorini says.
    Many people still relate Tarot to the occult and that is a perception that is difficult to change due to people posing as practitioners and manipulating the public, Fiorini says.
    “I wouldn’t want that on my Karma,” she says.
    Fiorini says her interest in Tarot grew in part because of her background in psychology and art history. She thought about becoming a counselor and today works part-time providing elder care services. She said her approach to Tarot is like that of a counselor rather than the “fortuneteller, voodoo priestess approach.” That doesn’t mean, however, that she isn’t drawn to the magic of Tarot.
    “I also like that there isn’t any concrete way to describe how Tarot works,” she says.
    The truth Tarot helps to reveal is each individual creates his or her own reality, Fiorini says.  It’s a concept that’s hard to grasp for Westerners, who, she says, like to believe external forces shape our lives.
    “It puts a lot of responsibility on the person,” Fiorini says. “We have to start out small with that – what small part of my life can I change?”
    Fiorini says if you wake up one morning with a headache, instead of declaring the remainder of the day will be bad, why not tell yourself you’re embarking on the best day of your life?
    “The rubbing point with people who are really religious is, where does the power sit?” Fiorini says. “Is God over there (pointing out away from her body) or is God here (pointing at herself)? The interesting thing about Tarot is, as above, so below. There’s no line between heaven and earth. We’re all part of the same system.”
    Fiorini says she doesn’t talk about her work with her two brothers, who are respectively raising their children Catholic and Mormon.
    “My brothers and my relatives, except for my mom, rarely ask me about my work and I think it’s just because they don’t know how to compartmentalize this,” she says.
    Fiorini says her 26-year-old daughter, Katie, was initially reluctant to talk about her work, but now she brings her friends to the house for readings.
    “I think she’s proud of me that I do something unique and weird in a good way,” Fiorini says.
    She says her friends are good about not confusing what she does with who she is – a normal person.
    “I’m not this perfect, saintly person who doesn’t have her foibles.”
    For more information about readings and upcoming classes, visit www.tarotworks.com or email tarotworks@tarotworks.com.
Fiorini hosts open forum Tarot readings at her home on the third Thursday of every month. To attend the next reading, please register by email.