google news and tarot

In an attempt to keep up with current events in the Tarot world, I recently signed up for Google News Alerts. I used keywords like ‘tarot’, ‘occult’, and ‘fortune telling’. What’s been most interesting has been how few articles I receive that are actually about tarot, the occult or fortune telling. The largest numbers are probably about finance – ‘fortune’ and ‘telling’ being the keywords. You’d be amazed at how often these words appear near each other without having anything to do with divination. More disturbing, though, are the items on ‘occult’ systemic vascular disease and fecal ‘occult’ blood tests. Not pleasant reading. Articles with ‘tarot’ and ‘psychic’ in them are usually a little more on point, though not always. For instance, there’s surprising amount of press on ‘Tarot’, a rock band from Finland. Ultimately though, I think the important news does get through. When the Pakistani tarot reader, Begum Shagufta Anwar made headlines predicting a resounding defeat for President Mushareff, I heard about it immediately. When Uri Gellar’s copyright lawsuit was dropped, I was one of the first to know. And when the Miss Toronto Tourism Pageant ousted tarot reading, reiki practicing Miss Plus Canada as a judge, I was on top of the story. Looking over my last few weeks’ worth of alerts though, it appears there’s not a lot of solid news out there involving the Tarot or anything Tarotesque. That’s all right. When a message is meant to get through, it always does. Google’s there to shake things up for me, pull some articles and send them on. It’s up to me to make sense of all the words and why I might be reading them.