Unless you’ve been holidaying on Pluto for the last decade, the name Oscar Pistorius will be almost as familiar as your own. First came his outstanding athletic success, then the shooting of Reeva Steenkamp and now a 5 year prison sentence. What is going on in the mind of Oscar Pistorius?
Obviously we know what Oscar’s immediate future is, and tarot spreads about holidays, travel, romance and career are not really relevant in this case, so I decided to choose a more psychological spread. The spread I picked is perhaps the best known tarot spread of all; The Celtic Cross. The Celtic Cross comprises of ten cards; four in a vertical line on the right, to the left of them is a single card, to the left of that are three vertical cards the middle one of which has a card placed horizontally across it, then there is another single card to the left of that.
The first card, the Eight of Wands, tells us how Oscar Pistorius is feeling now. It suggests that he is confused and without any real idea of what he should do next. He seems to float from one thing to another, and needs to ground his ideas and be much more practical.
The next card explains how he got into his present situation. In this case, the card in this position is the Page of Swords. This implies that Oscar Pistorius is an unusually arrogant man who is convinced he knows all the answers. Furthermore, he is, in many ways, immature and seeks to invoke a reaction in others. He is someone who enjoys a challenge; this can mean he achieves seemingly impossible goals, or that he likes to cause problems for himself and others when there is no need to do so.
The third card considers his conscious ambitions, and this is the King of Pentacles. Once again, we see his need to compete and be ‘King of the Castle’. He not only needs to be successful in his own mind but he wants others to admire him too. The next card, the Nine of Cups, refers to his subconscious aims and it’s more of the same, he desperately needs to be out there in the limelight enjoying his triumphs. Why on earth is he so obsessed with winning? The following card will tell us.
The Nine of Swords represents past influences in his life, and at some point he has really hit the slough of despair. He bravely worked through this but he seems to have overcompensated. The Six of Cups appears in the part of his reading dealing with future influences in his life, so it is possible that he could find himself in that dismal place he left so long ago. Oddly though, this is not so much about remorse or guilt, but a sense of ‘how could this happen to me’. Yet, the appearance of the Priestess in the sector of the spread relating to his inner resources implies he is not totally shallow and he can have moments of almost psychic insight. A dream or the resurfacing of a forgotten memory could prove very important for him soon.
Unfortunately, the appearance of the Five of Wands in the zone of the spread dealing with our interaction with others, indicates that Oscar is not going to win any friends for the time being. He is likely to be involved in a number of arguments and not all of these will be his fault. Other inmates are likely to see it as a challenge to knock him down a peg or two.
The next card, which is the Queen of Swords, tells us what his hopes and fears are. It seems to have dawned on him that life is not going to be much fun for a while, and he hopes that he has the strength to stay calm and quick-witted enough to cope with his tribulations.
The final card, The Fool, represents the outcome of Oscar Pistorius’ situation. No one could say his life has been boring so far and it has a few more twists and turns to come. If he calms down and engages in some introspection, he could find he will embark on an unexpected path but he will need to listen to advice for this to work. As we have seen, there is hope for him but he needs to work on his less charming character traits, but then again, that is true for all of us.