Card game meetings and conversations about a magical side of life were a common thing, something that, from my childhood perspective, was very natural. I believe that the environment had an enormous influence on who I am today and how I perceive another man. My mother – Helena – used to be a fortune-teller. Although she performed her profession for over 30 years with a lot of commitment, making all our numerous visitors happy, it was not actually her who cast an esoteric spell on our family. In the radio cycle „Rozmowy przy Tarocie” (Talks at Tarot) I told about the reasons of my relatives for being associated with fortune telling. I would not like to repeat myself, but I will just add the fact that I learnt about the woman-fortune tellers living in my great-grandparents’ block of flats from family stories. However, the photographs and cards that those fortune tellers gave my grandmother as a present, have been accompanying me to the present. They constitute a proof of those, up to a certain point beautiful, and then only turbulent years.
As a child I could not see the point in telling your fortune from cards. It was not even much of my interest. I loved playing cards themselves, however. I used to make constructions out of them, and I assume I was a master of that art.
As a serious, for my age, young man I started reading a lot about reading the cards and fortune telling. I asked more questions, but most of all practiced, which I keep doing despite years of practicing. I happened to tell somebody’s fortune on the phone. I read one’s fortune from cards in the Old Town cafés, during circumstance meetings, I attended together with my mother. A few more years passed. Fate decided for me to read one’s fortune from cards in replacement for my mother who had passed away. I have got an impression it was a breakthrough for me – both in private and fortune-telling life. From that moment her Clients visited me from time to time. That did not make my work easier at all. Quite the opposite, I felt self-conscious. In a way I had to try hard in a double way to deserve their trust. Though it seems to me it happened yesterday – a long time has passed since that time.
I keep telling fortune, foretelling the future, I go back to the past in order to understand the present. Those of you who know me, know perfectly well that I do not divide people into famous and normal ones, because I think that in the face of problems each of us is equally helpless. While telling somebody’s fortune, I deal with apparently happy and truly desperate people who seek for some clue from cards, a helpful hand and conversation. Each of them was equipped with good and bad experiences accumulated by fate. And though you might think I have already heard all the possible questions, which a desperate or happy person can ask, and any other questions may only irritate me, then I would like to assure you that my patience is inexhaustible. And the above mentioned questions, though they might seem all the same, are always different, just as their authors’ lives are.
Does all the above make me a competent tarot reader? Does it mean I am exceptional? I think it does not! Nevertheless, I can afford to say I am a responsible and trustworthy person who performs his profession of a fortune teller and tarot reader in an honest way. As the present reality shows, it is extremely important to be trusted with somebody’s secrets.
I would also like to add that I am a fortune teller from a slightly different generation than fortune tellers gaining popularity owing to foretelling on social media. Although life is going on and requires from us, even from senior fortune tellers, flexibility, I am not going to change anything in that matter. I do not like following fashions blindly. In my opinion, the success of a fortune teller, is not about making a so called spectacular career. The success means that the job of a fortune teller, though performed in privacy, is recognized, and a fortune teller is remembered for that reason.
Perhaps, many of you have been keeping in touch with me for a dozen years or so because I am independent and I notice things that seem to be significant? Maybe that is why you keep calling me: a tarot reader with a soul? I do not dare answer the above questions…