Homemade tarot cards help decision making (From Stroud News and Journal)

Homemade tarot cards help decision making

THE LIFE of a psychic can be an eventful affair.

Tarot reader Melanie Cheecham, 48, has seen a woman possessed by a ghost, met a clairvoyant who predicted the Zeebrugge ferry disaster and counselled a man thinking of having a sex change.

In past lives she believes she spoke Arabic, visited Tunisia and was a soldier killed in the trenches of the First World War.

Brought up as a spiritualist, Melanie now works for a charity in Stroud and in her spare time gives tarot card readings from her Thrupp home.

She lives with her partner Andrew, who runs a business in Cheltenham.

A self-taught reader, Melanie uses a home-made pack of cards to help clients with difficult decisions.

She counsels people - mostly women - through tricky periods, particularly after a major event in their lives, like the break-up of a marriage.

She asks clients to have a specific question to focus on during the hour-long sessions. Nearly all choose to talk about relationships.

She said: "I don't make people's minds up for them and I don't decide the future.

"I can give an indication of what might happen and perhaps say that someone will be standing in a certain place at a certain time, but everyone has a choice of what decision to make.

"I do it because I like hearing about people's lives and enjoy helping them." Melanie has been giving readings for 15 years.

Brought up in Devon and Cornwall, she moved to Stroud from Cheltenham a couple of years ago.

As well as using tarot at home, she conducts animal healing sessions and takes part in psychic fairs, offering short readings to members of the public.

She said: "It's like I have a little tv set in my head and I focus on that.

"I'm not a medium - my grandmother was, but I'm not.

"I believe everyone could give readings, but some people have a natural gift. "We all have an intuitive streak, but not everyone listens to it.

"Gypsies are good at fortune-telling because they don't have much education and education encourages you to think too logically.

"I don't have any gypsy blood in me, but I know there are other dimensions and I think tarot readers see into other worlds and other lives."

When clients visit Melanie at home she asks them to relax before shuffling the cards. She then picks 12 to reflect the client's life over the next 12 months.

The success of the reading depends on his or her attitude. "Some people are very withheld," said Melanie.

"Some challenge you, some people want to fight. "With others, you can't get a word in edgeways.

"The ones who want to test you are a real struggle because they refuse to open up in case they give anything away."

Melanie had 12 regular clients in Cheltenham, whom she saw about once a year. In Stroud she is still building up her customer base.

"I have only ever met one conman fortune teller," she said, "no-one would bother, because you don't make much money from it.

"It isn't full-time and you only see your clients about once a year. "Most people do it because they want to help others.

"You have a lot of responsibility and you would never discuss something medical or tell someone that they were going to have a serious illness.

"I get angry when I hear that some tarot readers have told people, for example, to leave their husbands, but haven't given them the confidence to do it.

"And I am against clairvoyant telephone lines, where people have only had a week's training."

Melanie has completed a counselling course and is very aware that people rely on her as they make big decisions about their lives.

She was once visited by a man who said he was thinking about a divorce.

"I knew there was something else on his mind," she said, "because when he walked in, I'd seen him in a dress, holding a camellia.

"He eventually admitted he was thinking about a sex change. "I told him what I'd seen.

"A while later, I got a call from someone called Camellia in Switzerland.

"He said he'd gone ahead with the operation and he was very happy - though he must have made an awful woman because he was a big man and at least six feet tall."

As people walk into the room, Melanie sometimes sees them with a spirit guide. She believes everyone has such a guide, though only a few of us are aware of them.

One of her guides is a nun, though she does not consider herself religious.

Melanie went to a Church of England school but was brought up in a strong spiritualist environment.

She knew her grandmother - who died when she was very young - had been a medium and had channelled the voices of the dead through her body.

At the age of 10 or 11, she saw a woman in Hampshire undergo this kind of transformation.

"Her face changed," Melanie said. "I can't explain it, but she did look like an old woman.

"I believe in life after death. "I was a nurse in the past, so I'm used to people dying.

"I know it's not a horrible thing and there's something else afterwards."

Melanie believes that deja vu sometimes comes about because you have been to a place in a previous life.

When she was 33, she went to Tunisia and was struck by feelings that she recognised the area.

She visited a local family and was shocked at the reaction of the grandmother to her presence.

"This big, Burba gran started talking at me in Arabic," she said.

"When I asked someone what she was saying, they told me: 'You have been here before, and you will come again'."

Melanie has since been to the country several times. She also believes that she died as a soldier in the first world war.

"I remember going over the top of the trenches," she said. "It didn't hurt because it was so quick."

Being able to see into the future can be a harrowing gift.

Melanie once met a man who predicted the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, where carrier doors were left open and many people were killed.

He phoned the company several times and told them the date, time and the name of the ship that would get into trouble - but he was treated as a prankster.

A less serious, but still upsetting, incident occurred when Melanie was asked to find a missing dog.

She knew the search would be fruitless, but the animal's owner still asked for her help. "It was horrible," she said.

"I knew it was down a rabbit hole and that it was dead." The dog's body was eventually found in a warren.

Melanie is now more likely to conduct animal healing than trying to find missing pets, which often has an unhappy ending.

She is appearing at a fete in the grounds of the Grange Nursing Home, Bristol Road, Eastington on Saturday, July 20 from 2pm.

She charges £20 for a home reading and can be contacted on 01453 763357.