OK, so I admit it. I can't resist a good horse race. I'm tuning into the Preakness Stakes later today and I'm making my almost compulsory tarot prediction. Yeah, I know intellectually that there are too many variables for a sane tarot reader to make a prediction on a horse race, but I simply cannot resist. 

A pair of nines and a page that is kind of like an eleven. 

Nyquist (the winner of the Kentucky Derby) is again the preferred and projected winner of this race and is coming out of gate #3. A pair of nines kind of pounds that exaggerated 3 home. However, a pair of nines, as I mentioned, is kind of an exaggeration isn't it, and since there is a horse named Exaggerator coming out of gate #5 I might be inclined to choose Exaggerator over Nyquist.

The last card, the page,makes me think that Stradivari will have a decent placement in this race and give them all a run for their money.

One might ask why I am not mentioning the horse coming out of #9 Gate, Abiding Star. With 30-1 odds, I am passing on this one. I have been learning from watching these races and I am now  beginning to understand the process a little bit more. My last prediction for the Kentucky Derby was bet on the #8 Horse, Lani who had these same 30-1 odds and only placed 9th in the overall race. And I'm still kicking myself for ignoring the fact that the 1st card I drew was #13, the gate which was assigned to Nyquist . So you see, a bit of an educated guess enters into the process. Had I understood better how it all worked at that time, I might have made a more accurate prediction. (Not necessarily, but I'd like to think I would have.) (You can read about my lKentucky Derby faux pas here)

So as tempting as it is to say #9 will be the winner, I have to use some horse sense and eliminate Abiding Star completely from the winner's realm. Had The Star card appeared in this spread I might have been tempted to choose Abiding Star, but not today.

So who am I ultimately predicting as the winner?

The Nine of Cups and the Nine of Wheels, kind of says to me, rain will affect the legs.

So, drum roll please.....My prediction is Exaggerator for today's win, even though Nyquist is the projected winner. Exaggerator, might have a slight edge over Nyquist when it comes to wet weather. There is no question that Nyquist will undoubtedly place high and maybe I'm a fool for not going with Nyquist, but with those particular two nines which I interpret as water and legs, and with the exaggeration of repeating nines, my prediction is Exaggerator.

Of course if there's no rain, I'll probably be kicking myself in the arse tomorrow.

The edition of this featured deck is out-of-print but was published by Llewellyn Publications. Information on this edition may be found at: www.llewellyn.com and the new incarnation of this deck may be purchased through Galde Press.

For the past few years my husband as gotten me hooked on watching the Kentucky Derby Race with him. Last year, for the first time, I had decided to make a prediction for the winner using the cards. It is an exception to my usual habit of not doing predictive readings. Last year my prediction was spot on.

This year, despite in-my-face clues to the winner's identity, I predicted incorrectly. 

In an ironic twist, I often tell my clients that predicting the future is a lot like predicting a horse race, there are so many variables that have nothing to do with our own free will, though certainly our own actions do contribute to how many of our own life situations play out.

But in the case of a horse race, the outcome has nothing to do with any of my own actions and frankly, guessing a horse race is well, just as unreliable as guessing on a horse race!

Of course I realized this before posting my prediction and I knew I only had a 1 in 20 chance of guessing right. In fact, I was pretty certain that my guess would not be correct. But in the spirit of fun I did it anyway and now, in retrospect, I see it was a very interesting learning process about the predictive nature of tarot.

For those of you who did not read my prediction when I posted it Saturday morning, you may read it here, but I will summarize in the account that follows.

The day prior to making my 'official' predictive Kentucky Derby reading, my daughter (also a tarot reader) and I decided to make a joint effort at predicting the outcome of the race. We pulled cards simultaneously and ironically got similar feeling cards like Death and the Tower for card 1, and we both pulled an 8 for the 2nd card. We interpreted this to mean that there would be an upset, or an unusual occurrence. We tried a 2nd time because we could not agree on which horse we thought it represented, and again we both pulled an 8, I again pulled Death (#13), and my daughter pulled the Six of Wands which in her particular deck was represented by a newspaper headline with a huge news event. This time we again felt there would be an upset because of the 2nd Death card that I pulled, that would cause breaking news because of her newspaper image, and we associated it with a horse named Suddenbreakingnews. But the eight that we both pulled both times made the situation very confusing. We thought about the card meanings into the next day, but had no real inclination for who would win. In fact, it occurred to me that this year, the outcome of the race would not be mine to know.

On the morning of the races I made my final prediction with three cards from the same deck that I had success with the year before. Those cards were: #13 Death, The #1 Ace of Coins, and again, the #8 card. In that deck the #8 card was represented by Strength, not Justice as it is represented by the cards used for this photo.

Now, Death #13 was the first card I pulled and I admit, I should have paid more attention to it since I had pulled it consistently two days in a row along with the 8. But again, I interpreted the cards to illustrate Death as a sudden upset, the Ace of Coins as the winner's circle, which all had something to do with the horse out of Gate #8. And so whatever horse was in Gate #8 was where I placed my prediction.

In a kick-in-the-teeth scenario, when we tuned into the race, we saw that in the race immediately before the Kentucky Derby race, the #8 horse won. During that race, two horses and their jockeys were felled, which was quite a bit of an unexpected upset.

I knew right then and there that two horses from Gate #8 were very unlikely to win two races in a row, and the odds of another upset were slim to none. But it seemed to be some consolation when we learned that Lani, the #8 horse in the Kentucky Derby race was a bit of a bad-ass horse, so bad that in fact, that he had to be separated from the other horses so that he would not upset them or distract them before the race. It was with this in mind that I rooted for Lani coming around the stretch, hoping beyond hope that he would be the shocking winner that would upset the projected winner's winning streak.

But alas, the #13 horse, Nyquist was the undisputed winner. There was no upset at all, Nyquist was the projected winner and the race was pretty much text book perfect.

Although the information was there all along in the cards, I did not interpret it the way it played out. The #13 horse pranced to the winner's circle #1 position while the #8 horse served no other purpose than to keep me humble. 

​Gotta love tarot.

I'm not one to encourage predictive tarot, in fact, I discourage it. So it may come as a surprise to some that the one predictive challenge that I will partake in regarding tarot is the Kentucky Derby Race.

I am not a gambler so there is no money in it for me, but heck, since I'm a tarot reader I am allowing myself this small annual predictive indulgence.

I only began making tarot predictions on the race beginning last year, and to my delight, my predicted horse won. (Read last year's predictive blog article here) Granted, that particular horse was the favorite to win, but lots of horse racing experts made predictions that said that American Pharoah would not win. The winner of a horse race is really anyone's guess. Despite my enjoyment in watching the race with my husband every year, I do not follow the horses all year nor do I understand statistics or the odds making process. So my prediction process is strictly visual and based on my understanding of the cards.

My daughter came for a visit this past week and we got to talking about my success in predicting last year's winner. It's a bit daunting to make an advanced public prediction especially when its associated with a professional reputation. But one thing about being a tarot reader is that we often go out on a limb to speak what we see even if it isn't always what ends up happening.

Although my 'official' draw for this race is only done in the hours before the race, yesterday we decided to try our hand at a joint predictive pre-pre-race effort.

I used the deck I used last year, the Buckland Romani Tarot, and my daughter used the Zombie Tarot. We pulled cards together from our respective decks with uncanny results. Last year's winner was no fuss, no muss. I pulled three cards and the winner was evident to me immediately. But during our little experiment yesterday we had no such luck. In fact, there was no apparent connection to any of the horse names, at all. It was very confusing and it became clear to us that the winner was not presenting itself to us by an association to its name. However, there were a few consistent elements that popped up in everyone of the four or five draws, and that was an implied upset, and the #8. Interestingly, the number eight appeared for both of us, every time.

It clearly appeared that there would be an upset, and we both got the impression that something unusual might happen. We decided that something was up with Gate #8. Lani is the name of the horse who is slated to be running from Gate #8.  So we decided that based on our results, something unexpected might happen from Gate eight, or, that whatever horse running from Gate #8 when the race takes place is the likely winner. I don't know if horses can change gates after they are posted in the paper, but if they do, Gate #8 appears to be the gate to watch. We were more connected to the number eight this time than associating the winner by its name which is how I predicted the winner last year. The only possible winner that struck us by virtue of its name was Suddenbreakingnews who is slated to depart from the #2 gate. We thought that Suddenbreakingnews might be a viable placement winner because the accompanying cards that appeared with the eights all suggested an unexpected turn of events. The Tower, the Death card from my deck, and the Six of Wands from my daughter's Zombie deck (which has an image of a newspaper with sudden news) all suggest some type of upset. We concluded it either was a possible indictment for Suddenbreakingnews to win, or that the #8 horse would do something considered big news, like be an unexpected winner. Of course it might be a suggestion that the #8 horse might be injured or some unfortunate development might result from gate 8; but since our intent was to predict a winning outcome, we were inclined to focus on a more positive outcome.

This morning, I did my 'official' predictive Kentucky Derby drawing and using the same deck I used last year (if it ain't broke don't fix it), I pulled three cards. The cards shown in the photo for this article are the three I pulled; Death, the Ace of Bolers or Wheels (Pentacles), and the #8 arcana card which in this case is Strength. Interpreting these three cards, The Death card again suggests an upset, (as we picked up on yesterday), the Ace of Bolers (pentacles) suggests a winner's circle or at least a chance at prosperity and very clearly, the #8 made it's appearance again!

Therefore, I am inclined to believe that the cards are suggesting a win for Lani, or whatever horse runs from the 8th gate, and/or, that something surprising occurs out of Gate #8. (And maybe Suddenbreakingnews will come in the top few.)

​It is also possible that after the race these results will make sense in a way that I had not understood, but that's what going out on a limb is all about. 

Fingers and toes crossed. Good luck everyone!