Nevine El-Aref tries to listen to secret murmurs by reading the Tarot and practising Reiki Having a Tarot reading or practising Reiki is not my cup of tea. Yet I can't deny that it offered positive results to a friend of mine who was going through a period of deep depression and mood swings. So I have been questioning my attitude, and I now believe that Tarot readings and Reiki -- the transfer of spiritual energy -- might just work. In the densely-populated area of Downtown Cairo, hemmed in by historical sites, inside a small apartment on the sixth floor of an old building, lives Reiki practitioner Rawya El-Sabahi. Her frequent visits to ancient Egyptian sites and monuments allow her to explore her inner senses, because El-Sabahi possesses an exceptional talent. I ring the doorbell. For a few moments I want to turn and run, but then I hear from inside the apartment the tones of a voice that is at once soft, warm and cheerful, and all my trepidation vanishes. Weak rays of sun cast a dim light into the living room where we sit amidst a collection of replica pyramids of various colours and materials. A huge tapestry embroidered with the face of Queen Nefertiti, wife of the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhnaten, covers one wall. On the floor in the far end corner of the room lies a tortoiseshell cat, silently regarding us. "I really love her. She is my favourite queen," El-Sabahi says as I admire the Nefertiti tapestry. "I feel that we are related somehow to each other," she adds with a beautiful, coquettish smile. El-Sabahi is a brunette, of medium height, with a slight gap between her top front teeth and foliage painted on her fingernails in red henna. While she is shuffling her ancient Egyptian- painted Tarot cards I realise that her face is very familiar. I try to think where I might I have seen her before, but I cannot remember. The Tarot is a pack of cards, most commonly numbering 78. It was used in Mamluk Egypt, and it may have been from here that it entered Europe in the late 14th century. There are four suits of 14 cards each known as the Lesser Arcana: staves, cups, swords and pentacles; and 22 other cards, one of which is the Fool while the rest make up the Greater Arcana or higher cards. At first Tarot packs were used for card games, and by the mid-15th century their use was widespread in Europe. They began to be used for divination in the late 18th century, and up to the present day the Tarot is used by mystics and occultists in attempts to learn an indication or a prediction of the future or as a map for a mental or spiritual path. The cards have been traced by some occult writers to ancient Egypt or the Kabbalah, but there is no firm evidence of such origins or of the use of Tarot cards for divination before the 18th century. One theory relates the name "Tarot" to the Taro River in northern Italy. Other writers believe that it comes from one or other of the Arabic words turuq (pathways), taraka ( abandon) or tarh (deduction). There is a reference to the use of playing cards for divination in as early as 1540 in a book entitled The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forli, but it is not until the manuscripts The Square of Sevens and Pratesi Cartomancer appeared in 1735 and 1750 respectively that there is documentation of rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards of the Tarot as well as a system for laying out the cards. The four suits in the Tarot's Lesser Arcana correspond to the suits of conventional playing cards. Each of these suits has cards numbering from ace to 10 and four face cards. The Greater Arcana has 21 trump cards: the magician, the priestess, the empress, the emperor, the hierophant, the lovers, the chariot, strength, the hermit, the wheel of fortune, justice, the hanged man, death, temperance, the devil, the tower, the star, the moon, the sun, judgement and the world. Depending on the game the odd man out, the Fool, may act as the top trump or may be played to avoid following suit. The Ancient Egyptian Tarot is a Golden Dawn- based design that makes full use of the Egyptian milieu in which its images are set. As I sorted through the colourful and beautifully- illustrated Tarot card, El-Sabahi started to tell me about the major incidents that have occurred in my life. I was really shocked, because everything she said was true. Such a feat raised my journalist's curiosity, so I asked her how she got her talent. "Coincidence, just coincidence," she replied. "But it has certainly played a major role in forming my career." El-Sabahi says that her ability to read the Tarot came purely by chance. She tried reading it as a joke at a friend's party. She took the Tarot cards chosen by her French colleague and started telling her the clichés repeated by all fortune tellers, such as "You will travel; God will help you to handle your life," and things of that sort. While she gazed at the cards, however, El-Sabahi felt that she had a direct connection with her colleague's spirit, and she began to analyse her true personality through her chosen cards. Every card said something. The conversation went from being just a joke to a concrete and serious analysis. El-Sabahi also told her colleague about things and events that had taken place in her life. "Every time I read the Tarot to anyone, I feel this unexpected soul connection," she says. "I really don't know the name and the meaning of every card, such as the devil, the fool, the magician and so on, since I'm not such an expert. I am only an amateur who delves into the soul of the other person and analyses his or her personality through the shapes and colours of their chosen cards." "She really knows a lot," says Mona Mohsen, an executive secretary at a well-known stock company who believes firmly in El-Sabahi's ability. Mohsen told Al-Ahram Weekly that she was in a bad condition after a failed love affair when she first met El-Sabahi. That was two years ago. "She read the cards for me and told me everything that had happened," Mohsen said. "El-Sabahi behaved like a psychiatrist and started me on a course of Reiki which has made me more able to process life." "My passion for healing people who are suffering is behind my being a Reiki practitioner," El-Sabahi says. "My mother passed away in my arms when I was 16 years old, and I asked God to give me a means of healing people and eliminating their suffering." Several years after her mother's death she passed through three levels of training in Australia at the Faculty of Human Universal Energy, Academy of Human Universal Energy and Spirituality (HUESA), emerging as a fully-fledged Reiki practitioner. Reiki is a spiritual practice that developed in 1922 by a Japanese Buddhist, Mikao Usui. It uses a technique commonly called palm healing as a form of complementary and alternative medicine, and is sometimes classified as Oriental medicine by some professional bodies. Through the use of this technique, practitioners believe that they are transferring healing energy through the palms of their hands. El-Sabahi told the Weekly that at the first level of the training course she learnt hand placement positions on the parts of the recipient's body that are thought to be most conducive to the process in a whole body treatment. On completing this level a Reiki practitioner can then treat him or herself and others. In the second level the student learns the use of a number of symbols that are said to enhance the strength and distance over which Reiki can be exerted. This involves the use of symbols to form a temporary connection between the practitioner and the recipient, regardless of location and time, and allows the Reiki energy to flow. "It can be sent from a very far distance," El-Sabahi says. In the third level the Reiki practitioner becomes a master of the art. Reiki works in conjunction with meridian energy lines and chakras through the use of the hand-positions, which correspond to the seven major chakras on the body. These chakras are the crown, the third eye, the throat, the heart, the solar plexus, the sacral and the base-root chakras. These hand-positions are used both on the front and back of the body, and can include specific areas. The treatment proceeds with the practitioner using a non-contact technique where the hands are held in various positions a few centimetres away from the recipient's body. The hands are usually kept in a position for three to five minutes before moving to the next position. The hand positions usually give a general coverage of the head, the front and back of the torso, the knees, and feet. "Between 12 and 20 positions are used, with the whole treatment lasting for 45 minutes," El-Sabahi says. During the treatment she always recites versus from the holy Quran, while in the background is soft candlelight, the sound of light music and the scent of burning incense. The client often feels a warm or tingling sensation in the area being treated. A state of deep relaxation, combined with a general feeling of well-being, is usually the most noticeable and immediate effect of the treatment, although emotional release can also occur. "As a practitioner I always feel tired afterwards because I absorb the negative energy from the client and replace it with my positive energy. This negative energy will probably affect my mood, which is why I always meditate to recharge myself with energy. "The places that have the highest rates of energy are the Giza Pyramids, Saqqara and Dahshour, but my favourite is Saqqara," El-Sabahi says. Every week she pays a visit to the Djoser Pyramid at Saqqara. "I recharge my energy so as to get on with my life and my willingness to heal people," she says.
