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1950's Fortune Telling Cake Set

A Vintage Fortune Telling Cake Set

This set of fortune telling charms from 1957 were meant to be distributed inside cake batter or placed in a cake after it is baked or bought. When someone gets a certain charm, they look at the card for its meaning.

Four of the ten charms - a plane, 
horse race, fish and bird cage.

Click to enlarge and see all the charms.

Does my spouse really love me?

Wondering if My Husband Still Loves Me asks:
I want to know if my husband really loves me. We have been married for 23 years and he does not show me very much attention any more. We talk about the children, but nothing else. Does he love me?
Dear Wondering About His Love:

You were a beautiful little girl. I see you in a white lace dress, shy with your eyes looking down, dreaming of the future.

You've grown up to be an assertive, confident woman. Your soul is simple, and I mean that in a good way - simple in expressing what's at the heart of you, and what's in your heart.

When you were young, you imagined your future. Remember? Now you are older and you are imagining your future again, and you wonder about the present.

Is your husband's love true? Is he actually in love with you? Are the both of you truly in love and loving with each other?

It's been a long time since you remember, and when you recall and look back at the past, at the times when you recall yourself remembering your future, you think: is this true, real, and right?

Let me tell you a story that's true:
One time, my friend Linda told me that your eyes can only see if they are moving. Your eyes were designed so that they must move in tiny little motions whenever they look at something. If they did not flutter, vibrate, or ripple when they looked, they would not work. When you gaze at another, the other person would slowly become transparent, vanish, and fade as if they no longer existed.
You and your husband are vanishing from each other.

Your eyes do not see him absolutely, and his eyes do not see you fully.

Soon you will be ghosts, and your love will be a love for the ghosts of the past, and you will say to yourself:
"I love you less than yesterday, and even less tomorrow."
I sense your husband feels a similar way, not exactly as you, not as tenderly and perceptive as you, but he cannot see you, or hear you, or feel you as near as he used to.

Your husband loves you.

And you love him, and yes you would love him as a ghost, and yes you will love him when he passes from you.

And today you will open your eyes to see his love for you.

You are energetic, hard-working, and active with your eyes and soul. You will fall asleep and wake up and look at him and you know you will see part of him for the first time, a part of him that you imagined as a child in your white dress, and you will love him for who he is, and this first step you take will walk you closer to knowing how much he loves you.

My friend Linda also told me another wise story:
"My friend was having trouble with her marriage. She was angry at her husband. She went to church during the middle of the day and asked her priest: "How can I get over this white-hot anger?" And he told her: "It's easy to love him when he does everything right, isn't it? Doesn't everyone do that? It's much more work to love him when he does something wrong..."

Before she left her church, she lit a candle, and as the flame burned, the church was instantly filled with a bright light. She was amazed. A fierce rainstorm was raging outside, and the light was lightning that brightened the church at the same time as her candle. And despite what others said, she took it as a sign, and even though my friend decided she wasn't perfect, she decided to be as perfect as she could be, and that night she had a dream."
"What was her dream? I asked.

"She could not remember," Linda said, "but when she opened her eyes the next day, at first she thought she was blind, but it was because everything looked different."

Casting a shadow to see a future husband

A detail of the painting "Fortune-Telling on 
Christmastide", by Ukrainian artist 
Mykola Pymonenko.

In this painting from 1888, two Russian girls examine shadows cast by a candle, hoping to see an image of their future husbands. This type of fortune-telling was traditionally performed around Christmas.

When you view the entire painting, you'll see that the shadow of at least one handsome husband does appear - right behind them.

(Click to get a better view.)

Divorced and looking for true love

Wary of Looking for Love asks:
I am a divorced woman in my 40s and I want to find someone to share the rest of my life with. But I've heard so many horror stories about the dating world. What do I have to watch out for while I'm looking for someone to love?
Dear Wary,

You are right to be concerned. There are so many stories out there about men you could love but who take control in a way that would not benefit you.

I can tell you're a sensitive woman who loves God. You would never be one to blame God for your troubles, but like Job in the Bible, you do not always have to approve of what happens to you!

I know you are a strong woman, stronger than you realize, even though you may have told yourself deep down that you are not so powerful, because you look at what's happened, and some part of you says it's all your fault.

Your fault is merely your past loss of innocence. Your fault is merely being part of the fall that snags us all.

Others have convinced you - for their purposes - that you have no control or willpower of your own, that you are not an assertive child of God, that you have no determination to change into the most perfect image of God that you can be.

As you evolve into the romantic, godlike, loving person you are, listen to your inner voice, your voice that's blessed, your intuitive voice, your voice within that tells you to step back and see the godlike spirit within others, and to slow down your heart just a little bit, so it beats ever so slower and is quiet and you can hear your voice.

It says what you know is true, and it asks you to breath a bit.

(And yes it knows about your trouble with that man, the one without a solution.)

Let me tell you: I read a story about a woman who kept meeting men and none of them was right. She was concerned because it was taking her valuable time and energy and it was like a job to her and she wanted to get the job done right now.

And her best friend asked her why she scurried around so, and she said, "I'm afraid I'll never find the right one." And her friend was wise - everyone has a friend like that we never listen to completely - and she said, "You know, if you're looking for a man while you're afraid, your man you're looking for will not see you when you're brave, confident and full of love. He'll only see you when you're not brave, not confident and not full of love."

And her friend stopped and thought a bit.

I can see you finding someone to spend the rest of your life with. How could a beautiful woman like you not attract a man who wants to love you?

Another story I heard was from a woman who was the head of her church, who counseled souls all day and night, who saw God's spirit in everyone, who gave out her wisdom... and a man lied to her about love and stole $13,000.

And the expert in that story said that others could learn from her story.

And the woman in the other story who had fear gained bravery to be herself.

And the woman in the first story gained when she met her handsome detective...

In the real world, do this:
  1. Meet a person for real, in public.
  2. Never give your dates money or share financial information.
  3. Meet the person's family.
  4. Listen to your inner voice. 
(And read this to yourself once a day - you may skip a few days, of course - as your job for 13 days.)

The Golden Wheel Fortune Teller

This is a detail from a vintage hand-colored illustration 
in "Fontaine's Golden Wheel Dream Book and 
Fortune-Teller", written in 1862.

The book explained various ways of answering questions about the future using cards, dice, dominoes, palmistry, tea leaves, coffee grounds and more. To use this diagram, you turned over the page and pricked the paper at random with a pin, and if it poked through a number, you consulted a numbered chart which told your fortune.

(Click to enlarge)

Read the entire book yourself, for free: The golden wheel dream-book and fortune-teller : being the most complete work on fortune-telling and interpreting dreams ever printed, containing an alphabetical list of dreams, with their interpretation, and the lucky numbers they signify; also explaining how to tell fortunes by the mysterious golden wheel... (1862), The Internet Archive>>

How can I help my warrior husband?

Warrior's Wife asks:
After my husband returned from his tour in Afghanistan he has been mostly silent about what went on there. But he's withdrawn and moody and sometimes he throws and breaks things. He's never violent towards me or our son, and after he gets angry he leaves and comes back okay. But even when he smiles he never seems truly happy. What can I do to help him?
Dear Warrior's Wife:

You know your husband well, and you know he's wounded even if he has no physical scars.

How would you deal with nerve damage that might cause you to grimace in pain and throw your arm about wildly? You would contact doctors and experts who know about nerve damage to see what they could do to help you.

What else would you do? What else do others do? Smart people will find others who had the same wounds and ask them: "What did you do to help yourself?"

They would contact families and ask them: "What did you do? How did you - and how do you - cope?"

And there are many resources to help families and you. (There's one from the United States Department of Veteran Affairs, HERE.)

I know your husband loves you and he's in pain. You may feel he feels like less of a man and more like a monster. He might even tell you "I'm a monster", and you know he isn't and yet... and yet you can't convince him he's not.

That's because he feels like a freak, a demon, a savage.

You know, that's what he "feels." And you can't stop him from feeling what he feels, even if it's not true.

Let's say you put your hand on a hot stove for too long and you burn yourself and now you have a burn. How do you know? The evidence is there. Your hand is rapidly swelling, getting red. Others can see your hand. And your burn is painful.

Can someone seeing another person with a burn on their hand say: "Hey, buddy, stop feeling your pain!"

Even if they love you they can't tell you to stop feeling.

You have to administer to your wound and put on medicine to cool it down and it takes a little time... and gradually you feel it less and less as the nerves settle down, and you apply soothing medicine, and your bandages come off and now your hand is better (even if you always remember that time you touched the stove.)

Maybe your husband feels like a "demon." How to get rid of demons? You will find rituals, ceremonies and practices that allow you to help him bring joy inside his life, to slowly push out the bad spirit and replace it with good. And yet there will be no spiritual "magical" cure, or if there is some divine magic, it is long-term supernatural magic that you may find to cure him. And you know any sacred magic will only work one day at a time, and it takes time.

Your husband may feel he was not successful at what he should have done, or that he could have done more than he did. True, maybe he was not as successful as he wanted... or maybe he could have done more... or maybe he did as much as he could do and yet he wanted to push himself even more... Isn't he a warrior? And don't all good warriors always want to do more? And you know it's silly for you to try to convince warriors like him that they shouldn't have worked harder. You know him.

Your husband has memories of those who were lost, and he will never forget them. How can you help him to honor their memory, and keep them alive with honor inside himself? When he regains more and more strength, what else can you both do as a tribute, to elevate and to recognize what they have sacrificed?

I am also obliged to tell you to go to your counseling and see your therapist and get to your veteran programs... and you already know all that, don't you? And you're smart enough to know what else you have to do.