1.  What topic or focus would enrich, support, or benefit you the most in the form of a single 90-minute teleseminar in July or August of this year?

2.  What topic or focus would enrich, support, or benefit you the most in the form of a multi-session weekly series (six to eight sessions) in the Autumn of this year (in the northern hemisphere)?

Please really feel into these questions and listen to your body’s inner guidance, then respond in the Comments.  Thank you in advance for your participation in this!

Don’t be so vain

as to assume that the dark one

is not a part of

your evolution;

neither goodness nor freedom

exists in a vacuum.

Shaded dimensions of self

invite refreshment

from the scalding light of

awakening,

respite from

perfection.

This structure: temple or prison?

Choose.

This boundary: saviour or oppressor?

Choose.

This responsibility: commitment or burden?

Choose.

This container: temenos or muzzle?

Choose.

Image: Devil from the Motherpeace Tarot by Karen Vogel and Vicki Noble.

   A couple of days ago, someone on Facebook posted a link to The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Australian author Bronnie Ware.  These top five regrets inspired a fruitful online conversation and prompted me to create a five-card tarot layout to help us live a life that’s less regret-filled and more fulfilling and authentic.  You can use tarot cards, runes, crone stones, soul cards, gifting bones, or any other divinatory insight tool.  You can also use the five layout questions as prompts for journal writing or for verbal sharing in a circle-based conversation group.  If desired, you can preface the entire spread with a specific time frame — e.g. “Throughout the coming year…” or “This season…” — or you can let your insights resonate for a lifetime, your choice.

1     2     3     4     5

1. How can I remain true to myself?
2. How can I remember to set work aside for other important things?
3. How can I develop and maintain the courage to express my feelings?
4. How can I remember to stay in touch with people whom I love and value?
5. How can I demonstrate my choice to be happy?

Please try out this spread and let us know what comes up for you, or feel free to have a session with me to help you explore these questions.  I hope that you’re happily surprised and nourished by Life’s responses!

]]> http://jameswells.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/from-regret-to-authentic-life-a-tarot-spread/feed/ 16 jameswells Bronnie's book http://jameswells.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/boundaries-according-to-the-tarot-and-me/ http://jameswells.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/boundaries-according-to-the-tarot-and-me/#comments Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:28:24 +0000 jameswells http://jameswells.wordpress.com/?p=2680 Continue reading →]]> I belong to several Facebook groups that are for professional tarot practitioners.  In one group, the topic of good boundaries recently came up.  I suggested that we post those we have for ourselves with regard to our tarot work and those we have for others with regard to our tarot work.  Another member suggested that in addition to stating the boundaries from our own perspectives, it might be interesting to add the tarot’s viewpoint.  Here is my own list.

First, from my own perspective:

BOUNDARIES FOR MYSELF. 

I will do no more than three hours of client work on any given day.

In all of the tarot consultations I offer, I will stick with my belief that we are beings of choice, not beings of fate, and will use language that is consonant with that belief.

For every card we explore, I will always return the client and myself back to the question or spread position so that we remain within the intention(s) we have set.

BOUNDARIES FOR OTHERS. 

Pre-payment secures an appointment with me.

Sending me your responses to the intake questions that I send to you secures an appointment with me.

The session begins at the agreed-upon time, so please be on time when you call, skype, or show up because we’ll end at the appointed end time.

Second, using the tarot:

BOUNDARIES FOR MYSELF. 

10 of Swords, reversed: I will put my inner mental chatter on hold so that I can pay attention to the client.

Queen of Swords, upright: I will communicate with the client in a competent manner, employing my most mature language.

Tower, reversed: In each session, I am simply a catalyst for inner change.

BOUNDARIES FOR OTHERS. 

5 of Wands, reversed: Please come into the session willing to change your view of who you are.

Fool, reversed: If you’re going to put your trust in anything, let it be in yourself and your Greater Power.

King of Cups, reversed: Please leave behind the notion that this is a “psychic reading”.

who am i?

oracle being!

mature, fully myself

anything else would be an insult;

nothing but the best possible human

offers truth.

from mouth, from body is flung forth

prophecy, revelation

of what’s life-giving and what’s not

especially in

tender precarious times like these.

rigorous self-evolution

yields a beauty-filled culture.

Readers Studio always begins with a foundation reading, a 20-minute tarot reading offered to a partner, then from the same partner.  One records the cards and what came up during the reading so it can be revisited on Sunday.  I was paired with a pleasant young woman from Australia named Jennifer.  She used the Rider-Waite-Smith deck for my reading and I used the Gran Tarot Esoterico for hers.  Both of us felt satisfied with what came through in our mini sessions.

The first key presenter of the conference was Nancy Antenucci from the Twin Cities, MN area.  Nancy brought in body awareness and using different senses (see with your ears, listen with your eyes…), being a witness to the sitter, and based a lot of her presentation on XXI, the World card.  What I took from her session was that multiple factors contribute to a reading, and we can give ourselves permission to open ourselves to these factors, allowing them to dance in the mandorla that is the tarot experience.  Ambiguity can be a gift that allows us to shed being “right” so that we can be “real” with ourselves and querents.  There’s no need to fix, just receive in a way that helps the client to become a better human.  I enjoyed the sense of creativity and embodiment that Nancy brought.

Dallas TX’s Tom Schick’s presentation allowed us to hear the story of Tom’s journey to the tarot through a variety of life experiences and trainings.  His centred presence held my attention and was an excellent model for how a tarot practitioner can be when working with either individuals or groups.  The grounding and centring activity that we did in this workshop was simple and deep, taking us (in the imagination) through our roots to a safe cave where a guide resides.  A ball of energy — merging both earth and cosmos — pulsed in our hearts.  I appreciated Tom’s phrase, “Belief is unnecessary!  But suspension of disbelief is helpful.”  Another useful statement was, “Once one has used the tarot to perceive, one can use the tarot to shape life/reality.”  Each small group offered perceptions to their tablemates about their simple two-card spreads — the layout positions were, “What I do perceive that can help me” and “My barrier to an important perception”.  Our table was full of excellent observations about the cards.  Tom’s session had a steady, grounded pulse that nourished and centred us.

Ferol Humphrey (also of Dallas, TX) took us through an energised workshop of getting our inner editor out of the way as we turned over cards and blurted what came to us, learning to trust more fully what wants to come forth in the moment.  She wove a safe and efficient container into which the unexpected could flow.  Some of her open sentence blurts included: “Right now, I ____”; “I accept ____, I reject ____”; “You may embrace ____”: “My love is ____, my sex is ____”; and many more that derailed our usual way of thinking about the cards.  The phrase that comes to mind when I reflect on Ferol’s presentation is “rigorous discipline that contributes to a liberating tarot encounter”.

On Saturday night, after our banquet, I offered a short workshop called Tarot as a Spiritual Practice to a group of 13 people.  We used visio divina (a form of meditation or contemplation of a sacred image), simple poetry writing, and body postures/movements to take us where we needed to go with regard to our cards.  I gave people a series of questions based on the last seven tarot trumps to use as the basis for journal writing, a tarot reading, group discussion, or therapy sessions.  The participants engaged fully and some real “aha” moments took place.  Thank you to all who attended!

On Sunday, we revisited our foundation readings with our original partners and added any bits of what we had learned or experienced over the course of the weekend to what we did before.  This certainly made a difference to Jennifer and me as we came back to the cards we drew and the questions we posed.

Before lunch, seven topic tables were set up, each hosted by a different person, for a Tarot Incubation Process.  If people wanted to explore and hold conversations around tarot as a business, creating their own deck, writing a tarot book, broadcasting a tarot-themed radio show, using their laptop as a “home base” for creative soul experiences, combining tarot and coaching, or learning more about historic tarot decks, there was a table for them.  People came away with great ideas to take with them into the world and implement in order to become more like the tarot practitioner they want to be.  Fantastic!

My overall perception of this year’s Readers Studio is that it was about entering states of being that enhance the tarot experience by shifting our perceptions in a helpful manner.  Vast waves of gratitude to Ruth Ann and Wald Amberstone for hosting such a spacious, friendly, and skill-building event!

Dr. David Van Nuys’ presentation emphasised that psychology and tarot converge in the place of story, meaning, and metaphor, a place where that which is life-affirming and transformative exists.  He led us through a brief hypnotic process, then we drew cards to explore any image or concept that came to us during our relaxed state.  We were invited to reflect on what psychology might offer to the tarot community and what the tarot might offer to psychology.  I enjoyed David’s idea that working with the tarot is like dreamwork, only we say, “Let’s have a dream, right here and now on the table.”

Dr. Elinor Greenberg took us through a process in which we created our own ten-card oracle deck based on something that’s on our mind and a goal connected with that.  The pack of cards I ended up creating is called the Oracle of Authentic Purpose.  Elinor’s session was essentially about the client being hir own best oracle, drawing upon themes and meanings that are personal and personally relevant and recording them in deck form.  These cards act as visual and/or verbal reminders of our constructive goals and helpful inner and outer resources.

Dr. Art Rosengarten was unable to attend due to flu and pneumonia, so Mary K. Greer filled in for him with two days’ notice.  Brava!  Her presentation/workshop — Intuition and Transference — gave us information about a vast array of psychological concepts, particularly according to Jungian thought, in addition to tarot knowledge and intuitive processes that go into a tarot consultation.  She popped some bubbles about intuition, showing us how much of it related to transference, projection, and more.  By acting as a “midwife of the soul” rather than as a traditional “reader”, the tarot practitioner can use the psychological concepts as a means to set up conditions for the client to empower hirself.

Overall, my sense of the Tarot and Psychology Conference is that is was about discovering where tarot and psychology meet — the place of story, metaphor, projection, transference, intuition — so we can create time and space wherein the client, whether self or other, becomes hir own best oracle/guide in order to help hir feel better in our presence and to self-actualise beyond the session.

A worthwhile day.  I’m thrilled that the Tarot School will host another Tarot and Psychology Conference next year. 

More about the three-day Readers Studio that took place afterwards in a new blog post soon!

For those of you who’d like to connect more deeply with your own relationship with Earth and more deeply with those around you, feel free to play my Earth Day Tarot Circle Game.  You can read and use the guidelines for it at http://jameswells.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/earth-day-tarot-circle-game-3/

I pulled a card from the Tarot of the Crone to respond to, “What does Earth most want to tell us today?” and received the Ace of Disks.

Through this card, Gaia’s message to us this Earth day seems to be, “My body and your body are one.  What would you put into your own body?  What do you put into my body?  There’s no difference.  I gave birth to you.  I have fed and held you in my lap.  Imagine how this can be reciprocal.  Begin tangible steps to make this so.”

The simple answer — but not a glib one — is that they’re all correct.  Each person who uses the tarot has hir own rituals to help cue hirself that s/he’s entering “tarot time”.  Some readers say that having the readee mix the cards puts their energy into the deck to help with the reading, so they prefer that the other person do it.  For this same reason, other practitioners don’t let anyone else touch their cards, simply shuffling and laying them out themselves with the intention that the consultation is for the sitter who’s with them.  Some of the same people are also concerned about the transmission of germs.  There are tarot consultants who like the sense of partnership that’s symbolised by both reader and readee mixing the pack, either one after the other or even at the same time.                                 [article continues below image]

How do I deal with this?  First, I mix the cards however I feel like doing it in the moment.  Then I invite the other person to mix the cards too. I don’t tell hir how to do it, so s/he can do something as simple as slowly stir them on the tabletop, do an overhand shuffle, move them around in piles and restack them, riffle them (if it’s not an expensive deck!), or any combination of these. In my sessions, I prefer to let people experience as many of the senses as possible; touching and mixing the cards brings in the tactile sense.  It grounds them by allowing the tarot to be a bodily experience, not just a conceptual one.  The act of mixing the cards reminds a person, “Yes, you really are here.  You really are engaging in a tarot consultation and it’s OK.”  Also, there are people who are kinesthetic learners; the experience of mixing the cards helps them to remember more of the tarot encounter after the session is done.

If you’re someone who uses the tarot, I encourage you to check in with yourself about this ritual of mixing the cards.  What is your comfort level around other people touching, handling, and mixing your tarot pack?  Very comfortable?  Freaked out?  Somewhere in between?  What makes sense to you?  What doesn’t make sense to you?  Keep what’s useful, discard the rest.  It’s OK to be in charge of the reading enough to decide who does what.

Image: XIV, Temperance, from the Morgan-Greer tarot deck by Bill Greer and Lloyd Morgan.