New York Tarot Trip 2013, Part 1

On Thursday, April 25, the Tarot School hosted the first Tarot and Psychology Conference.  I was happy to be there and to partake of what was offered.

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!

Earth Day 2013 Message

Earth Day.  It seems a shame that we need to set aside one day a year to remember that we live on a planet whose systems are just right for life as we know it.  And it’s good that we set aside this day each year to honour this generous and lovely planet from which we came forth.

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.”

Who Mixes the Cards?

So you’re reading some tarot textbooks to get better at this tarot reading/consulting thing.  Every author suggests that it’s good to mix the cards before laying them out.  Whew!  They agree.  So far, so good.  Author A’s advice is, “Only you, the reader, should mix the cards and you should do it with an overhand shuffle that keeps all cards upright.”  Author B writes, “Both the reader and the readee should shuffle the cards in such a way that both upright and reversed cards will turn up.  Do this until they ‘feel done’.”  Author C tells you, “The reader cuts and riffles while the querent picks the cards from the fanned out pack”  Author D warns, “Under no circumstances should any other person touch or handle your precious tarot cards.”  Author E says, “Since it’s the querent’s session, only he or she should mix the pack.”  Uh-oh!  Who’s right?

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.

Five Years of This Blog

Today marks five years since beginning this blog.  Wow!  The fifth tarot trump is the Hierophant (or Pope or Teacher or…depending on the deck used).  Trump V, for me, can be about philosophy, teaching, learning, ethics, morals, and traditions. 

It seems appropriate then that on the fifth anniversary of this blog, an interview in which I’m teaching has appeared on the wonderful Biddy Tarot site. The topic is on of my favourites: creating spreads/maps that can make a tarot session a satisfying and empowering experience.  Brigit, who runs Biddy Tarot, is a great interviewer, a pleasant person, and a very good tarot practitioner.  She even had a couple  of people send in questions for me to turn into something that can take a client to a different place than they thought a reading might take them.  The link is immediately below.  Enjoy!

http://www.biddytarot.com/james-wells-empowering-tarot-spreads/

Consciousness, Not Salvation

The new pope recently stated that people such as tarot readers are not able to provide salvation.  This is fascinating to me for three reasons.

First, as a practitioner of tarot, I don’t offer salvation.  For me, the concept of salvation is unnecessary because, in my cosmology, there’s no enemy “out there” from whom or from which to be saved.  As a tarot consultant, I employ the tarot as a tool to encourage consciousness, awareness, and insights that can lead to constructive change.  My goal is to assist myself and others to remember, embrace and express our innate wholeness.

Second, I wonder why such a long-standing religious organisation is so unsure about the power of its deity that it feels the need to proclaim other groups, practices, and deities as invalid.  Why start yet another sacred pissing match?  There’s room enough for the many names of the Nameless One(s), space enough for the multiple faces of the Imageless One(s), so it seems unnecessary to scare people away from another person’s concept or vision of the Holy.  For many, the torah, the bible, the koran, the tao te ching, and others are texts that provide comfort and guidance.  For me, and for many people in my sphere of influence, the tarot is a text in pictures that offers comfort and guidance.

Third, the tarot emerged as a pack of cards during Europe’s early Renaissance and, as a product of its time, is full of christian symbolism.  The cards extol the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.  Several of us have heard that John Paul II possessed a copy of Anonymous’s Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism and approved of its contents.

I hope that the new pope finds it in his mind and heart to embrace the many paths to wholeness and divinity.  May we all do likewise.

Treasures from the Toronto Tarot Symposium

On March 23, we held the Toronto Tarot Symposium.  It was a gathering of 24 tarot enthusiasts.  The six presentations were varied and appropriate for people of all levels of tarot experience. 

Marilyn Shannnon shared how to employ crystals and stones with the tarot in ways that enhance the information that comes to both reader and querent.  I offered a workshop on using the structure of the tarot to map out where you are in various parts of life, where you’d like to be, and how you might get there.  Shelley Carter presented a colourful slideshow that compared the cards of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck with those of the various Marseille decks.  Monica Bodirsky came up with a tarot spread to help us explore the conditions of a past life and what we can learn from it in this lifetime.  Andrew McGregor’s session was on using tarot to predict and prepare for life’s contingencies (Plan A, Plan B, etc.).  Freda Crake guided us through a meditation in which we spent time in Malkuth, the tenth sephirah on the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

Participants were enthusiastic to discover these different ways that tarot can look, be used, and thought about.  The day concluded with a collaborative conversational process called World Café.  At the end, we harvested ideas to take forward to create tarot community, inspire more more events, make the tarot a richer part of our lives, and encourage learning.  Here’s what emerged, recorded by me in the form of open-ended questions:

• What would creating and maintaining a skilled, deep, inclusive, and self-expanding clan of tarot people in Southern Ontario entail?
• What small group experiences might be offered that contribute to the tarot clan’s sense of community?
• What larger group experiences might be offered that contribute to the tarot clan’s sense of community?
• What collaborative small and/or larger group tarot experiences might some or all of the presenters offer that contributes to that sense of community?
• How might people’s basic tarot skills be sharpened?
• How might we assist people to find themselves in the tarot, integrate it into their spiritual practice(s), and connect it to their archetypal journeys?  What role might other tools, processes, and modalities — e.g. dream exploration, astrology, numerology, non-tarot decks — play in this?
• How might we offer a symposium that gives people longer sessions/presentations/workshops to deepen their understanding while keeping the symposium affordable, time-efficient, and enjoyable?  What might “deepening” actually mean or look like at such a gathering?
• What space(s) would allow presenters and participants to communicate well, contribute to all feeling nurtured, and be easy to access?
• How can we ensure that the experiences we offer include people of many levels of tarot experience while keeping a diverse range of people authentically engaged?
• What do we who offer tarot experiences on a professional basis need?  How can we meet the needs/requests of tarot explorers while growing and thriving in ways that really feed *us*?
• How can we balance our desire to present something innovative and creative with the needs of those who attend an event?  If we could do our most creative, innovative tarot presentations without censoring them, what would look like, and who would our true audience(s) be?

Even More Good Books

Here are some words about three books I’ve been reading that have been helpful or meaningful to me in some way.  May they enrich your life, too.

Motherpeace Tarot Guidebook (Karen Vogel).     This compact book, intended to accompany the Motherpeace tarot deck, is not only a succinct reference for the cards in that particular tarot pack, it also enriches my knowing of the cards in others.  Vogel offers good general commentary about using the tarot.  Two examples: “The cards are a useful tool for self-reflection.  They help to bring information from the deep intuitive and creative parts of ourselves and create a dialogue between our internal and external lives.” and “Fortunately the cards seem to have a way of giving useless or confused responses if we become too dependent on them.”  I’m also inspired by the author’s statement that her hard work in creating, publishing, and distributing the Motherpeace Tarot provided her with a livelihood that allowed her to move to the country and make art.  For me, this text is about tarot and much more.

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred (Mark Nepo).     This lovely text is made up of three sections: The Work of Being, The Work of Being Human, and The Work of Love.  Nepo’s stories — some his own, some others’ — teach us how to be present and compassionate Earthbeings.  Grounded spirituality is brought home to the reader through reflective pauses that the author provides.  These consist of meditations, journal questions, and table questions (conscious conversation starters) that help us apply our own life experiences to each topic.  Nepo is a poet as well as a spiritual teacher, so the prose speaks to more than the intellect.  Two excerpts:  “Simply and profoundly, things that matter are repeated as a way to bring our full attention to them, as a way to meet them.  Such naming through listening is the beginning of prayer.”  “How I love people.  I love how we root and bloom, how we twine around each other and reach for the light, how as far as we grow in the dark of the Earth is as far as we stand in the world.”  Such a generous publication for such uncertain times.

Arcana (Clara Blackwood).     This set of 22 poems is based on the Major Arcana of the tarot, particularly of four decks: Rider-Waite-Smith, Thoth, Marseille, and Arto.  Each poem is a page or less in length, yet rich with symbolism.  I can imagine myself not only reading these pieces for my own enjoyment, they would be appropriate for various kinds of ceremonies or meaningful occasions.  Here is Blackwood’s poem for the High Priestess:

Think her oblique, / like Temple pillars / subtly slanted upwards / or the north door concealed / in an old church.

She is the guardian of transparency – / keeper of worlds / we can’t talk about.

Over her a fine mesh / falls.  From certain angles / the diadem shines silver-bright.

She has eaten from the pomegranate, / danced with the Daughters of the Night.

And she is the one / who appears when your feet / stomp out the bonfire.