Please join us for Embodied Divination!

Please join my friends and me for this deep, enjoyable journey to a more radiant, authentic personhood!

Read Full Post »

Your Evolution is Cared For Here

A few weeks ago, I crafted a Vision Statement for my tarot practice to keep me even more focused:

“I, James Wells, commit to providing tarot consultations that are so astonishingly insightful and transformational that my clients must evolve into the wise, creative, whole, and resourceful beings that their True Selves always intended them to be.”

Part of this commitment is that after your session, I will hold your intentions and goals in a circle of healing on Monday mornings to help you kick-start your fresh week in a good way.  Each Monday morning, I will light a beeswax candle and spend a few minutes envisioning your best good held in a vast circle of well-being with the Infinite Will To Good at its centre.  This practice is one way I am committed to the evolution alluded to in my Vision Statement.  Please know that even after your consultations have ended, the care continues.  

It’s an honour to work with all of you who are in my sphere of influence.  Thank you for being here!

 

Read Full Post »

Tarot or Non-Tarot? That Is the Question

Continuing our Q & A series:

” I’m interested to know what kind of questions/situations prompt you to reach for an oracle deck instead of a tarot deck. Does it vary from client to client, or do you notice a pattern?

~ SB, Sylvania, OH, U.S.A.“

(My response is below the images)

   

Thanks for your question, SB.  Non-tarot decks are reserved primarily for myself when I want to yank my thinking out of the box around personal growth or new projects.  Once in a blue moon, with a client who knows me well, I’ll employ something like the Oracle of Initiation, the Earth Deck, or the Sustain Yourself Cards for the same reason.  I also offer a programme called Divinely Artistic YOU which is a four-week series of consultations with the Oracle of Initiation for people in the arts who want to dig deeply into getting their most authentic work out there.  Most of the time, however, the tarot is what I use with clients, regardless of the topic or intention.  I hope this helps.

—-

 

Images:  High Priestess from the Morgan-Greer Tarot and Centred from the Oracle of Initiation.

Read Full Post »

Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Tarot Sessions

Here’s a new enquiry I received about my work with the tarot:

“I am always interested in anything to do with gender readings as a reader — male/female/trans and straight/queer/et al — especially from the male perspective as Tarot is traditionally a female dominated industry.

~ MF, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A.”

Dear MF,

Thank you for your note.  Many factors come into play here.  As I reflect on what you’ve written, I wonder what type of male perspective to come from; there are straight males, bisexual males, gay males, transgender males, and many other forms of male identification.  I can approach gender in the context of working with the tarot from a James Wells-related perspective, I suppose.  I’m a gay male whose work has been influenced by many feminist and lesbian mentors, authors, friends, and colleagues.  I do my best to be conscious of what I’m saying or asking with regard to gender during the tarot encounter.  It’s helpful if I don’t make assumptions about a person’s sexual orientation; if their topic is intimate relationships and they don’t refer to a partner(s)’s gender, I either ask, “Which gender or genders of partner shall we discuss?” or I simply use generic words such as “they”, “the other person”, or “intimate partner(s)”.  In fact, their preferred partner may even be themselves!  The choice of deck is a factor, too.  Do the cards depict one gender holding power over others or do different genders seem to be interacting with equal power in the images?  Do the majority of symbols imply that one gender is “better” or “more advantaged” than another or are all gender identities  symbolised in a healthy manner?  I applaud tarot deck creators who have moved away from court/people cards and found other ways to think about and illustrate the last four cards of each suit.  The old ways of choosing a significator no longer honour most people.  If I were to create my own pack of cards, I would eliminate people cards altogether and simply number every suit Ace through Fourteen to depict the stages of journeying through each aspect of life.  For me, every card, Major or Minor, can be a personality trait, an event, an emotion, an object, a place, a strategy, a challenge, a gift, an idea, or a person.  Trump III is about nurturing, caretaking, and feeling safe and healed.  Anyone can be these things, not just a woman sitting on a pillow in a field.  Trump IV is about power, authority, and leadership.  Every person can experience these qualities, not just a man sitting on a throne.  When I’m with a client, I’m most interested in the concepts of the cards and applying them to a person’s enquiry, not whether they “should” belong to a person of any particular gender.  The topic/question and our interaction with the cards in that context are what count.  Whatever a client’s sexual orientation, no matter what body parts they possess, regardless of how a person identifies in terms of gender (if at all), they are a whole human being.  To guide a person to richer awareness about hir situation and to witness hir leaving the consultation with a greater sense of power are profoundly satisfying, no matter who they are.  I hope that helps, MF.  These thoughts are brief and only touch briefly on a necessary topic.  I invite other constructive ideas about this in the Comments section.

 

Read Full Post »

Helping People Make Friends with the Cards

I recently received a fresh batch of questions about my work, tools, and processes.  Here’s the first in the new series.

“I’d be interested in reading about how you help a client feel ‘at home’ with the tarot during a reading, if they are perhaps very new to it (but intrigued).

~ BCC, Birmingham, UK”

Dear BCC,

Thank you for your enquiry.  I help a client feel “at home” with the tarot and with the process in a few ways.  First, there’s initial contact and an intake process during which I get to hear about them and their issue or topic and they get to hear about the ways in which I employ the cards (and the ways in which I *don’t* employ them).  So, dialogue and feedback come into things from the get-go.  If a person comes to me in person, I show them three or four different tarot decks, then invite them to choose one that they like.  It’s important for me that they’re comfortable with the symbols and scenes on the cards and they notice that their comfort is important to me.  If the client is someone with whom I’m working on Skype or on the phone, either we use the deck they have on their end (many, but not all, of my long-distance clients have their own decks) or I simply use what is to hand on my end.  I’m very clear that their power is not being usurped, that the power lies within them rather than in a set of pasteboards, that the session will simply be about gaining insights, strategies, and awareness of options so that their sense of having choices is enhanced.  This is very reassuring because there’s so much bunk about “fate” and many “ooky-spooky” superstitions out there about the tarot.  I remind them that it’s simply a tool, a springboard for a helpful conversation.  I hope that this response to your query is useful, BCC. 

——-

Image: Two of Water from the Osho Zen Tarot.

Read Full Post »