The 2016 Card Reading Magic Summit

On By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, oracle deck, promotional, tarot, tarot community6 Comments
Click the banner to sign up.
Click the banner to sign up.

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The amazing and illustrious Tori Hartman, author of the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Cards has organized an incredible event–an online cartomancy summit. For access, you’ll need to register. Click on the banner above and register to partake in the summit. Registration is free right now! How cool is that! And just check out the lineup of speakers.

2016tarotcardreadingsummit

No matter where you are in your card reading journey, there is always more to learn about this art that none of us can ever truly perfect. So Tori Hartman has put together a free virtual intuitive festival. By registering, you’ll get the benefit of rarely-heard insights in conversations with well-known groundbreakers and up-and-coming experts.

Card Reading Magic is an online event that features 18 speakers. It will take place between September 14 and 18. For more details, you’ll have to sign up.

During this virtual intuitive festival, you’ll discover:

– How to gain more specific, in depth information from your readings
– The five essentials of card reading
– How you can use your intuition more effectively and naturally
– Mistakes that keep you from accurate readings
– How you can shift into the zone of being a card reader quickly and easily
– Simple techniques to move away from the guidebook
– How to put the story together for your clients by linking cards
– The insider secrets of self-publishing decks from experts who have done it

September 14 through 18, 2016.

Mark it in your calendar, folks.

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A Free Gift?

Oh yes. By the way, every speaker will be giving away a free gift. Let me just tell you, I couldn’t quite figure out the instructions for what I was supposed to do exactly in terms of the logistics for giving away said gift. I know it’s related to getting you to register for the event through my link. So this is going to be my best guess for what I was supposed to do about the affiliate link, free gift, and such. So first, here’s my link:

https://gj248.isrefer.com/go/crm/benebell/

Here’s a shortlink of that link that’s easier to remember:

http://tinyurl.com/cardreadingsummit

Click on my referral link to register and, well, register. Free gift or not, it’s going to be an awesome summit, so register regardless.

Then e-mail me at benebellwen@gmail.com to let me know you’ve registered. Then I’ll email you the free gift!

What’s the free gift? It’s a 30-page [edit: added new sections, so now it’s] 35-page workbook, “Independent Shadow Work Cartomancy Session.” You’ll get it as either a DOCX or PDF file. In your email to me, let me know your preference.

09/01/16 Update: Okay, sorry but the “email me and I’ll send as attachment” routine was a bad idea. This post went up, I went to bed, I woke up, checked email, and it was bombarded with boldfaced emails for as far as the finger could scroll. Eeps. So we’re not doing that anymore. Instead, the honor system. Please register using my affiliate link and as my thank you gift to you, download the “Independent Shadow Work Cartomancy Session” workbook below. Choose between PDF or DOCX, or heck, download both if you really want.

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DOCX | Shadow Work Session with the Cards

PDF | Shadow Work Session with the Cards

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So register, mark September 14 through 18 in your calendar, and email me to [edit: see above links for direct download] get your free “Independent Shadow Work Cartomancy Session” workbook. It’s a 30-page 35-page, 1-2 hour guided tarot or oracle card reading and shadow work session you do for yourself, the results of which, I have to imagine, are going to be provocative.

See you at the summit!

Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module IV

On By benebellIn book writing, free download6 Comments

Writing and Publishing Nonfiction Independent Study Course

Whereas Module III covered traditional publishing, Module IV will address self-publishing.

Module IV: Independent (or Self) Publishing

Module 4 will cover basic pointers for self-publishing. There will be 5 lectures, 1 workbook that you should complete, and supplementary handouts that you will want to go through in the order noted below. I’m also providing a few unaffiliated external links, so you have someplace to start shopping around for printing presses, getting price quotes, etc.

In the previous modules, the lectures were provided as audio recordings, but my laptop went kaput and I’ve been recording the audio with an app on my laptop. I don’t know how to do it with my desktop, so instead of mp4 files for download in Module 4, we have text–the audio lecture transcripts I would have read off of.

Continue reading “Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module IV” →

Review of Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford

On By benebellIn book review, holistic food, personal spirituality, promotional6 Comments

Healing_with_Whole_Foods_by_Paul_Pitchford

Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition by Paul Pitchford (North Atlantic Books) is one of those reference tomes every holistic healing practitioner will want to have in the personal library. I’ll be reviewing the Third Edition published in 2002. It was first released in 1993 and since then, over 500,000 copies have been sold and no wonder.

Click image to enlarge.
Click image to enlarge.

Healing is well-organized, which is a prerequisite for any reference book. He begins where every holistic healer using traditional Chinese medicine would begin: covering Qi vitality and the binary of yin and yang, which he then expands on to cover hot/cold temperaments; interior/exterior physical conditions; and diagnosing for excess versus deficiency.

Continue reading “Review of Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford” →

The Chariot Card: Guest Post at BiddyTarot

On By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, Holistic Tarot (book), personal, personal spirituality, promotional, tarot, tarot community, tarot symbolismLeave a comment
Banner from BiddyTarot
Banner from BiddyTarot

Brigit’s BiddyTarot is one of the most popular (I even dare say the most popular) tarot spot on the web. And it’s for good reason, too. She sustains the site with incredible content. Brigit is compiling a free e-book, Real Life Lessons from the Major Arcana, a collection of 22 essays by 22 tarot authors, each writer covering one Major Arcanum.

I chose Key VII: The Chariot for personal and sentimental reasons. Click on the above banner to go straight to my article over at Biddy. Also, be sure to download the entire e-book for FREE (how cool is that!) by clicking on the below banner or going here.

Continue reading “The Chariot Card: Guest Post at BiddyTarot” →

Altar Kit in a Tin (A Mini Travel Altar or Prayer Box)

On By benebellIn divination, Fu talismans, gemstones and crystals, personal, personal spirituality12 Comments

Travel Altar Kit in an Altoids Tin 01

I’m new to the craft idea of an altar-in-a-tin. The other day while surfing Pinterest (that never ends well for me), I came across photos of people who DIY-ed their own miniature altar kits or prayer boxes using a candy tin. These photos were incredible. The Pinterest excursion led to Etsy and three and a half hours later that lazy Sunday, I get the brilliant idea that I can DIY my own altar kit (or prayer box).

Travel Altar Kit in an Altoids Tin 02

Above you see my initial proposition of contents. Given limited parameters (e.g., don’t want to leave the house to buy anything; must finish this crafty project today so must utilize what I have in my house right now; must be itty bitty tiny because this f****** tin of mints is itty bitty tiny; etc.), this project turned out to be harder than I expected.

Continue reading “Altar Kit in a Tin (A Mini Travel Altar or Prayer Box)” →

Gemstones and Crystals Glossary

On By benebellIn free download, gemstones and crystals, grimoire, Magical in the Mundane, personal, personal spirituality, promotional18 Comments

gemstones

I love gemstones and crystals. I also like to keep a personal glossary of metaphysical correspondences for the gemstones and crystals I acquire. That’s what this document for free download is. I’m sharing with you my personal glossary in hopes it might be of use to you.

I’m providing both the PDF and DOCX for free download below. Both the DOCX and PDF versions have “smart headings,” so if you open the left-bar navigation pane in either Microsoft Word or your PDF viewer (in Adobe Reader they’re called bookmarks), you should be able to navigate between the alphabetically listed entries with ease. All correspondence reference tables at the back of the document are also enabled as “smart headings.”

glossaryofgemstones-jpg

glossaryofgemstones-pdf

The docx file is given to you so you can edit or redesign the document to suit your own needs.

You can also download a program, like Calibre, and convert one of these files to a PUB or MOBI file for your e-book reader.

Updates

  • First Posted: 2016 Aug 3
  • Updated: 2017 Aug 6
  • Updated: 2017 Sep 27
  • Updated: 2018 Sep 21
  • Last Updated: 2019 Oct 21

Review of the Corporate Tarot

On By benebellIn deck review, tarot6 Comments

Corporate Tarot 01 Box and Deck

The Corporate Tarot by Melanie McCarthy is an incredible tool for employee training that re-polishes the tarot structure so that it might lend itself to the corporate world. Team building, corporate and operational strategic planning, and team brainstorming are big things these days among the midsize to large corporations. Perhaps I may be in an exceptional bubble in the Silicon Valley, but around here, every CEO and ED is looking for an “innovative, creative” way to get their employees to work together more cohesively. What better way to achieve that than through McCarthy’s Corporate Tarot?

Corporate Tarot 02 Majors Front

Photographs with a corporate aesthetic illustrate this deck. I love the “stock photo” vibe here, honoring the frequent use of stock photos in corporate documents and marketing materials. Of course, I also love the diversity, which is subtle, seamless, and well done. Each card is assigned a keyword, one that represents a factor for corporate success (or hindrance to corporate success, e.g., “Conflict” or “Negativity,” etc.).

Corporate Tarot 03 Majors Back

Another beautiful feature of the deck are the card backs. Each one is different and I believe they can fit together like puzzle pieces to create a unified urban landscape. The metaphor there is also clever.

Continue reading “Review of the Corporate Tarot” →

My Responses to the 10 Questions Every Tarot Reader Must Answer

On By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, personal, promotional, tarot, tarot community, tarot symbolism7 Comments
Tried to find a photo of me with tarot cards. This was what I came up with.
Tried to find a photo of me with tarot cards. This was what I came up with.

Writer and tarotist James Bulls posted a provocative piece on the 10 questions every tarot reader must answer. Check out the post here. I thought I’d answer them for myself, so here we go.

Continue reading “My Responses to the 10 Questions Every Tarot Reader Must Answer” →

Review of the Gaian Tarot

On By benebellIn book review, cartomancy, deck review, tarot, tarot community, tarot symbolism9 Comments

Gaian Tarot 01 Box Set

A deck that taps into earth consciousness like no other deck, the Gaian Tarot is the much talked about, beloved, and exceptional deck borne from the genius of artist and writer Joanna Powell Colbert.

The Gaian Tarot was initially self-published by Colbert in 2010, and then it’s popularity convinced Llewellyn to publish it in 2011, and then somehow mysteriously, it went out of print. Copies of the deck were going for outrageous prices all over the interwebs as folks clamored to get themselves a copy of this beloved deck. Now, be happy all my friends, because the Gaian Tarot is back in a new published version by Schiffer Publishing and I’ve got to say, Schiffer has done a remarkable job with Colbert’s work.

Gaian Tarot 02 Box and Cards

Here’s an interesting point about this deck. At least four professional writers I am connected with use the Gaian Tarot for creative writing. One writes women’s fiction, one writes metaphysical books, one writes literary fiction (with a collection of short stories that has won prestigious book awards), and one is a bestselling author. Only one of them– that I know of– subscribes to a pagan-based spiritual path, and the only reason I mention that is to showcase the diversity and versatility of this deck. I don’t know if it was ever intentionally meant to become a “writer’s tarot deck,” but that it certainly has!

Be sure to read about Colbert’s creative process for the deck here. From what I could gather, Colbert works with mixed media. The inspiration for each Gaian Tarot card image begins with photographs– with one single photograph as the main focal point. Then a photographic collage is used for the background. Layered, the deck image is created. Then Colbert transitions into working by hand. The photographic collage becomes a line drawing and colored pencil sketch, and the final colored pencil sketch is cleaned up digitally.

Gaian Tarot 23 Reading

Let’s try a reading for you. Left to right above, the cards represent Mind, Body, and Spirit respectively. However, you’re to choose only one of those three cards. Which would you like to divine upon today? About your Mind, your Body, or your Spirit? Left, center, or right-most card? Remember your selection.

Gaian Tarot 24 Guidebook Three Card Reading

Here I’m lifting the idea of the “Mind, Body, Spirit” spread from the accompanying guidebook comes with instructions for three-card readings.

Continue reading “Review of the Gaian Tarot” →