Category: cartomancy

Peace Oracle by Toni Salerno and Leela Williams

On By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, oracle deck2 Comments

The Peace Oracle by Toni Salerno and Leela Williams is a 45-card oracle deck premised on divinatory guidance to help us achieve both inner and outer peace. It’s about helping you through life’s challenges. When you’re feeling most stuck, the Peace Oracle is intended to guide you through overcoming those obstacles.

The iconic art style of Toni Salerno is vibrant contemporary, neo-impressionistic fantasy. That’s present throughout the Peace Oracle, which I think works perfectly with the modern spiritual point of view expressed in the deck.

Try out an oracle card reading with the deck to see if it resonates with you. Start by defining a challenge you currently face, that you’d like some divinatory guidance on how to overcome. Then select one of the cards above: left, center, or right. The card drawn will reveal a critical key or factor you need to consider to help you overcome your challenge. Now let’s proceed with the deck review.

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Money Tarot by Eugene Vinitski

On By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review4 Comments

This isn’t so much a formal deck review as it is a “let’s ooh and ahh this Vinitski deck together.” I reviewed his masterpiece deck The Venetian Tarot previously, here. And now I have the incredible opportunity to offer you a first-look into the Money Tarot.

The Money Tarot pulls art from actual bills of currency around the world and superimposes actual money art onto the tarot deck structure. The accompanying little white booklets–and there are two of them–tell you the bill that each tarot card image comes from. Also, loving the reversible card backs.

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Your Saturn Returns (Free Saturn Return Survival Kit)

On By benebellIn astrology, Bell Chimes In, cartomancy, divination, free download, I Ching, personal spirituality, promotional, tarot8 Comments

In Episode #29 of “Bell Chimes In,” I talk about the Saturn Return. I also make reference to the Decisive Age and how it may relate to your Saturn Return. (What is a Decisive Age? Find out more here.)

A Saturn Return is a period of time, typically within a year, when the transiting or present Saturn’s positioning is at the same degree in the same zodiac sign as it was in at the moment of your birth. In other words, if Saturn was positioned at 3° in Capricorn when you were born, and currently Saturn is at 3° in Capricorn, then you, my friend, are in the throes of one of your Saturn Returns. Typically, there are three: the First Saturn Return, the Second Saturn Return, and your Third Saturn Return.

For the general population (there are a few astrological exceptions, which I get into in the video), Saturn can create a large weight or obstacle that holds you back. People cross a major threshold in their lives during a Saturn Return. You’ll hear astrologers talk about the First Saturn Return as a coming-of-age, when the process of growth may be difficult, but is the necessary rite of passage that must be crossed in every person’s life path.

You can find free Saturn Return Calculators online. Here’s one that I like. Input your birth details, click “Calculate,” and the dates of your three Saturn Returns, all Saturn Oppositions, and Saturn Squares are provided.

Going through or about to go through one of your Saturn Returns? Here’s a fun Saturn Return Survival Kit you can download for free.

DOWNLOAD PDF:

Your Saturn Return Survival Kit

The Saturn Return Survival Kit is granted to you under a Creative Commons license, Attribution 4.0 International. Continue reading “Your Saturn Returns (Free Saturn Return Survival Kit)” →

Your Year Ahead Twelve-Month Tarot Forecast Reading

On By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, personal spirituality, professional tarot, tarot, tarot community6 Comments
Selecting a significator card. Deck pictured: Golden Universal by Lo Scarabeo.

For quite a while I offered a Year Ahead twelve-month forecast reading, but I received so many requests in 2017 that the reading type burned me out. So I won’t be offering it in 2018, but it’s an incredible tarot reading methodology and one you can absolutely do for yourself. So in this post I’ll show you how you can do my Year Ahead forecast reading all on your own.

The Year Ahead forecast reading consists of the following steps:

  1. Solar Return Astrology Analysis
  2. Preliminary Four Worlds Reading
  3. Elemental Key for the Year
  4. Twelve-Month Four-Quarter Projections
  5. Six Points Revelation Spread
  6. Power Word for the Year

Now let’s address each in turn.

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The Asian American Tarot & Read The Cartomancer

On By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, tarot, tarot community4 Comments

Are you subscribed to The Cartomancer? If you’re a tarot or oracle card reader, then you’ve got to check out this independent magazine.

My review of the Asian American Tarot published by the Asian American Literary Review was first published in The Cartomancer magazine, Volume 3, Issue 3.

A dear friend gifted me with the Asian American Tarot thinking I’d love it and she should be right. I really wanted to love this deck. I would say that I am biased in favor of loving this deck for more reasons than I can list, from being Asian American myself to knowing most of the names of the artists and writers who worked on this project and knowing the literary journal that ran it. I want to shower this deck with praise and be ever so proud that this, this is the very first Asian American tarot deck. Instead, for me, it fell flat and, worse yet, this isn’t tarot. I’m not entirely clear what part of this deck is tarot other than a few shallow references interspersed throughout the cards and literally printing the word TAROT on the box.

What I do praise about the endeavor is it was never about creating a tarot deck in the first place. It’s about fundraising for an arts-based self-care package to address mental health issues in the Asian American community. The money raised through this tarot deck went toward a non-profit for addressing mental health. Since I’m not reviewing the non-profit’s mission and am here to review the tarot deck on its merits, I can only talk about the deck. Otherwise, for its non-profit mission, it gets an immediate A+.

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The Kokeshi Tarot and Reading Square Tarot Cards

On By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, divination, tarot, tarot community, tarot symbolism3 Comments

Kokeshi dolls are wood-crafted Japanese dolls that look not unlike the High Priestess kokeshi featured above on the box cover of the Kokeshi Tarot by Arlain. The Kokeshi Tarot stylizes traditional Rider-Waite-Smith tarot iconography into kokeshi dolls and the results are too cute to handle.

We’ve got reversible, symmetrical card backs, which are going to be relevant when we consider reversals and even–gasp!–reading with sideways cards. More on that later. Let’s talk about the Kokeshi Tarot.

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Art Oracles by Katya Tylevich and Mikkel Sommer Christensen

On By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, oracle deck5 Comments

The Art Oracles: Creative and Life Inspiration features 50 artists with corresponding oracular messages inspired by each artist’s point of view. The deck was created by Katya Tylevich and Mikkel Sommer Christensen and published by Laurence King Publishing. This is easily one of my favorite oracle decks and one I am always recommending to friends who aren’t that into tarot or the metaphysical but still one to give cartomancy a whirl. The Art Oracles is a user-friendly deck that anyone, no matter what proficiency level with card reading, can work with.

Totally random– Vincent Van Gogh was my stalker card. Different shuffling methods, toying around the with the deck, whether intending to do a oracle reading or arbitrarily pulling a card to look at it, this card kept coming up for me.

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Mid-Fall BlogHop: Birth, Death, Rebirth

On By benebellIn cartomancy, personal, personal spirituality, tarot, tarot community9 Comments

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Tarot deck pictured: The Golden Universal by Lo Scarabeo (with my handwritten astrological notations)

Congratulations. You’ve found yourself in the middle of a Mid-Fall BlogHop. The Tarot BlogHop is a great way to get acquainted with a dozen or so tarot blogs and to immerse yourself in the online tarot community. By the way, if you’re a tarot blogger, please join our next round! Become a member of the TarotBlogHop Facebook group.

Jay, the noble wrangler for this Bloghop has asked us to think about the cycle of death, birth, and rebirth. This is about ruminating on where we are at the end of this Year of Saturn, and Year of the Yin Fire Rooster. We’ll be using the tarot to express those ruminations.

So, okay. I think for this exercise, we were supposed to do, like, actual tarot readings and then talk about our tarot readings. I’ve decided to do something not that. Instead, I’m going to select a card, so I’m intentionally choosing these cards. It’s not a tarot reading. And instead, you start off by interpreting the card I’ve chosen to see if you can anticipate why I chose that card. Then, well, if you want, read on to see my answer. =)

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On Tarot Certification – Redux

On By benebellIn cartomancy, opinion, professional tarot, tarot, tarot community16 Comments
Italian Playing Cards (circa 15th century). From the Rosenwald Collection at the National Gallery of Art.

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Three years ago I wrote about my experience with tarot certification through the Tarot Certification Board of America, which is now defunct and any piece of paper you received from them is in effect defunct. Fortunately, the experience for me was all about the experience and that was a lot of fun for me. Going through the exercises, motions, and prompts was quite the enrichment, so I have nothing whatsoever to gripe about. I went through the process for the fun of it. Had I gone through the process for the sake of tarot certification, well then, I would probably be quite pissed right about now, considering my grandiose title of Certified Tarot Master is meaningless. (Not that I’m claiming it was ever at some point meaningful, but.. arrgh.. you know what I mean.)

Today, there are dozens of privately-held tarot certification programs out there and lately I’ve been experiencing a trend of inquiries in my inbox asking me for my opinion on tarot certification.

Then, recently…as in last week…there was a bit of a public misunderstanding where some folks thought I commercially endorsed a particular tarot certification program since my name, face, and my words endorsing a totally different thing was attached to that certification program and, well, let’s just say there was some misunderstanding that ensued and my right of publicity was put into question. Fortunately, the misunderstanding was quickly and amicably resolved and all is right with the world again. As a result, I’d like to just memorialize my take on the whole tarot certification issue.

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The Bad Bitches Tarot: A Modern Goddess Deck

On By benebellIn beginner tarot deck, cartomancy, deck review4 Comments

The Bad Bitches Tarot by Ethony has my kid sister’s name all over it. Okay, it doesn’t literally, and she’s not exactly a “kid” anymore, but if I were to profile who would fall in love with the Bad Bitches Tarot, it would be the yuppie upper east side Manhattan dwelling Millennial fashionista third-wave feminist who thinks it would be really chic to have a tarot deck out on her coffee table.

I showed the deck to my sister by video chat and she just gasped. “Omigod it’s gorgeous. But I don’t know how to read the tarot.” To demonstrate how she could totally use this deck for herself, I pulled a card for her–the Six of Wands–then read the card’s meaning out of the accompanying Guidebook. The meaning, straight out of the book, fit perfectly with her situation.

We then pulled another card, the Seven of Swords. Again, I read that card’s meaning to her straight from the book. The sis major LOL-ed at how blunt the message was. Ethony’s Bad Bitches Tarot Guidebook has attitude, style, and a modern, punchy tone. Sis totally approves.

“So I can just read that tarot deck for myself? Pull a card like you just did and then read about it from the little Guidebook?” (It’s embarrassing to me as a tarot author how minimal my sisters know about the tarot…)

“Yes.” I said. (Or you could read the card meaning from that giant book your sister wrote but whatevs.)

“I love it,” she beams. And really, you can’t help but to love this deck. It’s a goddess deck for the digital Millennial age. It photographs beautifully for Instagram shots, with rose gold gilded edges and a semi-matte finish that’s got just the perfect relaxing ASMR shuffling sound when you riffle the cards.

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