There were seventeen presentations across two days, where each presentation in its own way addressed heterodox praxis. Topics ranged from Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greco-Roman, Persian and Zoroastrian, Anatolian, Jewish and Solomonic, Christian and medieval European, Golden Dawn, Thelemic, to Japanese and Taoist magical traditions. We were learning about necromancy, different forms of talismanic magic, planetary magic, spirit work, divination, ritual, sacred languages, animism, and magical world-building.
And I’m not even sure that’s an adequate listing of the full expanse of what we covered! In terms of depth and breadth of scope on occult and esoteric topics, this conference really shined.
Not too long ago Serena Saint-Sinclair hosted an AAPI Esotericism Panel where I was one of the panelists, alongside Angela Yuriko Smith, an award-winning Ryukyuan-American writer and poet, David Shi, a North Asian shamanic worker, and Yeong-Tae, a baksu (Korean shaman).
Earlier this year I posted on this blog and my Substack, “Are Asian Folk Traditions ‘Pagan’?” I also have an old post showcasing Asian voices in the tarot community. At the end of that post I reflect a bit on AAPI activism as I’ve experienced it through the decades. Just some related links in case you’re interested.
Anyway, to dovetail on the AAPI Esotericism Panel, I wanted to add an afterword to remark on this newfound popularity of Asian Americans returning to their ancestral spiritual practices. I see it on TikTok and Threads, and I see it among the local AAPI youth.
The following is from a keynote presentation I did at the Northwest Tarot Symposium in 2022, the materials now made freely and publicly available.
The subject of this presentation was one more often seen as taboo: using the tarot to do health readings.
Spiritual health and its interaction with physical, psychological, and social wellness had been gaining serious attention in medical literature. So I wanted to consider those perspectives in a discussion on spiritual health and tarot.
What this post provides is a summary of the workshop, the PowerPoint presentation slides I used during the keynote that you can now download and walk through, and all the handouts and resources that were provided to the attendees.
I was invited as a Guest of Honor Headliner to speak at this year’s ConVocation, and this is my recap of the event, as it was also my very first time (1) attending ConVocation and (2) attending a pagan event in the Midwest. ConVocation is a pagan conference that has been going strong in the Upper Midwest since 1995, and truly what sets it apart is how community-oriented it is.
Photo via Barb Milburn Stenger of Celtic Readings (celticreadings.com)
My write-up is coming out a bit later than planned, as I had initially hoped to include some of the official event photos from David Loken-Rozian‘s 2025 ConVocation album onto his Flickr. Since the album isn’t available yet, I’ve decided to go ahead and post this recap, so apologies for lack of people pics. I don’t know why I always forget to take photos of people at events; I have a dozen photos of snow and trees, food, rocks, and clouds, but none of people. Argh.
StaarCon has the personableness and small-group-feel of the Omega conference, some of the razzle-dazzle characteristics of the iconic Readers Studio, and the ability to attract big personalities the way NWTS does. Oh, and because video recordings of all master classes are available all year long and there is the post-conference tarot lounge events and virtual gatherings, it’s reminiscent of Ethony’s Tarot Summer School at the Tarot Readers Academy (my blog posts on it in 2016 and in 2018). So if you’re looking for that tarot conference with a little bit of something for everyone, then that’s StaarCon.
Accelevents Attendee Portal StaarCon 2024
I was invited back as a keynote for StaarCon 2024, my first time attending in person (the 2021 conference during the pandemic was virtual only). What’s unique about StaarCon is its hybrid model, with the virtual event managed by Accelevents. Meaning you can elect to attend in person or attend virtually from the comfort of your own home.
For the price of admission, you’re getting access to a wide array of master classes on tarot techniques, tarot adjacent studies like astrology, crystals, and sound bath meditation, in-depth targeted explorations on how to read the cards, powerful and transformative guided visual journeying sessions for connecting with an animal totem or quantum healing, tarot business essentials, more academic-driven workshops, to creating and selling your own deck, just to name a few of the topics covered this weekend.
2019 Masters of the Tarot Conference. Left to Right: Me, Mary K. Greer, Terry Iacuzzo, Rachel Pollack, and Joanna Powell Colbert
I was first invited to present at the Masters of the Tarot Conference back in 2019. The Conference takes place every July at the Omega Institute in upstate New York, and was founded by Rachel Pollack and Mary K. Greer.
Opening ceremonies and introductions happen on Friday evening, with a starter workshop or master class as your night cap. Then the keynote speaker events begin first thing Saturday morning and go until Sunday noon. Interspersed throughout are discussion panels for Q&As and moderated topical conversations. The event ends with all of us having lunch together.
From the 2019 Masters of the Tarot Conference. Photo courtesy of Joanna Powell Colbert (IG: @joannapcolbert)
I’ve had an incomplete draft of a post-event write-up since July 2019 that I never got around to finishing and posting onto this blog. Sigh. And now the 2023 Conference has come and gone, which was the second time I’ve presented at Omega.
So this blog post is going to cover both the 2019 and the recent 2023 events.
Psychism vs. Psychology: Transcending the Binary Bias in Tarot
For the 2023 Masters of the Tarot Conference held at the Omega Institute, the theme is magic, mysticism, and neuroscience.
My presentation will be on practical reading methods for transcending innate binary bias. We’ll be talking about what that binary bias is in both neuroscience and the world of tarot and how to bridge the binary through assigned correspondences and guided imagery, a tempered method for bilateral cognitive stimulation.
Due to the layering of images to create animation effects, you’ll need to view the slides in Slide Show.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR VIEWING: Along the upper row of tabs, click on “Slide Show.” Then click on the icon “From Beginning” to start the animation.
You will have received a printout copy of the above downloadable handout. Here are the digital files in case you want additional copies, or you would like to integrate this information into your personal working journals.
7/18 REVISION: Please re-download the handout with the correct correspondence table. Recall there was a typo between the Water and Air columns under “Physical Body” correspondences.
This is a compilation of notable sources I found discussing brain lateralization, with bullet point summaries of the contents of each resource.
“Tarot’s Chinese sister, the I Ching.”
– Rachel Pollack, A Walk through the Forest of Souls
HOMEWORK
As an additional bonus step, and to further symbolically bridge the binary, combine your two card readings from the workshop to yield an I Ching hexagram reading. As Rachel Pollack notes, the I Ching is “Tarot’s Chinese sister.”
Begin by identifying the corresponding Ba Gua trigrams to the two tarot cards you pulled during the workshop.
Click on image file to download
The first card you had pulled, reading elemental correspondences per Body, Mind, and Spirit, will be the Lower Trigram (left most column).
The second card you pulled, for the guided imagery exercise, will be the Upper Trigram (top most row).
Here’s an alternate version of the table for your archives:
Click on image file to download
Use the below cross-reference table to identify the six-line hexagram that your two tarot cards form:
Click image file to download
Here’s the I Ching cross-reference table found on your workshop handout. It’s the same as above, but without the hexagram images.
Click image file to download
Once you’ve identified the resulting hexagram, look up its short form oracle message in the below download:
The above book of short form oracles summarizing the meaning of the 64 hexagrams is excerpted from my forthcoming book, I Ching, The Oracle, published by North Atlantic Books (September, 2023).
Whew! NWTS 2022 was a blast! This was Michelle and Roger of SoulTopia’s inaugural year as the organizers of NWTS, the Northwest Tarot Symposium in Portland, Oregon. And wow, what a comeback for NWTS, thanks to SoulTopia’s tireless efforts, persistence, and stewardship. This year, the tarot community really showed up for an impressive turnout, to the point where we might’ve outgrown the Monarch Hotel! Time for a bigger even more spacious venue? =)
Anyway, this is a casual recap of the event from my vantage point.
The World Divination Association, founded by the amazing Toni @thecardgeek, hosts the annual World Divination Association Conference, a virtual event that brings together an impressive roster of authors, creators, and modern mystics. I’ll be one of the speakers this year, sharing my learned experiences and insights into reading tarot professionally for others.
For those who heard previous info about me doing a course on Freud and Jung, and how to apply psychoanalytic and analytic theory to tarot readings, due to some tech obstacles, I’m changing my workshop topic. The Freud and Jung workshop would have been PowerPoint intensive, along with a massive workbook, tons of researched reference materials, etc., and it wouldn’t have worked in the virtual event setting.
So I’m pivoting and going with a talking-head-video-livestream format where I’ll be talking about reading tarot professionally for others– not the business aspect, no, but the actual tarot reading part of it all. The heart and soul of reading tarot.
