Spiritual Service Professionals: How to Win Every Refund Dispute

Deck Pictured: Oswald Wirth Tarot (USGS, 1997).
Deck Pictured: Oswald Wirth Tarot (USGS, 1997).

This won’t be an interesting post.

It’s targeted only at spiritual service professionals.

So unless you are a professional tarot reader, astrologer, life coach, divination mentor, or are engaged professionally in a similar form of spiritual business, this post will not be of much interest.

I’m posting it kind of as a PSA so that it is available to any spiritual entrepreneur who manages to find this page.

If you teach business tips and strategies to spiritual entrepreneurs, then I ask of you to incorporate the contents of this post into your educational materials. Screw credit or no credit or infringement wtf ever– just get your people informed, will you? Who the hell cares who came up with the idea first. Just get the information out there to fellow spiritual service professionals.

Continue reading “Spiritual Service Professionals: How to Win Every Refund Dispute”

Shadow Work with a Tarot or Oracle Deck

Shadow Work 02

I’ve put together a self-guided workbook that takes you through one session of shadow working with a tarot or oracle deck. I used an oracle deck I created for myself, which I share for free here (scroll down). Go there and you can download all digital files for it to print out and produce your own copy of the deck.

Continue reading “Shadow Work with a Tarot or Oracle Deck”

Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module IV

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”

Gemstones and Crystals Glossary

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

Learning the Opening of the Key (Online Course)

Originally offered at the Tarot Readers Academy in 2016 for the Tarot Summer School

Course Description:

This is a FREE ONLINE video-led course taught through concise installments that endeavor to de-mystify the Opening of the Key (OOTK) divinatory technique as detailed by Paul Foster Case, MacGregor Mathers, and Aleister Crowley, augmented with commentary from contemporary masters like Chic & Tabatha Cicero and Paul Hughes-Barlow.

Much like how the Celtic Cross spread has become a golden standard, we will learn how to integrate the OOTK into personal practice. Along with deconstructing the five operations of the OOTK, we will learn about elemental dignities, Kabbalistic basics, traditional card counting, Western astrology basics, and what all of these studies combined with tarot divination can teach us about the cornerstone principle in Western occultism–“as above, so below.”

Continue reading “Learning the Opening of the Key (Online Course)”

Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module III

Recap:

Module III is all about the submissions and publication process with traditional publishers.

Coming after this module:

Module III: Traditional Publishers

Module 3 accompanies you from drafting your book proposal to querying traditional publishers. We’ll cover the big publishing houses (and how you’ll need a literary agent if you want to approach these publishers) and also the small to medium publishers (where you won’t need a literary agent).

There will be 5 audio lectures (total run time about 40 minutes), 3 workbooks, and supplementary handouts that you will want to go through in the order noted below.

Continue reading “Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module III”

Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module II

Modules I and II are being posted consecutively this week working toward the new moon in Taurus so that maybe everything will be aligned just so and this weekend you’ll be motivated to get to work on that book you’ve always meant to write.

Do not proceed with Module II until you’ve completed the audio lectures and workbooks from Module I. I mean, you can if you want, it’s not like I can stop you, but it won’t make sense. Module II will make more sense if you’ve completed Module I.

Module I: Introduction

Refer back to the post on Module I here. You can also download all files for Module I via Dropbox by clicking below.

DROPBOX LINK TO MODULE 1

Assuming you’ve completed Module I, you now have a solid book idea, you know how and where it would be positioned in the current market, and you are prepared to finish your book manuscript.

Module II will offer some insights and guidance for completing your manuscript.

Module II: Completing Your Manuscript

Module 2 helps you grow your seed of a book idea and walks you through the process of nurturing that seed to full bloom, achieving a completed book manuscript. Let me tell you how I managed to stay on track and finish my books while working full-time and tending to family responsibilities. Let’s talk about the daily grind. How do you structure the chapters of your book? How do you schedule your weeks to make sure you get your target writing done? What are some of my personal tips and tricks? The handouts in this module will help you to track your progress. Also, how can you tell if a work is in the public domain? What exactly constitutes fair use? I’ve got handouts for both questions.

There will be four audio lectures (for a total of about 35 minutes play time), two workbooks for you to complete, and supplementary handouts that you will want to go through in the order noted below.

Continue reading “Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module II”

Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module I

I’m putting together a multi-media web series on writing and publishing nonfiction, placing emphasis on nonfiction in the spirituality and New Age category. I was going to wait until I finished the entire course, all proposed modules, but then I was like F it. Let’s just play this by ear. Throw the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.

As each new installment is published here, I’ll link everything together so no matter when you stumble upon these posts, you can trace back to the beginning and follow the steps in consecutive order. All installments will be tagged with the “book writing” category, so you can simply click on that category label and every installment will pop up.

This independent study course will consist of a bunch of downloads, some free and some not so free, pretty much depending on my mood that day that I’m putting the installment together and posting it. There may be some jumping around, however. So for instance, the next installment I have scheduled is out of the order of modules and instead, is a single workbook on publishing contracts. Then we’ll get back to the modules, for Module II.

All right. Why don’t you read on to see what this is all about.

Continue reading “Writing and Publishing Nonfiction: Module I”

Workbook for Devising Your Professional Tarot Business Plan

The Efflorescent Tarot by Katie Rose Pipkin (Self-Published)
The Efflorescent Tarot by Katie Rose Pipkin (Self-Published)

Note: What synchronicity. Theresa Reed of The Tarot Lady asked me to contribute to a really cool piece, “Best Tarot Business Advice from 22 Tarot Pros.” And I had scheduled this post to go live in the same week. Definitely check out Theresa’s blog. It’s one of my favorites.

* * *

So you’ve always been kind of a weirdo. An intuitive weirdo, no less. You read tarot cards. Scrying with a crystal ball is not out of your realm of conceivable possibilities. Also, for the last who-knows-how-long, your friends and family have been asking you to divine for them. You hear the calling to do this as a professional now. That’s right. You want to launch a professional service in divination. Although you’re no computer whiz, you do know your way around the Internet. So you’re thinking, gee, I think I could launch an online business where I do tarot readings for people from home.

What do you do now?

Continue reading “Workbook for Devising Your Professional Tarot Business Plan”

Tarot and Social Inductive Reasoning

"The Fortune Teller" by Georges de La Tour (circa 1630s).
“The Fortune Teller” by Georges de La Tour (circa 1630s).

I would say this is the dark or shadow side of professional tarot practice. To not face it, to intentionally withhold it from public scrutiny is to practice tarot with your head buried in the sand or worse yet, to intentionally misrepresent what happens or could happen in professional tarot. Everything here makes me uncomfortable. It makes me squirm. It makes me feel icky. I loathe that any little part of my personal tarot practice– always unintentionally– mirrors anything I’m about to address in this post (or in the downloadable PDF I’m providing).

Continue reading “Tarot and Social Inductive Reasoning”