Category: tarot community

Money Magic Manifestation Cards by Ethony

On By benebellIn deck review, Magical in the Mundane, oracle deck, personal spirituality, tarot community2 Comments

The Money Magic Manifestation Cards by Ethony is an exquisite deck of 48 affirmations that calibrate your mindset toward attracting abundance, financial security, and professional success into your life. It’s a comforting candy deck that’s also good for your soul. Pocket-size yet powerful, the amazing Ethony personally charges your copy of the deck under the full moon before it gets delivered to you.

If there’s one person I’d trust for money magic and to learn money magic from, it’d be Ethony. Her amazing juju certainly rubs off on each and every one of these decks and to receive one and work with it for your own abundance attraction process is going to be impactful.

The cards come in this beautiful matte keepsake box with a magnetic clasp that opens from the side. I love the prismatic rainbow wash card back. There’s no little white booklet, but the deck does come with a glossy two-page pamphlet that offers some tips for performing your own money magic.

Continue reading “Money Magic Manifestation Cards by Ethony” →

King Billy and the Royal Road: Tarot-Inspired Children’s Book

On By benebellIn book review, tarot, tarot community, tarot symbolismLeave a comment

King Billy and the Royal Road by R. C. Ajounuma and published in the UK by SilverWood Books is endearing. The book is written in poetic form, triplet line stanzas with an AAB CCB rhyme scheme. You’ll also find a lot of slant rhymes, or near-rhymes. Here’s how the book starts:

A trumpet blew loud,
Like a call from a cloud,
And Billy awoke with a start!

He looked overhead,
Then under his bed,
In search of the source of the blast.

I see the Judgment card, what about you? The narrative of the poem follows Billy, a young boy who awakens with an aspiration, cannot fulfill it at home, and so journeys outdoors in search of what he’s looking for. Won’t give away what it is he’s looking for. It’s cute, though.

Continue reading “King Billy and the Royal Road: Tarot-Inspired Children’s Book” →

Tarot Going Mainstream + So You Wanna Create a Tarot Deck?

On By benebellIn Bell Chimes In, tarot, tarot community5 Comments

This post is a combo, a two-fer. First, above, I share Episode #22 of Bell Chimes In, a cheeky rant on tarot deck creators. Oh, by the way, the deck I’m displaying is the Venetian Tarot by Eugene Vinitski, which I love and have been using religiously for all my personal readings as of late. Vinitski’s deck is totally not one of the decks I’m whining about in the video rant. I literally just showed this deck for the cover pic because it matched my outfit.

It turns out this video is somewhat related to something else. This month (January, 2018), Ethony over at Tarot Readers Academy is hosting the annual “31 Days of Tarot” challenge. For Day 26 (Friday), the prompt was to share your thoughts on tarot going mainstream. I have had so much fun watching people’s YouTube videos on this. Can’t link them all, but the most recent ones I watched are listed below. There’s a diversity of perspectives offered here, so definitely check out more than one.

Mad props and shout-out to Cape Code Creatures for keeping it real. I also love how personal Nobody Here gets.

Continue reading “Tarot Going Mainstream + So You Wanna Create a Tarot Deck?” →

List of 2018 Bell Chimes In Episodes

On By benebellIn Bell Chimes In, Magical in the Mundane, personal, personal spirituality, tarot community, traditional witchcraft6 Comments

In the Fall of 2017, I started a fun little series on my YouTube channel, called “Bell Chimes In.” Here’s a refresher of the 18 episodes that came out last year:

List of 2017 Bell Chimes in Episodes

line

“Bell Chimes In” is a video series on my YouTube channel where I pick a topic that is oft talked about and chime in with my perspective. In doing so, I hope you’ll chime back. After the video, please join in conversation with me through a video response, blog post of your own, or by adding your thoughts in the comments section of the video.

I hope this series won’t be about me. I hope that it will be about us, about discourse, and the collective ideas of a community. There will be a new “Bell Chimes In” video every Sunday for the first quarter of the year.

# Title of Episode Video Length Date of Publication Blog Post
19 Good Witch; Bad Witch 13:15 01/07/2018 N/A
20 Race, Culture, and Spirituality 18:44 01/14/2018 N/A
21 Demonology 20:17 01/21/2018 Link
22 So You Wanna Create a Tarot Deck? 7:50 01/28/2018 Link
23 Tradition vs. Solitary 18:39 01/28/2018 N/A
24 Do No Harm? Diet and Spirituality 19:55 02/04/2018 N/A
25 What is Déjà Vu? 16:22 02/11/2018 N/A
26 Authenticity; Truth Seeking 15:15 02/18/2018 N/A
27 Spirit Guides, Patron Deities 15:45 02/25/2018 N/A
28 Starseeds and Multiverses 17:51 03/04/2018 N/A
29 Saturn Return (and Decisive Age) 15:20 03/11/2018 Link
30 People of Color in Spiritual Spaces 20:33 03/14/2018 N/A
31 Mercury Retrograde 11:16 03/25/2018 N/A
32 Selling Spirituality 14:52 03/30/2018 N/A
33 Three Truths I’ve Learned 18:56 04/14/2018 N/A
34 Seeds of Doubt 12:21 05/23/2018 N/A
35 On Reiki: An Opinion 14:43 05/26/2018 Link
36 The Privilege of Beauty 12:27 09/01/2018 N/A

Click Here for the Complete Bell Chimes In Playlist

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.

Continue reading “Your Year Ahead Twelve-Month Tarot Forecast Reading” →

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+.

Continue reading “The Asian American Tarot & Read The Cartomancer” →

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.

Continue reading “The Kokeshi Tarot and Reading Square Tarot Cards” →

Failing to Predict Disaster

On By benebellIn divination, opinion, personal, personal spirituality, tarot community6 Comments

My mother possesses an eerily keen sense for what’s to come and can feel future events in her bones. But I remember this one personal tragedy that had blindsided her. None of the talismans, trinkets, doodads, protection circles, shielding, prognosticating, or spirit guides prepared her for what happened. It shook her to her core and she had no choice but to acquire wisdom the hard way. Knowledge is one thing. Wisdom is another. If you accept that there is a greater Divinity, then sometimes our knowledge is blocked so that we can have clearer access to wisdom.

I recall once hearing an interview of a well-known celebrity psychic medium who attained fame and fortune for that ability to see what is to come, and yet when that medium’s own mother came down suddenly with a terminal illness and then passed on, that medium did not see it coming, at all. In the interview, that medium talked about the wisdom gained from that hard check to the ego.

Why is there such irony in this world? Those who seem to have the Sight cannot see coming the worst of all calamities. They’ve built a paradigm around the ability to forecast, so that we can plan ahead and prepare, and yet that one thing that needs the most planning and preparation they could not predict.

Continue reading “Failing to Predict Disaster” →

Mid-Fall BlogHop: Birth, Death, Rebirth

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

PREVIOUS BLOG | MASTER LIST | NEXT

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. =)

Continue reading “Mid-Fall BlogHop: Birth, Death, Rebirth” →

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.

line

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.

Continue reading “On Tarot Certification – Redux” →