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.
I’m thrilled to be participating in the “Foodies Guide to the Tarot” BlogHop hosted by our co-wranglers Jay Cassels and Arwen Lynch Poe. The topic was left wide open for us bloggers to go in any direction of our pleasure, as long as it had to do with tarot and it had to do with food. I’m thinking I’ve done just that.
The Major Arcana of the tarot deck can be subdivided into Three Septenaries. The First Septenary of the Major Arcana is about the primal dramas of the ego, expressed by the first seven Keys of the Majors: Keys I through VII. You can read more about the Three Septenaries here.
Menu Planning with Tarot?
Inspired by the First Septenary, I will be preparing a seven course brunch for Hubby and me. (Jay and Arwen: the hubby thanks you for your BlogHop topic idea). Here we go.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here I’m lifting the idea of the “Mind, Body, Spirit” spread from the accompanying guidebook comes with instructions for three-card readings.
This is my review of the book A Year in the Wildwood by Alison Cross, and this won’t be a review of the Wildwood Tarot deck, though of course I’ll make reference to the deck while I comment on the book. Cross has published a thoughtful, explorative, and detailed guide to the Wildwood Tarot deck, a favorite and popular deck among tarotists today, especially those with a pagan persuasion. The e-book came out on Amazon Kindle earlier this year, 2016, and I am lucky enough to receive a copy for review.
Throughout this post, please feel free to click on the screenshot images of the e-book for an enlarged view.
The Gypsy Palace Tarot by Nora Huszka is a potent deck for intuitive readings that articulates the “death and the maiden” motif. Gypsy Palace showcases a postmodern macabre aesthetic that blends tribal-aboriginal inspirations with Fauvist flavors. In other words, I love it.
I don’t know and can’t and didn’t verify, but I have the very strong hunch that Huszka is witchy. That hunch is so strong in me that I’m willing to speculate openly about it. =) Here’s why. There is such power invested into this deck and anyone sensitive will feel it. It’s really undeniable. So I have a strong hunch Huszka knows a thing or two about craft. (But again, it’s purely my speculation. I have no idea whether she does or not and didn’t bother to confirm it.) xoxo
Your deck, when you order it from Huszka, will come with a beautiful drawstring bag that matches the fabric of the accompanying guidebook. (However, that drawstring bag is not shown here.) If you’re going to get the Gypsy Palace Tarot, then I recommend ordering the set with the guidebook. You won’t regret it. I’ll show you why later on in this review.
This is a self-published deck that you can buy from the deck creatrix herself, via Etsy. You’ll want this deck in your collection if you’re a collector and you’ll want to work with this deck if you consider yourself an intuitive reader. There is also this “fortune-teller-traveller” boho consciousness infused into the Gypsy Palace Tarot deck that is going to resonate strongly with those who identify as a fortune-teller.
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.”
benebell wen 