Ancestral Tarot (Red Wheel Weiser, 2021) by Nancy Hendrickson, a genealogist and tarot master, is an incredible journey into self-discovery through ancestor work. This Sightsee the Tarot video is a guided meditation and three-card reading from Ancestral Tarot— how to commune with your Ancient Ones. You’ll find this spread in Chapter 5, Ancestors of Blood.
Continue reading “Connecting to Your Ancient Ones (with Ancestral Tarot)”
For each year of your life, you have a card from the Major Arcana called the Tarot Year Card, which represents the tests and lessons you’ll experience in any given year. Your Tarot Year Card indicates the kind of archetypal energies that are constellated in that year, suggesting personal qualities you can work with.
In Archetypal Tarot (Weiser, 2021), Mary K. Greer connects astrology and numerology to the tarot to create an in-depth personality profile that can be used for self-realization and personal harmony.
This video workshop will explore Chapter 14 from Greer’s text. We’ll reflect on your Tarot Year Card from 2021 and write out forecasts for the year to come in 2022.
Continue reading “Tarot Year Card (from Archetypal Tarot by Mary K. Greer)”
A video I watched inspired me to hit the record button and share these thoughts. But this is no longer a direct VR to that video (and in fact this video might have taken on a more melancholic tone than intended).
Instead of being a direct VR to the video inspiring this sharing, I will be commenting on what my own experiences have been like.
Here are some of my thoughts 7 years in.
This video is unlisted, which means it won’t appear on my YouTube channel or on the public YouTube platform. I will be experimenting with moving away from that platform and posting more unlisted videos here on the personal website.
Evolving from the pen and ink line drawing you see above to the digitally-remastered in-color version of The Priestess was a journey. As 2021 comes to a close and I send out the final shipment of first print run decks of the Revelation Edition, I’d like to share my reflections on this journey.
Fair warning upfront: This is going to be a looooong blog post. I also share some tips, from direct personal experience, to aspiring indie deck creators.
Completing the Revelation Edition is one of the coolest things I’ve ever achieved, because I leveled up so much in terms of my own art. I did something I didn’t even know I was capable of doing.
I am so, so excited to have stumbled upon Johnny of Cosmic Wheel Tarot and his video interview series called Deck Creator Corner. It’s on Instagram as a video channel, which is the only negative thing about it (lol, am I biased against technological progress or what). I say that only because I don’t know what to do with someone’s IG video channel that I love. I don’t know how to share it. I don’t know how to bookmark it for later. I can’t even subscribe to it. Argh.
But this is worth your fuss. I promise. Johnny’s Deck Creator Corner interviews artists from our community who share their inspiration, their creative process, and give advice straight from experience.
Btw, I’ll be chatting with Johnny on his Insta channel this Saturday, Dec. 11, at 10 am Pacifc, 1 pm Eastern (Man, do you midwesterners feel left out? We always flag the east coast and west coast time, but rarely mountain, central, and let’s not even talk about Alaska or Hawaii.)
Here’s a sampling of 12 interviews from Deck Creator Corner, linked for your convenient viewing pleasure.
Continue reading “Johnny of Cosmic Wheel Tarot’s Deck Creator Corner”
…to that stranded remote island where I will only ever be able to use these 10 decks for the rest of my mortal life. Or so goes the prompt. I may have embellished a little. Katey Flowers on Tarot Tube started the hashtag. You can watch her video here.
By the way, at the start of her video she says she was inspired by the makeup community’s tag “only 10 eyeshadow palettes” and I have to confess I kind of guffawed at the thought of “only” 10 eyeshadow palettes.. Ten…palettes? I don’t even have one! Ah but then I’m sure most of the known world would guffaw at my struggles over choosing just 10 decks for this prompt.
Continue reading “#only10decks The 10 decks I’d take with me”
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.
Continue reading “How I Read Tarot Cards: Workshop at the World Divination Conference”
General Admission: $100
Generosity Rate: $125
Reduced Rate: $75
Sign up for an all-day online tarot workshop with me, via Zoom, and hosted by the California Institute of Integral Studies:
November 6, 2021
10 am – 5 pm
1 hr. break for lunch
I’m so excited to be conducting an all-day workshop at the Cal. Institute of Integral Studies. More than that, the admission rates go to support an incredible educational program. The Cal. Institute of Integral Studies does so much for the community, and gives sanctuary to brilliant, peculiar minds who otherwise have felt like they don’t belong anywhere else.
You can be a total tarot beginner or a seasoned practitioner. That’s because at the heart of it, this workshop is about where tarot card meanings come from, and the source of archetypes, instinct, and intuition. And yet tarot is very much an empirical, learned knowledge that asks for your focused study.
This course is about both mysticism and philosophy. A semiotic study of the tarot means embodying both the mystic and the philosopher, and that’s what we’ll do through a series of collaborative reading exercises.
After an overview of history and the development of different tarot designs, along with a brief introduction to reading mechanics, we’ll explore techniques for cultivating transformative personal spirituality, from divinatory readings for yourself to birth cards and pathworking.
You’ll team up with classmates to workshop your personal readings. You’ll also be reading for each other, to hone professional cartomancy skills. I’ll share my insights and insider tips, acquired from two decades of experiences in reading tarot for others. Explore your role as a channel for guiding others toward attaining wisdom and an improved quality of life.
Here’s a tentative rundown of the day’s schedule:
| MORNING SESSION | |
| 10:00 am | A Beginner’s Introduction to the Tarot |
| 10:30 am | History and Origins of the Cards |
| 11:00 am | Differing Tarot Designs and Systems |
| 11:20 am | Break – 10 minutes of guided relaxation (Video Clip) |
| 11:30 am | Sources and Evolution of Card Meanings |
| 12:00 pm | Philosophy, Psychology, and Mysticism |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch Break (1 hour) |
| 1:30 pm | Casual Tarot Chit-Chat (optional, if you prefer a 30 min. lunch) |
| AFTERNOON SESSION | |
| 2:00 pm | The Mechanics of a Tarot Reading |
| 2:30 pm | Breakout Sessions |
| 3:30 pm | Break – 10 minutes of guided relaxation (Video Clip) |
| 3:40 pm | Reflections and Discussion |
| 4:10 pm | Your Tarot Archetypes and What They Reveal |
| 4:45 pm | Q & A Session |
| 5:00 pm | END |
I’m the Justice card in Jamie Sawyer’s Pocket of Peers Tarot! What an honor! The two little tiles tilted on top of the guidebook cover are not part of the cover design– I placed those two extra tiles Jamie gifted me with there for the photo.
The Pocket of Peers Tarot was crowdfunded on Kickstarter. It was fully-funded in 95 minutes, which is crazy! Crazy-good that is. I love how supportive the tarot community is toward its members. There’s so much love and mutual respect.
The interior of the box design is magnificent. I mean, just look at that reading table and the library bookshelves behind it, with an Akashic Records vibe. I’m also loving the eight-spoke wheel with the leaf design for the reversible card backs.
To me, it’s also symbolic of what this deck expresses: living knowledge. While there is traditional symbolism on each card to anchor it for RWS readers, the Pocket of Peers Tarot celebrates the living collective of knowledge that the tarot community represents.
Tarot deck art featuring people the artist knows is nothing new; in fact, it’s kind of its heritage. The earliest Renaissance tarots featured portraits of family members from the house that commissioned the painting of that deck. I love that Pocket of Peers is like a time capsule of the tarot community in 2021.
Continue reading “The Pocket of Peers Tarot by Jamie Sawyer”
It was through quite a bit of serendipity and social connections that I got my hands on the End of Empires Tarot, the Major Arcana series, by artist Sarah Julig. There are only 12 totally handmade copies of the first edition, each card hand-cut, glued together onto the card backs, and even the bag it came in was hand-made.
She auctioned off the 12 handmade tarot Majors decks and all proceeds went to BLM bail funds and the ACLU. That’s so cool!
The berry hues (red ink, blue watercolor, and vintage white tempera), ink blot reminiscent style, and eerie dream like quality altogether win me over. The art transports me to an alternate dimension, à la The Upside Down. Above is The Fool, Magician, Priestess, Empress, Emperor, and the Hierophant card in the bottom right corner features a human’s internal organs. An anatomical diagram for the Hierophant… now that intrigues!
Continue reading “End of Empires Tarot (Majors) by Sarah Julig”
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