Beginning Tarot Reading Class
February 6, 2010A tarot dream
December 11, 2009
This morning I dreamt that I was at a Thai restaurant with my family. While the waiter was taking orders, I turned around and noticed the party behind me. Each person at the table had a poster-sized tarot card attached to his or her shirt. The deck and the cards were unfamiliar but clearly tarot. The man closest to me wasn’t wearing a poster-sized card but had a Rider-Waite Nine of Wands tucked behind his ear.
It’s not easy to tuck a tarot card behind one’s ear. I gave it a try the second I woke up!
Thank you
December 11, 2009
Thank you to all who participated in the weekly Lunchtime Tarot Group, 10/30/09 to 12/4/09. It was a lot of fun! If you would like to be on my email list to hear about workshops I will offer in San Mateo, CA, in the New Year, please send me an email: susan(at)tarotinsights(dot)net. Feel free to suggest topics that interest you. I am also happy to arrange private classes for you and a group of friends.
To learn more about me, and to see a listing of my past workshops and events, please visit: www.tarotinsights.net.
Lunchtime tarot exercise for 12/4/09
December 4, 2009The internet is full of advice in the form of bulleted lists. A Google search for “five ways to” yielded these results:
- avoid a Black Friday trampling
- improve your memory
- keep laptop thieves from jacking your data
- tell you’re ovulating
- speak like Obama
For this exercise, you might randomly draw and/or consciously select three to five tarot cards to help you
- say no
- cope with stress
- stop procrastinating
- curb your spending
- grow your business
- engage your audience
- impress your boss
- get in shape
- find love
- etc.
You might also pull three to five cards to help you
- accept, tame, or enhance your inner Fool
- be The Magician
- face The Emperor in your life
- avoid the shadow side of The Tower
- bounce back from a Three or Ten of Swords experience
Choose your card for the week of 11/29/09
November 29, 2009
Choose your card for the week from The Tarot of Trees by Dana Driscoll. When making your selection, don’t worry about what the cards mean. Base your choice on the pictures—the stories they tell and how they make you feel.
Let us know which card you choose—post a comment! (Put your cursor over each card to see its title.)
Isn’t this a gorgeous deck?! I recently stumbled onto tarotoftrees.com and was mesmerized. On her site, Dana Driscoll includes images of each of the 78 cards and discusses her artistic process, which I find fascinating. She even includes photos of the Three of Swords in various stages. There are decks and deck sets for purchase on the site along with other Tarot of Trees goodies such as incense tins, original prints, hand painted boxes, and silk wraps.
The cards are tactilely pleasing. They are a nice size for shuffling—2.5″ x 3.5″, have rounded corners and are thin and flexible, yet sturdy and slick with a glossy lamination. The colors are vibrant and the cards have a nice thin black border—not shown above.
It is fun to look through the images and discover all the creative ways Dana has used trees as metaphor. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is a clear influence, but the tree theme provides new interpretations. See the Five of Cups and Six of Pentacles above and compare:
There are also refreshing and surprising departures such as the Ten of Wands. Compare the card above with this one:
This deck would make a great holiday gift for a tarot enthusiast, art or nature lover.
Choose your card for the week of 11/22/09
November 22, 2009
Choose your card for the week from the Bosch Tarot by A. Atanassov. This deck is based on the work of the Flemish painter, Hieronymus Bosch, b. 1450. When making your selection, don’t worry about what the cards mean. Base your choice on the pictures—the stories they tell and how they make you feel.
Let us know which card you choose—post a comment!
Lunchtime Tarot Exercise for 11/20/09
November 22, 2009
For this week’s Lunchtime Tarot, we did an exercise that Sandra A. Thomson shared with me some time ago. Sandra is the author of these two terrific books:
Pictures from the Heart: A Tarot Dictionary and The Heart of the Tarot: The Two-card Layout: Easy, Fast, and Insightful
We also did the “Picture This” exercise on page 17 of Nina Lee Braden’s wonderful book, Tarot for Self Discovery.
Tarot Class with Anastasia Haysler: The Death Card
November 15, 2009
Anastasia & Rose Red at Anastasia's Tarot Class in San Francisco
Just look at all that fun stuff on the table: cards and art supplies, handouts, tea and treats…. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I highly recommend attending Anastasia’s tarot class on the second Saturday of each month.
Yesterday’s class was on the Death card. Anastasia started by sharing quotations about death. She sent us home with three and a half pages of quotations to ponder. Here are a couple that I really liked:
We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance. –Marcel Proust
Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life. –Bertolt Brecht
Anastasia also talked about death customs as well as attitudes towards death throughout history and in various parts of the world. She is a an engaging story teller with a great sense of humor.
Before our break, she played us the song, “So Spricht Das Leben” by the Mediaeval Baebes.
Next we compared Death cards from many different decks. Anastasia pointed out an interesting detail in the Rider-Waite Death card that I had never noticed. Look at the spur on the foot of the skeleton. It’s an arrow, and it seems to be pointing to a cave behind the ship and to the left of the trees. Any ideas out there about what it might mean?
After looking at Death card images, Anastasia invited us to share stories of the Death card turning up in readings we have done. She pointed out that while the Death card is typically thought to symbolize transformation, sometimes it does reflect issues of mortality, such as in the case of a querant who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, or someone who has just lost a loved one.
Our final activity was for each of us to draw our own interpretation of the Death card. What an interesting assignment! Anastasia had markers and crayons and pastels for us to use, and then we shared our cards and ideas.
The class ended with a drawing for two generous prizes: a deck and a beautiful deck pouch. Even those who didn’t win these prizes went home with a Forget-Me-Not key ring from the Tarot Media Company shop.
What a great afternoon!
I should mention that in addition to teaching tarot classes in the Bay Area, Anastasia is a luminary in the tarot community at large . Check out these projects which she has founded and directs:
Choose your card for the week of 11/15/09
November 15, 2009Choose your card for the week from the Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set (aka Smith-Waite Tarot Centennial Edition Deck). When making your selection, don’t worry about what the cards mean. Base your choice on the pictures—the stories they tell and how they make you feel.
Let us know which card you choose—post a comment!
U.S. Games, Inc. put out this deck to honor the artist of the classic Rider-Waite deck: Pamela Colman Smith. The commemorative set includes a reproduction of the 1909 version of the deck, a blue organza pouch, a copy of Arthur Waite’s classic book, Pictorial Key to the Tarot, The Artwork & Times of Pamela Colman Smith by Stuart Kaplan, postcards of other artwork by Colman Smith and a photo portrait of her. Take a look at what you get:
Touchstone Tarot’s Painting Sources
November 14, 2009Submerina of the tarot blog, the princess and the sea, chose the Eight of Wands from Kat Black’s Touchstone Tarot for her card for the week, and her description of the card, which she posted in comments, really turned me onto it.
Touchstone Tarot is digital collage, and the book that accompanies the deck includes the painting sources for each card, so I looked online for the various images that went into the Eight of Wands (see below). This gave me an even deeper appreciation for Black’s talent.
Eight of Wands, Touchstone Tarot
The Cumaean Sibyl, Domenichino. Source for girl in Touchstone Tarot's Eight of Wands.
Here’s some interesting information on the Cumean Sibyl. (Mary Greer said something to the effect that one could get a complete liberal arts education by studying the tarot. Ain’t that a fact!)
An Extensive Landscape, Paul Bril. Source for landscape in Touchstone Tarot's Eight of Wands.
Cosimo il Vecchio, Jacopo Pontormo. Source for wand leaves in Touchstone Tarot.
St. Christopher, Vecellio Tiziano. Source for wands in Touchstone Tarot.
