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The fun and fabulous Connie
over at Dirty Footprints is going to be interviewing me at Blog Talk
Radio! Can you believe it? Two blog girlies chatting away a Sunday
morning for all to listen in on... its going to be a blast! Come join
in and give a listen, by going to the link below. We will be on at 9
AM Pacific Standard Time, but it will also be available to listen to in
her archive section, and when I have it I will post a link to it here
in my sidebar.
A couple of weeks ago I was staying at a friends house down in Long Beach for the weekend while I vended at an art fair. My friend, Tree rents a back house from our mutual friend Tanya, and late late late one night, after a long rainy day of vending we all converged in the front house in our jammies with our little snackie snacks. It was the perfect ending to a very exhausting day, and the kind of evening that I had been craving for a while, as I don't get to see my Sister Souls as often as I used to.
There we were, late into the night, Tanya's hub had long ago gone to bed, when we break out with the Tarot cards. We took turns looking over cards, sharing our favorites and the ones that always seem to come up for each of us, and of course readings for each other about where we were at in our lives and what needed to happen next. I love my Soul Sisters, don't you? It was the kind of evening I imagine to be so ancient and so timeless as well. Forever, women have been gathering together in circles big and small to tell stories, consult oracles and share the wisdom of their intuitive hearts.
Tarot Thursday is my way of creating that same circling here in our blogging world - a virtual gathering around a candlelit table, delicious hot tea and our cards... It will be a weekly touch stone for learning tarot intimately, sharing our thoughts and inklings about what we see and going over the symbolism, numerology, elementals and astrology of each card. We will have journal exercises and meditations to help imprint each card into our subconscious and give us an anchor into each card and the deck as a whole. And of course our dialogue... I would love for all of us to comment, share, connect with each other about what insights and experiences are happening for you as we go through this journey together. So... read on my lovelies!
Having your own deck to follow along and begin establishing a deeper relationship with Tarot is essential. If you don't own a deck yet, you can find them at your local New Age shops, Barnes and Noble or Borders. I also recommend checking out the 100s of cards listed and reviewed at Aeclectic Tarot. Purchasing a deck is an incredibly subjective and intimate process. You will find that some cards will "speak" to you and others won't at all. This is why its always ideal to be able to handle them and look through several decks in person. But clearly, not all of us have access to stores that may carry decks. For this reason Aeclectic Tarot is great. You can browse through so many cards and at least see a sampling of the imagery you will be working with. If you find a deck you want, they provide links to sellers for you.
I will be using the Rohrig Tarot , which follows the model of the Thoth Deck. Another commonly used deck is the Rider Waite. There are so many! I spend hours looking through the decks at Aeclectic. Have some fun with it. The artistry you will find is exquisite and its also a great place to get ideas if you yourself want to embark on the adventure of making cards of your own. I will from time to time post reviews of my own as I continue adding to my collection. There will be a post in the upcoming days offering more information about choosing cards for yourself.
If you are interested in gathering together here, leave your name and blog address and I will place a link to you in the side bar. Like Wellness Wednesday at my other blog, I would love for you to also include a post on your blog for Tarot Thursday, sharing your journey and insight with the card we are working with for the week. It would be wonderful if we all shared images of our individual cards on our posts. This will add a variety of textures and depth to our exploration and seeing the many different interpretations of each card by other artists will enrich our journey. As the weeks pass I would like to pull from these postings and feature various posts that you have contributed throughout the journey. Linking here and having an archive folder of your own on your blog will also create a great resource for all of us to check out and with permission we can also print out the information we get on each card and create a file/folder or book of our own for our personal library. The ideas and possibilities are endless! So more on this in the weeks to come.
You are welcomed to join at any time, just stop by and introduce yourself to us and I will add you to the blogroll. Below is a badge you can take and place on your blog as well. Just copy and paste the code into your posts or sidebars or both.
<a href="http://lunarmusings.typepad.com/inner_revealings_tarot/2009/02/tarot-thursday-learn-tarot.html"><img src="http://lunarmusings.typepad.com/inner_revealings_tarot/TarotThursdayBadge.jpg"/></a>
Its Valentines Day. And here with the two cards that most speak to love I give you some questions to ponder:
~How do you Love?
~What does that look like?
~What does that feel like?
~How do you receive Love?
~Are there blockages in this area for you?
~How are you choosing to Love?
~How are you choosing to Love yourself?
~How are you choosing to Love your Beloved (whether they are present in your life or not)?
~What are your personal rituals of bonding?
~Are there things you want to change around that?
~What are possible new ways to create these rituals of bonding?
~Union... What has that been like for you?
~What fears does Union with the Beloved bring up for you?
~What are some ways you can transcend that now?
~What does Love feel like in your body?
~What does Love sound like in your life?
~If you were nothing but pure Love, what would that Be?
I send you all deep abiding love today and always. May we continue learning Love in all its profound ways.
Note: I am so honored to be able to serve so many of you on this day and this week by doing readings on the trajectory of Love in your lives. Truly I am touched by the response I have had to this blog. Right now I am able to stick to my 3 day turn around for a reading, but may have to extend that to a 4 day turnaround by the end of today. Thank you so much for your patience!
Much Love.
Creating your own Tarot deck can be a very meaningful and deepening experience. Spending time to really dive in and conceptualize each card, and what you will include in each image can really amplify the act of learning tarot. So when I got the comment to a previous post from Silvia, I decided to include it here and address it so all can read. She wrote:
"HI! I know very little on tarot, so I might be making silly questions.
Here's my first:
You say "The Tarot is a deck of cards, a visual medium using symbols,
numbers, colors, words, archetypes, that help reflect/mirror the
reality of what is truly happening in the past, present and future of
our lives." I would like to make my own deck since I've been looking
and have not yet come across one I've liked. So I'm guessing I would
have to know all these symbols, numbers, colors, etc. to make my own
tarot deck?
Thank you!"
If you are going to make a tarot deck specifically, then learning the symbols and the numbers and as many layers as you can into each card can lead you into a profoundly enriching learning experience. Doing this however takes time and I have heard of several instances where such an endeavor has taken several years to complete! This is partly because the process of making a deck becomes its own ritual, where each card that is being made takes the creator on their own unique spirit journey into the meaning and wisdom of each card as well as deeper into the heart of intuition.
But the beauty of creating your own deck is that you can do with it whatever you want, and so if you want a deck that has as many symbolic references on there as you can fit, or if you want a deck that is simple and very straight forward, you can choose that for yourself! There is no right and wrong here. The idea is to make a tool that will speak to you and that you can have a relationship with.
The other option is to create a deck of cards depicting a variety of themes to aid in self exploration that has nothing to do with the tarot, but can still be used as a tool for divination and personal growth. You can also create an inspiration deck with cards that are designed to be pulled one at a time to provide inspiration or affirmations for that specific day. Again, the options are endless.
Cards can be created with paints, ink, collage, photography, digital collaging, block printing, pastels or anything else you can think of. You will need a good sturdy cardstock and will want to consider the possibility of laminating if you are using mixed media. It is however, always a good idea to make copies of your work so that you have the original deck as an art piece and then the copy which you can use for your every day use. This gives you a back up, if over time the wear and tear becomes to much for the cards that you are using.
If you are going to make yourself a tarot deck specifically, a good way to organize the work is to break it down in sections. You could devote a month or two to the Major Arcana and start creating the cards from the beginning with the Fool. Doing this will help you move through the progression of the Major Arcana and also help imprint in your consciousness the path that the Fool travels in the cards. When working with the Minor Arcana, working with all four of a number of court card will help teach you the significance of the number and the difference in the suits and elements of each suit. For example, you could start with working on all 4 aces, and then moving on to the 2 cards and so on.
A website to check out is Plain Cards. They offer a fairly inexpensive downloadable program that helps you digitally design and print your cards. I have not personally used this, but it looks like it may be worth a look. Another option would be to create your cards and have them transferred into a digital format and then having them printed professionally. I have consider doing this after I created my postcards, because they came out so lovely and vibrant and the UV coating on them feels much better then a thick laminate. Its also something to consider if you love your work so much that you want to sell copies to others.
Please let me know if any of you begin to undertake this project for yourself. I would love to hear how it is going and what route you decide to take. Whatever it is, I assure you it will be a potent process through learning tarot.
And thank you Silvia for posting your question!
The Tarot is a method of divination or fortune telling that dates back to about 600-1000 years. Each source I've come across gives a different amount of years, and if you want the Wiki version you can go here. I don't really want to get into dates and all the historic minutiae of the Tarot. Really what I would like to do is give a basic idea and structure of the Tarot and what it is.
The Tarot is a deck of cards, a visual medium using symbols, numbers, colors, words, archetypes, that help reflect/mirror the reality of what is truly happening in the past, present and future of our lives. It is a deck of 78 cards divided into two groups. The Major Arcana, consists of 22 cards that depict the archetypal development journey that we all take through life, and the 56 Minor Arcana cards or pip cards that depict every day elements and personalities of daily life. There are a few other types of groupings with regards to the cards that will be covered in later posts.
For me the best way to explain it is that each card is a mirror to what is going on in a given situation or in a persons life. It reflects what lies beyond our projections, expectations and whatever assumptions we may have that are driven by our emotional states. The cards are a way for our deeper knowing and that part of us that is part of the collective unconscious to break through the clutter of our illusions and show us what is really going on.
With intention and focus on the querents questions, the cards are shuffled and laid out in specific spreads designed to reveal the story. And the reader interprets the story and in some cases pulls through any intuitive "hits" or information that might also come up regarding the querents situation. For me personally, this has nothing to do with any specific religion, as much as its an acknowledgment of the energetic/spiritual web that we are all a part of.
It is important to note that there is a huge variety of decks out there, and not all of them are Tarot cards. Some are inspiration, meditation and other form of divination or oracle cards designed to help pull through guiding themes, images or divine truths. I think they are all potently effective. The Tarot is just a specific language unto itself.
There is an entire universe of layers involved in Tarot. I suppose that is because it reflects the complex universe within each of us as well as outside of us. I find myself challenged by how to create individual small posts regarding something so vast. Bare with me as I experiment with short blasts of information, and other times lengthy explorations. Over time I will figure out what works best!
