At the Intersection of Tarot and Food

The Four Elements in Bread, for the Pocono Tarot Picnic

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The Fall Equinox, or Mabon, is also called “The Second Harvest”. To celebrate that theme, the Tarot Blog Hop is writing about food and tarot.

That’s not as much of a stretch as you might think. There are actually lots of ways that tarot and food intersect, and many, many tarotists are foodies.

There are even a few notable tarot food publications, such as Theresa Reed’s “Tarot by the Mouthful”, and Corrine Kenner’s Epicurean Tarot Recipe Cards, now sadly out of print.

I’m only truly a foodie to the extent that I love foods from different cultures, and I love to shop at Whole Foods, although my bank account doesn’t. I review restaurants on UrbanSpoon, and my favorite thing to make for dinner is reservations.

Since I haven’t a recipe to share, and you probably don’t want to hear about the three great restaurants I enjoyed when I was doing readings in New York City last month, I will instead share some thoughts about the ways I have seen food weave in and out of tarot over the years. I may have shared some of these stories before; I guess some of my favorite memories involve food and tarot.

One crossing of food and tarot is simply operational. I’m a Waite-Smith reader, and I’m programmed to think about the smallest details in the cards, including the food that appears. Sometimes that food becomes part of the reading.

What happens, for instance, when a person dealing with a gluten issue is presented with the wheat-surrounded Empress?

Might the pumpkins in the Three of Cups suggest that one eat more root vegetables?

Sometimes, the pomegranates of the High Priestess could advise a diet higher in superfoods and anti-oxidants, perhaps.

While we certainly can’t prescribe diets, the issues of food, diets and weight loss come up so often in tarot readings that I often jokingly call my tarot deck the Weight-Smith instead of the Waite-Smith.

I’ve done many readings for people about their complex relationships with food, body weight, health and body image. So often, these things are rooted in painful early trauma.

Frankly, I’m trying to use tarot to help me through my own journey toward weight loss and a better relationship with food and exercise. Results, so far, vary.

The connection between food and tarot isn’t always deep and painful, though. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to organize a few food-related local tarot events. In fact, it seems that every tarot event ends up being food-related in some way.

The first event was so long ago that it was in the days before digital cameras were common, so, no pictures (but it DID happen).

I rented the banquet room at the Plainfield Yankee Motor Inn in Plainfield, CT, for $75. I think the year was 2001 or so.

The event was a tarot potluck, where everyone had to dress as a tarot character, and everyone had to bring a tarot-themed food.

The tarot-themed foods were amazing. People were really creative. There was Death Chili, Eight of Wands Chicken Skewers, Hermit Cookies, Devil’s Food Cake, Pentacle Pie, and more.

The event was fun, and well-attended.

Belly dancing at the Pocono Tarot Picnic

My next attempts at fun local tarot events were the Tarot Picnics, held three times in the Poconos, and once in Connecticut, at Devil’s Hopyard.

The Tarot Picnic was a day-long event with workshops, music, dancing, drumming, tarot readings, and, of course, food.

In the Poconos, we had a great venue with a full kitchen, and one of our Tarot Circle members was a fabulous cook. As well as making a great meal for us, Regina made the Tools of the Four Element in bread. At the end of the event, which was held in September, we threw the bread to the fire.

When I first started holding tarot fellowship meetings, in the days before Meetup, having good food at the meeting was really important.

Now I hold monthly meetings online, using WebEx and, most recently, Facebook Live. The thing I miss most about meeting with my tarot friends in person is the ability to share food as we share tarot and friendship.

I guess this food-themed blog hop is the closest we’ll get to sharing food with tarot friends online!

Holiday Open House 2015, Beef O'Brady's, Land O Lakes, FL

As much as we tarotists enjoy sharing food with each other, we also enjoy working together to share food with those in need. For most of the past sixteen years, I have hosted a “Holiday Open House” near the Winter Solstice. What this event has evolved into is basically a psychic fair where the currency is non-perishable food items.

Readers and healers volunteer their services, the public enjoys readings and healing sessions, and holiday snacks, at no cost, in exchange for their donation of food for the local food bank.

Holiday Open House 2012, at the Harvey Building in West Palm Beach. We raised a lot of food!

The event always raises as much fun as it does food, and brings visibility to a lot of great local tarot talent!

There is only one way in which we don’t want food to intersect with tarot, and this is physically. There is nothing worse than wine or tomato sauce splashed on your cards!

Now let’s see what’s cooking at Meniscus Tarot as you continue along the hop, or at TarotWitchery if you ate dessert first.

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The Cards Never Shut Up

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Welcome to the Mabon Tarot Blog Hop, in celebration of the Autumnal Equinox.

Almost thirty tarot bloggers have agreed to write on the same topic at the same time. When you finish here, proceed forward to Leeza Robertson at TarotScapes, or work backward to Joanna Ash at Sun Goddess Tarot.
If you find a break in the chain, visit the Master List.

Our wrangler this turn of the Wheel is Morgan Drake Eckstein. His task for us is deceptively simple. Morgan has asked us each to share a specific experience in our development as a tarot reader when our understanding of tarot or our tarot reading skill took a giant leap forward.

Any tarotist will tell you that tarot is full of aha moments. I think that’s what keeps most of us hooked. Over twenty-one years as a professional reader my reading style has gone through a lot of changes. I’d like to think my skills are always improving.

Can I isolate one moment, one class, one reading, or one profound experience with the cards, which thrust me forward? Certainly there are many. Let me share one that came very early in my tarot journey.

The thing that constantly amazes me about the cards is their ability to be repetitive. That the same poignant card will show up over and over again has always been an indicator of tarot’s efficacy for me. I could tell many stories about specific cards which constantly appeared for me over a period of time to guide me through a difficult journey or drive a specific unwelcome-but-necessary message home.

My discovery of tarot’s ability to make one card appear frequently in a person’s life is the quantum leap story I will add to our blog hop collection.

It started when I was first learning tarot, back in the mid-1980s in New Haven, Connecticut. I had a Rider Waite Smith in the yellow box, A Motherpeace Round Tarot, a book by Vicki Noble and a book by Eden Gray. I took four classes at the local New Age shop, The Elements of Life on State Street, now long gone. I don’t remember the name of my teacher, but obviously, she was good at what she did.

At the time I was living in student apartments in the Yale-dominated East Rock neighborhood. There were people constantly coming and going; I had four housemates and plenty of friends.

Everyone was willing to let me practice my new skill on them, even the one with a secret to hide.

One of our housemates had some really erratic behavior. We all loved her, but we were all concerned. Why was she behaving so strangely?

She was happy to let me practice tarot on her. I did, with great regularity. Each and every time, no matter the question or the deck, the Seven of Swords figured prominently. There was definitely a fox in the chicken coop.

The third time I saw the Seven of Swords come up for her, I called her on it. I knew she had been lying to all of us. She smiled the way children do with their hand in the cookie jar, but she said nothing.

At that point, I was a dog with a bone. I continued to ask questions, not of my housemate querent, but of the cards themselves. Eventually I had my answer, and she had to acknowledge its truth.

My housemate was a full-blown crack addict. That solved a few mysteries!

We often hear that “The cards never lie.” It’s also true that, until the truth comes out, the cards never shut up.

The realization that the same card would insistently present itself over and over again made it easy to more fully trust the wisdom of the cards. The power of those repetitive cards caused me to organically develop a reading style that allows for multiple appearances of the same card even in a single reading.

Over time I saw that a card which appeared insistently over a period of weeks or months would suddenly disappear when a situation resolved. That same card might reappear years later, or in a reading for another person, to denote a similar situation.

Those repetitive cards helped me develop a personal relationship with, and understanding of, each card.

Over the years, repetitive cards in self-reading have marked the significant events of my own life, from the development of my tarot business (Queen of Wands) to the death of my mother (Six of Cups), and beyond.

Repetitive cards help to build relationships with clients and students as we discover together the profound depth of a single card as it appears over a period of time.

 As a tarot professional on a journey of spiritual growth, my quantum leaps in tarot advance me both professionally and personally.

May all your tarot leaps be joyous, and may you have a blessed turn of the Wheel.

Now don’t stop here! Make your own leap to the next blog in the chain!

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2013 Mabon Tarot Blog Hop Master List

Welcome to the 2013 Mabon Tarot Blog Hop. The Tarot Blog Hop blogs together eight times a year. We are tarotists and diviners from all over the globe. Each time we hop a different volunteer is the wrangler, with the responsibility of setting the topic and hosting the Master List. This time it's my turn!

Here is the topic and instruction I gave to our bloggers. Below that  you will find a list of all our participants and the links to their blog posts. Enjoy the Hop, and please comment on the blogs if you can. We appreciate your participation!

Mabon is a name for the Autumnal Equinox. Mabon is also the name of the “Great Son” of Arthurian legend.

In the Northern Hemisphere this is the first day of autumn. While the days have been growing shorter and the nights longer since the summer solstice, on the equinox the day and the night are of equal length. From here the days will be shorter than the nights until we reach the winter solstice.

I often celebrate the holiday of Mabon with myth. I read stories about Mabon and King Arthur’s Court. I gather my friends to reenact the abduction of Persephone and tell the mythical story of how winter began with Demeter longing for her daughter.

Myths are an important part of our culture, our spirituality and our personal identity.

As tarotists and diviners we have a special relationship with myth and story. Tarot itself is the story of the Fool, and thus tarot is the story of each of us on our journey through life.

With the cards we are able to see the stories of people for whom we read. We are able to see the ways in which people create myths about themselves in both healthy and unhealthy ways.

Many tarot decks honor mythology. Consider Mythic Tarot, the Lover’s Path Tarot and Ancestral Path Tarot.

Our topic for the Mabon Blog Hop is this: Divination and Myth.

Tell us a story from your own life that involves divination. Talk about divination tools that honor mythology. Write a reenactment of your favorite myth. Design a spread that reveals a story. Discuss the myths that you see in your tarot deck, or in the characters of particular cards. Write a poem about your favorite mythical character, or do a reading for them. Dispel erroneous myths about tarot or divination. Create a new mythic story. Tell the story of a God or Goddess from your culture or spiritual path. Create a myth about divination.

The possibilities are endless.

How you want to handle the topic is up to you. Be creative and have fun!

Here is the Master List for the 2013 Mabon Tarot Blog Hop.

1. Jordan Hoggard http://divinationstudio.com/tarot-myth-divination-bloghop-the-myth-of-the-potss/

2. Olivia Destrades http://firstearthtarot.blogspot.com/2013/09/mabon-blog-hop-2013-persephone-high.html

3. Christiana Gaudet http://tarottrends.com/content/2013-mabon-tarot-blog-hop-divination-and-myth       

4. Chloe for Celtic Lenormand http://www.celticlenormand.com/2013/09/mabon-blog-hop-making-of-meadow.html

5. Karen Sealey  http://pureblessedtarot.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/a-mabon-tarot-blog-hop-bouquet/

6. Louise Underhill http://wp.me/p1IleY-10Q

7. Stella  http://www.usgamesinc.com/tarotblog/mabon-tarot-blog-hop-2013

8. Lynda http://thecauldronborn.blogspot.com/2013/09/frigga-and-her-handmaidens-tarot-spread.html

9. Chloe for TABI http://tabitarot.blogspot.com/2013/09/tarot-blog-hop-myth-tarot.html

10. Alison Coals http://alisonsalembic.blogspot.com/2013/09/tarot-blog-hop-mabon-2013.html

11. Cassandra Santori: http://www.quickcardreading.com/fall-equinox/

12. Joanna Ash http://sungoddesstarot.blogspot.com/2013/09/autumn-made-richer-with-lessons-from-a-myth.html

13. Pepi Valderrama  http://www.depepi.com/2013/09/22/inanna-and-the-journey-to-the-underworld/

14. Chloe McCracken http://innerwhisperscouk.blogspot.com/2013/09/mabon-blog-hop-mythical-things.html

15. Anita Perez http://circlingin.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/future-fool-for-mabon-tarot-blog-hop/

16. Joanne Sprott http://cosmicwhisperstarot.com/2013/09/22/mabon-tarot-blog-hop-star-stories

17. Arwen Lynch http://tarotbyarwen.com/?p=17086

18. AndybC http://boroveshengra.blogspot.com/2013/09/tarot-blog-hop-mabon_22.html

19. Margo Benson http://wynntarot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/mabon-tarot-blog-hop.html

20. Aisling http://tarotwitchery.blogspot.com/2013/09/tarot-blog-hop-mabon-2013-divine-mythos.html

21. Tierney Sadler http://www.tierneysadler.com/2013/09/92313separating-myth-from-fact.html    

22. Joy Vernon http://joyvernon.com/Blog/divination-and-myth

23. Amanda Levesque http://tarottopics.org/content/mabon-tarot-blog-hop-2013

24. Bonnie Fernandes http://tarotsalve.com/2013/09/22/mabon-blog-hop-divination-and-myth/

25. Morgan Drake Eckstein http://gleamingsfromthedawn.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-mythology-is-brand-new-more-or-less.html

 Bonus Blogs! Though not part of our official hop, a few of our tarot friends have also blogged on this topic. Read their blogs, and check back again to see this list grow!

Jenna Matlin http://www.queenofwandstarot.net/queen-of-wands-blog.html

Sophie Juneau http://sophiejuneau.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/inanna-and-erishkigal/

2013 Mabon Tarot Blog Hop: Divination and Myth

Welcome to the 2013 Mabon Tarot Blog Hop. This time around I'm the wrangler. That means I got to set the topic. If you want to see the reasons behind the topic you can visit the Master List. There you will also see a full list of our participants and the links to their blogs.
The Tarot Blog Hop is an amazing exercise in global tarot community and creativity. I am so honored to be a part of it.

Perhaps you are joining me from Olivia Destrades' First Earth Tarot Blog.

When you finish here please continue on to Chloe McCracken's Celtic Lenormand Blog.

If you find a break in the chain refer to the Master List.

Some myths are ancient. Some myths are stories we make up. Here is a story a friend of mine made up. Or maybe he intuited it. Like all myths, it’s hard to know for sure if it’s true or not. And, like all myths, it has enough truth in it to make you think.

This myth answers the question “How did Random Token Divination begin?”

First, let me explain “random token divination.” Tthis is a term my friend and I coined. It describes any divination method that draws from a group of tokens (cards, stones, etc.) at random.

Tarot, of course, is random token divination. We know that tarot originated as a trump-taking card game. Eventually Tarot Appropriati, a game of telling poetic stories that compared people and events to individual tarot cards, led to random token divination with tarot.

I have always believed  random is a divine energy. When we shuffle the deck we are giving the Universe the opportunity to have a hand in the outcome. To me, random is a source of spiritual power in divination.

And now it is time to tell our story.

Let’s go back to a very early time in the history of our species – perhaps even before we had a written language.

Perhaps one day a man walks to the river and catches a fish. It’s a big fish that will make a wonderful meal for his family. After he catches the fish he sees an unusual shell at the river’s edge. He picks the shell up and takes it with him. Later when he looks at the shell it reminds him of the large fish he caught and the wonderful meal it made.

Another day he is out in the woods and a large animal chases him. For a moment he thinks his life is over. Finally he climbs a tree and the animal loses interest.  When he climbs down the tree he picks up a stick that appears to have fallen from the tree that saved his life. He brings the stick home. He shows his family the stick and tells them the story of his close call.

A bit later he goes out to hunt and it rains. He is cold and wet, and finds nothing to bring home. He knows his family will be hungry. He is frustrated and disappointed. On his way home he finds a stone on the path. He picks it up. Later, that stone reminds him of his disappointment.

Over time these objects grow into a collection. He knows which one reminds him of victory and which reminds him of defeat. Before taking a journey he chooses one at random to see what he might encounter on his journey.

Perhaps this collection of sticks, shells and stones is the first oracle of random token divination. Or perhaps this is just a made up story to explain something we don’t quite understand.  

That is the power of myth. In a simple story we find truth; something that makes sense. That is the power of divination, too.

Blessed Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox and Second Harvest Festival!

Now it’s time to continue your journey through the Tarot Blog Hop. Your next stop is Chloe's Celtic Lenormand Blog. If you are working in the other direction you can visit the blog before mine, Olivia's First Earth Tarot Blog.

If you find a break in the chain visit the Master List.

Harvest Psychic Gallery at Pearl Rauberts'

Pearl Rauberts is a respected spiritual teacher in South Florida and beyond.

Her home sits on ten acres in wild Loxahatchee. Part of her home and property is dedicated to classes, workshops and ceremony. She has an elite cadre of teachers who work with her to present and impressive calendar of events.

Four times a year I am on that calendar presenting my Psychic Gallery. This past Saturday was our Harvest Psychic Gallery, held on Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox. We had a full house of 25 lovely people in Pearl's sacred room.

I love doing galleries. I have seen both John Edward and Sylvia Browne perform their galleries - I like to think that I have developed a style that works for me, and my audience.

I have done a lot of different kinds of performing - theatre, music, ceremony and more. The Psychic Gallery separates itself from all that because there is no way to practice or rehearse, and no lines to memorize. It is my job to create safe, sacred space, to help the group to work together in support of each other, and to be open to all the messages that come for each group member. That is all I can do - Spirit does the rest.

I will be returning to Pearl's for a New Year Gallery on Sunday, January 6. Prior to that, I will be doing a Gallery in Royal Palm Beach in a wonderful venue that is new for me, Insights Center for Personal Growth, 1480 C Royal Palm Beach Blvd. • Royal Palm Beach, Florida 33411. The date for that is November 3^rd, at 7 pm. For more info, look here.

I will also be performing a sort of "Cyber Psychic Gallery" this Sunday, September 30 at 4 pm on Webex. For more information, please visit here.