A Day of Intuitive Studies : Our Tarot Retreat

What a wonderful time we had at our first-ever retreat day. Here's what happened.

Another Successful Psychic Foodraiser: Holiday Open House 2015

On December 20, 2015, I was able to revive an old and favorite holiday tradition of mine, the Holiday Open House.

Early in my career, the Open House was simply a day during the holiday season when I would give free readings and holiday snacks to anyone who stopped by. I remember my young children (they are now adults) dressed up in their fanciest clothes to serve cookies and soda to the guests as they waited to see me for a holiday reading.

Eventually, as I started to build tarot community, the Open House became a group project for a great cause. My students and colleagues worked with me to raise toys, funds and food for the needy.

Over the years, I have held the Holiday Open House in a number of locations, including six locations in Connecticut and two in Pennsylvania. There were some years I held two Open House in separate locations, in order to serve as many people as possible

 After moving to West Palm Beach, I held the event in the Harvey Building where I had my office. In the five years I kept my office there the event grew to an enormous size. Our 2012 Open House featured twenty-two readers and healers, and raised 600 pounds of food.

Our volunteer host, Brenda, organizing 600 pounds of food in the lobby of the Harvey Building at the 2012 Holiday Open House.

Now that I’ve opened my office in the Tampa area and founded the Tampa Bay Area Tarot Meetup, it seemed time to revive the Open House tradition. This time I chose a different kind of venue- the private room at Beef O’Brady’s in Land O’ Lakes. I hadn’t thought about the advantages of having food and libations available, but now I see it as a definite plus!

Regardless of Beef’s tempting menu, the snack table at the event was full of treats provided by our attendees. A number of people did enjoy a bit of holiday cheer from the bar during the afternoon’s festivities.

Our volunteers for the event were fabulous. We had amazing professional readers, including Beverly Frable, Michael Newton-Brown, Jan, Brenda and Lori, who read for folks throughout the day. These pro readers did a wonderful job sharing their skills with the many people who stopped by.

 We also had a new student, Michele, working with Lenormand cards. She kept pace with the pros and received great feedback! There is nothing like reading for the public to let you know you’ve got what it takes to be a reader.   Helping readers develop their skills is a definite side benefit of these Open House events.

Three wonderful readers made time to stop by to share a few readings during the day. We were honored to have Erika, Magda and Aria Sparrowsong with us for a few hours.

One of our tarot meetup members, Joy, offered a unique service. She is a calligraphy artist, and created colorful tags with special words for people. It was fun to see the words folks chose. Some did their name, or a concept or theme they wanted to keep in focus.

One person asked the Universe for guidance as to what words she should use. The message that came to her was “New Beginnings.” Then, she sat down to have an oracle reading. The first card drawn in the reading was called “New Beginnings!’

I was really happy with the level of support from our meetup members. Everyone who was available stopped by and helped out. Marianne and her daughter stayed all day to help me host!

The local community turned out in force, all ready to enjoy a day of fun and insight, and to help the needy.

Our crew of volunteers also included a coworker of mine from Origins Spa and Wellness Center. Rochelle did an amazing job giving ten-minute chair massages.

Our volunteers provided their services for free, in exchange for donations of food. The next day, I brought our collection of food and cash to Feeding America Tampa Bay. Our donations equaled 1,092 meals for local area families. It really feels good to make such a substantial contribution!

Afterwards, in the spirit of TarotCon, some of us stayed for a “Survivor’s Dinner” at Beef’s. The fellowship and fun continued, even after the Open House had officially ended.

The following week, I heard feedback from someone who had attended the Open House and taken the time to sit with each reader. A few readers mentioned a pregnancy around her. She is well past the age for pregnancy, and wondered why this message kept coming up. At Christmas dinner with her family, a pregnancy was announced. It became clear that my friend would have a special role in this child’s life, just as many of our readers had foreseen!

Thanks to everyone who volunteered and to everyone who participated. We’ll continue the tradition next year.

Enjoy the pictures from the event below, and, if you are in the area, make sure to join the Tampa Bay Area Tarot Meetup!

Learning about Lenormand at the Tampa Bay Area Tarot Meetup

Cards from Pixie's Astounding Lenormand by Edmund Zebrowski.

One of the things we are doing in our (still relatively new) tarot meetup is asking our members to share their knowledge in little ways, and in big ways.

Everyone shares their knowledge in little ways during discussions, and when we read for each other.

Many of our members are agreeing to share in big ways by teaching sessions on tarot, astrology, Lenormand and other areas of interest to our group.

Yesterday, Bridget Fortune Burns led a session on Lenormand.

I’ve been a tarot reader for more than twenty years. However, my skill with tarot does not necessarily easily translate to Lenormand – it’s a very different system. I’ve been struggling for a while to add this skill to my toolbox. Yesterday’s class with Bridget really resulted in some breakthroughs for me.

At the end of the session, I was able to perform a nine-card Lenormand reading for myself that was accurate and insightful, and I was able to help another group member interpret her spread.

Bridget helped us make Lenormand flash cards, and taught us to understand the court cards.

Here are some things I learned.

It is important to memorize the number associated with each Lenormand card.

Although there are not suits, as in tarot, the numbers are still important. That’s because the Lenormand cards also become the “houses” of the grand tableau.

In Lenormand, as in astrology, houses are essentially departments of life.  So the first card in a grand tableau is the house of the Rider, the second is the house of the Clover, and so on. I had known this, but it hadn’t really made sense until yesterday.

This reminded me that Marcus Katz taught us a similar technique with tarot at TarotCon (Florida) 2015. In this technique, we used three tarot cards to create spread positions into which we drew other tarot cards at random.

Bridget also stressed the importance of memorizing key words. I am a huge fan of tarot key words, so that makes sense to me.

Next, we learned about the Court cards of Lenormand. We discussed the people that the twelve Lenormand Court cards might represent, and the general meanings associated with the suits.

Finally, Bridget shared her method for performing a nine-card reading with Lenormand.

By the end of our two hours at Panera, I was feeling a lot more comfortable with using the Lenormand for divination. I can see a time when I will incorporate these cards into my professional readings.

One of the best parts of gathering together with tarot friends is the opportunity to learn from each other. Fostering a cooperative environment of learning and sharing among readers is an important part of building community. 

If you are in the Tampa Bay Area, please join our meetup!

A Lesson in Intuitive Tarot: December Tarot Meetup at Panera in Lutz

I expected a small group for our second-ever Tampa Bay Tarot Meetup at Panera Bread in Lutz on Sunday, December 7^th.  I had received a ton of emails; holiday parties, home renovations and seasonal sniffles were going to take a toll on our turnout.

I had a problem, too. Seasonal allergies had taken away my voice – literally. I woke up with laryngitis.

There were five of us at the meetup. Since things are rarely “accidents,” I interpreted my ailing throat as a sign I needed to let the students do the talking. Today, I wasn’t there to teach, I was there to listen and support.

This experience really taught me something important about teaching in general, and about teaching tarot in specific.

You see, I am an interpretive reader. That doesn’t mean I don’t use my psychic ability, or communicate with spirits, in a reading. I just believe that a solid knowledge of tarot archetypes and key words help to stimulate the intuition by giving us the language we need to accomplish the communication.

That means my tarot teaching is associative and interpretive. I ask my students to make associations between the Four Elements, numerology and astrology as they learn the cards, and I ask them to memorize key words.

As it turned out, none of my four attendees had memorized key words in their tarot toolbox. Worse, a few of them felt badly about that fact, sheepish that they hadn’t done their homework.

The theme of our meeting was “techniques practice.” Clearly, the only technique we could practice was intuitive reading.

Each person performed a short reading for another attendee. Then we did some group readings, where each person pulled a card and put them together to form a comprehensive answer. Finally, each person performed a seven-card reading for themselves.

This meetup had a lot of aha moments for everyone, but perhaps especially for me. In watching the students struggle with, and then master, the basic skills of intuitive reading, I realized the following important points to be true.

Whether from intuition or from past study, students know a lot more about the cards than they think they do. The anxiety of being “on the spot” in a reading, and of not having a solid memorized list of key words, seems to shut down the intuition.

Even beginning students need to focus on grounding, centering and breathing in order to tap in to the intuition and leave anxiety behind.

We can encourage students to notice different things about the cards by asking questions, such as “What color do you see most predominately?” or “What is this person doing in this image?” or “How does this image make you feel?”

The next step is encouraging the student to say what they feel.  Two of our student readers reported strong feelings that had turned out to be accurate. They were embarrassed to share those strong feelings at first.

After each person used their intuition (and whatever knowledge of the cards they had) to perform a reading, I had them look up the meanings of the cards in their books. They were pleased and surprised to see that their intuition had led them to give accurate readings, and that what they said about the cards was in fact extremely close to the book meanings.

I will continue to teach the importance of memorized meanings, archetypes and tarot study. At the same time, I will add some new teaching methods to my own toolbox.

Anxiety – the fear of being wrong – may be a new tarot student’s biggest enemy. Allowing students to look at the cards and simply say what they see very quickly helps them to see their own abilities, as well as the cards’ astounding abilities to give us truth.

Once that anxiety is gone and students feel free to communicate with their cards, the acquiring of the larger body of knowledge should come somewhat less painfully.

Sometimes I say the prayer, “Lord, put your hand over my mouth.” Well, this time the Lord did in fact silence me. In that silence, I learned something new about teaching tarot, and my students learned something about their own ability to read tarot.

Today my voice has returned.

Our next meeting of the Tampa Bay Area Tarot Meetup is February 1. Join us!