At the Intersection of Tarot and Food

The Four Elements in Bread, for the Pocono Tarot Picnic

 PREVIOUS BLOG | MASTER LIST | NEXT BLOG

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.

PREVIOUS BLOG | MASTER LIST | NEXT BLOG

When Common Wisdom Has No Place at the Tarot Table

I am a very busy professional tarot reader. This means that, in any given week, I have a unique view into what is happening on the planet.

It’s amazing how often personal life events seem to trend. One week, many people I talk to, from all over the world, are dealing with bosses who bully them. The next week, it seems as if everyone is getting laid off. Some weeks, no one seems to be able to make a romantic connection. Other times, everyone is discussing wedding colors and guest lists.

That personal events are mirrored by so many people across the world in short time periods is evidence to me of planetary energies that affect us all, whether they be angelic influence, astrology, social media, or some combination thereof.

As a tarot reader, it is very important that I not let one person’s story influence someone else’s reading. Just because Stephanie, Martha and Ruth all met great guys this week doesn’t necessarily mean that Karen will be equally lucky. Whatever energy seems to be prevalent, each person remains unique and all things remain equally possible. When we step into the process of divination, it is those possibilities we seek, not the trends we identified earlier in the week.

The same thing is true with the history of particular clients. That I have been reading for some people for more than twenty years can be both a help and a hindrance as I try to keep readings fresh, relevant and accurate.

Because I know my longstanding clients well, I can point out patterns, celebrate growth and warn against repeated mistakes. At the same time, I have to be very careful to assume nothing based on my clients’ history. Just because Samantha’s last three husbands have been alcoholics does not mean that she couldn’t meet a decent social drinker in a bar and have a happy relationship with him.

Likewise, It’s a hazard for anyone who gives professional or dating advice to become stuck in idioms and common wisdom. I find part of my job is getting clients unstuck from oft-repeated beliefs and woke to all that can actually be true. I also find that many of my tarot-reading peers are equally stuck in old-school beliefs about jobs and relationships.

For instance, how often have your heard, thought or said the following things?

No one wants to hire older workers.

Once a cheater, always a cheater.

A man won’t respect a woman who makes the first move.

We all hear these sorts of common wisdom idioms. Sometimes, they are based in some sort of truth. However, these sorts of expressions and beliefs have little place at the tarot table.

It took me a long time to learn this hard truth.

When I first started my tarot career, a quarter-century ago (yikes!), I subscribed to some basic beliefs, including:

It is always right to leave an abusive relationship immediately.

A person with a history of substance abuse must be completely sober to be healthy.

A marriage requires love to be successful.

Sometimes, those beliefs would come out in readings, even when those beliefs might not have been completely supported by the cards.

Very quickly, I learned to temper and silence my own beliefs, and instead trust the process of intuition and interpretation that is tarot reading is.

The truth is, regardless of trends and commonalities, every person is unique, every situation is different, and every reading is unexampled.

Most importantly, every tarot client has the right to an actual reading, not a parroting of beliefs and assumptions.

When we tarot pros get together to talk shop, either in person or online, we often speak of specific cards and situations by saying “I always say ________ when I see this card.” Or, “In a situation like ________, I usually tell my clients ________.”

While it is necessary for us all to have some wisdom on tap in our memory banks, I think we need to avoid “always” or “usually” saying something in readings.

There is a place for favorite quotations and meaningful metaphors in a tarot reading, of course. When we find ourselves needing to explain a card or a concept to a client, sharing a nugget of conventional wisdom can help illustrate our point.

My own late mother often participates in readings this way. Sometimes something she used to say really works to drive home a concept.

The problem comes when we say something by rote or opinion, rather than as the oracles we are.

Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin, in their brilliant “Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot”, say that “The oracular moment is sacrosanct”.

If there is one piece of wisdom we should always remember and repeat often, it is that.

The fact that cards have classic meanings but unique interpretations makes tarot teaching and learning a challenge.

We must learn, and teach others, to allow the cards to speak within that oracular moment, and we must be able to listen and convey their messages without filtering those messages through our own beliefs.

We do this best when we are open to the voice of the Universe, rather than bogged down with common wisdom and limiting beliefs.

Let the Flowers Sell Themselves: The Best Marketing Advice I Ever Received

Making sales has been a part of my job responsibilities since my first job at seventeen. I’ve taken sales training courses, and I’ve sold everything from telephone service to tarot cards to tie-dyes to social change.

I’ve hawked beaded jewelry at Grateful Dead shows and negotiated complex deals with difficult clients. I’ve knocked on doors for political candidates and sold tarot readings at street festivals.

Like everyone of a certain age, I had to make the leap to online marketing. I’ve been selling stuff since before we all had computers and mobile phones. While the technologies are vastly different, I think sales is sales, and marketing is marketing.  Whether we’re doing it with an email list, a Facebook page, on a door step or a street corner, or in a café, sales and marketing are about making introductions, sharing information and creating relationships – nothing more, nothing less.

What is the difference between sales and marketing? Whether you are a one-person shop or a huge corporation, the concepts remain the same.

Marketing is the overall strategy to produce sales. Marketing is your message, and your plan to get people to hear and recognize that message.

A sale is the actual transaction.

Typically, marketing is required in order to make a sale. People need to recognize you, and have a comfort level with you, before they will spend their money.

In today’s internet world, so much of our marketing, and even our actual sales, can be conducted online, with no voice or face contact. This makes our online marketing strategy even more critical.

In the field of metaphysical practitioners, mystics and healers, there are an inordinate number of marketing gurus trying to convince us that a six figure income from life coaching is months away, if only we buy their sales course.

Many times these teachers have no sales or marketing training at all – they simply want to teach us to do what they claim they are doing.

These sorts of marketing classes are very appealing to we mystics and healers. That’s because marketing is often the scariest aspect of setting up a metaphysical business. Between shyness, lack of experience and fear of stigma, many fledgling healers feel they don't know how to market themselves, and turn to these gurus for help. Sadly, some end up disappointed and discouraged.

Often, these sales programs are really just cheer-leading sessions. “If you can believe in yourself, you can do anything”, and that sort of thing.  To me, this seems dangerous and counter-productive. If healers are ready to work with the public, they should possess some inherent confidence in themselves and their work.

Sure, we all need encouragement, but to expect that a sales training program will replace the confidence that comes from years of practice and study is optimistic, to say the least.

Even worse, I have seen many metaphysical business trainers encourage talented students to hang their shingle long before they are ready. This is a problem for three reasons.

First, it discourages those who could have been successful if they hadn’t launched prematurely.

Second, it unleashes a passel of unqualified practitioners who don’t know what they are doing, and therefore reflect poorly on all of us.

Third, there is little or no vetting process to be accepted to these training programs. These trainers preach that anyone who wants to, can – regardless of actual talent.

Other marketing gurus try a one-size-fits-all solution, thinking that what made them successful will make anyone successful, rather than empowering each seeker to find what works best for them.

Sometimes, the daily onslaught of advertising for these marketing programs that we see in our social media feed can be quite disempowering.

In order to sell their questionable products, many of these sales gurus try to make us believe that we can never be successful because we are unaware of their special secret. It makes us wonder what we are doing wrong, and scares us away from seeking our own success. Sometimes it causes us to spend money we don’t have for something we don’t need.

In all my years, and in the variety of jobs I’ve worked, the very best sales and marketing lesson I ever learned came in one sentence, and from an unlikely source.

In the mid-late 1980s, I sold flowers on the streets of New Haven. Think of young me as a patchouli-infused Eliza Doolittle, if you will. I worked for Wallie Weisser, with whom I shared many adventures.

When I reported to the flower stand on the corner of Elm and Broadway for my first evening of work, Wallie’s father, Louie, was there to train me.

Louie was a retired bus driver. He told me some jokes to make me feel at ease. He showed me the prices, and how to wrap the flowers. I asked if I should hawk the flowers, or try to speak with passers-by.

Louie looked at me with a smile, and gestured broadly to the flower cart.

“The flowers are beautiful” he said.  “Make a lovely display, and the flowers will sell themselves.”

He was right. Then I found I could increase the sale during my interaction with the client. They would stop to admire the flowers, decide to buy a small bouquet, and I had an opportunity to up-sell them, simply by engaging in conversation.

Truly, everything I’ve ever needed to know about sales and marketing is inherent in what I learned from Louie at the flower cart.

The way we present ourselves – our websites, our social media presence, our advertising – is just like the lovely display of flowers on the cart. It has to be eye-catching, attractive, and engaging. It has to inform people of what we are doing, and what we can do for them.

That moment when I would chat with the client and make the sale, is the moment we make our appointment and create a connection with our clients.

While there are some amazing metaphysical business mentors available to us, there are also many marketing gurus who work to create within us a sense of fear; fear that we don’t know what we are doing, or that we can’t be successful.

Before you sign up with someone who dazzles you with promises of easy money, consider that you might, perhaps, be better off to take a lesson from Louie, and simply let the flowers sell themselves.

A Day of Intuitive Studies : Our Tarot Retreat

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

Share Your Tarot Shelfie for World Tarot Day!

Tarosophy Tarot Association designates May 25th as “World Tarot Day”.

Over the years, I have celebrated in different ways. Here’s a blog post from 2011, written hours before a well-attended Skill Share in my office in West Palm Beach, in honor of the day.

In 2014, I hosted a weekly video podcast. Olivia Destrades joined me to celebrate World Tarot Day together.

This year, I thought it would be fun to ask my tarot friends to join me in sharing a tarot shelfie!

Would you take a picture of your tarot shelf and share it on social media today, or this week?

I’ve shown you mine, now you show me yours!