Author: innowen

Today’s card is The Fool.

Starting at the North, 3 qualities I see inside this card are: freedom, expression, carefree.

Moving towards the East, I’m going to have a fun weekend motorcycle ride from Portland to Seattle where my partner and I are visiting a friend.

Moving to the South, I’m going to have fun to New York City where my tarot family is awaiting me at this year’s Readers Studio.

Finally, circling around to the West has me setting an action step that I will do during the next 30 days that makes me feel free, expressive, and carefree. I think I’ll set a board game date with some friends. I backed a game called Stones of Fate last year on kickstarter and it should be arriving soon.

Finally, circling around to the West, I’m going to play the game, Stones of Fate, a Kickstarter game I backed last year and has the art of Ciro Marchetti.

What would your compass reading be for the The Fool?

Leave a comment with your North Star, 24-hour action, weekly action, and monthly actions.

The Readers Studio in New York. Since then, my life took a bit of a detour when I moved from Washington State into Portland, Oregon and then had to deal with life challenges. This year definitely has pushed me on those challenges but I am going to RS15 and this is going to revitalize my love for Tarot and gives me a chance to reconnect to my tribe.

Three of my favorite tribemates are on main stage this year: Theresa Reed, Carrie Paris, and Ellen Lorenzi-Prince. I can’t wait to see what these fabulous women present and I’m going to be all smiles to see them present.

Are you going to RS15?

Let me know, I’d love to hang! (Also, Big props to Carrie Paris who gave me permission to use her awesome image for today’s post.)

This post is a snippet that I removed from Tarot Inspired Life. It details the “science” or the how I see tarot working. Enjoy!

Part of the allure of Tarot and other divination devices is that they seem to “work their magic” without any rhyme or reason. Some people believe Tarot messages come from the cards having tapped into some sort of universal energy current, or concepts taught to them by their higher selves. While no one really knows for certain how the cards work, we do know that there is an uncanny synchronicity to them. They work. They give us exactly what we need to know when we need to hear it at (and sometimes when we don’t want to hear it). When I’m asked “how does Tarot work”, I tell them:

Tarot is nothing more than a pack of seventy-eight cards with nifty (and precisely designed) images on them. That’s all the Tarot physically is. The true power of the cards comes from within the person examining the cards. This power comes from our beliefs, our experiences, and what things we give importance from this world. It comes from our mental ability to create associations to all the cards’ imagery, symbolism, and colors and how we synthesize something new from it. And when a reader reads for a seeker, this power melds into an even stronger one from the combined beliefs, knowledge, and experiences of both the Tarot reader and the client. In rare cases, usually when the reader is also psychic, then a third entity, a divine being, can lend their hand to the reading by making sure the right card gets flipped over.

If this doesn’t clear the air on how Tarot works, I have three other explanations for how the magic works:

Synchronicity
A term coined by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, synchronicity represents events in our life that seem to hold special meanings for us. For events to be synchronistic they must be randomly occurring, such as the haphazard throwing of Tarot cards that somehow wind up coinciding with the particulars of the question in that moment.

The Stars Are Right
In this theory, the energies of the EXACT moment determine the advice given. These energies include: positions of the stars and planets, the energy levels within the reader’s and the seeker’s body, the thoughts streaming through both of our minds, our belief in Tarot, the exact space we share, and where we are sitting. All these factors contribute and become channeled into the cards. Thus, when the deck is shuffled and I turn over the card, it is this energy that pushes “the correct” card up to the top of the deck to tell the seeker what known or hidden knowledge they need to know about their given situation.

Disco Ball Perspectives
In this explanation, I ask people to imagine a 78-paneled disco ball with an image of a Tarot card attached to each panel. Each panel represents a different perspective. Some perspectives appear near to what is going on, others are on the other side and cannot hear what is happening. Perspectives that are up close and personal are the ones that get selected from the deck.

So what are your thoughts on how Tarot works? Feel free to post your ideas in the comments.

I was honored today by Theresa Reed, aka The Tarot Lady, who posted the interview she did with me. I see that it has boosted the views to my site. Thank you to everyone who has stopped by and peeked around. I have lots of new posts coming up and also new events.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my little corner of the world!

Disclaimer: I received an eARC from netgalley in exchange for a review.

Sasha Graham’s 365 Tarot Spreads is an interesting study in creating tarot spreads. She wrote the book to fill the gap that appeared on bookshelves, noticing that there was no “daily tarot spread” book out there. Each spread in this book, then, was created by her (or some other notable tarot alums) for practitioners to use on a daily basis. Many of the spreads were created based on: historical information, pagan or astrological date info, or literary and pop cultural reference.

What I liked: This book should be a quick read. Graham includes a wide variety of spreads and topics to fit any request. Readers could use it as a tarot-a-day study guide or just flip through the pages until a spread they need pops up. As one who loves designing spreads for her own uses, I looked at this book as a way to see the wide variety of spreads that a single person (in this case, Sasha) could create. It’s a highly creative volume of spreads.

What I didn’t like: This book took me forever to read. The layout includes so much side-bar information that it’s a bit overwhelming and cluttered. After the book came out and I purchased the epub file, I found the file horribly designed. The spread layout images were tiny and the formatters attempted to design to the print layout, rather than to the device. Ugh. It really made reading the book on a device harder than it should have been.

Bottom Line: Love tarot spreads? Then add 365 Tarot Spreads to your collection. I’ve flagged many of the spreads that I’m sure I’ll look back to over and over again for my own use. I also recommend that you buy the print version of the book (yes, it’s huge and heavy) and skip the eBook due to the layout issues. Other than that… it’s a great resource for any tarot library.