Tarot Tips: Self-Healing Tips for Tarot Readers
Published: Mon, 10/01/18
"Most professional readers will acknowledge that a consecutive..."
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![]() Newsletter of The Tarot School
http://TarotSchool.com ISSN: 1529-0565 Vol. 10 #8 / October 1, 2018
In this Issue: - Welcome
- Tarot Tip: Self-Healing Tips for the Tarot Reader
- Tarot School Aphorism
- What's Gnu? - Diviner's Corner: Tarot and the Nature of Divinity - Cool New Event: Rune Wisdom Telesummit - Best Practices: Expert Ways To Attract Clients - Upcoming Events Welcome to a new issue of Tarot Tips!
And a special welcome to our new subscribers.
![]() It’s a bit spooky how October has arrived so quickly! This season certainly sets a tone for changes, festivities, and time with loved ones. These times can also be important for healing and self-reflection. In this issue, Benebell Wen’s tarot tip is all about self- healing for tarot readers. The Diviner’s Corner features Sasha Graham's exploration of the connection between tarot and the nature of divinity, and in Best Practices for Professional Readers, expert ways of finding clients is the topic at hand. Enjoy! And one more thing...
I love it when I find unexpected tarot imagery in real life. When I looked at this picture of my daughter, Rachel at her recent baby shower, the resemblance to The Empress card was striking — even down to the pearl necklace! ~ Ruth Ann (card from the Universal Waite deck by US Games; photo by Judith Zweiman) ![]() With love and gratitude on the tarot journey, Ruth Ann, Wald, and Gina
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SELF-HEALING TIPS FOR THE TAROT READER
by Benebell Wen a consecutive series of intense divinatory readings can leave them feeling energetically depleted. I believe that a tarot reading done right is going to be the transference of a lot of your own personal energy, through the lattice of the cards, and received by the querent. Querents often talk about feeling rejuvenated, inspired, and revived after a reading, while tarot readers often talk about feeling the complete opposite. Symptoms ranging from fatigue and lethargy to tarot burn-out and even an intuited debilitation of physical health or vitality are not uncommon side effects for the professional reader. Whether you call it self-care or self-healing, prefer to practice a mundane ritual or are open to engaging in magical work, you’ll want to restore the energy you’ve drained out of yourself. In the metaphysical Chinese philosophy of Qi, or personal life force, routine draining of your energies through work such as divinatory tarot readings, and no efforts to then restore the lost energy can hurt not only your physical and emotional health, but by extension, can also have a detrimental effect on your own luck and fortunes. Restoration of that lost energy can happen simply by drawing up a hot bath infused with your favorite essential oils and Epsom salt, with a candle lit nearby to bring in the sacred presence of Spirit. While resting in the bath, close your eyes and isolate attention to each part of your body, limb by limb, and taking deep breaths, let each inhale permeate that limb and on exhale release all tensions. Patiently take the time to release tensions in every part of the body while immersed in the bath. When you take care of your body, you also take care of your mind and spirit. Thus, a more concerted effort at observing ordinary health and nutrition maxims can help to replenish your lost Qi, or life force. Drink plenty of clean water for the next forty-eight hours and try to eat healthy, foods you know your body likes. Being mindful of nutrition, diet, and physical exercise after intense metaphysical work helps the body’s energy field to heal and replenish more efficiently. Meditation is also a form of self-healing, though if sitting still for an hour in total silence and focused on a single thought is daunting, then consider guided meditation or qi gong. To maintain the elasticity of your mental faculties, after a series of intense tarot work you’ll want to redirect your attention to work that is a contrasting use of your mind. I like to go on a weekend road trip, driving and hiking through a nearby national park. Going through the ritual of preparing and cooking an elaborate meal from scratch (and then, of course, the enjoyment of eating it) helps me as well. What works for me might not work for you, however. So the core message here is this: you have to redirect your attention from intense tarot work to an activity that is notably different. Maybe that’s curling up on the couch wrapped in your favorite blanket watching your favorite television show marathon-style. In terms of using the TV for self-care, I would recommend opting for content that’s not emotionally or ideologically intense. That seems to defeat the purpose of shifting mental gears after tarot work. In a way, the more farcical, silly-happy, and humorously nonsensical the TV show or movie is, the better. As for enjoying movies, I would recommend watching the movies at home, in a safeguarded environment, rather than watching it at the theaters, where all sorts of frenetic energies are going to be around you and affecting your already tender personal field. Just as taking care of the body takes care of your mind and spirit, taking care of your spirit can help to take care of your mind and body. The classic holistic approach to self-healing for diviners is mantra recitation or a form of repeated, dedicated prayer that invokes a deified divine healing force, whether that’s by the name of an archangel for you, the name of a specific god or goddess from a specific tradition, or simply to call out to Spirit, or Holy Spirit. I like to use “the Many Holy Names of Spirit.” Here’s one ritual to consider as-is or modified: Plant the soles of both feet firmly on the ground. Sit up as straight as you can, visualizing yourself as tall and stable as a mountain. Call forth and visualize a luminescent beam of white light coming from above, as if from the heavens, entering the crown of your head. Then feel a luminescent beam of lapis lazuli light enter up from the ground, through the soles of your feet. These two beams then temper and balance your personal energetic field so that you’re in a more harmonious, healthy alignment with both Heaven and Earth. Then recite the words of the following prayer three consecutive times: “What had been drained from my body, may the Holy Light hereby restore. What had been empty inside me, may the Holy Light fill with Curing, Invigorating Love. Mend my fractures. Purify my impurities. Soothe the disturbances of my spirit. And so may it be.” On the physical plane, rituals in self-healing can reduce the aftermath of exhaustion or fatigue. On the metaphysical plane of correspondence, such rituals maintain optimal levels of personal life force that can then be exerted to achieve your own goals and attain your aspired fortunes. When you’re constantly feeling drained of that life force, you don’t have enough fuel left in you to manifest prosperity for yourself. Maintaining a disciplined routine to self-healing and preventative self-care will make all the difference in your wellness when you read tarot for others. About Benebell: Benebell Wen is the author of Holistic Tarot: An Integrative Approach to Using Tarot for Personal Growth and The Tao of Craft: Fu Talismans and Casting Sigils in the Eastern Esoteric Tradition, both published by North Atlantic Books. She is also the deck creator and illustrator of the forthcoming independently published Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, to be released on December 21, 2018. Learn more about her work at benebellwen.com Tarot School Aphorism ![]() ![]() READERS STUDIO STUDY GROUPS! One of the favorite parts of the Readers Studio experience is the optional evening Study Groups. Even though Readers Studio is sold out, there are still seats for Thursday's Divination Day. If you're there, you can attend a Study Group, too! Thanks to everyone who submitted a Study Group proposal! Here's the lineup: THURSDAY, APRIL 25 ================== Abraham Bae Sight Beyond Sight: 5 Exercises to Broaden Your Tarot Intuition Lisa Freinkel Tishman Mindful Tarot: Opening the Heart, Freeing the Mind Neera Sareen “Moksha Patta” (The Liberation Board): The Indian Vedic Divination... ‘Birth to Liberation’ Anne Walner Astro-Tarot-Numerology Wheel: How to Create Astro-Tarot-Numerology and Timing Charts Michelle Welch Storeowner Insights to Deck Success Katrina Wynne Tarot Games for Fun FRIDAY, APRIL 26 ================ Monica Bodirsky 9-Card Storyteller: A complete tarot reading w/ only 9 cards Rome Choi Dawn from East: New classic from outside the mainstream Kathleen Gubitosi Voice Alchemy: Professional Voice Care and Voice Painting for Tarot Readers Al Juarez Tarot Time: Tell Me Cuando, Cuando, Cuando! Dan Pelletier Dan’s ‘Post-It-Notes’ Tarot Workshop Joan Scannell & Chrissy Manolakis Let’s Cut to the Chase!: Delivering Clear, Accurate Readings that Bring Clients Back Again and Again Tickets for Divination Day on Thursday, April 25th are available here: 2019 Divination Day Diviner's Corner TAROT AND THE NATURE OF DIVINITY by Sasha Graham ![]() art by Julie Jensen You are the universe. You are divine. You are pure consciousness. Everything you see, notice, observe, listen to, eat, laugh at, make fun of, enjoy and dislike, resist and surrender to is the universe seeing itself, understanding itself, and recognizing itself. What is true for you is true for the universe. What is true for the universe is true for you. As above, so below. This is why when you give love, you receive love. You, like The Fool tarot card, are on a journey, quest, adventure. The journey of who you are, like a sacred circle, will lead you back yourself. The World circles back to The Fool card and begins the journey again. Your journey begins with you. It ends with you. You may travel to the edges of your backyard or to the far flung reaches of the world. It is the internal journey that matters. Everything else? Shadows and dust. The exterior world is energy changing form, a mere illusion. Your interior life, your inner roads, bear the mark of eternity. Each day as you wake, the mystery of who you are unfolds a bit further. You move forward, backwards or sideways on your respective path, closer to or further from your goals. You speed along on cruise control sometimes. Other times, you find yourself lost in thorny thickets or gasping for air in quicksand. We all instigate cause and effect with our actions and deeds. We fill the world with our energy. We spend it wisely on things we love, reinvesting energy in ourselves or give it away to other people and things. Each day of our life, we step closer to death. August’s rich harvest and golden light surrenders into the deepening shadows of September’s equinox. It is worth surrendering to. It isn’t easy but its beautiful. It is why we are here. Practice the art of surrender. If you let Summer’s passage into Fall be your teacher, you become more of who you are outside of linear time. A map is essential for any journey. These days, we use handy cell phone maps fitting snugly into the palm of our traveling hands. If you were around in the 1970’s you’ll remember giant AAA travel maps found under vinyl seats and in the dusty glove compartments of our parent’s car. These maps became reading fodder during infernal road trips after the Mad Libs and fast food fries gave out. Ancient peoples crafted scroll maps by hand. Men and women looked to the firmament before paper’s invention. Constellations in a crystal clear, pollution-free night sky were used as a guide, plot, and plan. Maps show us landscapes, they reveal the lay of the land so we can orient ourselves. Maps let us know where to find things like gas stations, convenience stores, and our friend’s house. Yet, the most most exciting maps, the most rarified, desired and lusted for maps, maps that people have shed blood and lost their lives over, are treasure maps. If you are looking for the treasure map of your soul, look no further than a deck of tarot cards for sale at your local bookshop. Tarot has been described as many things; an oracle, game, book, meditation and contemplative device, etc. Tarot is the ideal map because it presents you, the inner and outer life, in a sensible, precise, easy to read manner. It speaks with equal equity of the practical and the mysterious, the visible and invisible. The tarot, like you, is the micro and macrocosm. Tarot offers possibility while reflecting precisely where you are on your journey. Tarot reflects infinite possibility because it communicates through symbol. Each of us fill symbols and cards with personal meaning, the way we read between the lines of poetry or prose. Poetry speaks through economy of words and silence. Silence, like dark matter or garden compost, contains all possibility. Tarot’s symbols communicate like poetry because symbolic meaning is felt. Visuals are ingested and move inside of us to take residence. They are ripe with wide open space. You illuminate the space with personal meaning. My newest offering, Llewellyn’s Complete Book of the Rider Waite Smith Tarot offers a keen examination of the occult mapping of tarot. I put aside personal associations with the cards and went straight to Arthur Waite, the author and source of the RWS deck, to craft a book on the world’s most famous deck. I deconstructed his books and articles relating to the cards to understand his ultimate goal when creating the deck in 1909. Turns out, Waite was using the tarot as a mapping tool to express the nature of divinity. The nature of divinity was the last thing I was looking for when buying my first deck of tarot cards at age twelve. Delicious, mysterious Halloween was all I could sense inside the cards. Black and orange jelly beans, bobbing for apples, witches with pointy hats and sugary orange pumpkins carved into silly and macabre faces. I wouldn’t have understood the phrase “nature of divinity” as a pre-teen. I did, however, hop off my bike often to lie back on a field. I enjoyed feeling myself tiny against an expansive summer sky or seeing luminous fall foliage flush through valleys blazing with color. It was a signature of things to come. Nature is the great equalizer of humanity. We all gaze at the same moon. No matter how we come to understand our existence, regardless of dogma, religion, system or rejection of systems used to explain our souls, life and the after-life; nature is the equalizer. The ocean remains the ocean. A mountain is a mountain. A flower is a flower. Nature contains the first archetypes. Nature predates human personality. This is why myth and legend are elemental and grounded in mountains, sky, and ocean. Earth, air, fire and water are reflected in tarot as Pentacles, Swords, Wands and Cups. These are the symbolic elements we fill to the brim with personal meaning. The material world (Pentacles) is the place where we all meet each other while navigating the folds of our interior life. The earth contains everything you can touch, taste, see, feel and smell. Pentacles are your soft body, your tasty dinner, your little black dress, the money you stuff in your wallet, your bedroom, your garden, etc. Everything else in the tarot and in our life is invisible. We experience and feel the passion of Wands when we desire a person or thing. We see Wands expressed in others through facial expressions and actions, yet we are unable to hold passion in our hands. We experience the intellectuality of Swords, articulate ourselves through language, make calculations and see others doing the same, yet we cannot taste or smell a thought itself. The emotional life of Cups often influences our every action. Our emotions can feel wonderful or horrifying, yet you can’t literally hold love, fear, excitement, or trepidation in your hands. Major Arcana archetypes are psychological constructs and ideas which are not available in solid form. We cycle through the archetypes and court card personalities on a daily basis. Court cards and archetypes reflect all of the different personalities living inside of you. • You are a tarot Queen when in an empathetic state of mind and nurturing others. • You are The Empress when at the height of your creative ability and being brilliant with your talents. • You are The Emperor when you make routines and rules for yourself and stick to them. • You are a Page when you are in a childlike and curious mood. We cycle through personalities, moods and archetypes differently each day and on a moment-to-moment basis. Yet it is all invisible and ephemeral. The experience of our life occurs inside of us. Your response to spirituality, the supernatural, creativity etc. is interior and highly personal. No two people experience mystery in the same way. C.S Lewis said: “Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even at best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for and listening for?” Arthur Waite offers us a map of how divinity (the universal life force, the godhead, a flower, whatever name you’d like to give it) unfolds in the material world via the tarot by connecting it with the Tree of Life. Once divinity moves down through the Tree and expresses itself in the material world, like a sunflower blooming in your garden, you are free to retrace these steps in reverse. You can moves back up the Tree, retracing the path of divinity. You reach the summit to look it squarely in the eye. Divinity sees you seeing it. Divinity wants you to recognize it as much as your soul wants to be seen and understood. Have you ever fallen in love with a person or animal and felt them loving you back? It is the soul recognition in another. It usually happens when you least expected it, although you always desired it. Divinity’s been on Tinder looking for you all along. This is why love, especially new love, fills us with endorphin like drug feelings. It is a hint, a gasp of the ecstatic love which created you. Once you truly “see” each other and recognize one another, like a lover’s kiss, a Big Bang explodes. Your Big Bang expresses itself though synchronicities and evolution in the material world. Uncanny synchronicity appears to let us know we chose well. We are right where we should be on our path, journey, adventure. You change on a cellular level. The material world changes with you. You find yourself responding to old habits and behaviors in a different way. Patterns change. Old challenges are met with sudden clarity and solutions. You become more of who you are. The mystery of who you are unfolds. The seeds of everything you are, everything you need, is right there. Just as the Magician has Cups, Wands, Swords and Pentacles on his table, your psyche, spirit, passions and body are a self-sustaining kit with everything you need. I hope you tend to the garden of your soul. I hope you make use of the gifts enfolded and entrusted deep inside of you. May your gifts bring you joy. You make the world a more beautiful place by sharing them. I hope you stay true to your path. Hope you are willing to brave dark woods and creepy shadows when the going gets tough. Persevere through to claim the glittering treasure beyond. May you cycle through the tarot a million times over and find your deepest authenticity in every draw. All the universe is planted inside of you. It’s harvest time. (This article first appeared in the Llewellyn Journal, September 11th, 2018.) About Sasha: Sasha Graham teaches tarot classes, speaks and lectures around the world. She is the author of Llewellyn's Tarot Diva, 365 Tarot Spreads, 365 Tarot Spells and served as editor and writer of Lo Scarabeo's Tarot Fundamentals, Tarot Experience and Tarot Compendium. Her most recent book is Llewellyn's Complete Book of the Rider Waite Smith Tarot. Sasha created her first tarot deck with Marvel and Disney artist Mirco Pierfederici, The Haunted House Tarot with Lo Scarabeo. Her second dark and delicious deck with artist Abigail Larson, The Dark Wood Tarot will be released by Llewellyn in 2019. Sasha will also be one of the featured master class instructors at the 2019 Readers Studio. Visit her website at: sashagraham.com We’d love your suggestion or submissions for this column! If you have an idea or would love to contribute, please contact us at [email protected]. Cool New Event RUNE WISDOM TELESUMMIT ![]() Love throwing some runes along with your tarot reading? The Rune Wisdom Telesummit is a multi-speaker event that will show you how to partner with the primordial energies of the Runes to energize your life and align with your own soul purpose. The event will run October 22 through November 2, with two one-hour calls every weekday. There's no cost to attend, and even if you can't attend the talks live, you'll get access to each replay for 48 hours! Click here for details: http://www.mcssl.com/app/?Clk=5627386 Best Practices for Professional Readers EXPERT WAYS TO ATTRACT CLIENTS By Gina Thies www.tarotadvisor.com / www.facebook.com/tarotreaders www.tarotcoupling.com / www.oraclesoup.org One question I often hear from those starting a professional tarot journey is, “How do I find clients?” I dare say the prospects of both not having clients and finding good clients are cause for angst in building a solid tarot reading business. When a new client has a session with me, I always ask him or her how they found my services. Yes, the key point here is how they found me, not how I found them. The famous line from the movie Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner, “If you build it they will come,” is not exactly true in the era of e-commerce or selling online. I often tell hopeful entrepreneurs that building a website alone is not enough to “make them come.” Most savvy business owners understand the workings of website ownership, marketing, advertising, etc. but those things alone don’t necessarily make you feel confident about finding clients. I have surveyed other tarot professionals and other business owners to find out how they find clients. Here are the top tips from thriving business owners: • Volunteering services at charity events • Using tarot cards as a conversation piece with strangers • Old professional connections or relationships • Networking constantly with ideal clientele • Professional organizations or memberships • Lead generation sites and apps • Like-minded business referrals • Local newspaper advertising • Business cards Happy client hunting! Gina Upcoming Events:
• October 1, 15, 22 and 29, 2018
(There will be no Salon on Oct. 8th) ![]() Tarot Salon Forest Hills, New York
Our popular Monday night Salons are the hottest thing in tarot instruction!
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• Coming in early December! INTENSIVE: Esoteric Titles of the Minor Arcana Forest Hills, New York (Details coming soon!) • April 25, 2019 Divination Day (Website coming soon!) • April 26 – 28, 2019 ![]() 2019 Readers Studio (Sold Out! Contact us to get on the waiting list) http://ReadersStudio.com (Note: This is still the RS18 website. The new one won't be ready for a little while yet, but much of the information is still useful.) Join our 10,270+ fans and join the fun!
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