Advice for Tarot Students: Be Your Own Guinea Pig
When learning tarot, practice makes perfect.
Read MoreTarot Grandmaster
3559 Southwest Corporate Parkway Palm City, FL, 34990 United States
866-99TAROT 866-998-2768 (Toll Free) 561-655-1160 (Text or Call) 772-207-1852 (Palm City)
Tarot is a book of spiritual wisdom in picture form that tells the story of all human experience.
With tarot, we connect with Spirit to discern wise guidance for the present, develop understanding of the past, and learn ways to work to manifest our goals and possibilities for the future.
If you are interested in the tarot and other tools of divination please begin with my tarot news page!
Please leave this site if the practice of traditional methods of divination are not of interest to you.
When learning tarot, practice makes perfect.
Read MoreGiving individual tarot cards funny nicknames helps us develop a relationship with tarot!
Read MoreHere are more Minor Arcana pip card numerology exercises, this time with a twist! I’ve included the Major Arcana cards, and posed some thought-provoking questions about the cards and their numbers.
These exercises are great for journaling, study, and group work. I’d love to hear your results!
To begin, sort out the Sevens, Eights, and Nines from your Minor Arcana, and the Chariot, Strength and Hermit from your Major Arcana. Take these fifteen cards and sort them by number.
Sevens: Introspection, Valor, Self-Reliance
Are there Key Words that you would include for Seven?
What Key Words would you use for each of these four cards?
Look at the images of the Minor Arcana Sevens. Are there things these four images have in common? How do those things reflect the energy/meaning of Seven?
How does Major Arcana Seven, the Chariot, reflect the Key Words of Seven?
How does Major Arcana Seven, the Chariot, compare and contrast with the Minor Arcana Sevens?
Shuffle the five Sevens, and pull one at random to give insight into your personal challenges.
Eights: Motion, Balance and Power
Are there Key Words that you would include for Eight?
What Key Words would you use for each of these four cards?
Look at the images of the Minor Arcana Eights. Are there things these four images have in common? How do those things reflect the energy/meaning of Eight?
How does Major Arcana Eight, Strength, reflect the Key Words of Eight?
How does Major Arcana Eight, Strength, compare and contrast with the Minor Arcana Eights?
Shuffle the five Eights, and pull one at random to give insight into your personal power.
Nines: Completion, Success, Almost There
Are there Key Words that you would include for Nine?
What Key Words would you use for each of these four cards?
Look at the images of the Minor Arcana Nines. Are there things these four images have in common? How do those things reflect the energy/meaning of Nine?
How does Major Arcana Nine, the Hermit, reflect the Key Words of Nine?
How does Major Arcana Nine, the Hermit, compare and contrast with the Minor Arcana Nines?
Shuffle the five Nines, and pull one at random to give insight into your personal achievements.
What stories do you see in the sequence of Seven, Eight, Nine within the specific suits?
PREVIOUS BLOG | MASTER LIST | NEXT BLOG
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!
I love the Tom Petty song “Into the Great Wide Open.” Sometimes I see cards come up in tarot readings in ways that remind me of this song. Sometimes, for some people, the future is truly wide open.
So often, people seek tarot readings because they want a glimpse of their future. Often, the best tarot readings tell us that the Universe is ready to help us manifest the future we desire.
There are a few cards that indicate this state of being to me. Often they come up together in the same spread. When I see these cards I know it is very important to be clear about goals, intention and actions, because you are ready to manifest your future. What you do today will determine what your tomorrow looks like.
The three cards that specifically speak to me of actively manifesting your future are the Two of Wands, the Seven of Cups and the World. It is amazing to me how often I see these three cards together.
The Two of Wands is about dreaming dreams, setting goals and making plans. In this card we have the opportunity to decide what we want our world to look like.
The Seven of Cups reminds us that we have options and choices. With this card we need to choose what we want to manifest in life.
The World is the card of attainment. It comes up to say that we have the ability to create the world we want.
Inherent in tarot is the opportunity not just to gain knowledge and perspective, but also the opportunity to build the future we desire. When you see these three cards, be ready to set your goals and create the life you want!