Tarot Blog Hop Bealteine 2019: Teaching Tarot, Learning from Tarot

           Previous Blog                                        Master List                                  Next Blog

Our Wrangler for this Hop, Joy Vernon, suggested that we might wish to take a look, not simply at what we see when we do our readings, but at how we are deepening our understanding of Tarot and how we might be passing that knowledge along. Her questions, which are the topical threads for this Hop. were presented this way:

• What classes are you taking/recommending?
• What are you doing to advance your knowledge/experience/abilities with tarot?

I have been given much to think about in mentally pursuing this topic, and I have decided that some of what I know might need to be deepened, and some of what I do might need to be shared. Here are some of my own actions and intentions to make the experience of reading and interpreting Tarot be deeper and more meaningful, not just for me personally but also for my clients.

I have recently begun working with my coven, and with certain students who met me as a result of having readings, with the intent of creating a triadic meaning of Tarot spreads and individual cards. I utilize the Celtic lore of Body, Mind, and Spirit in discussing and teaching methodology for interpreting each card in a given reading as it relates to each of these elemental entities. And I have discovered a great benefit in assisting clients to look at the singular meaning of one aspect of a card, or a group of cards, individually interpreting the impact of that same card or cards on Body, Mind, and Spirit. In order to deepen my own abilities to assist clients in this kind of understanding, I myself have begun studying with a reader whom I met at a Psychic Fair last year, who is a psychologist in her mundane job, and who utilizes her awareness of the psychological, physiological, and philosophical ideas of humanity in any given situation to deepen her ability to explain the cards to her clients. I am finding that this is highly useful and adds a far deeper resonance to the knowledge the cards may already convey. In order to deepen understanding of the relationship of the cards with Body, Mind, and Spirit, I am teaching my coveners to take any card in the Tarot and decide which of the Trees of the Celtic Ogham also resonates with that meaning. We have found this a highly useful practice. 

And what I am learning is very new to me and very informative. This year, very recently, I was introduced by a friend to something I had never used, seen, or even heard of-- the Lenormand deck. I must say, beginning to study it and learn to interpret it has opened up an entirely new aspect of divination for me. I am now able, in a completely new environment, to look deep within my Self, and begin to understand, on a different level, my own thoughts, insights, foundations of understanding, and many other aspects of beginning to explain my own techniques and interpretations of the practice of divination to my Self. One of the first things I began to realize was that over the many years I have been reading, my interpretations of cards and card groupings had begun to be somewhat predetermined, and that it is simgularly essential to any individual reading to look at that set of cards as if you had never seen them before and interpret for the client from the base of the inner realm of spirit. The Lenormand brings an entirely new set of ideas to the table, and is adding much new awareness and insight to what I am able to read with this deck. I am actually just beginning to understand the inner meanings of cards and card combinations, so I am looking forward to deepening my awareness of these ideas over many months of study.

This summer I am going to be offering a class for those who wish to understand the Major and Minor arcana of the traditional Tarot with a deeper insight into modern society. More information about that will be available as I learn about it. But for now, I am delighted to discover that, even after 48 years as a reader of runes and cards, I am far from knowing all there is to know about it yet. Teaching, in my own experience, also includes learning, and in the realm of divination, I am currently experiencing both. I recommend that each of you might also benefit from this kind of practice.


                Previous Blog                                        Master List                                  Next Blog