31 Days of Tarot – Final Days

We have come to the end of the 31 Days of Tarot Challenge. I am a bit sad because the topics of the last days are something I don’t really care a lot about XD. But anyway.

Day 27. Share your first proseffional reading experience (either as a client or as a professional). I… never had one ^^’. I never read for money and I never actually had a reading done by a professional for me.
I’m actually disappointed to never having had the cards read for me. A friend did it for me but it’s not the same thing. Usually… I read for myself. I will hopefully try this this year.

Day 28. Share one celebrity you would refuse to read for and why.
Mmm… no one. I get that many readers don’t want to read for people who are particularly… “immoral”. But I wouldn’t refuse a reading for such a client, and not because I think I could change him (that would be presumptuous of me, and for many reasons). But because I am the the first whose ideas and morality are always “condemned”.

Now, before you think I’m a racist or something: no, I am not. But I also think that “morality” is subjective – so, the morality of a serial killer and mine are actually both valid. It just happens that mine is more helpful/less harmful to society.

I would probably refuse to read for someone who is clearly there to mock tarot or to “find the trick”. But I would do that even if they are not celebrities – plus, if you offer me 1.000.000 dollars to “find the trick” I may accept. That’s a lot of money, and if you *reeeeeeally* want to spend it just reinforcing your prejudices… well… I know what I could do with that money, so I don’t feel compelled to leave them in your pockets ^^.

I told you I had “peculiar” moral stances…

Day 29. How does tarot readings work?
I have no idea. I don’t believe in god (nor a specific one, nor the general idea of an “intelligent” entity which created the universe), and I’m not sure about the Higher Self in a supernatural sense.

Day 30. What is the most inclusive deck you own?
That’s a difficult question, actually. Most of my decks are from Lo Scarabeo: here there is a magazine, sold in the newsstands, which comes with a deck every month, all from Lo Scarabeo. And they are not very much diverse and/or inclusive, I must say.

I think the most inclusive that I own is the Sasuraibito Tarot. It depicts many women, it depicts people of different ethnic groups (also, the “default” ethnic group is Asians, not white people) and they have different body shapes.

Day 31. What are your favourite Tarot apps and how do you use them?
I don’t use many tarot apps, but I have two.

One is the Tarot sampler. It contains some cards from a lot of decks, and it’s a very good way to sample new decks that you are not sure you like. The cards come with the description from the booklet. The booklets themselves can be sampled too… although I would have put more significant parts than the introductions.

The second one is the Urban Tarot app. I didn’t get the deck in time, so I am using the app for now, because I really WANT it XD.

And that’s all for this year :)!

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31 Days of Tarot – Day 26

Here we are at Day 26 of the 31 days of Tarot Challenge :)! The prompt for today is: “Thoughts on Tarot Becoming Mainstream“.

I kinda like that tarot is so mainstream – and I also fear that a bit. I am quite sure that, in the long term, there will be problems for the tarot community because tarot became so mainstream, but for now, all I see are the benefits.

First, there is much more people discovering, talking, trying out the tarot, and this means there are a lot more books and tarot decks. A lot of authors of tarot decks, I am sure, would never had done their deck, and would never have been published, if tarot had not become mainstream.

Another benefit is the fact that, if tarot is less “mystical”, less “hidden”, there is less shame upon those who practise it. I am aware that many people still do not “come out” about being tarot readers or lovers, because they live in places where this is not possible, but the solution is exactly to make tarot commonplace, so that no one finds it strange or, worse, “diabolical”.

Tarot being mainstream also means that there is a lot of discourse around tarot. Many myths were dispelled, we know much more about the history of tarot, we found new ways of using the cards and maybe, one day, new systems will be created. I strongly believe that when an idea is shared, everyone benefits from it, no matter all the drawbacks that can be. The next tarot revolution, if there will be one, will be possible because so many people came to know tarot and because someone worked with it long enough and passionately enough to create something new about it.

What do you think?

31 Days of Tarot – Day 25

Uuuh, today’s prompt is really easy! “Tarot or Oracle? Which would you read with for the rest of your life if you had to pick one? And why?”

That’s easy: Tarot! I don’t connect very much with Oracles, although I love the Lenormand (but I kinda don’t consider them an “oracle” in the sense that most Oracle decks are oracles). Oracles just seem too limited to me.

While the Tarot is a versatile system, that can express a great range of meaning, I find most Oracles (and I say “most” but I really mean “every oracle I’ve seen”) narrower in scope. You can ask Tarot about your love life, your career, your pet, the objects you lost last week, how will your exam go.

You can’t do that with an Oracle deck – sure, you can ask, but it’s not designed to answer all these questions and I don’t see some other thing for which an oracle is better than a tarot deck.

So: Tarot 4 life :)!

What do you think? And I am curious about the ones, among you, who do prefer Oracles. Why is it so? Make me love them!

31 Days of Tarot – Day 24

We skipped Day 23 of the 31 Days of Tarot Challenge because there is not deck I had to break up with. I have decks I never connected to (such as the Mermaid Tarot), but not one that I connected at first and then didn’t work any more.

Today’s prompt is: “If you could design a 79th tarot card that everyone would use – what would it look like? What would it represent?”

I am not a fan of extra cards, I think there are 78 cards in a deck for a reason. It’s not impossible to make a deck with 79 cards, but to work well, imho, it should be based on a system that requires 79 cards, and no less.

That said, if I should add a generic card to a deck, I would make a “fun” card, or a lucky card. With a little Cthulhu on it. What? Everyone knows Chtulhu and if someone doesn’t, they should! So, it can work with every deck u.u.

31 Days of Tarot – Day 22

The prompt for Day 22 of the 31 Days of Tarot Challenge is this: “Share the card that was the hardest for you to get when you were first learning the tarot. How do you feel about the card now?”

Of course, I don’t remember which card was the most difficult for me to get. I started working with the Majors only, so it was surely a Major Arcana… but which one? Too complicated to try and remember.

Instead, I will talk about the card that I didn’t get until, finally, a book made me get it. That card is Temperance.

I didn’t like this card – and I still kinda dislike it – because in every book it is associated to moderation. I am against moderation, in general, and I don’t have fun if I am “moderate” in the things I like.

So, every time this card came up, and it seemed positive for the purpose of the reading, I was like “eh… no”.

Then I read Tarot Revelaed, by Paul Fenton Smith. And he describes Temperance as something else. I will let him speak:

My Sagittarian friend and I decided to take a walk after dinner one hot summer’s evening at around sunset. My flatmate asked if we could take her puppy with us, as it hadn’t been out of the house all day. It was a border collie who loved to chase shadows. I suppose shadows are the closest thing a city dog can get to sheep!

We were only two streets away from home when a car approached. Its headlights were on, as the sun was about to set, and they cast shadows across the road. The dog saw this and leapt out onto the road in front of the car. I froze in my tracks, and mentally said goodbye to the animal. In a matter of two seconds I had pictured how I would explain the loss of the dog to my flatmate, and was working out how I could buy her another puppy.

My friend seized the moment and followed the dog out onto the road in front of the car. She stood firm, held up one hand and said, ‘STOP’. She maintained eye contact with the driver, who braked immediately, bringing the car to a stop just short of her legs. The dog raced around the side of the car, unharmed and unaware of the danger.

My friend knew in a split second that what she was about to attempt was possible, and that to stop the car she would need to have the driver’s complete attention. While I reacted in one way, she judged that different actions were appropriate for that particular situation.

To him, Temperance is when your lower self is in accord to your higher self, so your actions carry purpose, they are not random or useless or chaotic. You know what you want and why you want it, and you know how to get it.

This makes a lot of sense to me, even with the meaning of moderation. If excess is something that you crave for reasons that are not clear to yourself, then it is possibly harmful. It’s different when you know exactly what you do, and the excess is not a way to compensate for some other deeper need.

31 Days of Tarot – Day 21

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a post for Day 21, because the prompt is: “Share some of your favourite deck storage“. And… I usually keep the cards in their own boxes ^^’.

As I said in the previous post, I was under the myth that tarot cards must have their own storage, with silk and whatnot. But soon practicality won over myth. I just can’t have a bag for every deck I own. I tried doing one, but I failed miserably.

I still have a couple. I have a beautiful leather pouch for my Golden Tarot (Kat Black’s ones); it was a gift, and it’s amazing, so soft! I was thinking of making another for the Anna K, because the box they came in is just… no.

A friend made me another pouch that I am still not using, because I know what deck I want to put in it and I don’t own it yet. This is white, made from an old shirt and sewn by my friend, with a charm on it :)! So cute!

Lastly, I have a third pouch, a violet one, for my Shadowscape Tarot. It was another gift, and its amazing! It came with a tarot mat of the same colour and a smaller pouch for runes. ❤

These are my main tarot storage :). What do you use to store your decks? As usual, you can find all the prompts here.

31 Days of Tarot – Day 20

Here we are, with Day 21 of Ethony’s 31 Days of Tarot. The prompt for today is: “Share one tarot myth you used to believe“.

I believed in many tarot myths. The most damaging to my practice was the myth about rituals. You know, those: “You must shuffle the cards this was and not that way; you must select the cards with the left hand; you must do so with closed eyes; you must use incense (I hate incense, candles, smells of any kind…); you must put your deck in order every 10 readings; you must clean every card with the entire content of your kitchen…”

O.O! I was terrified when I did readings. Did I shuffle the right number of times? Am I using the right hand? I really hate incense…

I stopped believing it thanks to the internet. I watched a lot of videos of readers who… used any kind of different system. And, if all those systems were acceptable, that meant that no system was truly necessary. Yay, freedom from anxiety for me XD.

What myth did you believe in?

31 Days of tarot – Day 19

Day 19 of the 31 Days of Tarot is here, and the prompt is: “Share which tarot deck out there gives you the “heebie jeebies“.

Actually, there isn’t one specific deck that gives me the heebie jeebies. Or, well, probably there is one, somewhere out there, but I don’t know it. I know a couple of things that I absolutely don’t like, and that would probably make me not buy a deck.

Of course, these are personal preferences and I am in no one passing judgement on someone who likes these things or someone who include them in their deck :)!

So, number one thing I don’t like is pregnant women. They just creep my out, in real life too, so I don’t like them in my decks. I have a couple of decks with some pregnant woman (usually the Empress) and that’s fine, but if I had a whole deck full of pregnant women… I don’t like anything that is related to pregnancy, so: hospital visits for pregnancies, newborn babies, breastfeeding… just… not for me.

Number two things I don’t like is bugs. I have no problem with zombies, gore, violence and decapitations; but I am creeped out by bugs. I do have a deck, The Elemental Tarot, that creeps me out a bit. In the 7 of Wands of this deck, there is an old man with salamander crawling out of his beard. Ok, a salamander is not a bug, and I usually like reptiles (but… not salamanders!), but in this case they behave like bugs. Brrr…

These are the 2 things that mostly creep me out in Tarot decks. What are yours?

As usual, you can find all the prompts here :)!

31 Days of Tarot – Day 18

We skipped Day 17 because I can’t draw, and the prompt for that day was “draw your favourite card”. But… I may still give it a try. Maybe. We’ll see.

Anyway, we are here on Day 18 with another prompt (as usual, you find all of them here): “Share one of the new things you learnt about tarot in the last year“.

This one is very difficult for me, not because I didn’t learn anything, but because it’s really difficult for me to remember when I learned something. I studied Crowley’s Thoth tarot, for example, and that showed me so many different things about tarot… but did I do it in 2017 or in 2016…?

I learned a lot about many cards, going through them one by one with a friend and with Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom. There are some small insights in the book about a lot of cards: she sees them going from King to Ace, so in the reversed order, and this gives a different spin to some of them.

The 2 of Wands, for example, is different in her perspective. Here, the man is not eager to go somewhere and conquer something, do something, see something; he is bored, and is contemplating all that he has already achieved. What comes next? Life without adventure is nothing for him, but he is now confined by his own successes. It is an interesting view.

31 Days of Tarot – Day 16

Today’s prompt is: “Do you read reversals? Why/why not?”

As usual, you can find all the prompts here :).

I do read reversals. I struggle with them many times, and there are periods in which I stop reading them, but, in general, I try to read them and incorporate them in my reading.

But why do I do that, especially if I struggle with them?

I must make a disclaimer: I am not criticizing how other people read. Everyone has their own way of reading the cards, and everyone has their reasons for doing so.

That said, I do think that by not reading reversals, I use a smaller “spectrum of meaning” for the card. I read about this concept in Mary K. Greer‘s Tarot Reversals, I think. Mary K. Greer is one of the most amazing teacher I have ever had the pleasure to read: her books are always very informative but in a way that is not schematic: she makes the cards alive and can really help you make them your own.

Anyway, I digress. In her book, she tells that, for her, every card has a “spectrum of meaning”: from right side up, to upside down, and with all the other degrees in between. If one uses a round deck, this is more visible, because the card can come up inclined at whatever angle possible.  For normal, rectangular cards, if one is upside down, or reversed, then it indicates that this card is somehow twisted or blocked. One must assess intuitively, and by using context, at what degree the reversed card is “twisted”. Does it represent a blocked energy? Or just one that is starting slow? Something that is going the opposite way than the right side up card? And so on.
Reading without reversals, imho, means losing a lot of these degrees.

Not only that. Many readers use the reversed meaning in another way: if the card is, say, the Obstacle position, they read it more negatively than if it is in the Advoce position (for example). I do not like this method, because it assumes that certain meanings can *only* be associated with said positions. Sometimes, though, what seems obvious may not be so.

Take the Death card. If in the Advice position, we could say that it’s saying: “Go with the change. Let it go.”
If it is in the Obstacles position, we would surely say: “You are resisting a necessary change. Don’t. Find a way to accept it.”
But it CAN be that sometimes the actually good thing to do is resist a change, and sometimes the obstacles is an actual change that is detrimental to our situation.

With reversals, such a situation is actually very clear. Without them, it is less so.

So, that’s why I don’t want to give up reversals and become good at them :). What are your opinion on reversals?