Newsletter of The Tarot School
http://TarotSchool.com
ISSN: 1529-0565 
Vol. 10 #10 / December 1, 2018
                                                                  
 In this Issue:
- Tarot Tip: Tarot for Meditation (Part 2) 
- Tarot School Aphorism
- Diviner's Corner: Discovering the Crystal Ball
- Cool Tarot Project: Sigils of True Sight
- Upcoming Events
 
Welcome to a new issue of Tarot Tips!
And a special welcome to our new subscribers.


Celebrate!


This time of year is filled with celebrations of all
kinds. There are spiritual celebrations, public
celebrations, and celebrations with friends, family,
and the tarot tribe. So much of our attention is turned
outward, but we think it would be a wonderful idea to
take some time to celebrate yourselves as well! 

Celebrate your curiosity and quest for knowledge,
your enthusiasm and creativity. Celebrate yourself
for letting tarot support you as you discover more
about your personal psychology, and for including
tarot in your spiritual life and work. By being a
seeker, you are enriching your own life, as well as
the lives of all of us. Celebrate yourself for being
the shining star you are!                     

In this issue, we have Part 2 of Carolyn Cushing’s
tips on using tarot for meditation, and The Diviner’s
Corner features some fond memories from Heatherleigh
Navarre, who will be leading a session on Crystal Ball
scrying at next year’s Divination Day event. We also
discovered a cool tarot Kickstarter campaign that
isn’t a deck. Gina Thies is taking some time off from
her Best Practices column to be with her ailing mother.
Please keep them both in your thoughts.

Whether your celebrations are filled with people and
activity, or spent by enjoying some quiet private time,
we wish you many bright blessings as we head into 2019!  

                  
 
And one more thing...

This holiday season I have something extra-special
to celebrate! My beautiful granddaughter, Molly
Josephine Mukon was born on the auspicious day 
of 11/11/18 at 5:28 pm. My daughter, Rachel and
her husband, Chris are over the moon in love
with her –– as is our whole family!  ~  Ruth Ann 

Molly Jo




With love and gratitude on the tarot journey,
Ruth Ann, Wald, and Gina

 
Tarot Tips is here to help you with the practical side
of your Tarot journey. In order to take the greatest
advantage of this newsletter, please send us your
questions regarding any aspect of your tarot study
or practice and we'll do our best to answer them
in an upcoming issue.

Spread the experience of tarot - share this newsletter
with other Tarot Enthusiasts!
 

 
Tarot Tip
TAROT FOR MEDITATION (Part 2)
Visio Divina with a Tarot Card 

by Carolyn Cushing, Soul Path Sanctuary
 
Visio Divina is a simple practice that lends itself
well to having a deeper dive encounter with a
particular Tarot card. It is an adaptation of Lectio
Divina
, an ancient practice for praying the scriptures
from the Christian tradition, in which a text is read a
number of times as a way to inspired movement in
meditative thinking and prayer. Traditionally it is a
four step process of Reading (or in this case,
Viewing),  Meditating/Rumination,  Prayer, and
Contemplating.

Taking a Long Loving Look (Visio)

Sit comfortably with a Tarot card (or any inspirational
image) before you. Gaze at it. Take “a long, loving
look.” Then close your eyes and let some part of the
image come into focus for you. Spend a few moments
with your eyes remaining closed to be with that image.   

Open your eyes and gaze again at the card or image for
a moment or two. When you close your eyes again for a
few moments, perhaps a new image will come up for
attention or the one from your first round will
re-appear. Accept whatever comes. 

You may want to repeat this step a third time.  


Ruminate (Meditatio)

Take up your journal and write or draw/doodle about
what you saw / experienced. Muse about what these
images might mean to you. Explore now with words
and/or doodles for a few minutes.  

(Optional - Only to be done after your own reflection:
Read just a bit from the book that came with your deck
or an inspirational Tarot writer such as Rachel Pollack
about the card. Remember you are reading for
inspiration. Stop when you hit an idea that resonates
with or expands on what you have already been
journaling/doodling about. Include it in your musings.
Stop reading and start writing/doodling again.)


Insight and Prayer (Oratio)

Close your eyes and clear your mind with a few gentle
breaths. Let some message of insight, gratitude, or
supplication arise from your heart. Be with this
message.


Connecting with Wisdom (Contemplatio)

Rest in what you have received. Pause before you jump
into your busy life. Be in the presence of your new
connection to this card and the wisdom of the Tarot.
 
          

About Carolyn:

Carolyn Cushing loves to work with people to
make positive life transitions, grow spiritually,
and develop creatively. In addition to working
one-on-one with seekers, she has taught and
facilitated Tarot classes and groups in Western
Massachusetts; been a guest teacher at the
Northwest Tarot Symposium, HATHOR Forum,
and Gaian Tarot Circle; and led meditations and
co-created rituals at Readers Studio.

Carolyn creates learning environments and circles
where deep sharing and exploration are possible.
She is a co-founder of the Massachusetts Tarot Society, 
and contributes a regular column on Tarot for soul
practice to the Cartomancer
           
          
Find her online at soulpathsanctuary.com


    


 Tarot School Aphorism
 
 
            You could say that every tarot landscape is born from an original darkness.  You could also say that every tarot landscape is created from different kinds of light.  It is the contrast between darkness and light that gives birth to every being and every image in tarot.  ~ Wald Amberstone / TarotSchool.com
 
 

Diviner's Corner
DISCOVERING THE CRYSTAL BALL

by Heatherleigh Navarre


          Crystal Ball on Pillow


When I was a child of about ten years old, there was
nothing more magical to me than walking up the steps to
the tiny shop above my aunt and uncle’s restaurant.
The shop was just a converted storeroom with slanting
ceilings, a few small tables and chairs, a dusty
bookshelf or two, and a few teacups and saucers turned
upside down on a drainboard. The stairs were creaky, so
whoever was at the top could always hear you coming and
would call out a greeting.

This shop was the domain of my uncle Phil’s mother,
great aunt Rita. Rita was short and solid, and wore her
white hair up when it was long enough, or in soft,
face-framing curls when it was short. She had a strong
Boston accent, a ready smile, and little tolerance for
foolishness. We kids were not permitted to be frequent
visitors to her shop, as she was engaged in “SERIOUS
BUSINESS,” which made me relish even more the rare
times I was permitted inside. For it was in those tiny
rooms, with the sunlight slanting through the high
windows, that I first witnessed the practice of
fortune-telling. 

Rita read playing cards, tea leaves, and the crystal
ball mostly, though tarot occasionally made an
appearance. Those cups on the drainboard would be
flipped over, she’d tear open a bag of her preferred
Red Rose tea, dump the contents, and cover them with
piping hot water from the kettle. She scarcely gave her
clients time to sip the hot brew before grabbing it up,
turning it slowly, swishing the leaves around, handing
it back to the lady (it was always a lady back then),
and directing her to turn the cup upside down onto the
saucer. She’d cluck her tongue, shake her head, or
smile and give a low whistle before she launched into
her telling of the fortune – sort of a symbolic
editorial preface that was part of her delivery style.

It was in those rooms that I fell deeply in love with
divination. I loved the riffling sound of cards being
shuffled, the smell of strong black tea, the gleam of
the crystal ball, and all the rest. But looking back, I
think now that what intrigued me most of all those many
years ago was the intimacy of those moments – the
image of a pair of women bonded by a common desire to
unravel the mystery of the future, one woman seeking to
understand her own fortune, and the other equally
intent on helping to shine a light for her to better
see her path, her options and her destiny. Together
they would chart a way forward, and I watched women
smile, cry or hug Rita (sometimes all three) every time
they stood up at the end of a session.

As a child I was positively mystified by how on earth
Rita and her colleagues could look into smooth,
polished rocks and see………..well, ANYTHING!
All I saw were the natural featherings, cracks, and
shimmering rainbows in the stone. I would look for
people, animals, signs of weather, anything I had heard
my aunt mention seeing in there, but to no avail. I
thought, in my child’s mind, that it must be somehow
like a television, and I needed to learn how to change
the channels. Rita, and the psychics that worked
alongside her, would say things like “You can’t see
anything in there until you learn to stop looking,”
or “Try letting your eyes cross a little,” or even
(and most confusingly) “It’s a lot easier to see
what’s in the crystal ball if you just close your eyes.” 

I learned from all this that fortune-tellers are a
mysterious, and not altogether logical bunch of folks.
Of course, now I understand all these comments and
more. What they were trying to explain to my
child-self, was that crystal ball gazing is an art that
can only be mastered by UN-learning our conventional
ways of viewing the world, rather than by trying to
forcefully direct our gaze in some way. 

It would be twenty years later that I myself would seek
to see the future in a cup of tea leaves, and even
longer still before I found myself successfully gazing
into a crystal sphere to see what, or who, might be
hiding there. But when I did at last return to the
family business (which had long since moved out of that
tiny second floor space and into a storefront a few
blocks away), I found that it was just as magical a
place to be as I had remembered. 

These days there are more men, both as clients and as
diviners, and it seems there is some new divination
tool developed or “discovered” every week, but I
find myself going back again and again to the
old-school favorites of my childhood. The smell of tea
is still my preferred fragrance, and swirling the
leaves around the bottom of the cup is incredibly
satisfying. But my favorite is still the crystal ball.

In that gleaming surface, I have seen dolphins jumping
next to a fast-moving boat, a man boarding an airplane
carrying a purple duffle bag, a colony of termites
devouring a wood-framed cottage, a young woman
throwing her graduation cap into the air, a curly-haired
black dog running across a park toward his favorite person,
the toddler who is also his best friend, and I once saw the
woman who sat across from me, a slender wisp of a thing,
reflected back to me in my crystal ball as a very pregnant
expectant mom, holding her belly and smiling joyfully.

These images don’t always make much sense to me when
I see them, until I describe them to that person in the
other chair, and they excitedly tell me how much it
means to them. The crystal ball gives me a wealth of
information about who these people are, what they need
to know, and sometimes even what they need to do
differently in order to change their path. 

It has taken years, maybe decades, to discover this
art, and maybe that is why crystal ball scrying
hasn’t seen the same rise in popularity as tarot over
the past few years – it isn’t a quick read, there
are no printed pictures waiting to be interpreted, and
it requires time and patience and copious amounts of
practice. But, if you have a little time, why not start
now, and see where it takes you? 
          

About Heatherleigh:

Heatherleigh Navarre is the owner of Boston Tea Room,
a psychic shop just outside of Detroit, Michigan, which
is home to fifteen professional diviners, and has been
in her family since the 1970s. 
                    
http://bostontearoom.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 tarot@tarotschool.com


 


Cool Tarot Project
SIGILS OF TRUE SIGHT ––

Tarot Themed Hard Enamel Pins

          
Sigils of True Sight

















Align yourself with the occult power of the Tarot with
these Minor Arcana themed enamel pins.  

Each hard enamel pin will be a precious 1” and made
with polished gold and black enamel. Each pin will have
a butterfly clasp and a custom backing card.  

Bring intention to your day by wearing any of the suits
and drawing energy from the charm… 

• Suit of Wands
Wear this pin to rekindle your inner fire and blow the
breath of creation on the embers of your resolve.
Strive ever forward, through sweat and hard work to
the celebration bonfire on the other side. Wands grant
willpower, inspiration, and growth. 

• Suit of Cups
Wear this pin to channel the rush of rains and floods
to renew your intuition or bring flow to your
interactions with others. Wear it near to your heart to
activate your second sight. Cups grant intuition,
empathy, and love.  

• Suit of Swords
Wear this pin when you need to invoke the power of
the tempest to move through conflict with a keen mind.
With this token, you are not victim to the winds, but
energized by them. Swords grant clear thought, freedom,
and rapid change. 

• Suit of Pentacles
Wear this pin when you need solid ground beneath your
feet and solid coin in your hands. Rest assured that
when you get your hands dirty, you are sowing the seeds
of a successful, secure future. Pentacles grant
practicality, prosperity, and stability.


This Kickstarter campaign ends on December 18th at 2:00 pm EST.

CLICK HERE!
          

          
 
 
Upcoming Events:
 
 
• December 3 and 10, 2018
 

Tarot Salon
Forest Hills, New York

Our popular Monday night Salons are the
hottest thing in tarot instruction!
 
http://tarot.salon


• December 8 – 9, 2018

The Lords of Tarot: Esoteric Titles of the Minor Arcana


WINTER INTENSIVE
The Lords of Tarot:
Esoteric Titles of the Minor Arcana


Forest Hills, New York




• April 25, 2019

Divination Day
(Website coming soon!)




• April 26 – 28, 2019

2019 Readers Studio logo

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.)

 
 
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Directors: Ruth Ann and Wald Amberstone