October Tarrytown Third Friday!

Hello, everybody! Yes, I know, long time, no post.

I will be doing readings at Whimsies Incognito for this Friday, October 15th, in honor of Third Friday.

Where:
Whimsies Incognito
35 S. Broadway
Tarrytown, NY 10591

When:
Friday, October 15, from 6 to 9p.m.

My friends at Whimsies will be offering their standard 10% discount for all purchases made during the Third Friday event, and if you come in costume, an additional 10%! That's something to be very excited about!

Hope to see a bunch of people for Third Friday!

Tarot of the Boroughs Launch Party!

I will be doing readings with the new deck, Tarot of the Boroughs, at its launch party this Thursday, August 26th, from 8pm–9:30pm.

Located at:

the Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery btw Bleecker and Houston (F train to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleecker)

New York, NY

For more information about the launch party, please check out the facebook page here.

For more information about the deck, please go to the Tarot of the Boroughs Web site.

Why Three-Card Spreads Get a Bad Rep

I am always surprised by people, sometimes by their generosity, sometimes by their out-and-out rudeness, and sometimes by their kindness. What really surprised me the other month, however, was a potential client's negative reaction to the three-card spread that I usually do at events.

"How much information can someone really get from a three-card spread?" she complained to me.

Hence the title and impetus for this post.

In my experience, three-card spreads are some of the most difficult readings to do. I only offer them during short events, such as carnivals, fairs, etc. because it allows me to read for more people and not have people waiting for a reading for too long. When I do a Celtic Cross spread for someone, they are usually sitting with me for forty-five minutes to an hour. Not an ideal time frame when at a carnival! Three-card spreads are difficult for me because you're reading for someone with a very limited amount of cards. There's only three cards... so intuiting a situation and its possible outcomes becomes more of a challenge when there are only three positions in the spread: past, present, and future. Some tarot readers do three-card readings with no positions defined as well, making the reading that much more challenging, in my opinion!

I liken to calling a three-card spread a "snapshot" spread—a very good reading to have to know if your life patterns are on the "right" track, so to speak.

So, some of you might be wondering what my answer was to this woman who asked, "How much information can you get from three cards?" My answer: "a heck of a lot!" My unsaid answer: "It's just a lot more work for the reader!"

I think different spreads have different uses, depending on the situation. All I know is three-card spreads work for me in a carnival setting... and I've never had a complaint until last month after doing them for five years at carnivals! I say to each their own.

This Friday, May 21

This Friday I will be doing short tarot readings at Whimsies in celebration of Third Friday. Weather-permitting, I will be outside giving readings. Hope to see you then!

The Heart of Faerie Oracle

I figured it was high time that I posted another blog, this time about my newly acquired deck, The Heart of the Faerie Oracle. It's not exactly a traditional tarot deck, but it has beautiful artwork, it is an oracle deck, and I figured it would be of interest to anyone who knows about tarot!

Karen got me this deck for my birthday, and had it signed by Wendy and Brian Froud, creators of the deck. You may have heard of Brian Froud before, he was the artistic director for the movie Labyrinth, and his artwork is centered around the world of faerie. The book is signed, and two of the cards in the deck are signed, too! Therefore, I have finally found my own personal deck to use on myself. I figured I would let people know about it. If you have a love of the faerie realms, then you definitely want to pick up a copy of either the Faerie Oracle, or The Heart of Faerie Oracle (which focuses on relationships).

One of my favorite parts of this deck is there are "wild cards" in the deck, with no name, explanation, or interpretation to look up within the book. The interpretation must come from the person looking at the card alone. I love the idea of this. Think about how many "wild cards" come up within our own lives out of nowhere. I think a measure of what's in someone's soul is how they deal with surprise situations. I think wild cards within a relationship deck is completely appropriate!

This Friday!

Sorry, totally short notice, but since I just got asked, I couldn't have been able to post this sooner! I will be doing readings this Friday, March 19th, at Whimsies! Since this event is from 5:30pm to 7pm, I can only offer short readings, but if you've ever been a curious observer of tarot readings, this a great way to get your feet wet!

Also, Whimsies' Annual Spring Sale started today, so for more information, visit their blog at whimsiesincognito.blogspot.com. Hope to see you Friday!

New deck, new ideas, etc.

First of all, welcome again to my tarot blog. I had hoped I would make blogging about tarot a more regular occurrence! People have been keeping me busy, and man, am I grateful for that. So, let's get to business, shall we?

I have attended two workshops on tarot within the past few months. In early December, I attended "Throw out the #@%!ing Book!" and in February I attended "Readings for Lovers and the People Who Want Them". Both were taught by Ms. Courtney Weber, and now I am very pleased to pass along that she is now taking pre-orders for HER OWN DECK! Tarot of the Boroughs is a photographic deck instead of an illustrated deck. Yes, you bet your bippy that I pre-ordered. There are 78 cards in a tarot deck... creating a tarot deck is a huge undertaking, and I take my hat off to anyone with vision and fortitude to see it through to the finished product. Please check out the link, and if the images you see are appealing to you... well, you know what to do!

The second order of business is to ask if anyone would be interested in me doing an e-mail mailing list. If so, please e-mail tarrytowntarot[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject line: mailing list, and I will add your e-mail. I plan on only doing a mailing every few months or when I am reading at a public event.

Thirdly, February was a very busy month for me for readings, and I noticed before and after my readings, people were asking me questions about tarot itself, about the nature of tarot, the origins of tarot, psychics vs. tarot readers (if there is a vs. or not), my feelings on tarot and why it works for me as a reader, etc. Very good and interesting stuff came out of these questions, and I think an equal amount of time was spent on answering those questions as doing the readings themselves. So, if you do have a question that you think falls into that other realm, please feel free to e-mail me at that same e-mail address, and I'll do my best to answer it. And, as always, if I've read for you and you had nice things to say, testimonials are ALWAYS welcomed!

It will soon be spring! Enjoy the lengthening hours of daylight, and thanks again for reading!

Getting the fears out

So, let me introduce you to a little friend of mine. It's a new friend, and I'm just making their acquaintance. It's called the Deviant Moon Tarot.
Depicted here is the Six of Wands (I figured I'd clarify, since the picture is flipped). This is a good example of what this deck looks like, and perhaps explains my original fear of doing a reading with it. It is very dark-feeling... from the colors and from the skewed figures on the cards. Made me feel slightly insane looking at them. Of course, the name of the spread that came with the deck is the Lunatic Spread.
I was asked to do a reading with this deck, so I did, and it turned out better than I expected. I have introduced my energy to this deck, and it has revealed its energy to me, and I think we'll get along just swimmingly with it playing second fiddle to my main deck.
In short, I was scared to work with this deck. I was asked to read using this deck, and I did it. Remember Eleanor Roosevelt's quote: "Do one thing every day that scares you." Your fear is never equivalent to what you experience when you actually get over your fear and just do it! You can surprise yourself!

2010, New Year's blessings, and a very late post

Happy New Year, everyone! I feel that 2010 has something really great in store for all of us. This is a year for communication and connections, even if (and perhaps in spite of) Mercury being in retrograde for the start of it! Mercury in retrograde makes everything wonky, by the way. I'm not really up and up on my astrology, but tarot.com has great articles on everything from tarot to numerology to astrology, especially this article on the effect of mercury retrograde on careers. Mercury in retrograde makes communication go awry or get misconstrued. In spite of that kind of start, I still think this year will bring breakthroughs in communication with people. We'll connect with people on levels that are deep and true, seeing through differences to connect to the core of other people. We'll realize that our differences are few when viewed with our universal similarities. We all have hopes, dreams, unfinished plans, procrastination, and faults we're looking to correct.

So, blessings to everyone that has found their way to my little blog, and blessings to everyone that hasn't. Blessings to my true friends and even people that aren't my friends, because both groups of people teach me lessons I need to learn. Blessings to everyone that I've read for, and blessings to people I haven't read for yet, because I learn a little bit from everyone. I take your journeys with you each and every time you allow me to read for you, and I thank you.

I took a wonderful workshop last year (ha, last year! but it's true, even yesterday was last year!) with Courtney Weber (don't you just love the photo?), professional tarot reader and class act. You can read Courtney's adventures at her blog, agirlcalledwoo. She definitely helped my tarot reading, simply by allowing the entire class permission to throw out the little white book that comes with a tarot deck and asking us to rely on our own interpretations of the cards. She also took us through several exercises that helped develop more of a personal relationship with our decks. This is certainly stuff that I should have been doing long ago when I first started reading tarot. When you do something long enough, you become more involved in the rote of it than with actually *connecting*. It never hurts to go back to basics... it can only help! It makes you look at things in a new light. Never a bad thing in my book!

Onwards and upwards, my fellow spiritual wanderers! Thoughts and comments are most certainly appreciated!