UK Tarot Conference 2012

Yesterday was the 2012 UK Tarot Conference in London and what a packed day it was! I absorbed so much information -- I'm going to try to hit the high points here so I can look at them more closely later. Feel free to skim if it gets tedious!

Bringing Tarot Alive by Tiffany Crossara

Tiffany did not present us with a lot of historical knowledge about the Fool. Instead, she turned up dressed in a Fool costume, led us in a brief brainstorm about the qualities of the Fool, and then a rather longish meditation session, the gist of which was to imagine going to a wardrobe and taking out a Fool costume and putting it on. (My Fool costume consisted of tights with a diamond pattern of white, green and yellow, sparkly red tap shoes, and a long, gauzy purple tunic with pointy tails that trailed down to just above my knees and ended in gold bells. It had poet sleeves and cuffs that extended over the hands. My Fool's hat was a gold crown that extended up and out in misty tendrils and on each was a tiny bell, like something you might see in Shadowscapes Tarot.) We then were meant to imagine jumping off the cliff, then to wake up and actually get up and move around the room. As this was the first exercise and we'd had no ice breaker, I found this awkward, and so seemingly did many others because we moved a bit more like shuffling zombies than 'Fools exploring the space'. Tiffany asked us to stop and examine the nearest person and give the impression we get of their energy in the form of Major Arcana, Minor and Court cards. I was told I am the Hanged Man, Emperor and Hierophant. (Can't remember now my minors and courts, though one woman said I had 'page energy'. Hmph)

The Hermit by Juliet Sharman-Burke

Juliet's presentation was more to my liking in that she sat and gave a tremendously informative talk about the Hermit card, the focus of this year's conference. We looked at mythology (Cronos), psychology (Jung), the Saturn cycle in astrology and alchemy. Then we drew cards to see where the Hermit is in our lives right now. Chloe and I shuffled and searched out the Hermit card and the two cards on either side:

Wheel of Year Tarot, Caratti and Plantano, LoScarabeo

I saw my draw as showing my hurts from the last week at work with troublesome customers and so on. But it also occurs to me now that this can be referring as well to my health worries, with the fatigue I've been suffering lately. However, because the Hermit is facing away from this card, I take it to mean the true issue that I should look to my Inner Teacher to address is 10 of Swords. The woman kneeling at the grave made me think at once of taking leave of something, learning to accept its loss. And I believe this card has to do with acceptance of who I am now and where I am at the moment in my physical body. Rather than using loss of strength and stamina as an excuse to just give up altogether on diet and exercise, I must learn to be at the level where I am. It's hard to accept that just a few short years ago I could do 50 on-toes press-ups and work out 6-8 hrs a week, whereas now after 10, I'm sinking to my knees and knackered after a 30-minute session that in the old days would have been more of an 'active rest' day. It's tempting to say, well, if I can't do what I used to do, why bother doing anything? But that is not the answer. Interestingly, and this just occurred to me, much of the talk Juliet gave was about how the Hermit is based on Saturn/Cronos, Father Time, and about our resistance to aging. In some images, his staff is actually Cronos's scythe. Lightbulb moment. (Oh, wait, he carries a lantern, too! Doh!)

Steampunk Tarot by Caitlyn Matthews
During lunchtime, Caitlyn Matthews shared some images from her new Steampunk Tarot deck, but to be honest it's not at all to my liking, so I won't be getting it.

The cards are completely unconventional, and the imagery reminiscent of Jules Verne et al. I thought it was sort of funny that when each card image came up, Caitlyn seemed to have to check her notes to see what the card title was. Well, there are no pips and the cards look like no other deck, so I would have had to do the same thing -- but I didn't design it, either. Well, bless her, she's got that many decks out. Maybe it gets harder to remember.

Tarot and the Shadow by Cilla Conway
Cilla led us in an examination of the shadow cards and consideration of the desire to sugar-coat their meaning to avoid owning up to the Shadow side of our own nature. As Cilla said, the  Shadow cannot be killed, it cannot be 'overcome once and for all'. It is a part of who we are. We looked at typical cards such as Death, Devil, 10 of Swords, then we were asked to pull a card and examine it for its shadow meaning. Chloe and I had a discussion about shadow and reversals. It seems to me that a shadow meaning is the darker side of the card's meaning. If the card is dark to begin with, such as 3 of Swords, it perhaps intensifies its meaning, depending on surround cards and the question. Even the most positive cards have a darker side, the way that cell division, for example, is a good thing and essential to life, but when it intensifies and runs amok, it becomes cancer and is deadly. I don't normally turn cards upside down in my readings, but many people do, and I have usually taken the idea of reversals as the need to read a card's shadow aspects, and because to me a shadow aspect is the deepening of an already dark card or something like the rampant overgrowth of a positive card, it almost never means the 'opposite' to the upright meaning. I also don't do a whole lot of examining card images on a literal image level and taking meaning from that (some call this 'intuitive' reading). So I've very seldom ever turned a card upside and imagined what would happen to the image with a reversal of gravity, but doing so would sometimes seem to lead to an opposite meaning. For example in 3 of Swords:

For me, the upright meaning is heartbreak or grief, the shadow meaning deepens that shadow aspect and it becomes a very deep-seated issue that must be worked through and won't go away on its own. (Dependent of course, on the question, the surrounding cards, and the impressions I get in the moment of the reading). But if you read reversed images literally, the upside down swords would fall out of the heart, suggesting just the opposite, that the grief is temporary and will soon pass.

The key thing to be learned here is not whether there is a right or wrong way to read cards, but to recognise that each reader has his or her own way of communicating with them. The cards will get the message to the reader in whatever way they can. If the message is 'This heartbreak is temporary', and the reader sees that in an upside down 3 of Swords, the cards will give that to the reader. But if a different reader would see that message in a completely different card, that is the one that will turn up. I do believe this, and it's why I would not enter into debate with a reader about their interpretation of the cards. (Though of course discussion of different points of view is always enlightening and helpful). The important thing is not to shy away from the dark side. The whole point of tarot is to help us see clearly and face reality full on, isn't it?

Rachel Pollack's 4 new books 
The amazing Rachel Pollack dazzled us for 2 hours with talk of finding more and more depth and meaning in Rider Waite Smith tarot imagery, the role of oracles in Oeidpus Tyrannus, and wisdom readings, amongst a plethora of other concepts. She has a propensity for seeing the tarot in its largest aspects ('wisdom readings'--asking the tarot huge questions such as, 'What is love? What is God?') and its smallest details (the letters 'DIN' carved on the corner of the table leg in the Magician card in the Original Rider Waite Smith). Rachel Pollack absolutely blows my mind and if she had talked all day long, I'd still have sacked out in the corner all night in the hopes that she would come back in the morning and keep talking. But alas, I could only afford one day at the conference, and she was only given two hours during it.

As an example of wisdom readings, Rachel suggested we use proverbs or striking quotations and turn them into tarot spreads. She gave the following famous quotation from Rabbi Hillel:

If I am not for myself, who will be? And if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?

This quotation in itself is what we used to call in my Bible study days a 'hard teaching'. Rachel turned the quotation into the following three card spread (with cards I drew):

1. How should I be for myself? (Knight of Coins)
2. How should I be for others? (Princess of Coins)
3. What action should I take? (Ace of Cups)

Wheel of Year Tarot

I wasn't sure what to make of the cards at first, and while Chloe and Anna both looked over my shoulder and helpfully suggested conventional tarot card meanings, it wasn't until I was waking up this morning that Ace of Cups gave me its message. Knight of Coins has always been a favourite; he is rock solid and dependable. Of course I should be that for myself. It goes right along with the theme of the quotation: If I am not rock solid and dependable for myself, who will be? And the Princess of Coins made both me and Anna think of a teaching role, and I do think the best way I can be of service to others is to help people learn. It goes along with my Myers-Briggs type, my star sign, and my personality, and my two main jobs have both been about that. It was the Ace of Cups -- action -- that stumped me. Cups are about emotion and relationships, and at first I thought it was about socialising, saying yes more often when invited out. But I remember staring at the card during the workshop and muttering to myself, 'She's hugging a candle'. It was when I was waking up this morning that I saw. The candle is the divine spark. It's what we say 'Namaste' to, 'The divine in me greets the divine in you.' So the action I can take both the facilitate my own stable ground and to be of better service to others is to actively seek out that spark, or remind myself of it, in every single person I encounter. That is, as we say, a 'big ask'. But it was a big question.

Namaste.