Sunday at TABI 2007

    Sunday morning started bright and early again (although probably not as bright or as early as it did for those who stayed up dancing all night!). As it had on Saturday, my day started with protein and coffee, and Lon Milo DuQuette. Instead of an interview with Lon, I was attending his workshop on “Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot.” An intense and involving topic at any time, but especially after a late night! I had been fortunate enough to attend an all-day seminar with Lon on the topic, so I was curious to see how he could take a full day’s worth of information and compress it into two hours – talk fast! Lon ran over his time slot – in fact, the Ammerdown staff had to ring the luncheon gong three times before the organizers reluctantly called an end to Lon’s session.

After lunch, Anya Gascoine-Marco presented the final session on “Tarot and Runes.” In addition to walking us through the runes themselves, Anya provided us with blank paper runes so we could each create our own set of runes during the workshop! Once we had our introduction to the runes, and our personalized runes, we paired up to do readings for each other using Tarot and runes. My partner, the wonderful Julie, had an excellent feel for the runes, despite never having worked with them previously, and we both found the process fascinating and informative.

At the end of Anya’s workshop, Ali (the mastermind conference organizer) thanked us all for being there, and distributed goodie bags with wonderful decks and books. Everyone milled about, oohed and aahed over their goodies, drank more tea and indulged in more biscuits, until finally the centre staff politely, but firmly, made it clear we really did have to pack up and let them start about cleaning up for the next group. I exchanged contact information with several new friends, and the DH and I rode off into the sunset in our little red car, enlightened, informed, excited, and intent on returning for next year’s conference.