San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium 2007 – In Detail!
As promised, here’s more detail about my Saturday at the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium (SF BATS) produced by Thalassa and the Daughters of Divination. Rosered and Andrew attended other sessions, and will be posting about their experience as well!
Even with staying in the main room (having the good fortune to be on Thalassa’s staff, I keep an eye on the Millard Fillmore Memorial Spiritualist Temple Garage Sale and make myself generally useful), I was still able to listen in on presentations by Mary Greer, James Wanless, David Skibbins, Sue Wilhite, and Thalassa herself.
First up was Sue Wilhite, discussing the ideas in her book 21 Templates that Run Your Life. Sue walked the group through figuring out their birth card, and discussed the meanings and implications of the birth card. It was interesting to see the distribution of the various cards through the group – a few Fools, a few Hierophants, only one Hermit (how perfect is that?), and so on.
Mary Greer then presented an excellent workshop on symbolism in the Tarot. Yes, a cup is a symbol of emotions – and so much more! Mary went through several of the major symbols which appear in the RWS deck, giving all of us a deeper appreciation of them.
James Wanless picked up after lunch. His energetic style is always good to ward off the post-prandial nap urges. James presented “Solitaro”, which is a variation on the game of Solitaire, played with Tarot cards, in which you can create an action map around any issue.
Thalassa then continued the high energy with a highly entertaining lecture on patterns in readings, and handling problem readings.
David Skibbins rounded out the afternoon with a fabulous presentation on Tarot, the Devil, and evil. As always, David was brilliant, quoting from sources ranging from Ancient Greek writers to Sylvia Plath, and injecting plenty of his own original genius. One of the things we tend to forget in modern society is that evil really does exist – not everyone who does bad things is misunderstood, or unenlightened, or otherwise “just dysfunctional” – evil exists in the world, and that has to be accepted and dealt with.
The day concluded with the Raffle of Fabulous Prizes ™, which featured a plethora of decks from Llewellyn, books from Llewellyn and Red Wheel / Weiser, and several wonderful items (jewelry, art work, hand made decks) from the various vendors at the event. Tarot-To-Go contributed a gift pack of a Tarot reading, a Da Vinci Tarot deck, a silk deck bag, and a Tarot candle from The Magician’s Table. The raffle had so many prizes, several people won more than once!
Suddenly it was 5:00 pm, and time to pack up for the day!