UK Tarot Conference 2007 – Friday Night
I’m in London for the UK Tarot Conference 2007. This year’s event started with a Friday night warm up – two excellent workshops with Mark McElroy. I’m all turned around from jet lag, so the postings will be going up at odd hours this week! (It’s currently 3:00 a.m. in London.)
I arrived at the Thistle Hotel Westminster (not to be confused with the Thistle Hotel Victoria, two blocks away, which is the Tube station where one disembarks to go to the Thistle Westminster), and was greeted cordially by Kim Arnold, the organizer of the conference. It was a pleasure to meet, since we’d only exchanged emails prior to the conference. We had a wonderful conversation, and then it was time to find the meeting room and settle in for the evening.
The first session on Friday was “Making Friends with the Spooky Cards.” Mark started by having everyone divide their deck into happy cards, spooky cards, and cards which we weren’t sure about. Using his very helpful Silver Lining Worksheet, Mark walked us through finding new information and perspective on two cards – Death and the Devil – to overcome discomfort/fear/anguish related to the cards. Being able to find new meaning in the difficult cards doesn’t make them any less difficult, but it is quite helpful to have new tools to help clients deal with the “Eek!” response when one (or more) of those cards turns up in the reading.
After that, we took a short break to stretch, do a little shopping (the Psychic Cafe had a wonderful little shop set up – I scored Caitlin Matthew‘s “Da Vinci Enigma Tarot” set for a mere five pounds sterling – even at current US/UK exchange rates, such a good find!). The lovely Mary Collin was at the Friday night session, so she and I spent a few minutes catching up – and chatting up Mark – before the second workshop began.
The second workshop, “Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams”, was also quite informative. Mark provided tools for using the Tarot to interpret dreams. His first example was quite fun: “You’re speaking with your Mom, who turns into Queen Elizabeth. Her Majesty gives you a cupcake, and you feel very happy.” We had a good time working with it, choosing cards to represent the various symbols, and everyone offering their ideas on interpretation. We worked through some other examples, and everyone agreed that they had learned some very useful tools for working with dreams.
Being oh so very jet lagged at that point (I’d been in London just over 24 hours), I opted out of the post-workshop social and managed to return to my hotel without falling asleep on the Tube so I could rest up and be ready for Saturday’s very full program!