Saturday morning came much too early in terms of how much sleep I’d been able to have (note to self: next year, arrive two days early so you can recover from the jet lag!), but I was so excited about the day ahead that I still managed to arrive at the conference with time to socialize before the first session (in spite of the best efforts of the Circle Line train to prevent this from happening.)
Kim Arnold, the conference organizer, started us off doing a four card reading for someone at the table with us. I paired with a very pleasant fellow named John, who did a great reading for me using the Robin Wood Tarot. I then did his reading with Alexandra Genetti‘s Wheel of Change deck, which was new to him and the others at the table – and a big hit!
Mark McElroy led off the workshop program with “Test the Tarot” – 20 interesting techniques for working with the cards to deal with questions that aren’t necessarily easy to answer – especially “why” and “when” questions. Mark always gives the best examples – he’s quite creative with the types of clients and questions he uses in his workshops – and is a master at teaching with humor and still treating the subject with appropriate seriousness. We managed to cover all 20 techniques in the 90 minutes alloted for the workshop, after which a break for tea and biscuits was quite welcome!
The second session featured Geraldine Beskin speaking on Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot. Geraldine owns the Atlantis Bookshop in London (where you absolutely must go when you are in London!), and Crowley was a frequent customer during his lifetime (before Geraldine’s time, you understand, but still a fun fact!). She gave a brief biography of Crowley for those who were familiar with him only from his negative PR, and talked about his magical training and writings as they related to his development of the deck. All very heady stuff, and quite interesting!
Riccardo Menetti, author of the Fey Tarot and the Gothic Tarot of Vampires, and chief executive of Lo Scarabeo, then gave a short talk on life at Lo Scarabeo and projects in the works at the publishing house. Their artists have been quite busy, and two new decks – the powerful Lo Scarabeo Tarot, and the Mona Lisa deck, are the next items to watch for. Hearing Riccardo speak about the challenges and rewards of creating new decks and restoring ancient decks was a fascinating look into the workings of this great publisher.
Suzanne Corbie held a lunchtime session on “Cosmic Ordering through Tarot”. In this workshop, Suzanne presented an outline for using Tarot to examine what we want, what we need, and how to construct and set intentions using the Tarot to create more abundance and happiness in life. She provided interesting example readings from actual client sessions to give clear demonstrations of using the technique.
After lunch, Miranda Gray, the author of the Arthurian Tarot and illustrator of R. J. Stewart‘s Merlin Tarot, (along with other original works), presented Healing the Shadow, an interactive workshop on using Tarot to heal the neglected, cut off parts of ourselves. The spread provides a great deal of information, far more than can be processed in one workshop session. John and the others at our table agreed that we all had something to keep us occupied on our various train/plane journeys home. After that deep work, a break for tea and biscuits was most welcome
We resumed with Kim leading us to revisit the morning readings we’d done for each other in light ot what we’d learned in the workshops. Everyone at our table compared notes – not just with our original reading partners – and discussed new ways we were seeing the cards, individually and as a whole spread, from what we had seen at the start of the day.
The day concluded with David Goddard leading us in two guided Tarot meditations to relate to the archetypes in the card. The first meditation was on the Fool card, which everyone agreed was fun and enlightening. The second meditation was on the Lovers card, which resulted in various responses from the attendees, and created much discussion afterwards
Kim wrapped up the day by thanking all of us for attending, and reminding us of upcoming Psychic Cafe events. If you live in the UK, or are planning to visit, do check out the schedule! In the meantime, I already have next year’s conference date – Oct. 18, 2008 – on my calendar!
