Tarot Deck Makers Course Q and A

The first of my Tarot Deck Makers courses starts this coming Monday; I've received much interest and have put together a post to distill the questions I've been asked. I still have a few spots left in the course; we have a beautiful group already forming. Please email me if you have any further questions. 

 Do I have to commit to making an entire Tarot Deck of my own?

You will have the opportunity to begin to create your very own Tarot Inspired Vision Deck—you work at your own pace. We focus on six Tarot cards in this first class: The Fool, The Magician, and the four Aces. The Fool card welcomes us to our deck making adventure. The Magician inspires us to pick up our tools, the Aces.  The Ace of Cups invites us to bring forth the chalice of self-love and compassion (heart), The Ace of Swords invites us to bring forth our vision with clarity and focus (mind), The Ace of Disks invites us to stand firmly on the earth and welcome the translation of our vison into a material deck (body), and The Ace of Wands invites us to bring our passion to the project as we consider how we would like to next direct our vision-aligned actions as depicted by the images we create for our decks (will). 

The course is meant to ground your deck making experience and give you the courage to keep creating cards, either in the rest of the series of classes I’ll be offering this year or on your own. Because it is a Tarot Inspired Vision Deck, you may choose to deviate from the Tarot’s structure, but I will be teaching sequentially through the deck this year to give us a grounding structure upon which to improvise.

Do I have to commit to a particular artform?

This course gives you a chance either to work in a medium you already feel comfortable working with or a chance to try something new—collage, watercolor, photography, you choose. You are also free to draft as many versions of your card as you wish; perhaps you’ll start out with a photograph and then decide to collage the photograph to add other elements or text.

Do I have to have a certain skill level with my artform or the Tarot?

This course is open to all level of student. We will read a variety of Tarot interpretations for each card, journal to connect our lived experiences to the card, and envision in writing and with art to create our own version of the card. The focus of the course is shared exploration as we create our decks.

For more details about the course:

Calling All Lovers of Tarot: Are You Ready to Make Your Own Deck?

and How to Deepen Your Study of the Tarot: Fall Resources from Wheel of Archetypal Selves

Tarot Blessings and thank you for your interest!

September Tarot Deck Making Class, Poetry Class, and Tarot for Two

Happy Fall! Hello September! It has been a busy couple of months, with a family trip to the UK and Ireland behind us that was beautiful--albeit rife with travel delays and unexpected weather delays--that has left my heart full and eager to return for more. 

Here are a couple of my favorite photos from the trip—despite many setbacks, we made it to Glastonbury Tor which is a heart-connected site for me and one I featured in the Guinevere section of November Butterfly. 

It was so very beautiful to walk the spiral path up to the Tower carrying the poems and Guinevere in my heart as the wind swept across our faces, sheep grazing in the glistering green fields below.

Another heart joy is that I’m finally offering a Deck Makers series of Tarot classes. Whether or not you have already been on Tarot pilgrimage with me through my prior Wheel of Archetypal Selves courses, or have been studying and playing with and working with the cards in other ways, I invite you to join me to make your own Tarot-inspired Vision Deck. 

Artwork and photo by Robyn Beattie

We start on September 12, 2016—you choose your medium or even mediums (watercolor, sketch, collage, photography, sculpture, you name it) and we write together, draft together, and meet through video call to inspire and encourage our decks into being. Please pass it on to anyone you think might be interested. For a full course description, visit my main site to sign up and read more about what we will have the opportunity to accomplish together: 

Calling all Lovers of Tarot: Are You Ready to MakeYour Own Deck?

San Diego Writers, Ink: Theme, Set, Go Monthly Poetry Workshop

Artwork and Photo by Robyn Beattie

My first Tuesday of the month workshop in San Diego needs a few more participants—drop-ins welcome. Animals are our focus for September. We will read aloud from Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” Jim Harrison’s “Barking,” Pablo Neruda’s “Horses,” Jayne Benjulian’s “Nutmeg” from her newly released Five Sextillion Atoms, Michelle Wing’s "Anthropomorphism" from Body on the Wall and "Bee Song" from Lisa Rizzo’s forthcoming Always a Blue House (Benjulian, Wing, and Rizzo are authors from my Saddle Road Press family; SRP published November Butterfly in 2014). Bring a friend and your favorite animal poem and come write your own poem with me this coming Tuesday, September 6, at 10 am. We meet at Liberty Station. October’s theme is Music.

Sign up here:

Theme, Set, Go with Tania Pryputniewicz

Tarot for Two: The Chariot and The Queen of Swords

So you’ve heard me talk about my friend and co-blogging companion at Tarot for Two, Mary Allen. What a blessing! Mary came to visit in August; so Mary and I threw cards together in person this month. Usually we read over the phone, hang up, and write to our cards of the month. Then call back and read to one another again over the phone. What a treat to read in person!

This month at Tarot for Two Mary wrote a bit about her travels in relation to the Queen of Swords:

It was the next to the last day of a seven-day trip so I was in transit.  Nothing in that moment was particularly stable, and my trip home couldn’t have been more unstable, driving in the middle of the night from San Diego to LAX on those much-bigger-than-I’m-used-to highways, getting lost midway there, being terrified of the trucks and traffic and being late when we got closer to LA. 

Then flying into Iowa in the middle of a possible tornado, roiling clouds outside the window, turbulence like I’ve never experienced before.  The Queen of Swords sits high in the blue sky on top of a bank of blue-tinged clouds, and maybe the cards were talking about that trip home, making a sly little comment about it, when they gave me her as my card of the month.

And I wrote more about poetry manuscript process in relation to the Chariot:

How blessed I am to reflect on the Chariot card and realize that yes, that thirty-one day challenge was the perfect vehicle for hearing the next layer of the journey out of child’s view of the commune. Sure, the leader was one of the Fools in the Corn, as were perhaps my parents and other followers, initially duped, but what of my own adult self, who had to find her way out of “Fool-dom” and into reality, sorting the True from the Not True. I see now that structures of religion can give us a false sense of security—the answers laid out as if we can somehow magically forego the threshing and sorting of experiences that being human affords us by birthright. As if we won’t have to learn to use our internal compass, regardless of outer chariot.

Read the rest of our post at Tarot for Two: 

The Chariot and The Queen of Swords

Photos at the top of the post are by yours truly and Kallista James; the example collage card and the clay walrus are both by Robyn Beattie.