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.