Showing posts with label tarot workbook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tarot workbook. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Honoring the Inner Valentine: Make Your Ace of Cups

February 14, Noon to 2 pm PST over zoom / $28

 

Heart’s Compass Tarot, my workbook published by Two Fine Crows Book, turns a year old on Valentine's Day! What a beautiful year—the workbook provided a blueprint for classes and wonderful events all year long, a number of which you can enjoy as recorded presentations on the Heart’s Compass You-Tube channel including Tarot for Memoir, Poets of Heart’s Compass, Tarot for Two and more.

 

I invite you to join me this Valentine’s Day for a 2-hour offering, Honoring the Inner Valentine, Make Your Ace of Cups, held over zoom from Noon to 2 pm PST. Feel free to use the contact form on my blog to drop me a line and I’ll send you the zoom and payment links.


While Valentine’s Day often focuses on “lovers love,” I am so very excited to start this new yearly tradition of making a tarot Ace of Cups card alongside other kindred tarot lovers and tarot curious seekers in community in tribute to the inner heart, the Inner Valentine, every February 14. And in tribute to Heart’s Compass Tarot’s birthday!   


If you only make one tarot card from the deck in your lifetime, I say, let it begin with love—the Ace of Cups, card of the heart. Whether you’ve been working your way through the Heart’s Compass Tarot workbook on your own or you are new to tarot and the Ace of Cups, you are welcome to join us for a loving and lively midday exploration.

 

In this 2-hour workshop we will:

 

·      Look at some beautiful examples of Ace of Cups tarot cards from a variety of decks

·      Reflect, write, and share about our own particular heart-joys and future heart-wishes using a tarot journaling method

·      Begin to make our own Ace of Cups card based on personal heart’s desires

 

To register: Use the contact form on my site to drop me a line to let me know you wish to join. You’ll receive instructions for what to bring to class, our zoom invite, and payment options. Honoring the Inner Valentine: Make Your Ace of Cups meets on February 14, Noon PST-2 pm on zoom. Course cost: $28. All level of tarot lover welcome, from the tarot curious to the tarot savvy.

 

Why Make an Ace of Cups?


This is the Ace of Cups I made back in 2016 alongside my students, as they created their own versions of the cards that would go on to grace the pages of the Heart's Compass Tarot workbook (Carrie’s Ace of Depths appears in the graphic at the top of this post; Lisa’s Ace of Cups depicts the set of hands cupping the heart cup; in the middle is an in-process Ace of Cups I started on a roadtrip). I wrote the following Haiku to accompany this birdlike, fiery, sky Ace of Cups:

 

Self-love’s Ace of Cups

Egret lands, folds outstretched wings

Heart rests between flights

 

As I drew the image of the bird, I felt consciously connected to the blues and lavendars, sensing into the heart and the element of water. I live across from the sea; pastel sunrise skies, egrets, seagulls, pelicans, osprey, sandpipers, and hummingbirds all form my dayscapes. I often wake to the cry of the osprey. I often see the setting sun slipping down behind the ocean’s horizon line. It makes sense that birdwings and sunset colors found their way into that original Ace of Cups. 


I also remember being surprised a bit by the reds and yellows, and the angular, jagged lines emanating from the sunlike orb.  But I also remember it just felt right in my heart of hearts. Allowing myself to immerse in color play, to start with the softer colors, allowed me to reach deeper. I love these reds as much as the blues, for the card ends up reflecting back to me a representation of the complexity and richness of emotions from soft love to the core red surges of anger that also call for expression at the heartline. I colored my way to a type of recognition, a permission to feel a full range of feelings, expressed in a few lines from the workbook:

 

I allow my heart the full range of emotions

From volcanic core to seed-bursting as the sun

I invite my heart’s waves from swell

To dissolving into the larger sea

 

I made my Ace as a mirror of my heart at that time. I am eager to drop into the present and see what I find there now, for I have changed, and oh, how the world has changed, for all of us. I look forward to discovering what you find in your heart's mirror. Come color, paint, sketch, collage--you name it--beside me. Tarot blessings!

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Heart's Compass Tarot Valentine's Day Book Launch

I'm standing in a lot of joy, a lot of gratitude, for the fortune and blessing of having my book, Heart's Compass Tarot: Discover Tarot Journaling and Create Your Own Cards debut tomorrow, on Valentine's Day, from Two Fine Crows Books. I'd love for you to join us--we are hosting a Facebook Live Event from the Heart's Compass Tarot and Writing Facebook page. If you RSVP, Facebook will let you know when we go live tomorrow (1 pm PST). 

Ruth Thompson will introduce yours truly and three marvelous heart's compass contributors, Carrie, Gillian, and Lisa. We will discuss our path from tarot journaling to tarot card creation, with a special focus on the Fool cards we made together.

I have so many people to thank--first, Ruth Thompson and Don Mitchell of Saddle Road Press and Two Fine Crows Books for believing in the project and for coursing through the permutations of chapters and edits and image wrangling...all worth it, to bring you a gentle and loving roadmap for developing a relationship to the tarot, or deepening the one you have, regardless of the tarot deck you use. Through a method of tarot journaling to look at past, present, and future, you have the opportunity to get clear about your personal symbols for use in meditation or for the creation of your own tarot cards. You can learn more about the book (which has a variety of chapters from tarot haiku to teens and tarot) on my main site Heart's Compass Tarot: Valentine's Day Release.

I also have my two writing groups, the Flamingos, and the Feisty writers, to thank, as well as my two memoir teachers, Marcia Meier and Marni Freedman. I worked on tarot essays and the book's structure in their classes. I thank my three children (all of us together under the pandemic roof) and husband for putting up with my tarot focus as I let myself float down the tarot river and into the tarot sea. I always come back to them, and I thank them for their love and trust.

Heart's Compass Tarot is available for pre-order at Bookshop, Amazon, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Tarot at AWP Portland 2019

Calling Your Writer's Block Bluff: Three Card Draws (Mini Tarot Readings)

AWP, Portland 2019
Oregon Convention Center

Drop by the Saddle Road Press Booth to sign up for a free mini tarot reading in celebration of the Heart's Compass Tarot and Writing Workbook, forthcoming soon from Saddle Road Press.

I will be giving ten minute readings on Thursday March 28, 2019 from 9-4 and Friday March 29 from 2-5. These three cards draws will be based on your writing project at hand or any other question of the heart.

You can also pick up a sample chapter from the tarot workbook that gives you an exercise for using tarot principles to write a cento (poem compromised of lines by other poets).

Here's a list of Saddle Road Press authors and the books you will find at our table:
  • Dane Cervine, The Gateless Gate and Polishing the Moon Sword
  • Erika Howsare, How Is Travel A Folded Form? 
  • Stefan Kiesbye, The Staked Plains 
  • Ire’ne Lara Silva, Blood Sugar Canto
  • Ire’ne Lara Silva, Cuicacalli: House of Song
  • Don Mitchell, A Red Woman Was Crying (2019 edition)
  • Tania Pryputniewicz, November Butterfly
  • Jessamyn Smyth, The Inugami Mochi 
  • Ruth Thompson, Whale Fall & Black Sage
  • Rolf Yngve, Dog Watches

Unmasked: Women Write About Sex and Intimacy After 50. Join us also on Thursday evening from 5-7 p.m. for an off-site reading from Unmasked featuring eight poets and essayists who contributed to the anthology. They include Debbie Brosten, Roberta Feins, Ellaraine Lockie, Tanya Ko-Hong, Bernadette Murphy, Lisa Rizzo , yours truly, and Cathie Sandstrom. The event will be at the offices of Nurture Realty, 1100 SE Division Street, Suite 120, Portland, 97202.