A Tarot Ancestor Garden of Verses: A Reading

We spent a beautiful 2022 using the tarot court cards to connect with the family tree through writing and art. We made personal tarot card art to honor the connections we discovered. 

Please join us as at our reading during which we will share the harvest of our reflections in poetry, prose, and art. Work was created in Antioch University's Continuing Education series, Using Tarot Court Cards to Explore Ancestry. 

This event is free and open to the public. Please pre-register here for the zoom link: A Tarot Garden of Ancestor Verses.

Sunday, January 26, 1 pm PST / 4 pm EST

Our presenters:

Valerie Coleman-Palansky: I am a 5 number and my archetype is The Hierophant: I am inspired by teaching and learning situations, honoring and valuing the sacred within as well as the unlimited source and resource provided by that inner faith and intuition. I am a psychotherapist, NYU adjunct professor, and and a registered Jin Shin Do acupressurist living in the Bronx, New York. I am married and have two almost adult daughters. I engage in many creative arts including writing. I have been specifically involved with tarot and metaphysical doings from my teen years. I synchronistically found Tania and her Heart's Compass Tarot Journaling group and was hooked via the Aces immersion. My first deck was The Golden Dawn Tarot and my most recent is Daughters of the Moon.

 

Alley Greymond: I am driven to learn and at various times have studied Accounting, Psychology, Systems Design, Real Estate Management, Poetry and Non-Fiction. While my current position is administrative support, I find value at work serving with different Employee Resource Groups towards perspective shifts and workplace equity. I’m not used to using my intuition to a robust capacity and when I first joined Tania’s class I felt as though I’d have nothing to offer. What a welcoming group of women and Tania creates an environment for one to think, feel and share. I appreciate having had an opportunity to explore Tarot with these women.  

 

Pratishta Natarajan: I have been fascinated with spirituality and meditation since I was five years old. My father was incredibly passionate about Indian mysticism, and I grew up surrounded by books on Eastern spiritual traditions. I found Tarot when I was a young teen. I loved receiving Tarot readings for years before I attempted doing my own reading. I was amazed by the connection I instantly felt with the cards. Tarot cards have been a powerful guide in my journey of personal healing and transformation. Currently, my favorite tarot deck is the Light Seers. 

 

Deborah Smith: My name is Debby and I live in New Paltz, New York on Lenape land. My pronouns are she/her. I have worked for 40 years practicing and teaching bodywork based in Chinese Medicine. My work with clients includes assisting them in tapping into their inner wisdom through the bodymind connection and supporting their intuitive relationship to their own health and happiness. I have revived my connection to Tarot as a doorway to my own intuition in the last two years and Tania's workshops have been a wonderful part of that. I've done a fair amount of writing related to my profession, but these writing experiences have been very rich and stimulating, both because of my own connections and being privileged to hear from the others in the group. Pulling tarot cards has become like having conversations with a dear and trusted friend: always relevant and always fascinating.

Additional Links of interest:

If you are unable to attend, but interested in using tarot cards to explore ancestry, the book Ancestral Tarot by Nancy Hendrickson is a beautiful place to start.

If you are interested in beginning or deepening your understanding of the tarot, I'll be teaching a new linked series of six-week courses through Antioch University's Continuing Education program that explore how the Major Arcana are connected to the Minors. 

For more information and to register for the first course (starts Sunday, February 26), visit: Tarot Journaling Courses 2023 & 2024

Winter Equinox Launch for The Fool in the Corn

The Fool in the Corn, my memoir-in-poems, is here: the physical copies arrived in the mail and are now in hand! To celebrate the tarot autobiography thread woven throughout this book, I am giving away free three-card tarot readings with purchase of the book on Winter Equinox at a beautiful sanctuary of a store called L.E.A.F. in Carlsbad...Live Enlightened and Free's Chris Parwell, owner, has crafted an amazing space with fountains and curated artwork and metaphysical gifts and gems and books and incense and beautiful greeting cards and more (a fabulous source if you need to round out holiday shopping and peruse a lovely range of options for gifts and stocking stuffers). Thank you for the opportunity to launch in this space, Chris!

I will be at LEAF on December 21 from 11 am to 2 pm. I can't wait to see you, sign a book for you, and send you home with poetry and tarot blessings; I'll give away the tarot readings on a first come first served basis. I'll be at the edge of the store under a pop-up tent; bring your coat, as we will be sitting outside. I can't wait to celebrate with you! The vibe in the store is incredibly healing.

Winter Equinox Book Signing for The Fool in the Corn

LEAF

3225 Business Park Drive, Suite 4

Vista, CA 92081

December 21

11 am until 2 pm

Here's my latest interview about risk-taking during the process of writing The Fool in the Corn. 

And you might also enjoy this review of The Fool in the Corn, written by Glynn Young at Tweetspeak Poetry. Thank you to Laura and Glynn at Tweetspeak for your time and energy supporting the book. 

My boundless gratitude goes to my publisher, Saddle Road Press (Ruth Thompson and Don Mitchell), and to my San Diego writing group and my beloved Flamingoes (you all know who you are). Books come into being during countless hours spent weighing words, themes, commas, colors, you name it...thanks to the love and care of many hearts, gathering around the same hearth, with grit, determination, joy, tears, laughter, and encouragement. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am blessed beyond compare. You can help the sails of this small press book fill, and send us further across the waters of the publishing world, by leaving us a review, if you are so moved. Thank you again.

Mother's Day Tarot

Photo by Robyn Beattie

I’ll be celebrating Mother’s Day by inviting my children to join me first in the yoga studio, followed by breakfast after, the present their presence. It’s been two years since I lost my own mother and I’m feeling like the Tarot Angel in the Temperance card, well--like I’m floating between her two cups, the streams of joy and sorrow passing through the filament of my body. Joy for my daughter graduating high school this summer and sorrow I can’t share that moment with my mother. But the truth is, we are surrounded by mothers and there’s an abundance of love, my mother-in-law and family members and friends coming from near and far to celebrate with us, and truly, my mother in spirit. I think also of the Empress, that beautiful card for mothering and nurturing, asking us to consider where in our lives we can honor the mother in ourselves, the mothers who mothered us, and the environments of beauty, harmony, in nature, or of our making, in which we thrive. 

Luna and the Butterfly Lantern

I’ll spend this Mother's Day afternoon (May 12) reading Tarot cards at Yoga with Shawna. Come play with me in Imperial Beach if you need to either spoil yourself or spoil your mother with some Tarot love. Sessions on Sundays are the 20 minute shorter readings. If you live far away, you can always book through my main site's Consult Page for virtual Tarot love. Tarot consults come with a Butterfly Lantern postcard bearing a personalized prompt for journaling and meditation based on your reading. Here's Luna, preparing to drink from my daughter's blue paint water, the famous disturber of art projects, this cat, famous dumper over of flower and paintbrush bouquet vases. 

And for my daughter, for the honor of being her mother, a paragraph I wrote with my Poetry Read and Critique class this spring:

Alice in Flames by Robyn Beattie

"Will you braid my hair," she asks, when we are late, ten minutes past when we should have left, all of us trained, her brother carrying her backpack...I've got her coffee and mine plus her second cup of yogurt and granola. We'll pull up at the curb in front of school where she'll have forgotten her shoes, ask to be driven around to the side gate. But that she ever asks--I am stunned--my daughter, did she just say, "Mom, braid my hair?" The very teen, averts the goodbye kiss, the one you can hug but no, no kiss on cheek, not even top of head, the very teen, at Christmas, will land all eighteen years of legs into your lap, always on her terms... always, always braid your daughter's hair when she asks.

Back in 2013 I compiled a pastiche of past Feral Mom Mother’s Day posts; very nostalgic as the kids get older and I look back to the time before the boys were taller than sunflowers, near taller than my husband (taller certainly than yours truly). Here’s a link to that post: A Modest Bouquet: Ten Mother’s Day Posts.

And here’s a more recent grief post at Tarot for Two about saying goodbye to my mother through the lens of Reversal, or The Hanged One.

Poetry Read and Critique, SDWI

Second Saturdays Poetry Read and Critique meets this coming Saturday, May 11 at Liberty Station from 10-12. We are a happy, lively, heart-open and passionate group of poets. Walk-ins welcome. We are playing with writing list poems and looking at fairytale themes and apologues this weekend; to that end we have poems by Maggie Smith, Ruth Thompson, Rebecca Chamaa, Shel Silverstein and more on our worksheet. I hope to see you there.

Photos by Robyn Beattie, with the exception of Luna (by yours truly).

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.

Awakenings: Songs of Survival, Chicago

Good morning beautiful sisters and brothers…many of us are at odds watching the fight played out across our Tv screens, over the radio, over tweets and soundbites, regarding whether or not to believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against a Supreme Court nominee our senators just voted through this weekend.

Turning to the face the heat of the sun, regardless of outcomes, I’m celebrating the way women are coming forward to voice their stories emboldened by Dr. Ford so that all of us, men and women alike, can heal. This summer when I applied to be part of an event in Chicago, Songs of Survival, I had no way of knowing we would be embroiled so heavily in the present conversation. Along with other performers (dance, music, poetry) I’ll be reading, “Peer Counselor,” a poem that is really my thank you letter to my peer counselor in college for the way she helped me see my story in a kinder light (kinder towards myself); isn’t that one of the core challenges? Self-love?

I hope this week finds you taking some tiny action towards loving yourself from journaling to reaching out to a friend or a counselor, registering to vote, deciding to run for office, or sending one of your helpers a thank you letter, poem, or drawing. How we need one another to grow and get back to joy; how we blossom regardless of what befalls us like moonflowers under nightfall.

If you are in Chicago, come out to celebrate the anniversary of the MeToo movement with us at Awakenings Gallery. Songs of Survival is a performance event, the fourth of its kind at Awakenings, featuring originally composed or re-envisioned music, poetry, and dance that is for, by, and about survivors of sexual violence. Join us on Thursday, October 18th for an evening of performance. Doors open at 6:30 and the show will begin at 7:00. More information here for Songs of Survival.

Tarot for Joy

Want to connect more deeply to joy? Work your way through the Tarot deck one card per week? We meet over video call and write to connect our experiences of lived joy to each card. We start tomorrow, October 9, with the Ace of Cups in celebration of the many forms of love, especially self-love. This is a lovely drop-in online group that meets every  Tuesday at 11 am PST.  You can visit my Wheel of Archetypal Selves Facebook page and IM me there for more details or contact me through my main website; here’s the full course description, Tarot Tuesday Returns with Tarot for Joy.

Poetry Meets Tarot Synchronicity: Crafting Centos and Leaning on Your Beloveds

While teaching “Election Blues: The Gift of Agency in Poetry” this spring, my poetry student Marcia Meier introduced me to the poetic form of the cento. (Marcia’s cento, drafted during our class and published in April at Writer’s Resist, can be read here: Scent of Mock Orange.)

Here’s a definition and a little background, Cento: Poetic Form, from Academy of American Poets, poets.org. In a nutshell, a cento is a poem comprised solely of a group of lines, each borrowed from a different writer.

I created the class, “Election Blues,” to help me break through the stunned quiet enveloping me after the election. When Marcia suggested centos, I felt immediate relief. I could draw on the strength and power of other writers to “get back home.” That day, I grabbed the volumes within arm’s reach off my bookshelf, women I admire and love (with the exception of WCW—he appears in only one of the centos):

Audre Lord

Kay Ryan

Ruth Thompson

Joy Harjo

Colleen J. McElroy

Emily Dickinson

Maxine Hong Kingston

Bhanu Kapil

Sylvia Plath

Joan Swift

Malinda Markham

William Carlos Williams

Because I was simultaneously teaching a Tarot writing class, I instinctively used Tarot reading principles as I began the process of making my centos.

When reading Tarot cards, you usually start by focusing on a question of the heart, shuffling the cards, and choosing cards blind (meaning the cards remain face down while you are choosing so the images are hidden until you begin the reading).

When drafting centos, I used the randomly selected volumes of poetry as my “deck.” I focused on one person related to the election at a time, put my hand on my heart, and opened to the mix of emotions I was feeling. Each time I let the book in my hand fall open and let my eye fall on a line.

Once I had copied down roughly ten lines, one from each volume for each person I was writing a cento for, I brought my writer self to bear on rearranging the lines into a meaningful order that best reflected my various states of love, gratitude, fear, and concern.

I was surprised by the richness and seeming appropriateness of the images and lines that fell, though after having worked with the Tarot for so  long, I was prepared for synchronicity. Poetry, like Tarot, works powerfully by association and context, so when you plug in a question or a focus for a Tarot reading, or you plug in a title or person as the focus for a cento, the associations boomerang back to that central question, person, or title, causing us to look deeper.

Of course you can argue that any random group of lines can be made to mean one thing in one context and something entirely different in another, but it didn’t stop me from trying the form and enjoying the inadvertent “reading.” I hope that beyond speaking privately and specifically to me, just as a Tarot reading would, the centos still work as poems on their own. You’ll have to let me know.

I’m honored that five in the series, “A Thank You Letter to Barack Obama,” “An Open Letter to Donald Trump, “ “An Iris for Hillary,” “Emerald Dream, For Michelle Obama,” and “Ghost Ribs, For Melania Trump” have been chosen by Nicelle Davis for an event in Venice, “Poetry Postcards at Beyond Baroque: write your political concerns to representatives.” The event is hosted by Nicelle Davis, Armine Iknadossian, and Quentin Ring; please do join us if you are in the area this coming Sunday, April 30, from 1-4. Our generous hosts print up the poems and provide a space for folks to gather, address postcards, pen messages to representatives, and read a little poetry aloud. Here’s the Facebook link to “Poetry postcards at Beyond Baroque.”

Hall and Pryputniewicz blockprint

In case you can’t make it to be with us this weekend,  I’ve recorded three of the centos, “A Thank you Letter to Barack Obama,” "An Open Letter to Donald Trump," and "An Iris for Hillary," as MP3s you can access from my Events page on my main site.

Next time you find yourself poetically blocked or lost I hope you’ll try writing a cento. Take your beloveds down off the bookshelf and lean on their strength! Or set the arrow of your intention and curiosity along any line: humor, love, spirituality, sport fishing—you name it—and see which harvest of poetry lines your deck of books brings you.

Related links:

I’ll be participating in the Ten Thousand Waves reading at the Museum of Women in Liberty Station, organized by Katya Williamson; I hope you’ll join us! Here’s the description from the flier.

Ten Thousand Waves: Come join us for an afternoon of original prose and poetry. We hope to inspire, raise awareness, comfort, entertain, and enjoy each other’s company.

4:30-6:30 on May 13^th

Women’s Museum, Liberty Station

2730 Historic Decatur Road, Barracks 16

92106, SD

Admission: $5

Losing Joan Swift:

In early March, I was heartbroken to learn that the gifted poet Joan Swift passed away (pictured here on the back jacket of The Dark Path of Our Names, photo by Mary Randlett, 1985). I can’t begin to express my gratitude for Swift's poetry. I first encountered her work as an undergraduate student at UC Davis in one of Sandra McPherson’s seminars. What a blessing to have been unwittingly working with Joan’s lines to create the centos in January and February.

If you wish to attend a memorial celebration and reading for Joan Swift, here's a link to an event posted by Poets and Writers, a May 16, 2017 event in Seattle. 

Here’s a link to a selection of poems by Swift that we ran at The Fertile Source in 2010. And  also up at the Fertile Source,  a 2010 Interview with Joan Swift. 

Here's a link to another  beautiful poem by Swift, "Sometimes a Lake" posted by Poetry Northwest in January of this year and another posted by Jennifer Flenniken at The Far Field: "Listening to My Bones." 

I will write more about Joan’s work in a future post. My love and deepest condolences to her family.