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 Dragonflies: Symbol Hunting for Joy on Election Day and January Classes

Artwork by Lisa Rizzo

Election results day, after delivering the children to school and pulling over to listen to Hillary’s concession speech, I walked beside the sea with my husband who took part of the morning off to be with me. In Hillary’s voice, I could hear the woven pain and promise when, near the end of her talk, she addressed women, young women, and little girls:

And to all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.

Back at home, overcome with a sense of immoblization, I rested face-down on the floor in a stripe of sunlight. Gradually, the seed-bursting warmth returned me to my body, my now. I sat up and looked out the window. The sun, now blocked perfectly by the spine of a palm tree, gave off a pale silver blue halo that enveloped the spine of a second palm tree just four feet away from the first tree.

Between the two trunks, in twos and threes, dragonflies lazily looped and landed, their wings backlit. A pair flew down into the yard, resting on the dried tips of the Bird of Paradise plant. I thought of my friend Lisa, who I worked with last month as we created our personal cards for Tarot’s suit of air, often depicted as swords in traditional decks. Here was Lisa’s suit of dragonflies, dozens of them—coming in form—so kindly, so gently, as if to say wake up, you are not alone! Lisa’s dragonfly, at the top of this post, lovingly visits here with her blessing.

In addition to the Tarot/art visitation, I am so very grateful for the beautiful newsletters from artists, writers, and healers that came to my inbox last month. Though I lost the path to my own words, I took solace in their words of hope, their grapplings to understand and chart a course to action, and their struggles to consider avenues to bridge-mending and even thriving again.  In that spirit, I’m offering courses in the New Year hoping to give sanctuary to others looking for a way to take up the pen again.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Responding to the Election: In Election Blues: The Gift of Agency in Poetry, we will look at contemporary election/political climate poetry and write our own poems based on a range of prompts from election night experience to candidate expectations to letter poems to the next generation and more. This is a virtual write-in present-time class that will meet over Zoom starting Friday, January 6. For more information: Visit Election Blues: The Gift of Agency in Poetry.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Practicing Gratitude: In My Cup Runneth Over: The Tarot Suit of Cups, we will move sequentially through the Cups from Ace to Ten, one card per week, and write personal responses to the card to deepen our relationship to the Tarot and to encourage a sense of heart-based gratitude as we connect the cards to our experiences of joy. This too is a virtual, live, write-in-present-time class that will meet over Zoom starting Thursday, January 5. For more information: Visit My Cup Runneth Over: The Tarot Suit of Cups.

Artwork by Tania Pryputniewicz

Making Your Own Deck: I am continuing the Tarot Dreamers: Make Your Tarot Deck series that I’ve been offering this fall; we pick up with The High Priestess. These classes are designed for soul-seeking women looking to connect artistically with their inner symbol world. We combine writing and art in the service of creating Tarot-inspired vision cards that function as beautiful physical reminders of the joys, dreams, and desires within.

The High Priestess, sometimes known as the card signaling, “the journey homeward” or a “return to oneself,” will be the focal point of our vision card making, along with the four ways we experience the High Priestess as we go about our daily lives: Two of Cups (navigating exchanges of the heart between equals), Two of Wands  (balancing our will before action), Two of Disks (juggling projects and commitments to finance while staying spiritually aligned), and Two of Swords (working to maintain a peaceful and loving set of thoughts in relation to ourselves so we can thrive internally as well as externally). For more information: Visit Tarot Dreamers: The High Priestess

In-Person Monthly Themed Poetry Workshop continues at San Diego Writers, Ink. January's theme is Outer Space. Come out and join us; we are a lovely, intimate circle of poets and welcome a few more bodies for sure. Sign up here:

Tania's First Tuesdays Theme Set Go Class

Additional Links of interest:

Artwork and Photo Credits: As noted by caption: by Lisa Rizzo and Robyn Beattie

A beautiful post my co-blogger at Tarot for Two, Mary Allen: The Lovers and the 2016 Election.

An excerpt from an inspiring interview with Tarot Deck Maker and Jazz Musician Art Lande of the Art Tarot:

We are really talking about your singing self. Let’s sing: something simple, like you would sing when you were two years old. We will sing together and we will listen together. What is honesty? What is innocence? What is resonance? It is something we feel, know in our hearts. Innocence, resonance, and looking at the heart of the matter together—whatever it is—we are all teachers and learners. And all the divisions, right vs. wrong, are heartbreaking. We’re all the same: We all want to be moved to the core.

Read rest of interview here: The Art Tarot.

Tarot Prompts and Musings and a June Poetry Workshop

Photo by Robyn Beattie

First Tuesdays Monthly Poetry Workshop at San Diego Writers, Ink

There are still a few spots left in my in-person San Diego Writers, Ink Monthly Poetry Workshop that starts Tuesday, June 7 over at Liberty Station at 10 am (we meet one day a month, first Tuesdays). Our first meeting is devoted to fathers and mothers (considering the roles from multiple points of view). If you’ve worked with me in the past you know I delight in bringing out the best you have to give your poems in the way of vulnerable grit. I only ask that you go the distance in your process to arrive somewhere you haven’t been before. All level of writer welcome.

A few selections I’ll be reading before we begin writing together include First Lesson by Philip Booth, “Lie back, daughter, let your head /  be tipped back in the cup of my hand…” and Thom Gunn’s Baby Song, “From the private ease of Mother’s womb / I fall into the lighted room.” Also Dorothy Parker’s Prayer for a New Mother, “The things she knew, let her forget again— / The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold…” and by Linda Pastan, Marks, “My husband gives me an A / For last night’s supper.” Please bring your own favorite poem to read on the topic of mothers and fathers, roll up your sleeves, join me, and bring a friend. What a way to kick off summer!

Sign up here at San Diego Writers, Ink, and I’d love it if you could pass it on to help it fill. Please do emial me through my contact page if you have any questions.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Tarot Writing Prompts for You to Use to Deepen Your Relationship to Tarot:

I continue to post a Tarot Writing prompt a week on my main website. We are in the Suit of Disks. Here are the most recent prompts; come join the conversation on Facebook at Wheel of Archetypal Selves or leave a comment on the site if you use the prompts or find inspiration using the exercises.

The Three of Disks, or Art for All

The Four of Disks

Pregnancy, The Five of Disks

Six of Disks Spiral Exchange

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Tarot for Two

One of life’s spectacular blessings is my monthly Tarot phone call with my friend Mary. As I shoo my kitty Luna off the cards, I love to picture Mary sitting in her house all the way in Iowa. I suppose we could use Skype or Zoom, but so far we’ve kept it old-fashioned. Which means it is her voice I drop in and enjoy.  We shuffle, cut, and then recreate the layouts we pull for one another so we are looking at the same cards. It is a gift to share the universal mirror with her and to puzzle out the larger sense of where we meet it with our particulars. At the end of the readings, we pull a card to live with for the month. We share our findings in relation to our card of the month on our blog, Tarot for Two. Here are excerpts from May:

Queen of Cups:       

In the tarot cards water is a symbol for the unconscious.  With the Thoth-deck Queen of Cups the water takes up half the card, it’s all that water below the line.  In the Rider-Waite deck the Queen of Cups is sitting on a throne with a pool of water at her feet; she’s wearing a kind of cape made of water too. Maybe it’s seeing her sitting on that throne that makes me think again of sitting in my own chair in the mornings trying to access the water of my own unconscious as I meditate.  How you get to that water, that unconscious place, and what you find there is what really interests me. 

Ten of Disks:

I don’t know if my children and husband see the magic all around us, but I feel it in the Sundays we rise and hop in the van to drive along Route 75 parallel to the sea.  A four-minute spin delivers us to Katie’s Café where its surfboard sign, hung by a pair of chains, greets us with image of a mermaid resting on her side. In we go past the paintings of surfers emerging from sunlit-backed barrels and tables adorned with glass goblet worlds holding cacti and succulents anchored in multicolored pebbles, miniature clay surfboards at the ready.

Read rest of our post here at Tarot for Two: The Queen of Cups and the Ten of Disks.

Photos are by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie.

April Tarot Writing Prompts and a June Themed Poetry Workshop for you....

Theme, Set, Go: Monthly Poetry Workshop at SDWI

I know you have some magic words...we all do. Would you like to shrine them in poems? This is an ongoing in person workshop that will meet the first Tuesday of every month starting in June at San Diego Writers, Ink at Liberty Station from 10 am to noon; the first six months of themes, offered as touchstones here, and open to a wide range of interpretations, include: 

June: Mothers and Fathers

July: Travel

August: Harvest

September: Animals

October: Music

While the poetry we write starts as a conversation with the Self, it inevitably becomes a conversation with Other Poets. If we are lucky, that conversation extends itself in front of an audience of Enthusiastic Readers. Come up out of your basement, down from your gable, or away from that crowded coffee shop you frequent. Bring paper, pencil, and your device. Let’s partake of all three conversations and write together!

While we will read and write poems based on a particular theme each month, I invite you to rebel and write the poems hunting you if the themes don’t suit you (though I believe out of the bedrock of resistance emerges some of our most feral, inspired poetry).

Expect to read poetry out loud, write and workshop poems, share ideas for potential submission targets, and grow as a poet. You will come away from each of our classes with enough assignments and started drafts to keep you busy during the month apart til our next meeting. I'll post a link once the course is Here's the link to the course description at SDWI where you can sign up; cost is $30 for members per month or $36 per month for nonmembers. Keep it in mind for keeping your summer writing practice robust; for more information about my relationship to writing poetry, check out this interview conducted by SDWI's Casey Cromwell.

Tarot Tuesday

Here are the latest in the series of Tarot writing prompts I am offering on Tuesdays on my main website. I am working my way through the deck, one card per week. We have moved into the Suit of Disks. I invite you to write to the prompt and share it with us on the Tarot Tuesday Facebook page or in comments on the site:

The Ace of Disks, or the Gift of Preparing to Receive

The Two of Disks, or the Unconscious Juggler

Tarot for Two

Writer Mary Allen and I continue to co-blog at Tarot for Two. We share our reflections on the card we lived with for the month prior, connecting our daily lives to the symbolism of the cards. This month we wrote to Hierophant and  Art/Temperance Cards:

Excerpt from The Hierophant (Tania’s card of the month):

Knowing there were multiple incarnations made this one seem optional, mundane. Traipsing around on our various field trips, I wondered: Why learn about fertilizer for seed crops or butchering methods at the slaughterhouse or chemical mixtures for sewage? Why would we, the chosen children, need to know these things, if we were once Lemurians or Atlanteans? Why did we fall from grace? How was it possible to skin a knee? To lose a cat to a car on a hot tar road in summer? And how am I to know which past incarnation’s work I need to complete in this incarnation?

Excerpt from The Art card, or Temperance (Mary’s card of the month):

This is a beautiful card with many strange and arresting images:  a circle in the woman’s chest holding a clutch of celestial blue balls, a large oval of pale yellow light behind the woman, with writing in it (what does that writing mean? I don’t even know what language it’s in), the woman’s green dress decorated with bees….When this card comes up I think it’s talking, not so much about art as we think about it but about the art of life, the alchemy of mixing things together—a little of this, a little of that, sorrow, happiness, darkness, light, and what you do with all of that—to create a life. 

We invite you to read the rest of both card of the month reflections at Tarot for Two; we'd love it if you dropped us a comment about the writing. I hope this post finds you thriving and taking time to reflect on the moments that brought your joy, or that you find your way back to joy through writing about the challenging moments. Tarot blessings, as I like to say these days.

Photo Credits: Artwork in the top photo is by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie; the remaining three photos are hers.

March Publications and Tarot Writing Prompts

Robyn Beattie

“Walking the Laguna,” dedicated to Reginald Shepherd, is live in this month’s issue of TAB, A Journal of Poetry and Poetics thanks to Anna Leahy. The poem is up both as a PDF and sound recording. You won’t hear my Siberian Husky in the background of the final MP3, but she gave it her best shot (see Pet Bedlam, Three Takes to Record a Poem)! I love that TAB includes our written words and our actual voices. The issue is beautiful in entirety.

Robyn Beattie 

“When Elder Becomes Child,” is up at Marisa Gaudy’s website as part of her #365Strong Stories thread; I am grateful to the artists and writers I’m blessed to collaborate with thanks to Tracking Wonder's Quest 2016. Marisa is looking for submissions for her Strong Stories series; please do send her your work.

All through December, I used colored pencils while on Quest to sketch out and explore my Tarot Devotions and dreams for my Tarot Writing Business; I’m blessed to be in the middle of teaching my new Wheel of Archetypal Selves Courses: The Many Faces of Love and working on creating new courses around Tarot Deck creation. I'm happily booking  Tarot Consults with writing prompts and giving away a weekly Tarot Writing prompt at my Wheel of Archetypal Selves Tarot Tuesday page. 

Photo Robyn Beattie

I created Tarot Tuesdays with my prior and current Tarot students in mind and also invite artists, writers, and Tarot enthusiasts to check out the prompts. We’re moving sequentially through the deck, starting with the suit of Cups. If you are not a fan of Facebook, you can also find the prompts on my main site (links included below for Ace of Cups through Six of Cups).

Here are the links to far:

Prompt for Ace of Cups

Prompt for Two of Cups

Prompt for Three of Cups

Prompt for Four of Cups

Prompt for Five of Cups

Prompt for Six of Cups

Robyn Beattie

A second goal for this project is an ongoing collaboration with Robyn Beattie—she’s supplying a photo interpretation of each card, and I’m writing a Haiku. 

Last week's Haiku for the Five of Cups:

Grief is a blue cloak

Wicking tears from root-spilled cups

Widow, turn: Friends wait.

It’ll take us a year and a half to create our full deck of Tarot Writing prompts using Robyn’s images paired with Haiku and drawing on the prompts up on the website—but I’m very excited about this project, which seems a new beautiful extension of our poetry movies.

I’d love any feedback about how the prompts are working for you so we can create the best set of Tarot Writing prompt cards possible. Let me know in comments here, on Facebook, or on my main site, how the prompts are working for you.