Wheel of Archetypal Selves: The Many Faces of Love

Sea Queen of Hearts

In this on-line Tarot Writing course, we will explore Tarot’s many faces of love including Self-Love, Friendship’s Gift of Love, Love Between Lovers, Royal Marriage, Spiritual Marriage, and The Alchemy of Love/Art. Approaching the Tarot from a relaxed, open-hearted stance, we will explore how the cards inspire us to understand and reflect upon our experiences as a soul traveler passing through the various stages of love.

We will write to connect past experiences to aspects of each card as well as answering weekly questions based on definitions assigned the cards by Tarot scholars. We will read excerpts of published work based on the Tarot and keep a Tarot Journal for the duration of the course, noting any experiential synchronicities occurring during the week in relation to the cards under study.

In addition to sharing weekly free-writes and exercises, students are encouraged to work towards one or more polished pieces of writing in the genres of their choice (poetry, flash fiction, essay, memoir, monologue, etc.) to share with us by week six.

By the end of this class, students will gain a working knowledge of The Ace of Cups, Two of Cups, The Emperor/Empress pairing, the High Priestess/Hierophant pairing, and The Temperance or Art card. This class is open to all level of writer; no prior experience needed in working with the Tarot. Images from a variety of Tarot decks will be provided weekly (including Roots of Asia, Poet Tarot, Rider-Waite, Thoth, Motherpeace, Daughters of the Moon, Voyager, and more).

This six week on-line course starts February 15 and ends on March 25, 2016. Cost is $250. Course communication will take place over a combination of email, Zoom, and private online discussion forum. For more information or to sign up, email me through my contact page or visit The Wheel of Archetypal Selves Tarot Facebook page to message me there.

Artwork at top of this post: Collaborative Blockprint, Pryputniewicz and Hall

Related Links:

Crossing the Blue Bridge or Navigating by Mermaid

Deciphering the Siren: Premature Gifts, Luminaries, and Transformative Blogging

New in 2016: Tarot Consult Services with Writing Prompts

from Two Feet in An Open Sky

True to my hummingbird ways and love for cross-pollinations, this year I’m expanding my teaching and editing services to include one-on-one Tarot Consults. It’s time to combine my MFA and twenty-plus years as a writing teacher and artist with my twenty-plus years of reading cards.

Though I’ll offer a general soul-focused reading to querents with a question on their minds and an affinity for working with the Tarot archetypes, I am especially in love with a new type of reading I created for A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Retreat last August titled, Tarot as Poet’s Mirror. It was my intention at the outset to read for poets, but I ended up reading not only for poets but also for writers, artists, and those who love to journal. So now I'm calling the consult: Tarot as Project Mirror with Writing Prompts.

I’m creating a page on my main website devoted to the new consults (I plan to have it up by the end of the month) but in the meantime, I wanted to announce the consults here at Feral Mom, Feral Writer. Please feel free to use the contact form on this website  (use the link beneath my "About Me" photo) if you are interested in booking a reading or if you would like more information; readings are conducted over Skype and payment made via Paypal.

Elusive Fish of Dream

1) Tarot as Soul Mirror 

This hour session focuses on a question of your choice; we address your question with a nine-card layout. We will pull up to three additional cards to satisfy the question at hand. Consult Fee: $60 (includes Skype session and follow-up email with a written recap of your reading). *Introductory rate good through February, as of March 1, 2016, this consult Fee: $75.

2) Tarot as Project Mirror with Writing Prompts:

This hour session focuses on a question you have regarding your project or manuscript; we address your project or manuscript using a nine card layout. I also provide a written recap of our session and a list of nine to twelve individualized writing prompts based on your cards. You bring your core question and together we look at the messages coming through the cards about possible next steps and direction for inspiration. You continue the work as you respond to the prompts after our reading at your own pace and leisure. Consult Fee: $150 (includes Skype session, set of individualized writing prompts, and a follow-up email with written recap of your reading).

Capricorn Quest

This is the right reading for you if:

You are at an impasse with a particular project, manuscript, or soul question and wish to re-invigorate it with new inspiration or insight

You are image driven and would like to use the archetypes to deepen your relationship to your soul, your project, manuscript, or artwork

You love to journal, blog, write or draw in response to prompts

Tarot Bio:

Tania Pryputniewicz has worked with the Tarot for over twenty years. Her Tarot teachers include Reverend Jacqueline of the Temple of Living Prayer and Astrologers Quan Tracey Cherry and Bonnie Orgren. While pursuing her MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Tania read cards for the Vortex Crystal and Gem Store, The Women's Center, and The Women's Music Festival in Iowa City. She also taught Beginning Tarot during that time and worked one on one with students of the Tarot, publishing "Tarot as Spiritual Midwifery" (an article celebrating the work of the late Angeles Arrien, Icon). Most recently she offered Tarot as Poet’s Mirror consults for A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Summer 2015 writing retreat for women writers. Tania’s Wheel of Archetypal Selves courses combine writing and journaling in conjunction with the study of the Minor Mentors and Major Arcana.

Photo by Robyn Beattie: La Posada reading

Tania’s poetry collection, November Butterfly, was published by Saddle Road Press in 2014. She lives in San Diego with her husband, three children, one Siberian Husky and two tubby housecats. Visit her website, a blog she curates for writing mothers: Mother Writer Mentor, or Tarot for Two where she co-blogs with writer Mary Allen.

Related Links:

Tarot for Two: A blog devoted to connecting the Tarot's symbols and imagery to ordinary life; writer Mary Allen and I co-blog here. We pull a Tarot card each month to consider in relation to our daily lives.

Your Tarot Adventure: Tarot Writing Exercise for You: A simple four notebook exercise for you to begin your own Tarot play.

My Tarot Lineage on The Royal Road: 100 Butterflies and a Bicycle: How the Tarot entered my life.

Tarot Visioning on Quest 2016: Musings on prompts offered on Tracking Wonder's Quest 2016; you'll find my colored pencil drawings based on the Tarot cards here too. Here is a list of the most recent posts (retitled here by image or concept):

Chalice Mirror

The Blue Chalice

  

Who I Would Love to Serve

Opportunity Chain Butterfly

Trusting the Mother Clock

 Rainbow Fish of Dream or Where Story of Self and Client Overlap

Tarot Mirror and the Key to Being Unmistakeable

Igniting the Heart Torus

Artwork: Colored pencil on white paper drawings are this year's Quest 2016 crop (I drew them as a synthesis of the three cards chosen for each prompt). The black and white drawing at the top of the post dates back to graduate school/Iowa City days when I was studying Reiki and is part of a series of Reiki drawings shown at UIHC under the title, Two Feet in An Open Sky.

Photo: by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie.

December 20 Submission Workshop for San Diego Writers

Salvage Your December with Tania Pryputniewicz at San Diego Writers, Ink

I'm looking for a few more students to come out this coming Sunday, December 20^th  for three hours to join me for my Submission Blitz workshop. We will bring work, work in progress, and lists of places to potentially submit. We will match work with targets so that January 1 you are ready to come out of holiday haze ahead of the game and eager to submit to new venues.

Remember to bring your own list of targets to share and any hard copy zines you want to let us peruse as well as at least one in-process poem or short story or project you are revising. I’ve printed out a copy of Tweetspeak Poetry's Submission Map for us to flag state by state to indicate where we’ve published as a class. Bring a friend…you’ll keep one another accountable to your goals!

All the details here: Salvage Your December with Tania Pryputniewicz.

Interview Live at r.k.v.r.y. Quarterly Literary Journal with Tina Pocha

Suffering was incredibly grounding. It brought everything into perspective--what was important, what was painful, what was undoing. It returned me to love—Tina Pocha

I had the honor of interviewing poet Tina Pocha this week for r.k.v.r.y. Quarterly. You’ll find a link to her poetry and her reflections on the gift of disclosure and other musings on addiction, the role of labels such as “addict” or “poet,” and the ways Pocha’s childhood in India weaves itself into her approach to valuing the process of writing poetry:

In Indian tradition, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati is thought to be symbolic of the ultimate integration of the soul, the achieving of enlightenment where we bring together all the (seemingly) disparate parts of our selves into one whole. I’m tired of living divided—head from heart, strength from tenderness—and poetry helps me to bring it all together.

We’d love it if you have a moment to read her poem and interview and drop a comment if so inspired.

Quest 2016

I’ve committed to blogging in response to prompts offered by Tracking Wonder’s December line up of visionaries. (Yes, you can still join us if you want to play in public across platform of your choice and/or in private Facebook Forum. To join, visit Tracking Wonder's Quest 2016 page; from that page, you can also view my short video about the work last year's Quest helped me develop with Tarot and Writing as well as videos by my stellar Quest mates and their projects). This year, I’m using the lens of the Tarot and blogging in response to what I see as well as creating a synthesis image of the cards in colored pencil. Most recent posts address:

The Star Card as Daydreaming Self…(Barry Kaufman’s Daydreaming Prompt)

Re-visioning the Aeon Card Through Lens of Birth…(Seth Godin’s Miss Me Prompt)

Heart Lighthouse on the Horizon…(Jeffrey Davis, an extra Horizon Exercise Prompt)

Pet Bedlam: Three Takes to Record a Poem

Luna, oh innocent Luna

I spent this morning trying to make a simple recording of “Walking the Laguna,” a poem I wrote dedicated to poet Reginald Shepherd, and which TAB, A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, accepted for Spring 2016 publication.

Silly me….thought I could record in peace! Kids at school, husband at work. Garbage day behind us. Early morning motorcyle thrash of traffic long past, no storm gale thundering surf. We’re talking about 3 minutes.

Take 1: Heading into couplet 4, Luna--preferring musky stem water to her own drinking water, takes down the vase on the dining room table, scattering bouqet. Rivulets chase her sleeping counterpart, Sam, off the new red sparkling chair cushion Grandma just bought for the house at Thanksgiving. Luna lifts her paws daintily out of the way and looks at me, forlorn, waiting for rescue. As if. Of course, how can I be mad at a cat famous for keeping the kids company while they read?!

Take 2: Four lines left to go! The Husky bolts up from her nap in the stripe of sun in our bedroom and tears to the front door in search of The Phantom Guest, her four paws’ worth of nails clicking across the floor all the down the hallway past my microphone. Unmistakeable in playback: the solid thud of her body hurling against the front door.

Take 3: Success!

(A special thank you goes to my father, for Nessie, my so easy to use microphone! She plugs right in to the Mac, hooks right up to Garage Band...so easy....)

Submission Workshop

Letter Press by Robyn Beattie

Please do come out on December 20^th  for three hours to join me for my Submission Blitz workshop for writers at San Diego Writer, Ink; we will bring work, work in progress, and lists of places to potentially submit. We will match work with targets so that January 1 you are ready to come out of holiday haze ahead of the game and eager to submit to new venues.

All the details here: Salvage Your December with Tania Pryputniewicz.

Quest 2016

I’ve been blogging up a storm with a growing group of creatives at Tracking Wonder. We answer prompts doled out by visionaries Jeffrey Davis chose for us, so far Susan Piver, Jonathan Fields, Debbie Millman, and Dr. Tina Seelig. We envision our best coming year across layers of our lives, including business artistry and how we might apply ourselves to making a difference.

My Quest 2016 Dragon of Imagination

For my version of Quest, I am pulling three Tarot cards to deepen my relationship to each prompt as well as drawing my answer as a synthesis of the three cards. I’m posting the drawings in process as I can’t seem to keep up with the pace of finishing drawings and blogging and keeping the cats Off The Table While Recording Poems and feeding the kids...Here is my Dragon of Imagination, a reminder from my Future Self to play more.

Remember you can join us on Quest 2016 if it sounds fun at any point. Honestly.  Here are the posts so far:

What I most need to tell myself about 2016…

Choosing a question to pursue…

If I thought I couldn’t fail…

What my future self would tell me…

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Last but not least, here’s a guest post I wrote for Ginny Lee Taylor at Women of Wonder; I “met” Ginny on Quest last year and have long admired the work she does on behalf of survivors. In this guest post, I address one of her Compass Points for Healing: Own Your Story, by explicating three of the poems in November Butterfly, “Absolute Power,” “Peer Counselor,” and “(25) Floors Up An Open Balcony Guinevere Fails to Appear” in order to address the healing power of poetry and nature. You’ll find writing exercises for survivors at the end of the post

Words as Spiral Path: Tania Pryputniewicz on Owning Your Story

Also check out Ginny’s beautiful post on Quest along this topic line, a haunting look at the collateral affect of a survivor’s path through life; Ginny acknowledges lost dreams for survivor, family, community, and more:

What’s Knocking

Photo Credits: Letter Press and Frost Rose by Robyn Beattie