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Here’s an interesting video on different methods of fortune-telling found today in Taiwan. The bird technique is found all over the world and is sometimes used with tarot or cartomancy decks in which case the bird picks the cards.

Come One, Come All to the

2012 Tarot Omega Tarot Conference – July 27 – 29th – the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck NY.

Featuring Caitlín Matthews, Robert Place, Joanna Powell-Colbert, Rachel Pollack and Mary K. Greer

This conference brings together an extraordinary group of tarot readers and tarot deck creators for a wonderful weekend of readings, art, and practical skills. This year’s conference features three tarot artists plus two deck conceptualizers. Discover what inspired them to “dream the tarot onwards,” creating new images and ideas deeply rooted in the tarot’s ancient traditions.

No matter what your level as a reader or your knowledge of tarot is, learning directly from deck creators will help you develop you own natural abilities. Discover what inspires a new deck and what goes into the making of cards that really work. Guided by this passion and knowledge, we do readings—for ourselves, friends, and complete strangers.

but don’t plan on going home after that – because Mary and Rachel continue on with five fabulous days of Tarot Magic –

Reading Tarot Cards with Magic and Wisdom – July 29, 2012 – August 03, 2012

In this tarot workshop with masters Mary K. Greer and Rachel Pollack, we work with the evocative images of the tarot to gain insight and wisdom for ourself and others, and to create the changes we want personally and globally. We learn how to read for others in ways that honor the natural wisdom within everyone and that turn the act of choosing a future into a magical experience.

This tarot workshop supports beginners while offering new ideas and techniques to seasoned professionals.

Click on the links for more information!

I have a webinar coming up this Thursday. Please join me. It’s for everyone who wonders what learning about Tarot history can do to improve their readings. I’ll be illustrating the changing perceptions of the Lovers card from ancient Greece to modern Wicca; it is far more complex than you might have thought. Journey with me in living color through pictures depicting the origins of cards and cartomancy and learn how to add depth to your readings.

Improve Your Tarot Readings Through Tarot History – a webinar through Global Spiritual Studies

Last minute call to enroll for the September 17-18th Tarosophy Tarot Conference in the beautiful Lake District of the UK. You can get a 1-day (Saturday) or 2-day last-minute ticket to the conference. Hear Ciro Marchetti speak on the Tarot industry, Marcus Katz reveals A. E. Waite’s SECOND Tarot – and more – and Carrie Paris from Santa Fe will arrive with a taste of Tarot. On Sunday Richard Abbot speaks on Numerology and Dan Pelletier takes Tarot out of the box. There’s also a social event on Saturday.

There’s still time to get a ticket for France to attend the September 23rd-25th Association for Tarot Studies’ Convention at a castle in St. Suzanne, France. The line-up is spectacular: Jean-Michel David, Christine Payne-Towler, Robert Mealing from forum.tarothistory.com, Marcus Katz, Joep van Loon, Yoav Ben-Dov, Russell Sturgess, Enrique Enriquez, Fern Mercier, Dan Pelletier, Major Tom Schick, Karen Mahony and Alex Ukolov, Lyn Olds, Mafalda Serrano, and Roxanne Flornoy.

K. Frank Jensen just sent me fascinating information about the Oswald Wirth deck used in the movie, which I have added to my earlier post:

https://marygreer.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/oswald-wirth-meets-sherlock-holmes/

The photograph is of Wirth around the time he created his first set of cards.

Here’s a selection of uncolored Wirth cards from the Yale University Library:

“With the Great Solstice Turning of the Seasons, we honor the spirit of the Tarot and all those, past, present and future, who unselfishly support its gifts of illumination, healing, and inspiration for all.”

Wherever you are, at High Noon (or whenever is convenient) tomorrow—June 21st—we ask you to take a moment to send these thoughts out into the world. See the Tarot and all who love it and all who love them, bathed in the light of the Sun. If you can’t do it on the 21st, then join us on the 22nd.

In Love and Luck and Light, may the Sun’s illumination awaken all to your best expression of Self,

Mary

I bet you never knew that the High Priestess could sing. Watch her musical debut HERE. Click on the play button. The song is “Life is Like a Boat”by the amazing Rei fu, a Japanese singer/songwriter/artist (thank you, Bill D.).

I couldn’t resist doing the Empress, too: HERE. Her song is “One I Love” by Meav who appears on the Celtic Women album.

And some great advice from the Devil: HERE. The first line of this piece is attributed to Heather Pryor. I can’t find the original recording.

These talking pictures are made from the sample clips and web app available at PQ Talking Photo. I’ll be posting more of them.

On Wednesday, May 25th (tomorrow for most of you) head over to the World Tarot Day official site to experience fun, games, free class, new ideas, free readings and much much more. I’ll show up at Shindig Tarot to do a few short, free readings: http://shindigtarot.com/directory/mary_k_greer

Here’s only a few of the activities:

1. Tarot VideoWall: Submit a short 1-3 minute video clip on the theme “Tarot is …” and send it to:

worldtarotday@tarotprofessionals.com (use sendthisfile.com or similar free service for large files) and have it included in our Tarot VideoWall project for 2011.

2. Take part in the Worlds Largest Tarot Reading and claim your free place on the Tarot Wall of Fame!

You can also join the experience of World Tarot Day™ (May 25th) by selecting a card on the day itself, to answer the question, “What is the spirit of Tarot for the next year?” from your favourite deck, and sending its name to worldtarotday@tarotprofessionals.com and it will be entered into the WORLDS LARGEST EVER TAROT READING!

If you’d like to take a crazy photograph of you drawing the card in some weird place – local or bizarre, domestic or esoteric – and send that as well, the strangest photograph will get a prize! Every entry and your website will also be featured on our TAROT WALL OF HONOUR for the whole year, gaining you promotion to the wider community!

You’ll also receive a unique collectable certificate showing “I Spoke the Spirit of Tarot on World Tarot Day” just for entering your single card – with or without a photograph!

See the photograph gallery from the World’s Largest Tarot Reading 2010, featuring over 40+ Tarot readers worldwide.

Download and interpret the 1-card, 3-card, 10-card and 100+card World’s largest Tarot reading and discuss what it means for the Spirit of Tarot on our Facebook group all year round!

3. Team Dog or Team Cat?

Take part in this surprise team competition and make new tarot friends from across the globe! Watch this space over the week for more announcements. Will you guide the Fool’s Dog or take sides with the Queen’s Cat …? Who will take the Tarot throne this year? YOU Decide!

4. THE FOOLS FAIR WILL BE HERE ONLY ON THE DAY

With special offers, prizes, education and promotion available for only a few moments at a time during the day, all day, the Fool’s Fair is a festival flurry of awesome Tarot bargains, fun, provocation and challenge. When you enter the Fool’s Fair, you will leave with more than you bargained for!

I’ve received permission to reprint this article by Erik Davis. It’s a brilliant journey that elucidates the cultural value of esotericism in the face of science and historicity—as well as being a critical appraisal of the esoteric writings of Antoine Faivre. If you are wondering why I am printing an article that is not specifically tarot (hey, I can do anything I want on my blog!)—let me point you to Erik Davis’ insightful article on tarot at Pop Arcana (1): “The Comic Book of Thoth” at HiLoBrow—which led me to read his other work.

Hermes on the Seine
The Esoteric Scholarship of Antoine Faivre

by Erik Davis ( techgnosis.com )

A truncated version of this review appeared in Parabola, 1996

Imagine you’re a bookish paleface wandering through the stained and musty halls of Western civilization, sick to death of the endless tales of bloody conquests, heinous Churchman, and the ominous march of abstract and manipulative reason. Just when you’re ready to cash in you chips and join the barbarians and bodhisattvas at the gate, you stumble across some moldering sidedoor, thick with sigils and glyphs and glints of otherworldly light. The door opens unbeckoned, and you stumble past animated statues of Egyptian gods into basements packed with arcana: astrological diagrams, alchemical flowcharts, magical cook-books and Hermetic texts, organized not by the Dewey decimal system but by the blazing rainbow filing system of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Isaac Newton’s alchemical library is here, along with the hermetic troves of Breton and Blake, Walter Benjamin and Umberto Eco. You wander like a half-blind Argentinian sage through this iconic museum, each tome vibrating with its neighbors until the texts become a hieroglyphic hall of mirrors that reflect anew yourself and the world that made you.

For folks willing to dig beneath the newsprint horoscopes, esotericism appears not only as an underground history of Western ideas but as a broiling stream of consciousness that feeds and flows through everything from science to poetry to politics. Mercurial, fecund with imagery, yet propelled by a quite modern sense of psychological dynamics and individual experiment, esotericism is the West’s magic realism, a living metaphysical poetry grounded in the transformative potential of experience.

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