"Tarot helps you meet whatever comes in the best possible way."
I was just interviewed about the laws regarding psychic services by Jason Pitzl-Waters for Wild Hunt – one of the leading voices for analysis and insight into how modern Pagan faiths are represented within the mainstream media. Feel free to add your voice here or on at the Wild Hunt site.
This earlier post discusses additional aspects of the situation.
Here’s another Donnaleigh tarot music video discovery. The tarot reading starts just after 2:30. Can you ID the deck? Enjoy.
Update: As of October 2010, a court in East Ridge, Tennessee, ruled that a woman was exercising her free speech in fortune-telling for the public – read it here.
At the same time as the ACLU wins freedom-of-speech rights for fortune tellers in Maryland, Michigan is cracking down on their fortune tellers. Even Time Magazine is reporting on this news.
Elizabeth Dias at Time Magazine begins her article with: “Starting this week, fortune tellers in Warren, Mich., must be fingerprinted and pay an annual fee of $150 – plus $10 for a police background check – to practice their craft. The new rules are among America’s strictest on palmists, fortune readers and other psychics, part of a growing push to regulate a business that has never been taken, or overseen, very seriously.” Read the whole article here.
What’s your opinion about regulation of any kind? Is it necessary? How should it be done? Please comment.
Here’s one way around such discriminatory practices as reported a year ago in St. Petersburg FL.
In this music video the cards used are Wahrsagekarten – a style of cartomancy deck found in Germany and Eastern Europe. (Thanks to Donnaleigh.)
In this music video two children do a five card tarot reading predicting a series of future events—all happening at the same resort hotel. Meanwhile we see their future selves (at these five different times) interspersed with their child selves. The exquisite Olivia Wilde, who appears on the TV program “House,” is the final adult woman. The deck appears to have been created specifically for this video. It’s worth watching several times to piece together the whole story.
Can anyone pick out what cards they are supposed to be and describe each of the predicted events?
Here’s an unexpectedly decent report on tarot, especially for being on a TV talk show. It features Treadwell’s Bookstore in London.
The second annual Minnesota Area Tarot Symposium (MATS) is scheduled for the weekend of August 20-22, 2010, at the Dakota Ridge Hotel in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan, Minnesota.
Katrina Wynne, a psychotherapist who writes about tarot counseling, will be on Tarot Today Radio, sponsored by The Tarot Guild this Tuesday, August 10th at 6pm (PT). Catch the Tarot Today radio show twice a week—Sundays at 10am (PT) and Tuesdays at 6pm. You’ll find lots of great interviews and discussions at the Tarot Today Radio website. Also, check out Katrina’s blog post on “Tarot Counseling vs. Predictive Readings.”
Mike Hernandez has an intriguing blog post on Prediction versus Forecasting when answering questions about the future.
U.S. Games Systems, Inc. now has a blog, Fool Stop Tarot overseen by Janet, the USGS Social Media Maven, that showcases new decks and also has fun games and interesting articles. My favorite is the “Tarot CSI Case Series” in which you identify the crime based on the evidence of a couple of tarot cards. There’s also a fascinating interview with Stuart Kaplan by Dr. Stephen Winick, Folklore Specialist for the Library of Congress. What will be of great interest to many in the tarot world is Kaplan’s discussion of the controversy over the rights to Waite’s deck. Kaplan explains, “The copyright protection on the Rider-Waite Tarot runs to 2021, which is seventy years after the date of death of the artist [Pamela Colman Smith].” While many will want to argue this—that U.S. copyright places works around the world prior to 1923 in the public domain, or that the art was a “work for hire” and so copyright ends in 2012 (seventy years after the death of Waite)—Kaplan has sued twice and won both cases. The 2021 date and the creative rights of Pamela Colman Smith have yet to be tested in court.
Simon Wintle‘s World of Playing Cards website features a timeline of Early References to Playing Cards and lots of other goodies.
Julia Gordon-Bramer reports that in the original manuscript of Sylvia Plath’s book of poems, Ariel, the poems were ordered according to the Tarot and Qabala. The first twenty-two poems are associated with the Major Arcana and the next ten with the ten pips and sephiroth, followed by the four ranks of the Court, and then the four suits. This ordering is apparent in Ariel: The Restored Edition (2004) as explained in an article by Gordon-Bramer for the journal Plath Profiles. Download a pdf of the article here. Listen to Sylvia Plath read “Daddy” with its tarot reference here.
James Wells created “An Empowerment Tarot Layout” (found at his always inspiring Circle Ways blog) based on the twelve resources for empowerment that I discovered through the life stories of Moina Mathers, Florence Farr, Maud Gonnne and Annie Horniman and explain in my book Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels & Priestesses.
James Ricklef continues his popular “Ask Knighthawk” tarot advice column on his new blog and invites readers to send in a question. “Ask Knighthawk” was the basis of James’ innovative and extremely helpful book Tarot Tells the Tale. Also check out his deck, Tarot of the Masters.
Tero Hynynen from Finland has created his own animoto video on the Book of Thoth. His Tarotpuu blog has articles on Tarot in both Finnish and English.
The latest issue of the Association for Tarot Studies Newsletter features an article on Rudolph Steiner and Tarot by Jean-Michel David.
Tarot Professionals has recently opened Tarosophy Tarot Town, a social networking environment. Membership is currently free. Also check out issue 7 of Tarosophist International. It has some of the best articles I’ve seen in a while: Robert Place: The Often Misunderstood Pamela Colman Smith, Dr. Angela Voss: Divination as Divine Revelation, Dr. Elinor Greenberg: Tarot & Psychotherapy: The Bad Cards, Katrina Wynne: Tarot & Counselling, Jean-Michel David: Tarot & Certification, Mike Hernandez: Using Multiple Decks, Lucy Setters: Finding Your Intuitive Voice, Tero Hynenen: Tarot Walkabout [an amazing concept!!! mkg] and much, much more.
Donnaleigh and Storm Cestavani host blogtalk radio’s Beyond World’s—Your Tarot Tribe. They recently talked with Enrique Enriques about the Marseille deck, poetry and more. After their summer vacation they’ll return on September 11th with an interview with Robert Place on the Minor Arcana. And don’t forget The Storm Cestavani Show that covers the worlds of spirituality, pop culture, and celebrity via astrology, tarot and psychic insights among other things.
Leisa ReFalo‘s The Tarot Connection podcast has just celebrated its 100th episode with a discussion of tarot’s most controversial issues featuring Donnaleigh, Storm Cestavani, Ginny Hunt, and Thalassa [what a line-up of those-in-the-know!].
I updated my post on Mlle. Lenormand (see end) with the text from a novel about the French Republic by Alexandre Dumas that describes, in depth, Lenormand’s readings for both Josephine and Napoleon. Dumas claims, though, that this part of his book is not fiction: “I can guarantee the truth of this scene, for these details were given me by the friend and pupil of Mademoiselle Lenormand, Madame Moreau, who still lives (1867) at No. 5 Rue du Tournon, in the same rooms as the famous seeress, where she devotes herself to the same art with immense success.” Certainly the card reading itself, for Josephine, has the most detail I’ve ever seen describing a nineteenth century card reading.
Let me know what things I’ve forgotten and I’ll create a new Tarot News Shorts for all the things I’ve missed (& those that haven’t been created yet).
The San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium,
produced by Thalassa
in association with the Daughters of Divination
August 28-29, 2010
First Unitarian Universalist Centre
1187 Franklin (at Geary), San Francisco
Featuring a most EXTRA-ORDINARY line-up of deck creators, authors, vendors & aficionados:
Rachel Pollack, Emily Carding, Marcus Katz, Leisa ReFalo, James Wanless, Mary K. Greer, Diane Wilkes, Pamela Eakins, Joseph Martin, Teressena & Martien Bakens, Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, Jaymi Elford, Katrina Wynne, Arisa Victor, Bill Haigwood, Carole Pierce, Thena MacArthur, Holly Voley, Tarot Garden, Baba Studios.
Here’s an hd four minute extension of my original animoto video from The Cartomancer Series. Try it full screen. What do these images say about cartomancers and cartomancy?
You can see a large image of this painting in my earlier post, along with an in depth discussion in the comments section.
Here’s an alternate version of this video:
Saltimbanques-1 (note: turn down your volume control first).
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Mary K. Greer has made tarot her life work. Check here for reports of goings-on in the world of tarot and cartomancy, articles on the history and practice of tarot, and materials on other cartomancy decks. Sorry, I no longer write reviews. Contact me HERE.
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