Vol. 9 #4 / June 1, 2017
In this Issue:
- Welcome
- Tarot Tip: A Useful Spread for Decision-Making
- Tarot School Aphorism
- PsychWise: Key 12 The Hanged Man
- 50% Off Asteroid Sale!
- Best Practices: Why Clients Decide to Choose You
- Cool Tarot Find: The Fortune Teller
- Upcoming Events
Welcome to a new issue of Tarot Tips!
And a special welcome to our new subscribers.
We are fresh off our break after a successful Tarot and
Psychology Conference and Readers Studio! If you’d like to
see some highlights, stop by our Readers Studio Facebook
Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ReadersStudio/
The photo above is of Michael Bridge-Dickson, the
emcee of our Saturday night banquet, wearing one of
his fabulous costume creations! It was taken by the
equally fabulous Doug Reuschel.
If you blogged about the event, please send us the link or
post it on the FB page. We’d love to hear about your
experience.
This issue is all about choices and perspectives. Kooch
Daniels, one of the RS17 master class instructors, is the
author of this month’s Tarot Tip on decision-making.
Dr. G returns with a great piece on one of the most
interesting Major Arcana cards – The Hanged Man.
And in the Best Practices column, you’ll find out
why clients decide to choose you as a reader or use
your services.
And one more thing...
If you're curious to know the line-up for RS18
or when we'll be accepting study group proposals
and merchant faire table reservations, you'll just
have to wait awhile. We're in the process of
looking for a new hotel (our previous
"home" has changed management) and that
takes time. We'll be sure to let you know
when the time comes.
With love and gratitude on the tarot journey,
Ruth Ann, Wald, Gina & Elinor
P.S. I'd like to extend my deepest gratitude
to all of you who sent me your condolences
on the loss of my mother. It meant the world
to me. ~ Ruth Ann
Tarot Tips is here to help you with the practical side
of your Tarot journey. In order to take the greatest
advantage of this newsletter, please send us your
questions regarding any aspect of your tarot study
or practice and we'll do our best to answer them
in an upcoming issue.
Spread the experience of tarot - share this newsletter
with other Tarot Enthusiasts!
Tarot Tip
A USEFUL SPREAD FOR DECISION-MAKING
by Kooch N. Daniels
Just as Cinderella’s royal coach turned into a
pumpkin at midnight, we can each predict that at
certain times change will come into our life. Although
many count their blessings to have the opportunity for
new experiences, some people face unfamiliar
experiences and untested outcomes with dread. Coming
to a crossroad and facing an opportunity to make a life
change, a person may freeze with uncertainty as to what
choice to make. Juggling even the best alternatives can
turn worrisome and frustrating.
Seeking clarity about a decision can become a stressful
dilemma that causes a client to knock on a Tarot
reader’s door. Questions such as, “Should I stay in
my relationship or should I leave?” “Will I be
happier living in California or should I move to New
York?” “I’m thinking about changing jobs. Should
I or shouldn’t I?” are but a few of the limitless
concerns involving ambivalence. Emotional and career
choices can sit heavily in a person’s mind like a
mound of boulders dangling from a cliff’s edge.
One of my favorite spreads to inspire clarity and help
a person hear his or her opposing voices is called The
Inner Dialogue Spread. You can use this spread for your
own decision-making process to see how it works. Once
you become well acquainted with it, you’ll be able to
work its magic with your clients.
The Inner Dialogue Spread
Think about your situation while you shuffle your
cards. Cut the cards as you normally do to get ready
for your reading. Once you are ready, select your
cards.
Place the first two cards that you draw side-by-side
on your table.
Card 1: Represents how you see the pros of your
situation.
Card 2: Represents the other side, what you feel are
the cons of your concerns.
Envision the images on the two cards discussing the
pros and cons of your feelings. Give each card a voice
and let it and your imagination express the judgment of
the image it represents. What does each card have to
say about your situation? How do you feel about the
insights, arguments, suggestions, or warnings that each
card brings to your attention in the decision-making
process?
Now draw and place two more cards side by side on your
table. Card 3 goes directly under Card 1 and Card 4
goes directly under Card 2.
Card 3: Represents the present most likely outcome of
making the decision to follow the direction of Card 1,
or the pros of your situation.
Card 4: Reflects the present most likely outcome of
making a decision to follow the direction of Card 2, or
the cons of your situation.
Listen to your inner dialogue in relation to each
statement that goes with each card. What feelings are
the card images invoking? Explore the real life
possibilities of decision-making in relation to the
pros and cons that each of these cards represents. You
can even let all four cards argue among themselves.
Which card has the strongest argument? Pretend that you
are the judge listening to all concerns and you need to
make a verdict that determines who or what is right and
wrong.
Next select and place the final two cards on the
table.
Card 5 goes directly under Card 3 and Card 6 goes
directly under Card 4. You will now have 6 cards on
your table sitting in three horizontal rows of two
cards each.
Card 5: Represents envisioned future merits of
making your decision.
Card 6: Reflects potential future negative fallout
from your decision.
Listen to your inner dialogue concerning the pros and
cons of your future that the card images are evoking.
Does listening to the two (or more) sides of your story
that is being told in relation to all the card images
clarify what’s involved in your choice?
Optional card: The Wisdom Card
If any one of the six cards in your spread makes you
feel sad for any reason, listen without judgment to
your inner dialogue. What negative thoughts are being
triggered? To give you a deeper look into your
feelings, you can pull another card called The Wisdom
Card. The reason to pull this card is to gain further
insight and potentially alleviate your concerns. After
all, your goal in doing this reading is to gain clarity
and have a positive sense of what choice is best to
make.
Resource: Tarot at a Crossroads, the Unexpected
Meeting of Tarot & Psychology
by Kooch N. Daniels, MA. and Victor Daniels, PhD
Kooch N. Daniels is a life-long professional Tarot
reader. Besides Tarot, she enjoys transpersonal
psychology, mysticism, metaphysics, hugging trees,
and writing books. Her newest titles co-authored
with her partner, Victor, is Tarot at the Crossroads,
and Awakening The Chakras.
To view her other books please go to:
http://www.cybermystic.com/thebookspage.html
Tarot School Aphorism
PsychWise – Tarot & Psychology Q & A
with Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP, CPTR
KEY 12 THE HANGED MAN
When I ask most people about their favorite Major
Arcana card, most people mention Key 2 The High
Priestess or Key 17 The Star. Both of these are
beautiful to look at, but when it comes to psychotherapy
work I find that Key 12 The Hanged Man is the most
useful card in the deck. Many basic principles of
psychology are hidden in the pictorial symbolism
of this card, as well as a number of useful tools for
managing emotions, and even handling insomnia.
Let Reason Rule Your Imagination
Let me start with the idea of 4 over 3.
If you look at this card in the Rider/Waite/Smith deck
or the B.O.T.A. deck, you will see that the legs of the
upside down person make a figure that looks like a red
upside down number 4. The arms are folded to look like
an inverted blue triangle, representing the number 3.
There are a number of useful messages encoded here.
The 4 is a reference to Key 4 The Emperor. In esoteric
Tarot Key 4 The Emperor represents our self-conscious
mind’s capacities of “Reason and Foresight.” The
3 is a reference to Key 3 The Empress. In esoteric
Tarot Key 3 The Empress represents the creative
capacities of the subconscious mind.
By showing the 4 over the 3, we are being told to
consciously use our capacity for “Reason and
Foresight” to govern the endless stream of thoughts
and images that flow from our subconscious mind’s
creative capacity. This is further emphasized by the
colors.
The color Red is associated with Mars Power and action.
We are thus told that our powers of “Reason and
Foresight” should be active. Blue is the color associated
with water and Key 2 The High Priestess, the virgin
subconscious mind. In Key 2 The High Priestess’s blue
gown dissolves into water. Water in esoteric Tarot
symbolizes the flowing consciousness of the One Force
that creates and sustains all living creatures. An
upside-down blue triangle is the symbol for the
element of Water. The color blue and the water
signal us that our subconscious mind is receptive
to the control our conscious mind.
The Hebrew letter associated with this card is
“Mem”, which represents the element of Water. Its
connection to the feminine subconscious mind is
reinforced by the fact that one of the names associated
with “Mem” is “Mother Deep.”
In Psychology Terminology:
The basic principle behind Cognitive Behavior Therapy
(CBT) is that our emotions are directly affected by our
thoughts. The emotional centers of our brain do not
have the capacity to judge whether a thought is
realistic or not, they just react. This is especially
true when we visualize something or hear it. For
example, when we go to a horror movie we get scared
even though we know that it is all make believe and
that the people on the screen are actors, not zombies
or crazed ax murderers. Our emotions react to what is
seen and heard regardless of what we “know.”
The Psychotherapy Punchline: If you continually churn
out scary ideas and picture disasters in your mind, you
will become frightened and they will feel real. You
will walk around with a great deal of fear and
unnecessary worry. The principle of 4 over 3 depicted
in this card tells us that we need to use our capacity
to reason and think ahead about how we want to feel and
only generate thoughts and visualizations that are in
accord with our desires. If we want to feel calm and
happy in a few minutes, we need to create calm and
happy thoughts now.
What is amazing about this very sophisticated message
embedded in Key 12 The Hanged Man, is that Cognitive
Behavior Therapy only dates back to around the
1980s, but the members of the Mystery Schools were
well aware of this principle before modern psychology
was invented. The Rider/Waite/Smith deck was a product
of collaboration between two members of “The Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn” Mystery School—A. E.
Waite and Pamela Coleman Smith—and was published in
1910. To give you some perspective, Sigmund Freud’s
first book, The Interpretation of Dreams, was published
in 1900 and was first translated into English by A. A.
Brill in 1913. Psychology was still in its infancy at
that time and Cognitive Behavior Therapy was not
invented till many decades later.
The Suspended Mind
One of the occult meanings of Key 12 The Hanged Man is
“Suspended Mind.” The figure is depicted in a state
of deep meditative trance. The words Mind and Man are
from the same Sanskrit root Manas. Manas refers to mind
as the thinking principle. (Case, 1990, p. 35)
What is suspended? Personal mental activity is
suspended by concentrating the conscious mind on
something that fixates its power of attention. This
quiets the conscious mind and suspends the formation
of chains of associated ideas. The subconscious mind
then becomes the gateway to joining the personal
consciousness with the Universal Super-consciousness.
When this is done for a prolonged period, it leads to a
profound trance state (Samadhi).
The Word “Man”: In Sanskrit, this relates to the
concept of “Mind.” “Manas” is a Sanskrit noun
meaning mind in its widest sense (all mental powers).
“Manu” means “thinking, wise, intelligent—the
thinking creature—man, mankind” According to
Jayaram V, “Man literally implies a thinking being,
or a being with a mind.
(Jayaram V, www.Hinduwebsite.com)
Psychology, Meditation, and Mindfulness
Modern psychology has now accepted the usefulness of
various forms of meditation and mindfulness as tools
that can help people gain control over their thoughts,
feel calmer, and see their life more clearly.
Sleep
I use three aspects of this card to help me fall
asleep at night: “4 over 3,” “Suspended Mind,”
and the deep waters associated with the Hebrew letter
“Mem” which is attributed to Key 12 The Hanged Man.
• 4 over 3:
I make the choice to use the Hanged Man card to
help me sleep.
• Suspended Mind:
I quiet my mind by picturing the card and I identify
myself with the suspended figure.
• Mem:
I picture the deep, black, warm waters of “Mem.”
Then I choose to “dissolve” my sense of self by
imagining myself dissolving into the waters of Mem.
I experience the edges of my body dissolving into
the water, which leads to my falling asleep.
Conclusion
I am always so impressed by how helpful my Tarot deck
can be to me as I try to solve daily, practical problems.
So many sound psychology principles and methods were
embedded in the cards by their designers. My five-year
apprenticeship at The Tarot School (I hold three degrees
in Tarot from the Amberstones) combined with my lessons
from the Builders of the Adytum Mystery School
(www.bota.org) have helped me find many uses for my
cards in addition to divination.
============================================================
 Dr. Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP, CPTR
is an internationally renowned Gestalt therapy
trainer who specializes in teaching the diagnosis
and treatment of Borderline, Narcissistic, and
Schizoid adaptations. She has been studying
tarot since 1995 and is psychology consultant to
The Tarot School, where she earned a Third Degree
in Tarot. She is a member of B.O.T.A. (Builders
of the Adytum) and has been certified as a professional
tarot reader by the American Tarot Association.
Dr. Greenberg is the author of Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid
Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety, which
demystifies the diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders.
http://elinorgreenberg.com/
We knew our Tarot School website and e-commerce
infrastructure was outdated, but what we didn’t
realize is that it’s downright prehistoric!
When orders stopped coming in a couple of weeks ago,
we were concerned that interest in tarot (and especially
in us) was seriously waning. What we discovered instead
was that our online store had been disabled. We’ll
spare you the technical details, but our ancient store
is incompatible with the new server updates — and
there’s no quick fix. We essentially have to rebuild
it from scratch!
We were given a reprieve of 2 weeks.
The good folks at our server were able to revert our
platform to the old one —
BUT ONLY UNTIL JUNE 13TH.
Then they pull the plug.
We’re essentially dinosaurs and there’s a big
asteroid heading our way!
We’ve started the upgrade process, but we have no
idea if the new store can be ready in two weeks. So in
order to keep from going extinct during this period…
WE’RE HAVING THE BIGGEST
TAROT SCHOOL SALE EVER!
From now until June 13th, we’re offering you 50% OFF
EVERYTHING currently in our store except the Tarot
Salon and the correspondence course degree program with
coaching.
That’s 50% OFF:
• All audio courses
• All study guides
• All books
• All decks
• All music and meditation mp3s
• The Tarot School Correspondence Course
 Enter Coupon Code ASTEROID to get the discount.
(Note: Digital products will be delivered to you via
dropbox because the automatic download feature is also
downright Jurassic.)
This is your chance to stockpile some great tarot
instruction, while supporting The Tarot School and
Readers Studio. But don’t wait — the sky is
starting to glow and that asteroid is getting closer!
http://www.tarotschool.com/store/
Best Practices for Professional Readers
WHY CLIENTS DECIDE TO CHOOSE YOU
By Gina Thies
www.tarotadvisor.com / www.facebook.com/tarotreaders
www.tarotcoupling.com / www.oraclesoup.org
Sustaining a thriving business means a constant flow
of clients for the professional reader. This means
thinking of ways to find the right people and closing
them. I recently did a little survey of my clients
asking why they chose to work with me. There is a ton
of expert information about how to find your ideal
client based on what works for them, but I wanted to
know what was going on with the people who had chosen
to give me their money.
Here are some of their responses:
I felt drawn to you.
I was referred to you from __.
You seemed like the right one.
There was something in the words you used.
You seemed familiar.
I was looking and found you.
You popped up in my search.
I don’t know, I was just led to you.
Now, if you have been following my column for the
past few years, you know I talk a lot about marketing
strategies and how to find your ideal client. In reviewing
the responses above, could you make sense of how to
take this information and find a specific “ideal”?
It is obvious they are “seekers” butwhat struck me the
most was the comment of “something in the words you
used.” This was in reference to my copy.
I think it all boils down to feeling connected, either
through words or brief in-person interactions with me.
The lesson I am taking from this is that in some way
people make decisions to buy based on what/who they
feel connected to, and it is easy to see why branding
becomes important. One of these days, I need to write a
book about it!
Cool Tarot Find
THE FORTUNE TELLER
There's a new tarot novel making it's debut on June 6th!
I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of
The Fortune Teller by Gwendolyn Womack. I'm about
halfway through and am enjoying it immensely!
The book is billed as "A sweeping and suspenseful
tale of romance, fate and fortune." The story spans
several centuries –– part of which takes place in the
Library of Alexandria! It's well-researched and has
memorable characters. If you're a fan of Deborah
Harkness' A Discovery of Witches, you'll enjoy this
one. And tarot plays a starring role!
To find out more about the story and it's award-winning
author, visit Gwendolyn's website:
http://www.gwendolynwomack.com/the-fortune-teller/the-story/
Upcoming Events:
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June 5, 12, 19 and 26
Our popular Monday night Salons are the
hottest thing in tarot instruction!
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June 24-25, 2017
11:00am – 7:00pm
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Directors: Ruth Ann and Wald Amberstone
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