The Tarot School: Tarot Tips Newsletter

Welcome to a new issue of Tarot Tips!

And a special welcome to our new subscribers.

As we close in on Harvest Time,
it seems signs of welcoming in the
end of the year are all around.
But we don’t want to think about
that too soon!

For some of you this may be the
busiest month of the year. More
festivals, fairs and parties seem to occur in October than any other
month of the year, probably because it is a time when there are
back-to-back reasons to celebrate. In that case, you might want to
check out the excellent article, 22 Suggestions for Offering Readings
at Parties, Expos and Psychic Fairs on our website at:
http://www.tarotschool.com/Readings.html

This time of year is about finding the good in others and
ourselves. In this issue we have a lot to share with you
related to quantity, quality and goodness. The tip for this
issue is all about adding and tabulating, Dr. G – Elinor
Greenberg, our in-house psychotherapist, shares a method of
finding the best qualities in those with low self-esteem who
show up at your table, and the Best Practices column shares
much information on the topic of policies for the
professionally-inclined reader. So much information in this
packed issue!

Happy Samhain/Halloween!

And one more thing...

We recently had the pleasure of being guests
on Andrew McGregor's excellent show,
The Hermit's Lantern. He caught up with us
to talk about tarot and our combined 100+
years of experience. In a bit of turnabout
Wald spent a lot of time interviewing him,
which was also quite fun. We talk about magic,
life, death, and the limits we live by which
we don't even know are there.

There's a link to the replay (along with
other appearances we've made in the
past) on the Interviews page on our website:
http://tarotschool.com/Interviews.html

Enjoy!

Yours truly on the tarot journey,

Ruth Ann, Wald, Gina & Elinor

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

TAROT READING TABULATION TECHNIQUE

Techniques are as plentiful as tarot practitioners but there
are general preparatory steps to beginning a reading:

• Express a focus intention or pose a question. If
necessary, take some time for clarification.

• The next order of business is to thoroughly shuffle
the cards.

• While the shuffling action is underway, have the querent
focus on their question or issue. Shuffling can be done for
any length of time and come to a stop whenever it feels
right to do so. Or you can get the querent involved and
have them tell you when to stop.

• The next step is to cut the deck into several stacks of cards.
You may leave the stacks and draw cards off the top of each
one, or reassemble them into a complete pack. Cutting the
deck should be definite and clean so as not to lose focus on
the matter at hand, and to prevent cards from spilling out
and falling to the floor. If you “mis-cut,” repeat the process.

Now it starts to get interesting!

The general standard beginning becomes individual style
and technique. The tone of the reading will be set by the
reader’s unique divination method. From here, the cards
are dealt into a spread of the reader’s choice or design.
You can choose to employ a significator, Birth Card sets
or the querent’s zodiac sign, and add supporting faculties
such as intuition or psychic ability.

Here is a technique you may find very useful...

Once all the cards are in their positions, observe the cards
and tabulate the majority of suits, numbered cards, and
Court Cards. When your tabulation is done, refer to the
following lists for possible interpretations:

Majority of Swords –
Challenges, complexity, strife and melancholy

Majority of Wands –
Busyness, action, resistance or disagreements

Majority of Cups –
Goodness, excitement, happiness and cooperation

Majority of Pentacles –
Physical items, possessions, finances and family

Majority of Majors –
Uncontrollable circumstances or energy

Majority of Court Cards –
Social concerns or gatherings of people

Majority of...

Aces – Strong forces or potential
Twos – Separation, polarity, change, and balance
Threes – Unity, mediation, bridge or joining
Fours – Reciprocation, reconciliation or connection
Fives – Change, breakdown, disruption, progression
Sixes – Composition, enjoyment, androgyny, perfection
Sevens – Embodiment, initiation, unpredictability, instability
Eights – Organization, transformation, information, wisdom,
     and prudence
Nines – Finality, limitation, strength, increase
Tens – Perfection, fulfillment, completion, and encompassing

The following is from The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Tradition (excerpt from The Golden Dawn as revealed by
Israel Regardie, 6th Edition, Llewellyn Publications,
2002):

Four Aces – Great power and force
Three Aces – Riches and success

Four Kings – Great swiftness and rapidity
Three Kings – Unexpected meetings

Fours Queens – Authority and influence
Three Queens – Powerful and influential friends

Four Knights – Meeting with the great
Three Knights – Rank and honor

Four Pages – New ideas and plans
Three Pages – Society of the young

Four 10s – Anxiety and responsibility
Three 10s – Buying, selling, commercial transactions

Four 9s – Added responsibility
Three 9s – Much correspondence

Four 8s– Much news
Three 8s – Much journeying

Four 7s – Disappointments
Three 7s – Treaties and compacts

Four 6s – Pleasure
Three 6s – Gain and success

Four 5s – Order, regularity
Three 5s – Quarrels, fights

Four 4s – Rest in peace
Three 4s – Industry

Four 3s – Resolution and determination
Three 3s – Deceit

Four 2s – Conference and conversations
Three 2s – Reorganization and recommencement of a thing

Tarot School Aphorism

THE ADVANCED ELEMENTAL ARRAY INTENSIVE TELECOURSE

If you know the story of how Wald and I met, you will have heard
about how the first time we exchanged tarot readings, we surprised
each other with an almost identical original technique. It was at that
moment that we knew we were meant to be together!

Over the years, we've developed that technique to become what
techies might call our "killer app." The Elemental Array is part of
the great magical psychology of tarot. Using just the four Aces
of a tarot deck, you can learn the whole range of any person's
likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, habits and
predilections, and their general patterns of thought, feeling and
behavior. It shows you exactly why individual people act, feel,
think and believe as they do.

The fully developed, fully extended Advanced Elemental Array
is a complete analytical technique. It paints a complex and accurate
portrait of personality, and by itself is the foundation of a very
effective magical therapy. Although this course is not for beginners,
any experienced reader can quickly add this powerful tool to
their repertory.

This telecourse begins October 15th and runs for 8 Thursdays,
skipping Thanksgiving. You can get credit toward a Tarot School
Advanced Intensive Degree, but if you're not interested in that,
the course stands beautifully on it's own.

If you're familiar with the basic technique from recordings or
our Readers Studio presentation, this course takes that material
much, much further. And if this will be your introduction to
The Elemental Array, you're in for a treat -- and a wild ride!

Click Here to Learn More and for the Syllabus.

PsychWise – Tarot & Psychology Q & A
with Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP, CPTR

FIND YOUR GOOD QUALITIES: A TAROT COUNSELING SPREAD

How to Use Your Tarot Deck to Help Querents with Low Self-Esteem

QUESTION:

Many of my querents seem to come for a Tarot reading
when they are depressed. Some of them have lost faith
in themselves and feel like everything that they do is
wrong. Is there anything that I could do with a Tarot
reading that might be helpful?

ANSWER:

Many querents come for a Tarot reading during a low point
in their life. They want reassurance that the future holds
greater success and happiness than their present. Often
these same querents are feeling badly about themselves
because of some perceived failure: a rejection by a mate,
a bad decision that led to money problems, or even just
confusion about what they should do next in life. Their
self-esteem and confidence are suffering as a result.

As a psychotherapist, I have found that it is often useful
to redirect my clients’ attention to their past successes
and positive qualities in order to help them see themselves
in a more realistically positive light. I thought it would
be useful for Tarot readers to have a simple way of doing
something similar in order to help their querents. With that
in mind, I invented the following Tarot Counseling spread
that I call “Find your Good Qualities.”

This method takes advantage of the psychological principle
that our conscious mind and our emotions are affected by
whatever we choose to focus on. When we focus on something
happy, we are likely to feel happy; and when we focus on
something scary, we become frightened. Anything that we
choose to focus on or even vividly imagine will emotionally
affect us. By directing querents’ attention away from
their perceived failures to their good qualities and their
successes, we can help them shift to a happier and more
optimistic mood and outlook.

This principle can be expressed in esoteric Tarot terms as
follows:

Key 1 The Magician is associated with the attributes of
concentration and focus. The esoteric functions of Life and
Death are traditionally attributed to this card. From this
point of view, The Magician card represents the idea that
whatever the conscious mind focuses on, it brings to life,
and whatever goes unseen is as if dead to us.

Key 2 The High Priestess represents the virgin subconscious
mind that takes in the impression of whatever the conscious
mind focuses on.

Key 3 The Empress represents the creative power of our
subconscious mind that spins out the logical elaborations
of the initial conscious idea planted by The Magician.

My “Find Your Good Qualities” spread utilizes the above
principles to redirect querents’ conscious mind (The
Magician) in a more positive and useful direction so that
their subconscious mind’s (The High Priestess) elaborations
(The Empress’s creations) lead to a more optimistic outlook.
I use the Rider/Waite/Smith deck for this method because of
Smith’s evocative illustrations of the four suits’ Aces – tens.
Her pictures make it easy for my querents to look through
the face-up deck and choose cards that “speak” to them.

INSTRUCTIONS

STEP 1: PICK 2 CARDS FROM A FACE-UP DECK

Have your querent look through the deck with the cards
face-up and pick two cards that show or represent some
things that he or she is proud of. These could be qualities
or talents that the querent has, or something that the
querent has accomplished in the past.

STEP 2: EXPLAIN WHAT THEY MEAN

Ask your querent to explain what positive qualities or
events each of these cards represent. If your querent needs
help explaining how these cards relate to him or her, below
are some questions to ask that I have found helpful:

1. What do you see in this card?
2. How does what you see relate to your life?

STEP 3: QUALITY QUERENT WOULD LIKE TO HAVE

Now ask the querent to look through the face-up deck again
and choose a card that shows a quality or success that he or
she would like to have. You can use the previous questions
from Step 2 to help your querent explain what this card
represents to him or her.

STEP 4: A STEP TOWARDS ACHIEVING THIS

Ask your querent to shuffle the remaining deck-face down and
draw a card that will represent a step he or she might take
to get the quality or success that he or she would like to
have. Below are some questions that I have found helpful:

1. What do you see in this card?
2. How could what you see help you get the quality you want?

STEP 5: THE LAYOUT OF THE SPREAD

Essentially, these 4 cards can be laid out in any way that
makes sense to you. Below is the way I usually place them
down.

Card 3 (Want)

Card 4 (Do)

Cards 1 & 2 (Have)

For more information:

Notice what Tarot Suits the cards fall into (Wands, Cups,
Swords, or Pentacles), whether they are Court Cards (Kings,
Queens, Knights, or Pages) or if they are one of the 22
Major Arcana cards. These can give you insights into the
querent’s strengths and what areas might need more
development.

AN EXAMPLE

My querent Emelia came for a reading because she had just
been let go from her job and wanted to know what the future
held. She said that she was depressed and felt so ashamed of
being fired that she did not feel able to interview for a
new position elsewhere because she lacked confidence in
herself. I suggested to Emelia that we try a new technique
that I had developed that I thought would be useful in
giving her more self-confidence. I said that if she wanted a
traditional reading after, we could do that as well. Emelia
agreed.

Card 1 (Have): Ace of Cups

Emelia said that this represented her ability to give love.
She felt very confident that she was a loving and
affectionate person with her family and her friends and
that other people could see this in her. This made her
feel proud.

Card 2 (Have): Queen of Pentacles

Emelia said that she identified with this Queen and saw her
as calm, confident and practical. Emelia likes working with
plants and seeing the garden surrounding the Queen of
Pentacles reminded her that she had a “green thumb” and
was a good gardener, cook and homemaker. She felt very
proud of these attributes and enjoyed telling me about how
she knew how to propagate many plants from cuttings.
As she talked about this area of her life, her mood visibly
cheered up and she sounded calmer and happier.

Card 3 (Want): 3 of Pentacles

Emelia said that she chose this card because she wanted
to be the person standing on the bench that the other
two people were listening to with respect. This felt like
a problem for her. She wished that she felt the same
confidence at work that she did at home.

Card 4 (Do): 8 of Pentacles

When Emelia saw the picture of the man working steadily at
the bench hammering out pentacle after pentacle, she said
that she understood what that card was saying to her. It
clarified what she needed to do if she wanted to succeed at
her next job. One of the criticisms that her boss at her
last job had made about her work before she was fired was
that she did not get enough done. Emelia admitted that she
liked to socialize with her colleagues more than she
actually liked doing her job. She had found it very hard to
stay seated at her computer and stay focused on churning out
what to her were somewhat boring and meaningless
spreadsheets of numbers.

As a result of this “reading,” Emelia said that she
realized that she needed to find a job that was closer to
her actual interests and strengths. She wanted a job in
which she worked more closely with a group of people that
did not require her to spend long periods of time alone at a
computer. She also preferred to have a job in which she
produced an actual product, instead of analyzing numbers.

Further Analysis: Pentacles and Cups

All of Emelia’s cards were feminine. The two suits that
played a role in her reading (Cups and Pentacles) are
traditionally considered to be the feminine and receptive
suits of Tarot. In the Rider/Waite/Smith deck the Aces of
these suits show the suit symbol resting on an open
receptive hand, while the Aces of the more traditionally
masculine suits of Wands and Swords show a hand actively
grasping a weapon. Emelia also identified with a Queen,
another personification of feminity. All of Emelia’s
strengths had to do with what are traditionally considered
to be feminine qualities: being loving, nurturing, and
feeding living things. Her solution card, the 8 of
Pentacles, was also a Pentacle, one of the feminine suits.
This suggests that Emelia does not have to focus on
developing a new part of her (Wands or Swords), but simply
has to find a different way to express her Pentacles side
that included the emotional satisfaction of Cups, her
identification with the Queen of Pentacles (Competency in
the practical realm), and her wish to be a respected part of
a group, as in the 3 of Pentacles.

In her prior job, she needed the persistence of the 8 of
Pentacles, but because her work tasks lacked creativity and
isolated her from others, it was a poor match for her good
qualities. In addition, the side of her personality that
identified with a Queen and wanted to be above the others on
the bench in the 3 of Pentacles reflect her desire to be
looked up to as a figure to respect, and not simply be an
anonymous cog in the machine at work. For her to feel
satisfied, Emelia needs to work in a group that values her
good qualities and allows her to get the respect for her
work that is so important to her.

All of the above suggests that money and power play very
little role in Emelia’s sense of job satisfaction. What
she basically wants is to be a valued member of a group in
which she gets to produce something tangible.

A Caution:

Some querents may be so depressed that they need
professional psychiatric help, not just a new way to read
the cards. I suggest that professional Tarot readers start
to build a list of community resources that includes low
cost psychotherapy, outpatient clinics, and suicide hotlines
that they can share with those querents.

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.

Join us at the 2016 Readers Studio! http://ReadersStudio.com

Register now to get a 5-month payment plan!

ReadersStudio.com

Best Practices for Professional Readers

TERMS OF SERVICE, PRIVACY AND REFUND POLICIES

By Gina Thies

www.tarotadvisor.com

www.facebook.com/tarotreaders

www.tarotcoupling.com / www.oraclesoup.org

Do your clients and business prospects know what to expect
from doing business with you? In these times of e-commerce,
it is no longer enough just to explain your reading process
and techniques to the divinatory arts consumer.

For those practitioners who collect information from
consumers for business purposes, it is necessary to
investigate privacy policy laws under the FTC guidelines.
This is particularly so if information collected from those
under 13 are collected by an online business. Consumer
privacy issues are a critical concern with respect to online
and electronic activity today. In addition to Federal laws,
there are state and international laws to consider.

The FTC has been pretty consistent with how they protect
consumer privacy rights. The age of e-commerce is quite the
source of regularly introduced bills and new laws for
consumer rights. When it comes to collecting and using your
clients’ information, it is of the upmost importance to
protect it and tell them exactly how you plan to use and
protect their information with a privacy policy. We
recommend that you to check with a legal advisor as to
whether law in your geographical region requires this or not.

When using a Terms of Service, Privacy or Refund policy,
both for offline and online clients, it should be readily
accessible and posted where clients have a chance to review
their rights and yours.

These policies typically include and disclose information
and statements that pertain to access and use of a website,
collection of information and the criteria for use of the
site, and stipulations for refunds of purchases.

Other great policies to have in place include cancellation,
no-show and, of course, caveats and codes of ethics. If you
choose to have these, enlist the help of a licensed
professional to ensure you have all bases covered for your
area of practice.

An ounce of prevention, as they say, really helps in the
long run.

Resource: Create a free custom privacy policy for your
website, blog or mobile app.
https://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/

Upcoming Events:

Tarot Salon

Forest Hills, New York

October 5, 12, 19 and 26

Our popular Monday night Salons are the

hottest thing in tarot instruction!

http://tarotschool.com/Classes.html

UK Tarot Conference

London

October 9 – 10, 2015

Featuring: Caitlin Matthews, David Wells, Susyn Blair-Hunt,
Karen Mahony, Wicca Meier-Spring, Sue Farebrother,
Kim Arnold & Lunch Time with Chloe McCracken

http://tarotconference.co.uk/