The Five Minute Tarot

This weekend, at the North Star Tarot conference, Melani Weber presented a workshop. That workshop was the most fun I’d had in a very long time. And you can re-create the experience at home for yourself alone or for yourself and some friends. The workshop was inspired by Robyn Tisch-Hollister’s Minute Tarot (in which the artist drew each card in one minute).

Melani provided magazine and old books, stamps and ink, stickers and crayons, glue and scissors. She also provided a blank “deck” of 25 card stock “cards.” The cards we are 5 – 7 and we were given 25 in case we made an in surmountable mistake as we created our 22 card Majors Only deck. She also gave us labels, in a variety of fonts, for the card titles. Or in case we wanted to make an additional card, like the ever-popular Happy Squirrel. She even provided alternative numbering, so if we wanted Justice to be 8 and Strength as 11, we could.

We had two hours for the workshop. Twenty-two times five minutes is 1 hour and 50 minutes. So Melani had about ten minutes to explain the concept, which has simple. Make 22 cards, in order, in the time allotted, that is, five minutes per card.

Melani made a play list for each card to inspire us. She said “Fool!” and we started. She gave us warnings, like a 2 minute warning and a 30 second warning. When it was time to move to the next card, you HAD to. She walked around and made sure. In fact, she caught me finishing up the High Priestess when I should have been working on the Empress!

There was not much time to think. It was all pages through images, cutting, gluing, and moving on. After they were done, we set them all out and looked at them and they were all amazing. Some were more polished than others, but each revealed some wonderful facet of truth. They were at the same time intensely personal and incredibly universal. Just like tarot cards should be.

I encourage you to try this at home, alone or with friends. Be very strict on the timing and keep moving. Now there is one rule that I found helpful:

You must move on when time is called. You cannot work ahead. If you finish a card before time is called, you can go back and work on another…but you cannot work ahead.

For me, some cards came together more quickly, so I was able to go back and work on others (such as that darn High Priestess!).