Tall, Dark, and Silent Recently Melanie Marquis, author and assistant editor of the American Tarot Association’s Quarterly Journal, interviewed me for their fine publication. She asked me which cards in the tarot I thought were the darkest. I responded: “For me personally, I’ll risk committing tarot sacrilege and say that I have issues with the High Priestess and The Moon. The way the High Priestess sits there with that “I know but I’m not telling” attitude and the whole “oh you know what you need to know” thing. Makes me want to scream! If I knew, I wouldn’t be doing a reading now, would I? Yep, I clearly have issues. The Moon drives me nuts, too. All that shadowy

A while back, I posted about shuffling techniques and invited readers to share their shuffling techniques. There were some excellent ideas and I wanted to highlight a few, plus add one of my own. Catherine says I’ve heard some pretty crazy methods and ways to shuffle and cut, but like most things in Tarot, I don’t believe there’s a right or a wrong way – just a lot of talking points! Perhaps one of the only things I really agree with is allowing the client to shuffle the cards as I feel this provides them with a sense of ownership over the reading, making it more pertinent to them – they shuffled after all! I don’t believe they put their energy or essence into the cards,

A Real Treat I’m sure most of you have heard of Lisa Hunt, a very talented artist and tarot expert. Her knowledge of fairy tales, myths, psychology, art, and tarot is impressive not only because of the sheer breadth but also because of the magical way Lisa weaves all these disciplines together to create extraordinary tarot deck. Her works include The Shapeshifter Tarot, the Celtic Dragon Tarot, the Fantastical Creatures Tarot, and the award winning Animals Divine Tarot. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with her about her most recent deck, the Fairy Tale Tarot. Barbara: Fairy tales and myths are different genres. However, they do have similarities as well as differences, which

As mentioned in Tell Me a Story in 30 Days, I’m taking the NaNoWriMo challenge. Since I am not a fiction writer, I’m not expecting a readable novel. Instead, I’m hoping to loosen up my imagination and play with my intuition.  Because I really know nothing about writing a novel, I’m using Corrine Kenner’s book, Tarot for Writers, to guide me. After a short introduction to tarot, Tarot for Writers delves into character creation. So that’s also where I started. Corrine doesn’t just teach about tarot, she also teaches writing and explains the various types of characters: protagonist, antagonist, foils, supporting characters, and stock characters. The first writing practice is