Shop Re-Opening

I have re-opened my tarot shop! After a necessary break, during which I focused on my professor job, and tended to my chronic illnesses, I have felt strongly called to return to tarot. I miss working one-on-one with clients, and the deeper studying and shadow work I've done since I put the shop on hiatus has greatly improved my intuitive abilities and deepened the gifts I can offer to my clients. 

Click on the link above to book a reading with me through my Etsy site, and if you don't see an option you like, purchase a custom reading, or message me, and we'll design something perfect for you!

I will also be opening up a few slots for Magical Mentoring sessions with me, where I work with you as a spiritual counselor, so be on the look out for that coming up in September.

I'm so glad to be back!

Why I'm Taking a break

I love tarot. I really love reading for other people, and I’m good at it. But part of living a multi-passionate life means that there are always more things I want to do than I have time for.

I feel like I’m drowning. Lately, I feel like I am drowning. I struggle to wake up in the morning, and my new meds are a frustrating cocktail of side effects.

As an adjunct professor, I have to hustle my ass off to keep teaching students, and my tarot business isn’t big enough yet to support me. Being a poet and a professor and a tarot reader, not to mention all of my duties in my personal life has me run ragged. This semester, I’m teaching four classes at two different schools in two different cities, and working part time at a writing center. I’m also still working on promoting my second book, and trying to adjust to new medication and keeping myself as well as possible, and spend time with my friends and family.

I want to believe that I can do anything, that I can do everything I want to do, but the truth is, I’m not able to. Most people hide the ugly parts of their lives, the difficult parts, but I want to be honest with the community I work with.

The Wild Unknown Tarot deck

in order to best serve you, I need to take time off this semester. I simply can’t do everything, and I cannot pour from an empty cup. Nothing this year has gone as expected, and even my routines are being crowded out by the bare necessities of surviving my days. 

I love tarot. And the tarot teaches us that sometimes it’s time to take a break, and tend to ourselves. I hope to get through this semester and then figure out the next steps.

Thank you for understanding. 

The Power of Lists for Creatives

I love lists. I feel comforted when I keep lists, and inspired, motivated, relaxed, and galvanized into action.

As Maria Popova says, lists can be "a remarkably potent tool for jostling the muse into manifesting." I've always used lists in my creative work, and to help keep my life organized. Lists of words I like, and want to use in a poem. Words that my intuitive mind calls forth when I pull a particular tarot card. A to-do list to settle my thoughts at the beginning and end of the day. One of my favorite lists comes from Esme Weijun Wang, a "Things I've Done Today" list, that helps my guilt and internalized ableism quiet down on days when chronic pain keep me from being as productive as I'd like to be.

Lists are a tool for self-discovery. A generative task for the creative person.  

Get a list down and then word associate around it.

Jot down your to-dos before you go to bed so you can rest easy, having dumped your brain of nagging ideas.

All of these are reasons why the Bullet Journal is an important part of my regular planning system. It lets me journal, track various things, record favorite quotes, and, most of all, make lists. Organizing my life this way helps me to be more mindful in my daily life, which is a necessity as I juggle teaching college English, writing poetry, editing a literary journal, and running a tarot business. The bullet journal and its list-making not only keeps me organized and my mind refreshed, but also allows me to track my progress, remember my goals, and look back to keep my goals in mind. I love, for example, being able to look back at older tarot readings and see how I've progressed through my challenges.

If you're not familiar with the bullet journal, here are the basics:

My current book project is about disability and everyday life. I like to describe it as a cross between Dorothy Wordsworth's diaries and Riot Grrl. It examines the difficulties, joys, and microaggressions of daily life as a queer disabled person, so it helps me to have a system to record my days and look back at them. My bullet journal, my list-making, is a vital part of my creative work.

My bullet journal isn't pretty or decorated like those you'd find on Pinterest. It's purely functional, and that's what works for me. Updating it is a part of my morning and evening routines, and I carry it with me wherever I go. One of its primary functions is to keep track of things I want to write about, whether it's a word, a fragment of dialogue, and image, a theme, a color. Albert Einstein famously said, you should never remember something that you can look up. I don't adhere to this completely, but with my fibro brain fog, I struggle with my memory sometimes, so keeping a bullet journal helps ease my anxiety over forgetting something important; I can just look it up.

When I do a tarot reading, the first step for me is to make a list of key words that come to mind when I see the cards laid out. I then expand upon those words and weave together the querent's story in the cards, but it all begins with a list, as do so many of my poems. 

How do you use list-making in your artistic practice?

The Importance of Routine for Creative Professionals

Routines are vitally important for me as a writer, adjunct professor, professional tarot reader, and, most of all, someone with a disability and chronic illness. 

I won’t lie to you and pretend that I stick to my routines 100% every day. Many days I wake up in too much pain and/or fatigue, or a last-minute freelance job pops up, or I’m called in to babysit my niece when her regular sitter cancels, but having a structure in place helps me get things done and maintain a multi-passionate lifestyle, with several irons in the fire.

In January, I finally found an ideal morning routine. The  concept is simple: spend an hour a day—ideally first thing in the morning—devoted to a few things that are most important to you. Reading, writing, exercise, meditation, etc. 

For me, on an ideal day, that means I wake up, feed the dog, get my coffee, and do my daily tarot draw and journaling, write, meditate, read for 20 minutes, and do some yoga stretches that ease my sore body. I fit it all in by breaking the tasks down into short increments. 5-20 minutes, maximum for this initial hour.

This way, I begin the day having already accomplished the most important things I want to incorporate into every day life: reading, writing, tarot, and meditation. And I have done it all without checking my email or social media first thing in the morning. I enjoy being engaged with my friends and followers, but I need to start off my days centered and grounded before I tune in to the world outside. I’m an empath and that high degree of sensitivity means that I’m easily overwhelmed if I connect with the chaos of the world before I have my shields up. Meditating and checking in with the tarot first thing really helps me.

My creativity is also jump-started daily by doing these morning pages, and I spend the day feeling productive and tuned in to my creative energy, rather than feeling guilty for not writing. 

Full disclosure: I definitely still have days when I’m too anxious and depressed to do this routine, or to do it all. Some days I wake up, and just roll over and go back to bed. But I actually do this entire routine in bed many days, to make it easier to stick to this routine even on days I’m not feeling well. I keep everything I need for personal tarot readings in a pouch, including my tarot journal, which facilitates the morning routine. Figure out ways to make it as easy as possible to stick to whatever routine works for you, and you’ll be more likely to follow through. I’ve learned yoga moves I can do in bed (vital for us disabled folks!), and keep a journal and pens in my bedside table, ready to go when I am.

Routines are important. One of my favorite quotes about creativity comes from Annie Dillard:

From her book The Writing Life. 

My third book is actually all about everyday life from a disability perspective (and a few other things. 😃 ), so I spend a lot of time thinking about routines and real sustainability. No routine will work for me if it is too rigid to allow for real life. Vacations are important. Flexibility is important. But no one else in the world will ever prioritize your creative work more than you do. I was lucky to get multiple graduate degrees in Creative Writing, and it let me experience external deadlines and a community of writers who supported me, but even in grad school—and definitely beyond—not a single person will do the work of making time for your art. You have to do that. And building routines into your day is an excellent way to do this.

I like to write every day (though it doesn’t always happen), but I know that’s not for everyone. What I think is important is what Melanie Rae Thon  calls “touching the project daily.” Spend time with your work every day, whether you are composing, revising, rereading, brainstorming. Spend time with your creative work daily and make time for it in some way, every day. I do this by putting writing into my morning routine, and my scheduling writing days (or at least hours!) each week.

I love me some “hustle” and “girl boss!” and “do something today that your future self will thank you for” mantras, but I often find myself chafing against a lot of biz advice that hinges on “wake up at 5am!” or “run 10 miles before breakfast” or “just never sleep!” or “only eat these four things in order to succeed” or any other advice that ignores the lived reality (and differences) of my disabled body.

The best part about the morning routine is that it actually does not need to be done in the morning. Sure, there are benefits to a morning routine that jumpstarts your day, and plugs you in immediately to your creativity. However, I’m not a morning person, and some days it’s a midday or even a midnight routine instead. The idea still works. Squeezing in your priorities wherever you can.

Build a routine that works for you. This is what works for me. Don’t stress about what someone else is doing. Find a system that works and remember that slow and steady beats fast and sloppy any day. 

Tune in next week to learn more about using routines to juggle all the elements of your multi-passionate life. And if you'd like deeper insight into your own life/work balance, book a tarot reading with me today!

Moving Past Creative Blocks with the Five of Pentacles

This is the fourth post in my series on lessons for moving past creative blocks from the Five cards in the Tarot.

In this series, I'm sharing lessons from the Five cards in the Tarot—the Five of Swords, the Five of Wands, the Five of Cups, and the Five of Pentacles--and telling you the specifics of how I moved beyond setbacks in my writing career. 

My book Call Me by My Other Name is a novel in verse, based on the lives of  two people assigned female at birth who lived as husband and wife in the rural Midwest in the late 19th century. It's a queer narrative and a trans narrative told in three voices, Gertrude, the feminine partner, Frank/Anna the masculine partner, and a meta-poetic third narrator who ties the past to the present. It's about marriage and relationships and gender and queer desire and love. Written over the course of ten years, a lot happened in regards to LGBT rights in that time, and yet discrimination remains. 

Read the first three posts in the series.

The Five of Pentacles

This card feels really scary, because it's about being rejected, excommunicated, cut off from accessing financial success. We can beat our hands against the doors of the systems we want access to, but the door won't open, and we'll end up with bloody hands. 

For six years, I sent my manuscript to book contests, spending thousands of dollars I didn't have trying to access elite presses and contests hoping to achieve some poetry fame. People told me they liked my work, so why was I always a bridesmaid, never a bride? This can feel particularly painful if you're watching friends and peers succeed and gain the accolades you so desperately want.

Eventually, though, I stopped wasting my money on contest fees, and focus on explicitly queer or queer-friendly presses. I took editors' advice and put CMBMON aside, while I put together a new "first book" manuscript from all the poems that I'd been writing through the years that didn't fit into CMBMON. And most importantly, when I was ready to submit again, I sent my work to Sibling Rivalry Press, a very new at the time small press based in Arkansas that focused on texts that "disturb and enrapture." The publishers were queer, and they'd published several excellent queer books. I sent my work there, and they ended up published both of my books, in 2014, and 2016. I've never regretted that decision, and it turned out that I didn't need a big fancy poetry press to win a Lambda Award, which had been a dream of mine since I was a baby poet.

When you are going through what I like to call a "Five Time," experiencing a scenario that resembles one of these cards, it can be so difficult to see beyond the pain of the current moment. I have time and distance to allow me to reflect on all of this, but if you'd tried to tell me to be positive and think differently six years ago, I would have just kept on crying. It's important to look for the lessons embedded in these cards in order to see how to move forward, and there are very concrete next steps you can take in each case, it just requires a step back, and some difficult, honest examination of what's working—and what's really not in your work.

If you'd like to learn how tarot can help you move through a tough time in your creative work, book a reading with me.

Deck used: Rider Waite Smith, published by U.S. Games Systems.

Moving Past Creative Blocks with the Five of Cups

This is the third post in my series on lessons for moving past creative blocks from the Five cards in the Tarot.

In this series, I'm sharing lessons from the Five cards in the Tarot—the Five of Swords, the Five of Wands, the Five of Cups, and the Five of Pentacles--and telling you the specifics of how I moved beyond setbacks in my writing career. 

My book Call Me by My Other Name is a novel in verse, based on the lives of  two people assigned female at birth who lived as husband and wife in the rural Midwest in the late 19th century. It's a queer narrative and a trans narrative told in three voices, Gertrude, the feminine partner, Frank/Anna the masculine partner, and a meta-poetic third narrator who ties the past to the present. It's about marriage and relationships and gender and queer desire and love. Written over the course of ten years, a lot happened in regards to LGBT rights in that time, and yet discrimination remains. 

Read the first two posts in the series.

 

The Five of Cups

It is important to mourn setbacks, but look at this card—too focused on mourning, this figure has their back to what they still have, those cups that haven't been overturned. The good stuff that remains. During the decade I worked on this book, many people did not understand it. Workshop after workshop of heterosexual readers didn't understand why I'd bother telling this story. There was vocabulary they didn't understand (topping, stone, butch, femme, binding, etc), and a famous editor even told me in a one-on-one consultation that no one wanted to read about "people like this." It was devastating. I poured my heart and soul into this book that means the world to me, yet it wasn't landing with readers. 

A few different things were going on here. The first is genuine homophobia. I made some straight readers uncomfortable, and they lashed out, rejecting the work. But there were also structural problems with the manuscript at that phase that were alienating the reader, and making it difficult for them to follow the non-linear narrative. I needed to do something with the format to help make this story legible for them. The book will simply never appeal to some people; that's fine. It's not for them. Realizing who your audience is can be hugely important, because it helps you understand what advice to listen to, and what to ignore. Obviously I wasn't going to scrap my entire project just because some old cis straight white dude didn't like it. So I had to find some readers from my target demographic. Lesbians love this book. Which makes sense, because I'm a lesbian, and once I started asking some queer women friends of mine to read it, I started getting better feedback. But there was still something not quite right with the manuscript.

Focusing on what didn't work for my target demographic helped me realize that the voices of my characters were confusing. I needed to do more to differentiate the two main characters, so I worked on revising their language, and reformatting the text—changing the alignment of the poem on the page—to better signal to the reader who was speaking.

If you'd like to learn more about how tarot can help you work through creative blocks, book a tarot reading with me.

Stay tuned next week for Part 4 of the series, where I examine the lessons from the Five of Pentacles.

Deck used: Rider Waite Smith, published by U.S. Games Systems.

Moving Past Creative Blocks with the Five of Wands

This is the second post in my series on lessons for moving past creative blocks from the Five cards in the Tarot.

In this series, I’m sharing lessons from the Five Cards in the Tarot—the Five of Swords, the Five of Wands, the Five of Cups, and the Five of Pentacles—and tell you the specifics of how I moved beyond setbacks in my writing career. 

Check out the first post on the Five of Swords.

The Five of Wands

This card of sparring—of preparing for a battle, but not yet being allowed to fight—is, for me, all about the publication process. I submitted the manuscript countless times between 2009 and 2014, and was frequently a finalist or semi-finalist in contests. (Most poetry manuscripts are published through a contest system in the USA, or open reading periods at presses.) Several editors told me they liked the work, but it made a better second book than a first book, and I was mostly submitting to first book contests. Eventually, I took all the poems I had been writing that didn't fit in Call Me by My Other Name, including the section I just mentioned, and made what became my first published book, Mysterious Acts by My People. That book ended up winning the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry, but it never would have existed if CMBMON hadn't been rejected. 

I also think of the Five of Wands as Grad School. Training to be a professional Author out in the world, but people constantly telling you "not yet, you're not ready" can be maddening, but I'm forever grateful for my commitment and perseverance to finish my MFA and PhD. I learned so much, and I miss having all that time to devote to writing and reading. I thought I was so busy, but I didn't realize how much free time I actually had! If we have chosen our mentors right, then we can trust their advice when they tell us we still have more to learn before we leave our training behind. 

Everyone wishes they could skip ahead to the Expert phase, but apprenticeship is vital to prepare ourselves. I'm so grateful that my manuscript wasn't accepted for publication in earlier versions, because it was not nearly as good as the final published version. I so badly wanted to be published, and there is so much pressure to publish fast and often, but it's not worth putting out a shoddy product before it's ready when we're trying to creative a piece of art. 

Stay patient with yourself, and your work. Quality takes time.

If you'd like to learn more about how tarot can help you work through creative blocks, book a tarot reading with me.

Stay tuned next week for Part 3 of the series, where I examine the lessons from the Five of Cups.

Deck used: Rider Waite Smith, published by U.S. Games Systems.

Moving Past Creative Blocks with the 5 of Swords

Being an artist is tough. Tackling rejection, self-doubt, and a world that is often hostile to artists, but in order to succeed, we need to feed our imagination and trust our intuition. Tarot is a great way to push beyond our immediate situation, learn how to expand our creativity, and push beyond blockages. 

In this series, I’m will share lessons from the Five Cards in the Tarot—the Five of Swords, the Five of Wands, the Five of Cups, and the Five of Pentacles—and tell you the specifics of how I moved beyond setbacks in my writing career. 

I spent ten years writing my second poetry collection (published under my legal name). The past several months, I've been on a national book tour promoting the book, and all that time traveling alone gave me ample opportunity to reflect on the process.

Success is not easy, especially not creative success, and everyone must define success for themselves.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the lessons I learned from the 5 cards in tarot, and how each of these lessons popped up along my creative journey.

Call Me by My Other Name is a novel in verse, based on the lives of two people assigned female at birth who lived as husband and wife in the rural Midwest in the late 19th century. It's a queer narrative and a trans narrative told in three voices, Gertrude, the feminine partner, Frank/Anna the masculine partner, and a meta-poetic third narrator who ties the past to the present. It's about marriage and relationships and gender and queer desire and love. Written over the course of ten years, a lot happened in regards to LGBT rights in that time, and yet discrimination remains. 

 

The Five of Swords

The Five of Swords is a battlefield with no winners.

Time and again, people gave me advice about how to revise my book, but I dug in my heels and refused to change parts that meant a lot to me, though they didn't, ultimately, serve the overall narrative. My stubbornness led to years of setbacks with the manuscript, unable to see a way forward, and moving in circles through draft after draft, clinging to a section of the book that, ultimately didn't belong. At last I removed this section entirely, and put it into the manuscript that became my first book. Divorced from its original context, where it did not belong, this section was able to stand alone and be appreciated for what it was, not as a way to prop up a different story. 

When you've invested a lot of time in something, it's hard to let it go, but sometimes you have to delete huge swathes of your work, admit that the poems you love don't fit with this project, and the book won't be as good as it could be if you don't take the writing advice we all here time and again: kill your darlings. Sometimes you have to cut your favorite poem, kill off your favorite character, switch to a new POV. Ask yourself why you are holding on to something when you know, deep down, that it needs to be cut, or radically revised. 

Don't let your pride get in the way of your progress.

If you want to see how the tarot can help you move past blocks in your own creative process, book a tarot reading with me. 

Stay tuned for Part 2 in the series, exploring what the 5 of Wands can teach us about breaking through creative blocks.

Deck used: Rider Waite Smith, published by U.S. Games Systems.

Queer Tarot

Most tarot decks can be pretty white and heteronormative. The Lovers card pictured above is from the Atomic Tarot by the Atomic Pixies artist collective. I love queer tarot decks like this, because seeing images of figures with lovers and lives and bodies like ours is vital for us to imagine ourselves into the lives we want.

However, it's possible to queer the tarot even without a capacious deck like the Atomic Tarot. Little Red Tarot hosts a blog series called Queering the Tarot, which I love, and is definitely worth reading, and sheds light on how we might queer any deck. The truth is that we queer folks are used to altering everything in the world in order to find our place in it, so we naturally read ourselves into even the heteronormative narratives, identify with protagonists of different genders in order to imagine our way into a story that doesn't yet exist for us. 

As a child, I pretended to be Zack Morris from Saved by the Bell. I wanted to woo the pretty girls, command attention, and avoid consequences. I imagined cutting my hair short and kissing my babysitter. Representation matters, and we can, do, should create art that includes us, but we don't have to wait to make use of the tools we already have.

I've always viewed the tarot as a little queer, with its mysticism so different from the fundamentalist Christian doctrine with which I was raised. The idea that I could embody all of the archetypes of the Major Arcana, that I could be both eternally beautiful High Priestess and muscular charioteer fascinated me as a child when I hid in my closet shuffling my first deck. 

The divinatory connotations of tarot and its occult connections place the tarot squarely in the realm of queer—different, unusual, strange—for me, and many people I talk to about being a Tarot Reader. I love this. I love that tarot allows me control over how I tell my story, allows me to take a multi-faceted approach to my life and be both this and that simultaneously. My genderqueer heart delights in the options offered by the tarot's acknowledgement of multiplicity.

The Fool's Journey speaks to my queer spirit, too, as we queers are skilled in forging our own path, forming chosen families, and transforming time and again. All of these elements are present in the tarot , and I bring my lived queer experience to my interpretations for my clients. Where have we been? Where are we going? To whom can we turn for solidarity as we wether the storm of the heteropatriarchy? 

Stay tuned for more queer tarot thoughts on my blog.

Get your own Queer Life Path Reading at my shop.

Weekend Creative Wisdom

Since most of the creative people I know balance their art with day jobs, the weekend is our time to dive in deep with our creative projects, and for those on the academic track, summer is especially so. Today I bring you some advice to carry in to your weekend of creating. 

Pick a card, and then scroll down.

(Deck used is The Hardy Tarot.)

Did you pick your card?

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Card 1: The Hermit

Feedback can be wonderful, but now it's time to withdraw from the crowd, take what you can from the lessons others have given you, and trust your own intuition. Find time this weekend to be alone with your creative work, and think not about what other people want from you, but what you want from this project. What needs to stay, what needs to go? Tune out the external voices, and tune in to your intuition. Trust yourself. You are the creator, and only you can make this work.

Card 2: Eight of Wands

Research and planning are wonderful, but now it's time to sit down and get to work. Start writing, painting, shooting photos, whatever your genre requires. This card is meant to light a fire under your ass to actually get shit done. Do what you need to to do in order to get the momentum for a creative sprint this weekend. 

Card 3: Death

Something needs to change in your current project. Is it time to let this particular project go? Perhaps your novel should be in first person, not third person. Whatever the case, a major transition is required with your creative work right now. Take some time to consider deeply what your work truly needs--and why? What are you holding on to that isn't serving the work? Time to kill it off now.

Now take the message from the cards, and head off into a productive, creative weekend!

Happy New Moon!

Happy New Moon in Gemini! There's something about the first moon cycle of the summer that always feels so magical. Here in the Midwest, we've had a series of storms, and I've been reveling in all the electricity in the air!

Just a quick update that the shop will open back up in July for new orders, so if you have been planning to place an order, whether for a tarot subscription, or a single reading, start saving your pennies. I have a few new decks I've fallen in love with, and I'm very excited to deliver some tarot insight to your inbox.

In the meantime, make sure to head over to my Youtube channel, where I've been rambling about a lot of witchy things as part of the YT Pagan challenge!

Many blessings!

Welcome 2016 with Tarot Subscriptions!

One of my favorite things is monthly subscription boxes. I've tried so many over the years, and it got me thinking--wouldn't it be fun and illuminating to get a custom tarot reading every month or so in your inbox? So I created five different tarot and oracle subscription offerings at a variety of price points. You buy the subscription, and your readings will be emailed to you regularly! And you are always free to get in touch to ask me to focus on a certain area of your life or a specific question for your different readings.

I am really excited about these subscriptions. One of my favorite things about being a tarot reader is developing relationships with clients through multiple readings, over a long period of time. While it's important to allow enough time between readings to let the insights and ideas really sink in and take shape in your life, these subs are the perfect way to keep plugged in to to the messages you need to hear.

There are also a bunch of other standalone listings in the shop, as always, so head on over to Etsy, and check out all the goodies I created for you!

Happy New Year! I look forward to finding your story in the cards in 2016.

Happy Solstice!

This is my favorite time of year. Perhaps it's because I'm a Sagittarius, but I love the turn toward the darker, colder part of the year (in my hemisphere, anyway). I've always been an insomniac, which can be frustrating, but also wildly productive. I've been ensconced in my studio writing and reading cards late into the night. I'm so excited to share the new spreads I've designed for this time of year!

My Solstice Reading will shed light into your most pressing questions at this, the darkest time of year. The cards become a beam of light, illuminating your path ahead.

This 12-month forecast is one of my most popular items. It offers a one-card reading for each month of 2016, giving you a glimpse at what the new year could hold. 

There are many other listings in the shop, including a Get Shit Done reading, a Career and Biz spread, and one focused on Goal-setting. 

Stay tuned for more releases coming up, and exciting new offerings in 2016, such as a subscription service, mentoring sessions, and ebooks!

Flash Sale! Halloween Readings on Sale Now!

My shop's Grand Opening is on Halloween, but I got so many requests to do Halloween readings before then, that I decided to open up the shop for a limited number of inexpensive Halloween readings! There are also $7 Oracle Readings on sale, so head over to the shop and book your reading today!

All Hallow's Eve Mystic Collab Giveaway (CLOSED)

[Giveaway Now Closed]

I'm so thrilled that I was asked to participate in the All Hallow's Eve Mystic Collab Giveaway over at Orb of the Night! I will be giving away a special Halloween tarot reading!

The giveaway runs October 10th – October 16th, and winners will be announced the 17th.

We have 11 shops participating, each one offering enchanting gifts for the thinning of the veil.

Each shop will be giving away something they specialize in. That means we will have 11 winners! One per shop!

Head over to Orb of the Night to enter and get more details! 

Using Tarot to Get Sh*t Done!

We all know tarot is great for introspection. Readings invite us to think deeply about the messages from the cards and retreat into contemplation, but sometimes, it's just time to get up and get sh*t done! I wrote an ebook for just those times. 

Using Tarot to Get Sh*t Done is absolutely free, so get your copy today!

The link will ask you to sign up for my newsletter, after which you will be automatically sent the download link for the book. Newsletter subscribers always get the first heads up on sales and special shop offerings and, trust me, this month, you DEFINITELY want to be on that list, because I have exciting things coming your way!

Periscope

It's hard to believe that I've been on Periscope less than two months, and it's already changed so much for me. If you're unfamiliar with Periscope, it's a Twitter-connected livestreaming app that allows you to "follow" people, then get notifications when they broadcast live, just as if you're Facetiming or Skyping with the world. You can tap the screen to leave hearts and let the broadcaster know you dig what they're saying, and you can comment and ask and answer questions directly. I just love the immediate interaction and the intimacy of the platform. So much so that I'm 'scoping every day!

My Periscope schedule is as follows:

Monday: Oracle Message Monday, where I pull cards from oracle decks for anyone who wants one, and we chat about oracle decks and intention-setting for the week ahead.

Tuesday: Tarot Tuesdays, where I chat about all things tarot, answer questions, and occasionally pull cards for folks who tune in.

Wednesday: Witchy Wednesday, where I chat about various witchy things, like Sabbats, rituals, spells, crystals, witchy books, etc.

Thursday: Thalia Talks Thursday, a free-for-all, a chance for Q&As, and casual chats with my #thaliatribe

Friday: This alternates between Feminist Friday, where I chat about witchy intersections with feminism, and Friday Faves, where I share my current favorite tarot or oracle decks or any other witchy woo woo things I'm vibing on.

Saturday: Self-Love Saturday is all about raising our vibration and loving ourselves more. How can we do that? How can witchcraft and/or tarot help with that?

Sunday: Spirit Sunday is a day to chat more deeply about how we connect with the Divine, including rituals, meditations, prayers, etc.

As on all my social media platforms, you can follow me on Periscope at taleraventarot, and while you can watch from the web, the experience is so much better if you download the app and watch live. You can, however, catch my replays at katch.me/taleraventarot. 

Hope you see you on the 'scope soon!

Reflecting on 33 Free Readings

Wow! I have had so much fun the past month doing readings for 33 strangers and friends in anticipation of launching my tarot business. The buzz was so great and the demand so high that I decided the #thaliatribe just couldn't wait until December for me to finally open shop, so I'm officially launching on Halloween/Samhain!

The Etsy shop is open already, however, for gift certificates, so if you want to be first in line on Halloween for a reading, buy a short or long reading for yourself or a loved one ASAP!

I learned a lot from these readings, received a lot of excellent feedback, and best of all, confirmed that, yes, this is what I want to be doing next in my life, and it's what you want from me, too! I feel profoundly blessed to have this intuitive gift, and I'm very pleased to have yet another way to teach, heal, and inspire people.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 33 Free Readings, and if you didn't get one this time around, purchase a gift certificate, and tune in to my Periscope (@taleraventarot) on Mondays and Tuesdays, when I'll be doing one-card Oracle and Tarot readings.

Cultivate Enthusiasm

If you're not using the app Periscope, you are missing out on daily content from me! Find me over there @taleraventarot (or on katch.me for the replays). 

Today I talked about enthusiasm, which means in essence being at one with the energy of God or the Divine. The word itself comes from the Greek en (one with) and theos (the divine). Enthusiasm comes from our closeness to Spirit (or God, or Goddess, or Deity or the Universe, or whatever your conception of a Higher Power might be). On a Monday, this is good to keep in mind. We all want to hit the ground running on Monday morning, but it's difficult to get going and cultivate that enthusiasm. We're dragging, we need more coffee, we spend time on social media instead of getting down to business. I always say that the Universe has your back, but you have to do the work. But before that, make sure you're connecting with the Divine, because that is the source of enthusiasm, which we need to carry us through a busy week.

Look to nature for inspiration. The morning glories just show up every morning. We need to make a commitment and show up to connect with the Divine, whether it's through a daily tarot card draw, meditating, prayer, reading a daily devotional, spending time at our altar, or whatever works for you. We have to make time for that, or we won't have the energy and enthusiasm to get to all the rest of what we need to do! I love the adage that you should meditate for 30 minutes a day, unless you don't have time for that, then you should meditate for an hour. If we don't make time for this, how can we make time for anything else? It is so difficult in this world to prioritize our spiritual sides, because there is always something else that needs doing, but we owe it to ourselves and to the Divine to honor and cultivate that connection. It will be worth it, I swear.

33 FREE READINGS!

I am so excited to announce a special pre-launch event for my shop. The grand opening of Tale Raven Tarot will take place in December, and in November (yes, I'm a Sagittarius!), I turn 33. What a magical number! In honor of my birthday and the shop's grand opening, I'll be doing 33 absolutely FREE readings for the first 33 people who contact me. 

These readings will be emailed readings, just as in-depth as I'll do for my paying clients once the shop launches. It's a chance to get insight into your life story and an excellent opportunity to get a detailed, high-quality reading from me.

Who am I? I'm an intuitive tarot reader, poet, and teacher with fifteen years of experience reading cards. I have a number of decks I read with, and I will let my intuition guide me to the best deck for your needs.

Reading tarot cards is my passion. I do a daily draw for myself, and readings for friends all the time, and I'm so excited for the opportunity to read for you! Whether you've had dozens of readings before, or this is your first one, I'm sure I can help you find your story in the cards.

I will be doing these readings from now until the shop opens in December (or until I reach 33 readings), but these will go fast, so get in touch with me today, and I'll add you to my list, and do the readings on a first come, first served basis.

Edited to Add: All the readings have now been claimed! Thank you for participating!