It seems to me that one of the most important tarot-reading skills is the ability to map the cards to the domain of the question. After all, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the 5 of Wands show up and told the querent “you will fight with sticks.”

Anyway…. Today I was thinking specifically about the role of the Major arcana in my readings. Kind of a back-to-basics thing. And, I was trying to find worthwhile exercises besides simply doing as many readings as possible. So, I thought it would be fun to map the standard “Fool’s Journey” to various domains. In the course of a real reading, this needs to be done on the fly, but I’m betting offline practice may be useful.

Tonight I’m pretty tired, so I’ll take a shot at “The Career Journey.” It’s kind-of a subset of the overall Fool’s Journey, which made the mapping pretty easy. Mostly, anyway. I am least happy with the ideas I had for empress/emperor… I think pointing at the parents is a bit of a cop-out. But oh well!

The Career Journey

• Fool: A person ventures out into the working world. Since I love women, and I’d like to pick a pronoun to use, let’s say she’s a woman.
• Magician: She has certain talents and abilities that are marketable.
• High Priestess: She has underlying motivations and needs driving her to seek work
• Empress: I’ll say this represents the various ways her mother prepared her for a career. Ideas and expectations her mother put in her head about career.
• Emperor: Ideas and expectations about her career that she absorbed from her father. Again, I’m wondering if there’s not a better mapping for this one.
• Hierophant: Teachers/Friends/Society advise her about what kinds of jobs would be appropriate.
• Lovers: She finds jobs and companies that look like a good fit to her, based on her pre-conceived notions about her ideal career.
• Chariot: She makes sure that she fits the mold (looks right, acts right, has the right items on resume, etc.) necessary to get her intended job.

Great! Now she’s got a job. Now what?

• Strength: She masters the job she gets, and does good work. She’s putting her talents into action and making a name for herself. Her magician’s potential is actualized.
• Hermit: Mentors she meets broaden her horizons. Also, as she gains experience she can teach others what she knows.
• Wheel of Fortune: Through experience, and through Hermits she runs across, she gains a deeper understanding of how her area of the business world works (the causes and effects… like how to get promoted, who to watch out for, procedures, etc.).
• Justice: She gets a promotion/signs NDAs/makes business agreements/etc.
• Hanged Man: Over time, she gets into a rut (dead-end position, or just not fun anymore, or working for an abusive boss, etc.). But, she doesn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. She’s comfortable where she is. Inertia sets in.
• Death: She finally changes jobs/requests a transfer/re-defines her role. She starts something new. She takes herself out of her comfort zone for her own good, and gets out of her rut.
• Temperance: Her experiences and challenges help her to better understand herself. What does she really want out of her job, and where do her true talents lie?

Well, that doesn’t sound too bad! Of course anyone familiar with the tarot knows that there’s trouble ahead… fasten your seatbelts…

• The Devil: The experience of Death and Temperance has changed her. Her current position and responsibilities no longer seem to fit. Her desired career may not be in line at all with what she originally wanted, or what her parents or culture expect of her. She feels constrained. She’s out of phase with her own life.
• The Tower: Eventually the tension and dissatisfaction with her job may reach life-altering proportions. Even if outwardly successful, she becomes depressed. She doesn’t know who she is anymore. Everything she thought she knew in the Chariot era was wrong. Her dissatisfaction may distract her and cause her work to suffer, and in the worst case she’ll even be fired.
• The Star: Once the mental scaffolding around her intended career has come down, and she’s accepted that she’s made some wrong turns, then she is finally free to clear her head and start planning again. It feels good to have a clean slate.
• The Moon: But it’s also confusing. She reflects on what she’s learned, and feels around for the next step.
• The Sun: Inspiration strikes, and a new career path becomes clear to her.
• Judgment: She is able to act swiftly and forcefully to re-organize her life around her new path. The changes are potentially disruptive and surprising to others, but are made with clear intent. Maybe she suddenly resigns, or requests a sabbatical to write a novel. Things like that.
• World: Having found her new path, and made the necessary adjustments, her career journey is complete. Or to be more precise… her career journey starts again.

Now that the readers studio has had a couple days to sink in, I wanted to reflect on the main things I took away from it.

• I got to hang out with a lot of great people, many of whom were named Carolyn. If you are at the readers studio and can’t recall the name of the person who just walked up, play the odds and say “Hi, Carolyn!”
• Two of the three presenters focused on using tarot for an ongoing exploration of important and complex issues. For instance, Kevin spoke of grading yourself on your ability to give the client a message they can take to heart–the seeds of deep and lasting changes. Meanwhile, I often use tarot to choose between bleu cheese and ranch dressing. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but clearly I am not fully exploiting the therapeutic potential tarot has for me. I think the issue is that I’d have to be brave enough to ask the hard questions before I can even try to get the deep answers. And, while I know I have such questions, I am generally too confused or too scared to formulate them. Welcome to the crazy shallow world of the Gemini with Gemini rising.

• Related to the last item… it’s good for my ego if I intuit a great answer for the querent, but it can be more powerful to intuit great follow-up questions to ask them instead. This is the main thing I took from James’ session. After all, the goal is to meaningfully help the client, rather than merely to impress them with my divinatory skill. Leading someone to connect the dots in their own mind may be the quickest path to the personal transformation they are after. I know this was not James’ main point about the importance of questions, but it’s where I went with it upon further reflection. Something to think about, anyway.
• None of the presenters seemed keen on divination of future events. Interesting, because I definitely am interested in that type of reading.
• I missed both the breakfast roundtables, if they even really happened. You know, I believe in divination and magickal acts of will, but I’m still skeptical about this 7:30 in the morning. Sounds pretty far-fetched to me. People swear they’ve seen it, but still…
• Though my confidence is growing, I am still most comfortable doing readings for myself in the privacy of my home. To really improve quickly, I need to force myself to do more readings for other people. Not easy for the introvert, but necessary. Seeing all these seasoned readers in action has helped me see that. To close the gap between me and them, I need more experience doing public readings, plain and simple.
• Next time, I should bring food with me. Then I will have more money for readings and other goods.

I felt embarrassed to meet Mary Greer and Rachel Pollack without having had the chance to read their major books. And, I really made no secret about it. To me, it seems like if I am going to a conference for serious tarot folk, then it’s almost disrespectful not to have read the big names. I know it’s all in my head–it’s my issue and not theirs. But that’s what makes it important to me!

At least I knew in advance what they looked like, so I didn’t have a conversation like this:

Me: Hi there, I’m Richard.

Super Famous Author: Hi, nice to meet you.

Me: So, do you do this professionally?

Super Famous Author: Actually, I’m a super-famous author.

Me: gluurghh *impales himself on nearest sharp object*

So anyway, I’m happy to say that I got over my issues on the last day, just in time to speak to both of them a little at lunch. And of course they were both great to talk to. And, I am pretty sure I can read faster than they can write, so next year this will not be an issue at all.

But before that, I took lots of pictures of them at a distance. Rachel was easy to catch in frame, since she usually sat at a table between me and the stage. So, I could take a picture of the presenter and get her photo in the process. Mary was a bit more elusive, but I got several pictures over the course of the conference. In this one, I think she noticed I had my phone pointed at her. Oops! Every stalker’s nightmare…

Every time he got near the stage, there was applause and people chanted his name. I think he was really touched by the reception he got.

…causing Rachel to spin around to grab her notebook in a blur of action. Whatever he said grabbed her attention!

…at the start of the last day.

People greet and hug as Ruth Ann looks victorious.

This was my favorite part of the readers studio. Carolyn Guss of www.tarotmuse.com gave a presentation all about the Seven of Cups. It was engaging, and funny, and informative. I made sure I gushed about it to Ruth Ann and Wald later, because I want to see more from her if at all possible.

What a horribly out-of-focus picture. Sorry, but that was the best I could do with my iphone.

[edit: Ok, well how about this picture, instead. It was taken by Beth Owl's Daughter. You can tell by the way it's in focus, and zoomed in appropriately....

]

Sound was a real issue during the whole conference, but we got by.