I was the presenter at today’s Meetup! It was stressful to give a presentation, as I am always really nervous. But, I do think it went over well, and I didn’t say too many things that I regret. When I’m nervous and on an empty stomach, I’m prone to wanton hyperbole…

I do want to point out that I wasn’t knocking knitting as an activity, when I said something like “if you are going to selectively ignore and deprecate your readings, you might as well take up knitting.” I just meant that knitting would be a more productive use of your time. I actually plan to learn how to knit, at some point. So, I hope no one took that the wrong way.

Anyway, I had notes I was referring to, in the form of slides…. and sometime soon I will post them here on the site, for anyone that wants them.

I used my Osho Zen Tarot today at the Tarot Talk Dallas meeting. I hadn’t been using the deck much, and wanted to play with it.

I gotta say, though the pictures are beautiful, I didn’t enjoy it much. It’s possible for a deck to be too zen. You know what I mean? The readings I did kept boiling down to “the answer is: it doesn’t matter” That may be true on a deep spiritual level, but it’s not that satisfying when you are doing a reading to locate your car keys….

A smaller issue: The cards are just similar enough to RWS that I want to read them like RWS… but they are just different enough that it doesn’t always work smoothly to do so. I need to get over that and simply go by the pictures, I think.

Anyway, I haven’t written off the deck, but I think it will be relegated to internal, self-transformation kinds of meditations. I’m sure some people out there probably disagree with me, but that’s the conclusion I am coming to.

Today was the Sunday Living Tarot meetup. Valentina, Judie, and Ben went over various tarot ethics scenarios. They dressed up in different costumes for each skit, which was great fun. Here, for example, are Valentina and Judie in one of the skits with big rollers in their “hair”:

When I got to the meetup, they asked if I would be willing to take part in one of the skits, and of course I agreed. I was supposed to play a low-life loser, so I guess they figured I could probably pull that off without rehearsal Anyway, as always happens, I got nervous when I stood up in front of everyone, so I said something unusual to shake people up. I think it worked. Plus, I think it drove home the idea that my character was sleazy, so it worked on an acting level, as well. Yeah, I rock.

Afterwards, we did some readings and ate dinner, which is pretty much the usual Sunday meetup routine from what I can tell.

So, we had the Monday meetup tonight. The people that went to the reader’s studio stood up and talked about their experiences there. I always get nervous about that kind of thing… especially because I’m certain my experience of the studio (as a beginner) was pretty different than everyone else’s. So, when it was my turn, I spouted off some ridiculous stuff about bringing joy into the lives of everyone I met. That went over pretty well, and then I felt comfortable going into at least my main takeaway, which was that tarot can be used in a much more serious and therapeutic fashion than I’ve used it for so far.

Ben brought a fun transformation deck, which enchanted all who saw it. It was called “The Key to the Kingdom.” I bought a copy from amazon as soon as I got home. Here are a couple pics I got from my phone while I was there:

I got yet more evidence that I need to force myself to do public readings. It’s the fastest track to improvement. I am still pretty unhappy with the readings I do for people at the meetups and other events. I am just not comfortable like I am at home reading for myself. I don’t do a good job of getting my message out, sometimes. Like tonight, I gave a reading for Rebecca that was okay (but no better than okay in my opinion) in the end, but I rambled a long time before I got where I was going. I am absorbing the academic information by myself with no problem, but I need practice communicating the results to other people.