I know in this economy, a lot of people really need more guidance, not less. Yet how is it possible to get that guidance when you can't spare the money? It's bad enough to have to struggle to pay the bills when people don't even know what they are going to do about their jobs, etc.
However, a tarot card reading can actually be one of the few things that is well worth the investment in yourself that it involves. It is money well spent because the advice you receive may very well change your life for the better, help you make the right decisions financially, emotionally help you when you are in that bad place that the lack of money has put you into in the first place.
There is a saying in certain 12-step fellowships that when you least feel like going to a meeting, that is when you MOST NEED to go to a meeting. This is also true of getting a tarot reading. At those very times when you feel overwhelmed and like you can't take the time to go get one, that is often the time you need it most. And while you may not be able to afford to get that reading, well it can in many cases be as simple as one less meal eaten out, and eating at home instead.
Because I know how difficult it is to do this, I am offering my $25 reading special now through the end of June. Hopefully there will be a Paypal button embedded in this blog post so anyone who wants one can click straight through. I do my readings via online chat, so you get the ability of having instant feedback while you are having your reading, and you can log the chat so you can save it and print later.
Here's hoping we are able to be helpful to each other during this economic downturn....
Yours in Tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Thoughts on the Moon in Tarot.
One of my tarot students asked me this question the other night, and I thought it was worthy of a post... as I feel that I am still fleshing out the answer to this question. It's a deeper symbolism than at first suspected, and keeps bringing up more material to the surface..... thanks Lee for asking about it!
In my tarot class, we are using the Rider-Waite tarot deck for study. We're actually going pretty deep, I am only getting about 5 cards per week done LOL so we are working fairly intensively with each card. I am pleased with this progress, even if it means the class will take longer to finish (I don't hear anyone complaining that they don't want to go into extra innings)
We were looking at the 8 of Cups, and Lee asked me what the symbolism of the moon was. I stopped, not so much because I didn't know the answer, but because it was something I hadn't really articulated yet and wasn't sure how to really target it.
The Moon is a deliberate symbol in this card and in most of the cards where it shows up. Pamela Colman Smith's artwork is very thorough in its meaning; each and every detail in an image has a reason for being there and a connection both to the meaning of the picture, and the meaning of the card itself in readings. In fact, I consider this one of the most brilliant decks in print, for that very reason. Smith is known to have "channeled" much of the material for this deck, going into a meditative trance and envisioning an image before drawing it. Often music made up a part of her rhythm for creation of a card. Therefore, the details of each image are startlingly pertinent on many levels.
Thinking about Lee's question, and about the symbolism of the Moon overall, I said, "What is the Sun? What is the Moon?"
Both are astronomical bodies, one of which we are in orbit around, the other in orbit around us. Both illuminate our skies and our lives, the Sun dominates the daytime sky, while the Moon has dominion over the night sky. But that very thing they have in common is also the very thing that defines their difference..... the Sun is an actual star, emitting light waves and heat and radiation towards our small planet and everything else that is in orbit around it. However, the light we receive from the Moon is.... REFLECTED from the Sun. The Moon has no light of its own, it is merely taking the light from the Sun, which is out of our line of sight at the time we see the Moon, and shining it back down at us.
Reflected light, time to reflect.... the Moon showing up in a tarot card reading, whether on the actual Moon card, or as a symbol on another card's image, one of the first things you can do is take a moment and think about how its main quality is REFLECTION. And so of course, the card asks us to pause and reflect.... but it's not just a simple matter of thinking, meditating..... no, this reflection is due to a change in the angle of perception.... so we're not just reflecting, we're taking another look at the situation we're reading about, we're getting a different perspective, looking at things in a different light.
One of my favorite things to point out to clients in a reading when the Moon card comes up is the way that when you see things in real life by the light of the Full Moon, they often look two dimensional in the darkness. Everything has kind of washed-out colors, if not downright grayscale..... everything looks like cardboard cutouts..... perspective is changed, even lost at times. You may be driving along a night road, and everything on the side of the road looks like it is made of flat paper standing up on the side..... it's harder to gauge distance, harder to know what reaction time will be for things, etc. So we must be both more cautious and pay more attention.....
I also like the fact that, even though you may be completely, fully aware of the layout of an area, like a road through your neighborhood or your backyard garden, in the darkness, lit only by the moonlight, it is easy to get disoriented and lost. I mean literally you could have placed every single one of those flagstones on the path of your garden, you intimately know every inch of it, and yet, you can get disoriented and stumble into the rosebushes if you're not paying careful attention. This is because of the changed perspective.
In similar fashion, though you could know exactly where everything is in your bedroom, you can awaken in the middle of the night and be frightened out of your wits by seeing the Boogeyman standing there across from you in the room, staring at you! And yet, when you turn your lights on, you realize it is really only your bathrobe hanging on the back of your door. When you turn the lights back out, you still see your bathrobe, because once your consciousness has emerged from the darkness and is enlightened to what the reality actually is, you cannot "unsee" the bathrobe and go back to seeing the Boogeyman..... and so it is with the Moon..... what you reflect on, what you see, the changed perspective you bring to the situation at hand, once you have seen the changes, once you realize what is actually going on, the truth can never be hidden from you again.....
Once you have taken the Red Pill, you cannot go back into the Matrix.....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
In my tarot class, we are using the Rider-Waite tarot deck for study. We're actually going pretty deep, I am only getting about 5 cards per week done LOL so we are working fairly intensively with each card. I am pleased with this progress, even if it means the class will take longer to finish (I don't hear anyone complaining that they don't want to go into extra innings)
We were looking at the 8 of Cups, and Lee asked me what the symbolism of the moon was. I stopped, not so much because I didn't know the answer, but because it was something I hadn't really articulated yet and wasn't sure how to really target it.
The Moon is a deliberate symbol in this card and in most of the cards where it shows up. Pamela Colman Smith's artwork is very thorough in its meaning; each and every detail in an image has a reason for being there and a connection both to the meaning of the picture, and the meaning of the card itself in readings. In fact, I consider this one of the most brilliant decks in print, for that very reason. Smith is known to have "channeled" much of the material for this deck, going into a meditative trance and envisioning an image before drawing it. Often music made up a part of her rhythm for creation of a card. Therefore, the details of each image are startlingly pertinent on many levels.
Thinking about Lee's question, and about the symbolism of the Moon overall, I said, "What is the Sun? What is the Moon?"
Both are astronomical bodies, one of which we are in orbit around, the other in orbit around us. Both illuminate our skies and our lives, the Sun dominates the daytime sky, while the Moon has dominion over the night sky. But that very thing they have in common is also the very thing that defines their difference..... the Sun is an actual star, emitting light waves and heat and radiation towards our small planet and everything else that is in orbit around it. However, the light we receive from the Moon is.... REFLECTED from the Sun. The Moon has no light of its own, it is merely taking the light from the Sun, which is out of our line of sight at the time we see the Moon, and shining it back down at us.
Reflected light, time to reflect.... the Moon showing up in a tarot card reading, whether on the actual Moon card, or as a symbol on another card's image, one of the first things you can do is take a moment and think about how its main quality is REFLECTION. And so of course, the card asks us to pause and reflect.... but it's not just a simple matter of thinking, meditating..... no, this reflection is due to a change in the angle of perception.... so we're not just reflecting, we're taking another look at the situation we're reading about, we're getting a different perspective, looking at things in a different light.
One of my favorite things to point out to clients in a reading when the Moon card comes up is the way that when you see things in real life by the light of the Full Moon, they often look two dimensional in the darkness. Everything has kind of washed-out colors, if not downright grayscale..... everything looks like cardboard cutouts..... perspective is changed, even lost at times. You may be driving along a night road, and everything on the side of the road looks like it is made of flat paper standing up on the side..... it's harder to gauge distance, harder to know what reaction time will be for things, etc. So we must be both more cautious and pay more attention.....
I also like the fact that, even though you may be completely, fully aware of the layout of an area, like a road through your neighborhood or your backyard garden, in the darkness, lit only by the moonlight, it is easy to get disoriented and lost. I mean literally you could have placed every single one of those flagstones on the path of your garden, you intimately know every inch of it, and yet, you can get disoriented and stumble into the rosebushes if you're not paying careful attention. This is because of the changed perspective.
In similar fashion, though you could know exactly where everything is in your bedroom, you can awaken in the middle of the night and be frightened out of your wits by seeing the Boogeyman standing there across from you in the room, staring at you! And yet, when you turn your lights on, you realize it is really only your bathrobe hanging on the back of your door. When you turn the lights back out, you still see your bathrobe, because once your consciousness has emerged from the darkness and is enlightened to what the reality actually is, you cannot "unsee" the bathrobe and go back to seeing the Boogeyman..... and so it is with the Moon..... what you reflect on, what you see, the changed perspective you bring to the situation at hand, once you have seen the changes, once you realize what is actually going on, the truth can never be hidden from you again.....
Once you have taken the Red Pill, you cannot go back into the Matrix.....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Monday, May 2, 2011
Thoughts on Grief, Loss, and the Tarot
Part of the reason I have not written anything in the past couple of weeks is due to a string of technical difficulties, but by far one of the most difficult situations lately was the loss of my aunt and uncle in the recent spate of tornados, rains, flooding, and such down in the southern states.
When you look at a map of the areas hit by the storm cells, the westernmost points were located in northwest Arkansas, where my aunt and uncle lived. Moving eastward through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, the storms also moved up the coast and the northeastern most points were here in Pennsylvania, where I currently live.
Many good people lost their lives in this series of storms. Many more lost everything they owned, or struggled with some form of damage.
My ceiling leaked and in many places my carpeting may well be ruined, but when taken into perspective the loss is nothing compared to the deaths of my family members.
I decided that I would pull some tarot cards in order to make some sense out of what had happened. Not just for myself, but for everyone who had lost someone in this time. Interesting cards came up in the reading. Not the Tower, or the Death card, which you might expect, but instead I got the 7 of Wands, the Moon, the 9 of Wands, the 5 of Cups, the 8 of Cups, the 10 of Swords, and the 9 of Pentacles.
Looking at these cards in the Rider-Waite deck, which is the deck I reached for when I felt low.... this deck has a sense of history and support and feels like coming home whenever I feel at a loss or when I am in doubt. I have a long familiarity with it and I don't have to struggle to think about what each card means, it simply speaks its message to me.
The 7 of Wands, feelings of struggle and being overwhelmed and bombarded, even though you have the high ground, immediately jumped out at me. We tend to focus on the negative in times of struggle, and often we need to be able to put ourselves in a bit of perspective. Granted, that man on the card could be pulled down into the army below him, but he does hold the high ground. Similar energy is associated with the 5 of Cups. We have a choice to make, whether to continue dwelling in sorrow for the love that is lost, or we can pick up the pieces that are good and continue forward. Yet not to skip the grieving process, it is necessary and healthy to spend SOME time looking at what is gone and completely feeling and understanding the loss.
The 9 of Wands was fitting for me as well as for a lot of people. It just seemed this week like the bad news kept coming, and coming, and coming. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, the Royal Wedding, and other good news to follow. We feel a bit overwhelmed by everything. We are safe, but we are wary. Continued weather reports of more rain and more bad weather leave us edgy and out of sorts, on the defensive.
The Moon and the 8 of Cups both point to feelings of focusing too much on the loss. I felt strongly as though these were a caution not to get too swept up in the whole thing. Sometimes it seems appropriate to drop out of life for a while when things get too hairy, and for those who are closest to the loss (in my case, my cousins) there is going to be a sense of being isolated within their own world for a while. We can offer support, but we cannot go inside their hearts and heal the pain inside.
The 10 of Swords. A gruesome image, certainly, but one that indicates a sense of finality. No matter what the battle is, it is over. We would really like to believe that at least for now, we can stop holding our breath and waiting for the next big blow. It is critical to our functioning that we know that it will not be ceaseless in its battering of our emotional reserves. The 9 of Pentacles, ironically, showing us a contented, happy, secure lifestyle, nonetheless has its own set of walls to keep the world out. It may be a long time before the process is complete, and while we are doing our own set of emotional repairs, we may still be closeted inside our own lives for some time, allowing ourselves the luxury of privacy and the ability to find solace within as the wound heals from the inside out.....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
When you look at a map of the areas hit by the storm cells, the westernmost points were located in northwest Arkansas, where my aunt and uncle lived. Moving eastward through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, the storms also moved up the coast and the northeastern most points were here in Pennsylvania, where I currently live.
Many good people lost their lives in this series of storms. Many more lost everything they owned, or struggled with some form of damage.
My ceiling leaked and in many places my carpeting may well be ruined, but when taken into perspective the loss is nothing compared to the deaths of my family members.
I decided that I would pull some tarot cards in order to make some sense out of what had happened. Not just for myself, but for everyone who had lost someone in this time. Interesting cards came up in the reading. Not the Tower, or the Death card, which you might expect, but instead I got the 7 of Wands, the Moon, the 9 of Wands, the 5 of Cups, the 8 of Cups, the 10 of Swords, and the 9 of Pentacles.
Looking at these cards in the Rider-Waite deck, which is the deck I reached for when I felt low.... this deck has a sense of history and support and feels like coming home whenever I feel at a loss or when I am in doubt. I have a long familiarity with it and I don't have to struggle to think about what each card means, it simply speaks its message to me.
The 7 of Wands, feelings of struggle and being overwhelmed and bombarded, even though you have the high ground, immediately jumped out at me. We tend to focus on the negative in times of struggle, and often we need to be able to put ourselves in a bit of perspective. Granted, that man on the card could be pulled down into the army below him, but he does hold the high ground. Similar energy is associated with the 5 of Cups. We have a choice to make, whether to continue dwelling in sorrow for the love that is lost, or we can pick up the pieces that are good and continue forward. Yet not to skip the grieving process, it is necessary and healthy to spend SOME time looking at what is gone and completely feeling and understanding the loss.
The 9 of Wands was fitting for me as well as for a lot of people. It just seemed this week like the bad news kept coming, and coming, and coming. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, the Royal Wedding, and other good news to follow. We feel a bit overwhelmed by everything. We are safe, but we are wary. Continued weather reports of more rain and more bad weather leave us edgy and out of sorts, on the defensive.
The Moon and the 8 of Cups both point to feelings of focusing too much on the loss. I felt strongly as though these were a caution not to get too swept up in the whole thing. Sometimes it seems appropriate to drop out of life for a while when things get too hairy, and for those who are closest to the loss (in my case, my cousins) there is going to be a sense of being isolated within their own world for a while. We can offer support, but we cannot go inside their hearts and heal the pain inside.
The 10 of Swords. A gruesome image, certainly, but one that indicates a sense of finality. No matter what the battle is, it is over. We would really like to believe that at least for now, we can stop holding our breath and waiting for the next big blow. It is critical to our functioning that we know that it will not be ceaseless in its battering of our emotional reserves. The 9 of Pentacles, ironically, showing us a contented, happy, secure lifestyle, nonetheless has its own set of walls to keep the world out. It may be a long time before the process is complete, and while we are doing our own set of emotional repairs, we may still be closeted inside our own lives for some time, allowing ourselves the luxury of privacy and the ability to find solace within as the wound heals from the inside out.....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Friday, April 15, 2011
Thoughts on How We Found the Tarot Path in Life
As I am sitting here on a Friday evening, reflecting on the events of the week and how things have transpired, I am thinking a lot about how I got into the tarot in the first place, and how many people have been impacted by that choice in many direct and indirect ways as a result.
It was 1987, I was finishing up my last year of college and one of the most important social structures in my life was the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was a member of the local cast, which meant that every Friday and Saturday night, while the local theater showed the movie as their midnight movie selection, we would be there to hand out "supplies" and enact the movie in live-action on the floor in front of the front row of seats, what was known as the "floor show." I did not have reliable transportation nor parental approval, and so I was only able to be there on Saturday nights, but I became a valued and important member of the cast. I did not do the floor show, because I wasn't there frequently enough, but I was still part of the "family."
One of the other members of the family, a boy named Bobby, was someone I was particularly close to and spent a lot of time hanging out with him. I had a major crush on him, but I am not sure he ever knew this, as I was too shy to really say or do anything about it. We did develop a good friendship though, and I was invited to his eighteenth birthday party.
I remember going from room to room at one point at the party, looking for him, but he had disappeared. Everyone else was having a good enough time and hadn't really noticed that the guest of honor had gone missing, so to speak. I found him out back, in the yard, at a picnic table, with a bunch of strange-looking cards spread out in front of him on the table. They were larger than playing cards, with pictures on them in simple but nice colors, and he had a small paperback book that he was reading out of.
I was brought up extremely sheltered, and had never in my life HEARD of such things as tarot cards, much less seen them before, so I was curious to know what these were. I asked him what he was doing, and he said "I'm reading my tarot cards." As I recall it now, he didn't seem to have a lot of experience with them, because he would look up the meaning of each card as he went through the spread on the table. However, he sure had more than me, and at the time, I was really impressed by how neat the whole thing looked and how engrossed in it he was. So engrossed, in fact, that he could barely be bothered to acknowledge my presence.
I sat down across from him on the table and said "Cool, show me how to do that!" I don't think it sounded as demanding as it looks like it might, but it was more eagerness than anything else. I had a crush on him anyway, so anything he was doing was of interest to me, but these things actually looked neat in and of themselves, and I was genuinely curious.
Bobby looked up from his book momentarily and glared at me across the table. "Go away, would you? go get your own cards!" And with that, he returned to focusing on his own reading.
Well, I've always been a person who had the same reaction every time to being told this advice: I went straight to the bookstore in our local mall and went right to the weirdo new age section (that was how I thought back then, anyway) and I remember I looked through a bunch of books until I found the EXACT same book that he was reading. And then I went up to the register and they had a small display rack with a few decks of tarot cards, and there was a bright yellow box of Rider Tarot Deck cards, which I immediately recognized as the ones he had. I bought both the deck and the book on the spot, and took them home and began to read.
I first familiarized myself with the cards, looking at each one in order, then went and read the whole book cover-to-cover. It was "The Complete Guide to the Tarot" by Eden Gray. A small paperback book, and a fairly quick read, considering much of it was meant to be a reference not a straight-through read. I then proceeded to follow all the directions and do my very first tarot card reading. I do not now remember what the topic of the reading was, but I remember being impressed by the accuracy of the cards, right out of the box.
Later on I would encounter all kinds of advice from various people about them; that I should wrap them in silk; that I should sleep with them under my pillow, etc. I would experiment with these but found that they really didn't make much difference. The cards were accurate for me regardless of what I kept them in or where I stored them when I wasn't using them.
I remember that summer, I did readings in my little apartment kitchen for some of my neighbors and a few of my friends and they always thought it was really neat. Even the two girls who lived next door and who attended school at the local Baptist college eventually decided that I wasn't doing anything evil, and one of them even got her own cards read.
Over the years, something that started out being a personal hobby turned into a professional venture; I did readings for people, then finally I began teaching tarot classes as well, then writing professional tarot deck reviews. And finally, came the day when LoScarabeo approached me and asked me to design a tarot deck using my religion, Wicca, as a specific theme for the design. And the rest, as they say, is history.....
So whether you have had a tarot reading from me, taken a tarot class from me, had a reading from one of my students over the years, bought a tarot deck based on what you read in my review, or are using my Pagan Tarot deck for your own readings, you all have one person to thank for setting me on the path that has impacted your lives..... my friend Bobby. Sadly, life took us in two different directions a few months after that birthday party, but the legacy endures....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
It was 1987, I was finishing up my last year of college and one of the most important social structures in my life was the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was a member of the local cast, which meant that every Friday and Saturday night, while the local theater showed the movie as their midnight movie selection, we would be there to hand out "supplies" and enact the movie in live-action on the floor in front of the front row of seats, what was known as the "floor show." I did not have reliable transportation nor parental approval, and so I was only able to be there on Saturday nights, but I became a valued and important member of the cast. I did not do the floor show, because I wasn't there frequently enough, but I was still part of the "family."
One of the other members of the family, a boy named Bobby, was someone I was particularly close to and spent a lot of time hanging out with him. I had a major crush on him, but I am not sure he ever knew this, as I was too shy to really say or do anything about it. We did develop a good friendship though, and I was invited to his eighteenth birthday party.
I remember going from room to room at one point at the party, looking for him, but he had disappeared. Everyone else was having a good enough time and hadn't really noticed that the guest of honor had gone missing, so to speak. I found him out back, in the yard, at a picnic table, with a bunch of strange-looking cards spread out in front of him on the table. They were larger than playing cards, with pictures on them in simple but nice colors, and he had a small paperback book that he was reading out of.
I was brought up extremely sheltered, and had never in my life HEARD of such things as tarot cards, much less seen them before, so I was curious to know what these were. I asked him what he was doing, and he said "I'm reading my tarot cards." As I recall it now, he didn't seem to have a lot of experience with them, because he would look up the meaning of each card as he went through the spread on the table. However, he sure had more than me, and at the time, I was really impressed by how neat the whole thing looked and how engrossed in it he was. So engrossed, in fact, that he could barely be bothered to acknowledge my presence.
I sat down across from him on the table and said "Cool, show me how to do that!" I don't think it sounded as demanding as it looks like it might, but it was more eagerness than anything else. I had a crush on him anyway, so anything he was doing was of interest to me, but these things actually looked neat in and of themselves, and I was genuinely curious.
Bobby looked up from his book momentarily and glared at me across the table. "Go away, would you? go get your own cards!" And with that, he returned to focusing on his own reading.
Well, I've always been a person who had the same reaction every time to being told this advice: I went straight to the bookstore in our local mall and went right to the weirdo new age section (that was how I thought back then, anyway) and I remember I looked through a bunch of books until I found the EXACT same book that he was reading. And then I went up to the register and they had a small display rack with a few decks of tarot cards, and there was a bright yellow box of Rider Tarot Deck cards, which I immediately recognized as the ones he had. I bought both the deck and the book on the spot, and took them home and began to read.
I first familiarized myself with the cards, looking at each one in order, then went and read the whole book cover-to-cover. It was "The Complete Guide to the Tarot" by Eden Gray. A small paperback book, and a fairly quick read, considering much of it was meant to be a reference not a straight-through read. I then proceeded to follow all the directions and do my very first tarot card reading. I do not now remember what the topic of the reading was, but I remember being impressed by the accuracy of the cards, right out of the box.
Later on I would encounter all kinds of advice from various people about them; that I should wrap them in silk; that I should sleep with them under my pillow, etc. I would experiment with these but found that they really didn't make much difference. The cards were accurate for me regardless of what I kept them in or where I stored them when I wasn't using them.
I remember that summer, I did readings in my little apartment kitchen for some of my neighbors and a few of my friends and they always thought it was really neat. Even the two girls who lived next door and who attended school at the local Baptist college eventually decided that I wasn't doing anything evil, and one of them even got her own cards read.
Over the years, something that started out being a personal hobby turned into a professional venture; I did readings for people, then finally I began teaching tarot classes as well, then writing professional tarot deck reviews. And finally, came the day when LoScarabeo approached me and asked me to design a tarot deck using my religion, Wicca, as a specific theme for the design. And the rest, as they say, is history.....
So whether you have had a tarot reading from me, taken a tarot class from me, had a reading from one of my students over the years, bought a tarot deck based on what you read in my review, or are using my Pagan Tarot deck for your own readings, you all have one person to thank for setting me on the path that has impacted your lives..... my friend Bobby. Sadly, life took us in two different directions a few months after that birthday party, but the legacy endures....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Thoughts On Teaching Tarot Classes, by Wicce!
I recently, as in last week, began to teach my ten-week tarot course at the new age bookshop that I manage here in Scranton, PA. First of all, I really enjoy teaching. I have to say that it comes naturally to me, possibly as the result of coming from many generations of schoolteachers in my family on my mother's side. Or perhaps due to majoring in theater/communications in college..... at any rate, possibly the number one problem I have encountered over the years is this:
Every time I teach a tarot class, the number of people who can take it at the time offered is so many less than the number of people who are free to take it at that time! I have changed up the time each time I offer it. Monday nights, Sunday afternoons, now Thursday evenings.... I have compressed the entire ten week course into one full length weekend seminar..... but then it becomes cost prohibitive for people.
The cost for my class is a measly $10 per week or $80 if you pay in advance for the entire course. Considering the years of work that has gone into this course and what you get in return, I think this is definitely a good price for the work.
In addition to not being able to solve the time problem, I will be relocating to the Southwest on Sept 1st. So I won't be available locally any longer. I have already been trying to come up with ways to continue to offer what I already offer for my clients here, on a long-distance basis, and can do the readings online or on the phone, etc. I am thinking about further breaking down my tarot course, and elaborating on it much more heavily, and offering it as a Kindle e-book for 99 cents per card. That would make the entire course $78 instead of $80 or $100..... I would throw in the e-books for all the additional materials like spreads and stuff for free if you bought the whole course.....
This way one would actually end up with MORE material per card than ever before; the student could carry the materials with them on their phone (Kindle app is free on most smartphones) or on their PC or Kindle device..... one could buy individual lessons for cards that are "problematic" or "sticky" and if one wanted the whole course, it would still be really easy to find each individual lesson due to the way they would be titled and organized in the Kindle library on-board.
What do you think? Would you pay 99 cents for an e-book on each card? (with rewards for buying the whole set) this would also allow people to purchase as they could afford, and work through the course at their own pace....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Every time I teach a tarot class, the number of people who can take it at the time offered is so many less than the number of people who are free to take it at that time! I have changed up the time each time I offer it. Monday nights, Sunday afternoons, now Thursday evenings.... I have compressed the entire ten week course into one full length weekend seminar..... but then it becomes cost prohibitive for people.
The cost for my class is a measly $10 per week or $80 if you pay in advance for the entire course. Considering the years of work that has gone into this course and what you get in return, I think this is definitely a good price for the work.
In addition to not being able to solve the time problem, I will be relocating to the Southwest on Sept 1st. So I won't be available locally any longer. I have already been trying to come up with ways to continue to offer what I already offer for my clients here, on a long-distance basis, and can do the readings online or on the phone, etc. I am thinking about further breaking down my tarot course, and elaborating on it much more heavily, and offering it as a Kindle e-book for 99 cents per card. That would make the entire course $78 instead of $80 or $100..... I would throw in the e-books for all the additional materials like spreads and stuff for free if you bought the whole course.....
This way one would actually end up with MORE material per card than ever before; the student could carry the materials with them on their phone (Kindle app is free on most smartphones) or on their PC or Kindle device..... one could buy individual lessons for cards that are "problematic" or "sticky" and if one wanted the whole course, it would still be really easy to find each individual lesson due to the way they would be titled and organized in the Kindle library on-board.
What do you think? Would you pay 99 cents for an e-book on each card? (with rewards for buying the whole set) this would also allow people to purchase as they could afford, and work through the course at their own pace....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Thoughts About Tarot, from Me, Wicce!
I know I'm not always a consistent blogger. But I do have a lot of deep, intriguing thoughts and things to say about tarot. After all, I've been a professional tarot card reader for 24 years, I've reviewed hundreds of tarot decks, I've designed and published a tarot deck, deck-and-book set, and been published in several other tarot publications including the Tarot Calendar from Llewellyn and Llewellyn's Magical Almanac.
I've had a few false starts lately. But I really do need to have a place to say what I'm thinking and be able to post articles I've written, etc. So I'm going to try this. See how it goes! Maybe I will find a lot of new inspiration here. Only time will tell!
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
I've had a few false starts lately. But I really do need to have a place to say what I'm thinking and be able to post articles I've written, etc. So I'm going to try this. See how it goes! Maybe I will find a lot of new inspiration here. Only time will tell!
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)