Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Month: August 2016

  • TABI Tarot Conference | The Day!

    As one of the organisers, you need to be up bright and early to make sure that all is going according to plan.  Witness the breakfast table at 8am:

    Late night in bar = this breakfast table

    Yes, that’s my lonesome plate of food 😀

    Anyway, Caroline materialised soon afterwards and we started to get the show on the road.  Caroline manned the check-in desk and I manned the Conference room.

    Every year we are supported by various publishers in our goody bags for attendees.  This year we had help from PGUK, Eddison Books, Schiffer and Carrie Paris (although Carrie’s Siren’s Song Lenormand is still getting printed!)

    We had lots of lovely attendees this year.  In fact we sold out of places! We were joined by Kim Arnold (London) and Kirsten Buchholzer (Verbandes Tarot e V – Germany)… Barbie Davidson and Linda Marson (Australia) and Rashunda Tramble (Switzerland) …. along with the many other well-travelled TABI members!

    Goody bags – with TABI branding on the front.
    I *know* super posh

    Our first speaker was Karen Mahony from Baba Studio and she began with a presentation about their move to Kerry from Prague and the work of the studio.  She then moved on to talking about working with the Majors and the Minors and gave us a couple of spreads to demonstrate:

    Karen Mahony | Baba Studio
    ps – see that li’l white adapter on the table ….
    that was the source of ALL my worries the previous day
    God bless the lad at the Apple Store 😀 

    It was then the turn of long-time TABI member and creator of the Celtic Lenormand Oracle, Chloe McCracken.  She took us on a journey through working with a pendulum and the chakras… and the Tarot!

    Chloe McCracken | Pendulum work

    Now it was lunch time and everyone piled back into the dining room for a self-service that let you stock up on whatever you wanted with as many revisits to the food bar as you needed!  And dessert!!

    After lunch it was over to Emily Carding to explore the use of Tarot and Sigils.  Drawing from the ability to create compound images with her Transparent Tarot and Oracle, we set out to explore making sigils using standard tarot cards.  With an amazing ritual at the end of the workshop, we had a blast!

    Emily Carding | Tarot and Sigils

    At afternoon coffee break we drew the raffle – with the top prizes being our kickstarter copy of Andrea Aste’s Book of Shadows Tarot and a silk scarf kindly donated by Karen, from Baba Studio.  I, of course, won absolutely nothing.  I never win ANYTHING in raffles 😀

    Then it was the turn of our last speaker, Julia Jeffrey who had accompanied me down from Glasgow.  Julia is the creator of The Tarot of the Hidden Realm and we had the opportunity to work with her beautiful deck, exploring various Hidden Realm spreads.

    Julia Jeffrey | Tarot of the Hidden Realm

    And suddenly it was allllll over!  I presented Caroline with a well-deserved art voucher for all her work – double-deserved given that all the things I had volunteered to do to take some of the weight off her, I ended up leaving back at home in my computer bag.  And Caroline, bless her cotton socks, on behalf of TABI gave me a lovely voucher for Bute School of Art – which I will very much look forward to using!!

    For almost everyone it was over, but for us travelling back to Glasgow, we had one more night in Aston and then home.  And what a lovely evening that turned out to be – both our Australian attendees, Linda and Barbie, were there, as was Rashunda our attendee who was flying back to Switzerland on the Sunday.  We had a lovely …. and slightly irreverent … bar meal and glass or two of wine to unwind.

    And then on Sunday, it was the long (and not uneventful) drive back up the M6, the M74, the M8, the ferry …….. and home 🙂

    See you next year!

  • TABI Tarot Conference | 2016 | The Saga of my lap top bag – Part 1

    ‘Back to the ferry –
    and don’t spare the horses!’

    Although our annual Tarot gig in Birmingham didn’t kick off until Friday afternoon, my journey began the previous day as I decanted my son and dog up to my mother’s so that I could make an early start.

    We arrived in sunny Airdrie at about 2pm and I sat with a mug of tea and chatted with my mum as Sonshine and the dog mooched about looking for things to do/eat.  At 4pm I was hit with the sudden thought: ‘hey where did I put my computer bag oh jesus I have left it behind’

    Reader, you know that dream where you are going to sit an exam for which you have not studied ….or that dream where you are standing naked on a stage ready to dance a role that you have not rehearsed? Yeah? THAT magnified by ‘OMG-this-is-not-a-dream-this-is-a-real-life-clusterf*ck’

    This was just about THE worst thing that could happen.  Everything that I needed for Conference was in that bag – my laptop, a cable that two of our speakers were going to use for their presentations, the TABI shop float of £30, 35 copies of the feedback form, all my Tarot decks …. I would rather have left behind all my clothes than my laptop bag.

    Rigid with panic and hyperventilating, I decided to drive home and get it.

    Which wouldn’t be a problem if I lived in Aberdeen or Carlisle or somewhere sensible. I live on a small Scottish island.  Therefore you cannot come and go as you please, you are at the mercy of the ferry timetable.

    Despite fighting my way through rush hour traffic in Glasgow, I arrived at the ferry terminal to receive confirmation that if I crossed over to the island on the next boat, then I would be stuck on the island until the morning.

    Which was useless: I was picking up one of our lovely speakers from her home in Glasgow very early on Friday morning.  There was nothing for it but to drive back to my mother’s house, shaking like a leaf and sporting sweat rings on my t-shirt the size of water wings ….

    Not a wink was slept on the Thursday night.  Every time I was about to drop off, a bud of anxiety would blossom in my gut and flood my body with fury at my stupidity and anxiety about how I’d let people down.

    And I had over 300 miles to drive the following day.

    At 6am I was up and packed and ready to go.  The early morning fog burned away as I approached Glasgow and Mrs Sat Nav woman correctly directed me to the front door of Julia Jeffrey.

    Julia is a lovely person – the artist behind the Tarot of the Hidden Realms and we were travelling down to the Conference together.

    We loaded up the car with Julia’s treasures and set off for Birmingham. Despite my stupid in-car games (honed from YEARS of being stuck in traffic on the M8 in the morning) we had a pleasant coffee-and-pastry speckled journey down the country.

    Amazingly, we made pretty good time and rolled into Conference Aston just after 2pm.  Sure, we did have a bit of trouble with Mrs Sat Nav Woman who directed us ENDLESSLY around two roundabouts right at the very end causing me to recklessly turn up an unnamed road….. only to realise that we were right at Conference Aston.

    Half an hour later we were in the Apple shop buying the vital cable that had been left behind at home.  Lo, the situation that had caused me so much grief was put right in a matter of minutes.

    Which court card best represented me as I drove about like a loony trying to put things right – Knight of Swords, rx?

    Which court best represented me as I successfully purchased the vital cable in the Apple shop – probably a Pentacle, maybe the Queen (I was supporting other people, I didn’t need the cable myself)

    What do you think?

    Next:  The Conference itself!!!