Cold Reading Definition from The Skeptic’s Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll

Cold reading refers to a set of techniques used by professional manipulators to get a subject to behave in a certain way or to think that the cold reader has some sort of special ability that allows him to “mysteriously” know things about the subject. Cold reading goes beyond the usual tools of manipulation: suggestion and flattery. In cold reading, salespersons, hypnotists, advertising pros, faith healers, con men, and some therapists bank on their subject’s inclination to find more meaning in a situation than there actually is. (read more)

Mary Greer joins me to talk about Cold Readings and Mentalist techniques with the aim of taking back some of the territory taken over by those with ill intentions.

From Mary’s Blog - Cold Reading and Tarot, Part 2

December 4, 2008

Part 2: Hijacking What It Means to Be Human

(Read Part 1 to learn about mentalists, skeptics and cold reading.)

Imagine my surprise when I discovered there are at least a half-dozen extremely expensive books marketed by mentalists on tarot, of which I’d never heard in my forty-plus years collecting tarot books. And, they were written by and for professional tarot readers that I didn’t even know existed as a self-identified group. Of course, I was aware there are fraudulent tarot readers who deliberately used cold reading techniques to con their marks. Naively, I had assumed, though, that cold reading was used mostly by fake mediums and clairvoyants (as in the 19th century) and by mentalist entertainers. I had no idea that tarot was regularly taught as a scam except among some phone psychics and those storefront psychics who used it to extort money for removing curses, etc.—a whole different, albeit related, enterprise. [Note: some mentalists are also ethical tarot readers, and not all mentalists deny the paranormal. I am also not referring, in most of what follows, to ethical mentalists who are honest about using mental tricks.]

Read the Rest of the Post

Mary Greer

Mary K. Greer is an author and teacher specializing in methods of self exploration and transformation. She has practiced tarot for over thirty-eight years, has taught at the Omega Institute for twenty years, and is featured at most Tarot conferences and symposia in the United States and abroad.

Active in Tarot associations and internet discussion groups, she also teaches and writes for the women’s and pagan communities, and is an Arch-Priestess/Hierophant in the Fellowship of Isis. Tools And Rites Of Transformation (T.A.R.O.T.) is a learning center founded and directed by Mary for the study of divination, women’s mysteries, and the transformative arts.

Visit Mary K. Greer’s Tarot Blog

Her most recent book is entitled 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card (May 2006).

Other books include:

1. Understanding the Tarot Court (2004) with Tom Little.
2. The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals (2002)
3. Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for Personal Transformation (1984, 2002)
4. Aromatherapy: Healing for the Body and Soul (1998) with Kathi Keville
5. Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses (1995)
6. The Essence of Magic: Tarot, Ritual, and Aromatherapy (1993)
7. Tarot Mirrors: Reflections of Personal Meaning (1988)
8. Tarot Constellations: Patterns of Personal Destiny (1987)

Mary has an M.A. in English literature and was on the faculty and administration of New College of California (San Francisco) for eleven years. As a world traveler, she has lived in Japan, Germany, England, Mexico, six states in the U.S., and currently leads workshops around the world. She resides in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Mentalist-Gerry McCambridge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_UDaahAd5o

BBC - History of Magic - Mentalism (1 of 6)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_EjG-Oa3hE

Debunking “Psychics” and other Miracle Workers #1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRAO3dyabvQ

How to Make People Like you in 90 Seconds or Less

Music Credits

• Opening Music & Transition Music: Narcissus by Queenie from Dream of Flight
• Closing Music: I Married a Magician by the Dust Poets from The Podsafe Music Network

Play or Download the Episode

The Tarot Connection is listed in Chapter 18: Top 10 Type of Podcasts to Check Out, in the Spiritual Podcasts. The other two mentioned are Catholic Insider (www.catholicinsider.com) and ZenCast (www.zencast.com).

The Tarot Connection (www.tarotconnection.net): If your understanding of Tarot doesn’t reach beyond the 007 classic Live and Let die, you need to know “There’s more to the cards than your realize, Mr. Bond”. A podcast like the Tarot Connection dispells many of the myths and misunderstandings of what card readings really mean and how they work. Host Leisa ReFalo, an author of two Tarot decks herself, talks Tarot on The Tarot Conection but also explores Journeywork, Astrology, Numerology and other studies.

Available at Amazon.com

The Quantum Tarot combines the revolutionary theories of 21st century physics with the traditional Tarot Card archetypes in a 78-card deck. Quantum mechanics, Einstein’s theories of relativity and modern superstring theory offer new and wonderful ways to visualize tarot themes. The Quantum Tarot shows how New Age wisdom can mesh with New Age science.

The deck and book set features 78 borderless, gilt-edged cards and a 208-paged perfect bound paperback book with black-and-white illustrations, packaged in a sturdy, elegant cigar box.

I The Magician – The Electromagnetic Force

The Quantum Magician is the Electromagnetic Force, encompassing the whole spectrum of different rays, including visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma rays, X-rays, radio waves and microwaves.
The Magician manipulates and formulates energy, making the invisible visible. He has the ability to make something out of nothing – to act creatively – which can seem magical from the outside. He brings consciousness and illumination to mystery, acting as a bridge between the inchoate sea of the unconscious, and material reality. Whenever we create anything we invoke the Magician archetype.

Read Kay’s Blog on the Magician: http://quantumtarot.blogspot.com/2008/04/bring-some-magic-into-your-life.html

XVIII The Moon – Extra Dimensions

If string theory (see the Star card) is correct, all the fundamental particles in the universe comprise of tiny loops, or strings, that vibrate at different frequencies. The early versions of string theory suggested that strings have only one dimension, but then superstring theory proposed that strings might vibrate in ten dimensions! How is this possible? Well, apart from the three dimensions of ordinary space, and one of time, the theory claims that the other six dimensions are curled up, or compressed into a very tiny space. The strings wind themselves around these “curled up” dimensions like a kind of cosmic cat’s cradle.
Because these other dimensions occupy such an unimaginably small space, we may move through them all the time without realizing it. The Moon represents this idea that there is much more to the world than we are usually aware of. These inaccessible extra dimensions are like the extra dimensions of our lives; hints, hunches, movements out of the corners of our eye. The Moon represents a fearful mystery to those who like everything to be explained. To the more intuitively or psychically-minded, this sense of something extra, something more than we can detect with our everyday, physical senses, is no surprise. The Moon shows up when the indefinable starts demanding attention in our consciousness – and to the conscious mind this can seem like a threat.

Read Kay’s Blog on the Moon: http://quantumtarot.blogspot.com/2008/08/strange-phenomena.html

Kay Stopforth

Kay bought her first deck, the Mythic Tarot, in 1990 and has been fascinated by the tarot ever since. Kay is a Film Studies graduate, a former geek who trained in electronic engineering and information science. Kay has worked as a recording studio technician, pop video editor, waitress, documentary maker, IT systems manager, librarian and professional tarot reader.

Inspired by photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope, Kay created her first deck, the Universe Cards, in 1999. She is a regular blogger and contributor to the Aeclectic Tarot Forum. Kay is currently working on her first novel.

• quantumtarot.co.uk
• kaystopforth.com

Chris Butler

Chris Butler is a UK based artist and illustrator. He has illustrated five tarot decks and two oracle decks to date. Chris discovered the Tarot through watching a James Bond movie at the age of thirteen. Now, almost thirty years later, his fascination with the cards remains undiminished. Apart from his digital illustration work, Chris works as a painter and a portrait artist. He has also worked as an assistant to Tony Raymond, one of Europe’s foremost decorative artists. He now lives in his native city of Liverpool, England

• www.butlerart.co.uk
• chris-butlerart.blogspot.com

Relativity Spread

from the Companion Book pg 31

1. Space: where you are at the moment
2. Time: what will change in the near future
3. Gravity: what is attracting you
4. Relativity: key to integration

Quantum Tarot Wallpaper by Chris Butler

(image links to full sized wallpaper)

Music Credits

• Opening Music & Transition Music: Narcissus by Queenie from Dream of Flight
• Closing Music: Borealis by Robert Rich from Calling Down the Sky

Play or Download the Episode

Download the Handout

• Designing the Deck
• Types of Printing & Getting Quotes
• Preparing Artwork
• Formality & Legality (ISBN, Barcodes)
• Selling
• Pricing
• Order Fulfillment
• Wholesale, Retail and International Distribution
• Packing
• And many lessons learned.

Lou Lorenzi-Prince at my table at BATS

This was my first time setting up a vendor table and I didn’t have a sign of any kind. While I was setting up my husband went out to get us espresso after carrying the boxes in. He was gone about an hour. In that time he went back to the hotel room, e-mail the banner graphic from my website to FedEx-Kinkos and came back with this huge vinyl sign.

The Seven Soul Centers with with Robert Place - Nov. 26, 2008

$25.00

Register Here

The theory of the seven psychic centers in the body, commonly called the Chakras, is thought to originate in India. However, the oldest writing in India that describes it dates from the second century AD. In the West we can find them described in detail in the writings of Plato in the fourth century BC, and can find similar ideas in The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Greek philosopher, Pythagoras - the first man to call himself a philosopher - used the seven notes of his musical scale to bring the soul centers of his patients into harmony and health and realized that these seven centers figured in our spiritual development as well.This class will include a lecture demonstrating that the theory of the Chakras is a universal truth found in all cultures and focusing on the Western theories about the centers. It will also included meditative exercises designed to heighten sensitivity to the energy centers in the body and demonstrate how this sensitivity can be used to improve ones ability to use the Tarot cards for divination. The students will also learn how to use the Tarot for analyzing the health and balance of the seven soul centers.

• Date: Wednesday November 26, 2008
• Time: 6:00 - 8:00 Pacific Time
• Time: 9:00 - 11:00 Eastern Time

Dena DeCastro

A professional astrologer in the Portland area for several years, Dena has appeared on local radio shows, taught workshops, and given lectures on topics in Evolutionary Astrology. The evolutionary perspective is that our souls progress from lifetime to lifetime. The focus of Dena’s readings is upon your chart as the dynamic representation of your highest potential, and the guide toward achieving it. Dena hosts the podcast Evolutions of Astrology featuring interviews with astrologers and other readers, as well as discussing various topics of astrology and chart interpretation.

To subscribe to “Evolutions of Astrology” via iTunes, click here.

Music Credits

• Opening Music & Transition Music: Narcissus by Queenie from Dream of Flight
• Closing Music: Why You Wanna Do it by Boo Boo Harris from The Name of the Game

Play or Download the Episode

So then I hear, oh, it was an INTUITIVE reading. There. Now everything’s all better.

Hell not!  (read the full post at 78Notes.blogspot.com)

Ginny Hunt

Ginny Hunt is a Professional Tarot Reader from Maryland. Her interest in the spiritual and metaphysical has been a lifelong passion. She has been a practicing counselor, both professionally with adolescents and para-professionally as a volunteer with abused women. She offers professional reading services through 78 Notes to Self.

Music Credits

• 78 Notes Music: Winter Moon by Rhonda Lorence from Winter Moon (Magnatune)

The symbolism of the Star is curious. Often there is a naked woman portrayed pouring out two jugs of water, one onto the earth and the other into the water. One immediate sense is that of abundance. But as one friend of mine noted, this woman is pouring herself out to a ridiculous degree: “She’s watering the water, for heaven’s sake!” my friend said. When we look at what water symbolizes in tarot, the emotions, we can see a dual meaning here. On the one hand, there is emotional healing going on. She’s pouring out, releasing her emotions, both for their generative qualities and just for the sake of releasing them. Her nakedness suggests both a vulnerability and a healthy sense of self. Being transparent and not hiding one’s feelings is imperative for emotional health and healing. Yet it does leave one vulnerable to further injury, so it takes a good deal of courage to do what this woman is doing. Going back to my friend’s observation, women especially tend to overextend themselves emotionally and give rise to the need for the Star’s emotional down time. Someone represented by the Star in a reading could signify someone who is an emotional giver, sometimes to their own detriment. The advice then is to take some real time for oneself and attend to one’s own emotional waters and dry, parched soul.

The Star is an incredibly peaceful card and brings with it a sense of wholeness. It’s a relief, a breather, on a long arduous journey. It reminds us to slow down because any amount of stressing out about when you’ll get there isn’t going to make the trip go any faster. It quiets those voices in your head that sound like children in the back seat chattering, “Are we there yet?” every five minutes. It answers soothingly, “No, but we will get there at just the right time, now relax and enjoy the scenery.” It’s the kind of card that makes you stop and experience the present moment in all its peaceful beauty and reminds us that the journey IS the destination. (read the full post at 78Notes.blogspot.com)

Ginny Hunt

Ginny Hunt is a Professional Tarot Reader from Maryland. Her interest in the spiritual and metaphysical has been a lifelong passion. She has been a practicing counselor, both professionally with adolescents and para-professionally as a volunteer with abused women. She offers professional reading services through 78 Notes to Self.

Music Credits

• 78 Notes Music: Winter Moon by Rhonda Lorence from Winter Moon (Magnatune)

Started in 1991 by Thalassa, and currently produced in association with the Daughters of Divination, the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium (SF BATS) is the oldest continuously produced Tarot even in the country. It has been the inspiration and/or the model for virtually every large Tarot-centred gathering in this country for more than a decade.

SF BATS is a day long event devoted to covering all areas of Tarot and related topics. Many established authors and teachers use SF BATS as an opportunity to try new and different approaches and projects as well as polishing existing work. Exhibitions of new (and often as yet unpublished or privately published) Tarot decks and artwork are an especially important feature of this event. In addition to providing networking opportunities and community building for Tarot enthusiasts of all levels of interest and experience, SF BATS has facilitated or furthered the careers of several noted Tarot artists, authors, and teachers, as well as being instrumental in the publication of several books and decks.

San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium Fall 2008

SF BATS is proud to present:

• Wald & RuthAnn Amberstone, East Coast powerhouse teachers, authors (The Secret Language of the Tarot) and producers of the Readers Studio
• James Wanless, groundbreaking teacher, coach and creator of the Voyager Tarot system
• Monte Farber & Amy Zerner, divination pioneers (The Enchanted Tarot, The Enchanted Spellboard, Breathe Easy Deck, and so many more)
• Joseph Ernest Martin, acclaimed psychic and creator of the Quest Tarot
• Julie Cuccia-Watts, superb Tarot artist (The Ancestral Path Tarot, the Ma’at Tarot, and many other works)
• Pamela Eakins, priestess, teacher and co-creatrix of the Tarot of the Spirit
• Arnell Ando, visionary Tarot artist and facilitator (the Transformational Tarot, the Tarot Museum )
• Holly Voley, well known expert on the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck
• Sasha St John, creatrix of Gentle Wisdom of the Faerie Realm, worker with angelic, faerie and mermaid wisdom
• Corinne Kenner, popular Tarot author (Tall Dark Stranger, Simple Fortunetelling with Tarot Cards, and many more)
• Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, creatrix of the Tarot of the Crone
• Kooch Daniels, popular local reader and author of Tarot d’Amour
• Susan Gold and Evelyn Pine of The Magician’s Table
• Calyxa Omphalos, creatrix of the revolutionary divination system, Elemental Hexagons

Saturday, October 4, 2008 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m
First Unitarian Universalist Centre
1187 Franklin Street, San Francisco, CA

Visit the BATS Fall 2008 web page for more information

Thalassa

Thalassa is the producer of the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium (SF BATS), founder of the Daughters of Divination (DOD), and publisher of The Belfry. She teaches and produces divination events in the SF Bay Area, and has presented at the World Tarot Congress, the New York Tarot Festival, PantheaCon, and LATS (LA Tarot Symposium). She lives in San Francisco with a collection of swords, too many books, more tarot decks than one can safely shake a stick at, and a tribe of semi-feral dust bunnies.

• Thalassaland.com
• Daughters of Divination
• Belfry
• Bay Area Tarot Symposium

Follow the Yellow Brick Royal Road Spread

Based on the movie the Wizard of Oz

• What is your goal, what is your emerald city?
• Where are your brains (scarecrow swords or mental game)?
• Where is your heart (tinman, cups)?
• Where is your courage (lion, wands)?
• Where are your ruby slippers? What gets you from one place to another? (Pentacles)
• What is your little dog (toto) What do you need to pay attention to?

Music Credits

• Opening Music & Transition Music: Narcissus by Queenie from Dream of Flight
• Closing Music: Simple Pleasures by Jive Ass Sleepers from Getting Down to Business

Play or Download the Episode

Music Credits

• Opening Music & Transition Music: Narcissus by Queenie from Dream of Flight
• Closing Music: Shi by Tilopa from Pictures of Silence (Magnatune)

Play or Download the Episode

I know this goes without saying but … Always respect copyright laws.

I have made dozens of decks by hand over the years. I like to make prototypes to flesh out ideas, to find mistakes and to get feedback from other people. I only really know if I like something for size, layout and color if I’ve seen it and held it in my hand.

I’ve also made copies of very rare decks that I’m to afraid to use. I helped my friend Linda make a usable deck with her BOTA cards that she spend years coloring. (more about that later when we talk about embellishments.)

Just as a fair warning it is very expensive and time consuming to make decks in this manner. Appreciate what a value your commercial decks are.

Supplies

There are some basic supplies that you will need.

• Card stock (Type depends on method)
• Decorative Paper (for the Backs)
• The use of a ink jet printer, color laser printer, or color copier
• Laminator (method 2) & 3 mil Pouches
• Xyron 900 (method 3)
• Sharp Scissors
• 2? Portable Paper Trimmer by Fiskars
• Corner Rounder (You can use scissors with a little technique)

There are a number of considerations when making the deck and the qualities can work against each other.

• Beauty
• Durability
• Usability (how well it shuffles)
• Deck Thickness

The Methods

• Very Heavy Card Stock
• Lamination
• 2 page Adhesive
• 2 page Adhesive/Lamination Com

Download the Handout

Music Credits

• Music: Narcissus by Queenie from Dream of Flight

Play or Download the Episode

About the Mystereum Tarot

2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ playing card size decks in a great looking box complete with 46 page booklet (lwb) + fold-out intro cardlet. The Mystereum Tarot deck is playing card size! Great for small hands and for shuffling.

$28.95 + S & H.

Visit www.mystereum.com to request your copy today!

Inception Story

The concept of setting into the creative adventure of this tarot deck began several years back when I made a connection between the meaning of architecture and The Magician and The High Priestess. And when I say the meaning of architecture I am literally looking to the word architecture itself. There is a four-point mode of being that I enjoy for the general purpose of architectural analysis which I will use to preface this connection for conversation’s sake, and to provide just a moment of suspense. This four-point mode is somewhat existential, and I have to honestly say I don’t think about these four points much anymore unless a building really perplexes me. Things incorporate over time, are amended into the soil so to speak:

1. How does a building stand on the ground?
2. How does a building extend to the sides?
3. How does a building open and close?
4. How does a building meet the sky?

Now, for just a bit more suspense. I won’t go in to whether something has to be a building to be considered architecture. That’s another story, and tarot is the order of the day here.

OK. Architecture. The meaning of architecture. If I disassemble the word into its Greek roots, I get arche and techne, and I STILL can’t remember how to make the accent over a letter work on my keyboard. I ask that you please imagine the accent and play along. Further for your imagination, that the accent starts low on the left and ends high on the right. Accent ague? Accent grave? Imagination. Arche, techne. Say ar-kay. Tek-nay. And, here’s where I made a connection.

Arche is the first inkling, the creation, the first spark of an idea. Arche is the place of inception. Techne is the giving form to the formless, the making, the putting together of the idea that has been created. Techne is the place of conception. And, I saw The Magician and The High Priestess with their respective 1st spark, the creation of the Magician, and then the giving form, the making of The High Priestess. And though I remained fascinated with the deck and stayed my course with architecture and art, the connection didn’t stick. Or, so I thought.

Scroll forward several years to the summer of 2006 while I’m gardening, and I look up at my turn-of-the-century Victorian house (1906) and realize that I’ve been working on the cards here and there, reading text and history when I can, or simply come across it, and …rush inside and rinse the dirt off and open up the folder on my computer, and there I saw…just down the page!…The Empress carrying to full term! The Emperor overseeing! And, it came to mind that I was thick in the middle of the largest scale project I have ever undertaken, had been walking right on the burial as I amended the soil in my garden. Imagine my bright , wide eyes when I eventually came to looking at the Judgment card having a The Hanged Man moment!

Though architecture provided a form-giving metaphor for the creation of this deck, from which I lifted arche, techne, identity, place, and context, the architecture may or may not stop right there. The warm-up is oftentimes not a member of the performance. Either way or neither, though, one’s path is experienced and built, built back in upon and re-built, expanded and contracted…one’s path continually pulses through the scales of life, driven by life itself. The tarot cards are wonderful trail-markers as well as storytellers along the path. Sometimes there is the soliloquy of a single card as the context. Sometimes a card or cards speak with the chorus of the other cards to flesh out context. Most all tarot decks present a visual vitality that speaks to the mind – you can call it consciousness or anything else for that matter…but in this regard, never-mind the research in this area(s)in this regard though fitting and inspiring even…in this regard there is no proof or re-proof but life itself. In this regard we each have our own say. With vitality at a variety of scales, and incorporating the concept of all similar, each unique to the cards, to ourselves, a whole world is present and complete at each and every scale.

And there, at that point is a shell in my garden cracking open of its own accord underground, the story of the creation and making of this deck sprouted, remembering origin and destiny as one and the same maybe. Or not. The roots of tarot and architecture will flower perennially in my garden, naturalizing over time as this deck is completed and becomes dog-eared from use, naturalizing. I will move from there now to the fruits that began to come from my garden in the summer of 2006. Enjoy!

– Jordan Hoggard, January 2007

The Context Spread

click on the images to view the pdf

Jordan Hoggard

Jordan Hoggard is an artist and architect. He is the Principal of J. Jordan Hoggard Design which is a small architectural company established in 2002 devoted to providing disciplined, responsive, and respectful service to every client, no matter how big or small the project. Jordan works directly with every client to assure their continuing satisfaction throughout the design and construction process.

• “Architecture is for everyone…” © 2003
• “ Form Follows Priority” ® 2007

Jordan has been working on award-winning projects singe 1991.

Graduated in 1991 from Texas Tech University with the degree of Bachelor of Architecture. He was honored with numerous scholarships and awards, held the offices of Vice President and President of the American Institute of Architecture Students, and was named by the Dean of the College of Architecture to the Faculty Search Committee.

Jordan spent five years as a professional painter of fine art oils and watercolors and continues to pursue special studies in architecture and art.

• www.JJHDesign.com
• www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/mysterium-conunctionis/
• www.cafepress.com/mystereum
• www.mystereum.com

Max in a Mystereum Dog Shirt

Music Credits

• Opening Music & Transition Music: Narcissus by Queenie from Dream of Flight
• Closing Music: Music to Look for Something Lost by Michael Masley from Mystery Repeats Itself (Magnatune)

Play or Download the Episode