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My tarot deck has been replaced a few times.  Each time I've given away my favorite deck, I felt compelled to do so.  I always told myself I'll go pick out something new and different.  Each time, I bought the same deck again.  

Tarot to me is soothing and calming.  I love tapping into the energy of the cards.  I love giving readings though I don't read for others often.  When I read for myself, I look at the cards write down whatever comes to mind and then I look at what the book has to say.  I use both for interpretation.  

I own about a dozen books dedicated to symbolism, and (surprisingly) only one addresses the symbolism of nakedness. I thought for sure that Barbara Walker's Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects would address the topic--or even The Book of Symbols by Taschen.

Alas, no.

The room was not dark, there was no mysterious woman dressed in shawls and exotic clothes wearing finger symbols wielding tarot cards (though how you would do both those I’m not quite sure).  There was no veil of mystery.  There were just seven other women and myself, sitting around a dining room table with a box full of tarot and divination decks.  My first group tarot reading - it was a bit scary, a bit intimidating and a bit exciting.  I am not a professional reader.  Since I don’t have all the cards memorized (heck I’m lucky if I can remember my name some days), I use the books and my intuition.  I don’t charge for my readings.  I do them because people ask and I enjoy the process.  My best friend was my first guinea pig and I’d been reading for her for several years when she asked if I’d be willing to read for others in her family.  

We gathered around her grandmother’s old wood table.  I brought candles, tarot decks (and books) and faith that this group of women would make the night interesting.  I have an opening spiel I say to all the people the first time I read for them.  It goes something like “this is for entertainment purposes only.  If you take away something more than entertainment great, it is not evil; you get from the cards guidance if that is what you choose to find.”  I also give a little talk about the two “shocking” cards of Death and the Devil.  These women are all Christians and I knew these two cards would upset or intimidate them.  I wanted them to have a positive experience so before we even started readings I explained about those two cards.  

A lot of people ask me how I got into Modern Minoan Paganism and why I'm inspired to write the books and create the art that goes along with that spiritual path. If I'm honest, the Minoan gods and goddesses have been stalking me since I was a teenager and it just took me a while to pick up on their intent - sometimes I'm slow that way. But once I finally got started, all enthusiastic and rarin' to go, I hit a roadblock: There were virtually no resources out there.

Bear in mind, I'm old enough that when I first started researching the Minoans, I had to resort to actual ink-and-paper encyclopedias and history books. And none of those ever had more than a paragraph or two about the Minoans, usually as a sort of side note before the text started talking about the Greeks.

For the first time, but not the last, I attended Readers Studio. In my mind, this was always THE Tarot conference to attend. But I never did. I came up with all sorts of excuses as to why not. I didn't have the vacation. I couldn't afford it. But the underlying reason for every excuse and variation of excuse was this. I wasn't Tarot enough.

I'm not even sure what that means now after having been there. It has threads of inadequacy, low self-esteem, comparison monsters, and so many other negative self-thoughts. I began to unravel those at the NorthWest Tarot Symposium which was my first Tarot conference (and first time to present at a conference of my peers.) This year I went to NWTS for the second time and RS for the first. 

In the Tarot, the Swords suit is associated with the intellectual realm--thoughts, communication, bias, opinions, analysis, logic and so on. The sword, itself, is a symbol of power and cutting, engendering dread in many a foe.

And so it is with the Tarot Swords suit, which not only causes fear in many querents and readers--but also reflects the same relating to an issue at hand.

In this episode of my Naked Tarot Podcast, I discusses a recent YouTube video from some punk who thinks that Tarot should NOT be accessible to the masses--because they'll "degrade" the cards, water down the meanings and "turn it into shit". 

Although the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot and Thoth decks are replete with esoteric symbolism (Western Hermeticism, especially), the 78 cards--the underlying structure or "bones" of a Tarot deck--aren't shackled to those two traditions.