Hello, I'm T.

[burningtarot]

Hi there, I'm T and I've been reading Tarot a little over 30 years. I live in the woods of Oregon, where I roam the pines and lava fields, rock formations and creeks. For a day job, I'm a freelance writer, editor, artist, and occasionally adjunct faculty at a college. I have a tiny podcast called Burning Tarot and created several decks and art projects by that same name.

 

So, hi! I'm really looking forward to connecting with other readers and Tarot nerds. I quit social media about three years ago due to the unethical business practices of the technology companies involved (and hey, also for the sake of my sanity)... so I'm not connected to Instagram witches and Facebook Tarot discussions and such. Just a lone solo practitioner in the woods of Oregon.

 

Here's a photo of the woods where I live:

 

 

[stephanelli]

Welcome to the forum, lovely picture!

[joy]

Hello @burningtarotwelcome to the TT&M Family

[TheLoracular]

Welcome T!

By wonderful serendipity, I had started listening to "Ace & Devils" last night but had to pause and take care of IRL things, then forgot to go back.  I'd stumbled across your podcasts in September and put them on my "to do" list but hadn't gotten far into it.  Now I will definitely be listening to them all.  They are marvelous. 

[burningtarot]

@TheLoracular  *blushing*  awww thanks! i wonder, how on earth did you hear about Burning Tarot? i haven't promoted it much at all, in fact kind of feeling like -- like it's very intimate and i'm mostly talking to people i know, clients and such.

 

thanks for the welcome, @stephanelli and @joy !

 

 

[TheLoracular]

@burningtarot
So....

Back in mid October, I began collecting websites of tarot readers who offered free content, blogs on the tarot, publisher sites, forums, artist sites, blah blah the whole works.  I am starting to assemble an add-free wiki that is about everything tarot and nothing but tarot.   Originally, I was going to publicly launch it in January but I've decided to focus instead on getting my own Twitch/YouTube/podcast content going first and work more slowly on the wiki and launch it in July instead.   

Somewhere in my deep delving of looking for any & all active or archived tarot podcasters I found you!!!  You just happened to be on my list and the title caught my attention, made me curious enough to start to listen to and I'm so glad.  Yesterday was an especially trying day.  About  a half hour after I'd finished posting to TT&M. my domestic partner got a phone call from his doctor who had just eyed his latest blood work (Frank has a rare condition called ITP that causes his platelet count to crash sometimes but not always when he gets any sort of infection so he gets weekly blood draws from his visiting nurse) and told him to call 911 and get to the hospital for a transfusion.  

After he was off to the hospital, I sat back down and started listening some more to Aces & Devils and did the mediational work you set up before your CC reading.  And it was -perfect- in bringing my anxiety down to the place I could cope with everything else.   

Frank is fine today, well as fine as anyone who had spend eight hours a day in an ER with a blood transfusion and started prednisone.  

Part of my hope for my wiki is that I can bring more viewers/readers to sites like yours where the content is really good, unique and deep.  But I am also, selfishly, learning from content creators like you about what kind of tarot content I want to create myself in 2021 through research and comparing/contrasting different styles and presentations.  

Edited November 6, 2020 by TheLoracular

[burningtarot]

very cool, @TheLoracular thanks for telling me the whole story. that must be SO stressful and difficult for you and your partner! i'm glad he is okay.

 

i feel like there's a place for small, intimate groups learning and reading together through a reader-leader, via podcast, YouTube, etc. they can come together quite naturally. most of the internet is about trying to "scale" - make everything huge. in the last year or two, i've spent a lot of time thinking about scale on an energetic level. (i also had a super high-level marketing client a year before that, a kind of startup which was poised to get acquired by an important global brand, then scale -- which they did, quite successfully. i was their writer.)

 

my conclusion is that unless you're David Bowie or Barack Obama -- someone who's really *about* scale energies and happens to be good -- it can get dicey. Mussolini and Hitler also did "scale" quite effectively. scale ain't always great.

 

there are some Tarot-involved witches and readers and teachers whose podcasts, workshops, and websites have attracted me for short periods of time. often what i can feel there is a kind of breaking with the core energy, as the person consciously grows her audience, expands her reach, scales her core offerings. maybe some of the certified Tarot readers who come out of her workshop system don't appear to be that successful or that grounded in their work. so anyway, observing all this has made me hesitate on how to approach my own practice and its evolution. i observe this from a place of understanding the magic in the marketing and communications work that takes place as part of it. i believe that really is a kind of magick, and i believe it can compromise us.

 

so, i recognize that doing things small is never going to be financially rewarding for me, and it won't connect me with the "high" feeling of having a large audience. but i would rather be genuine and grounded. anyway, thought i'd share that part of my process with you.

Edited November 6, 2020 by burningtarot
adding @TheLoracular tag thingy

[Tjesi]

Hello, @burningtarot! I love the burned tree in your photo. It's powerful somehow.

 

I'm very new here and new to seriously trying to read the cards, so I'm finding hearing other people's ideas helpful. 

 

Might go look up your podcast too!

[burningtarot]

21 minutes ago, Tjesi said:

Hello, @burningtarot! I love the burned tree in your photo. It's powerful somehow.

 

Thank you, Tjesi! It felt very powerful indeed. I was actually recording a teaching of sorts, up there by that tree, on the day I took the shot. I was learning about "sensory processing issues" and working through some of that in an audio file. I never posted it and I'm not sure it was even a reading. Anyway, thank you for reminding me of that. It was a difficult and cathartic day.

[burningtarot]

23 minutes ago, Tjesi said:

Might go look up your podcast too!

 

There's an area on this forum for self-promotion, so I have posted in there with a link. I don't think we're supposed to post elsewhere. There is a link from my profile under "about me." I think? I'm not new to Tarot, but I am new here! And I'm loving it. I feel there's so much heart here, and not a whole lot of the posturing and (pardon my French) bull**** that I've seen in other forums/Instagram/etc.

[katrinka]

3 hours ago, burningtarot said:

i feel like there's a place for small, intimate groups learning and reading together through a reader-leader, via podcast, YouTube, etc. they can come together quite naturally. most of the internet is about trying to "scale" - make everything huge. in the last year or two, i've spent a lot of time thinking about scale on an energetic level. (i also had a super high-level marketing client a year before that, a kind of startup which was poised to get acquired by an important global brand, then scale -- which they did, quite successfully. i was their writer.)

 

my conclusion is that unless you're David Bowie or Barack Obama -- someone who's really *about* scale energies and happens to be good -- it can get dicey. Mussolini and Hitler also did "scale" quite effectively. scale ain't always great.

 

there are some Tarot-involved witches and readers and teachers whose podcasts, workshops, and websites have attracted me for short periods of time. often what i can feel there is a kind of breaking with the core energy, as the person consciously grows her audience, expands her reach, scales her core offerings. maybe some of the certified Tarot readers who come out of her workshop system don't appear to be that successful or that grounded in their work.

 

Very incisive. People are sacrificing quality for scale. You can see it with a lot of books: they're kind of kid-level, with lots of white space. Everything is expected to be easy and inoffensive to all, not challenging or complex.

 

And I agree about the workshop system. People generally come out no better than they were when they went in. 

I can't totally blame the people creating this content. They're trying to keep afloat, and the current vogue is the "wellness model" so they feel pressured into conforming to that. There's tons of articles on the net about how Tarot has become mainstream and popular, but when you read these articles, what they're talking about isn't really Tarot, it's people pretending to read cards. The content creators could lose customers by actually teaching, since teaching hinges on correcting people when they're wrong, and they don't want to alienate the customer base. 

But I guess Tarot is subject to Sturgeon's Law just like everything else. *sigh*
 

Quote

so anyway, observing all this has made me hesitate on how to approach my own practice and its evolution. i observe this from a place of understanding the magic in the marketing and communications work that takes place as part of it. i believe that really is a kind of magick, and i believe it can compromise us.

 

The only solution I have is to just do the right thing. It's the Sultans of Swing solution: "And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene - he's got a daytime job, he's doin' alright..." 😁 Never sacrifice quality, integrity and credibility for popularity. 
 

Quote

so, i recognize that doing things small is never going to be financially rewarding for me, and it won't connect me with the "high" feeling of having a large audience. but i would rather be genuine and grounded. anyway, thought i'd share that part of my process with you.

 

Exactly. 
 

Edited November 6, 2020 by katrinka

[burningtarot]

thanks, @katrinka .

 

meanwhile, i haven't even been doing readings at all. i've flopped into a sort of post-election malaise. not terrible, not great, and Covid is stirring up everywhere -- definitely hitting record highs where i live.

[LoveLightPeace]

Hi and welcome to TT&M @burningtarot! So glad that you decided to  join us. I love the pic that you've share with us, it's beautiful. I long for warmer weather in my area so that I can comfortably spend some time exploring and enjoying the woods! 

[burningtarot]

thanks for the welcome, @LoveLightPeace .

 

 

[katrinka]

On 12/3/2020 at 7:14 PM, burningtarot said:

thanks, @katrinka .

 

meanwhile, i haven't even been doing readings at all. i've flopped into a sort of post-election malaise. not terrible, not great, and Covid is stirring up everywhere -- definitely hitting record highs where i live.

 

Yeah. Not to get into politics, but it's been a long, ugly fight, and a regime change doesn't mean it's over. Far from it.

And nobody seems to care much about Covid here in Texas, so it's spiking like crazy. The other night I went to the neighborhood convenience store. It's next to a bar with live music, and I heard a guy announce over the PA that there were free shots at the bar. Can you imagine the crush?

So yeah. I still do client readings, but for myself, I don't feel like I want to know.

 

[katrinka]

But, that said, I think we pessimistic types are happier overall than optimists. 
It came out at my job that we wouldn't be getting our gift cards or bonuses or any of that, "this year" (translation: ever) "because of Covid." And a lot of people were very upset. 
But some of us saw it coming months ago. No cards needed, the signs were there:
The company changed hands.
We were on a reduced schedule last spring due to Ford, etc. being shut down.
They've been paying $100 incentives and having $500 drawings for people who come in on their nonscheduled weekends and work overtime. How could anybody actually believe that this was the company's money and not ours?
Those of us who'd been expecting it were annoyed, and yes, we spit nails ("Happy holidays! You get diddly ****!") but not stressing and shattered like the optimistic people. They didn't have a clue, and they were broadsided.
 

[Morenita]

Hello 🙂 I’m new here too. I’ll have to look up your podcast. I’m very interested in tarot. 

[burningtarot]

hi @Morenita! i don't think my tarot podcast shows up in directories, but there is a link on my profile (i think?)

 

@katrinka sometimes it's not really pessimism, more just reality-based practicality. realism!

 

Covid has now struck my family, who live a couple hours from here. it is a close and dysfunctional family. i'm worried, of course. 

 

and on a selfish note: i'm being thrust into dealing with a lot of my ancestral healing and Family Stuff. injured my foot a bit, and the Forest Service is doing a horrible "treatment" for fire prevention in my beautiful forest ... so some days are very dark, and there's not enough nature time or walking. i try to meditate, i get like 2 breaths in before Monkey Mind is swarming with thoughts.

 

on the plus side, i've doing readings again, the Woo is flowin', which feels good. my husband is a secular Jew and we are suddenly doing a lot of Hanukkah activity with a nearby Jewish community - via Zoom and such. my son's at the age where Hebrew school comes up. these things feel healthy and good.

Covid is most definitely here. i did a reading on it in regards to my family, 1 month ago. Ten of Swords, which i interpreted as "it's coming." 8 of Wands: it's coming soon. crowning card The Fool, final outcome Six of Wands, which led me to believe a) we would emerge victorious and b) no way am i visiting my family over the holidays like A Fool. this was before any of them got Covid.

 

i thank the Tarot for helping guide me on that. i have a bunch of health problems, don't want to add Covid to the mix.

 

[MisterTarot]

Hi T,

Your photo of the woods of Oregon looks peaceful and inviting. And the other pics on your website are great too! Hope you enjoy your visits to this forum.

Kind regards,

Don