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The Good Tarot by Colette Baron-Reid

The Good Tarot

“The Good Tarot doesn’t shy away from the truth of our sufferings.  Instead, it gives us hope that no matter how many times we stumble, we nevertheless find immense treasures as we discover our true natures as spiritual beings expressing ourselves through the art of living in the realm of form.”

From the Good Tarot by Colette Baron-Reid

So, let me say upfront, I so did not want to like this deck.

The title of it annoys me, just a little bit…

I mean, if there is a ‘Good Tarot’ does that mean that there is a ‘Bad Tarot’?  If so, could someone direct me to the bad deck?  Further, what are the qualifications for a good tarot and a bad tarot?

Is this like Good Witches and Wicked Witches? Are ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ real or simply in the eye of the beholder?

The good news (or could it be bad news?) is that I decided to give the deck a chance.  After all, I have several decks by Colette Baron-Reid, and I have thoroughly enjoyed them.

Before I read through the LWB (that’s tarotspeak for Little White Book that usually comes with a tarot deck), I looked through the deck.  It’s a beautifully designed deck that features mystical, feminine empowering, and fantastical imagery.  There are a few changes that have been made to the card names.  Lovers is now Love, Death is now Transformation, Temperance is now Patience, The Devil is now Temptation, and Judgment is now simply called Call.  Further, the traditional swords, pentacles, cups, and wands have been be replaced with their elemental correspondences air, earth, water, and fire, and there are some minor tweaks to the titles of the court cards.  Otherwise, the deck is easy to understand, and the cards are easy to designate for people that are more familiar with the cards.

After reading through the LWB, I loved the approach that CBR (Colette Baron-Reid) uses.  Instead of designating cards to traditional meanings, she uses simplified keywords and affirmations.  If I am understanding her correctly, she wants to empower the client and instead of showing archetypal trends that normally may be challenging, she wants to help the end-user see how challenges can be opportunities.  I feel that this is very creative and is a rather productive use of the deck.  This deck could be used by traditional tarot practitioners, but opens itself up to life coaches, psychologists, or other modalities that do not ordinarily use cards.

Let me give an example.

The 5 of Air (5 of Swords) is a card that is associated with strife and arguments.  In the ‘Good Tarot’, CBR’s keywords are still tension and conflict.  However, here is the affirmation that she uses:

“Conflict is a good way to see my motives and intentions.  I can use this experience to grow into a more authentic version of myself. It’s not important to win.  It’s important to have integrity.  Other people have different ways of thinking and may not always be in agreement with me.  I open to this opportunity to live and let live.”

Usually, conflict occurs when two people have differing ideas about a situation.  This can be personal, social, or political.   When someone steps over the line of wanting something that you believe you should have or should be able to attain problems can occur.  Of course, the key to all of this is whether the conflict is worth it or not.  If it is worth it, then strife should not be something that consumes you and you should be able to proceed forward with confidence.  However, if you do not feel its worth it, then let it go and fight for something you feel strongly about.

I feel that the most powerful part of this deck is giving the querent (a fancy word for a person that is asking questions) the opportunity to choose how they wish to proceed.  If you choose to fight the good fight, then obstacles or outside influences shouldn’t matter.  You are either all in or you are not.  If you choose to walk away, then you have learned how to pick your battles.  Either way, you are more psychologically sound for making personal choices.

In the back of the LWB CBR gives a bit of insight into spreads.  She recommends only doing one card or three-card spreads with the deck but emphasizes that they can be used to do larger spreads.  Her main point that she pushes throughout the LWB is that this oracle is used to co-create with the universe in a constructive way rather than just being passive to its energies or messages.

Here is one of the spreads:

Three Card Reading: (From the LWB)

Card 1: Represents where you are now and what energy is affecting the situation.

Card 2: Represents what is coming in to influence the situation

Card 3:  Represents the energy that will come into the situation if you continue along the same path you are on.

I decided to do a reading of my own with this deck.

My question:  Should I work on the project?

Card 1:  10 of Earth   Card 2:  10 of Water   Card 3: 9 of Air

The Reading:

I have recently pondered whether I should work on a new project.  Although this is not part of my career as an astrologer or life coach, I still have been drawn to this type of creative work before.  I will admit that I was gob smacked when I drew the 9 of Air, which has a notorious negative connotation.

Card 1: 10 of Earth: Affluence, material abundance, mastery, financial security, inherited wealth and knowledge

Affirmation for 10 of Earth:  I am now able to step back and observe the results of what I built through my dedication and hard work.  I claim ownership of the castles I built that have taken form in the material world. I have achieved mastery and inherited treasures of knowledge and experience thanks to all I have been through.  I smile appreciatively at my run of good fortune.

This card made a lot of sense.  I have been in my profession for 30 years and have built a sizeable practice and have been able to do astrological/intuitive counseling exclusively for 3 decades.  It’s home to me and I have a vast knowledge of the industry and how to market within it.  However, this can also be a bit scary because working on another project might take time away from my business practice and I need to figure out whether I would like to take that type of risk.

Card 2:  10 of Water:  Serenity, peace, good fortune, well-being

Affirmation for 10 of Water:  All is well with the world and with me.  Well-being is my natural state. Everything I need comes to me easily and effortlessly. I feel joy and express it to others as I look around and see all the love that we share. I take pleasure in all I have accomplished. Whatever attention I receive or don’t receive, I am serene, for I know good well what it took to get where I am.  I celebrate myself and all who traveled down this road with me and feel grateful to Spirit for being my companion always.

Card 2 represents what is coming in to influence the situation.  I feel that this card reflects that I am happy and content with what I am doing and that I should realize that even if the project that I work on doesn’t produce much fruit that I need to do it because I already have accomplished a lot with my career and profession.  There is much to celebrate.  Not many people have the luxury of working in the same profession for three decades.  I feel that this card also reflects a positive support system that will be around me as I travel this new path.

Card 3:  9 of Air:  Shifting negative self-talk to self-compassion, from fear to possibility, a call to faith.

Affirmation for 9 of Air:   With a gentle, mellifluous voice, I tell myself that I will be okay, that I am okay, and that any fear is merely false evidence appearing as real. I forgive myself because I know I am a human trying the best I can and need only call on Spirit to remember that I can and will do better as new possibilities begin to gather on my horizons.

Card 3 represents the energy that will come into the situation if you continue on the same path you are on.  Traditionally, the 9 of air is associated with fears, phobias, nightmares and other nasty mental situations that may plague me.  Starting a new project is difficult and challenging, and I have already experienced some of the 9 of air elements.  However, using this affirmation technique, it tells me to attempt to push past the thoughts and call upon my spiritual beliefs in those moments when fears may overwhelm me.  Ordinarily, this card might encourage someone to abandon ship, and focus on the tried and true safety of the 10 of earth.  However, the Good Tarot encourages me to press in and press on.

Conclusion:

After spending some time with this deck, I would highly recommend it to anyone that wants to seek gentle clarity that offers you options and positive self-talk to push you beyond your problems.  It’s a great deck for people that are going through struggles and need a little extra boost.  I’ve already made a list of people that I feel would benefit from this deck and will purchase several copies as gifts during the holiday season.  My only complaint is that I wish CBR had created an actual book to go with the deck rather than the LWB, it would have given her an opportunity to really flesh out her ideals, which are highly creative, yet could have been so much more.

Great job, CBR.  Keep them coming!

Here is where you can get the deck — The Good Tarot by Colette Baron-Reid

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Psychological Hauntings — Dealing With Our Inner Ghosts and Demons

Psychological HauntingsI don’t like tarot reversals.  I never have. I don’t really get them.  I suppose I’m a little geeky and prefer elemental dignities or astrological attributions.  But, I don’t like reversals.

I mean there are 78 cards in tarot deck and many of them are already difficult. Why would one need to add another whole set of difficult cards to a reading?  But, I digress… this is not a post about card reversals.

This blog post is about “Psychological Hauntings”, which is the theme of “Keep It Magic” for the month of November.

However, when I pulled out the tarot and asked the cards a simple question (whatever that means), “What are psychological hauntings?”  The tarot card I drew was the Two of Cups Reversed (Rx).  Ordinarily, I would just turn the card upright and move right along to interpretation.  I must admit that I was “haunted” by this ordinarily graceful card that represents “relationships”.

Sigh.

Before I go into personally being haunted by the “2 of Cups Rx”, let me explain what a psychological haunting is.

In “Hauntings:  Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives” written by Jungian Analyst John Hollis, we come face to face with the reality that ghosts and spectral objects don’t necessarily come after us in the physical world (although in some cases they do), yet more often than not the demons we need to exercise live within and are the result of psychological traumas that the psyche has difficulty integrating.  In many cases, these are a direct result of the “complexes” we have developed and/or those we inherited.

Hollis has this to say:

“We all have complexes because we have a history, and history charges our psychic life with energized clusters of valence.  Some complexes exercise a benign protective role in our lives.  Without some positive experience of bonding and trust, we would be prevented from forming commitments and relationships.  Yet others bind us to trauma, immaturity, and outdated prejudicial perspectives.  The recrudescence of these fragmentary histories invariable usurps our purchase on the present and plunges us into our replicative pasts.  Some complexes even dominate an entire life.”  (Hollis, Kindle Edition)

In essence, what Hollis discusses is that we are the sum of our experiences good or bad.  Our experiences tend to create the foundation of our personality and as such our complexes are built around them.

In my article on “The Psychological Model of the Psyche”, I give three descriptions of complexes as follows:

The Dynamics of Complexes:

  1. Clusters of feeling toned associations around a common theme
  2. All complexes have experiences associated with them.  We all have experiences with mother, father, money, work and career, and our ego (and many many more).
  3. Complexes make us behave in ways that are not part of our usual everyday personality.  The complex temporarily takes over.  This is called ‘complexing out’, and it is where the Ego (center of personality) suffers from a reduced ability to operate appropriately.   For example, during your early life you lived poorly, and your family struggled with lack of opportunities and poor job conditions.  You grow up and you achieve some success.  An event occurs in your life, where you either lose your job, or some form of financial struggle occurs and you go back to the feelings of financial suffering in your childhood.   The anxiety you are feeling and the reactions to your situation may cause you to behave in ways that you normally wouldn’t.   This is called complexing out.

 (Astro 101 fans we will discuss complexes thoroughly when we get to aspects)

Hollis goes on to say:

“When one has resided long enough in a toxic zone, one carries the toxin within, always, and all one can do is flush it out into the realm of consciousness and wrestle with it.”

What a powerful statement!  The only way for us to deal with the psychological hauntings (this can be fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, sexual abuse, and lack of parenting) is to wrestle with them.  This means we have to pull it out of the haunted house of our psyche and deal with it.  Otherwise, the ghosts take over and we are then controlled or for lack of a better phrase “possessed” by our inner demons.

So, let’s go to my personal haunting created by my pulling the 2 of Cups Rx.   As I stated, this is traditionally a relationship card and usually a good one.  Now in a humorous synchronistic way (also discussed in Hollis’ book), if you take reversals to mean the opposite of what the upright position states, then the 2 of Cups Rx is rather fitting.  Rather than being a “happy relationship”, it reflects dysfunctional relationships.

Karen Zondag in her book, “Tarot as a Way of Life,” refers to all of the two’s in the tarot as conflict cards.  Although she states that the female two’s (cups and pentacles) refer to a gentler and more graceful way of dealing with conflict than the male two’s (wands and swords); nevertheless, a conflict exists.  Why?  Every relationship that enters our life on some level reflects a cast of inner characters.  In some cases, these inner characters are a “match” and they act benign.  However, some relationships stir up our complexes (even parental relationships especially in dysfunctional systems) and can then when we experience “feeling toned associations” that are similar to the initial experience, the complex then will take over or as I stated earlier,  “we complex out”.

According to the tarot, the key to “psychological hauntings” is our relationships.  Psychology says that our outer relationships are also inner relationships.  A cast of our own characters.  Creating relationships with these inner characters helps cure our internal hauntings and as a result our “complexes” can be used in a creative rather than a destructive manner.

You can learn more about ‘psychological hauntings’ on the next episode of Keep It Magic which will air on November 12, 2013.

Storm Cestavani is the co-host of the top rated metaphysical show “Keep It Magic” and the co-creator of the “Tarot Magic” with Coventry Creations.  Storm is available for consultations by setting up an appointment to speak with him.  Simply click on Book A Reading with Storm at the top of the page.

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