Saturday, July 15, 2017

Are you a Tarot blogger? Want to Hop with us? (Next topic: Respecting the Tarot)

Do you blog about the Tarot? Do you want to help build community among Tarot bloggers? If so, consider joining the Tarot Blog Hop.

Eight times a year (aligned with the eight Wiccan sabbats--but that is only because it was something that many of us Tarot bloggers knew, so it doesn't have to do anything with the sabbat the Hop lands on), a dozen or more Tarot readers, authors, and experts, blog about one of their favorite subjects--the Tarot.


The Tarot Blog Hop is in its fifth year.
What are the rules?


Members of the Tarot Blog Hop commit to doing two blog hops a year (out of the eight). They link to two neighbors, and create a link chain leading from one blog to another in a big circle. And most importantly, our posts are about a theme that a volunteer wrangler and cat herder came up with.


We organize the Tarot Blog Hop though a Facebook group (you must confirm that you blog about the Tarot before we let you join the group---because that's the purpose of the group).


What type of topics could you be blogging about?


Good question. The next Tarot Blog Hop is being wrangled by me (August 1, 2017), and here is the blogging prompt that I provided to the group:


Our theme for this Tarot Blog Hop is pretty broad--Respecting the divinatory arts, with an emphasis on Tarot.


When I was growing up, I spent some time with my Wiccan aunt. Many of the lessons I learned from her about the occult have affected me and the way I approach things. One of the lessons that I learned was to respect divination systems.


My first lesson in this was in relation to a Magic Eight Ball (as silly of a divination device as you can get). “Respect the Eight Ball, and it will give you accurate answers,” my aunt told me. Over the years, I have learned that she was right about this advice.


As a result, one of the things I teach is “Show respect to the divination systems you are using, even if they are silly systems.”


We all have rules, habits, customs that are our ways of showing respect to our divination tools--things that we do that seem to increase our connection (therefore, our accurancy) with our divination tools.


We also know things to avoid doing--things that seem to annoy our divination tools--things that end up with us saying, “Don’t do that--it upsets the cards.” For instance, my tools gets uppity when someone keeps rewording a question in an attempt to get the answer that they want to hear--snarky answers start to happen, and total silence descends if one does not get the hint that the cards have given all they intend to give you.


So your mission this Tarot Blog Hop is to discuss how you show respect to the Tarot (remember it is called the “Tarot Blog Hop”) and things that you have learned not to do. It can range from smudging the deck periodically to elaborate rituals like the Golden Dawn uses, from not using the cards until the dinner table is clean to well, whatever it is that you do. We all have stories about this subject--if you don’t, you would be the first reader I ever encountered that didn’t have stuff to say on this topic.


[Would you like to take part in the Tarot Blog Hop? If so, come join us on the Facebook group.]

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