It’s only now beginning to sink in. What I’ve done, I mean. If you would have asked me a year ago whether I’d ever be a deck artist/creator, I’d probably have sighed and said, “Maybe, someday.” And then even after I started working on the Lenormand, I didn’t consider actual cards in actual boxes with an actual book… but so much momentum was building and there was only one way to go. And now here I am, reading emails and forum posts and blog entries that other people are writing about my cards, as they hold them in their hands.

It’s very surreal to me.

It’s hard to read the good stuff and the bad stuff. I shouldn’t say that, but it’s true. The bad stuff is just painful. The good stuff is just perplexing. You know how when you bake twelve dozen cookies for some big event and then you get done and everyone rants and raves about the cookies but you can’t even touch them because you spent all that time making them and looking at them kind of makes you a little queasy? It’s almost like that.

I’ve got a handful of decks left and then poof! What next? A book maybe. Who knows. Going back to the cards, going back to tarot. Back to my sitters. Back to self. That’s where it all begins.

The week I sent out the pre-ordered decks I also finished all the requirements of my Bachelor’s degree and my daughter took her first steps. In the weeks before that, my son turned three and I traveled to New York City for Readers Studio. Days earlier I got my cast off my fractured wrist — and I’m still healing. Maybe I just need to relax for awhile, but the wheel keeps turning and I’m compelled to move. There will always be milestones, challenges and rites, conferences, meetings and coffee with friends, roller derby, reading and writing, that creative fire burning, prickling my fingers to make something new.

The Rider, the Stork and the Snake cards from The Melissa Lenormand.

These are my cards today. This is what I am now. The Rider is the industrious maker — the push forward — the momentum that keeps the wheel spinning. The Stork is the divine inspiration, the seed of new creation. The Snake is the knowledge of good and evil, that precocious balance I strive for and sometimes hit — my head wrapped around these new ideas — my obsessive nature that won’t let me drop it, won’t let me feel at ease. It’s wonderful and dangerous and difficult — but it always is, I imagine, when you run 250 copies of yourself and fling them out into the world.

I do have standards. Who I will read for, who I won’t. What I will read about, what I won’t. I’ve never read for men who were romantically interested in me. I don’t read for children or teenagers – only adults who are capable of taking personal responsibility for their choices and actions. I don’t read about medical conditions. I don’t like to read about legal matters, and to cover my bases now, I have to explain in plain English, that my readings are for entertainment only (imagine me spitting those words out). In the state of Ohio, I became an ordained minister of the Church of Universal Life (online) in order to provide “spiritual counseling”. I still have my certificate, that I printed out from the webpage (it even has the URL at the top), in a binder – just in case I’m ever hassled. In some states and counties, fortune telling, as they put it in the books, is completely illegal.

I read for myself all the time. This is probably the greatest benefit of reading cards – how you can use them for yourself. I don’t read compulsively on every decision I’m faced with. Instead I typically draw one to three cards a day, make some notes in my journal, and let myself be surprised by how Universe finds a way to place those cards in my path. Certain cards resonate with me so deeply. The Empress is the third card in the Major Arcana. She represents a feminine receptive energy, sensuality, sexuality, motherhood. She’s typically depicted as voluptuous or pregnant or surrounded by animals. Over the years I’ve connected with her raw sexual energy, her fertility and now, her store of womanly wisdom. I’m constantly amazed by the new lessons that the Empress teaches me. She’s a good friend of mine. I’ve even made photo-copies of that card from my favorite decks to tape to my bathroom mirror. She reminds me of the things I want to be and I’m grateful for her influence in my life.

I even read for other tarot readers. Thanks to the internet I’ve gotten to know many tarot readers all over the world and even form close friendships with a few. I read cards for them – partially out of professional courtesy, but also because I have a lot of guts. It can be intimidating to read for someone who is reading the cards in a completely different fashion as you’re throwing them on the table. And that’s part of the charm of tarot. Everyone has their own reading voice and style. Some readers claim to channel spirits. Some say they are psychic – in the very day-time television sense of the word. Others, like me, say that we’re just readers. That we’re energy consultants – and we open dialogues with the self that you might have otherwise shied away from.

Jan is another tarot reader. She works full-time in a dreadful retail position and does tarot consulting in her precious free time. She is one of my regular querents – often asking me for spiritual advice. She senses this great void in her life and longs for something to fill it up. Over the years I’ve been reading for her, we’ve worked on big questions she’s had – meaning of life kind of stuff. Her readings are typically intense, but incredibly satisfying for me – only because her attitude toward the cards is so open and she just loves to talk her way through one of my readings. It’s more fun when the sitter is engaged in the reading, asking questions and pointing out things in the cards I might have missed on my own. There’s no happier feeling for me than sitting over a spread of cards with a cup of coffee and a good friend with a soft, open heart.

Remember the girl from the beginning? The grad school question? There were five cards on the table, and I was pointing to each, in-between each and trying my best to figure out the cardinal directions from where I was sitting, as I explained to her what she might encounter if she chose one certain grad program over another. After I would finish up each one, she would smile and nod, her eyes bright and focused on the table. She didn’t say much while I was reading, just asking a few questions about the particulars of the cards. When I finished the reading, I let it sink in a few minutes while she continued her careful examination of the spread.

“Well, was it good?”

“Yes!” she smiled widely, “It was so good. It was so fun. It was… different than what I was expecting.”

Yes. The Universe usually is.

Energy is the other factor in what I do. I’m not a religious person and I find that my religious ideas are really irrelevant anyway. Tarot may be viewed as a spiritual practice – and indeed it is helpful to connect to ones high sense of self. But I do believe that any energy I use up, give off, is used up and given off by someone or something else. The energy is all connected. I call this the Universe. It’s sort of the force that compels me. And maybe that’s how the cards work. By tapping into that realm or dimension where we sense things on the elemental Universal energy level. I like to feel like I’m in touch with the Universe. Capital U.

I’ve never done the phone lines, but I’ve thought about it. After my kids were born, I was no longer comfortable having strangers come into my house for readings and getting out of the house became more and more impractical. Regular clients know my phone number and if I wasn’t able to arrange a meeting or phone call, I would read for them on chat or through email. The internet has changed everything (even psychic counseling!) and I regularly get referrals for my email readings. It’s a steady source of income, but I miss the cash I could bring in with face-to-face readings. Not to mention the energy exchange – it’s a bit of a rush when you’re right on.

I sat next to the chair by the front door for a good ten minutes. Waffling. I really wanted to go to the bar and hand the tender my card and say, Hey, hire me! But I didn’t want to go either. I was afraid I’d sit there most of the night by myself, feeling silly and out of place, afraid I’d lose the courage to talk to anyone — and yet I also felt the Universe nudging me out, gently. Here’s your purse, Universe said. Make sure you have some cash to buy a beer and leave a tip. Now put your boots on and go!

It was fortunate that a few old friends who I hadn’t seen in a long while happened to be there. It was doubly fortunate that the bar owner himself showed up. I worked up the courage to introduce myself when I noticed he was taking a break, drinking a beer at the bar.

He was really open to the idea of having me read there. He took my card and asked me all kinds of questions. He said he always thought it was interesting and his sister gets her cards read frequently. He said that he would think about it and put some feelers out to see if his customers would be interested in it.

When I got back to my table, a woman — friend of a friend, asked what I was doing. I told her how I read cards and wanted to start reading at the bar. She pursed her lips and said, “Uh, want to… practice… on me?”

I just shrugged and said, sure. Universe was in my bag, practically pulling my cards out before I even got my hands in. I put down five cards, met her eyes, and opened my mouth to speak.

Ten minutes later, she sat there quiet, lips parted — like the words wouldn’t materialize. Finally, she cried out, “It’s like you’ve known me my whole life!” grabbed her purse and started rifling through it. She pulled out a tiny wallet and shoved a wad of cash in my face. “Here! Take it! Please!! It’s all the cash I have.”

I never ended up reading in the bar. It was too draining to be super-mom all day and super-tarot reader all night. But when you’re open to the gentle nudges of Universe, you find yourself in situations that are surprising, exciting and new.

In 1909 Sir Alfred Edward Waite released a deck he designed, commissioned by an artist named Pamela Coleman Smith. He designed the cards in the metaphysical tradition of the Golden Dawn Society (an esoteric club that was en vogue with the upper-middle classes of England and America) and Pixie illustrated them. The Rider publishing house printed the cards and the resulting deck, the Rider-Waite Tarot (now the Rider-Waite-Smith or Pamela Coleman Smith deck), has become the most popular and arguably the most accessible system of divination that the western world has known.

The first known use of tarrochi cards (a popular card game in Italy and France) for divination dates roughly back to 16th century France. The cards included twenty-two themed cards that became what is known as the Major Arcana and fifty-six pip cards that roughly correspond to a standard pack of playing cards (included was an extra court card for each suite – the page). Historically, the pips were plain – numbered with the suite – like playing card pips. That’s why Waite’s contribution to tarot was so revolutionary – he envisioned fully illustrated scenic pips that conveyed the card meaning using symbols that were relevant to the tradition of the Golden Dawn Society. Today there are thousands upon thousands of tarot decks that build on that tradition and apply wholly different symbols to mean more or less the same thing. The point being, if you can read a RWS deck, you can read 90% of the tarot packs you’ll find at any given metashop. Like vampires? There’s a tarot for you. Like fairies? The Renaissance? Romantic period? The novels of Jane Austen? Hello Kitty? There’s a tarot pack for you.

The Major cards are numbered zero through twenty-one. The Fool is zero. The World is twenty-one. The cards in-between represent sweeping themes and archetypes that make up human existence. The Minor Arcana cards in the suits of Cups, Wands, Pentacles and Swords (hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades, respectively), Ace through King, represent situations, events, actions and people that one might encounter in daily life.

Danielle sat on the floor in my living room, hand clutching a tissue, bent over a chest I used as a coffee-table. I was opposite her, pulling cards and passing them over the steady stream of curling incense smoke before they found their place on the woven scarf I used as a spread cloth. The cards weren’t good and her eyes were spilling over with tears. Turbulent court cards, Kings and Knights. She was in a troubled marriage. She had two small children at home and while she worked hard as a Realtor, she had little success in the downtrodden rural economy. She wanted desperately to leave her husband – had even considered an affair at one point, but feared his temper and the repercussions for her children. It wouldn’t matter, I told her, turning over the Page of Cups and then Eight of Swords. The Eight is illustrated with a bound and blindfolded woman, surrounded by eight swords. The cold wind whips her hair across her pallid face and the landscape is harsh and barren. He would be arrested, in jail soon enough. She exhaled loudly and burst into awkward laughter. I pursed my lips while she described his violent outbursts. He’d never hit her, she insisted. He’d never hurt the kids, but still… something fierce was building up inside him.

She called me the next morning to let me know that he’d been picked up by the cops overnight during a bar fight. She had packed her children up and moved them back in with her parents. She thanked me over and over again for the reading – for the insight it provided her and promised that she would be calling again, that she would tell all her friends about the amazing wonderful psychic she had met. I haven’t heard from her since.

I am not psychic. Not in the way it’s portrayed on television. A friend of mine once accused me of defrauding people – letting them believe I was seeing into their minds. It’s not like that though and I never represent myself in that way. My card says my name – followed by the words “Tarot Consultant.”

Anyone can read cards. Some of the best readings I’ve ever gotten were from people who had never seen a tarot pack before. I would put the cards in front of them and ask them to shuffle. Ask them to pull. Close your eyes. Tell me what you see in the cards. Tell me how it relates to me. Say the first thing that pops into your mind. Make it up if you have to.

I think that part of what I do is just opening a dialogue. The images in the cards immediately bring to mind specific situations that nearly everyone has gone through. Seeing those trigger memories that we connect with our current situations. Sometimes just being reminded of lessons we’ve learned in the past is enough to help us solve the problems ahead of us. It’s also helpful, when we’ve exhausted all rational means of problem-solving, to look at something from a completely irrational angle. Try something crazy to break out of the rut we’ve found ourselves in. Get a tarot reading. How irrational is that? Once we begin to see our small problems as part of a larger human experience, they feel more manageable. That’s all I do. I facilitate the irrational.

And then there’s the part where I’m just really good at reading people’s intentions. It’s not hard, when you’ve spent enough time talking to someone, to guess how their current actions are going to influence future decisions. Perhaps that is the talent I actually possess. I don’t like to call it cold reading – because that makes it sound like something deceitful. I don’t look for personal queues and predict that a tall, dark stranger whose first name begins with T will come into your life the second week of February. Maybe I’m just not that good. Instead, I see a Knight of Swords and I suggest that the energy is ripe for an intense encounter with someone who will impress you with sharp opinions, quick wit and high energy. Does it happen? I don’t know. It has happened for me though – when I know what to look for, I see it. I guess that’s part of the trick too, right? But what does it say about our human minds – that we’re susceptible to this kind of suggestion? Maybe we were meant to be suggested to, that’s all I’m saying.

You know what would be great? If these things could just print up themselves. I’ve been banging my head against a wall for weeks trying to figure out the logistics of all of this and honestly, I still don’t know where I’m going.

It’s one thing or another and all of them add up to a big headache for me. But at this point, I have to finish. I have to push through. I can’t just let it drop when I’m so so close.

When I started the project, I never really had much vision for the finished physical cards. Honestly it was more of an exercise in photoshop, collage, art, lenormand stuff. I’ve been wanting to make a tarot pack for a long time and thought doing this would give me the courage and background to tackle a full seventy-eight card deck.

And now? Well, I’m still not sure. Yes, it’s satisfying, but it’s also a pain. And the only reason I can think of doing it is because I’m either crazy or in love (and often, being crazy-in-love is exactly the reason we tackle large thankless artful projects with no hopes of compensation, right?).

And that sort of brings me around to other questions that have been nagging at me the past few weeks. Questions like, just what am I doing, really? Am I an artist? Am I a tarot reader? Am I a writer? A crafter? I feel like if I were just one thing — an artist, for example, bringing forth a big project like the Lenormand, or putting together a proper tarot pack, would be no problem. Piece of cake! It’s what I do, see? I am (insert ONE thing here).

But the truth is, I’m so many things and I find myself, my time, my mind and my desires splintered in so many directions that I can’t even begin to nail myself to a wall. And frankly, that seems like it would be bad for my career.

Earlier this week I listened to a marketing teleconference call by Elizabeth Genco Purvis.  And one of the things she talked about was putting your authentic self into your marketing for your business. And it got me thinking that I either A. Don’t have an authentic self or B. My authentic self is schizophrenic. And every time I ever read anything about being successful in business or life or whatever, they talk about having a clear focus. But me? I’m all over the map! Yes, I love reading tarot cards, but I also love sewing handbags. I love art, but I make a lot more money doing freelance copywriting. It’s very satisfying designing crochet patterns. I want to open a coffeeshop. I want to be a llama farmer. If I could make sauerkraut all day, I’d be happy (for a few weeks, that is — then it’d be on to something new). Ooooh, there’s my ukulele in the corner. Wonder if I could get a gig to play down at the bar next week…

So how do I pack all that authentic self into one little website about tarot? And if I’m busy marketing my tarot practice, when do I get time for learning to spin recycled art yarn out of dryer lint and dog hair? And if you’re reading all this authentic stuff about me, are you going to think to yourself, “This lady is nuts!! I don’t want her probing the dark recesses of my past or divining the mysteries of my future!!”

Because the truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it, or how I’m going to get anything done! Like self-publishing a deck of cards, I’m mostly doing this all by the seat of my pants. I can’t think of any way to be more authentic than that. And honestly, honestly. It’s hard for me.

Thanks for playing! I’ll do another giveaway in a few weeks for Yule.

I have a new Facebook Fan page! And it’s great! It’s sort of addicting too, and I know it shouldn’t take the place of a proper blog, for for the moment, it totally has. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m somewhat rather addicted to facebook anyway.

I wanted to have some kind of monthly contest on my fan page, but it turns out that kind of a thing is a no-no with facebook, so I’m going to do a monthly contest on my blog instead — and just promote it on facebook. That works for everyone, right? Even the people who don’t have facebook.

It seems as though my “fans” on FB are mostly people I know who aren’t tarot readers, but I know a lot of readers like to read this blog — so for this contest I’m offering the choice between two prizes! One person will win either:

• A three-five card reading — online (pdf), in chat (Skype) or in person if you’re in the Richmond-area
• A pretty handmade batik and hemp tarot bag like this one in the batik colors of my choosing

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment below answering the following:

Tell me about your first experience having a tarot reading done for yourself. If you’ve never had your cards read, what has been holding you back?

If you’d like an additional entry, follow me on twitter (@melissajohill) and retweet the following:

RT @melissajohill Check out Mel’s tarot blog & win a free tarot reading or tarot bag! http://digg.com/u1GUxC

And for one final additional entry into my magical hat of names, post about this contest on your blog (make sure you link to this entry so I get a pingback!).

If you reblog or retweet this, please make a note in the comments too so I will put in your extra entries!

This contest will run from now till Nov. 30 — plenty of time to enter and spread the word. On Nov. 30 I’ll randomly draw a winner and notify that person via email. Good luck everyone!

I have three new cards done on the oracle deck. The Fox, the Woman and the Tree cards are all finished. You can see all of them on the oracle deck page. I have been having a ball working on this when I get the time. I really need about six extra hours in the day if I’m going to get anything done at all.

Oh, I also redid the readings page finally. Haha. I know a few of you have been pestering me about that! Let me know if something is confusing or unclear.

This week I probably won’t be able to do any more cards. I have a marathon sewing session ahead of me for Halloween. My husband needs me to sew him a lab coat a la Dr. Horrible. For me, I’m going as a fortune teller (of course!) and I’m going to try to sew a complete underbust corset. This will probably end with a lot of cursing and hanging out with my friend Jack (the seam ripper). I haven’t even decided what the kids are going to be — but probably something simple — using materials I already have in my fabric stash. I have a hunch I may just cut eye holes in a sheet for Sullivan. I know it’s a ridiculously simple costume, but in my head he’d love it and be so cute!

Halloween/Samhain is my absolute favorite time of the year. And then on Nov. 1st, we’re going to go to a Dia de los Muertos festival. I have my house all decorated for it. I probably decorate more for harvest season and Halloween than I do for Yule. And right now I’m batty (get it, batty!) about Halloween or skull themed tarot decks, of course!

I actually got some new tarot decks this week. Thanks to some great people on a certain tarot forum, I now have a copy of MRP’s Fairy Tale tarot. I also have the companion book for the Fantastic Menagerie finally! This is one of my absolute favorite decks, so I’m pretty happy about that. Once I’ve had a chance to sit down the Fairy Tale, I’ll post a review.

Next up on my wishlist would be Lisa Hunt’s Fairy Tale deck. Looks absolutely lovey and dreamy and soft! Maybe for Yule.

I have a novel to read before midnight tonight for my English Lit class and some Spanish homework to do for tomorrow! Have a great day everyone!