The Tarot Helped The Spirits To Cross Over

The Colors Of A Multicultural Society

I love Singapore for its eclectic mix of races and religions.  Although I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, I had a taste of ancestor worship from my Peranakan culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peranakan).  Mum is still very traditional about the Chinese New Year celebrations and in spite of almost being a professional pope at home; her beliefs are steeped in Asian superstitions steered by her conviction to maintain true to her Asian roots.  I regularly partake in my Hindu and Muslim friends’ Deepavali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali) and Hari Raya(http://www.yoursingapore.com/content/traveller/en/browse/whats-on/festivals-and-events/hari-raya-aidilfitri.html ) festivities respectively and enjoy taking the camera out on a photography adventure during these festivals to capture the colorful revelry.

The 7^th Month Festival Of The Hungry Ghost

The only festival that I didn’t get was the Chinese festival of the hungry ghost which falls on the 7^th month of the Chinese lunar calendar.  Intrinsic to the festival is ancestor worship where descendants traditionally demonstrate their filial piety to their ancestors by preparing ritualistic food offerings and burning incense, joss paper and papier-mâché form of material goods like clothes, cars, houses, and even Ipads, for their ancestors. Elaborate meals would be served with empty seats for each of the deceased in the family, treating the deceased as if they are still living. Elaborately staged outdoor performances are organized with the first row of chairs left empty in the belief that the deceased would visit and be entertained by these performances.

The reason I didn’t get it was that to me, spirits should be left where they were and not be disturbed.  They lived in their own realm and we lived in ours.  I was brought up to believe that when one dies, he or she can’t take anything material along.  I felt that the burning of joss, incense and other festival paraphernalia was unfriendly to the environment, the smoke irritated my eyes and the smells clung to my hair as I walked past these activities along the street.  Moreover, my dogs were left with very little spaces to “do their thing” when we went out on our nightly walks.

My Dream

That’s the reason why I was thrown into a state of confusion when I had a disconcerting dream a few days ago.  I dreamt of a family of 4, a man, a woman, a little boy and a little girl. I knew none of them.  They stood together facing me and the man told me he couldn’t cross over because the entire family was not properly clothed.  Under any other circumstances, I would have laughed it off as a comical or nonsensical dream.  However, when I recounted the dream to Mum and my friends, they advised that I should purchase 4 sets of papier-mâché clothes and burn them as an offering to the 4 people who appeared in my dream. Their rationale was that this being the Chinese 7^th lunar month, it was the spirits’ way of trying to reach out to me for help.  As I was frightened out of my wits by the thought that I was visited by wandering spirits in my dream, one of my mentors, assured me that being spiritually sensitive at this stage of my life as a professional tarot reader might have opened the opportunity for spirits to communicate with me.  She said it was nothing to be afraid of, and I would be doing a good deed by rendering whatever help I could render.

My Skepticism

Now, I was already a skeptic at the start of my tarot reading journey.  It took me a long time to accept and embrace this skill as a gift from the universe for the purpose of doing something good for the people around me.  I am of course even more skeptical with this “utter nonsense” about spirits visiting me in my dream and my having to help them cross over.  However, I spent the last few days worrying about that family.  And I felt so terrible about my skepticism. What if they truly needed my help and were not a figment of my imagination?  So upon the advice of Mum and my friends, David and I braved the drizzle last night to purchase 4 packs of papier-mâché “clothes and things” with the intention to burn them as an offering to that family tomorrow, on the 15^th day of the 7^th lunar month ( yes, the instructions from Mum and my looney friends were quite specific).  All that time I was muttering in flustered exasperation to myself “You guys had better not be pulling my leg!”

What My Cards Told Me

Still skeptical and fighting mentally with my Catholic upbringing and my rational self, I decided to do a spiritual read with my tarot cards to see what my intuition tells me. And the below were the cards I drew:

1. What’s the situation surrounding that family? - World Reversed

2. Why have they approached me? – Page of Pentacles

3.  How can I help them? – 8 of Wands

4.  Outcome – 4 of Swords

What’s The Situation Surrounding That Family? – World Reversed
This tarot card spread revealed that that family was stuck in this world and not able to move on to the next as they cannot let go off their negative illusions about themselves in their “naked” state.  This “naked” state could have been propelled by their sense of incompletion or non-fulfillment in this world when they were alive.  They were not able to find the light to cross over in this “naked” state. 

Why Have They Approached Me? – Page Of Pentacles
They may have approached me because they wanted to tap into my heightened spiritual consciousness to get help.  I had been opening my mind to a smorgasbord of esoteric studies, discovering new things along my journey of spiritual enrichment.   I was at a stage of learning all the tangible aspects of my spirituality from specific rituals during meditation through to the different techniques of reading my tarot cards, and applying it practically to my everyday life.  That family was part of an everyday life, taken very tragically and suddenly from it into a world of unknown.  They have become beneficiaries of a culture steeped in religious traditions.  If it wasn’t for the 7^th month festival of the hungry ghost, they wouldn’t have been able to reach out to me to request for help.  I was going to be that conduit, ready to apply my intuition and compassion garnered from months of learning and spiritual awakening.

How Can I Help Them? – 8 Of Wands
The 8 Of Wands was a clear signal that this was my “breakthrough moment” in my spiritual path.  It assured me that I had the ability to take immediate action and transform the situation for that family into a positive one.  As a card indicating travel and movement, it signaled to me that with my help that family can move on quickly into the light to the world where they now belonged.

Outcome – 4 Of Swords
Well, this dream had been etched in my mind throughout my waking hours for the past few days. I had been agonizing over it as I was caught in a tug of war between my Catholic beliefs, my skepticism, fears that everyone was going to laugh at me when they heard about it and the nudge from my intuition to do the right thing.   I have been so spiritually drained by this tug of war but was glad that my intuition won.  After fulfilling my obligation to that family, I planned to recharge by meditating to the sunrise this weekend.  The 4 of Swords indicated that my higher self will thank me for the opportunity to refresh my spiritual energies by resting and recovering from this episode.

About The Writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She obtained a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and is also a certified numerologist who runs a Tarot consultancy based in Singapore. A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also a reader for the Free Tarot Network and is a mentor for the ATA.

She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com

Working Together May Be In The Cards

Last week, a friend hired David and I to help out at his company's first year anniversary party. David was hired as official photographer for the event and I was hired to entertain guests with my tarot reading.

David and I often get invited to help out at projects like these, but we have never been invited as a couple on the same project. He would get invited for photography shoots at rock concerts, company events, personal profile shots of friends and their families and I often get invited to read my tarot cards at birthday and hen parties, company events as well as charity events. And strangely, we had never thought to go into projects together. So this experience was an eye opener. I don't consider our wedding a project and even then, he just informed me of the date and time and I just turned up.

I started to look at the tarot cards that reflect the fulfilment of both our working well together on a project. These were the 2 of Cups and the 3 of Pentacles.

Barbara De Angelis said, " The more connections one makes with our lover, not just between our bodies but between our minds, our hearts and our souls, the more we will strengthen the fabric of our relationship and the more real moments we will experience together." The 2 of Cups is a reflection of our connectedness, leveraging off each other's strengths whilst giving each other space to shine when David and I work together on a project. The 3 of Pentacles is a manifestation of the strong team spirit between us as we support each other in our endeavour to put in our best efforts in a project. The positivity of the 3 of Pentacles doesn't stop at just the project that we have worked on. It is a card reflecting the collaborative nature of our relationship, manifesting itself in the way we resolve any issues along our journey as a married couple and as a parent juggling multiple commitments between family and career. No challenges faze us because we know we got each other's back.

The energies of the 2 of Cups and 3 of Pentacles governed the way David and I worked at my friend's event, such that I was not sure who had more of a blast; my friend, David or me.

For my friend's event, we had already visited the event venue a few days prior to establish the setting and environment we were going to be at. This allowed David to plan the type of equipment he was going to be bringing along with the right camera he was using. It also allowed me to "feel" the space and make a mental note of where my querants could get the appropriate privacy to get a reading with as little interference as possible while allowing me ease of managing a queue. David and I also had a discussion about the lighting and it's impact on our respective areas of work.

I have to say, David's dedication was amazing. He had spent an entire day before rushing through back to back meetings in Kuala Lumpur and had just arrived a couple of hours before the event to check out the venue again and sort out his equipment in preparation for the event.

At the event, as the crowds streamed in and we were both just consumed with taking the photos and doing the readings, we often checked on each other. I was worried that the venue's dim lighting will affect the quality of the photos whereas he was worried that I wouldn't be able to cope with the crowd as the queue list at the tarot table was very long.

It was an extremely busy night for the both of us but we enjoyed it tremendously because it gave us the opportunity to watch out for each other and we were probably each other's best critique. He reminded me in between readings to take a 5 minute breather to do a "download"( it was essential for me to do a grounding meditation for a few minutes in between client readings to dispel residual negative energies before I start reading for a new batch of clients) and I reminded him to create different and more interesting angles for the shots at the photography wall. Even after the event, I played Art Director to his digital imaging work on the photos....sometimes to his annoyance.

David and I are proof that working on a project together as a couple is extremely fulfilling. That may have given us a vision for our retirement years and it certainly looks promising.

About the writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She was awarded a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and was recently certified as a numerologist in Singapore. A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also endorsed as a reader for the Free Tarot Network and is a mentor for the ATA.

She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com

Being Happy With What I Have

Keeping It Separate:

I have been running 2 blogs, the first is http://thecrazyangmoandhisangrywife.blogspot.com which was set up long ago for the purpose of detailing my family's quirky exploits. For my international friends around the world, an "ang-mo" is the term used in Singapore by a Singaporean Chinese to describe a Caucasian in a humorous way. It actually means "the one with red hair". But don't tell my blonde husband that as he makes rude jokes about "ginger people".

The second blog is http://sungoddesstarot.blogspot.com which was set up this year, when I had set up my tarot consultancy Sun Goddess Tarot after building an ardent passion for tarot reading and gotten myself certified as a professional tarot reader and numerologist. The latter was a platform I used to detail my exciting journey with tarot.

Bouncing between the 2 blogs was easy initially because the 2 most important areas of my life, family/work and tarot had for a long time sat in separate realms, with the latter forced in its space by the skepticism of family and friends, conjoined only by the jubilation brought by sporadic demonstrations of acceptance from my husband. Lately however, it has become just a little bit more difficult to separate the 2 areas of my life because the "crazy angmo", the not so angry wife, her "Addams' family" and some of her loonie friends have finally come to accept that like my playing the piano, my interest in "non-mainstream" classical music ( specifically Bela Bartok and Smetana), and my love for the "game of the Gods", rugby ( still in love with the game though age and fitness prevents me from continuing to play the game), the tarot has become a key driver of my happiness. So honestly, I shouldn't be afraid of mentioning anything about my world of tarot in my first blog.

My Internal Battle:

A-ha! There you go, I just admitted it unwittingly. I was quite afraid to mention anything about tarot in my blog http://thecrazyangmoandhisangrywife.blogspot.com and I have been keeping the subject matters within both blogs quite separate. And you know, I am tired from using my "non-accepting friends and family" as a convenient excuse. In truth, I am still a spectator to an internal war being waged between my rational mind and my intuitive skills. I have detailed some of these challenges in my tarot blog recently. I have been managing this war by wading through my mood swings, hurling into a hermit-like world of expansive studying of more esoteric works and constantly questioning concepts and ideas in my head, with only my fellow tarot-reading friends and mentors within the international tarot community and in Singapore, holding my hand through it all.

I forgot however, that I have got very special people in my life, formerly parked in the "crazy angmo" world, who have also, been holding my hand in their individual ways, throughout this battle within me. Numerologically, my life path number is a 7. I am naturally deign to constantly questioning and seeking truths, discovering new ideas and learning new things. My birthday number of 1, governs my egoistic personality who tend to tread the barren path alone without asking for help. Therefore, as I deal with my growing intuitive skills, the turmoil in my head sends me into a spiral that buries me deep within the cave for fear of being laughed at, for fear of being questioned, for fear of making a mistake on any of my consultations with any of my clients, for fear of generally mixing my "irrational" intuitive skills with my "rational" skills as a marketeer, wife and mother.

I Fear My Growing Intuitive Skills:

Lately, I have begun noticing that my intuitive skills are growing even more such that often when a client presents me a question, a vision forms in my head about his/her story without me shuffling the cards. When I draw the tarot cards, they only serve to validate that vision in my head. My clients always affirms the facts of these stories in my head. That was when I started panicking because I didn't "sign up for this". When I studied tarot and numerology, nothing in the books or in the courses I took talked about getting visions which tell of my clients' respective stories vividly. However, I can't stop these visions, when I get a question. And they were always validated by my clients. True to my life path number 7, I started reading up about this and asking as many questions as I could about this "new party trick". I haven't gotten a satisfying answer till today.

I shuffled my new deck, the Wizards Tarot deck in a bid to do a general read for myself last night with a 3-card spread (image below). And I got the 10 of Cups, the King of Wands, and the 4 of Wands Reversed. These were read in an integrated fashion with no fixed positions. Afterwhich, I pulled the 9 of Cups which formed an advice to my spread. Now, I have been doing tarot readings for numerous clients with ease, but this spread threw me off completely. I wasn't sure what to make of the great 10 of Cups and 9 of Cups cards ( which symbolize fulfilment) juxtaposed with the not so fantastic 4 of Wands Reversed which symbolized instability and uncertainties. And I felt like the King of Wands trying to juggle these extremes with as much "balls" as he can master!

I See The Light:

I bounced that spread off to one my mentors Brigit, who very kindly helped me by offering her perspective on it. I think I finally see the light.

In her interpretation, she said that the cards were telling me that I was looking at how I could integrate my personal values and beliefs (10 of Cups) into my longer term vision ( King of Wands). That is true. I have been constantly questioning my intuitive skills, managing the tug-of-war between my rational mind and my intuitive skills, managing my career goals vs my passion and trying to build a long term plan with an end vision of capturing all my passions and my goals all at once, in mind. This period is transitory for me, hence I picked the 4 of Wands Reversed, which suggested that I have been unsettled by this period of transition. Most importantly, I picked the 9 of Cups as my advice. Now, note that earlier, I had picked the 9 of Cups as my card du jour and posted my take on it, on my Sun Goddess Tarot facebook page. So to see the 9 of Cups as an advice to this spread was a bit of a surprise for me. Brigit summed that advice as "Be happy with what you have, and see every moment as a blessing. This will make the 4 of Wands Reversed easier to deal with".

Brigit was brilliant. How could I have not seen that coming? You see, one never stops learning. I can be armed with every tarot and numerology book, every professional tarot reading certificate in the world, set up a successful tarot consultancy, Sun Goddess Tarot, and balance all that with managing a marketing career and running a family. Yet, it all boiled down to my needing to be happy with what I had, and to feel blessed with the skills I got and remain open to the universe to guide me along the way.

About the writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident.  She currently runs a Tarot consultancy called Sun Goddess Tarot based in Singapore.  She obtained a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and is a certified numerologist. A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also endorsed as a reader for the Free Tarot Network and is a mentor for the ATA.

She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com

Cutting Through The Chatter In My Mind

From time to time, I get pulled into an emotional roller coaster at work. I would be sucked backwards into a tunnel of stress, mismatched expectations, misalignment of values resulting in a lack of confidence, only to be sped forward like a crashing wave into an exhilarating high for the satisfaction felt about making a right business decision, or having completed a major project, or doing something right for the team. With this intense emotional see-sawing, I often fall into a mentally exhausting routine of self-evaluation.

Likewise, as a tarot reader and numerologist bent on turning my gifts into something positive which brings light to others in need, I also go through a similar emotional roller coaster which sees me questioning the science behind the depth of my intuition. What's funny is that I am noticing that my intuition is getting stronger everyday and there are times I do not even need the cards to guide me through a story I want to tell my clients because that vision is already in my head when I see him or her. I can understand and accept the skepticism of family and friends around my gifts, but I am sometimes harder on myself and would retreat for awhile into a period of self evaluation and further studies into my library of esoteric works like the Hermit in tarot.

I need that alone time to do that because it helps me to "download", then "re-load" again so that I could help the beginner tarot readers that I am currently mentoring who are going through their own individual challenges within their journey as new tarot readers.

So yesterday, a fellow tarot-reading friend did a spread on my behalf and assured me that all I needed to do was to learn to let go of the past and embrace what the universe has put before me. In her words " I'm getting the three of water which speaks of abundance and letting go of the past to embrace new joys and adventures...". That spoke to me. I needed to tread my present life with a measure of temperance and embrace my gifts and accompanying new life with total acceptance and empathy after leaving the guilt, disappointments, egotism and other negative aspects of my past behind.

As I meditated upon this, I picked a card, the King of Swords and heard the king talk to me through my meditation. He assured me that my job skills and my tarot reading and numerological skills that I have will always be used for the greater good at work, at home or with my clients. They do not change who I am as a person apart from to make me better, more resilient, more accepting of others and more empathetic. He wanted me to balance my heart with my head in everything I did with these skills, and govern all that I did with reason, forethought and logic.
He said that courage, good judgement and open and honest communication will help me lead the way, open doors and bring a measure of order in the midst of my emotional and mental chaos. The King of Swords was teaching me to balance my heart and mind. I have always struggled with his due to my ego and my fears.

Then, as if the universe was talking to me, Facebook pinged me with a notification that a new Tarot Bloghop topic was just posted by a fellow tarot blogger. This time, the topic was about Mabon, which is the pagan celebration of the Autumn Equinox. Mabon is all about balance and transformation. I thought the universe and my fellow tarot blogger, wrangling that Tarot Bloghop topic were actually quite brilliant. It was definitely timely for me to plan the points to my next Tarot Bloghop topic, particularly as I am going through a period of transformation myself.

I can't wait to see what my pen dreams up for the next blog entry about Mabon.

About the writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She was awarded a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and was recently certified as a numerologist in Singapore. A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also endorsed as a reader for the Free Tarot Network and is a mentor for the ATA.

She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com

A Light-hearted Take On Numerology

I got myself certified for numerology just last week. It was an intensive course but I had learnt so much from decoding birth dates and names. What was even more satisfying was that when I combined numerology with my tarot cards, the readings became even more robust and I was not sure who was more pleasantly surprised by the depth of the reading, my clients or myself. What was hilarious, was how I practiced my numerology skills on friends whenever we met up for dinner and drinks. My neat party trick came in handy to entertain them!

So here's what I gleaned about myself from my own numbers:

My natural talent is to lead, innovate and take action. My team at work however have a phrase to describe this. They call it "Monster boss in action". As my birthday is a number 1, the energy of the number suggests that I have a lot of self confidence and will power ( I wonder where that went, when one puts an ice cream in front of me on days I need to go on a diet). The 1 also suggests that I am bad at details and would be better off thinking big picture, painting things with a broad paint brush. That's completely correct. I am impatient with tiny details. The 1 energy also suggests that I am rather sensitive but will repress my feelings. My shrink calls it the "volcano" syndrome where I harbor it and let it fester for awhile before threatening to explode it into a seismic scale not unlike Pompeii. Oh and did I tell you that I was egotistical and aggressive too? My husband is preparing a "stay clear" sign to be pasted on the back of my tee shirt as I write this.

My life path number 7 makes me a person who will tread the spiritual path. That explains my passion for tarot and numerology. I tend to throw myself into a life of perpetual learning and seeking knowledge, investigating theories and challenging ideas. The number 7 sees me governing my life path with focused determination to achieve the goals I had set my mind to achieve. And often, I enjoy my solitude, relishing time for quiet meditation. Oh and did I tell you that my life path 7 makes me an intolerable perfectionist? My husband is now sticking that "stay clear" sign at the back of my tee shirt as I write this.

My heart's desire is a number 5. This means that my soul evolves by communicating and traveling, constantly managing my restless mind with new knowledge, turning everything I do into one big adventure. I need to have a partner that constantly stimulates me intellectually ( yes, am making my husband read this repeatedly), and I need to be in a job that isn't mundane. I can attest that my job isn't one that draws me into a daily routine, apart from lunch times when we spend a good hour daily figuring out where the team and I should be having our "happy and de-stressing lunch".

My personality mask is a number 3, displaying my creative and artistic side with a tendency to be highly sociable, fun and a great communicator. Oh, totally agree with that particular during my university days when I made up excuses on not handing up my tutorials or not showing up for lectures.

My destiny number 8 eventually makes me aspire to be a person of authority, or in an executive position in a company or possibly running my own business. It promises me a life of a workaholic, managing my business with tenacity, grounded in lots of planning and complete control. That explains my marriage to my blackberry, a love-affair that constantly bugs my husband because my fingers are glued to it 24 hours a day. One of the ladies that I am currently mentoring for tarot asked me the other day, " do you ever sleep?"

You see? Numerology is so much fun. And my life path 7 is warranting my taking my studies on numerology even further with a more advanced course coming up soon.

With Sun Goddess Tarot, I feel obligated to my clients to provide even more in-depth and robust readings combining tarot with numerology. I want to continuously pursue more knowledge that can help provide them with even more clarity and assurance.

About the writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She was awarded a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and was recently certified as a numerologist in Singapore. A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also endorsed as a reader for the Free Tarot Network and is a mentor for the ATA.

She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com

Mentoring With Love

Many years ago as a child, I fell in love with the movie "To Sir With Love", which was a story depicting the commitment of a teacher to his high school students. Secretly, as a student myself, I had wished my teachers were like him, passionate, rational, and genuine. Ok, it would have helped if like him, they were dark and handsome too.

Much as my Mum would have loved for me to be a teacher when I entered Junior College, I felt I didn't have the patience and gift of empathy to be one. However, mentoring tarot readers who are at the beginning of their tarot journey was so different. It required patience, empathy and so much more.

After obtaining my CPTR and having gained even more experience with tarot readings for more clients, I started getting involved with mentoring beginner tarot readers here in Singapore. The studies I had gone through and the resource generously provided by my own mentors here, who had helped me over the months, were crucial for the development of the beginners that I had mentored. Activities ranged from one on one structured sessions with these readers weekly as well as interactive group classes where the beginners are taken through a combination of readily-available resource as well as a basic curriculum written by myself.

I am not sure who enjoyed it more, the beginners or me, but I felt so much emotional fulfilment that came with my opportunity to "pay it forward" by getting these beginners proficient with basic tarot reading skills.

I was also assigned with a couple of protégées from the American Trot Association. While it posed a little more challenging with my only mode of communications via email only because I reside in Singapore, it still did not take away that feeling of fulfilment for the opportunity to play an important role in their respective journeys with their tarot cards.

When I first started Sun Goddess Tarot focusing on my tarot consultancy business, I enjoyed meeting, talking, and reading for my clients. The emotional connections I have formed with them gave me tremendous joy. However when I started mentoring beginner tarot readers, I absolutely loved sharing my tarot reading skills and I felt like I was on a mission to help demystify tarot further with the beginners whom I touched through my sessions. I remembered being questioned about studying tarot which was so "irrelevant to everyday life". How wrong could they be! Tarot IS the journey of life in a wee card box!

Every time I read the tarot cards for my clients, I would always try to remind them about how the interpretation of the spread had uncovered choices for them to make so as to shape their own destinies. Likewise, at the mentoring sessions, I often repeat my stand to the beginner readers. I think I am slowly chipping away at it.

With this in mind, I thought to pull out my Queen of Cups from Ciro Marchetti's Gilded Tarot deck. A warm-hearted, compassionate, sensitive and nurturing queen, the card reminded me to always mentor the beginner readers using the spirit of the queen. It's not about how qualified, or how experienced I am as a tarot reader. It's all about how I inspire the same passion in tarot the way my own mentors have inspired me.

About The Writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She has recently achieved a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America. A member of the American Tarot Association and the Tarot Association of the British Isles, she is also endorsed as a reader for the Free Tarot Network.

She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com

Making Firm Choices And Being Happier For It

2 years in the company have seen me building a wonderful amount of experiences, a close-knit and familial relationship within my team and a substantial amount of opportunities to create game-changing marketing campaigns. But I have never thought of where this will all lead me because I have likened it to the fulfillment I get at home with my family. Having achieved my 10 of Cups moment of emotional fulfillment in the home front, I don't turn around to say "let's upgrade the hubby and find a new and better one" do I? So, I have never asked after these 2 years of working in a sometimes frustrating but mostly fulfilling job, "What's next?"

My business trip in Hong Kong in the last 2 days was interesting because it presented me with the opportunity to meet my regional colleagues and get to know them better. Many had to uproot themselves from various home countries to set up a new home in Hong Kong and many of these are practically living out of their suitcases as they chock up frequent flyer air miles visiting the different countries in the region in a bid to juggle their multiple projects. Honestly, I admired their energy and enthusiasm but they did have a weary glint in their eyes.

So I thought to draw my card du jour today to get some clarity on the issue and uncannily enough, I drew the Lovers card. A major arcana card, the Lovers card was about deep love, passion and connectedness influenced by the hard value choices one makes. I knew immediately what it was trying to tell me.

After 2 marriages, missing out on some of my son's growing up years and a breast cancer scare, I think I had learnt to make the right choices of putting my family first and fighting fiercely for my right to a healthy work-life balance. There were compromises that I had to make over the years, like giving up on higher career ambitions within a job that I love so passionately and turning down opportunities for regional roles. I had gladly done so and made the firm choice of putting the interests of my family first.

That was why I was homesick even though it was merely a 2-day trip.

I know what my aspirations are now. I am inspired by the energy of the Queen of Pentacles. She is a nurturing earth mother adept at keeping her family together and happy, maintaining a warm and beautiful home whilst managing a demanding career.

In many of the tarot readings that I do for my clients and indeed amongst my own social circle, I know of people who often find these priorities in conflict and are weighed down by the burden of managing high expectations of themselves. While I learnt to juggle these demands, I know where my priorities lie. That is why I am happier for it. My only expectations of myself, are that I always make the right choices for my family.

The pictures posted within this blog entry are taken from the Gilded Tarot deck by Ciro Marchetti.

About The Writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She has recently achieved a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America. A member of the American Tarot Association and the Tarot Association of the British Isles, she is also endorsed as a reader for the Free Tarot Network.

She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com