Readers Studio 2013 Rundown—Part 3

For Part 1, click here.

For Part 2, click here.

Saturday morning dawned, and I hustled my way to the breakfast buffet and grabbed my chow before high-tailing it the the main room to attend Theresa Reed’s breakfast roundtable “The Tarot Industry: Where Do We Go From Here?”

The breakfast roundtable was full of lively conversation and interjections. A lot of it was business related, and even some of it involved the good old debate about what Beth Owl’s Daughter calls the “purple-color ghetto”: people that think that spiritual or metaphysical people shouldn’t be charging for their services. Theresa acted as a moderator and kept the talk engaged and on-topic. I even chimed in with my thoughts on legitimacy when someone offered up the idea of selling products to bring legitimacy to a tarot practice, to which I replied, “I’d love to get beyond that where there is no need for us to legitimize what we do as tarot readers.”

Once the roundtable wrapped up, we were all ready for Day 2 of Readers Studio. Saturday usually proves to be the busiest day of the conference, with the two final Master Classes and the dinner banquet. This one was no exception, and there was added low-grade pressure on me, because my class was Saturday night… and I was still stressing about it. I simply knew I couldn’t relax until after I was done teaching. I tried to calm down and just focus on a “one step at a time” mentality, or in this case, one class at a time.

The first Master Class of the day was with Major Tom Shick. He took us through his own tarot journey, and taught us a few things he learned along the way. Then it was time for lunch. While I wanted to join people for a nice long lunch and conversation, I opted to sequester myself in my room and go over my class notes and slides. (Did I mention I was stressing about my class?) It’s a good thing I did, because I felt calmer and more centered afterwards, and ready to rejoin the conference for the final Master Class.

We returned to the second Master Class of the day with Ferol Humphrey. She took us through a lot of interactive exercises that were table-wide, which may or may not have been a problem since I was seated at the “Bad Girls Table + Mike”. I really took a lot out of this class, and realized that perhaps a longer frame of time for a reading might be counter to what specific clients need. Sometimes they just need a sentence to summarize what’s REALLY going on in a situation!

After the final Master Class, we had a brief break before the cocktail party and dinner banquet. I hurried off to change for the banquet and gather my stuff together for my class so I could easily grab it after dinner.

The banquet was lovely as usual, and I enjoyed spending time in classy elegance with my tarot peeps. Cue the photo montage of mingling at the banquet!

The highlight of the banquet was a tribute to Ciro Marchetti for his prolific contributions to the tarot and Lenormand world. Ciro is an amazing artist, and had made the decision to move away from tarot endeavors. This was the last Readers Studio he was attending. While most of us in the tarot world are absolutely obsessed with Ciro’s work (Hello, Legacy of the Divine Deck? Gilded Reverie Lenormand?), we cannot be happier for the time he spent in our crazy subset, and we wish him all the best in his future artistic ventures!

Unfortunately for me, but fortunate for my class attendees, I didn’t get to watch Ciro’s video tribute, because I had to skaddle away from the banquet early to set up for my class. True to my nerd roots, I had a powerpoint and nerves the size of Kentucky, but all went well!

And now, it’s time for a backstory. I would never have been teaching at Readers Studio unless Theresa made submitting a class proposal a homework assignment. Yes, my tarot mentor still gives me homework assignments, and for some reason I still obey (even though our mentorship relationship ended over a year ago!). Be careful with her: she may give you homework assignments, too!

I was thrilled with the turnout, and though all the evening classes started late, my students stayed on to make up for the delay and play with the spreads I had created for the class. I also had an additional bonus in the form of Sasha Graham being my assigned “Teacher’s Assistant” (yes, the very same Sasha Graham that wrote the book Tarot Diva, go read it now if you haven’t already)!

After class I celebrated by doing a “wand dance” instead of a “pole dance”…

…answered any remaining questions my students had, and then proceeded quickly to the hotel bar, where I was more than happy to answer any other questions, drink a lovely berry mohito, and play with the Lenormand cards with an assorted bunch of the tarot motley crew. I can’t even remember what time it was when I finally called it a night and went to bed, because I was running on pure adrenaline and found it very hard to go to sleep! Thank goodness I did, because I still had a full final day of Readers Studio ahead…

Part 4 (the conclusion of the rundown) tomorrow!

Blessings,
~*~Hilary~*~
www.tarotbyhilary.com

RS13 logo courtesy of Readers Studio/The Tarot School

 

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