My new book "Within The Cards" is here!

After months of delays and problems and just about every little thing that could get in the way came and went, it's finally here and ready for you! My new tarot book "Within The Cards" is done, out there, and for sale! There is one catch though. Right now I only have the e-book versions available; the paperback version will be available in a few weeks though! Now, here are some of the important details!

Tarot for the Week 7/25 to 7/31

It's been a while since the tarotscopes have been posted but it's time for them to come back and I thought we'd get back into the swing of things by looking to see what the cards have to say for this week.  Next week you can bet that there will be tarotscopes for the month of August posted too!  In honor of the Gaian Tarot be released to the masses by Llewellyn in September, I'm going to be doing all the tarotscopes between now and the deck release with my collector's edition Gaian Tarot.  As anyone who's been following the tarotscopes knows, I love this deck and it's one of my absolute favorites in the last few years. I haven't had such an instant connection to a deck in a long time and it's one of the few "lighter" decks (as opposed to things like the Bohemian Gothic Tarot) that I have developed such a strong connection to.  Be sure to check out the Gaian Tarot website and pre-order the deck from Amazon!  It's fantastic.

Tarot for the Week 6/13 to 6/19

This week's Tarot for the Week post is being done with a new deck.  And what a surprise that must be for some.  :)  I did acquire a new deck last week, one that I was very excited to get.  It's The Wildwood Tarot by Mark Ryan and John Matthews with the wonderful art of Will Worthington.  There are four other decks that he's done art for, all of which I have and all of which I really love...The Green Man Tree Oracle, The Druid Animal Oracle, The Druid Plant Oracle, and a favorite of many Pagan and Wiccan readers, The Druid Craft Tarot.  This is another wonderful deck with his Celtic themed art and the book features some fantastic wisdom by Mark Ryan and John Matthews.

When I first pulled the cards and looked at them I read their descriptions and interpretations in the book.  The art is very unique and the way these cards tell the stories involves deeper spiritual symbolism like their connections to the Wheel of the Year and things like that.  After reading reading the descriptions I then moved into actually looking at and interpreting the cards and found that the messages coming through for me were somewhat different and skewed to the meanings in the book.  Really a very interesting deck!

Tarotscopes for June

This month's tarotscopes are going to be a little different.  Things have been ridiculous for me for the last few months and I have hit a point where I'm behind on a number of things (book included) and now mulling over the impending details of my upcoming move to the east coast.  So my head is very full and now working terribly well it seems.  So when I decided that I needed to sit down and start working on the tarotscopes I had to do a little thinking about how to best do them so that A) you all get a good card for the month and a decent message and B) my head doesn't explode in the process.  I did a small meditation and was guided to asked my reading Guide, William (who gave permission for me to make an introduction there), to help channel the messages for this month rather than me trying to just piece things together myself.  The process of channeling readings like this can take a little time for me but it works out really well in the end (at least I think it does).  It took about two days to get through all twelve individual messages and I've done my best here to lightly translate them into language that will make more sense to all of you. I hope that you enjoy this months messages!

Tarot for the Week 5/23 to 5/29

This week's Tarot for the Week reading is being done with a deck that I love so much and that is in my top five favorite decks of all time; the Bohemian Gothic Tarot.  It's a very dark deck and it's one that I don't really read with for others too often because I find a lot of people that don't have a taste for the darker side don't fully appreciate or understand.  And then I have moments when I have this desperate need to make people come out of their shell in a session and get them to maybe confront something. This is that kind of deck; the imagery is very evocative and if certain cards fall in certain places in a reading it can be quite a powerful wake up call.  I have the first and second editions of these cards, the only deck I've ever done that with (though I do have the collectors edition of the Gaian Tarot and I plan to get the standard edition when it comes out this fall).  You can find out more about the Bohemian Gothic Tarot here. 

Tarot for the Week 5/16 to 5/22

This week's tarot for the week read is being done with a deck that I have wanted for a long time and was finally able to get a copy of. And for you tarot people you're going to laugh when I tell you what deck it is...lol.  The Hanson-Roberts Tarot.  Yes, it's been a deck I've wanted for years and I've never been able to get a hold of a copy for one reason or another.  For a long time it was because I couldn't find a copy in a shop or anything and then I tried to order it, twice, from Amazon and both times in the process of waiting for the deck to come I end up getting an email saying that the deck is out of stock.  Finally I was able to get a copy last week and I have to say, this is my new favorite travel deck.  It's the perfect size to take along in a purse to have a deck at all times and it's such a great RWS clone.  So I wanted to use this deck for our reading for this week. 

The Tale of Ten Wands

Finally I feel like I'm on a role with the tarot book! It's been a such a tough job these last few months but I'm actually starting to think this thing will be done on time! Yay for that! But in the process of finalizing everything I had come to realize that some things that I never planned to do needed to be done which meant more writing to be done. One of those things was the inclusion of a full description of each of the minor arcana cards. I never planned to do that and just intended to give a list of keywords. I don't know why, really, but I just didn't feel it was necessary. Then as I was putting things together for the minor arcana chapter I realized I had to do it.

Tarot for the Week 5/9 to 5/15

We're back for another Tarot for the Week reading and we're also back to reading with the Tarot of the Sidhe.  Tarot of the Sidhe card posts are going to be coming back later this week as well.  I've been doing a lot of campaigning for this deck lately to those looking for something a little different.  This week's reading I thought I would do a little differently.  Something that I love about these cards and the book that comes with them is that rather than giving explanations of the individual minors you have little rhymes that provide the message followed by your usual keywords.  I thought that I would share those rhymes and then give an interpretation of the reading. 

Ask Rowan: Reappearing Cards, Shuffling, and Reversals

I’m excited to get to present our first couple of questions for the “Ask Rowan Your Tarot Questions” segment.  These questions come from Joanna and they are some really good ones…let’s take a look!

Tarotscopes for May 2011

For this month’s Tarotscopes I have decided to use a different deck because it called me to do some other readings lately and I feel like this is the one that we need for May.  For this month I’m using the Tarot of Dreams by Ciro Marchetti.  If you’re familiar with his decks you know how truly special and unique they are and how amazing the color is in these cards.  I’ll add some images of cards for those that aren’t familiar with them.  Hopefully these readings will bring you some insight for this first month of the summer half of the year!

Tarot for the Week 4/25 to 5/1

Once again we're looking at the energy for this week with the help of the the Tarot of Sidhe once again. It seems especially fitting to work with this deck this week since Beltane will be Saturday through Sunday.  As I was getting ready to do the cards for this week I was starting to get this feeling like something is just hanging in the air this week.  It could be that it's that thinning of the veil as we head to Beltane or it could be something else.  The cards are certainly showing some interesting things...

Finally!! The Table of Contents from my UpcomingTarot Book!

I've been saying for about a month now that I was going to post the Table of Contents from my upcoming book "Within The Cards - Using Knowledge and Psychic Vision to Read the Tarot".  I keep getting either completely side tracked or, in the case of why this was still absent in the last two weeks, because I have made some changes.  At this point I would say that what I have here is the final thing.  Goddess willing!  I don't want to make any more chances and just want to get this finished! Right now the only other major thing that I need to deal with is a cover design.  I'm setting aside a whole day this week to deal with that.  But in the meantime you can check this out to get a feel for what the book is going to be like.

Tarot for the Week 4/18 to 4/24

For these week we have some pretty strong cards that are giving some pretty clear messages, much like we had this past week.  The thing that's interesting to me is the change of the overall message as we head out to the tail end of a crazy Mercury Retrograde.  It looks like things are going to calm down and begin to be more solid and more positive.

Tarot for the Week 4/11 to 4/17

This week is one of those week's where the reading is so simple and cut and dry that you have to acknowledge and love the directness of the cards.  So I'm not going to give a lot of lead up to the reading and we'll get right down to it.  Once again I'm using the Tarot of the Sidhe for our reading this week.  Let's see what we have for the week.

Tarot of the Sidhe - Maker Nine

This week's Tarot of the Sidhe card is Maker Nine, a card that in traditional tarot would be the Nine of Pentacles.  In this deck the Coins or Pentacles are called the Makers because these are the cards of manifestation.  These cards deal with the real world, and often physical and material realms of things like money, material objects, stability, health and physical well-being, careers, and growth in the material world.  These are the cards that help us to bring what we want into our physical and material reality.  When we want to know if we're going to get the raise or the promotion, or if our health is going to improve, it's the Makers we want to watch for because their messages are the ones that are going to really give us some solid answers.

Tarot for the Week 4/4 to 4/10

It was quite interesting to me to find that while struggling through the to April tarotscopes I had to change decks in order to feel any sense of clarity or direction in what I was doing, but when I sat down to do this post, starting with my Tarot of Dreams deck, I heard a very distinct "NO!  Other one" from one of my guides.  So I picked the Tarot of Sidhe deck back up and started to shuffle and, sure enough, the fuzzy feeling that had been there all weekend with the deck was gone.  I guess that means that we're back on track!  Here is this week's tarot reading...

Tarotscopes for April 2011

Well, here we are, April Tarotscopes...and they are, admittedly, a few days late.  I don't know if it's the Mercury Retrograde or what but I've been feeling really off these last few days especially and I haven't been able to get on track with doing these cards!  But, here are, finally with the readings for this month.  


Rather than using the Tarot of the Sidhe, which I had been using when I first started to do these, I switched decks to the Tarot of Dreams by Ciro Marchetti.  I spent a few hours staring at my Tarot of the Sidhe cards wondering what to do and why I was feeling so off and my guides told me that I needed to try another deck for this month.  I haven't had a chance to use this deck for the tarotscopes yet so here we are!  

Tarot of the Sidhe - The High Priestess

This week's Tarot of the Sidhe card decided to flip itself out of the deck while shuffling and wanted some serious attention.  I was actually coming to the point of getting ready to stop shuffling and cut the deck and pull a card but this one decided to jump out instead.  And it's a great one!  I have come to a point where I judge a deck based on two cards, the High Priestess and The Hermit.  If I like these two cards in a deck then I typically end up loving the whole deck.  This ended up being the case here because this is truly one of the most dynamic High Priestess cards I have ever seen.

Tarot for the Week 3/28 to 4/3

As we have been, this week's tarot reading is done with the Tarot of the Sidhe and once again we see some cards that have been popping up quite a bit back for another visit.  It's always interesting to me to see cards come up again and again in these weekly readings but it's even more interesting to see how they rearrange themselves and how they tell different stories each time they come up.  This week is no exception to that idea; these repeat visitors have some different things to talk about than they have in past weeks. 

Simplcity in Creating Spreads

I've seen and read a lot of really excellent stuff about creating tarot spreads over the years that make it almost a science.  The need to place things in an exact order or the many ins and outs of why spreads should be created one way and not another.  While a lot of these are really great and there are some fantastic methods for making spreads for just about anything out there, I'm a lot more simple than a lot of other readers in that area.  I don't want to spend hours trying to create a spread and often I find that I need to create a spread on the fly for someone because I don't feel that any of my standard spreads I use will really do the trick.  So here are some thoughts and suggestions for creating spreads in a quick and simple way.