The Rowdy Goddess

An Ecstatic Vision of the Goddess, dancing in harmony with the Universe.

Archive for the tag “teaching”

25 Oct 2013
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Enriching your Tarot Visual Vocabulary

Strength from Labyrinth Tarot

Strength from Labyrinth Tarot

When you practice anything, whether it be a musical instrument, a spirituality, an exercise program, or a divination practice, you sometimes have to mix it up to keep from getting stale and stuck in routine.  You can mix it up by learning new things, looking at something with a beginners mind, or by expanding your skills.  Tarot has a rich heritage of lore, history, visual images, and traditionally assigned meanings.  Moreover, Tarot is a place full of exploration, experimentation, building new meanings, vision, and voice.  I often tell my students that each deck has a voice and you need to learn to hear the voice and then translate it into meaning, for yourself and for others.  How do you do that?, I’m often asked.

One way is to employ Visual Thinking Strategies (VST), an active teaching technique.  I learned it in the context of leading it with a group.  Today, I’m attempting to explain how I employ these techniques when I am alone and learning a new deck.  It’s part knowledge and part intuition as applied this way.  I imagine the scholars that develop would cringe at this little bit of Unverified Personal Gnosis!  We live in a society where we are bombarded and saturated with visual messages, and yet we are not always literate in the language.  This has helped me be more fluent in visual language.  It helps as a Tarot Reader.  If you read all the time with the same deck, it’s important to keep it fresh, as you know.  This helps expand your vocabulary and look at an old friend with fresh eyes.

Visual Thinking Strategies is used by art educators to help people interpret what they see in front of them, do develop an artistic vocabulary, and to aid in better expression, either verbally or in writing.  It is usually a facilitated discussion process that encourages depth of analysis.  VTS is centered on students and is an experiential process.  Students are looking at the primary object, not secondary sources or critical analyses.  Participants are encouraged to develop a new vocabulary and VTS provides a structured approach to construct new meaning.

It is a simple process and I’m going to describe how a facilitator does this and then give you some ideas of doing this when you are alone with your cards.  The facilitator presents the groups with a painting or other kind of artwork and says, “Take a minute and look at this picture.”  After a minute, asks “what is going on in this picture?”  As the students gives their response and the facilitator paraphrases their responses and points to what they have pointed out.  Then the facilitator probes deeper, “What is going on in this picture?” When the students respond, the facilitator asks, “What makes you say that?”  When the responses reach a lull, the facilitator goes for even more depth by saying, “What can we find?”, and then continues, making links to previous statements about the image.

Three things are happening here:  Paraphrasing, Pointing, and Linking.  Each is an important part of the process of hearing the voices of the images.

Paraphrasing helps students understand that their thoughts are heard, understood, and valued.   In addition, they can see their idea grow and contribute to the group understanding as the conversation goes on.  This kind of technique is inclusive and creates mutual respect for ideas and interpretations.  It also has the potential of growing an individuals’ vocabulary and ability to see nuance and express nuanced meaning.

Pointing engages the student and helps them to keep actively learning and helps the conversation stay on the image.  Each student in the group hears other students being acknowledged and sees what they have observed, allowing for collaboration.  It also ensures that the facilitator is accurately identifying what the student meant to point out!

Making links between one observation and another builds the ideas and allows the construction of new knowledge and understanding.  It helps everyone stretch their ability to reason and pointing out difference and building the meaning incrementally allows the student to experience the evolution of knowledge and wisdom.

The goal of the session is to have the students leave wanting more, more knowledge, more exploration, and to seek more “answers.”  The faciltator does not summarize, allowing the students to remember or choose what is most important or memorable.  And of course, compliment the students and encourage them for the skills they demonstrated.

As an individual Tarot Reader or student, how can you use these techniques to enrich your understanding of individual cards?  You may want to journal your response and practice on each card a couple or three times.  That way you create a conversation with yourself.  Say, you start on a Monday and repeat on Wednesday, you can look at Monday self and draw a connection,

Take a look at the card at the top of the page.  What is going on in the picture?  What did you see that made you say that.  For instance, I might say that it’s some kind of circus act with a woman and a lion.  I say that because if you look at her body, it/she is not pulling against the lion, but rather placing her open hands on his mouth.  It’s almost like they are doing a very strong, active dance together.  What more can you see?  The rope doesn’t seem to be a restraint, but rather something used to enhance their interaction and it forms an infinity sign.  It seems that the interaction between human and wild is an active one, that is a constant balancing act.  One that combines fearlessness with careful balance and discernment.  For both creatures, the ‘dance’ of their connection is through constant awareness and understanding.

I would stop there and come back and look at it another day.  I’m not terribly familiar with this deck.  On the basis of writing this blog, I went ahead and bought a copy so I could continue my interaction with more “hands-on.”  If you, Dear Reader, try this, let me know how it goes.  It’s fun to do as a group and great to do alone.

Be gentle with yourself and honor all your insights.

Posted in Tarot and tagged , , , ,
27 Feb 2009
5 Comments

Felon Friends and Pen Pals: Reflections on the Lessons I Learned

As I related in a previous post, I had a prison ministry for several years. I learned a great deal about myself, about inmates and about the dedicated people who provide a service to inmates. This is a conglomeration of random lessons learned.

Prison and jail are not nice places. I know you are saying “DUH.” I also know the inmates who wrote to me protected me from what they experienced. I had the naive notion that the majority of pagans were incarcerated by the unfair and punitive drug laws of this country. Wrong. Very wrong. The ones that wrote to me had done bad things and in some cases, very bad things. One of the rules I developed was to not ask what they did. It was better not knowing in many cases. Nevertheless, they proved to me they were sincerely seeking further education in the Craft. My weeding out process was fairly effective and rigorous.

That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t try to manipulate me. Prison life is all about manipulating the system. Keeping out of trouble, getting what you want, avoiding further punishment is what prison is all about. We desperately need prison reform in this country because it’s all about containment and punishment. Most of the time, the only rehabilitation taking place is freed inmates are determined never to go back. Prisons and prison attitudes towards religion vary widely from state to state. Mail rooms in prisons can make or break a correspondence course. Many times, it was a struggle for the prisoner and me to convince the prison bureacracy that i was a legitimate teacher.

I developed what I consider some very good friends from this group of correspondents. One of my regrets is that I’ve lost touch with a few of them. I wish them well and hope maybe someday I’ll pick up the pen and write, and that my letter will find them. Believe it or not, prisoners seem to get moved around a lot. Many prisoners even most that I worked with were not pagan until they came to prison. They either stumbled into it through a book or another inmate, or they observed inmates and wanted to know what it was. Some, truth be told, used Wicca as a way to scare other inmates and to manipuate they system. Some were lonely witches seeking same. My weeding out process was very effective in these matters.

When a prisoner gets out, they rarely stay in touch. I may get a call or two or a letter. Sometimes even an email. Fortunately and happily, their new life in the free world absorbs them and they don’t need a reminder of their prison life. At least that’s the way I look at it.

I learned that talking about a prison ministry to others, even in the pagan world would get greeted with judgment and dismay. At a couple of points, I asked for help from the groups I was in and was basically told that I was on my own. Many people counseled me to stop and it’s rather awkward for your new lover to field a call from a prisoner when he didn’t know you were doing prison work. We got over that but he has never been really comfortable with my felon friends.

Fortunately I found the pagan prison ministry group on yahoo groups and they were a great resource. There are a few good websites too. California has a pagan chaplain in its prison system. Mainstream religion does a much better job at this and they have really good resources that are translateable to pagan life and ethics. Get over your prejudices about mainstream religions, they have good people and good stuff and will help sometimes more than our pagan brothers and sisters.

I learned to have good, strong boundaries and to be a little harder. No is an excellent word and I should have said it sooner. I learned that I should have stayed small. I never went into the prisons as a pagan chaplain. I’d visited prisons to review their libraries and related programs and it was not something I intended on doing. Those who do are admirable!

My feelings about this today are a little raw because of a couple of lawsuits. Lawsuits happen, it’s just ironic to get sued by the people you were trying to help. I don’t want people who are contemplating a prison ministry to hesitate. It is good, satisfying work and it is desperately needed in our community. Go into it eyes wide open, without naive assumptions, with strong boundaries, and keep it small. You can’t help everyone, you aren’t responsible for the lack of response from the rest of the community, and you will work hard. And when you’re done, end it in a way that honors you as a priest or priestess and honors your students (that was a do as I say, don’t do what I did moment!) The gods will smile on you and bless you for sure.

Posted in pagan inmates and tagged , ,
27 Feb 2009
4 Comments

Felon Friends and Pen Pals: How it all happened

It started with a naive assumption and a good heart. We were in a pagan group together and we wanted to connect with other pagans. So we listed our names and addresses in a directory of pagan groups. This was back in the day before the ubiquity of the internet, so–hooray!– we made connections when letters started arriving.
Here’s the kicker. The letters were from inmates seeking connection with other pagans. I laughingly called my fellow witch and said thank you for the new friends, calling them “felon friends.” The name stuck as we referred to the burgeoning prison correspondence as “the felon friends.” There weren’t many and the few inmates had intriguing stories and seemed very sincere. We sent them our newsletter and wrote personal letters.
About that time, I started offering correspondence courses. As a matter of fact, three of the four books I’ve written and published started out as correspondence courses. You guessed it! A good proportion of the subscribers were incarcerated pagans. As I drifted away from my former group, the felon friends continued to write to both of us, or at least to me. Inmates would pass my name on to others and my correspondence grew. It was very absorbing work and I learned a lot about how to deal with inmates. There are few resources for pagans working with inmates and sometimes the advice came from the inmates themselves. Many of them became very protective of me, giving me advice about how to tell the sincere seekers from the manipulators and the fakes.
Most of the faithful writers were eager for correspondence courses. I did a Tarot course using Learning the Tarot, and I did a “God of the Month,” using my then unpublished book, The Wild God. So one day I realized I needed to ‘get real’ about this ministry and act like it was a ministry. I organized myself and took my in person beginning Wicca class which I call The Initiation of Athena and divided up into chapters, wrote questions, and designed a course ending with a dedication. I figured it would take a year and a day. what I didn’t figure was the different mail restrictions in different prisons and different states. What I didn’t figure is the enormous time it took to review and comment on the questions, to answer letters, keep good records, to make the copies and to get to the post office.
At one point, I formed it as a coven, The Coven of the Barbed Pentacle. We had a newsletter and when someone finished the course, there was a self-dedication ritual and I made up a certificate. The first person to finish was very dedicated and it took almost exactly two years. It was a happy and proud moment for us both.
One of the inmates gave my name to a newsletter that went out to incarcerated pagans across the country. I had 100 people, mostly men, in 21 states. To run a correspondence service of this size took most of the weekend and evenings during the week. It took a good investment of money (for postage and copying) and time. Most inmates are destitute but a few would send money or stamps when they could. One of the newsletter issues was financed 100% by inmate donations. A proud moment.
I would get phone calls and sometimes inmates would pass my name on to their chaplains or others so I would get calls from chaplains asking for advice on how to accomodate those observing pagan and Wiccan religions.
I was a priestess to inmates for more than five years with little help from others (more on that later). It took a lot of time, effort, and expense. It was the focus of my spiritual work, my spiritual practice, and my understanding of service to the gods. It can be and was for me, a burn-out situation. Inmates are demanding, their stories are sad, and sometimes their manipulation is evident but sometimes not. If I skipped a weekend or missed a night of writing letters, I got behind. Their letters reflected anger, disappointment, dismay, and concern.
I was getting burnt out. I was getting further and further behind. In some ways, I set myself up for failure. The process I developed was very individual and based on a personal response so there was no way to make this a ‘factory’ approach. One day a letter from an inmate — for whom I’d gone the extra mile — arrived that was a screaming accusation about how I took his money and gave him nothing in return (I used the money for the newsletter) and that I was another in a long line of betrayers of his trust.
That was the last letter I read from an inmate, with one exception. Months went by, then a year. I don’t throw the letters out. I keep them thinking one day, I will write a letter of apology and maybe refer them elsewhere. I didn’t end my services to them with honor and I still feel remorse and guilt over that.
Meanwhile, I was getting phone calls from the Department of Corrections, asking for information on accomodating pagan inmates observences of their religion. Ocassionally they would want someone to come into the prisons and lead groups. Amazingly, I had been able to find people. It’s a rare and wonderful person who has the right kind of skills to do that. Kudos to all prison chaplains, pagans or otherwise!
As a result of some of my consulting, I was named in a law suit last year; the defendant inmate claiming that I along with the prison chaplain and warden were violating his right to observe his . Luckily for me, the Department of Corrections added me to their consultancy list so I was represented by the state attorney general and didn’t have to retain my own lawyers. I just filed documents, answered questions, reviewed documents. Eventually, the case against me was dropped.
Yesterday, a letter arrived at my work, marked “legal materials.” It was from an inmate demanding I provide an affadavit for his lawsuit against the Department of Corrections. The letter questioned my credentials and abilities. But more upsetting was that this inmate had my work address because the DOC had sent him a copy of the fax cover sheet. My feelings on this are still rather raw. My sense of privacy is violated and my ability to keep this work separate from my work is also destroyed. Luckily, the people who opened the mail and saw the letter are confidential and trustworthy.
And so it will go on. In the next post, I will write some reflections on the process, the call to service, and what I learned from the felon friends.
Best wishes and be good, or at least stay out of jail. It is not a nice place.
Posted in God of Wicca, pagan inmates and tagged , ,
24 Jun 2008

Students who want to be there…the joys and the terror!!


So, as Tarot Teachers, we have students who want to be there in our class. How cool is that! There’s an adult learning theory model that says we need to be as aware of their learning needs and make our classroom compatable with their needs and desires.

Adults look at what as taught as an Experience which they take in and Reflect on it through the lens of past learning experiences and the style in which they learn. Then they process the subject and Connect it to their life experience, their thoughts, philosophies which tend to be more fully formed than when teaching children and young adults. When they make this connection [or not], they Decide the relevance of the topic.

Through their life’s journey, adult students are less likely to accept information at face value and more likely to think critically about it. Not all, but many!

  • They will ask questions
  • They will evaluate your statements and make counter-arguments
  • They will be able to admit that they don’t know something and ask for clarification.
  • Adult students are interested, willing to examine beliefs and underlying assumptions.
  • They will listen and give feedback–there lies terror and joy!
  • They look for evidence, will check your facts
  • They will adjust their opinion
  • They will examine and reject information if they find it is incorrect or irrelevant

The joy of this process is that you don’t have to convince the Tarot student that they need to learn the topic. They want to be there and they are most likely ready to learn. You don’t really have to convince them the topic is important or interesting.

The terror is that in their reflection on the material, if they don’t find it relevant and don’t make a connection to it, they won’t continue to learn it. I think that includes the idea that “this stuff is too hard to learn.” They are more likely to know that life is short and there’s much to learn. They will vote with their feet.
So we start with an advantage and we end up on the precipice. Like the fool, we step off the cliff into a grand adventure. Perhaps we will fly or perhaps we will land with a thud. I take reassurance in the fact that Wil E. Coyote always comes back for more. His relationship with the roadrunner is always on, always active, and always full of energy.
Posted in Tarot, teacher and tagged , , , | Leave a comment
23 Jun 2008

Teaching Tarot and the New Student…some initial thoughts

I work at a college in the library and I’m part of many college-wide discussions about how to reach our students so that they learn. And much greater than that, they are excited and engaged in the learning process; further that students become passionate about the subject and it becomes a life-long pursuit or interest. It’s what makes us interesting human beings. And then when we reach out to one another, mind to mind, to share our passions, we are become community. Teachers and students alike become community. Passionate, knowledgeable, reflective, thoughtful, and engaged. We argue, we teach, we laugh, we learn, and we play as we learn.

Students who are there because the class is required, are not in this community yet. It takes some doing to get them to that place of passion and delight. For some, there will be topics that never excite them. For others, it will ignite them and the fire will burn for a lifetime.

Most students of Tarot come because they are interested: some are passionately drawn to the cards, perhaps for a long time; some because they are curious; and some because it’s something daring and even dangerous. For teachers of Tarot, we often get a “leg up,” or an extra boost because we don’t have to lure, seduce, and convince a reluctant learner to become engaged in our passionate discoveries.

At the same time, we can’t assume that everyone is going to become instantly attuned to the cards. It is an intimdating subject to study and learn. Seventy-eight cards with upright meanings, reversals, dignities, correspondences, images, and more. Centuries of writings, opinions, rumors, theories, and arguments can cause a student to run screaming to some other, more apparently simple divinitory system.

Then there’s the whoo whoo factor, both good and bad. The Devil’s Picture Book, a Wicked Pack of Cards are really something to fear by some folks and some of our students may have grown up with that idea. It is something to overcome. Then there’s the other side of the whoo whoo factor. People who come to the Tarot because they are following a spirituality that not only accepts but assumes that their practitioners will use some sort of divination. I’ll admit I was on both sides of this coin, having been in a fundamentalist cult and then following an earth-based religion. As teachers, we may have to temper one or other of those expectations.

On the other hand, we have a much greater change to lure our students into love of the Tarot because they are in the class voluntarily. All we have to do is seduce them gracefully and with the knowledge that a wicked deck of cards brings a lifetime of wisdom, passion, devotion, strength, and learning.

Posted in Tarot and tagged , , | Leave a comment

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