Tarot Mentoring

Tarot mentoring is something I have been doing for many years, and to be honest it has been a closely guarded secret. Mentoring involves giving support and encouragement through the ups and downs, sometimes simply by being there. I can also help avoid pitfalls, or confirm that a particular situation or experience is a valid part of learning the Tarot.

For me, being a mentor is not about creating Paul Hughes-Barlow clones; far from it! Of course, those who have been mentored by me are very likely to be attracted to my style of tarot readings, in particular card counting, pairing and elemental dignities.

What I particularly like about mentoring is that there can be a free and open exchange of views, and the agenda is led by the student. Building up confidence in one’s abilities is critical to the success of a mentor. My students have pushed me in so many ways – they can be very honest in their assessment of my own writings, and they open up new areas of study and research.

The nature of individual mentoring is confidentiality – in much the same way that a tarot reading is confidential – so that unless a student tells people about my mentoring, there is not much for me to say.

In the last few weeks, however, things have changed. I am very pleased to see that Douglas Gibb and Catherine Chapman have both set up blogs with the express purpose of exploring tarot from different directions that are in themselves quite different from other websites on the tarot. Both are professional tarot readers who have their own views on what the tarot is about.