The Goal is to Strengthen

In my practice, the goal of psychic consultations is to help women empower themselves. I was fascinated by how most women's developmental paths in the practice of divination can be so accurately traced to the Major Arcana of the Tarot, which has often been described as "The Fool's Path to Enlightenment."

In one of my advanced workshops, the Tarot is explored as a teacher of female psychology, a kind of female guru, with a particular emphasis on the High Priestess, the Sovereign, the Ruler, the Hierophant, Strength, Temperance, the Hermit, the Hanged Man, Death, the Devil, the Tower, and the World. For women, for example, ego death is not as difficult a process as shedding the false self. This is one of the differences in the interpretation of the Hanged Man card for women.

I'm always excited by my use of Clarissa Pinkola Estes's work ("Women Who Run with the Wolves") to contextualize the World card as representative of the magical reader, the "medium woman." Drawing parallels between Estes's description of the medium woman who mediates between the invisible world and the world of unconscious reality, and the magical reader, I show women how specific stages of development in the Tarot can lead women to this strong, natural center of their power and purpose. According to Estes, the medium woman mediates between the criatura—the female "creature," that is, her soul or "true femininity"—and society. In the Tarot, the concept of the criatura is linked to the reader herself. Women become purer conduits for information from the invisible world when they live authentically. To be authentic to themselves, readers must do what has "soul and meaning" in their lives, otherwise they will not be able to hear when the client is being dishonest in their life, and therefore, they will not be able to help the client empower themselves to make decisions.