and we're ever so close now to laying cards out for a reading we've already talked about each of the 52 cards and we're memorizing keywords for those cards we've talked about color suit and number the all-important building blocks for our card reading practice so we have just a few really important little items before we jump right in to a full-blown reading and this video covers the material pages 103 through 112 in the playing card Oracle's a little chapter title but before you lay out the cards there's only one thing one physical object that you need
in your readings only one thing and that's your card deck card readers travel light and because it's the only object we need it becomes extremely important and here you see I'm taking my cards out of a little special pouch and I don't recommend doing this just because everyone else does it I certainly don't do it for that reason keeping your deck in a special pouch is an act of intention my intention with my deck is that it is used for extraordinary purposes it's not for playing card games anymore it's for communication with unseen intelligences I'm
asking something extraordinary of my cards and so I take that intention and I act it out by putting my cards into a special place of honor when I'm finished with them this also signals to me that the reading is finished it's like putting your cards to bed letting them rest in their special home between readings and when the deck comes out I know something special is happening so it's part of making intention real the way that you treat your deck you know so think about that in regard to your cards your space is the next
preparation point and you don't need a special space you can make any space special and inviting I use my kitchen table and I simply create something that's clear of clutter right because I want my mind to be free of clutter and I want it to be a place where I would invite a guest because I'm inviting these intelligences right that may have their being within other dimensions I'm inviting divine intelligence into the reading like a guest so I make sure the pizza crumbs are all wiped off you know I put a nice little cloth on
the table and I clear anything away that's not related to the reading everything else is optional and so so this is my own table today the day that I took this photo my space looks different every time I set it up I don't follow hard and fast rules I let myself be a little impulsive you know just like it doesn't look the same every time I have a guest come over right I often like to have a candle but not every time and I like a candle because it symbolizes my intention for the reading which
is to cut through the haze or the fog surrounding any issues like a light in the dark to me it symbolizes truth and so I include it often I like this photo of my dad here he's the creator of this system of reading cards he he loved card reading love talking about cards and so I invite him you know he's passed away now but I invite him to participate because I think he would enjoy that and I think it adds something to the reading and these are some crystals I I bring in and and they
feel nice to me and I like them and to me they have properties that I like they help to amplify my intention oftentimes or I feel that they do a lot of times I'll put them on top of the cards before the reading takes place so this is just me and you should feel free to create your own space but when the readings finished all of this comes up goes back in the drawer and it's the kitchen table again and no one would know anything ever happened there except the pizza crumbs have been cleaned off
nice little prairie dog chirping in the background there I don't know if you can hear that the next subsection in this chapter is prayer a word I actually prefer as invocation it's a little more neutral and what I'm really doing with this part of the reading is just calling out to the intelligences that I know are already present but I'm just getting their attention asking them to participate inviting them and I've got a couple examples of different prayers or invocations they're in the playing card at locals but again it's about making verbal my intention for
the reading and I don't always say a prayer out loud or an invocation out loud in a reading it's something that I know inside of myself and sometimes I feel like sharing that with the client and sometimes I don't so I don't have a lot of hard and fast rules connecting is an important topic this is an illustration from the alchemy Edition playing card Oracle deck that my father created for the two of clubs and the two of clubs in both playing card Oracle decks communicate the same kind of message it's it's a communion card
it's about connecting on a level that's invisible right clubs is the suit that represents the invisible realm of air and I love the image of the solitary figure what an interesting depiction of the concept for connecting and this figure is going inside herself to connect with a quiet space in order to connect with something outside herself something greater and I love that and I think that's a wonderful representation of what we do in a reading as we connect to our clients or even if we're just playing with the cards by ourselves it's important to find
that inner silence so we can receive something that's outside of ourselves asking the question critical part of preparation for a reading cards are so much more helpful if you can pose a question especially if you're with someone else it's a really good idea to have a question to make the most use of your time and a better worded question will get you better results then a poorly worded question and people are really good at poorly worded questions and so you need to be educated in this and often it's helpful to help the client reword their
questions so that the Oracles will respond in an optimal way so one of the big issues I see commonly with questions is people will glob multiple questions or cram multiple questions into what sounds like one rambling question and it's your job as the reader to help them out otherwise if you lay the cards out in response to a question like that you don't know what the cards are relating to which aspect of the question it's too much information and you want to get to what the client is actually concerned about people hide their real questions
within these rambling scenarios so it's fun to find what the client really is concerned about and it's helpful to the client so make it as simple as possible you know and you can then follow from whatever a response you get from the car into the next concern for the clients lots of people come with you know several concerns and you can address them one at a time general questions are another big thing that you'll see you know this can be for different reasons sometimes people are a little guarded they don't want to give away too
much so sometimes general questions give way to more specific questions once the reading gets underway and the cards spark things in the client you know you can follow those general questions with more specific questions beating around the bush questions you know similar to general questions but a little different often people are intimidated by asking their real question and you'll know this because the question will either feel really super heady like mental rather than a question that's coming from their gut you know or their heart or the question will just seem uninteresting like really why would
the person actually be asking that question it doesn't feel like the person's even that interested in their question so it's good to you know just pry a little and make sure that you get the questions that are actually important to the client and the client will be will be grateful and the final consideration in our preparations is the shuffle you know everyone shuffles a little differently I've created a little flip book with the photos on the left side of the screen there of my shuffle I have sort of a weird sideways shuffle I don't Poker
shuffle you know I don't do the typical card game shuffle and how you shuffle is not as important as what's going on inside of you when you shuffle similar to that slide we saw a couple slides back of the solitary figure there that's the two of clubs illustration it's important to create an opening for intelligences other than your own to come into the reading so if you have your usual busy banter going on inside your head or you're just chatting with the client about their life or something or your life you're not creating that opening
so I like to either concentrate on the question that was asked or concentrate on my own breath something that gets my usual flow of mental dialogue you know out of the way and so that's so that's that and then you're ready to lay your cards out you
