Welcome to the Real Life Lessons from the Major Arcana series. We've gathered together 22 of the best Tarot readers to share their personal stories and interpretations of the Major Arcana cards.
Discover new meanings and spiritual lessons behind the Major Arcana cards, through real-life experiences and stories. And watch as the Tarot cards truly come to life!
Tarot Diva Sasha Graham illustrates how this inspiring card is a muse for artists, creatives, and anyone who seeks peace, renewal, and hope. Read on…
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I love reading tarot.
Reading cards for another allows me to plug into a massive current of electricity. This seismic current also exists between painter, canvas and subject. In tarot’s case, it is reader, cards and querent. If you and I sat together on my back deck, on a warm summer night, sharing a bottle of icy cold rosé, I might tell you this same electricity provokes daises to bloom and makes babies grow. But that’s a subject for a different essay. I’m supposed to tell you all about my relationship with the Star card.
Art bleeds stories. Tarot is narrative in pure form. The Star card is often called the Muse. Art requires the Muse because Muses are inspiration. Art cannot exist without inspiration.
Early 80’s radio used DJ’s to play love songs. Every night at bedtime, I used a brown rectangle plastic clock radio to listen to scratchy FM stations. Uncleanable dust wedged in the clock’s top. White numbers were marked on little cards that flipped down with tiny clicks. I gazed out the stars outside my window and listened as singers crooned of desire, love and passion. Who were the women inspiring these men to put pen to paper, lyrics to guitar? What strange supernatural powers did these women possess? Did this latent power exists somewhere inside of me? At twelve years old, it barely seemed that I mattered to anyone at all. Would a person ever want to write a love song about me? Was it possible?
The Water Bearer is the traditional symbol of the Star card. It invokes Greek Muses who appear to the artist like goddesses. Ten years later, in my 20’s, I continued to seek validation. I worked as an actress in independent films and off-broadway theaters. You could say models, film and reality stars are muses for the masses. They give shape to fantasy. Form to desire. But to merely stand as the muse, I soon discovered, is a flat and boring prospect. One that involves boat loads of ego. This ego is found in people who declare, “I want to be famous,” or worse, “I should be famous.” This ego distinctly serves a 12 year old who seeks attention, validation and their place in the world. But when the ego does not mature and transform into adulthood, trouble ensues.
By my 30’s, I’d married a handsome photographer, gave birth to a beautiful daughter, started a Tarot business and wrote my first book, Tarot Diva. I continued learning from the Star card. Only this time, I sought inspiration. I wanted to be the artist. To work alongside those I respected and admired. The pool on the Star card is a gathering place. Enter this space and coexist beside all artists who have sought inspiration, Van Gogh, Hemmingway, Neruda, Balanchine, Kahlo.
What about the artists you’ve never heard of? The ones who die unknown and penniless? They stand at the Star too. The artist down the street? The one who paints on off-hours, for love, not money? He’s there. Accountants, cashiers, and cab drivers? They gather at the font of the Star card to. How does your pizza delivery boy stand next to Virginia Woolf at the Star card’s pool? Because creative thinking is the essence of the Star card. And creative thinking comes in all forms, not just when painting, dancing or writing.
Now in my 40’s, I have just written a book of Tarot magic. It is called 365 Tarot Spells. You should open an Amazon tab and order it right now! I can show you how to work and whittle with the energetic reserves of each Arcana. As always, the personal and intimate work you embark on the inside will reflect evolution on the outside of your life.
Certain magic should not be attempted by those who are under 40. The psyche is not ready. The scope of understanding is not there. It should not be rushed. Besides, we are often the worst judges of ourselves and our needs. What we want is rarely what we need. What is at your fingertips at this very moment? This is what you should focus on. Don’t believe me? Try it. See what happens.
I continue to explore the energetic and Shamanistic landscape of the Star card which takes on as many forms as people who gaze into it. Arcana energy is as real as rain. It is alive. It has an essence all it’s own. To work with this energy is not only pleasurable but also effective.
To stand inside the softness and stillness of the Star card is to hear the voice of inspiration speak. It is to whisper softly to the ears of others. You become the muse and the artist. They are one and the same. The Star card is the union of creativity making all life possible. Working inside the Star is to work in tandem with high and low energy, to weave darkness and light, and to siphon the stars. Because when we look up to the night sky what we are really looking at is ourselves.
Pleasurable, cathartic, the Star is the quiet after the storms of our life. Distant thunder rumbles. Traces of lightening illuminate mountainscapes. The worst if over. You made it. Emotional turmoil has wiped you clean. You are hollow, empty and ready to be filled. Defenses and ego blasted away, you are nothing but pure essence. Inside the calm, you hear the voice speak. You pour the water. Nourish everything around you. Life is possible again. You create something new. Beauty. Art. Possibility.
Cultivate Star energy.
Court it.
Because when you merge with this card, it is pure magic. And anything is possible.
In case you were wondering, I haven’t inspired any love songs yet. And that is totally okay. I have something more valuable than a pining musician, ex-boyfriend. I have an intimate love song with the universe. Otherwise known as my life …
About Sasha
For Sasha, tarot is life, magic is alive and signs are everywhere if you know how to look.
Sasha embraced the supernatural from her moment of birth on a chilly Halloween night in Saranac Lake, NY. Her eclectic childhood carried her across the country, from dusty pig farms in Iowa, to the craggy canyons of Colorado, from the lush Green Mountains of Vermont, to fertile produce farms of New Jersey.
At seventeen, Sasha was desperate for culture and hungry for urban life. She moved herself to New York City where she remains to this day.
Sasha originated fiesty, blood sucking roles a cast member in La Commedia Del Sangue: Vampyr Theatre, a weekly vampire play performed in Gotham theaters, bars and clubs. She would go on star in over fifteen b-horror films, playing gargoyles, werewolves, aliens, more vampires and even a mafia hit woman.
After receiving her BA in Literature and Religion at Hunter College, Sasha began her work with tarot. She joined the Tarot School and opened a private reading practice. Sasha quickly became a sought after reader for the fashion and media set, becoming a staple at Fashion's Night Out and serving clients such as Burt's Bees, M. Missoni and Christian Loubouitin.
Sasha conceived and produced tarot events The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Morgan Library. She brought the tarot community behind the scenes with curators and educators. Rare Viconti, Marseille and Minchiate cards along with uncut Italian card sheets were unveiled. These treasures, previously shuttered in musuem archives and unavailable to the public, were exmained and considered in a modern context.
Sasha is most proud of her Tarot Outreach Program. Sasha's first ever of it's kind outreach was developed for New York City's at-risk, inner city youth. Working with kids who were transitioning out of the foster care system, Sasha used tarot and symbol as the igniting point of nurturing personal intuition. She taught that trust in oneself can be rebuilt. This trust can be used to empower a population robbed of stability and security.
Sasha and her tarot books have been featured in documentaries and media outlets such as Sirius XM Radio, The Wall Street Journal, Page Six of The Daily News and featured in the cover of Crain's New York Business. Sasha appeared regularly as a guest on the WPIX Channel 11 Morning News, reading tarot on pop culture topics and celebrities and wrote a weekly tarot column for Marie Claire.com.
Sasha, her husband, and daughter split their time between Manhattan and the eerily gothic, “Jane Eyresque” landscape of upstate New York. She is currently finishing up her 5th book Tarot Experience and her first Tarot deck, the Haunted Mansion Tarot for Lo Scarabeo due out in Spring ’17.
www.sashagraham.com
https://www.instagram.com/sashatarotdiva/
https://www.facebook.com/sasha.graham1
http://www.amazon.com/365-Tarot-Spells-Creating-Magic/dp/073874624X
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