CIIS & Consultations
March Sessions Open & Cultivating Decolonial Perspectives on Divination workshop
Hello darling reader,
I write you in the glittering incandescence of the divinatory moment. Last night I started Thresholds, and I can already tell this cohort is going to be particularly magical. Then this afternoon I had a very synchronistic and humbling reading with a client. I savor the fruits of passion pursued.
Many students said they wanted to study tarot to contest an authority that would gaslight their own intuition. They are studying tarot to form intimate relationships with spirit that are deeply self-affirming in its reparative potential. The inner validation enabled in the ritual communion with Spirit via a tarot practice becomes vital for cultivating an authentic personhood. Authenticity is so damn hard to embody when we are conditioned to rely on external validation. Spirit hails us towards a particular path, knowing more of what would manifest our innate potential than the ego’s perception that is limited by its constellation within a social matrix. So you walk and you walk and you follow the faint amber glow of prudence, but you’re never quite sure you’re ever progressing toward some point that promises fulfillment. Maybe its because my destined light is a balsamic moon, but then even the tiniest sliver of silver light in the night sky is nowhere to be found from my horizon standpoint, but I’ve learned that external reflection must sometimes be sacrificed as a source of support or guidance. So you write your own way. You do the work you can’t not do. You enrich your inner life, you cultivate radical trust and at some point you forget how warm is the light that others can shine on you when they actually see you. You’ve been focused on keeping the fire kindling within. At some point you become a lighthouse. You shine your light in the dark not knowing if it helps any other cold soul find their way through tremendous uncertainty, persistent precarity and the ever-looming threat of purposelessness. But then ships with survivors come to harbor with messages of gratitude. And every thank you is stunning. I am grateful for every student, every client, every reader, every reference, every collaborator and most of all my Spirit, my ever-present muse that keeps me inspired enough to keep charting my own course. Truly, thank you for being here reader, thank if you’ve written me about my work and the impact its had on you and thank you if you’ve shared that work with others.
I am happy to continue offering this red work and announce that my books are open for March. I only have a handful of sessions available this month due to travel and teaching. I am excited to be returning the University of British Columbia, Vancouver to lecture and give workshops at an even greater capacity than I did last year. So if you’d like a reading with me, nows your chance!
I’m also excited to announce that I will be returning to the California Institute of Integral Studies in April! This two-day online workshop, three Hours Per day, Cultivating Decolonial Perspectives on Divination with Tarot, will be held from April 12-13, from 10:00am -1:00pm PDT.
Join me for an illuminating workshop on decolonial perspectives on divination with Tarot and how to develop a decolonial praxis. On the first day, participants examine how tarot cards can be read to subvert the dynamics of white supremacist-capitalist-imperialist-patriarchy, weaving historical context and spiritual practice into a comprehensive overview of tarot. Participants also explore tarot as a radical epistemology that shifts the authority of knowing into the hands of the people themselves.
The second day is centered on application with a focus on how to use the cards in a reading for yourself or others. I will share insights on the consultation space of a tarot reading, opening conversation and consideration for the similarities and distinctions between a formal therapeutic session; navigating the spread with confidence and a kaleidoscopic perspective.
In this workshop participants leave with an understanding of Tarot as radical literacy with solid foundations in ethical tarot reading. Please bring your questions, your experience, your tarot decks and your intentions as diviner.
This workshop is open to all levels of tarot enthusiasts, but some basic understanding of tarot will be helpful in deepening your experience.
CIIS also offers scholarships for anyone where the cost is a barrier, but note that applications for all programs are due 14 days (about 2 weeks) before the event (so by the end of March). Here is a link to apply.
Lastly, darling reader is that TENZ is still open for enrollment!
This is a long walk with me under starlight, using our cards as compass points. I only offer it every other year and so I am excited to see a whole new cohort constellating, as I know we will become so much more intimate and supported in our shared pursuit of revelation.
Class will start Sunday April 23 (moved due to my UBC travel), but Aries is where the Sun exalts and so starting on a Sunday seems just as apt.
This is a year-long guide into the minor arcana, using the tarot images as doorways into a depth understanding of the zodiac. This will deeply expand your consideration, regard and application of the minor arca, the decans and the major arcana “parents” of each the minor arcana / pip cards.
As is the tradition with decanic imagery, this course is an inspired re-interpretation of historical meaning through a modern textual application for the decolonial diviner. Decan history and application is ongoing. Here we’ll study a rich ritual calendar with four-millenia long collection of spirits and symbols to walk a peripatetic path toward individual determination, a path toward dignity that is queer in its self-determination.
TENZ is tarot as a movement practice, whereby as we walk together with agency we reclaim dignity lost at the intersections of white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism.
TENZ teaches tarot a system of syncretization, connecting the decanic history in live classes, to the critical co-investigation of the new cultural terrain we walk on, done with lectures for each class which are interpreted through various queer, and critical theory. This course is an unveiling of tarot, a summoning of wisdom distilled from the Sun’s serpentine journey through the zodiac, and an extending our tarot reading into an expanded critical literacy informed by the indigenous, feminist, and decolonial texts curated for this course.
TENZ is a borderlands course. It aims to fuse relationships by honoring a narrative tradition which creates poetic coherence out of a life of movement and fragmentation, as is the case when modern readers traverse dissociative linguistic, colonial, cultural, psychic and physical borders.
I hope you join me in in the consultation room or in class, and please reach out if you have any questions. Talk soon.
X,
Christoper