Tarot Ethos and Teaching
I am Lara, founder of the International Tarot Foundation. I was born, and still live in live in a small town that was once a village, situated in Lancashire, England. I have always had a historic interest in the occult, which has taken me down some interesting paths and ultimately the practise of my craft and of course, Tarot.
I have always been amazed how Tarot can guide us through the many situations in life. The magick, mystery and higher connection of this awe inspiring medium of divination is integrated into my life and my work with absolute pleasure.
I believe that to have faith and trust in Tarot is key to our journey beyond the veil and that corresponding studies of Numerology, Elemental Dignities, Astrology, Philosophy and Kabbalistic knowledge can deepen our readings to insightful depths.
A subject of importance to me is that I read with and teach the value of ethics and principles of good practise, this is the baseline for each course I have written and the mentoring that we offer.
The International Tarot Foundation's Presence in the Tarot Community
In 2015 I was asked to help set up a new Tarot organisation and I can honestly say that the past 10 years
have been an education in itself. From building up the CARTA Cartomancy Awards for 7 years from its
humble beginnings to a successfully popular celebration of our community's talented deck artists and
writers.
To then developing our Tarot school platform which evolved from google docs to the current modern user
friendly school platform that we now have. In acknowledgement of the need to be able to provide a valued Tarot Certification program, we invested not only in resources for the new school but essentially in my own research and stringent self study. An initial period of offering daily free readings and journaling for 12 months allowed me to develop a reliable, intuitive Tarot foundation, often giving 10 free readings each day in my Tarot group.
7 years of studying the Elemental Dignities, Numerology, Astrology and the Spiritual Journey, Soul development and Ancient philosophy allowed me to fully appreciate the layers of insight that they offer. This allowed me to be able to write and deliver a whole new programme of Tarot and correspondence courses. This now forms our Certification programme, which I am very proud of today. My studies never stop so I can share this understanding and insight with students too, you will see from the Downloads and Insight tab on the menu, we are committed to offering Free resources to visitors of the website, more will be added.
Our students and Certified Tarot Consultants have the knowledge, skill and resources to be not just talented Tarot readers but also exemplary role models within our community.
Our focus was very much nudged along to the teaching and Tarot school route.
Did you know that we are also approved by the IICT
Bridging the Learning with Tarot
To give you a very basic example of the way we mentor and teach is to look at a quick exercise based upon a learning theory that I studied some years ago when I was at college, when I explain it, it sounds so simple and really it is simple.
The theory is referred to as ‘Scaffolding’, we support the student fully in every way possible and then step by step we remove the scaffold. I found this to be an excellent and reliable method of supporting my students in school.
We are building the understanding from the foundation upwards and supporting fully all the way until a time comes where the confidence is at a strong point. Then the support gradually steps back and as a result the structure is firm and solid.
We give enough support so the student does not struggle, the tasks are manageable, we do not want to present any opportunity to fail.
So-let’s call this ‘Bridging the Learning with Tarot’ I am going to choose two Tarot cards as below.
We want to help teach a student how to connect two cards together by finding a common theme/link
The Question is:
Is the Charioteer leaving the relationship or is he saving the relationship?
The clue is in the imagery, we are not looking for an interpretation,
we are looking for ideas and thoughts. The idea is to encourage the reader/student
to have to look closely at the imagery to find links.
Remember, practise is just practise and many roads lead to Rome.
I see the Charioteer as leaving the relationship. If we look at the elderly guy sat alone
with his dogs, we see that there is a greyed wall close by him. Now look behind the
Charioteer, he leaves the greyed walls of the city behind him.
Just for the student to come up with thoughts on the imagery is great, we can mention
our own thoughts at the end of the exercise and again, ask for thoughts.
Now, if we wanted to take this to the next step of learning, we could discuss the spiritual aspects of the two cards and how the movement is in a spiritual sense. We could ask which virtue connects to the two cards and how this energy connects to the reading. The Chariot has so much more to tell us about the 10 of Pentacles and what stage of personal development the client/querent is currently experiencing.
This would be for a more intermediate reader.
