Read an Excerpt from the Introduction of Fortune Stellar

Perhaps you are reading this book because you have made the decision to be a professional tarot reader. Perhaps you are already a professional reader and simply looking for new ideas and energy for your tarot business. In either case, your skills, wisdom, insight and study have brought you to a place where you are able to use the tarot to make a difference in people’s lives.

Your tarot career gives you the opportunity to be a counselor, a spiritual mentor, a coach, a cheerleader, an entertainer, and a friend to a diverse group of appreciative people. Throughout your journey, the tarot will be your guide, not only in readings, but for your business itself.

As much as the tarot will be your guide and friend, you are taking on the responsibility of representing the tarot within the community at large. You may at some point have opportunity to speak with the media about tarot. You may become a teacher of tarot, and you will most certainly be in the position of fielding questions from the curious and the misinformed. It is critical that you are able to represent the history and culture of tarot thoughtfully and accurately. It is also important that you understand the remarkable history and culture of which you are now a part.

Equally important is your ability to grow as a tarot reader, and if you choose to have students, to help them grow as well.

To those ends you will find sandwiched between the lessons, some brief essays, study guides and reference charts regarding tarot history, tarot culture, and tarot reading. Some suggestions for further reading and community involvement are listed in the appendix. These essays, charts and suggestions are by no means comprehensive. Let them be a beginning point in your studies, or simply let them provide you with some basic background knowledge. Some of them may be helpful for your tarot students as well.

Of course, the most important part of your job is to give great tarot readings. Each of the eight lessons in this book offer advice on reading techniques and thought-provoking discussion. This book is designed to quickly help you combine spirituality and psychology with art and entrepreneurship to discover your unique skills and abilities as a professional tarot reader. Each lesson targets an important aspect of becoming a professional tarot reader.

Lesson One deals with the structure of your business, from the first flicker of an idea to a viable, rewarding and profitable career.

Lesson Two explores the ethics of professional tarot reading and will provide a framework for you to develop your own sense of professional and spiritual ethics.

In Lesson Three, we will explore what makes a professional quality reading and ways to meet your clients’ needs.

Lesson Four offers solutions to the most difficult problems that you will face as a professional reader.

In Lesson Five, you will learn that, even as a professional tarot reader, you are eternally a tarot student. Some of your best teachers will be your clients!

Lesson Six discusses mentoring and teaching. Most professional tarot readers will teach in one form or another. As you will learn in this section, the outlets for your teaching skills are infinite.

Lesson Seven deals with the entertainment facet of your career and discusses public appearances and performances.

The final Lesson, Eight, discusses your role as a professional tarot reader within the community at large.

Each lesson includes exercises and assignments to take you, step-by-step, through the process of becoming a professional tarot reader.

At the end of each lesson you will find a section called “Focus on the Cards.” This will guide you in a special meditation, reading or contemplation of cards specifically chosen to be pertinent to the topics of the lesson.

Because the tarot is meant to be the guiding force of your business, many of the exercises will ask you to turn to the tarot. Some will have you shuffle and pick a card at random, using the tarot to help you divine information. Others will instruct you to contemplate particular cards. Others will have you cognitively choose a card to represent something in your life and contemplate the particular card.

Picking cards, either at random or by cognitive choice, is always both a spiritual and an intellectual process. When we pick cards at random, we're allowing the spiritual energies of the universe to guide our hand. When we see the cards we've drawn, we analyze them by comparing our understanding of the cards with the current situation. When we choose cards cognitively we are still guided by Spirit. We may be drawn to a particular symbol or color. We may consider our circumstances, and intellectually decide which image best describes them. Using both random and cognitive processes will provide you with a deeper understanding of the cards themselves. It will give you strong insight into your own circumstances, and new ways to help your clients. Contemplation of the tarot can be done in so many ways; the ones just mentioned are but a few. This book is designed to help you expand the ways in which you use and understand the tarot. It will help you stretch beyond your current skills and abilities, and grow into the successful tarot professional that you are becoming.

It is assumed that, since you are coming to this book as a budding professional, you have a basic foundation of tarot knowledge. Sometimes it happens, though, that we miss, or misunderstand, a critical bit of information along with way. No matter how advanced or experienced you may be as a tarot professional, there is never any shame in not knowing something. Part of the process of growth is to discover what you don’t know!