Dutch Tarot Conference

‘Are We All on the Same Camera/Page?’ LtoR: PCG, Agnes Yntema-De Vries, Kirsten Buchholzer, James Wanless, Petra Stam

Conferences can be dull affairs. Endless speakers droning on, weak coffee, and that little voice inside that says “Go on, no-one will notice, just sneak off after this talk…”But the recent Plant Consciousness event in London avoided this by having singing plants, a great venue, and frequent interludes with poetry, a beat-box rapper and strong coffee! And of course thrilling speakers…

And the Dutch Tarot Conference I attended in Utrecht a few days ago avoided conference fatigue too. It began well with an interesting venue that challenged us all to find  (so we were wide awake with our Sherlock Holmes hats on right from the start). And just as the Plant event kicked off with an American speaker gifted with pizazz (John Perkins who started the Be the Change movement) so we had the fantastic James Wanless, creator of the Voyager Tarot, who has a great presentation style – easy-going, Californian, high-energy, witty and very knowledgeable; followed by Kirsten Buchholzer, President of the German Tarot Association, who revealed to us the power of an extremely evocative deck that was new to many of us – the Rohrig deck; then Petra Stam who has created a beautiful Moon Deck, and is the author of a number of illustrated books on the Goddess and Spirituality (in Dutch only unfortunately); then Agnes Ynetma-De Vries from the Buro Voor Tarot who gave her unique perspective on working with the Tarot, which included a dramatic tearing up of a Tarot card. (If only I could understand Dutch!)

The Magician, from the Rohrig deck

Jurre Yntema, who organised the conference (and distributes the OBOD course in the Dutch, French and German languages) had kindly given me the last slot of the day – nice, because one tends to remember the last item in a series, but not nice since by now it was 4pm and we’d been indoors all day. The solution? Fresh air and exercise! In the evening sun we went outside and I took everyone through a movement-meditation series based on the first eight cards of the Major Arcana. Back inside we looked at the theme: When Psychotherapy meets the Tarot. Psychology met the Tarot a while back, and Jungian insights in particular have been well integrated into Tarot lore. But perspectives from psychotherapy do not seem to sit so comfortably, and this was the field I wanted us to explore together. I’ll post a write-up on this at some point…

Fresh air and exercise! Tarot Cult Activity in the Netherlands