Freemasonry and Tarot (Friday 7:30–9:30 pm)

Jean-Michel David

blah blah blah - well... not really, but that's what's up for now until the end of February

Keynote speaker 9:00 - 10:15

Christine Payne-Towler

Western esoteric currents: Alchemy, TheoSophia, and Tarot

By the lifetime of Jacob Beohme, the conversation between Alchemists, Kabbalists and esoteric Christians had reached such a point of interwoven multidimensionality that modern scholars struggle to comprehend it all and put the various layers in context. The ethos of chivalry was now being introjected by visionary private practitioners along Kabbalistic lines, their Quest being the redemption of the Wisdom of God, Sophia, the Shekhina within themselves. The self-published Alchemists were also teaching astrology, eros magic and a nature-based yoga through their exquisite Art of Memory illustrations and gnomic texts. The works of spiritual feminists Agrippa and Paracelsus were substantiating the call for an Age of the Holy Spirit by organizing and then refining the esoteric canon into an astral healing modality, soon to become a hallmark of Rosicrucian identification. Boehme, John Dee, and others in their expanding circles were cross-comparing the Heiroglyphic Monad as a universal Key, while the Protestant Sophianics were synthesizing a ChristoSophic religion in the margins of the Reformation. What happens when we bring the manual-less, esoterically-structured Tarot into this milieu?

About Christine Payne-Towler [USA]
www.tarotarkletters.com

Christine Payne-Towler is the author of the book The Underground Stream; Esoteric Tarot Revealed and the writer of the divinatory Tarot text at www.Tarot.com. Since 2005, Christine has been producing a stream of writings on Tarot, astrology, esotericism and magic at her blog site www.tarotarkletters.com. On the occasion of this conference, she will be unveiling the Tarot of the Holy Light, co-created with artist and producer Michael Dowers.

Fern Mercier

Hidden Within Full View

Codes ‘hidden within full view’ tell us the tarot is more than just a wicked pack of playing cards. The very form of each tarot card communicates a secret lexicon.

Concealed within the graphic structure and “sacred” geometry of each card lies a vocabulary of form and meaning.

The original tarot artists used a variety of clues including basic geometry of square, circle and triangle – as well as astrological glyphs and other basic shapes such as cross, crescent and star - to impart historical, religious cultural and social insights for the esoteric reader.

Even a simple vertical or horizontal line has significance in the underground stream of pagan and heretical knowledge that defied the religious tyrannies of mainstream ideology throughout the centuries.

The’ medium is the message’. Because the message is embedded within the actual designs, particularly in the traditional Marseille-type Tarot decks, it is clear that the cards were transmitting specific meanings and qualities.

Crack the codes that inform the esoteric language of the older tarot arcana with Fern Mercier.

About Fern [New Zealand]
www.tarot.net.nz

Fern has a busy practice in Auckland city, New Zealand as a professional tarot reader and astrologer, teaching consulting, writing and educating in both disciplines. She fell in love with tarot when she found her first deck in 1974. Her year-long Diploma tarot Course is long-established and she is a founding member of the Tarot Guild Aotearoa. She has appeared on many popular TV and radio shows. She co-organized the NZ Tarot Summer School in 2002 as well as the arcana tarot art event in 2006. Fern has lectured and workshopped at many national and international conferences including Chicago 2003 and Australia throughout the last decade. Most recently she was a keynote presenter at the ATS Conference in Brisbane and spoke at the LETS Symposium in Oct 2010 – the first tarot gathering to be available worldwide through a live stream video webcast program. With Lyn Olds, she co-organised the Southern Symposium – a Trans-Tasman event held in June 17th-19th 2011 in Auckland.

Dan Pelletier

"Clearing the Decks" – Reclaiming the Tarot from the Pirates
Finding Cosmic Truth beyond the marketing slogans of the Victorian and Summer of Love eras’.

synopsis

About Dan [New York, USA]
www.tarotgarden.com

Dan is an accomplished tarot reader with over thirty years of experience. Dan has also contributed to publications on Aeclectic Tarot, Tarot for Life website newsletter Seeker’s Journey, and Tarot Passages magazine. He is also co-owner of the well known and highly respected Tarot Garden.

Joep van Loon

The Tarot Wheel

In 'The Tarot Wheel: a tripartite view on the internal structure of the Visconti Sforza Tarot, Joep develops a original vision about the internal structure of the Visconti Sforza Tarot. During the conference he will come back to this subject and extend it to the Tarot de Marseille.

About Joep [Natitingou, Bénin]
The Tarot Wheel ~ ATS Newsletter

Joep is a hydrogeologist living in West Africa. His home is in Bénin but he is actually working in Sénégal. He's the author of 'The Tarot Wheel' piublished in the July edition of the ATS Newsletter of this year.

Yoav Ben-Dov

CBD Tarot de Marseille - A new restoration of the Conver deck

After 3+ years of intensive work, a restored version of the Conver (1760) Tarot deck was recently printed in Belgium (June 2011). Instead of trying to recover hypothetical lost symbols, what I tried to do is to bring forth, and adapt to present-day techniques and sensibilities, the artistic genius of Conver which made his version the most appreciated and influential among the traditional Tarot decks. In the conference I will present the finished cards and describe the process of their creation.

About Yoav [Israel]
www.bendov.info

Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov was trained as a physicist, historian and philosopher of science, and lectured for many years in Tel-Aviv and other universities on the philosophy of quantum mechanics and chaos theory, scientific method and digital culture. Author of the first Tarot book in Hebrew (1981), which had a considerable influence on Tarot readers in Israel. Studied Tarot under the guidance of Alexandro Jodorowsky, and later developed his own approach of "open reading".

Major Tom Schick

an early deck in the British Museum

Not all of us have been able to take the opportunity to visit some of the main museums around the world and take the time to sit with a deck or two for careful study. Major Tom will here present a visual exploration of an early deck held in the British Museum.

About Major Tom [UK]
www.majortom.biz

Major Tom has run tarot workshops in the UK for over a decade. His Tarot Lovers Calendar, in which pre-release decks have been featured, has been a useful litmus for tarot developments in the broader tarot community.

9:00–10:15

Marcus Katz

The Great Symbols of the Paths:

Tarot as an Illustration of the Spiritual Ascent Narrative in Western Esotericism. Illustrated by A. E. Waite's second Tarot and other unpublished Tarot material.

About Marcus [UK]
www.tarotprofessionals.com, www.tarosophy.com, www.tarot-town.com

Russell Sturgess

Primitive Christian Theology, the inspiration for the Marseille Tarot major arcana. (The Beatitudes and the Marseille Tarot)

synopsis

About Russell [Sunshine Coast, Australia]
www.beattitude.com.au

Russell Sturgess is a retired natural therapist, numerologist, business consultant, educator and author. In 2009 Russell published his book, Metanoia, Renovating the House of the Spirit, which explores his conference topic in enlightening detail. Using the core message of the sacred map revealed in his book, Russell currently runs a consultancy business that facilitates the integration of Spiritual Intelligence into companies, along with them being committed to creating Spiritual, Social and Human Capital. He also works with individuals using the same process.

Lyn Olds

Create a unique Tarot Journal

TAROT, JOURNAL, TRAVEL and FRANCE. These four words were the inspiration for this specially designed workshop for the 2011 ATS convention. Armed with no more than scissors and a glue stick, participants will create a tarot journal with a twist. A fabulous memento to take home from Ste Suzanne. All materials supplied.

About Lyn Olds [New Zealand]
www.tarot-ART.com

Lyn Olds has been involved in tarot for many years now and has enjoyed roles as a reader, teacher, mentor and tarot event organiser! Her focus at present is to unite her love of tarot with a growing interest in artistic ventures that celebrates the art of tarot in its many guises. More information can be found at www.tarot-ART.com

Roxanne Flornoy

Closing and farewells

Over the course of lunch, we'll bring the Convention to a close – until next time!