Tarot Love Affair

I am in love. Hopelessly, irrevocably, head over heels in capital L O V E. After spending the last five days in New York attending the Readers Studio, an annual tarot celebration and intensive study event presented by the prestigious New York City-based Tarot School, my love affair with the tarot has risen to new heights of passion and devotion. This is not some adolescent crush, it is no brief assignation, but is instead, like all true loves, a deeply transformative relationship.

There is a powerful alchemy which takes place when several hundred tarot people gather. In this case, there were Tarot scholars and historians, psychotherapists and social workers, professors of psychology, and some of the world’s most influential tarot authors, teachers, and Readers, all gathered together under one roof alongside Tarot enthusiasts from half a dozen countries, including Australia, China, and India. The combined energy of the group felt like an electromagnetic soup, drawing me into its swirling mix and infusing every cell of my body with enthusiasm and vitality.

What is it about the Tarot that has such a profound effect on me and so many of my friends and colleagues? It is, after all, just this innocent little stack of paper and ink images, some of them iconic, to be sure, but many of them merely quaint, or even abstract, depending on which version the deck one considers. What’s all the fuss about?

For me, the real answer lies in the intersection of Tarot and human relationship. When you bring the tarot into your life for the purpose of introspection, spiritual development, or divination, you begin to see your life and the people around you in new ways, as though from a broader and more expansive perspective, and the very landscape of your life seems to unfold in new ways outward toward distant horizons previously unexplored. Tarot brings a sense of adventure into my life. Along with meditation and prayer, it gives me one more way to investigate my inner world, and provides a contextual language with which I can enter into dialogue with my clients. Over the years, it has become for me a way to communicate with the spirit world, a tool for accessing past life memories, an aid to dreamwork and shamanic journeying, and a basis for profound intuitive counseling work with hundreds of clients. Unlike many of colleagues, I do not remember a time when I was unaware of the existence of Tarot. It seems as though it was always there, just another fact of my life, like the childhood doll I carried everywhere, or my grandmother’s hand always reaching out to me as we walked across the street. Likewise, I cannot imagine a life that doesn’t include an ongoing relationship with this little stack of paper and ink. 

Want to fall in love with Tarot for yourself? Join me this Thursday for 

Tarot Fundamentals

with Heatherleigh

A fun and energetic look at how to use the tarot deck for personal development, meditation, spiritual growth, and more. Banish the myths and superstitions, learn the origins and history, and see how this esoteric tool has very modern uses in everyday life. This is a great class for anyone interested in learning more about tarot reading for your self or for others.

Class is open to anyone 16 years or older.

Heatherleigh is the owner of Boston Tea Room in Ferndale, MI, and the

co-founder of the Detroit Area Tarot Guild, a tarot advocacy organization

currently more than 300 members strong.

Thursdays in May, 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, from 6-8pm

Classes held at 195 W. 9 Mile, Suite 102, $88 per person

Call 248-548-1415 to register.

This Thing Called Love

 "Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Shambhala Sun, March 2009

Another Valentine's Day is here, and with it a slew of candy, flowers, and expectations, some valid, and some a little unrealistic, being exchanged. So let's talk about love for a minute. We've all said the words "I love you", but how often do we stop to consider what that really means? I like the quote above, because it speaks to the fact that love is not some passive emotion over which we have no control, but is instead a choice that we make, one that necessitates that we take certain actions. I like the idea of love as a verb, something that galvanizes us to strive toward an ideal. The alternative, the concept sold to us by songwriters and screenwriters over the years, is a kind of bizarre idea that love is some external force that will either save us, if we can find it and keep it, or will destroy us, if we manage to find it and are then unlucky enough to somehow lose it. It's a depressing thought, but the reality is far more hopeful. The truth is that we each have a vast reserve of love within us, just waiting to be tapped, so it can flow out and touch the hearts of everyone we know, changing their lives for the better, just as it changes us for the better to give it.

Often, the folks who come in to our shops for tarot or tea leaf readings have questions about love: how to find it, how to rekindle it, how get over it when it ends....these are all questions that I think are universal, and there seem to be no easy answers. The toughest love questions I get, though, are the ones where the love is unrequited. "When will she come back to me?", or "What will it take for him to leave his wife so we can be together?" are just a couple of the all-too-common questions I hear. The inability to move past love that has gone awry seems to affect all of us at some point in our lives. Who hasn't hoped for that certain ex-sweetheart to come to their senses and suddenly see how awesome we really are?  Hollywood has taught us to believe in happy endings and fairytales, and the bestseller lists are filled with impossible stories of love conquering all. There's even a huge a genre of love stories that tell us that being a vampire, werewolf, or (and I can't believe I'm saying this) a  ZOMBIE, doesn't have to stand in your way of finding TRUE LOVE. Ohferchrissakes!

What I come back to over and over again when I think about love, is that it is meant to be a selfless yet joyful act. When I see my kids, the response in my heart is about what I want FOR them, not FROM them. My love for them inspires a desire for them to be happy and to be free. I use that feeling as a gauge in my romantic relationships: I ask myself often what I want for my partner, versus what I want from him. Am I bringing as much to the relationship as I can? Are my needs being met? Are his? Are we communicating honestly and openly and with mutual respect? Are we having fun? When the answers are "yes", then I can be sure I am engaged in the practice of love.

So my wish for each of you is that you have the chance to give some love today. If you have a partner, great! If not, find a way to express your love to someone else you adore - a parent, a sibling, your best friend, a neighbor - reach out and extend the blessing of love, and by giving it away, feel it increase within you as well. My friend Linda likes to say that there are only two ways to go through life, with your heart open or with your heart closed. I want to keep mine open. Join me, won't you?

Illustration from the Sarakina Tarot. Visit sarakinatarot.wordpress.com for more information

                                                                                                              

Spiritual Travel

Like so many of you, I love to travel. Everything about a trip, from the first stages of planning to packing, the ride to airport, even standing in the security line at the airport is fun for me, simply because its loaded with anticipation. I look forward not only to seeing the local geography and architecture of a new place, but primarily to meeting new people.

So my trip last week to New Orleans for the 3rd annual Folk Magic Festival was a treat on many levels. Having gone last year, I knew it would be a chance to see some wonderful friends I made then (I couldn't wait to hug Auntie Sindy Todo, for example), but I also had the fun of traveling with my sweetie this time around, which meant that I'd be getting to do new things as well, since he has different interests and would definitely add items to our "to-see" list. We rented bikes, left the French Quarter for at least a few hours each day, had coffee with the locals, dined at little out-of-the-way dive bars with killer food, chatted with bartenders, watched amazing bands in backyard party settings, traded dishes with other patrons, talked art and magic and music and burritos, took photos of great street art, and had ourselves a ball.

New Orleans is a magical place. It is like no other town I've ever visited. Full of its own history, storehouse of the mystical wisdom and traditions of voudoun, keeper of the faith in the transcendence of music, repository of resilient soul, it seeps under your skin and into your blood, making you want to remain there, eating gumbo and po-boys til the end of time. The infamous witch Dorothy Morrison (http://www.dorothymorrison.com/), who visits several times a year with her husband, Mark, while walking around shopping this weekend, showed me "her" building, the one she's already picked out to buy in the Quarter, complete with iron balconies hung with huge ferns, and I have no doubt that I will someday visit her there and we'll drink sweet tea and watch the traffic on the street below. When New Orleans beckons, you must heed her siren song.

As always, we visited the tomb of Marie Laveau, though I spent too long making offerings at the bank of the Mississippi first, so by the time we arrived at the cemetery, the tours were out in force, and it's just weird paying your respects and praying in front of a bunch of folks that are still wearing their beads and their hangovers from their visit to Bourbon Street the night before. Still, it was good to say "hello" to her. Next was a visit to Congo Square in Louis Armstrong park, where the presence of Spirit is strongest to me....I gathered a dozen acorns from the huge live oak that I always think of as "Marie's tree". Some of them will be planted, and some will be used in my readings for the next few months.

Yes, travel restores the soul, and made me eager to come home to the shop, and our friends, with new tools, new techniques, and new enthusiasm. Mission accomplished!

Heatherleigh

PS - Check back tomorrow for my post about the chilling LaLaurie Mansion.....one of the few places in New Orleans that I try to avoid at all costs. Spirit there is strong, but not in a way of light and love. 

Sharing Sacred Space by Heatherleigh

I've been thinking a lot about sacred space lately; how we create it, how we adorn it, what we do within it, and who we choose to invite into it. The topic is certainly relevant to my life right now in multiple ways. I moved residence in the last year, and am still in the process of expanding our Ferndale shop, creating a new space there for classes, events, healing work, and meditation. I'm also talking almost daily with my sister Vanessa, who has done the same thing at the Wyandotte shop, and with Jacki Smith, from Coventry Creations, who recently completed an overhaul of her business offices. With each of these projects, the mundane concerns usually associated with such things (the packing, the leases, getting the utilities in order, etc.) seemed to take a back seat to questions of a deeper nature. For instance, what colors will create the most soothing, harmonious energy for the people who will be visiting/working/living within the spaces? What "stuff" is worthy of staying, and what should go? How can we ensure that the energy of the space will reflect our intentions for it?

So it was a refreshing break from focusing on all of that to be invited into someone else's home for the first time recently, and get to take a look at how he has addressed the issue of creating sacred space. I was greeted at the front door, and asked if I'd like a tour, which I of course did (I am notoriously curious about other people's homes - I suspect it's because I grew up looking for hours at my mom's Architectural Digest magazines). He showed me around the gardens, which were wild and rambly, and overgrown in some places, sparse in others....in other words, they were perfectly imperfect. The clematis growing on his pergola are struggling, but the honeysuckle was blooming. The lily of the valley was tumbling over the border into the lawn, and the basil was desperately seeking sunlight (if he doesn't move them they won't last the month). The St. Francis statue, a tribute to his late mother, reminded me of the one on my porch, and which I almost to my darling first husband's new girlfriend, until he, the DFH, kindly returned it to me.

Inside, there was a perfectly organized office (my dream!), spartan furnishings, two pet rabbits (they have their own room, and before you ask, no, it didn't smell bad at all, surprisingly. The accessories were minimal, and each one had a special significance: his late mother's favorite teapot, a vase from a trip to Turkey, a tapestry from a different journey....everything had a story, and as he relayed them each to me, I got a deeper insight into who he truly is. It was lovely. There was no IKEA-ization going on here; his surroundings were no attempt to say anything specific to visitors, instead his home serves as an actual reflection of who he truly is. The difference seems small at first, but it's huge. If each of us could stop trying so hard to use our homes and cars and clothes to telegraph a message to everyone else, and could instead just be who we are, surround ourselves with the things that are dear to us, how much closer would we be to real union with one another?

In the end, sacred space is not about candles and crystals and incense (although for some of us, that is definitely a part of it). It is instead about being who we are, keeping what we love, discarding (responsibly) what no longer serves us, celebrating the things and the memories that brought us each to this particular place in our lives. And on that note, it's time to go clean my office. :)

Heatherleigh

Saying goodbye to Hombre by Heatherleigh

I got a call tonight from a good friend who is currently dealing with a loss that so many of us have experienced. Two days ago, he sat with his 13 year old Jack Russell terrier in his lap as the vet administered the drugs that would end little Hombre's days hear on earth.

We talked for a while about pets and other loved ones, about where they head off to once they're no longer here with us, and about how we so often still feel their presence so strongly after they go. I'm a big believer in physics, and of course we all know that matter is energy and that energy never goes away, it merely changes form, and so I truly believe that Hombre has left his own energetic paw print behind, on my friend's heart and mind. And for anyone else who might be going through this, I wanted to offer up the words I sent my friend:

Hey darling man,

Here's the thing: most animals just aren't anatomically designed to live as long as us. They weren't meant in the divine order to be our life companions. They are our temporary blessing, and their presence and personality and love and even their death are a source of great learning and growth for us.

Hombre had incredibly blessed karmic imprints in order to have been in your life. He had a length and quality of life that is very rare among his species. Household pets owned by loving, aware, and spiritual caregivers are very often on kind of a "fast track" to a human incarnation, and it was his time to make the transition. It was also apparently your time for getting one more dose of the "letting go" lesson that we all end up having to learn a little bit at a time over the course of our lives, so that when our time to let go of our own brief little stint comes along, we won't end up leaving claw marks on this life.

Just keep breathing, and try imagining where he will turn up next...as a kitty, or a seagull, or a little baby boy cradled in his new mother's arms, and if that doesn't make you feel at least a tiny bit better, I'll be amazed.

Heatherleigh

Spells and Curses?? Poof!! by Heatherleigh Navarre

"Never say never" has always been one of the mottoes I like to profess, but I'll be honest, there are some things I really did think would fall into the "never" category for me. And two of those are listed in this blog entry's title.

I have said more than once over my years of doing psychic readings, "I don't traffic in spells and curses". And I didn't, at least not knowingly. But I've always thought that a "spell" was quite similar to a blessing or a prayer.....a way of speaking out your intention and desires, and asking for assistance with attaining them. Regardless of your particular faith tradition or family upbringing, most of us do this in one form or another, and often the only thing that differentiates one from the other is the first line of it, in which we name the deity, saint, element, or guide from whom we are requesting assistance. So why get hung up on what we call this? Why not choose instead to focus on the similarities of these ancient customs, and what that common ground has to say about how we are all linked in both our wish to create a better life for ourselves and our loved ones, as well as in our innate understanding of the fact that there is something bigger than us, whether we choose to call that something God, Buddha, Allah, Goddess, or Gaia, or even simply universal force (personally, my favorite word for the divine has always been Providence).

With that openness of heart and mind, I decided to explore the teachings of some amazing practitioners of folk magic, who meet every year in November down in New Orleans. It was an opportunity to expand my knowledge of these areas, and hey, who doesn't love a week in New Orleans, right?? (Well, actually, I have a friend, Daniel, who's not a big fan of the Big Easy, but hey, there's no accounting for taste sometimes). I was heading down there with my friend and colleague, Jacki Smith, who had been the year before and loved the experience. This time around, her new book, Coventry Magic with Candles, Oils, and Herbs had just come out, and the trip was part of her book tour. By the way, I'm mentioned in her book (three times, if you count the index, which of course, I do!). Anyway, great book, such a fun read, and so we packed our bags and headed down. Boy, was I in for it.

By the end of the week I was wrapping a pair of panties around a jar of herbs for a spell called "Sugar in your panties, and spice in your britches", taught to us by Mama Sindy Todo (y'all should Google her, because she is a hoot, and super smart, to boot. Then you should have seen me scribbling notes in the workshop on curses and how to cleanse them! I just adore what Orion Foxwood, the presenter, said about curses and whether we believe in them or not: "A curse don't CARE whether you believe in it or not!" That about cracked me up. The brilliant thing here was that darling wise Orion was talking about the "curses" we all carry, often they show up in as part of a family legacy - for instance, in my family we have a lot of love, but HUGE communication issues, which can sometime make things crazy, chaotic, and seemingly very UN-loving. This has been a "curse" in my family for at least the past four generations. So, there are these ancestral curses, there are the energetic curses that land on us as a result of the negativity of others in our sphere, and well, there's more, but I don't want to bore you by going off on a ramble....

Point is, this girl who for so many years had no truck with such things, is now sitting down with clients and helping them craft their very own love spell, or prosperity spell, or helping them release old patterns of negativity and pain that have cursed them, often for years. These days, I'm not saying I pull out the chicken foot nearly as often as my tarot cards, but I will admit that I'm glad I never said never, because in this line of work, when you open your heart and mind to spirit, more WILL indeed, be revealed.

How it all began.....

           

Boston Tea Room

After the bustling holiday shopping season of 1981, the young owners of a small, relatively new restaurant in Wyandotte called “The Nibbler,” encountered the January business blues and post holiday decline that inevitably follows the holiday shopping exuberance of the preceding couple of months.  Their small restaurant was still experiencing the growing pangs of a new business, so a prolonged slow-down could spell disaster.  The couple put their heads together to come up with a strategy to re-invigorate their flagging sales; and hit on a novel solution. 

            The man’s mother, Rita, had spent many years entertaining her co-workers, family, and friends by giving them Tea Leaf Readings.  The couple seized on this off-beat activity as just the thing to appeal to their clientele.  On the following Friday, that is just what they did. Every customer that expressed an interest was given a free reading after their meal.

            Diners were delighted with this unexpected bonus, and whether they were just interested or merely psy-curious, word traveled through town like wildfire. The following Friday, business nearly doubled—on the Friday after that, business was better yet.  Part of the success was Rita herself.  In her mid-sixties, her snow white hair was pulled back into a soft French twist, her fair skin and rosy cheeks seemed to make her glow.  Her blue eyes truly seemed to twinkle.  With her Boston accent and grand-motherly figure, she inspired confidence and her warm personality said “fun.”

Her matter-of-fact readings were often accompanied with direct and earthy advice.  The combination was irresistible.

            The owners of the Nibbler realized they had a hit on their hands.  But the logistics of running a restaurant and providing readings at the same time were too unwieldy; the answer was a separate and distinct location for a Tea Room.  Within a few months a location was secured, the space was painted and prepared.  Additional readers were interviewed and the best ones were hired.  By spring of 1982 the Boston Tea Room opened its doors for the first time.  From concept to opening was a mere three months.

            Rita and the other five newly hired readers were an immediate success.

            In 1996, after a career change, the original owner sold the Tea Room to her cousin.  The Tea Room has remained a family business since it began.  The current owner is Carole Navarre, whose two daughters, Heatherleigh and Vanessa, help manage with her.

            The management team has sought to expand the vision, services, and strengthen the standard of customer service.

            In our 29+ years in business, the Boston Tea Room has endured economic good times and bad times as well, but riding the waves and vagaries of economic times, changing popular culture,  and learning to adapt has helped us stay afloat, while we have seen similar businesses come and go.

            Recognizing the elements of excellence in customer service and delivering it time after time is our goal.  Our staff is encouraged to continue learning and mentoring others—to realize that there is always something new to learn and to always honor the client and the gift they share.

            We continue to grow, evolve, and find joy in a business that entertains, surprises, enlightens, and stimulates spiritual growth.

            Thanks to the first owners for their original inspiration which continues to motivate the current management team.  Together we will celebrate our 30^th anniversary  in the spring.  And thanks to our many clients for their continued support on this marvelous journey.