Tarot Kaizen – By Alison Cross. If you don’t know Alison Cross let me introduce you – Alison is/was the chair of TABI – Tarot Association of the British Isles She has written two books – A Year in the Wildwood – about the Wildwood Tarot deck, and Tarot Kaizen. What the heck is a Kaizen you say? Kaizen, as Alison explains in the book, pretty much means ‘change for the better’ in Japanese. The Tarot Kaizen book contains over 100 small daily exercises you can use with your tarot deck to make help you get to know it, and to make working with it better. Alison also hosts a Facebook Kaizen – a couple of times a year, where a group follow the exercises together, in a secret group. Everyone sharing their experiences of working through the exercises. The aim is to improve your working relationship with a specific deck by doing these small exercises daily to build a foundation of knowledge and practise.
In my opinion it is worth the few pound cost, you can work at your own pace and redo the Kaizen for different decks. Tho working it for one deck at time is definitely the way to avoid burn out and boredom.
Tarot Kaizen is available on Kindle to download from Amazon and I recommend it. Below is my day 3 Kaizen exercise to interview the deck.
I am using the Deviant Moon in this example:
Card 1 – Tell me about yourself – what adjectives describe you?
King of Wands – energetic, dynamic, enthusiastic. This is a more male energy deck than some others I have known (maybe) and is keen to lead the way.
Card 2 – What gifts do you bring into my life?
2 of Coins – Balance, to bring a more balanced view of tarot back, from the academic world of Thoth immersion to something a little less, bookish. The 2 of coins looks like she’s shaking it up.
Card 3-What challenges shall I face with you?
8 of wands I am going to have to work for this to work properly. Which I guess is the same for all of us. To get the best from the deck you have to give your best.
Card 4 – What energies will sustain me during this Kaizen quest?
7 of CupsThe variety of challenges and cards, the images that I will see and the landscape of the Deviant moon will entice me to be more creative (the image shows a figure drawing) .
Card 5 – What is your message for me as we begin this quest?
Ace of Cups – this is a new friendship/relationship, yes it’s cardboard but it has a personality and it’s a new exciting dynamic, that will grow given the right tending and ingredients.
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