Two years ago, around September 2020, with heart in mouth, I booked the Mercure Manchester Piccadilly Hotel as our conference venue in July 2021. My first ever time arranging a conference!!! But due to the pandemic threatening to spoil the event for us, in February 2021 I made the decision to postpone for 12 months. And I’m glad I did!
Despite all the, stress, hard work, several bottles of Kalms™, and too-ing and fro-ing with the hotel, speakers and attendees, we all managed to get together, safely and bubbling with excitement, to Manchester. Phew!
Our Friday night was filled with excited chatter, food, drink, and merriment. The energy continued with our after-dinner speakers as theatre-maker Neil Kelso and visionary artist Andréa Aste invited us ‘through the looking-glass’ for their talk. As our guides, they taught us their unique approaches for developing personal connections and deep flow when interpreting Tarot cards. With Neil’s nods to the theatre and pantomime (oh yes he did!), and Andréa’s beautiful visual artwork, we were swept away into their splendiferous world of tarot. And it was so good!
On Saturday, after breakfast, we were treated to a workshop with Tarot Life Coach Brian Cormack Carr, who outlined his method for combining life coaching methodologies with tarot reading. Here we were introduced to Brian’s ACES (Awareness, Choice, Energy, Surrender) methodology which helped us to focus not on fortune-telling, but on future-making. Genius! Giving clients homework of sorts so they can empower themselves further. And he did not do this alone, he engaged the help and support of his beautiful cat Maya, also genius!
After a break to have refreshments, do some shopping and catch up with friends old and new we had a talk from author Tara Sanchez, “Thoth for non-Thelemites – demystifying the most marmite deck ever created”, where we were introduced to Alistair Crowley ‘the wickedest man in the world’, embraced the woman behind the deck by understanding her role in its creation. All aiding in de-mystifying and evaluating the cards to make them a deck you will always want to read with. Plus, we were all taught how to do the Thoth’s ‘Opening of the Key’. Here we see Tara almost singing the virtues of the Thoth Tarot to us all!
We had a fabulous conference, everyone was so friendly, relaxed, and excited to be there. It was so good we had to capture it all on video, and we had the most amazing up and coming, fresh out of university, (yes, they got Firsts!) team of videographers, Matt Jenkinson of Jenki Media, and Rosie Vardy. They were so professional and clearly loved what they do, and I think we may have just drawn them into the world of tarot a little bit more too!
So, to you both, Matt and Rosie, thank you so much for filming our conference and I wish you every success for your future careers.
The Esotorical https://esotoracle.com/
Liminal 11 Publishing https://liminal11.com/
Publishers Group UK (PGUK) http://www.pguk.co.uk/
Schiffer Publishing https://schifferbooks.com/
Total Tarot Magazine https://www.totaltarotcollection.com/Total Tarot Collection
Welbeck Publishers https://www.welbeckpublishing.com/
Here are some of the items we received to go into our goodie bags…
Ania M Couture & Embroidery Services https://aniam.co.uk/shop/Ania Marczyk
I also want to thank the Mercure Manchester Piccadilly Hotel for hosting our event. The support of the events staff was invaluable to me. https://www.mercuremanchester.co.uk
And lastly, to you, TABI members, conference attendees and my little army of helpers, thank you for making the TABI 21st birthday conference so wonderful. Thank you for coming along and I hope we can all keep in touch and see you at another TABI Conference one day. In the meantime, we can go back to peering through our own looking-glass (Zoom) at our TABI Social Evenings.
Yay, we did it, and it was so good too!!!
Jennifer
TABI Chairman
1 Comment
Sapling Tarot · August 22, 2022 at 10:00 am
How fabulous! I’m so glad it was a success!
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