PLAYING CARD ORACLE LESSONS NOW ONLINE!

It has long been my dream to bring The Playing Card Oracles to more and more people, in a very practical sense. I would love to see The Playing Cards recognized and being USED by people everywhere in the way they were originally intended. This is the return to our personal power through our alignment with the natural and powerful rhythms of Creation.
SO.....
This is the plan....
Videos will be posted on youtube and accessible through the video bar on this site under the user account 52cardmagic. My goal is to post a new video once a week. The first teaching video is there now, in 3 parts, called Card Reading Mastery. This is what you are learning as you master the playing deck. It will include things from the book, The Playing Card Oracles, although it will include things that are not in the book, as well.
ALSO.....
I AM AVAILABLE FOR PRIVATE, ONLINE INSTRUCTION. This is through SKYPE or via email. Please email me at ana@anacortez.org for appointments and rates.
Thank you especially to all the very devoted fans of The Playing Card Oracles over these years since the book was published. Your support has kept me going.
Love,
-- Ana

Asking the Question, part 2

"...When people want to know if they can ask a general question, I ask if they want a general answer. Like begets like with the cards. Similarly, it is interesting to notice where the person's inquiry is coming from. Is it from their gut or their head? A burning question is a world away from one asked out of mild curiosity. Surface questions get surface answers. Real questions invite the cards to speak."
(from The Playing Card Oracles, A Source Book for Divination, p. 109)

Asking the Question, part 1

This is the beginning of a short series quoted from my book, The Playing Card Oracles, A Source Book for Divination. The information could as easily be applied to any type of divination: Tarot, Playing Cards, I Ching, Runes, etc... I take a breath, open the book, and give to you, dear reader, this passage for today:

(From the sub-chapter, Asking the Question, p.109) "...One of the best ways to be of service (with the cards) is to help people phrase their concerns in a way that works in harmony with the nature of the cards. The Playing Deck, and oracles in general, function with profound, childlike simplicity and will reflect the inquiry in just such a manner. Complicated or ambiguously stated questions do not evoke the magic of the cards. Make sure the wording you choose is clear, simple, and direct, and the answer you receive will be the same. Beware of two-part questions disguised as a single inquiry. Break multi-faceted concerns down into components in order to get a clear response. If you're doing smaller readings, it's better to do separate layouts for each aspect of the question than to glob issues together." (to be continued next week..)

--Ana Cortez, The Playing Card Oracles - Painting by Remedios Varo

Your Personal Edge

If I am to truly become master of myself, I must know my limits. That is to say, when do I push myself and when do I draw back - in other words, "HOW DO I EXPAND?"
As a rule, we do not know our own limits because ordinary life rarely calls us to the edge. Those who live on the edge are exceptional. Olympic athletes are one example of people who we can see have gone to their personal edge, to the lonely nether land of what is actually possible in a human being.
For myself, these visits to my own outer limits are, as a rule, uncomfortable. Often they have been instigated by events that seemed traumatic or beyond my control. During moments of extreme "edge walking" I have even wondered if I would survive the journey.
In this place we either triumph big time or we are eaten alive.
Here I cannot help but reminisce on the recent events around famed spiritual leader James Ray, who encouraged people to challenge their limits only to lose three people in fatality. How much is too much? And yet we MUST challenge ourselves - while remaining sensitive to our own well being.

I like to do an hour and a half of yoga once a week in a hot as hell room to challenge my comfort zone and get that big time pay off. But once a week is generally enough for me and I know that. I have even left the room during class when I felt it was too hot for me. The teacher did not like that. Too bad.
The journey of spirit warrior is about becoming SENSITIVE to energy within YOURSELF. This is the same kind of sensitivity that leads to heightened psychic awareness, healing ability and all reaches of possibility. Some type of meditative practice will help you prepare for tuning in to sensitive energies. This is a skill you will be glad to have on the edge.
Finding my own personal limit has now become a way of being for me, a sort of lifestyle. It is not so obvious, like an Olympic athlete, because that is not my area. My areas are my own and yet I look for these edges I am called to find. Then I set off once more, with some measure of kicking and screaming on the inside, yet all the while tuning in to my own well being. It's weird but I am starting to crave these expansive yet uncomfortable experiences. There is no better place to discover who I truly am and that is a very cool pay off.

Present Moment Miraculous

Always a discipline to choose the proper topic for the blog. I like to capture something very close to the present. Something cathartic yet helpful. It is my meditation.
Today I will write as I wrote my latest book, The Teacher Within. That is, staying intimately and fiercely connected to the present moment. From this place of magic where I found room to breath and expand, I write.
A bit like stream of consciousness, only connected.
My dog just farted.
Oops. A little stream of consciousness enters the page!!! Hard to ignore my dog's farts.
Still breathing (amidst the fumes) I trust that I will be called to the appropriate words for my readers and for myself. This is a practice I can take into my daily life - into housework and phone calls - and penetrate the usual surface of life, dipping into depths of present moment miraculous.
This is the same way I approach my Oracle Reading practice and Reconnective Healing practice, as well. The present moment is the place where I am helpful, where my life begins.

Card Reading and Synchronicity

The other day I gave an Oracle Reading that was very illuminating of the expansive nature of the art of divination. I touched on this in my first book (The Playing Card Oracles) in the sub-chapter called The Reflective World (p.181). To quote myself, "We are electric, magnetic, and dynamic beings, and we attract as well as affect our surroundings... The cards are just one part of what I am paying attention to (in a reading)."
In the particular session I am referring to, we came to a point in the reading when the client asked about her Spirit Helpers. As she was verbalizing the question to me (it was a telephone reading) I saw a shadow pass by the window of my house through the curtains. My two dogs started barking. They saw it too. Continuing with the reading, I fanned the Playing Card Oracle deck in front of me, face down, and drew three cards - they all turned up Court Cards (representing people or personalities), a very slim probability. Three Spirit Helpers.
Well the dogs quit barking and there was never any trace of anyone coming past my house - no knock at the door, nothing left outside. Just a confirmation of a spirit for the reading.
When I am doing a reading, I am in a state of receiving information and guidance. This is not limited to the cards on the table. I believe that nothing is random. If I did not embody a firm conviction of this then all kinds of doubt could enter in each time I lay out the cards.
Divination is the sacred art of connecting to all things and receiving that wisdom on behalf of another. I am honored to be a part of that tradition.

"With great humility, presence, humor and a poet's paintbrush- Ana Cortez
invites us into the very intimate life of the Soul. For both beginners and
seasoned travelers alike, 'The Teacher Within' is a delightful and very
creative illumination of the great and beautiful Journey we are each called
to. I found it a joy and a balm."

Rev. Jenni Walker
Interfaith Minister and Spiritual Director