Kahlil Gibran, The Tides of Breath

You are not enclosed within your bodies,
nor confined to houses or fields.
That which is you dwells above the mountain
and roves with the wind.

It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth
or digs holes into darkness for safety.
But a thing free,
a spirit that envelopes the Earth
and moves in the ether...
This would I have you remember
in remembering me.

That which seems most feeble
and bewildered in you
is the strongest and most determined.

Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened
the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream
which none of you remember having dreamt,
that builded your city and fashioned
all there is in it?

Could you but see the tides of breath
you would cease to see all else,
and if you could hear the whispering of the dream
you would hear no other sound.

- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

One of my favorite quotes of all time... it is works like this that inspire me to write, when I feel the power of words to send me like this. Maybe I love this poem so dearly because I am a Gemini, an Air sign. That being what it is, I am also strongly aligned with the Club suit in the deck of cards, the suit symbolizing Air. I used this quote from Gibran in my introduction to the Club suit in The Playing Card Oracles, because I feel it so aptly and eloquently describes the spirit of these cards. In these trying times, most especially, how valuable it is to recall our eternal nature, our oneness with "the ethers..."
If you would like more information on the Elements and the Card Suits, see my youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7rOxWYAIHc
All blessings,
--Ana

HEALING.... THE FUTURE OF CARD READING

Increasingly I am finding the Oracle Readings to be beyond what I ever originally fathomed them to be. I mean, I always knew it was cool to be able to "read" people and see that the cards actually did "work", also that maybe glimpsing into the future would somehow help people. Somehow in seeing what they were creating in their life they would see that they also had choices.
Now I am seeing something more. Something beyond what I saw before.
Lately, I have been finding the readings more and more transformative, in the sense of events actually SHIFTING for people after their reading, and I believe this is due to the way I have shifted the way I look at the cards in a reading.
And here it is.

I no longer look at the cards as "good" and "bad." In other words, the old "this forebodes a good outcome and this is a bad."
I have shifted to looking at all the cards as a gift - meaning all the circumstances in a person's life are PERFECT for them at that moment and it is the way they are viewing the circumstances given that is helping or hindering them. No more good cards, bad cards. No more good life, bad life.
This is very big.
EACH CARD HAS A GIFT TO BRING, just the same as each life circumstance. Each layout or circumstance has a unique set of energies with equally unique opportunities.
Are you really swallowing this?
Some cards have more obvious gifts than others, but that is my job as the reader.... to find the OPPORTUNITY in the card layout, the POSITIVE course of action given the ENERGIES at play in that person's life. The energies are what they are (for the moment, anyway). It is the perception where personal power enters in.
Once I give PERMISSION for the person to be experiencing what they are experiencing, patterns of distress are released and situations shift of their own. The situation has been freed.

This is a way of looking at life that I have found for myself, that is now translating into my readings: Acceptance and Gratitude for WHAT IS. My opportunities are here, they are now.
The results of such a way of looking at life is translating into tangible and happy results for my clients - as it has for myself.
Although there is no way to follow up with everyone, the people I have followed up with express that often the very next day after a reading something profound shows up within the situation they were consulting me about. Often a real bone-cracker but sometimes just a feeling like, oh... that's not a problem anymore!!!! Why did I need that reading so bad?!!!
For the people I have not had the blessing of following up with, it is a knowing. I KNOW the readings are a force for shift. I feel it. I feel the person's situation shifting in ME as I am doing the reading. The new standard is the reading is not complete until I feel this shift.
Now wrap your head around this: What I am now starting to grasp is that even once a reading is scheduled the shift begins happening. Simply in anticipation of the reading (premonition?), by the time the appointment time comes the pressure has already been released from the situation.

Open your mind to a reading as a healing. Why should it be anything less?????
It is real. It is the future of card reading.

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.