Boost your INTUITION

Passing of Oracle Artist C.J. Freeman

dislike for paint brushes
C.J. Freeman 1941-2010

A quick message to fill in for my recent absence from the blog. My father, Oracle artist C.J. Freeman passed away on June 6th. His passing was sudden although his health had been declining for some time.
He will be missed by many. If ever there was an original, it was my father.
I am handling his affairs which has been quite a task and so my absence from the blog...
My commitment to the work of the ORACLES continues, deepened and strengthened by my father's passing.

To those I love
Be assured when I fly with the angels
I dream of you.

Preparation for 2012 and Your Card Reading Practice.

When speaking about preparation for 2012 I get interesting responses from different people. For some, no preparation is required at all. It is just another trip to the movies. For others, it is about stock piling food and supplies for some kind of apocalyptic scenario. And yet what is at the heart of this looming date?
2012 was calculated by the Mayan and other ancient civilizations and prophets as a time of great shift: The end of an old world and the beginning of a new. Chaos is foretold as familiar societal and planetary structures crumble, giving way to new, higher frequencies.
Whether you believe the prophecies or not, we can at least concede these are strange times, indeed. Global events are accelerating and intensifying as we enter a period of climate change, gigantic solar storms, and societal destabilization. What the new form of things will be as we become acclimatized to this vibratory makeover has yet to be seen and creates a feeling of unrest as we anticipate the unknown. Never before has such a transition as this been seen on our dear planet.
So back to the question of preparation.... And why oh why am I talking about this on a blog dedicated to the infinitely more simple (seemingly!) topic of Card Reading????
As we transition into a time of what Mayan Shamans are referring to as "the Fifth Age," the best and truly only preparation is one of frequency preparation. Once you give yourself the rub-down energetically, you will also be in tune with your own guidance, intuition, and natural, God-given GPS system. You will know what to do and when to do it.
What is your practice for energy alignment? Do you do it every day?
I have a number of my own practices (which I discuss periodically on the Astarte and Inanna Show on youtube), but what I want to talk about now is how to incorporate your Card Reading Practice.
The Playing Cards were created in accordance with natural and powerful energetic codes. The same energetics that the Mayans understood and used to create their calendar and calculate the year 2012.
I plan to make some sort of comparison chart to map this all out, but here are a few of the basics: The Mayan Calendar wheel is based on 52 year cycles and it is on these cycles that the year 2012 was predicted. 52 is the total number of cards in the playing deck and has been for as far back as we can trace it (before Tarot, which was an alteration of the original deck.)
There were 13 months to the Mayan (logical when you remember there are 13 lunar cycles in one solar cycle) and also 13 number Gods or "13 bearers of numbers." Accordingly, there are exactly 13 cards or numbers in each suit of the playing cards (Ace thru King.) 13 cards in each of 4 suits = 52, the same as 13 lunar cycles each of 4 weeks and 4 seasons each of 13 weeks = 52 weeks in the year. Now we begin to understand why the numbers 52, 13, and 4 were sacred.
To the Mayan, the world was conceived as a great square with four directions, four "bearers of the year," or four Gods. The playing deck too, is a "great square," divided evenly into four suits that also correspond to the four directions, the four seasons of the year, and the four elements of nature. The Mayan were Masters of observation and conceived the nature of time as manifold circles, all meshing together perfectly as intricate cogs in some sort of mind-blowing clock.
I am not saying the deck is Mayan. I am not saying it is the same as the Mayan Calendar. It is, however; like the Mayan calendar in that it is a work of art based upon the observation of the natural world and the rhythms within it. And it is this that we must return to.
In the pursuit of true spirituality and our own personal destiny, we must eventually shake the dust off of the knowledge of who we are. Try as we might, we will never be able to make ourselves into what we are not. The only thing awaiting us is The Return.
So this is how the study of your Playing Deck can become a part of your own sacred preparation for the accelerated frequencies making their way to planet Earth. It is a practice in alignment, a sacred study of natural frequency codes that the moon, sun, and seasons must dance to, and so must we. In this practice, we undertake nothing less than the reintegration and healing of our collectively scattered soul, a sacred meditation on crystalline structures put into card form. Now is the Time.
As I mentioned in my related video, hang out with your Playing Cards and look at them as if you've never seen them before - as if you knew they were a book of knowledge, and watch the secrets unfold :-)
P.S. Get the book! What are you waiting for? (The Playing Card Oracles)

2012, Energy Shift, and Your Card Reading Practice

This video is part 1 of 5. The remaining portions can be found in the 52cardmagic channel on youtube.

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