My daughter Emily tries out the new table in my office.

I’ve moved to a new office! To celebrate, I’m offering 20 percent off the price of all my services:

• Tarot readings and consultations
• Birth charts
• Astrology reports

The discounts are good during February and March, 2010. For full details, click here.

You don’t need to live in the Twin Cities area to take advantage of these special offers. I offer readings by telephone and astrology services by email.

If you are in the Minneapolis or St. Paul area, however, come see me in person! My new office is near the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, across the street from National American University. Click here for a map and directions.

What can astrology tell us about this year’s season of American Idol? Will a New-Age girl be a contender this season?

Read my predictions at http://idolpsychic.com/2010/01/09/american-idol-astrology/.

While tarot might seem like a visual medium, you can — and should — use all of your senses during a tarot reading.

Here’s a sample “five senses” reading from my book Tarot for Writers.

The Five Senses Spread

Try pulling details and imagery from five cards — one for each of your senses. Take, for example, these impressions:

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• Sight — Knight of Swords. Clouds race across the sky, and trees bend in the wind.
• Sound — Queen of Wands. A cat meows.
• Smell — The Sun. The air smells hot, with a hint of dry, black dirt on the breeze.
• Taste — Seven of Pentacles. The flavor of fresh tomatoes.
• Touch — The Page of Wands. The ground is hard underfoot.

As you develop your ability to sense what’s going on in the cards, you can consolidate your efforts and use all of your senses in a single card, too.

Will we see Paula Abdul at all on American Idol this season? My predictions are here:

http://idolpsychic.com/2010/01/06/hey-paula/

When Season 9 starts next week, I’ll be blogging my predictions on a new website: www.IdolPsychic.com. I hope you’ll join me there! You can also visit the site to sign up for automatic email updates when I post new predictions, or follow along on Facebook.

The start of a new year is a great time to practice meditation and visualization with tarot cards. Here are some tips from my 2006 book, Tarot Journaling. Try them for themselves in the pages of your tarot journal.

Go Inside the Cards

Sometimes, people who study tarot cards imagine themselves inside the cards, exploring the landscape and meeting personally with the characters inside each card. Typically, they enter each card through meditations and visualizations — two simple, remarkably effective ways to connect personally with each card.

The two techniques work seamlessly to bridge the communication gap between your conscious and subconscious minds. Because the information you glean during a meditation comes directly from your subconscious mind, it is imminently relevant and pertinent to your life. And because your journeys occur when you are fully conscious, meditations are easy to remember when you’re through.

Meditations and visualizations are two effective ways to use your tarot journal as a gateway into the cards. Simply allow your mind to wander, and watch as events unfold on the page.

Preparation. Choose one card from the deck. Sit comfortably in a chair, with your feet firmly on the floor, and breathe deeply. As you breathe, relax, and study the card in front of you. Examine every detail. As you look at the card, imagine it growing larger and larger, until it stands in front of you, like a doorway into another world. Picture yourself walking through that doorway and into the card.

Survey the grounds. Look around, and describe what you see. What do you notice that you couldn’t see from outside the card? What do you hear? What do you smell? What is the weather like? How does it feel to be inside the card?

You will probably be surprised by what you can sense. Many people who try this exercise report hearing background noise like wind, birds, and waves. They can feel the heat of the sun, or a cool breeze, or the grass underneath their feet. They can even smell flowers, and grass, and salty sea air.

You’re not alone. You find yourself face to face with a character from the card. Where do you meet him? What is he wearing? What is the expression on his face? What is the character’s mood? How does he or she react to your presence? Does the character greet you, or must you initiate a conversation? What do they say to you? How do you respond? Does he have a message for you? Does he have a gift for you? What is it? How do you feel about it? What do you say to him? What will you remember most about your encounter?

The safe haven. Imagine that you are on the run from an unseen attacker. Suddenly you find yourself in the scene shown in your card, where you can hide safely. What makes this card a refuge for you? What help can you find here?

Unexpected visitors. You may have gone into the cards during meditation or visualization, in order to explore the world of the tarot from the perspective of the cards. Now, try the process in reverse. Imagine that one of the characters has come out of a card to meet you in your surroundings. Imagine finding the Magician in your kitchen, or the boys from the Five of Wands roughhousing in your living room, or the Hanged Man at your computer.

Visualize yourself walking through your front door, and go through your house until you find your visitor. How do you feel: angry? Alarmed? Amused? What will you say? What will the two of you talk about?

Record your interaction in your journal.

Click here to get your own deck of Christmas Tarot cards.

Did you know that you can download your own deck of Christmas Tarot cards in less than a minute? Just visit www.ChristmasTarot.com, and you’ll be ready to read a new brand of holiday cards for all your friends and relatives on Christmas Eve.

I’ve had so much fun putting this project together. I love the imagery of Christmas cards from the Victorian era, and it was amazing to find so many vintage illustrations that parallel today’s tarot decks.

The accompanying guidebook took some time, but the results were worth it. You never know how much there is to say about a card until you start describing it in detail, and researching the symbols that might otherwise be overlooked.

It was fun to put the video and the website together, too. There’s a steep learning curve when it comes to technology, but I’ve discovered a few ways to simplify projects like this. For example, I’ve learned to rely on Corel’s Paint Shop Pro for image editing. I bought the domain name from GoDaddy, and then forwarded it to a wordpress.com site to keep the formatting simple. I used Microsoft Word to write and design the guide — and when I needed a break from writing about the cards, I used muvee software to make the video.

If you haven’t had a chance to look at the Christmas Tarot cards yet, head over to the Christmas Tarot website and explore. I hope you’ll download a deck for yourself, and I hope they brighten your holidays!

My husband and I put together a holiday tarot deck! You can download the cards from www.ChristmasTarot.com. Merry Christmas!