I’m working on the first draft of an exciting Tarot book that will revolutionize the way people learn the Major Arcana. One of the dimensions of reading Tarot I explore in the book is using aromatherapy to aide in your studies. I’ve enjoyed exploring herbs, resins and essential oils in my craft and as a perpetual student of the occult, I’m always thirsty for more knowledge. So when I heard about a workshop about how to use scents to enhance your Tarot reading abilities, I totally had to attend it.

The workshop was led by the owner of Isis Bookstore, Karen. The workshop had an old school witchy feel to it. I felt at home and immediately connected with the material.
 The class opened with a talk abou the best herbs, oils and resins to use when boosting psychic senses. When choosing one to work with, you generally want to choose ones ruled by the Moon, Venus or Neptune. 

I was familiar with the concept but it was nice to sample some scents I never tried before. 

We did an exercise that involved drawing a card to before we took a wiff of the scent and then drawing a card again after we took a wiff. Then we compared our reactions. If you’re just starting to get in tune with your psychic senses, this is an excellent exercise to try.

If you are interested in using lunar psychic influences, try Jasmin. I used Jasmin when I was studying the sphere of Yesod on the Tree of Life and I think some of my most beautiful experiences with comprehending the gentle, peaceful energy of the goddess has been experienced with the aide of Jasmin oil. Karen also recommended we use mugwort, which I haven’t tried yet. I’ve heard a lot about it and it’s supposed to be really mild but I haven’t gotten around to testing its effects out yet.

Karen also recommended we try listeria if we’re looking for more of a hypnotic, intoxicating feel in your psychic experience. This isn’t one I’ve had a chance to try either and I’m curious about the difference. I have very little experience with Neptunian scents so trying this may be a completely new experience to me.
Venetian oils are my favorite because I’m a devotee of Venus. Whereas I’ve never really connected with the goddess’ role as a mother, I do connect 100% with the way the sexual energy of the goddess. It may sound simple, but I’ve had some incredible psychic love experiences using rose oil. It’s powerful but it’s also sensual and gentle. If you’re doing readings about love, this is the oils to help give your psychic senses a kickstar. And as a Tarot professional, I would say at least 95% of my clients ask about love so it’s a good oil to have on hand.

Orange blossom was another oil Karen recommended. I’ve worked with orange but not orange blossom. I always find orange to have a very masculine, regal effect. It’s good for working with powerful, masculine entities like Archangel Michael and Apollo (well, one of the same in my opinion anyway, at least based on my mythological research).

She recommended prolific oil as well and although  I have noroli oil, I haven’t used it much. It does work really nicely in this wonderful blend that I came across to invoke Archangel Michael. It’s the oil that helped me develop a really wonderful relationship with him while I was trying to write his character for my novel. This is a recipe I got from my old teacher who is now deceased and uses a blend of pettigrain (a kind of wild orange), balsamea, neroli, Jasmin and Angelica.
After the Tarot talk, we branched off into other aroma therapy approaches like making herbal sachets, which I hadn’t experimented with before but I really am liking the effects of the samples we made in the class.
The first one we made was a “High Priestess” blend meant to bring physic dreams. This mix involves jasmine, gardina, sandlewood and dark musk. We put all of this in a purple sachet (purple for psychic senses). Karen told us to put it under our pillow or at our bedside and to meditate on a question before we go to sleep. She said we should get an answer in 72 hours.
 I tried it out and my results were strange. I’m sort of lost at sea when it comes to a career path. I taught English in Japan for several years and then came back to the US and haven’t been able to find a good job that’s a good fit for me yet. So I meditated on finding a career path that’s sustainable and right for me. My dream is to be a full time writer and teach workshops about witchcraft, Tarot and Qabalah but it takes a long time to build your reputation as a witch that knows her stuff because you can never know everything there is to know. So for now, I’m stuck asking the gods “Please guide me to a sustainable job that’s a good fit for me.”
The first night I dreamed I was floating in some really fluffy clouds and a big heart came out of them. I took that as a good sign. Next I had a short dream about montages of fashion magazines and videos. I guess I was reflecting on the small window of opportunity that I had to make it as a fashion writer when I was living in Tokyo but I was too young to realize what was happening. 

Then I dreamed that I was in my old witchcraft teachers’ shop (she’s deceased now). She was watching me hunt high and low for a purple candle but there wasn’t one to be found. I could see the exact, unlit candle I needed in my head but there was none in the shop. But I kept digging through the shop looking, hoping I’d find it. My teacher didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t speak to her either because that’s sadly, how our relationship ended. Although I got some signs when she died that it’s all good, sometimes I still feel a little sad that she never outright accepted my attempts to make things right with her. Sometimes she shows up in dreams as the crone and whenever she does, I know there’s a tough lesson to be learned because she was a tough teacher. It made me wonder if I’m just chasing pipe dreams when it comes to building my career as a witchcraft and tarot teacher. I woke up feeling like all night I dreamed of unrealized potential and how I let opportunity slip away from me.
The next night I had a strange dream about a friend who in waking life, has said he’ll help me get a good job at his Fortune 500 company. I’ve really struggled with this idea because every time I look at the jobs, I wonder if I have what it takes to make it at the company. It’s intimidating to have a shot at a really good job and I want to choose wisely. However, the dream didn’t direct me to anything that had to do with career stuff. It was more personal messages about our soul connection which is a totally different area of my life. It’s a very important relationship to me because its karma being set right and it has taught me so much on a mind, body spirit level, but it has nothing to do with my career … or does it? I woke up feeling that the reason why I had that dream was unclear.
The last night of the three night sequence I dreamed that I was a 5 year old Japanese girl. I lived in Japan for 3 years so dreams that take place in Japan are always a real treat for me. In this dreams, I was sitting at the breakfast table in a shiny, white kitchen. My mother was cleaning up after breakfast in the kitchen and my father had already left for work. I was finishing breakfast (rice), and my chopsticks were too big for me so it was awkward to use them. I had to be really careful not to drop rice on my brown uniform and little pink tie. This was one of those dreams that you see outside yourself and I thought I looked as cute as a button. On the table there was a hologram projector. I listened to the weather forecast. It was going to be sunny and warm. I realized that none of the dream was in English so I was totally, 100% back in Japan in my dream. That’s when I switched from being outside my body to inside my body. It was time to go to school so I got up. We had a big robot who was a lot taller than me. She was made from shiny, white metal and had a shiny, metal, yellow skirt. She kind of looked like a snowman on wheels. She was rolling around the living room on vacuum cleaner mode. I went up to her and said, “Mama-chan!” and gave her a hug. I guess that was the name of the robot. The hugged me back and said, “Do your best at school today!” What she said flashed on a scrolling marque across her helmet. I said goodbye to my real mom and went outside. There was a hologram traffic guard and robot police men. And that’s about all I can remember. I woke up from this dream feeling that the Fortune 500 job working with technology will be something that contributes to a great expansion in technology but I’m still uncertain about which job, if any, with this company would be a good fit for me ::sighs:: So I’m still looking at jobs with the company but I’m still feel like a good fit is buried somewhere on the site and I don’t know how to find it. So in the end, I still feel a lost with the job stuff although I did gain some insight.
The other sachet we used was one to help strengthen boundaries with clients during Tarot readings but really, it works well for any situation that needs boundary building. As an in home healthcare provider, I spend the day working with ill people who are really struggling to just get through the day without any pain. Sometimes their cosmic gunk can stick to me and I feel utterly exhausted on a mental, physical and spiritual level because although I have healer abilities, I don’t think healing is my path because my clients’ problems become my problems and as an empath, I absorb this kind of energy like a sponge without even trying. I want to take their pain away but I don’t know how to spit it back out and neutralize it. So instead, it becomes part of me. I also have this problem that I often act like a doormat at work and let people walk all over me. I let people push me around until I get fed up, push back too hard and break my relationships. So at work, this sachet has really helped me understand how to let someone know if I feel they’re overstepping my boundaries. If you have this problem, try a blend of listeria, mugwort and jasmine to build confidence and self-esteem.
 All in all, it was a wonderful class and I would love to learn more from Karen about aromatherapy in magick. She apparently has a long, one day workshop in the fall that I’m going to keep my ear to the ground for. I’m sure it will fill up fast.