I just came back from my final training in Cleveland Ohio for MARI Card readings. The Cards are a psychoanalytic tool to assess where a person is on the round of life, and the strength and the challenges of the current stages they fall within.
Because you pick the cards, and the colors to back them, they are entirely influenced by your unconscious and they bring up what needs attention to bring you to wholeness.
The cards are see through and a different color can be put behind each card to make many different combinations.. On the right and top are cards without color behind them. There are jewel tones of a color, e.g. red, a dark tone and a light tone which beings in different ways of reading the cards.
There are 39 cards and an array of colors that give many possibilities.
The cards have a guidance feature as well as a dislike card, which brings out what will be helpful and what is blocking.
Students studying MARI
I was in a class of about eight students and we looked at Mari Readings for about sixteen hours. It was wonderful to hear everyone’s input for their own patients and to hear our Workshop Leader, Jill Zikmund LPC pull the materials together and instruct us as we went along. Jill is truly a fish in the Mari Medium, and I felt I was swimming before the weekend was over.
I took to MARI Card reading like a duck to water
She encouraged me to do a reading for myself, in an intentional way. I was very happy that I have completed this process and am pleasantly surprised with what I found. The cards caution me not to put the wrong kind of energy into the beginning stages of my new business. If it has an overload of the wrong kind of energy, like a plant that is growing and getting too much manure or getting a too heavy handed digging, near the tender roots, this will not be helpful to me.
Pink tea roses at my house
Another card and color stumped me until I realized I would like to be recognized for what I have to offer. I am educated with a masters in counseling and I did a post masters class at EMU called “Growing Out Growing down” with Dr. Helen Benoit a couple of years ago.
The focus of this was psychoanalytic and took months to complete and was attended by 16 of my peers, mostly Licensed Professional Counselors. It was during this time I developed my Dream Leaflet.
Dream Leaflet Drawings
My training with the Mari Cards has been in my focus since early 2000s, precicely because it is a psychoanalytic tool. I completed a number of trainings, followed by practice completing a number of readings. This past year I have focused on supervision with Jill Zikmund LPC to gain my final certificate. This past two day training was offered by Jill, as a way to become immersed in the cards, with real practice time with practitioners in training, working with Mari Card readings for real clients. Most of the participants had training in Art Therapy.
When I pulled a card to “make better” the color indicated that I continue with my “gentle healing work” through what I am doing.
The red is being held in the lower segments which represent the unconscious. The blue is making its way through cooling down the red. The little red seeds at base are many awaiting their planting. The green of the heart is represented at the area of struggle and coming into my own. The blue continues up through the whole mandala giving stability. The white in the unconscious are like lotus leaves and like containers with a holding quality.
This is the mandala that I drew. I will continue to integrate what I am learning, getting a sharpness in my cognitions, a softness in my feelings, a depth into my intuitions and an ability to see around the corners and into corners to clean out what needs to be moved.
Mandala I drew when I came home, reflected all of the colors I chose for my MARI reading, with the blue and green predominant.
I do hope you will consider dream work and a Mari Card Reading. Both are only concerned with making you whole and in both cases the material comes straight from your unconscious. Doing this work brings a consciousness to inner work and wholeness to the person working with their own unconscious materials.
I can be contacted through this site. I look forward to hearing from you.
Love from Rose.
Rose Longworth Counseling 