First Meeting of The Jacksonville Social Club

Sunday was the first meeting of the Jacksonville Social Tarot Club. I woke up with a nervous energy, eager to see how things would go. There are currently 25 registered members on our Meetup Group and more than half of them RSVP'ed YES.

Having been in and run groups before I know the standard rule of thumb is if 50% of the people who say they will attend show up it is a great turn out. I was expecting between 5 and 7 people people, to my shock and suprise everyone who said they would be there showed up!!

This was fantastic since it meant we had enthusiastic members!! And it was horrible because it meant I under planned.

We met up at Starbuck's which was overcrowded and noisy so it was a challenge for all of us to sit together. I prefer things to manifest themselves organically in a small group environment so I didn't have an agenda. This was a mistake. The people who showed up were looking for more than a social time, they were looking for direction. Some were even looking for a class room environment. It became clear to me that a loose order needed to be imposed.

After pushing two or three tables together on the Starbuck's patio everyone hunkered down. Little conversation's sprouted up around the table between group members. Some were about Tarot, some were not. This was fine with me since I felt it was all part of the bonding process. Others were not of the same mind.

Soon a woman at the far end of the table wanted to know when we were going to start. I thought we had and was just waiting for the natural lull to happen. Instead I raised my voice to get the attention of everyone and introduced myself. I suggested we go around the table, introduce ourselves and tell a little of how we came to Tarot.

A person would introduce themselves and then a tangential conversation sprouted from what that member said. It could be on metaphysics, psychic abilities or forming S-Corps as opposed to LLCs. We never steered back to the introductions and a few at the table were left out.

In short, there were good points to the first meeting and definitely things I could learn from.

Good points: There was a high energy to the group. There was a diverse background to the members, everyone brought decks and books.

Challenges: There was a lack of respect given to some members as conversations were monopolized and steered away from introduction. There was no direction to the meeting. There were no readings (group or otherwise). There was no cohesiveness. There was no definite start and end times.

I have been involved in event promotion in the past and know the taskmaster mentality needed to create a successful conference, weekend or concert. I did not view this gathering as an event which was why I was so underprepared.

I have switched my focus and have come up with a loose structure and activities for the next meeting. We have also decided to change the venue to a local library meeting room.

In order to keep focus the following will be a loose agenda of our next meeting:

2:00p - Start of Meeting
2:00p-2:15p - Every arrives
2:15p-2:30p - Introductions. Going around the the table everyone will introduce themselves and give a brief expectation of what the hope to get out of this group.
2:30p-3:30p - Group Deck Reading. Everyone will throw no more than three questions into a hat. A reader picked at random will reach in a select a question. They will then perform a reading based on the question. Only the reader and the querent may speak at this time. After the initial reading we will go clockwise from the reader and the other members may chirp in with their interpretations of the spread. Once everyone has contributed, if there are still depths to plumb a round table discussion will take place. The rules of ther game "Yes and ..." will be strongly enforced. Time permitting we will do a second group reading.
3:30p-4:30p - Group decided activity. This may be based on the previous readings. A study of a specific card or deck or a game designed to incease our comfort levels with Tarot. Some examples of games include:

Tarot Stories: Three or four cards are drawn at random and placed on the table. The group will come up with a story (characters, plot, etc.) based upon the cards and write it up.
Divination Sentences: a simple three card spread is thrown. In one sentence the group will describe what they see
Songs: A card is drawn at random from the deck. The group wil try to come up with as many songs that can fit the meaning of the card

4:30p-5:00p - Brainstorming for next month's meeting
5:00p - End of Meeting