Tori Hartman – Chakra Wisdom Oracle

Tori Hartman is a world-renowned author, spiritual teacher, and intuitive soul. Born and raised in the free-thinking atmosphere of New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1960s, Tori has been aware of her psychic abilities since the age of eight. After a near-death experience about 25 years ago, Tori began having a series of encounters with angels that revealed the profound fables that were to become the basis of the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Cards and Chakra Wisdom Oracle Toolkit.

Tori has been featured in several highly-acclaimed publications such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Business Journal. She has also worked with celebrities including Jeff Lewis whom she helped launch his hit TV show, Flipping Out, on Bravo Network USA.

Her latest book, Chakra Wisdom Oracle: How To Read The Cards For Yourself and Others, has just released.

An Interview with Tori Hartman on the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Card Book

OMTimes: I understand your new book, Chakra Wisdom Oracle: How to Read the Cards for Yourself and Others, is soon to be published by Watkins. And it is a step-by-step guide to help readers gain a profound understanding of the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Cards?

Tori Hartman: I would say that the idea is to use the reading techniques and concepts to master your own intuition. I don’t think we ever learn cards. I think we learn the techniques that are necessary to read cards, and then the entire realm of card reading opens to us.

When I was learning to read Tarot, 25 years ago now, I studied with some great teachers, who all told me to look at the cards and tell them what the pictures meant, rather than the other way around. My single biggest frustration is when people email me and ask what a card means. The “meaning” is in the book, yet if it were that easy then wouldn’t everyone just “get” it? Learning to intuitively read cards is like learning a new language.

I’m oddly surprised when I go to a foreign country and can’t simply speak the language. As I can use intuitive reading skills, I always think I can speak any language with ease. Apparently, this is not the case. The last time I was in France, I told a gentleman in a bookstore that I wanted to “smoke him”. Languages are trickier to master than you think. So, my new book is about learning the tools and skills that will open the language of your intuition to you.

The Fables of the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Can Bring Healing

OMTimes: Why did you write this new book?

Tori Hartman: There is a short and long answer to this. The short answer is that it’s always frustrated me that so many cool decks didn’t give more than a small leaflet or booklet from which to learn the deck; I always wanted more. Because of this, I wanted to give the person picking up my deck every opportunity to learn more, to heal their wounds and their origin issues.

OMTimes: Why did you create the Chakra Wisdom Oracle in the first place?

Tori Hartman: Through working with the fables and cards, I found my purpose, and healed old family wounds. I originally self-published my deck because publishers told me it didn’t make sense. After spending my life savings getting it produced, I then found out that if I sold it on Amazon, they would charge me more than I paid to make it so I’d lose money on every sale. I was lost. Then, with my last bit of money, I put up a free shuffler online to give it away; my last-ditch effort to get the information out into the world. And it worked! Slowly they came; people started ordering the deck and soon, I had sold nearly ten thousand copies off my own website.

Then, after waking up one day, I felt like London was the place to go. My friends, Monty Farber and Amy Zerner, suggested speaking to a friend of theirs who had been at Harper-Collins, and he later became my agent. It was an exciting time. After that, I found Watkins. The moment I met my publisher, I loved her. I knew I had found my home. I went from broke and back, not just to publish a card deck, but to shepherd the Chakra Wisdom Oracle teachings out into the world.

Powerful Memories and the Origin of Special Gifts

OMTimes: Can you describe how you realized that you had psychic abilities?

Tori Hartman: My mother did astrology as a hobby, and from the time that I was very little, I was aware of my gift. But it was hard to tell folks that my first memory was when I was still in diapers, and after crawling on the rug, I took off flying around the room before landing back safely on the carpet. To this day, that is a powerful memory for me. Immediately after that experience, I remember wishing I could go back and fly again; a feeling that I’ve felt my whole life.

I return to that feeling every time I work with a client whose life opens to new adventures from the Chakra Wisdom Oracle.

My mother, who died of alcoholism, wholly supported my intuitive abilities. She validated my experiences again and again. Once, when I was eight years old and we were broke, I told my dad not to worry about money because he had just been given a check for $308. No such check existed so he was baffled, until later that day when a check arrived for exactly that amount. My mother kept saying I had a gift but it took a while for my father to believe me. Finally, he did.

OMTimes: Was there a special encounter in your life that made you more aware of your abilities, or encouraged you to share them with others?

Tori Hartman: Not really. Honestly, I’m more selfish than that. I always had an intention to do other things: write, act, create, etc. There was no way that I wanted to hang out a shingle that flashed, “Psychic Adviser” for the rest of my life. I would say that I’m the least likely person to do this type of work. And yet, I do. And I love it.

I decided to pursue the chakras after I suffered a near-death experience almost 20 years ago. After it happened, I was visited by a spirit who told me a collection of stories. And it was these stories that drove my fascination with the chakras and their power to transform and heal lives.

With the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Cards, I’ve gained several spiritual tools to add to my tool belt which bring me back into center. For some of us, life has been about using just one or two tools because that’s all we have on our belt. But for me, Chakra Wisdom Oracle is about embodying multiple tools to face life head on, to just jump straight in and say, ‘bring it’!

Third Book on the Chakra Wisdom Oracle

OMTimes: You speak about the Original Fables. Where are they now? This current book is your third in the series. Can you catch us all up?

Tori Hartman: When Watkins published the cards, we had to cut the fables out. They were reduced instead to legends in the card booklet. But after publication, the publisher spoke with one of my practitioners and asked her how she learned the cards, to which she replied: “It’s easy. I just studied the fables.” Hence, the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Toolkit was born. While it is independent of the cards, it is the only place where the full fable that inspired each card lives. When you read the fable, it fills in many of the blanks for people. It especially helps those who find the simple divination in the card book isn’t enough.

The fables have always been incredibly important to me. Two years ago, I sold my home and recording studio in Los Angeles and moved to Asheville, NC. I needed to make a drastic change and it was vital for my health to leave the west coast. At one point, I was homeless, driving cross-country in a rented car with my two dogs to a rented apartment in North Carolina. But I knew it was the only way for me to break my patterns and my addictions and completely reinvent my life. The lessons from the Original Fables did that for me.

OMTimes: How does the new book, How to Read the Cards for Yourself and Others, tie into this?