Voyager Tarot and Modern Day Alchemy with James Wanless

This week we interviewed James Wanless, a Speaker, Author, Teacher and Creator of Best-Selling Voyager Tarot. The “78 year-young”, as he puts it in his website, has a lot of stories to tell and an impressive journey that is still happening. Check out the interview below! In my early thirties, I worked as a Political Science professor in Cairo and Beirut.

After I finished that job, my wife and I decided to go to other places in the Middle East: Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and then India. I wanted to go to India to learn Transcendental Meditation. We went climbing in Nepal and I got sick with hepatitis – from the water, no doubt. All of sudden, I couldn’t even get out of the bed and all my body was yellow.

I heard there was a meditation course for Westerners outside Katmandu. I could be at death’s door, so I decided to go to this one-month meditation course with a Tibetan Buddhist. One month out there meditating all day long and listening to lectures on Buddhism, Enlightenment and more. After a month, I was well! I had no more hepatitis, I felt great and walked out of there.

I really learned the power of meditation, particularly the power of visualization. Tibetan Buddhists are great visualizers and I really learned how to apply the imagination we have to anything. In this case, to see myself as full of energy and gold light, every day, for hours. After 30 days, I was healed, but my life changed too. I did not want to teach Politics anymore.

It was too mundane. I was on the spiritual path and, once you’re in it, it’s hard to get off. We got back to California, and I had to pay the rent. So, I got into teaching meditation and spiritual things in the Bay Area. That whole journey changed my life.

I think life is an adventure and even the worst adversities that happen to us – diseases, financial setbacks or whatever –are ultimately the great teachers. Our gurus! Because we have to adapt. Even though we hate it, it’s the most important thing to be doing.

It’s funny because when I grew up in Leblon, Rio, and then in Long Island, when I moved to New York, I was a sports guy. I hated cards! Funnily, when I came back to America after that 4-year period, I was on a spiritual path and got a great teacher of Tarot in San Francisco.