Foundations, autumn intake — teaching begins 14 September See the dates
✦ Lumenarca

Who teaches

Three tutors. All three read professionally before they taught, and all three still read — teaching from memory of practice goes stale faster than people admit.

Hands laying cards on a velvet cloth during a reading

Ailsa

Founder · Foundations

Read at markets around Edinburgh for nine years before opening the studio in 2017. Teaches the whole of Foundations and half the court card workshops. Responsible for the structural way the deck is taught here, which not everyone agrees with.

Cards and a lamp on a dark table

Rhona

Reading for Others · Ethics

Came from fifteen years in advice work, which is where the ethics block comes from. Writes and marks the scenario paper, and takes the sessions on disclosure and referral. Does not supervise anyone she marks.

A spread of cards beside a lit candle

Marek

Diploma supervision

Joined in 2021 to take supervision off the teaching tutors. Sees every diploma candidate monthly and reads every logged write-up. Runs the festival workshop because he still works three a year.

Why supervision and marking are split

A supervisor is somewhere you can say "that reading went badly and I think I made it worse". That conversation does not happen honestly if the same person decides whether you pass. So from 2021 the supervisor sees no marks and the markers see no supervision notes, and the case study is marked by whichever tutor has had least contact with the candidate.

It costs more to run and it is the single change to the course we would least willingly reverse.

What we do not claim

None of the three holds a qualification in this awarded by anyone else, because no such qualification exists in the UK in any meaningful form. What they have is years of reading for paying sitters, a body of written work, and students who can be asked. We would rather point at that than at initials.

Guest tutors

Two or three times a year someone comes in for a single session on something none of us does well — historical decks, reading in a second language, working alongside a therapist. They are paid properly, named in the term letter, and never asked to teach for the visibility.