SUSAN'S BACKGROUND

LUCK on LIFE PATH
I'm a professional tarot card reader, astrologer, and feng shui consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. Being a highly intuitive Pisces born in the year of the gentle Sheep, this is the perfect lifelong career for me. I still have my first astrology book from when I was 11 years old, and I had my first tarot card reading when I was 17. Now I'm in my mid-50's and have over 40 years' experience studying astrology, specializing in Taoist astrology. I have much information to share, so I post tarot, astrology, and feng shui articles on my blog www.susanlevitt.wordpress.com and I post daily tarot and astrology tips and info on Facebook and on twitter @astrology and @tarot_tweet.

Fortunately, when I read tarot cards the interpretation is accurate and insightful so I've been able to counsel with tarot cards for the past 25 years. I became a professional tarot reader and astrologer in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1986. People contact me through word of mouth for readings, so I've been able to establish my family in San Francisco. (I love this small picturesque city.) Over the years in the Bay Area, I taught tarot and astrology classes. The notes from my classes just grew so I eventually became the author of 5 books Introduction to Tarot, The Complete Tarot Kit, Taoist Astrology, Taoist Feng Shui, and Teen Feng Shui that are published in eight languages. My The Complete Tarot Kit is an international best seller, and I am delighted to receive emails from tarot students and tarot readers all over the world who are using The Kit.

LOVE of LEARNING
When the student is ready, the teacher appears. I must be very ready because I've found many superb teachers in life. At age 17, I skipped Junior and Senior years of high school (Oak Park High, Hemingway's alma mater) and began an early-entry college program at Roosevelt University in Chicago. There I found Professor Takeko Stover -- that one teacher who changed by life. Professor Stover took me under her wing, and I completed courses for an Asian Studies major in Chinese and Japanese literature. I enrolled in a Chinese calligraphy class at the Art Institute of Chicago, a few blocks up the street on Michigan Avenue from Roosevelt University. I then transferred to The School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago and completed my studies there on full scholarship, receiving a B.F.A. in 1980 in painting and drawing, and fashion and textile design. I continued graduate studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ in Pre-Columbian art history, and history of photography through The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona Libraries. I support myself mostly by working as an English tutor, helping students write their papers. This decade of ghost writing is what gave me the ability to write 5 books, even though I did not take English classes.

In 1983 I moved to San Francisco and found the mother lode of wise teachers. When I became a professional tarot reader and astrologer in 1986, one of my first tarot clients was Victoria Lapp, a master Chinese herbalist who taught me in classical Chinese medicine in San Francisco for many years. I received professional certification in AstroCartography from AstroCartography creator Jim Lewis in 1993 in Berkeley, CA that confirmed that I'd relocated to a most fortunate Jupiter line in the Bay Area, leaving Pluto and Moon lines in Chicago.

I read a lot of classical Chinese literature when I lived in Chicago. The Yellow Emperor's Medicine Classic discussed what we now know in the West as Chinese Medicine. I'd read about acupuncture, but in the Bay Area people were actually doing it. Due to my art background, I became very interested in feng shui, a branch of Chinese medicine that shows how can we heal and live a balanced life if we live in a balanced clutter-free environment. I became a certified feng shui practitioner in 1997 and studied Black Hat feng shui under Lin Yun Rinpoche, Teacher Ho Lynn Tu, and Seann Xenja. I studied landform feng shui and celestial feng shui with Taoist monk Liu Ming of Da Yuan Circle, and studied Chinese pole star astrology with Liu Ming. I studied Taoist macrobiotics at Nam Singh's Academy of Cooking with Chinese Herbs in San Francisco, which changed my life because I cook every day.

CONSULTATIONS and WRITING
I do feng shui consultations for individual homes, offices, and businesses as well as corporations including the San Francisco SPCA, EA Electronic Arts, and Club One. As a Pisces born in the year of the Sheep, I am naturally more introverted than extroverted by nature. But I believe in the healing benefits of feng shui so I taught graduate-level feng shui courses in the Asian Studies and East/West Psychology graduate program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. And I was a featured speaker on the National Feng Shui Teleconference series. I lectured at Yuan-Yuan, the Worldwide Lin Yun Educational Foundation/Yun Shi Jing She Center in San Mateo, CA.

Now I enthusiastically spread the word about tarot, astrology, and feng shui. I lecture on Chinese astrology every New Year at East West Books in Mountain View, CA. I've lectured at Stanford University sponsored by the Women's Studies department, and presented at numerous conferences including the Whole Life Expo and the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium. I was interviewed in my home by CNN in July 2008 about the future of the United States economy, awarded "Best Astrologer" by the San Francisco Weekly in 2002, and was interviewed on the television program "Chicagoing" in Chicago my home town.

I write an astrology columnist for The Nob Hill Gazette in San Francisco, and wrote astrology columns for Feng Shui Journal and Sage Woman magazine. My articles and book reviews are published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Gnosis, Magical Blend, Shaman's Drum, We'Moon lunar calendars, and other spiritual magazines. I've been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle in September 2002, my tarot classes were featured in InStyle magazine in June 2000, and I was profiled in Marin's Pacific Sun in September 1997, and many other publications. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said in Wonderland, my book Taoist Astrology is published in English, Czech, and Bulgarian. Taoist Feng Shui is published in English, Spanish, Russian, and Croat. Teen Feng Shui is published in Bulgarian.

Thank you for finding me on the web. Feel free to send questions about tarot, astrology, or feng shui.