AUTHOR'S NOTE: Moving on from my recent essay about the observer's proper orientation to the left and right pillars of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, I set out to explore the significance of the left and right sides in divination. In Western mystical circles, the passive left side is often referred to as the receptive, … Continue reading Left or Right? Polarity in Divination
Month: April 2023
A Worthy Outlet?
One thing to which any blogger pays at least casual attention is daily site traffic. In my own case I haven't monetized this blog so I'm not hanging on every minuscule fraction of a penny that changes hands over my contribution to the community. But, although I have slightly more than 300 followers now (a … Continue reading A Worthy Outlet?
A Meditation on “Oddness”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Although as students and practitioners of the mystic arts we can be excused for often feeling "odd" in a world that rewards conformity, that's not what this essay is about. One of the most useful bits of metaphysical wisdom I've received from Joseph Maxwell's Tarot de Marseille book, The Tarot, is that the … Continue reading A Meditation on “Oddness”
The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn – A Deck Interview
This is Pat Zalewski's much-anticipated take on the Golden Dawn tarot. Its main selling point is that it is hyped as being faithful to the color scales of the Order, while in a less beguiling sense it looks remarkably like a color-corrected, minor artistic overhaul of the graphics created by Robert Wang in collaboration with … Continue reading The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn – A Deck Interview
The Problem of Pronunciation
" . . . the relationship among letters, words and reality is potent, magical and central to human life." (Isabel Kliegman, in Tarot and the Tree of Life) The truth of this quote is apparent in the lives of those for whom the spoken word seems to be vital to their sense of self-identity beyond … Continue reading The Problem of Pronunciation
A State of Mundanity
It is now going on five years since we moved to our new home in a much more populous region of southeastern New Hampshire. Although we relocated mainly for proximity to family, we had high hopes that we would discover an active social and intellectual environment. Unfortunately that hasn't proved to be the case. While … Continue reading A State of Mundanity
The Withholding
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've always had reservations about the prevailing opinion of the Waite-Smith 6 of Pentacles that advocates "charity and generosity" as its core premise since I believe this is social commentary that Smith grafted onto Waite's basic divinatory meanings of "gifts, presents and gratification," objective ideas that present no moral argument (although he does … Continue reading The Withholding
Change As Stability
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've just begun re-reading Isabel Kliegman's excellent Tarot and the Tree of Life and I've already encountered a meaty subject that is worth a brief essay. Although her focus is Kabbalistic, she uses the Waite-Smith Tarot (aka "RWS") to illustrate the text, which unfortunately introduces some of the prosaic non sequiturs characteristic of … Continue reading Change As Stability
Tarot Prediction and the “Eternal Now”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Over the last couple of years I've been toying with the increasingly popular theory that what we are looking at in a tarot prediction is not the foreseeable "Future" but just another face of the "Eternal Now" that has not yet presented itself to the querent's conscious awareness. In other words, every conceivable … Continue reading Tarot Prediction and the “Eternal Now”
“On the Other Hand . . . ” (A Study in Contrasts)
I've been thinking about the presence of interpretive contrasts and contradictions in almost every tarot reading, particularly when using spreads that include a "reactive" position such as the three-card "action/reaction/resolution" layout in which the second card provides an occasion for rebuttal against the original premise. Unless we are indulging in wishful thinking of the "It's … Continue reading “On the Other Hand . . . ” (A Study in Contrasts)
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 