*Syncretism: The union of different practices whose features may be synchronized to good effect. AUTHOR'S NOTE: I last weighed in on the subject of esoteric syncretism in divination with a pair of essays in April and May of 2024, and a recent encounter with the topic in an r/occult sub-reddit thread brought it to mind … Continue reading Tarot Syncretism*
Metaphysical Syncretism
Playing Cards and the Astro-Romany Personality Profile
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Several years ago I adapted the 21-card Romany spread for use with the seven planets of classical astrology and came up with a dual-axis developmental profile for both character analysis and associated timing. All seven columns can be used for a complete personality study, or only those that apply to specific circumstances can … Continue reading Playing Cards and the Astro-Romany Personality Profile
Qabalistic Mercury and the Tarot Trumps
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In my theoretical reworking of the Golden Dawn's astrological correspondences for the Major Arcana a few years ago, I realigned Mercury with two of the four trumps - Temperance and the World - via sign rulership and left it in place with the Magician, which represents the archetypal personification of its energy. Here … Continue reading Qabalistic Mercury and the Tarot Trumps
A New Year, A New Agenda
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's no secret that I've become thoroughly disenchanted with the populist pretensions of the online tarot community, to the point that I've decided to disengage from public conversation and return to private academic pursuits of a more esoteric nature. (I doubt the typical YouTube "talking head" will miss me or even notice.) I … Continue reading A New Year, A New Agenda
Esoteric Correspondences “In the Trenches”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been inspired by something I just read in T. Susan Chang's Tarot Correspondences: Ancient Secrets for Everyday Readers to revisit a subject I covered a few years ago in my essay "Correspondences: How Much is Too Much?" (linked below). Her section on "putting it all together" provides useful techniques by which the … Continue reading Esoteric Correspondences “In the Trenches”
Dynamic Tension: “Secret Paths” on the Tree of Life
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm currently reading T. Susan Chang's Tarot Correspondences: Ancient Secrets for Everyday Readers, and I'm at the point where she talks about the indirect connections between sephiroth on the Hermetic Tree of Life that aren't joined by established "paths" along with their associated trump cards. In baseball terminology, we could say that she … Continue reading Dynamic Tension: “Secret Paths” on the Tree of Life
Recasting Saturn: The Devil, the World and the Hermit
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is the next installment in my series of follow-up essays examining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's astrological notation for the Major Arcana of the tarot. The planet Saturn has traditionally shared equal billing with the element of Earth as the corresponding symbol for the World (Thoth Universe) card, which has … Continue reading Recasting Saturn: The Devil, the World and the Hermit
Swapping Correspondences for the Empress and the Lovers*
*Empress = Taurus (the most fertile of signs) and the Lovers = Venus (the Goddess of Love) In an earlier post (linked below), I explored "rethinking" the Golden Dawn's astrological assignments for the Major Arcana based on my five decades of practice with the esoteric tarot and astrology. This is the third in my series … Continue reading Swapping Correspondences for the Empress and the Lovers*
“I Want My MTV” (Metaphysical Tarot Values)*
*Riffing on the song Money for Nothing by Dire Straits AUTHOR'S NOTE: In Liber T, the Order's tarot curriculum, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn assigned esoteric correspondences to all 78 cards of the deck, ranging from astrological associations to Qabalistic notation to scraps from the Medieval grimoire,The Picatrix. In routine practice, these sometimes-forced … Continue reading “I Want My MTV” (Metaphysical Tarot Values)*
Zodiacal Segmenting of the Court Cards
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've written about this subject before, but I've just been reading T. Susan Chang's very precise description of it in her book, Tarot Correspondences: Ancient Secrets for Everyday Readers, that brought me back to my own assumptions. In the Golden Dawn's Chaldean model of zodiacal associations for the tarot, all of the court … Continue reading Zodiacal Segmenting of the Court Cards
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 