AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was conversing with someone online who is apparently dealing with an "earthbound spirit" in the house, one that is feeling a bit annoyed about being "stuck" although to date there have been no outward signs of this, just a general atmosphere of psychic malaise. My suggestion was that perhaps some kind of … Continue reading Spiritual Housekeeping: “Releasing” and “Banishing”
Practical Magic
“Here An Angel, There an Angel, Everywhere An . . . “
AUTHOR'S NOTE: My mother-in-law, who was a devout Catholic, had a small figurine of an angel with spread wings in her living room. My wife had been reading children’s books to our two-year-old son, who glanced quickly at the angel and said “Look at the duck, quack-quack.” The title of this essay comes from my … Continue reading “Here An Angel, There an Angel, Everywhere An . . . “
The “Tarot Magic” Invocation Spread: Second Cut
AUTHOR'S NOTE: After reading further into Donald Tyson's Tarot Magic, I decided to add a couple of new features to this spread. Tyson mentions that in traditional evocation, the Triangle of Art is drawn with its apex pointing away from the Circle of Summoning. The idea is that when the aspiration identified as the focus … Continue reading The “Tarot Magic” Invocation Spread: Second Cut
The “Purge of Mars” – A Banishing Sigil
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The premise behind this exercise is that the querent has something he or she would like to eliminate from present and future circumstances - it might be a difficult person or an unpleasant condition. This conjuration applies the cleansing agent of Mars as embodied in the Tower and the four most relevant "Mars" … Continue reading The “Purge of Mars” – A Banishing Sigil
Archetypal Gates and Elemental Focus: A Ritual Matrix and Tarot Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In Tarot Magic, Donald Tyson described a hierarchy of tarot trumps based on a Kabbalistic cosmology that places the Earth at the bottom as fixed and unmoving; the three "Primal Elements" (Water, Air and Fire in ascending order) as the first three increasingly-subtle "spheres" one encounters when rising from the Earth's surface; the … Continue reading Archetypal Gates and Elemental Focus: A Ritual Matrix and Tarot Spread
The “Star of Hope” Personal Initiative Sigil
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a layout that forms a sigil or "charm" intended to influence another person or situation that the querent wants to bend to his or her will. It uses a "significator" card at the center to represent the objective of the enchantment (for lack of a better word), and the seven classical … Continue reading The “Star of Hope” Personal Initiative Sigil
Aspiring to the Inside: A “Tarot Magic” Invocation Reading
AUTHOR'S NOTE: When I created my "Tarot Magic" spread based on Donald Tyson's book of the same name, I was planning to use it for evocation rituals that are focused on the realization of external objectives. However, upon reading further, I found that Tyson also covered the manifestation of internal conditions within the querent's immediate … Continue reading Aspiring to the Inside: A “Tarot Magic” Invocation Reading
A “Magical Evocation by Tarot” Example Reading
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a reading based on the "Tarot Magic" spread I just created using introductory comments in Donald Tyson's book Tarot Magic (formerly titled Portable Magic) and Pat Zalewski's The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn. (Since I'm sharing this post on a Thoth page, I decided to use the Thoth deck for … Continue reading A “Magical Evocation by Tarot” Example Reading
Portable Magic by Another Name
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've just begun reading Donald Tyson's book, Tarot Magic, one that I've wanted to own for a long time under its original title, Portable Magic. Its premise is that tarot cards can stand in for the elaborate trappings of full-blown ceremonial magic, and we can just box up the deck and put it … Continue reading Portable Magic by Another Name
The Cosmos According to Aleister Crowley: Love is Not Unconditional
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Recently I was asked to specifically name what I've often alluded to as the "half-dozen nuggets of pure metaphysical brilliance" in Aleister Crowley's Book of the Law (the founding text for the religion of Thelema and a fundamental source for the Book of Thoth and the Thoth tarot), as opposed to the rest … Continue reading The Cosmos According to Aleister Crowley: Love is Not Unconditional
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 