AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is another of my random, intermittent forays into the Minor Arcana of the Thoth deck, which has been my steadfast companion in the study and practice of tarot for over five decades. (See my Tarot 101 series of posts for a more systematic overview.) Think what you will of Crowley, his deck … Continue reading The Fives and the Inverted Pentagram: The Abrogation of Spirit
Qabalistic Theory
The 8 of Swords: Solving the Dilemma
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've written frequently in the past about the fact that the insurmountable obstacles to an agreeable outcome shown in the Waite-Smith 8 of Swords can be circumvented by the compromised woman - whose feet are unbound - "feeling her way" along the watercourse to escape off the lower-right corner of the card. (When … Continue reading The 8 of Swords: Solving the Dilemma
A Loony on the Paths
AUTHOR'S NOTE: After re-reading the Sepher Yetzirah and some of its modern commentary for the first time in several decades, I decided to rework the correspondences for the trump cards on the paths of the Qabalistic Tree of Life to align them with my renewed (some will say "skewed") awareness. During a discussion on one … Continue reading A Loony on the Paths
Scrambled Symbolism: Revisiting the Sepher Yetzirah
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I recently had occasion to revisit the Sepher Yetzirah (Hebrew "Book of Formation") as part of a discussion about the relationship between the tarot trumps and the 22 paths of the Hermetic Tree of Life. Once one acclimates to the euphoric "God-talk" and its mystical exhortations, the material in the brief epistle invites … Continue reading Scrambled Symbolism: Revisiting the Sepher Yetzirah
The Thoth Atu or Keys: Major Arcana in Brief
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This essay - the third and final installment of my Thoth "deep dive" series - is by far the most challenging. Crowley's take on the Major Arcana was nuanced and complex, full of syncretic flourishes and just plain ol' mystical ambiguity. But at least his rarefied excursions into occult profundity were a product … Continue reading The Thoth Atu or Keys: Major Arcana in Brief
The “Glorified Pip Cards” of the Thoth Tarot
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Today I'm embarking on my promised "deep dive" into the Thoth tarot, beginning with the Minor Arcana. Note, however, that I'm not going to present an exhaustive card-by-card analysis of divinatory content; I've already done that in my posted "Tarot 101" course material, which is primarily Thoth-based, and in a more general way … Continue reading The “Glorified Pip Cards” of the Thoth Tarot
Papus and the “Universal Fluids”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As I delve deeper into The Tarot of the Bohemians by "Papus" (Gerard Encausse), I've encountered his mystical take on the Kabbalistic concept of "the Descent of Spirit into Matter." Although my brain is starting to feel like a pretzel, I'm soldiering on and trying to render the best of it into comprehensible terms. … Continue reading Papus and the “Universal Fluids”
Papus and the Trump-Card Septenaries
AUTHOR'S NOTE: With the numbers One through Ten, Papus (Gerard Encausse) found major inspiration in the quaternary paradigm, by which he managed to turn ten "pips" into a triad of four-card arrays. (See my previous essay.) With the trump cards he adopted a septenary model instead, and strove to bring the two onto the same … Continue reading Papus and the Trump-Card Septenaries
Papus and the “Formula of Tetragrammaton”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In The Tarot of the Bohemians, Gerard Encausse (aka "Papus") spends the first 20% of the book playing with the numerology of the cards and relating them to the four Hebrew letters of the "ineffable Name of God" (euphemized as "Tetragrammaton"). Papus stacked up the trump cards in "quaternaries" (four-card sets) following the … Continue reading Papus and the “Formula of Tetragrammaton”
Rethinking the Chaldean Court
AUTHOR'S NOTE: During a recent online conversation, a question was raised about the reasons for the Golden Dawn's arrangement of the court cards on the Chaldean zodiac. I had a plausible answer for the Princesses: basically there was no place else to put them in the grand scheme, so the GD came up with a … Continue reading Rethinking the Chaldean Court
