Jimi Hendrix could have been channeling a dysfunctional 2 of Cups when he wrote the lyrics to "Love or Confusion:" Oh my head is pounding pounding Going 'round and 'round and 'round and 'round Must there always be these colors? Without names without sound? My heart burns with feelin' but Oh but my mind is … Continue reading “Is this love, or is it just confusion?”
Tarot Card Meanings
Hangin’ Out
It has always seemed to me that the Hanged Man gets a bad rap. After all, patience is a virtue and in my experience the “sacrifice” almost universally applied to interpretation of this card often means relinquishing time or initiative rather than irretrievable loss of anything more concrete. Inaction can even be the most prudent … Continue reading Hangin’ Out
Astrology is Your Friend
Those who prefer an entirely intuitive, visual approach to reading tarot cards are in the habit of pushing back vehemently against the use of any kind of knowledge-based occult symbolism or esoteric correspondences in their practice. In some cases a certain dismissive elitism is behind this resistance, in others it's simply a matter of being … Continue reading Astrology is Your Friend
Not Your Daddy’s Clergyman After All
I spent decades wrestling with ways to translate Temperance into practical interpretive terms, never once realizing that the Hierophant posed just as big a puzzle for me. I was content thinking of the latter as showing traditional values and conventional wisdom of a practical sort, primarily due to its correspondence to the conservative fixed sign, … Continue reading Not Your Daddy’s Clergyman After All
Who You Callin’ a . . . ?
. . . narcissist. In a forum exchange about which cards best portray male narcissism, I came up with a near-perfect expression in Brian William's Post-Modern Tarot.
Rota Fortunae: Ticket to Ride
In my unpublished book on tarot spreads, I made the following statement about the Wheel of Fortune: It sits in the eleventh position of the sequence, mid-way between Key 0 (the Fool) and Key 21 (the World), bringing to closure the first half of the Fool's journey of self-discovery and stimulating a fresh start with … Continue reading Rota Fortunae: Ticket to Ride
Simple Keyword Lists
Somewhere along the way I gathered these useful lists of basic keywords for the Major and Minor Arcana of the Thoth deck. I may have condensed them myself into this particular form, but more likely they came from the Aeclectic Tarot forum or an on-line blog. If I could recall from whom, I would credit … Continue reading Simple Keyword Lists
The Sevens and Eights
When reading the pip cards as a numeric sequence in accordance with esoteric number theory (both Pythagorean and Hermetic), the Sevens, Eights and Nines present a unique conundrum because they depart from the elegant geometric simplicity of the first six numbers. This makes them more difficult to conceptualize in metaphysical terms without relying on prior … Continue reading The Sevens and Eights
The “Aha!” Card
Ever wonder why most tarot decks at one time contained 80 cards and not 78? Modern printing practices seem to have changed, but not so long ago tarot decks were printed on sheets of card stock that produced 40 cards per sheet. So the deck creator - or more often the publisher - had two … Continue reading The “Aha!” Card
Wrestling with the Angel: ATU XIV – Art/Temperance
It has taken me the better part of 40 years to come to grips with the divinatory meaning of the Temperance card. The common understanding that it means nothing more than “moderation” has never convinced me. Nor has all of the elevated talk in the literature about alchemical transmutation and the reconciliation of opposites (Fire … Continue reading Wrestling with the Angel: ATU XIV – Art/Temperance
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 