Texas bluesman Freddie King once wrote a song titled Tore Down with the refrain "I'm tore down, almost level with the ground." This is a near-perfect expression of the customary take on the Tower card when it appears in a reading: a cautionary glimpse at some kind of calamitous "accident waiting to happen." In my … Continue reading Tore Down
Tarot History
A Long Way from Home
Or maybe I'm just waxing nostalgic? (Curmudgeon alert: incoming attitude!) At any rate, I'm no fan of what is apparently being touted as the emergence of a "New Tarot," a description I'd never heard until last week. (It's not a deck, it sounds more like a "cultural movement.") The gist of it seems to be … Continue reading A Long Way from Home
Archetype, Archetype, Who’s Got the Archetype?
It appears from the on-line conversations I've been following that there are two distinct chains of archetypal descent in the tarot. One of them - the older one - is culturally-specific, symbolizing conventions that were widely understood and accepted during the pre-Enlightenment era when they were first captured in the trump cards. Their appeal to … Continue reading Archetype, Archetype, Who’s Got the Archetype?
What’s In a Name?
Samuel Liddell Mathers was one of the seminal figures in the annals of modern esoteric tarot, having co-founded and eventually dominated the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, single-handedly penning a large portion of the tarot curriculum that was compiled in Liber T. (Hmm, why does spellcheck keep trying to substitute "single-underhandedly" and "single-highhandedly?" Maybe … Continue reading What’s In a Name?
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 