By all reliable accounts, Aleister Crowley was not a nice man. Yet he fathered one of the enduring icons of modern tarot - the Thoth deck - along with its remarkable companion volume, The Book of Thoth or BoT. A revisionist attempt is afoot to give the lion's share of the credit for the excellence of … Continue reading Confessions of an Incurable Thothie
Tarot Opinion
The Alchemy of Silence: A Temperance Poem
Yesterday, in the tarot and Lenormand blog My Curious Cabinet, I was reading Le Fanu's explanation for his retirement from active posting. His comments on the need to regain "silence" in his life, to fend off the intrusion of social and cultural malaise into his private space, got me thinking about my own perception of … Continue reading The Alchemy of Silence: A Temperance Poem
Daily Draws: My Back Pages
In the 1964 "political apostasy" song My Back Pages, Bob Dylan's refrain perfectly nailed my evolving attitude toward drawing one or more cards on a daily basis for anything other than learning purposes. "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Back in "the day" (mid-1970s), only a couple of … Continue reading Daily Draws: My Back Pages
The In-between
In a recent essay on David Spangler's (he of the pioneering New Age pedigree) Lorian Association website (see "Strange Attractors" at http://www.lorianassociation.com), Susan Beal described how she eventually resolved the apparent conflicts between her inner and outer worlds - those of private spiritual practice on one hand and routine daily existence on the other - … Continue reading The In-between
The Art of Reading
Cartomancy is fundamentally a story-tellers art, in which each card in a spread forms a scene in a narrative that logically advances the story from the preceding card and segues neatly into the next. The true test of the raconteur's skill occurs when facing what at first appears to be a hopeless jumble of mismatched … Continue reading The Art of Reading
Swaggin’ It
At one time, tarot was used primarily as a tool for divination; its forte was getting under the skin of outward appearances in order to examine the roots of causality found within a querent's subconscious grasp of his or her personal reality. This was usually expressed in terms of the chance for occurrence of some … Continue reading Swaggin’ It
Should We Empower or Should We Enable?
One thing I have always appreciated about tarot is its ability to speak the plain truth in difficult circumstances. Its advice is often bluntly constructive rather than comforting, and the reader must walk a fine line when imparting its wisdom to assure impartiality. It's a truism that "bad things" do still happen to "good people," … Continue reading Should We Empower or Should We Enable?
Culling the Herd
In agriculture, threshing a wheat harvest means separating the kernels from the chaff, after which winnowing removes the hulls, leaving behind only the edible part of the grain. Facing the bounty of new, old and restored tarot decks on the market today, I feel like a lucky farmer confronting a bumper crop. The phrase “So … Continue reading Culling the Herd
“Cheap Shots” #14 – Tough Love
I generally prefer decks that hand out unvarnished truth rather than affirmative pleasantries (which excludes many oracle decks, and especially "angel cards"). The Thoth is the granddaddy of them all in that regard, and each of its various clones is no slouch either. For example, unlike the ambivalent 8 of Cups in the Waite-Smith deck, … Continue reading “Cheap Shots” #14 – Tough Love
Cold Reading Then and Now
"Cold-reading" is an interesting subject; it seems to mean something entirely different now than in the past. In my own experience, it used to describe reading with zero prior knowledge or information, simply drawing insight from the cards or other tools of divination with no preliminary "warm-up" clues from the sitter. But it now implies … Continue reading Cold Reading Then and Now
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 