AUTHOR'S NOTE: In his book Tarot Mysticism, The Psycho-Spiritual Technology of the Thoth Tarot, Joe Monteleone observes that the ego "moving through time and space and acting on circumstances . . . gathers a story." In the realm of tarot divination, I submit that the story revealed by the cards in a spread serves as … Continue reading The Story in the Cards
Tarot Theory
Qabalistic Mercury and the Tarot Trumps
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In my theoretical reworking of the Golden Dawn's astrological correspondences for the Major Arcana a few years ago, I realigned Mercury with two of the four trumps - Temperance and the World - via sign rulership and left it in place with the Magician, which represents the archetypal personification of its energy. Here … Continue reading Qabalistic Mercury and the Tarot Trumps
Embracing the Cards as a Matter of Choice
AUTHOR'S NOTE: If we are savvy in the self-empowering ways of practical magic, our encounter with a given tarot card in a reading won't invariably deliver a foregone conclusion. We can choose how much of its influence to let into our life and how to engage it. The fundamental energy won't change, just our handling … Continue reading Embracing the Cards as a Matter of Choice
Esoteric Correspondences “In the Trenches”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been inspired by something I just read in T. Susan Chang's Tarot Correspondences: Ancient Secrets for Everyday Readers to revisit a subject I covered a few years ago in my essay "Correspondences: How Much is Too Much?" (linked below). Her section on "putting it all together" provides useful techniques by which the … Continue reading Esoteric Correspondences “In the Trenches”
Dynamic Tension: “Secret Paths” on the Tree of Life
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm currently reading T. Susan Chang's Tarot Correspondences: Ancient Secrets for Everyday Readers, and I'm at the point where she talks about the indirect connections between sephiroth on the Hermetic Tree of Life that aren't joined by established "paths" along with their associated trump cards. In baseball terminology, we could say that she … Continue reading Dynamic Tension: “Secret Paths” on the Tree of Life
Recasting Saturn: The Devil, the World and the Hermit
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is the next installment in my series of follow-up essays examining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's astrological notation for the Major Arcana of the tarot. The planet Saturn has traditionally shared equal billing with the element of Earth as the corresponding symbol for the World (Thoth Universe) card, which has … Continue reading Recasting Saturn: The Devil, the World and the Hermit
Swapping Correspondences for the Empress and the Lovers*
*Empress = Taurus (the most fertile of signs) and the Lovers = Venus (the Goddess of Love) In an earlier post (linked below), I explored "rethinking" the Golden Dawn's astrological assignments for the Major Arcana based on my five decades of practice with the esoteric tarot and astrology. This is the third in my series … Continue reading Swapping Correspondences for the Empress and the Lovers*
The Allure of Prediction
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've become irritated by the fatuous claims of self-styled experts in the online tarot community who insist that the cards should not be used for divination because they were "originally intended" only for the attainment of psychological self-awareness and self-improvement. If that's the case, why are the tarot pages flooded with requests for … Continue reading The Allure of Prediction
Reversing Cards at the Point-of-Placement
AUTHOR'S NOTE: My long-standing practice has been to allow the population of upright and reversed cards in my decks to become cumulative over time since I never put them back into "out-of-the-box" order. Prior to use I do a quick randomizing so some of the cards will obviously change from one state to the other, … Continue reading Reversing Cards at the Point-of-Placement
Strength Reversed: Not This Time
The lion this time againHe's in the circus in a cageHe's trying to break out of the frameThe lion this timeHe hears that same old sad refrainBut they can't hold him with no chainAnd they just can't denounce his claimThe lion again- from The Lion This Time by Van Morrison AUTHOR'S NOTE: Morrison seems to … Continue reading Strength Reversed: Not This Time
