I was thinking today about the ways that the Major Arcana cards tie together numerologically. Except for the Fool, all of them have what Phillip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm call "numerological counterparts:" trump cards whose numbers when subject to mathematical reduction result in a lower-numbered card with which the original card can be seen as having … Continue reading Numerological Fun with the Trumps
Trumps
Trump Card Elemental Assignments
Among writers on the Golden Dawn's version of the esoteric tarot, there is general agreement that each of the twelve so-called "zodiacal" trump cards can be assigned one of four classical elements (Fire, Water, Air and Earth) according to the quality of the sign to which they correspond. The three trump cards associated with three … Continue reading Trump Card Elemental Assignments
Cheap Shots #18: Justice Restored
No, this isn't about the impeachment of Donald Trump. It alludes to the fact that Aleister Crowley returned the trump cards Justice and Strength (aka Fortitude) to the positions they held in the historical decks of Italy and France: Justice as the eighth in the series and Strength as the eleventh. For his part, A. … Continue reading Cheap Shots #18: Justice Restored
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
The Golden Dawn Factor
The contribution of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn to our modern understanding and use of the tarot cannot be overestimated. Here is a link to a brief article on Biddy Tarot by Richard L. Palmer that lays out the fundamentals. https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-astrology-golden-dawn/ The esoteric concepts and structures devised by the Golden Dawn and its … Continue reading The Golden Dawn Factor
“Cheap Shots” #15: Moon Madness
No subject is prone to more mass confusion across various systems of divination than that of the Moon. In astrology it's the archetypal Mother, nurturing and emotionally effusive, connected with memory and the subconscious mind as well as psychic awareness. As one of the three main building-blocks of the personality, it has much to do … Continue reading “Cheap Shots” #15: Moon Madness
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
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
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
