As an online essayist, I try to stay abreast of which blog posts attract the most attention so I can continue to pursue similar topics in my work. WordPress archival statistics don't seem to be flexible enough for a real-time, on-demand roll up and ranking of the individual posts or categories that have drawn the … Continue reading Taking the Pulse
Miscellaneous
Cartomantic Snobbery?
The snooty elitism of wine snobs is well-known. Much of their recondite vocabulary speaks of properties that apply to anything but fermented grapes. To be fair, I have come to the conclusion that some red wines do present the fanciful and not-entirely-agreeable sensory impression of "raisins" or the slightly more desirable "black currants" in both … Continue reading Cartomantic Snobbery?
A Star to Steer By
Old wine in new bottles . . . Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will no doubt have noticed that I tend to recycle certain ideas that have become almost axiomatic for me, and I trot them out whenever the occasion warrants it. There are a couple here but … Continue reading A Star to Steer By
A Milestone and a Conundrum
I've just passed 175 self-created spreads in my personal inventory (see the Dropbox link in the sidebar for the list, which you can explore in the WordPress search function), and I paused a moment to wonder whether I will ever use the majority of these spreads in practice. Although I've binned them by category, the … Continue reading A Milestone and a Conundrum
The Cartomancer Redux
I see that The Cartomancer, the magnificent (and singular) high-quality tarot journal has changed hands again. Arwen Lynch acknowledged that she was having difficulty keeping up with production demands and schedules, so she sold the quarterly glossy magazine to 7 Stones Publishing with Lori Barbieri Ross at the helm. The following message was posted on … Continue reading The Cartomancer Redux
To Inform or Inspire?
Ever since the day last year when I was chided (gently) for my "fancy writing," I've striven to sharpen, refine and carefully prune my overly verbose descriptive style (of course, I'm not always successful because, as you can plainly see, I adore adjectives, semicolons and parentheses). In doing so, I sometimes find myself skewered by … Continue reading To Inform or Inspire?
A Valuable Resource
Although it's far from comprehensive given the explosion of new tarot decks in the last few years, there is a "tarot-card gallery" website that offers complete scans of numerous popular and historically-significant decks. My understanding is that the German owner of the site has authorization to publish the images from the copyright owners of the … Continue reading A Valuable Resource
Deck Wish List for 2020
Around this time every year I take a look at the decks I've wanted but still don't have. The list gets shorter each year, not because I've been buying a lot of decks (I haven't) but because my interests have been changing as I focus more on the Tarot de Marseille and other historical decks … Continue reading Deck Wish List for 2020
A Milestone Moment
I have now reached 1,000 posts on this blog since its launch in July of 2017. I've had just under 40,000 views in that time, not a lot compared to some of the blogs I follow, but it did jump more than 25% so far this year over the 2018 total. As always, I try … Continue reading A Milestone Moment
The Ringmaster Speaks
While digging through on-line interview material looking for videos by Enrique Enriquez, I came across a quote of his that put something into perspective for me. "The first metaphor in tarot happens when we shuffle the tarot. There is a carnivalesque stance in this debasement of hierarchies. I associate this with sabotaging reality. Shuffling the … Continue reading The Ringmaster Speaks
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 