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
Practical Magic
Probability Management: Divination as Agent of Destiny
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In the "magical practices" section of her book, Tarot Correspondences: Ancient Secrets for Everyday Readers, T. Susan Chang offers "probability enhancement" as one definition of practical magic. It involves creative visualization (a more assertive type of creative imagination) in the form of a consciously-scripted aim to manifest what we want for the future. … Continue reading Probability Management: Divination as Agent of Destiny
Spiritual Housekeeping: “Releasing” and “Banishing”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was conversing with someone online who is apparently dealing with an "earthbound spirit" in the house, one that is feeling a bit annoyed about being "stuck" although to date there have been no outward signs of this, just a general atmosphere of psychic malaise. My suggestion was that perhaps some kind of … Continue reading Spiritual Housekeeping: “Releasing” and “Banishing”
The “Star of Hope” Personal Initiative Sigil
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a layout that forms a sigil or "charm" intended to influence another person or situation that the querent wants to bend to his or her will. It uses a "significator" card at the center to represent the objective of the enchantment (for lack of a better word), and the seven classical … Continue reading The “Star of Hope” Personal Initiative Sigil
Portable Magic by Another Name
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've just begun reading Donald Tyson's book, Tarot Magic, one that I've wanted to own for a long time under its original title, Portable Magic. Its premise is that tarot cards can stand in for the elaborate trappings of full-blown ceremonial magic, and we can just box up the deck and put it … Continue reading Portable Magic by Another Name
Invoking or Evoking? A Case for Spirits
As I often say, I'm "devoutly nonreligious" in every orthodox sense but I do believe a persistent, non-human (or superhuman) primal intelligence, and maybe even a subordinate hierarchy of lesser spirits, inhabits the subtler realms of existence, and that we can communicate with it (or them) if we actively develop the sensitivity. (Before I get … Continue reading Invoking or Evoking? A Case for Spirits
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 