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
Qabalistic Tarot
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 Delusion of Perfection
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I hate to say it, but far too many of the tarot readers I encounter online are convinced they've attained the pinnacle of tarot mastery and make sage pronouncements based on that assumption, when it's clear to this seasoned observer that they're still finding their way and may in fact be going in … Continue reading The Delusion of Perfection
The 10 of Wands: Oppression as the Wages of Negligence
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I once wrote that, with his nose buried in his bundle of sticks, the man in the Waite-Smith 10 of Wands could just as easily walk off a cliff as reach the village shown in the distance. From a practical divination perspective, he has too much on his plate and doesn't know where, … Continue reading The 10 of Wands: Oppression as the Wages of Negligence
“Here An Angel, There an Angel, Everywhere An . . . “
AUTHOR'S NOTE: My mother-in-law, who was a devout Catholic, had a small figurine of an angel with spread wings in her living room. My wife had been reading children’s books to our two-year-old son, who glanced quickly at the angel and said “Look at the duck, quack-quack.” The title of this essay comes from my … Continue reading “Here An Angel, There an Angel, Everywhere An . . . “
The Aces: A Point to Ponder
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was going to sub-title this essay "The Importance of Fixity," but you will get that message as you read through it and examine the graphic. Conventional wisdom in the esoteric tarot community is that the Ace represents the creative and formative catalyst or "spark" behind the intent to manifest shown by the … Continue reading The Aces: A Point to Ponder
Thoughts on the Cube of Space and the Cardinal Directions
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been ramping up my study of the esoteric "Cube of Space" while reading Lon Milo DuQuette's Tarot Architect. It's a conceptual model that I've never fully appreciated nor had any practical use for, but that is about to change. In doing so I compared DuQuette's illustration to that of Robert Wang in … Continue reading Thoughts on the Cube of Space and the Cardinal Directions
Archetypal Gates and Elemental Focus: A Ritual Matrix and Tarot Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In Tarot Magic, Donald Tyson described a hierarchy of tarot trumps based on a Kabbalistic cosmology that places the Earth at the bottom as fixed and unmoving; the three "Primal Elements" (Water, Air and Fire in ascending order) as the first three increasingly-subtle "spheres" one encounters when rising from the Earth's surface; the … Continue reading Archetypal Gates and Elemental Focus: A Ritual Matrix and Tarot Spread
The “Power Grab” Spread: A Personal Power Profile
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As inquisitive beings we are always looking for insights that will aid us in understanding our inherent strengths and weaknesses. Although I don't use the "Tree of Life" spread often, here is a version that employs tarot cards to create a "power profile" showing the relative potency of eleven different aspects of our … Continue reading The “Power Grab” Spread: A Personal Power Profile
The Virtue of Numbers: Contrast vs Polarity
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Esoteric number theory is an important part of divination with the tarot cards. Aleister Crowley wrote in the Book of Thoth: "Ultimate reality is best described by numbers and their interplay." Since revealing objective truth through subjective engagement with the cards is one of the main goals of serious prognostication, number associations will … Continue reading The Virtue of Numbers: Contrast vs Polarity
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 