AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been playing around with the 7x3 array of trump cards (minus the Fool because zero adds nothing to this exercise) by running out the numerological expressions for each row and column. I used both Theosophical reduction (adding together the digits of any sum larger than 21) and "casting out nines" (subtracting increments … Continue reading The Lover and the Devil: Trump-Card Bookends
Tarot
2024 Celtic Wheel of the Year Layout
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the next solar cycle, I chose not to pull random cards to represent the Celtic year, but rather to use the tarot trump cards associated with the eight Celtic holidays and the four zodiacal ingress dates for the Sun, thus creating a universal layout with slightly more irregular sequencing than the typical … Continue reading 2024 Celtic Wheel of the Year Layout
Red and Blue: “Living and Knowing”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Except for the traditional block-printed Marseille decks, I get very little mileage out of color symbolism in the tarot. Even then, I stay mainly with the three primary colors red, blue and yellow (along with black and white), scarcely noticing the uncommon secondary hues of green, orange and purple, and even less so … Continue reading Red and Blue: “Living and Knowing”
Moon Mastery: Making the Darkness Conscious
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Although not alluding directly to the tarot Moon, Carl Gustav Jung wrote the following observation that has a bearing on the subject: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." In other words, we must draw it forth and examine it, not try to hide … Continue reading Moon Mastery: Making the Darkness Conscious
A Tarot Reckoning: Descent into Impressionism
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Lately I've been spending some time on the r/seculartarot sub-reddit, and after viewing numerous posts I've concluded that they categorically reject any kind of unstructured approach to the tarot (as one might suppose from the title of the sub). I find myself wondering "If you stifle creative inspiration, imagination and ingenuity in tarot … Continue reading A Tarot Reckoning: Descent into Impressionism
The Lover as Morality Play
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It struck me today that the image of the four characters on the Tarot de Marseille "Lover" card might be viewed as a composite of the first six cards that precede it in the series of trumps. If we lay out those cards according to the scene in the Lover, we have the … Continue reading The Lover as Morality Play
“Owning the Mystery” – Personal vs. Collective Tarot
AUTHOR'S NOTE: While reading about Carl Gustav Jung's process of individuation as it applies to the Major Arcana of the tarot, I came across this intriguing quote: "To own a mystery gives stature, conveys uniqueness, and assures that one will not be submerged in the mass. Mystery is essential to the experience of oneself as … Continue reading “Owning the Mystery” – Personal vs. Collective Tarot
Going for the Gold
I now have a handful of tarot decks with gold-foil highlights and in some cases complete backgrounds. I also have the Golden Lenormand but I'm not including it here, and the Dali Tarot but it only has gold on the upper and lower borders. Kat Black's Golden Tarot and Eric Dunne's Illuminati Tarot didn't make … Continue reading Going for the Gold
Garbage In, Garbage Out
This is likely to be a controversial subject. There is an old tenet from computer science that goes: "Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is the concept that flawed, or nonsense input data produces nonsense output or 'garbage.' The principle also applies more generally to all analysis and logic, in that arguments are unsound if their … Continue reading Garbage In, Garbage Out
The “12 Modes of Consciousness” Spread
Although I'm no fan of using tarot for psychological profiling (which is better served by natal astrology), preferring instead a more action-and-event-oriented approach, here is a spread that adopts a creative spin on the four cognitive functions of Carl Jung. Reversals may be used to show a further elaboration of the inner landscape.
