“Celestial Seeping”

As I work my way through The Discarded Image, an examination of Medieval cosmology by C.S. Lewis, I encountered an observation that seems to support my long-standing assumption - not my own idea but one I read somewhere  - that the Hermetic Qabalah is to a large extent grounded in the Neo-Platonism that was grafted …

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 …

A Baleful Thing?

Upon the recommendation of a fellow on-line "Tarot History" member, I've begun reading The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis, a study of Medieval literature and its iconography. At the very beginning of the Introduction I encountered a passage that stopped me in my tracks. He was talking about how, when we come upon "hard places" …

A Step Beyond

In the last few months I've read three tarot books that have caused me to move beyond my aversion to drawing additional "clarifier" cards during my readings, although in  a very specific and limited way. This situation arises due to the facing (also known as "gaze," "regard," "gesture" or "posture") of the figures on the …

A Career “Fishing Expedition” Spread

While I have a few spreads that examine career potential, all of them assume that  querents have at least some idea what they want to do for work. Before today I had none that start from the perspective that some kind of employment change is crucial but the individual has no clue where that might …

Hand Jive*

(*For those unfamiliar with it, the hand jive was a dance from the 1950s involving "a complicated pattern of hand moves."  It brings to mind some of the elaborate manual maneuvers we make in preparing a tarot deck for a reading.) Last night I was reading Paul Huson's Mystical Origins of the Tarot and reached …

An I Ching/Tarot Personality Profile

I'm continuing to experiment with the Russian table of correspondences for linking the I Ching hexagrams to the cards of the tarot. By bringing the trump and court cards into the mix, this table attempts to reconcile the discrepancy that there are 64 hexagrams but only 40 pip cards to which they can be assigned. …

By Guess or By Golly

UPDATE: The birth occurred early in the morning on January 9th, which was within slightly more than 24 hours of the predicted date. I seem to be giving my younger readers an ongoing education in idioms from a bygone era. This one seems particularly appropriate to the situation. We have an informal family lottery going …

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 …

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 …