The Wheel of Fortune is an odd card to turn up in a reading. Generally speaking, when people ask for a Tarot reading, it’s because they’re looking for knowledge about their lives. They have a question, some open thing that’s murky and unclear to them, and they’re hoping that you (with your transcendent mystical hoobedy-hoobedy […]
Read more "The Wheel of Fortune: Sometimes You Don’t Get to Know"There are plenty of ways to draw connections between the cards of the Major Arcana. You can do it through numerology, through astrology, through the septenaries or visual cues in their symbolism. One of the simplest ways to find the connections between the cards, though, is simply to fold the sequence of the Major Arcana […]
Read more "Pairing the Major Arcana, Forward and Backward"Blogging about Tarot is not all essays and analysis. Sometimes, it’s about finding fun and silly ways to relate to the cards like my occasional humor posts. Yesterday, I took a couple of hours to put together a playlist of twenty-two songs that make me think of the Major Arcana, so I wanted to share […]
Read more "A Tarot Playlist"Welcome to Part 2 of my James Bond Tarot series, where I match up one James Bond movie to each of the cards of the Major Arcana in the Tarot. If you missed Part 1, which ran from Casino Royale as the Fool to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as the Lovers, feel free to go check it […]
Read more "The James Bond Tarot (Part 2)"I love James Bond. I grew up with him. The Bond movies are the only films my parents own, and I’ve seen each of them (yes, even Never Say Never Again, which isn’t canon) so many times I’ve lost count. My family’s Thanksgiving tradition during my childhood was always to get Chinese takeout and watch James Bond […]
Read more "The James Bond Tarot (Part 1)"Patricia Monaghan, one of the most badass scholars of women’s spirituality in the modern age, had a really cool talk she used to deliver about taxonomizing goddesses. I never actually got to see this talk (for lo, I am but young), nor have I been able to find any published writings where she rehashes its […]
Read more "Five Goddess Prototypes in the Tarot"I’ve written a couple of times before about the devotional work I do with Tarot. One thing I haven’t much discussed, though, is the notion of myth-making as it factors into my personal Tarot practice. Religion involves myth. Before we have theology (and arguably before we have praxis) we have stories, which structure the things […]
Read more "A Tarot Fairy Tale"Western numerology likes to focus on the numbers between 1 and 10. Even though there are infinitely many numbers (nay, infinitely many integers), we in the Western occult tradition really only care about the first dizaine. There are a few notable exceptions (e.g. the number 13), but for the most part, once we get above 10, any […]
Read more "Reductio Ad Arcanum: Numerology in the Majors"The High Priestess is such an incredible, powerful card. She is the initiator, the guardian of the threshold, the one before whom we must pass if we are ever to attain higher knowledge. (Wow, I just reread that passage after a couple of days away from this draft. I sure do sound pompous, don’t I? […]
Read more "Who Is the High Priestess’s Consort?"On big days, when I need to be confident and in control, I wear a red necktie as a reminder of the Emperor. On my Tarot altar, I have a large blue-green stone that marks the presence of Death. I sometimes use a violet reading cloth, to signify the cosmic forces of the Wheel of […]
Read more "Colors and the Major Arcana"
Jack Chanek 