We’re drawing near the end of our exploration of the suit cards in the Tarot de Marseille. Today, I’m looking at the Nines, which take their meaning from the Hermit and the Sun among the trump cards. The theme that strikes me with both of these cards is one of illumination. The sun is, well, […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: The Nines"One of the great frustrations of Tarot is that the Swords get short shrift. Tarot decks contain unpleasant cards—they have to, in order to accurately represent the wide range of human experiences and emotions. A deck that has good vibes only is not actually terribly useful for divination, because it can never give you warning […]
Read more "In Defense of the Swords"Holy hell, it’s been eleven months. Eleven. Months. Fuck. I’m extraordinarily lucky. No one in my immediate circle has died from COVID-19. I’m safe, healthy, and gainfully employed. I have housemates, so I haven’t been totally without social interaction for the past eleven months. My parents both lost their jobs, but my mother pretty quickly […]
Read more "Tarot Cards for the Pandemic"I was doing some meditative work recently with the suit of Cups. Longtime readers of this blog will know that I am not, by nature, a Cupsy person, and this has always been the suit I’ve struggled most to connect to. So I did some intensive reflection and writing exercises to try and establish a […]
Read more "Mirror Images: Cups and Swords"This week’s post is going to be on the personal side. This blog is, by its nature, rather personal, but for the most part I try to keep things focused on Tarot, bringing in my own experiences as a jumping-off point for cartomantic discussion. This week, though, it’s really all about me. There’s no Tarot […]
Read more "Shadow Work: The Thoughts We Don’t Allow Ourselves to Think"Confession time: I love existentialist literature. The term “existential” has gained a negative connotation over the years. Jean-Paul Sartre himself had an anecdote about meeting a woman at a dinner party who swore profusely and, realizing that her language was not exactly à propos, excused herself by saying “I must be becoming an existentialist”. The word […]
Read more "Existentialism and Tarot, Part 1: The Sartre Cards"
Jack Chanek 