Tag: death | Tarot Elements

When Death Means Death

March 16, 2019November 26, 2016

Don’t we talk in spiritual terms in this community? We talk of death as if it is a beautiful experience. Some also play down the Tower while it’s been nothing short of devastating in my life.

We tend to do this with the Death card too – “Death doesn’t mean death, it means transition, or the end of something.” And so it goes on. But sometimes Death does mean death and more importantly, it is a part of life we cannot escape from. Like the Tower, when it comes crashing down around your ears. If you’re not already on your Chariot ready to drive through the devastation like a phoenix rising from the ashes, you will find yourself in the rubble, scratching your head and wondering what on earth just happened and where do I go from here?

Meditation on Death

March 13, 2014

Buddhism encourages new followers to go slowly and adopt the practices gradually. This is sound advice. Buddhism isn’t just another religion or philosophy to learn about, it’s also culturally different from anything we’re familiar with in the West, and is presented in many Eastern languages. Gradual suits me just fine.
On the Buddhist path, compassion is pretty much a prerequisite and one I very much agree with. Only it can be really, really hard to feel any sense of compassion when we hear and read such disturbing news across the media. It can be really difficult to feel compassion for our fellow man when they can be so annoying, egotistical, spiteful, hurtful, inconsiderate…

Soul Journey Tarot Spread

June 1, 2011

The Soul Journey Tarot Reading, from the legendary Rachel Pollack, seeks to help you understand, through the Major Arcana, what journey your soul has been undertaking during your dreams, and other trance-like states. It’s a little different to regular dream interpretation as it doesn’t seek to find what your dreams are about, rather it seeks to find out where your soul travels to and what it’s doing while there. As Rachel explains:

Hebrew for Tarot Readers – the Simple Letters

April 29, 2019September 5, 2010

Hebrew for Tarot Readers, the Simple Letters is Part 3 of Mick Frankel’s excellent & free tarot course. Explore the Simple Letters and the Zodiac.

Journey Through The Major Arcana – Part 2

April 28, 2019August 23, 2010

The Fool’s Journey as 3 X 7 Theory

In my Part One of Journey Through the Major Arcana, I talked about Rachel Pollack’s presentation (in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom) of the Major Arcana Trumps as a sequence, or progression, of an individual’s journey to individuation and enlightenment. The Trumps (minus the Fool, who represents the individual taking the journey, hence the system’s other name of the Fool’s Journey) are divided into three lines:

cards I-VII are seen as consciousness (the outer concerns of life in society)
cards VIII-XIV are seen as subconscious (our inward search to find who we really are)
cards XV-XXI are seen as superconscious (development of a spiritual awareness and a release of archetypal energy).

Hebrew for Tarot Readers, the Mother Letters

July 16, 2019August 16, 2010

There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet:

“Ch” is pronounced like a full-on Scots version of “Loch”. Along with “tz” it’s the characteristic sound of Hebrew as in the word, “chutzpah”.

Deck Review: the Illuminated Tarot

October 23, 2009

Review by Valerie Sylvester
The first deck most beginning tarot readers encounter when starting out on their tarot journey is the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, (which I’ll refer to as “RWS” after this initial mention). It’s often the “default deck”, the one that people learn the basic meanings of the cards from. It also serves to illustrate many tarot books and websites, and most experienced tarot readers have some familiarity with it, even if they don’t use the deck regularly. Many new Tarot decks are published each year; quite of few of these decks are based in some way upon the RWS deck.

The Gaian Tarot – An Interview With Joanna Powell Colbert

September 8, 2009

I recently began writing a review of the wonderful Gaian Tarot, created by Joanna Powell Colbert. Communication with Joanna regarding permission to use the artwork on my Tarot blog quickly became chatty and as luck would have it, she kindly agreed to a short interview based on the Gaian Tarot. This post is that interview, the review will follow in a couple of days. Enjoy.

Where did the Gaian Tarot begin for you?

I had the desire to create a deck of my own back in the mid-80’s when I was deep into Goddess and Tarot studies, especially of the Motherpeace and RWS decks. But the thought of painting 78 cards was daunting. (Little did I know . . .) Later on, in the late 90’s, I went through a period of time where I let go of all my esoteric interests like tarot, astrology and ritual. I moved to a small, rural island, built a straw bale house with my husband and started a wilderness awareness course of studies — learning about the native plants and animals, going deep into the Spirit of Place.

Scorpio Music

April 29, 2019August 22, 2009

…Introduction by Catherine

Working his way through the genres in search of music that is true to Scorpion depth and emotion, guest poster, Mick Frankel, finds this in 1960’s gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Mick does a grand job in showing the link between Mahalia’s music, her style, her personality and her Scorpio birth chart.