death Archives | Tarot Elements

When Death Means Death

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

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

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

A tutorial series by guest poster, Mick Frankel Part Three: the Simple Letters So far then we’ve seen that Sefer Yetziroh defines three of the Hebrew Letters as: אִמוֹת which means mothers. The three Mother Letters are: Sefer Yetziroh then goes on to define seven of the letters as: כְּפוּלוֹת which means doubles. The seven Double Letters are: Ten of the 22 Hebrew letters have now been classified which leaves 12 letters. These remaining 12 letters are defined in Sefer … Read more

Journey Through The Major Arcana – Part 2

The 3 X 7 Theory: Part 2

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) 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), and 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

A tutorial series by guest poster, Mick Frankel

Part One: the Mother Letters

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

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.