learn tarot for yourself
A tutorial series by guest poster, Mick Frankel
We’ve looked at the three Hebrew letters that Sefer Yetziroh calls “Mother Letters” or “Primary Letters”. These are א מ and שׁ.
Next, Sefer Yetziroh mentions a group of seven letters that are called “Double Letters”.
There are four letters that change their sound according to whether they have a dot in the middle or not. The version with the dot has a harder sound.
A tutorial series by guest poster, Mick Frankel
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”.
Guest post series by Bonnie Cehovet
I think that everyone understands that the journey through the archetypes of the Major Arcana is a journey of individuation, of personal growth and enlightenment. There are several different ways in which the journey can be broken down. In the companion book to the “Universal Marseille” deck, author/Tarotist Lee Bursten discusses the 3 X 7 theory, which is based on Plato’s theory of the soul being divided into three parts: The Soul of Desire, The Soul of Will, and The Soul of Reason. According to this theory, Trumps I-VII represent the Soul of Desire, Trumps VIII-XIV represent the Soul of Will, and Trumps XV-XXI represent the Soul of Reason.
A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to have a psychological Tarot reading by my good friend Zorian Cross, author of the excellent Tarot blog, the Tarot Quest. I was totally blown away by this reading, and not just the Tarot spread, which probed deep into my psyche, but by the way Zorian reads Tarot. He is amazing, his skills are exceptional and I can’t rave enough about him. Seek him out and buy a reading from him – I absolutely guarantee you will be as astounded as I was.
The reading itself was done on Skype through instant messaging and while I’ve edited out a lot of our conversation – we can talk for England about anything, I’ve kept the format of our back and to conversation to give you a flavour of how the reading developed and, despite this being a very personal reading for me (why am I always bearing my soul?), it remains chatty and lighthearted.
Guest post by Theresa Reed
The Horseshoe Tarot Spread is a very reliable layout that I have been using for years. It gives more depth than a 3 card spread but isn’t as complicated as something like the Celtic Cross. Although I can take no credit for designing it (I believe I found it in a book called Classic Tarot Spreads), I can attest that it is effective and powerful.
There are 7 cards in this spread. Begin by shuffling the cards and cutting them as you wish. Put them back together and then, taking the cards from the top of the deck, lay them out face down in a “horseshoe” formation, with card number 4 being at the top.
The positions are: