BACK-TO-SCHOOL WITH THE TAROT FOR SEPTEMBER 4TH

I’m looking forward to this Sunday, September 4th, when I will be back at the Triple Goddess. I will show up even though it’s the Labor Day weekend, because some people find that a convenient time to stop by. Having recently introduced the Round Robin Tarot technique, I’d like to start out with that again, because it would be good to get some more practice with this—especially with looking for connecting themes and images among the different cards that are drawn for each individual. (See the previous post for a description of the round robin technique.) Even if you are a regular visitor, there’s always something new to get out of it, as there is always a different mix of participants and card decks being used. I’m planning to use the Osho Zen Tarot deck, which uses some strikingly different imagery. (This deck, which is published by the Osho Zen Institute in Switzerland, is illustrated by Deva Padma, and edited by Sarito Carol Neiman.)

Then, because it’s back-to-school for a lot of young people and others, this is a good time to try out “The Wizards Tarot” (by Corrine Kenner and John J. Blumen), which is set up using the theme of a school for aspiring magicians—The Mandrake Academy—where the teachers of the different magical arts are portrayed in the Major Arcana cards, while the Minor Arcana represent four different groups of students, much like the different student households in Harry Potter. Normally, I tend to avoid anything which seems like an obvious imitation of anything else, so I had misgivings about a card deck that appears to be modeled after Harry Potter. However, because the artwork is so splendid, and the whole idea of belonging to a magical academy is such an intriguing concept to get into and work inside of, I believe there is great potential for exploring and trying new things with this deck. By the way, a group of my old friends had a shared sense of having belonged to a special academy in a past lifetime, though the memories were different depending on the person’s orientation—for some it was more of a military institution, for some the emphasis was on the arts, for others magic, etc. It all taps into certain archetypes of a grand educational institution and experience, which I believe also contributes to the popularity of Harry Potter.

I have long maintained that we can experience the different tarot cards as teaching personalities, each with its own teaching style, so this is an opportunity to better get to know the cards as mentors. One little quibble I have with the minor cards in the Wizard’s deck, is, although they do represent the students, shown in their school uniforms and everything, they otherwise reproduce the standard Rider-Waite-Smith imagery, but I would like to see how different Minor Arcana situations could be rendered as learning challenges or “teachable moments.” (Nevertheless, I do appreciate the massive effort it took to bring out this deck, and realize that reworking the Minors would have taken a lot longer.) As a group, perhaps we can contribute some new ideas on interpreting these cards in the context of lessons in the magic of living. Also, the group setting provides an opportunity to enter a collective fantasy.

School time is also a time to “get back to basics,” so if we have some extra time left over, I will trot out some of the more basic tarot techniques that I haven’t demonstrated in a good while.

ROUND-ROBIN-TAROT

The “Round Robin Tarot” technique that we demonstrated at the Triple Goddess earlier this month seems to have worked well, because it kept everyone engaged for a good while. Because it enables everybody to participate and provides a lot to discuss, this would be an ideal technique for any tarot study group.

How this technique works, is, each person brings or chooses a pack of tarot cards or oracle cards, then all sit in a circle, with the intention to focus on one person at a time, each in turn. So, the first person introduces him-or-herself, and then we invoke the interconnectedness of all people and all things to help bring forth information that would be good for that person to know. Next, the participants shuffle their cards, with each person pulling one card. Going around the circle, each person shows his/her card, (and also mentions which deck is being used), while we discuss potential meanings. After that, we shift focus to the next person and go through the same process.

I provide a place in the hand-outs to write down the cards and decks used, so people can afterward reconstruct (or at least try to approximate) the cards that were drawn for them when they get home. Even if you don’t have the same tarot decks, if you can set out some of the corresponding cards from your home deck, you can get the big picture and pull out new meanings by contemplating the cards as a group.

By the way, I did not invent this particular technique. The credit goes to a classmate in a weekend Photoshop seminar, but I unfortunately do not recall her name. (On that occasion, a group of us went out to lunch, and we had just one tarot deck among us, so we passed it around with each person taking a card from the deck as we read for different persons in turn.)

Back to the idea of interconnectedness: because a lot of us have an interest in the spirit world, group participation tarot exercises allow us to appreciate how spirit connections are part of the interconnectedness of all people and all things that we are invoking. I have touched on this in some previous posts, such as how spirit helpers converge in a high-vibration place like the Triple Goddess. So, as a number of psychics say that were are always surrounded by various spirit presences who are interested in our well-being, when you and I or anyone else get together, my spirit helpers are hobnobbing with your spirit helpers and those of everyone else present. (I don’t see it as being like we drag our spirits mentors around with us wherever we go, but rather, they are “present for us” in an extra-dimensional sort of way, and when two or more people come together, more extra-dimensional channels of exchange are open.) Now, it is possible that my spirit friends are aware of some things that it would be useful for you to know, and your spirit friends might have some special knowledge of concern to me. On such occasions, our spirit friends can exchange information with each other, and the Round Robin Tarot also provides them another means of connection.

THE MAGIC OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS for August 7th

This Sunday I will be back at the Triple Goddess for a free and casual session of tarot and other oracle card deck exploration. Anyone is welcome to drop in as I demonstrate different card reading techniques. If you don’t want to participate by reading and having your cards read, it’s OK to just come and watch. My theme for August is “The Magic of Interconnectedness,” which I also relate to “the mysteries of the grain” for the old celebration of Lammas. Activities will include a “Tarot Round Robin” where each person gets a chance to be the focal person while the rest of us draw cards for him or her from different decks. We will also do some exercises involving different oracle decks to look for themes across many decks, probing into Animal World and Ancestor World connections, too.

Shining on the Cards

Before I turn to the next theme, I want to say a little more about the Magic of Shining, which is always a sparkling topic, even though we are now closer to Lammas (Aug. 1) than Midsummer (June 21), and we in this latitude of the north are beginning to notice the length of evening light receding.

At the last workshop session, I handed out glass runestones with the rune “Dagaz/Daeg,” i.e. the “Day” rune painted on them in gold, because it relates both to the theme of shining illumination, and runelorists associate it with Midsummer. (This rune figure is like an “x” with the two ends closed with vertical lines, its outline somewhat reminiscent of a stylized axe or a butterfly; some Native Americans used the same figure to denote butterflies in design motifs.) I briefly discussed how you can use that rune magically, when you want to flood some matter or issue with light, (opening things up to full daylight), and also how you can use the runestone itself to amplify positive images in a tarot card layout, (effectively turning it into a tarot spell) by placing the runestone on top of cards where the combined symbolism would be meaningful.

So, to elaborate on the technique: when you get a tarot spread whose good energies you want to stretch, or when you are doing a tarot spell by laying specific cards out to make a visual statement about things you want to manifest in your life, you can enhance your arrangement with things like flowers, crystals, and gemstones, and also with runestones.

On that July 3rd session, one of the questions we put to the cards was, “Where, in my life, can I activate the Magic of Shining?” We did this in combination with mixing the Botticelli and Mantegna decks, because they are embossed with gold and silver, and because the Mantegna features a special assortment of cards not included in the standard tarot. A little while afterward, I tried to reconstruct some of the readings, though because time had passed, my memory may not be a 100 percent. However, yesterday I pulled those cards again to experiment for this blog write-up, and one gentleman’s reading, if I recall correctly, consisted of the Botticelli 3 of Swords, Mantegna’s Grammatica (XXI, Grammar), and the Botticelli High Priestess. Grammatica is in the “Arts and Sciences” class, and the pamphlet that comes with the Mantegna deck explains it as “Memory. Writings remain like an indelible memory.” I would interpret it as meaning that he can extend himself magically be using “shining words,” and I believe he did afterwards mention an interest in composing poetry. Grammar also has to do with the underlying structure of language (as well as other systems), so that is something that can be probed, in line with the High Priestess’s role as one who explores the mysteries below surfaces and appearances. How the first card, the 3 of Swords applies to all that, may suggest creative ways to express human pain and conflict. In the Botticelli 3 of Swords, a beautiful lady holding a lily drags a man, (who is in a prayerful trance), forward by his hair. This may suggest entering a meditative state and then allowing the muse to pull you where she will.

After I lay these cards out, I set the Dagaz runestone on the book the High Priestess is holding. I got an interesting visual effect, because the late afternoon sun was blasting through my glass door at such an angle, and also because the frosted glass runestone is slightly lens-shaped, the intense sunlight caused it to glow, which further illuminated that part of the High Priestess card. This provides a good image for visualization: one can easily imagine the High Priestess opening her book as the light of knowledge shoots forth. Then I set the runestone on the golden vase which the figure of Grammatica carries, considering how one could imagine a consciousness-altering elixir shining through. Then I played around with Loica (XXII, Logic), which another one of our friends got as her focal card, featuring a lady holding a small veiled dragon. The Mantegna brochure’s advice for this card is “think over problems,” so the Dagaz rune placed over the dragon could assist a visualization of the dragon as a messenger whose veil parts as it breathes mentally illuminating light instead of flame. Another lady got Cosmico (XXXIII, labeled as “Vital Functions”) as her key to shining magic, and as this angelic figure holds up the orb of the cosmos, it was easy to set the round, glowing runestone on top of that. (By the way, the Renaissance magician Marsilio Ficino said that an image of the cosmos makes the most powerful talisman.)

I similarly experimented with the other cards that I could recall coming up on the 3rd, and looking over the Mantegna cards in general, the images lend themselves very well to this kind of enhancement. I was somewhat stumped, however, with what to do with card XXXXVII, “Saturno,” which another participant had drawn, because it shows the god Saturn swallowing one of his children. However, it makes for an interesting play on Saturn’s myth if you place the runestone on top of the naked child who is being hefted up to Saturn’s mouth. In the original story, Saturn swallowed his children because he feared one would dethrone him; however, when Jupiter/Zeus was born, the Goddess Rhea, tired of seeing her children devoured, substituted a stone wrapped in swaddling, which Saturn swallowed whole; Rhea then had Zeus reared in secret. So, placing the runestone there can alter the reading, being symbolic of consuming the light of knowledge. This is something you could do if a Saturnine disposition is causing melancholy, or if Saturn in your horoscope is giving you a hardship transit.

Similar principles of decorating card layouts with symbolic objects apply for other runes, magical sigils, gemstones, and small talismans. When I try to think of which tarot cards might be effectively paired with which magical symbols and objects—well I can’t even begin to think about it, it’s too much. The best way to approach this is to let your own readings and personal situations suggest the best enhancements.

THE MAGIC OF SHINING

I am in the process of drafting my handouts for next Sunday, which include tarot exercises involving “the magic of shining,” so I am trying to articulate what this means, and will try to explain a little more about it here.

In spiritual and magical systems throughout the world, we often find a high value placed on bright and shining things, as well as shining qualities of character and spirit. So, shiny, sparkling objects or substances (such as gold, silver, crystal, glass, etc.), are used in spells, charms, and sacred medicines to attract the attention and affect the potency of the Spirit World. For example, among the Ki-Kongo, one puts oneself in alignment with the powers of the Spirit World by invoking “the flash of spirit.” (Here I reference Robert Farris Thomson’s “Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy.”) Some of this relates to the qualities of “like attracts like,” because of the shining nature of spirits and the Spirit World. In Asia, certain nature spirits and elevated types of spirits are called “dewas” or “devas,” meaning “the shining ones,” with roots related to our own word “deity.”

In a book I recently read on the Salish People of the Pacific Northwest, [“What I’ve Always Known: Living in Full Awareness of the Earth” by Tom Harmer], people who seek relationship with the elder nature spirits are referred to as the “come-alive people,” and, as a shaman explains, undertake a training which includes “cry[ing] to the powers of this world for soemthin’ to make the world shine for ‘em again” [38]. This terminology is used throughout the book, as when Harmer wonders, “… who are they, the ones who wait for a person, out in the mountains? Who show themselves, give instruction, do things for a person?” the shaman replies, “They’re the ones who make the world shine when we sing their songs!” [30].

Shining qualities are not just attributed to the spirit, but also to the mind, as when the Buddha says, “This mind is luminous,” with the idea that as you purify your thinking through meditation and mindfulness, the light of wisdom shines through.

In mythology, a quality of shining is especially associated with gods and goddesses who are friendly to humans, as in the case of golden Aphrodite, who bestows “golden gifts.” In “Goddesses in Every Woman,” Jean Shinoda Bolen relates this to “Aphrodite consciousness,” which “is present in all creative work,” and “Whenever Aphrodite consciousness is present, energy is generated: lovers glow with well-being and heightened energy; conversation sparkles, stimulating thoughts and feelings” [228, 229].

In folklore and ethnopoetics, we see that shining qualities of appearance and personality are especially characteristic of kings and queens, wonder children, virtuous maidens, fay-like women, and heroes, (e.g. the knight in shining armor). Robert Bly explores this concept in “Iron John,” describing the archetype of “The King [who] in his upper room comes toward us with a shining face—he blesses, he encourages creativity, he establishes alone an ordered universe” [113], or the archetype of “The Woman who Loves Gold,” (and her trace, “The Track of the Moon on the Water”), which recognizes, nourishes, and inspires talent and other glittering qualities in people. Describing how this latter archetype can shine through individual females, Bly says, “The Gold Woman in the other world sends her radiance down through the atmosphere, and the radiance appears on the girl’s face” [135]. For those of us older folks, Bly sees the experience or memory of the experience of these archetypes as helping us to recover our core creativity. Citing what William Stafford describes as “taking in our fingers the golden thread,” we can ask, “What were the delights we felt in childhood before we gave our life over to pleasing other people … or doing what they wanted done? Mythologically, catching hold of the end of the golden thread is described as picking up a single feather from the burning breast of the Firebird” [ Bly 112]. I relate this to the process of re-discovering the creative qualities in one’s Sun sign (among many other things). We may be intrigued when we are young and first learn of the different sun signs, but after a while we take them for granted, and some of their related personality traits get suppressed as we get older and have to conform to the world’s expectations. Going back to rediscover you sign can give you an unexpected source of new energy and vitality.

Related to the management of daily life, the concept of shining is a desirable personality trait. So, different peoples, including the Japanese, Balinese, and Thai, have social injunctions to cultivate a “bright face” or a “bright heart,” because that helps to promote social harmony and uplift everyone around you. Contrast this with certain aspects of American individualism, where you “let it all hang out” and indulge your every passing mood, without regard to the effect on other people. Note that these observations of our effect on other people may seem to contradict what I said in the previous paragraph about rediscovering our core personalities and the things that bring us pleasure, but they’re really not paradoxical when you explore their nuances. When we are able to cultivate a shining spirit, heart, face, and mind, we put ourselves in greater alignment with Deity.

Well, I could go on and on, but those are a few of the thoughts I am laying out. You can see that the concept of shining has many applications, and can be appreciated on many levels, both mundane and sublime. Next Sunday, we will explore these different meanings through the tarot, with the nature of the cards determining whether the most mundane or sublime aspects are present for us.

SHINING TAROT MAGIC FOR JULY 3RD

Hey all—I’m back from my California hiatus, and I’m preparing for the next MAGICAL CHAT, which is Sunday a week, July 3rd. Even though it’s a holiday weekend, people still like to drop by the Triple Goddess, whether for something fun to do on their staycation, or something novel for out-of-towners. (If you have 4th-of-July houseguests who are open-minded, consider bringing them down.)

I will bring my seashell oracle, and also have a number of deck-mixing techniques to demonstrate along the themes of “mysteries of the deep” (which I always like to do for the July workshop) and “the magic of shining,” which ties in with the heightened powers of the recent Summer Solstice, and is also a widespread theme in world magic.

So, the agenda is roughly that we’ll start out by mixing bibliomancy with tarot to see if we can provoke any “shining images” to shoot forth. Then, we will do the seashell oracle, which involves reaching into my basket of shells with your left hand to grasp a shell that represents your unconscious motivations, and with your right hand for one that represents conscious aims. All the shells have different divinatory meanings, and as always, can holographically convey many levels of meaning. Next, we’ll do a three deck combination reading involving the Mermaids deck, the Pirates Deck, and the Shapeshifter Deck. Your Mermaid card will represent something meaningful from your fantasy life; the Pirate card some area of life where you are forced to deal with some gritty reality, and the Shapeshifter a suggestion of what sort of hybrid being you can emulate to harmonize fantasy with reality. Because both the Pirates and Mermaids decks also feature multiple images of treasure chests, we will also do a little treasure hunt to find the buried treasure in your life.

We’ll continue the deck mixing experiment by mixing the Boticelli deck with the Mantegna deck to discover where you can activate the “magic of shining” in your life. Both the Botticelli and the Mantegna are lavishly embossed with gold and silver detailing that really makes them sparkle. They are from the same company and the same size, so it is easy to shuffle them together. While the Botticelli is a modern deck that uses Botticelli imagery to illustrate standard tarot meanings, the Mantegna goes back to the 1400s, but it is not a conventional tarot. Although a few of its cards overlap with conventional tarot, others bring in the muses, as well as the planets, the human conditions, the geniuses and virtues, and the arts and sciences as different allegorical figures.

Reminder--I'm on Hiatus, No June Session

Hi all! This is just to remind everyone that I shall be out of state, so I won't be holding my usual first-Sunday-of-the-month workshop. Until July, then, best wishes for a pleasant summer!