We continue with the Opening of the Key reading I did for myself at Yule. For those who are just joining us, you may want to read the First, Second, and Third Operations for context. In those stages of the reading, I talk through some of the things I’ve been struggling with in recent months […]
Read more "My Yule Opening of the Key: The Fourth Operation"This is the third installment in my series about the Opening of the Key reading I did for myself at Yule. You can catch up on parts 1 and 2 here and here, respectively. Here, we’re looking at the third operation of the reading. This involves dividing the deck up into twelve piles based on […]
Read more "My Yule Opening of the Key: The Third Operation"[There’s a lot of intro and personal reflection here. If you want to skip to the reading, scroll down. I flag where the reading itself starts.] Back in the early days of this blog, when I was still figuring out a lot of religious stuff, I had a devotional practice involving Tarot cards. Long story […]
Read more "My Yule Opening of the Key: The First Operation"Look, we’ve been on this merry-go-round before. I’m a Tarot reader, through and through. Tarot is far and away the most useful, versatile, satisfying divination system I’ve ever tried. Part of that is on me; Tarot was the first system I learned, and it turns out it’s really hard to committing to learning a new […]
Read more "Give Me That Old Time Divination"I own a lot of Tarot decks. Some were sent to me so that I could review them on the blog, others were gifts, but for the most part, these are decks that I bought because I saw them online, fell in love with the artwork, and felt that I had to have them. The […]
Read more "My Five Go-To Tarot Decks"People read Tarot for a variety of reasons. Some people use it predictively, some people use it introspectively, and so on. The uses range from the purely psychological, to decision-making, to bona fide divination. However, a common thread among all Tarot readers is that we read Tarot because it works. Whatever we’re trying to use […]
Read more "Sometimes You’re Wrong"I’ve been thinking a lot lately of two friends I had in college. To protect the innocent, we’ll call them Dave and Irina. They started dating each other fairly soon after the start of freshman year, and were together for long enough that they became firmly established as the power couple on our (admittedly small) […]
Read more "Prejudice, Preconceptions, and the Four of Cups"I’ve been away from the blog for a while, and I apologize for that. My father died unexpectedly, and I had to fly out to the West Coast to deal with that. I will likely write about the grieving process at some point here on the blog, but for now, I prefer to keep it […]
Read more "The Four of Swords and the Nine of Wands: Rest Imposes Itself"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"With Pride month coming up, I’ve been thinking a lot about family in all its forms: Chosen family, biological family, spiritual family, and so on. Pride is, historically, an interesting time for me; my High Priestess had to drag me kicking and screaming to my first Pride, because I was still processing a great deal […]
Read more "Family in the Tens of the Minor Arcana"
Jack Chanek 