Justin Michael interviewed me for his YouTube channel tonight; we had a great time chatting about how I got into Tarot, different reading styles and systems, and how we challenge ourselves and grow as readers. Check out the interview and give him a subscribe!
Read more "Tarot for Real Life: Interview With Justin Michael"Work has been incredibly overwhelming lately. I’m supposed to be on the academic job market this fall, but dealing with the consequences of a negligent adviser means that my job materials are nowhere near where they need to be, and I was recently told I need to redo more than eight months’ worth of work […]
Read more "Tarot for Real Life: The Hanged Man"I’m at an odd juncture in my life right now. I only have one year left of my Ph.D (although I said that this time last year, so who really knows?) and I’m desperate to move on to the next thing. I don’t know exactly what the next thing is; I’ll apply for academic jobs […]
Read more "The Seven and Eight of Pentacles: Patience and Humility"“I do not know these good people,” the prisoner replied. “Truly?” “Truly.” “And now tell me, why is it that you use the words ‘good people’ all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?” “Everyone,” the prisoner replied. “There are no evil people in the world.” Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita This […]
Read more "The Devil and the Star: There Are No Evil People"Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Beverly Keane. For those who don’t know her, Bev Keane is a major antagonist from Mike Flanagan’s small-town Catholic horror series Midnight Mass on Netflix. She is the embodiment of sanctimonious self-righteousness; an early scene in the show has her admonishing the town’s new priest for wearing the […]
Read more "Bev Keane, Hierophant"There are terrible things in the news today. Writing this post, I don’t want to dismiss the weight of the Supreme Court’s actions or the real and terrible consequences the overturning of Roe v Wade will have for people across the country. But I also desperately need to think and talk about something else, or […]
Read more "Tarot for Real Life"The Wheel of Fortune is an odd card to turn up in a reading. Generally speaking, when people ask for a Tarot reading, it’s because they’re looking for knowledge about their lives. They have a question, some open thing that’s murky and unclear to them, and they’re hoping that you (with your transcendent mystical hoobedy-hoobedy […]
Read more "The Wheel of Fortune: Sometimes You Don’t Get to Know"With hundreds of Tarot decks on the market, what makes a deck stand out? The obvious answer is creativity and innovation: Doing something with Tarot that hasn’t been done before. But that raises a second question: How much can be changed before a deck is no longer really a Tarot deck? What are the essential […]
Read more "Video: What Makes a (Good) Tarot Deck?"Tarot is riddled with alchemical symbolism. Particularly in decks influenced by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or other high forms of high magic (Etteila, Papus, etc.), we find that the Tarot deck is a series of symbolic, allegorical depictions of the same spiritual, magical, and psychological forces at play in the Great Work […]
Read more "After Temperance, the Devil: The Great Work is never done"This is a fun deck. Tarot can be (and often is) a serious business, but it can also be whimsical, playful, and just plain fun. The Disney Villains Tarot is a novelty deck designed for the young at heart, filling the 78 cards of the Tarot deck with familiar dastards from across the Disney canon. […]
Read more "A Review of the Disney Villains Tarot"
Jack Chanek 