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"This has got to be one of the most intriguing, puzzling, intellectually enriching Tarot decks I’ve reviewed in a long time. The American Renaissance Tarot, designed by Thea Wirsching and illustrated by Celeste Pile, is a themed deck exploring the rise of transcendentalism as a literary movement in the United States in the second half […]
Read more "A Review of the American Renaissance Tarot"This is the fifth and final post in my series on the opening of the key ritual I did for myself at Yule. You can read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 before diving into this, if you like. TL;DR: I’ve been struggling a lot with feeling stuck, trapped, and generally dissatisfied with my life. […]
Read more "My Yule Opening of the Key: The Fifth Operation"
Jack Chanek 