As the nights grow longer and colder, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about descents to the underworld. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the hero’s journey, the prototypical underworld descent myth laid out by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. This book is flawed, and I hesitate to bring […]
Read more "A Hero’s Journey Tarot Spread"I’m picking up this tag from Benebell Wen, who in turn got it from Kelly Bear. It’s originally a YouTube tag, but Benebell did it as a blog post and I’m going to follow in her steps (although my post won’t be nearly as aesthetically pleasing). The challenge: To list 5 Tarot decks you love, […]
Read more "#54321Tarot"I’m a fan of the Dungeons & Dragons (and occasionally other TTRPG) show Dimension 20, which airs on CollegeHumor’s streaming service Dropout. In this season, the players are a group of cognitive functions belonging to the mind of a scientist named Elias Hodge—his impulsiveness, his curiosity, his conscience, and so on. Over the course of […]
Read more "The Eights of the Tarot: What We Do When We’re Threatened"In my previous post on the Tarot de Marseille, I admitted that the system I was building wasn’t working for me and I wanted to start all over. Since then, I’ve been working my way through getting to know the deck again, using Camelia Elias’s book Read Like the Devil as a guide. And honestly? […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: Three Career Readings"For those of you who have been following along at home, I’ve committed myself to exploring the Tarot de Marseille in depth in 2023. I’m interested in this project for a couple of reasons, which I explored when I first began it: TdM is the system of Tarot that I’m least familiar with, and as […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: Rebooting"I’ve now worked my way through all of the numbered cards in the Tarot de Marseille, exploring their meanings through the lens of the trump cards that are numerologically associated with them. Having done that, I turn my attention to the court cards. In RWS-style Tarot reading, the personalities of the court cards are affected […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: The Courts, Part I"It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update in my year-long Tarot de Marseille project, but I haven’t forgotten about it! I’ve just been harried with work. Today, we return to the TdM and cap off our exploration of the pip cards with the Tens. These cards take their numerological meaning, I suggest, from […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: The Tens"We’re drawing near the end of our exploration of the suit cards in the Tarot de Marseille. Today, I’m looking at the Nines, which take their meaning from the Hermit and the Sun among the trump cards. The theme that strikes me with both of these cards is one of illumination. The sun is, well, […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: The Nines"Picking up where we left off in my project on the Tarot de Marseille, we come now to the Eights. These cards take their meaning from two of the trumps: Justice and the Moon. At first glance, these two trump cards really don’t seem to go together; Justice is rational and ordered, whereas (in RWS […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: The Eights"It’s been a long time since I’ve written a deck review. The main reason for that is that it’s been a long time since I’ve bought a new deck. I used to really love deck collecting, and I took enormous pride in acquiring decks with different themes, art styles, and expressions of the symbolic language […]
Read more "A Review of the Tarot of the Witch’s Garden"
Jack Chanek 