In the Tarot de Marseille, two of the trump cards are missing something that the others have. One card, the Madman, has a name but no number; it exists outside of the numbered sequence of the trumps. Meanwhile, there’s another card that has a number but no name. This is the thirteenth card in the […]
Read more "Death and the Madman"In a footnote to a previous post, I talked about translating the titles of the trump cards into English. Cards in the TdM system are titled in French, and a handful of their names are actually quite different from the conventional names of the Major Arcana in the RWS system (or in English Tarot more […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: Le Mat"There are plenty of ways to draw connections between the cards of the Major Arcana. You can do it through numerology, through astrology, through the septenaries or visual cues in their symbolism. One of the simplest ways to find the connections between the cards, though, is simply to fold the sequence of the Major Arcana […]
Read more "Pairing the Major Arcana, Forward and Backward"About a year ago, I wrote a post called “Five Goddess Prototypes in the Tarot,” where I talked about five archetypes* commonly associated with the divine feminine and where they can be found in the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Go read that post; I’m pretty damn proud of it. Today, I’m going to do […]
Read more "Five God Prototypes in the Tarot"It’s the last week of the semester. I have a pile of student essays to grade, two large research projects of my own to finish,* a couple of seasonal parties (both Pagan and secular) to attend, and just a lot on my plate, generally speaking. But hey! It’s almost Yule. Even though there’s no snow […]
Read more "Cards for Yule: The Fool, the Hanged Man, and Judgment"I love James Bond. I grew up with him. The Bond movies are the only films my parents own, and I’ve seen each of them (yes, even Never Say Never Again, which isn’t canon) so many times I’ve lost count. My family’s Thanksgiving tradition during my childhood was always to get Chinese takeout and watch James Bond […]
Read more "The James Bond Tarot (Part 1)"I’ve written a couple of times before about the devotional work I do with Tarot. One thing I haven’t much discussed, though, is the notion of myth-making as it factors into my personal Tarot practice. Religion involves myth. Before we have theology (and arguably before we have praxis) we have stories, which structure the things […]
Read more "A Tarot Fairy Tale"Yeah, yeah. It’s April Fool’s Day and I’m writing a post about the Fool. Sue me for being topical. Readers of this blog may recall that I recently subjected myself to the hellish process of applying for Ph.D programs in philosophy. (Truly. Hellish.) Well, application season is over, and acceptance season is drawing to a […]
Read more "It’s Okay to Play the Fool"“I’ll get back to posting weekly,” he said. “I promise,” he said. Well, he was a big fat liar and he apologizes for his deceit. Things are hectic right now, but I promise, I am trying to keep up with the blog as much as possible. This summer might turn out to be a season of […]
Read more "The Arch of the Arcana: From Kenoma to Pleroma"Ladies and gentlemen, the results are finally in. This summer, I announced that I would be performing a statistical analysis on my daily draws, conducted over the course of a hundred consecutive days, to look for patterns in Tarot that deviate from a random distribution of the cards. And now, a hundred days later, my […]
Read more "Statistics! Tarot! Yay!"
Jack Chanek 