september song

The reading's only trump card, in the middle of the bottom row, reminds me of I Ching hexagram 51, whose judgment reads in part, "First laughing words -- ha ha; then shock comes -- ah ah!" So it was with us, beginning with laughter and infatuation, then quickly moving into a process dominated by fear and resentment. 

It was the two queens, standing like protectresses on either side of the tower, who enabled us to get through that time. Hers, the pensive queen of spades, whose spiritual nature was formed out of pain and loss, and my queen of clubs. Even though she wears the habit and has taken the vow, she's more about knowledge and learning for its own sake than spiritual matters.

The lady's eight of hearts is indicative of "considerable emotional power, charm, and personal magnetism," according to Robert Camp*, and these qualities have enabled her to completely subdue the heart presently entwined with her own. The jack of clubs is the current unfolding of an ongoing theme, and the enthused young student is the most intense of all learners, cooking up spectacular results in his mind's oven when his subject is fresh, new, and exciting.

The ace of hearts usually means a new love relationship, or the desire for one. In this case it might mean an established relationship becoming new once more, like a flowering annual. The five of hearts next to it usually means a divorce, a breakup, or leaving one's family home. In this case, it more likely forecasts a significant change of residence which will occur November 1.

The nine of clubs tells us that whatever the jack is working so hard on will be completed in the near future. Robert Camp says of this card "it will signal a time when some ideas, ways of thinking or communicating, or some personal plans...are ready to end." This implies a new stage in one's thinking as well, possibly a synthesis of new material and old learning, with profitable results.

In the middle of it all, dominating the reading and drawing all the sequential lines of the spread's narratives into himself, sits the large, mute, and inscrutable ace of spades, the great keeper of secrets. He intervenes between the shock of recognition and the move across the water, pointing the way. He links the sadness of the mater dolorosa,, queen of spades, and the necessity of giving up familiar but obsolete ways of thinking. He also connects the queen of learning with the renewal of romantic love, and yokes the charisma of the center-left card with scholarly absorption on the right.

The ace of spades makes a cloudy lens, but it's through that we need to view these cards.

*All quotes from Robert Camp are from: Destiny Cards, (Sourcebooks, Inc., Naperville, IL), 1998.

Click on the image for a larger view. Photo and designs on cards ©2001, 2012 by Dave B, a.k.a. catboxer.

fancy and the ace of spades

Paul Christian was a 19th-century French journalist, historian, and occultist whose real name was Pitois. Cynthia Giles's "The Tarot: History, Mystery, and Lore," with its compact but comprehensive history section, includes a couple of pages on M. Christian and his work. Although Gile's discussion is intelligent and informed, she doesn't mention that it was this fellow Christian who originated the terms "major arcana" and "minor arcana."

Those names for the two divisions of the tarot deck, with their aura of mystery and mossy old age, go back to...1870? And they were just the point of departure for an elaborate, beautiful, over-the-top Oriental fantasy that culminated with initiation, underneath the pyramids, into an ancient Egyptian "mystery" religion, where neophytes were led into the circle composed of "78 gold leaves" which had once been housed in an extremely ancient temple in Memphis.

And so forth. "No factual basis was offered for the tale," Cynthia Giles notes, "but it swiftly became a part of the burgeoning background to the occult movment," along with the similar work of the American Ignatius Donnelly with his theory of the lost city of Atlantis. Even the golden plates found in a cave by another American, Joe Smith, who founded a new religion, were a similar sort of 19th-century fancy. Whether any of them actually believed what they wrote out of their exuberant imaginations is open to debate.

Christian was a scholar who got appointed to a position in the Ministry of Public Education at 28. His job was to sort through thousands of old books the revolutionary government had seized from monasteries in 1790, and a lot of them dealt with magic and alchemy. This was weird stuff for the modern age and, I imagine, pushed the young writer in occultic directions.

The thing about occultism is, it's the basis for an awful lot of contemporary approaches to tarot. If we don't have it, what have we got?

To start, we have a deck of cards, or rather two decks of cards, or to be very precise, a deck of 52 cards to which were added 4 court cards and 22 picture cards.

When I designed my own tarot, I decided to keep the 52-card deck and eliminate the 4th-ranked court card, and keep the queens and the usual 22 picture cards, making a deck of 74. Why there are usually four court cards in a tarot suit I don't know; it might have something to do with scoring the game, for the invention of the tarot pack as a gaming device which only later came to be used for divination, is beyond dispute.

There's a beauty and balance to the regular 52-card pack that I wanted to incorporate into my own. It mostly has to do with the 13-card suits, 13 being such a deliciously mysterious and immaculately prime number, compared to the clunky 14. Also, I grew up with the French suit signs, or the International deck as it's called nowadays, so adding the trumps to it seemed natural, just as adding them to a playing deck with suits of cups, sticks, coins, and swords would have seemed natural to a 15th-century Italian designer of games.

While they may seem plain as vanilla to aficionados of fanciful or occult tarots, some of the playing cards, even with their minimal imagery, resonate deeply in our culture: who doesn't understand the meaning of the queen of hearts, for example?

The Ace of spades is one of these. An ominous card, one of three associated with death (the others are the nine spades and, of course, trump XIII), the ace of spades conceals a secret. It was the center card in our reading this past weekend, and it sat there huge in the middle of the read, mute and secretive.

It was so big and so secretive I find it very disturbing.

reaching the end

In the misty days of long ago, a group called Moody Blues had a song about "Knights in white satin, never reaching the end."

But that's ridiculous. We all reach the end sooner or later, and that's what this card is about. Today we call him the Hermit, and he carries a lantern which shines the light of knowledge which he has acquired in his solitude.

Originally, however, the lantern was an hourglass, and the various names the card was known by -- Time, the Old Man, and the Hunchback -- all point to the deterioration  everybody who doesn't die young experiences. The age and condition of the figure on all versions of this card are reminiscent of the god Cronos (Saturn), from whom the symbolic content of the image derives.

 The Old Man (Il Vecchio) is also the penultimate image of the first half of the trumps, which include the stations of rank and status in society (trumps I through V), then love and war (VI and VII), two eternal conditions young people everywhere and in all times deal with, and finally the Old Man/Hermit, a difficult situation that is, ironically, the best possible outcome.

The hourglass in the Visconti-Sforza version of Time, shown here, didn't last long, and by 1500, tarot's Old Man was carrying an object in his right hand which can't be identified, but which he holds up like a lantern. In my version, which is a portrait of the Swiss psychoanalyst C.G. Jung, from a photograph taken a few days before his death, I've retained the posture, but brought back the hourglass, nearly spent in this version, which is also a light source.



Click on images for a larger view; photo and tarot card "The Old Man" ©2001, 2012 by Dave B, a.k.a. catboxer.

--30--

the trump sequence

The main thing to keep in mind about the sequence of tarot trumps is that there really isn't one. This is not to say that there is no sequence that seems right to us (i.e., the one we're used to).

For most who are familiar with the cards, "the sequence" means the trump order of the Tarot de Marseilles. That was the sequence inherited by French occultists of the 19th century, and bequeathed by them to their English brethren of the early 20th, although Edward Waite tweaked the order slightly in his Rider-Waite-Smith pack, switching the places of VIII-Justice and XI-Strength. To this day, you can stumble into heated debates on tarot discussion boards in which participants either point with approval or view with alarm Edward Waite's determination of which card goes where.

It's actually a natural topic, since the Rider-Waite-Smith is easily the most popular deck in English-speaking countries, while the Tarot de Marseilles remains the favorite all over continental Europe. However, Waite's tinkering, and the strong objections of occultic "purists" to it, pales to insignificance when we consider that from the beginning there were regional variations in the trump sequence that render the notion of a "correct" order moot.

This is complicated by the fact that in the earliest tarot decks made for the nobility, the trumps weren't numbered; players at Tarocchi were expected to know how many points each trump was worth. Fortunately, there are still existing some tarot decks made for commoners, dating from roughly the same period as the luxurious, hand-painted items used by the crowned heads. These consist of several uncut sheets from two different crude and ugly woodcut decks. The trumps in both these decks are numbered, and the numbers show that they conformed to the trump sequence that prevailed in the tarot hotbed of Ferrarra in the early days.

The illustration shows 3-1/2 cards from one of these uncut sheets, this one housed at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. At left is a fragment of the Emperor card, identifiable only by the double-headed eagle on his shield, and his number (IIII) in the upper right corner of the card. Next to him is the Pope, identifiable from the crossed keys of St. Peter's and numeral V in the upper left corner. Next is the Empress, the upper part of whose image and number (II) are nearly eradicated, but who is identifiable by the double eagle on her shield. Lastly we have the Female Pope, wearing the papal tiara and holding the crozier, and sporting the number we moderns usually associate with the Empress (III), for to our eyes they have switched places.

That's not the only wrinkle in the Ferrarese order that "seems wrong" to modern tarot enthusiasts. There are numerous trumps which seem out of place, most notably Justice, which in this sequence is moved to the 20th spot. Maybe Waite was on to something, for I've found that in studying the various historical trump orders, there is more variety in the placement of the three   virtues represented as females (Justice, Strength, and Temperance) than any of the other trumps.

Click on the image for a larger view.
--30--

rota fortuna

How fitting that this common symbol of life's ups and downs, which was universally visible during Europe's middle ages, in manuscripts and carved into the stone walls of churches, should appear among the tarot trumps.

For many years I've conceptualized it as the circuit of an individual lifetime, as opposed to the other great wheel among the trumps, XXI-the World, which is the cycle of all lifetimes.

The wheel of fortune (today we call it "luck") has two components: karma, and the chance occurrence of random events.

Karma is sort of like destiny, but not exactly. For each of us, accumulated karmic results are effects -- the results of choices we've previously made. And of course, the very nature and the specific array of those earlier choices were themselves partly determined by karmic effects which accumulated in our lives up to that time. Thus the specific circumstances of our lives are at least in part an expression of who we are.

It's the meshing of karma with random and chance occurrences that produces the pattern familiar to everyone over the age of ten, and expressed in the old American hymn: Sometimes I'm up; sometimes I'm down.

The card in the lllustration, from the very early Visconti-Sforza deck (Milan, about 1460) conforms to the standard medieval presentation. The substitution of beasts for humans in the Tarot de Marseilles was an unfortunate variation, leading to the degenerated echo of of the original image visible in the confused occultism of most modern decks.

The medieval Wheel of Fortune portrays the karmic component of the cycle, but doesn't account for the undeniable and often crucial element of chance. My own card emphasizes chance, but at the expense of the karmic component. It would require a gifted artist-philosopher indeed to produce an image which comprehensively embraces the elements of this simultaneously simple and very complex concept.

Photo and design of X-Wheel of Fortune ©2012 by Dave B, a.k.a. catboxer. Click on images for a larger view.

nine-card spread

The nine-card spread, which I have heard (but not confirmed) is known among the Rom as "the magic square," helps a reader achieve easy and logical interpretation.

It's like this: the bottom rank (horizontal line) is behind; the middle is happening now, the top lies ahead. The files (or vertical columns) are indicators of character: the left vertical is the moon, or the feminine, and the right column is the sun-masculine. The center represents the resulting combination of the two, in a whole human being, with built-in contradictions and conflicts.

This is an especially productive spread to use in a joint reading for a heterosexual couple, with each person represented by a vertical column, and the relationship between them developing through time, as revealed by the relationships in the horizontal ranks.

Studying relationships among the cards present in the two three-card diagonals can yield information as well.

Photo and images on cards ©2010, 2012 by Dave B, a.k.a. catboxer. Click on the photo for a larger view.

--30--

guarlo and noquiklos, part 1

Not far from here there's a lake whose name has been lost in the slipping-away of time, but today is called Anderson Lake, and not so long ago a monster of the type we call a dragon lived on a rock in that lake. The people who fished and hunted and grew potatoes hereabouts called the solitary beast (for he had no mate) Noquiklos.

And even though, as I said, these things I'm going to tell you were not long ago, the world was much different then than the degraded and dissolute world we inhabit today. The surfaces of the streams were alive with salmon, who constantly dream of the open sea, and so unite the fresh waters with those of the great whulge.

The people hereabouts, being afraid of the beast, as is shown in the name they gave him, which means "demon," stayed far away, but even at a distance they could see the sunlight glinting off his golden scales as he sunned himself on his rock, which was called Tomanawos, and at night they could see the supernatural purple glow of his eyes shining through the forest darkness.

Then a young Chimakum warrior named Guarlo decided to put his fear aside and visit Noquiklos on his rock. He wanted to learn the secret of the animal's power, which had all humans living in fear of him.

Like all other Chimakum children, Guarlo's mother had warned him not to go near "the rock in the lake, or Noquiklos will eat you." But he wrapped his fear up in an otter skin, and stowed it in the  rearmost nook of his canoe, and so paddled out to the rock Tomanawos. But the dragon was nowhere to be seen.

Guarlo beached his canoe in a perfect stillness; not even a breeze was stirring. He walked toward the stone cliff on the rock's landward side, and found a narrow cave opening about as tall as himself. Inside he saw the purple glow of the dragon's eye, and launched an arrow at it, but the beast easily dodged it, and a second shaft bounced harmlessly off the dragon's scales.

Guarlo realized his puny human-being weapons were useless against Noquiklos, and he gave up the fight. With resigned dignity, he backed away from the cave mouth, lay down on the flatness of the rock called Tomanawos, and composed himself to fearlessly meet his death.

--30--

gujarati mama

Way up north, way up in Gujarat,
Where the nights are steamy and the days are hot,
And where the pretty women at,
I met a devotchka with a vonny plott.

But the only problem was she spoke only Gujarati,
And when your Gujarati's spotty makes it kind of hard to party
Yeah. The only problem was she spoke only Gujarati,
And if your Gujarati's missing you won't get any.

I was lying low for awhile in Ahmedabad
With a bum leg and a bad case of I-don't-cares.
Then she came and looked into my eyes,
Blew out all four tires and both spares.

But the only problem was she spoke only Gujarati...

--30--

the lady pope

A couple of historical figures have been suggested as models for the Lady Pope. Except the famous "Pope Joan" wasn't really historical, and Guglielma of Bohemia, a legendary Visconti relative of the late 13th century, are both discussed by Rachel Pollack on page 29 of her "Complete Illustrated Guide."

Also, the Lady Pope in modern times has morphed into a high priestess, but I wonder, was she a high priestess before she was a pope? The archetype of the wise, powerful, mysterious woman is embedded deep in our past and our minds.

The priestess image is older than tarot, or dirt, for that matter. Consider this from Robert Graves, the poet, historian and cultural anthropologist: "The whole of neolithic Europe, to judge from surviving artifacts and myths, had a remarkably homogeneous system of religous ideas, based on worship of the many-titled mother goddess, who was also known in Syria and Libya.

"Ancient Europe had no gods. The great goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought. She took lovers, but for pleasure, not to provide her children with a father. Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch.

"Not only the moon, but (to judge from Hemera of Greece and Grainne of Ireland) the sun, were the goddess's celestial symbols. In earlier Greek myth, however, the sun yields precedence to the moon -- which inspires the greater superstitious fear, does not grow dimmer as the year wanes, and is credited with the power to grant or deny water to the fields." (note: Farmers in many parts of the world still plant according to the phases of the moon.)

"The tribal Nymph, it seems, chose an annual lover from her entourage of young men, a king to be sacrificed when the year ended; making him a symbol of fertility, rather than the object of her erotic pleasure. His sprinkled blood served to fructify trees, crops, and flocks, and his flesh was torn and eaten raw by the Queen's fellow-nymphs -- priestesses wearing the masks of bitches, mares, or sows."

This old gal's got a lot of high-powered, juicy juju, and she'll change your life if she's in it. She knows what's in our minds, even though she's not always aware of her own power; she's your fondest dream or sometimes your worst nightmare; she's intuition; she's the moon in all its phases.

Tarot card, The Female Pope, ©2001, 2012 by Dave B, a.k.a. catboxer.

--30--

living with parkinson's

People often say of this illness that "Some days are better and some are worse," and I've found this not only true, but that good days and bad days follow each other like daylight and darkness.

 Yesterday was a very nasty piece of work, I can tell you. Today I've been up for an hour during which I might easily pretend there's nothing wrong with me.

 This gives me something to look forward to -- an easy and fun time for the next 12 hours or so. So I've got a lot on my plate today. The main task today is to clean up the fence line and dig up the potatoes, of which there are a multitude, and I surely won't be able to do it tomorrow.

--30--

sutra on breath awareness

The method of being fully aware of breathing, if developed and practiced continuously, will have great rewards and bring advantages. What is the way to develop and practice continuously the method of Full Awareness of breathing so that the practice will be rewarding and offer great benefit?

Breathing in I know I am breathing in, Breathing out I know I am breathing out

Breathing in a long breath I know I am breathing a long breath. Breathing out a long breath, I know I am breathing out a long breath.

Breathing in a short breath, I know I am breathing in a short breath, Breathing out a short breath know I am breathing out a short breath.

Breathing in, I am aware of my whole body. Breathing out, I am aware of my whole body.

Breathing in, I experience joy. Breathing out, I experience joy.

Breathing in, I experience happiness. Breathing out, I experience happiness.

Breathing in, I am aware of the feeling [that is present now]. Breathing out, I am aware of the feeling [that is present now].

Breathing in, I calm the feeling [that is present now]. Breathing out, I calm the feeling [that is present now].

Breathing in, I am aware of the activity of the mind [that is present now]. Breathing out, I am aware of the activity of the mind [that is present now].

Breathing in, my mind experiences happiness. Breathing out, my mind experiences happiness.

Breathing in, I concentrate fully on the mind's activity. Breathing out, I concentrate fully on the mind's activity.

Breathing in, I liberate the activity of my mind. Breathing out, I liberate the activity of my mind.

Breathing in, I observe the impermanent nature of everthing. Breathing out, I observe the impermanent nature of everything.

That is the practice of conscious breathing, whose function is to calm the body and mind, to bring about right mindfulness, looking deeply, with clear and single-minded perception, so that the practitioner is in a position to pass through all the doors that lead to liberation.

--The Buddha
Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing

--30--

midweek gambit

I got this graveyard woman, you know, she keeps my kids,
But my soulful mama, you know, she keeps me hid...

--B. Dylan, "From a Buick 6"

Seven spades appeared in another reading recently, in someone else's cards. It's a warning that challenges lie ahead, in the area of health, or work, or both. Since the left-hand card indicates trends which are likely to be receding into the past, I'll say it's referencing my recent respiratory problems, now much improved.

Dominating the center of this abbreviated spread is the enormous presence of the Lady Pope. How like her!

Thirteen says of this card that she "is about keeping things hidden behind the curtain." I see this as key to the female Pope, just as she herself stays concealed, enclosed by all the phases of the moon. Thirteen also says she urges us "to silently reflect on (our) feelings."

OK, I'll try.

Last and certainly not least comes the potent image of the Magician, or conjuror -- the guy who can make something out of nothing and pull rabbits out of hats, if necessary. The important thing to keep in mind about him is, he may be a real magic man, or he might be a con artist, like a lot of the guys who have booths at a fair. He may even have attributes of both.

He's doing okay. He's working for a living, hence a trickster, like Don Draper.

How can you tell whether he's sincere? Well, since the Magician in my deck is also a self-portrait, you can believe me when I tell you that I would never steer you wrong. You have my absolute assurances on that.

Because this tarot deck has 74 rather than 78 cards, the probability that any single card drawn will be a trump or the Fool card is 22/74, or about 30 percent. The probability that two  cards in a three-card reading will be trumps, as is the case above, is thus 22/74 x 22/74 or .297 x .297 -- it will occur eight percent of the time. 

The likelihood of drawing three trumps to a three-card spread is faint, but it happens an average of approximately 26 times in every thousand.

Click on the image for a larger view. Photo and images on cards ©2012 by Dave B, a.k.a. Catboxer.

balm & frog under birdbath

This lovely lemon balm shrub is growing beneath a birdbath which sits on an iron tripod next to m'lady's backyard deck. A tiny frog lives in the balm bush, and sometimes comes out to take the sun on the rim of the basin or the plank nearest.

Frogs are symbolically potent, and play richly in literature, myth, and dreams. Above all the frog symbolizes transformation, because of the animal's life-cycle metamorphosis from aquatic tadpole to an air-breathing terrestrial creature.

The frog can also serve as an emblem of creativity, fertility, and intuition. He reminds us to exercise patience in the time of transformation.

Basin and balm bush photo ©2012 by Miss Moneypenny.

--30--

challenges

We keep getting repetition in our readings, and I don't see how it could be a random coincidence. S. shuffles the cards thoroughly before each reading (7 times) then divides the deck twice, making three piles.

Then she holds her outstretched palm over each of the three stacks in succession, searching out the one that seems to be generating warmth. Then I check the three piles the same way, and so far I've always sensed heat rising from the same group of cards she's chosen.

So what's the mathematical possibility, using this method of selection, of a querent having the same card show up in a three-card spread three out of four consecutive months? My deck has 74 cards (I dispensed with the usual four-courts tarot configuration in favor of 13-card suits with king-queen-jack). Any statistics whizzes out there who might help with this?

Starting with the bottom line (earth, and S.'s cards) we see the nine diamonds on the left. This is a straightforward money/material card, signaling the ending of a way of making money. She had the same card in May (in the center) and June (on the right). Since she retired from a decades-long job at the end of May, this is appropriate, if a little disconcerting. She's still dreaming of being stuck in the old job site, however, hence  nine diamonds is still, against the odds, popping up in her spread.

In the center of the same line, seven spades indicates serious challenges in the areas of work or health. Recently, m'lady took a serious fall, and now has sciatica on the right side, that extremely painful impingement of the large sciatic nerve running down the outside of the right leg. I see an orthopedic doctor in her near future.

Her monthly spread ends with the ace of diamonds -- "Pennies from Heaven" -- and a new way of making income, or the desire for such new horizons. I can see this happeing, post-sciatica.

Turning to my cards, the upper (sky) line, we start with the eight clubs, a sign of intense mental focus, and one of the three "fixed" cards among the suits. Fixed cards tend to have an extremely strong, emphatic, and somewhat rigid nature.

The Fool is back in the middle. I drew this symbol of the homeless wanderer to my spread in November and December of 2010, again in March of 2011, and now he's returned to his accustomed spot in my spread a year and a half later. I wasn't actually homeless during any of those months, but I felt that way, and now I feel that way again, as I prepare to move back across the water once more.

Finally, the eight spades is a payoff card, and shows regular and      consistent habits relating to health and work coming to fruition.  Since I'm a yoga practitioner and teacher, this is a very hopeful sign. I recently resumed teaching after a long layoff, and the class went well enough for me to feel optimistic about reinforcing my training and continuing to move in this direction.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Photo and images on cards ©2012 by catboxer, a.k.a. Dave B

mysterious july

A double reading for July, 2012, an unusual month of clouds and gloom.

The sky, Ouranos, above, made of air and carrying the moisture; The earth, Gaiea, mysterious and beautiful, with the fire deep inside, is the three cards below.

The air of mystery is apparent in the first card, the six diamonds, since it's the karma card symbolizing repayment of debts, or some other discharge of material obligation. I have no debts, although I might soon be looking at paying higher rents than I anticipated.

The six may be related to the shock and awe of the tower, a dramatic and sometimes traumatic event that shakes and often re-shapes one's world view. The event might be external or internal.

The ace of clubs means learning and studying, acquiring new knowledge or wanting to seek it. It's almost never a bad card to get.

Robert Camp says the eight clubs, "is the card of mental power, the ability to focus one's mind on a goal or objective and see it through to a successful conclusion...It bestows the power to overcome all problems by focusing one's thoughts...

"The Eight of Clubs" is one of three "fixed" cards. When it appears, we have the opportunity to fix our mind on certain goals and objectives...Out of that focus and concentration, success is assured."

Earth's reading reveals itself as a rapidly-unfolding sequence of events with the nine clubs, which Robert Camp says means "completion of plans or ideas," also saying that "it will signal a time when some ideas, ways of thinking, or communicating, or some personal plans of yours are ready to end.

"If you choose to resist this ending," Camp continues, "you will experience great disappointment by attempting to hold on to things, ideas, or plans that are no longer useful or helpful to you."

The nine clubs sometimes is indicative of a time when deep, mystical states of mind may occur, and the vehicle for such experiences might be symbolized by the moon card, as it is simply the "land of dreams," or place where each of us goes when we dream.

As with any other reading, the trump cards play larger parts than the others, and there are two here, one in each line.

Quotes from Robert Camp are from his book "Destiny Cards," (1998).

Photo and images on cards ©2012 by catboxer a.k.a. Dave B. Click on the image for a larger view.

tarot demystified

Despite the persistence of a stubborn mythology which asserts that tarot cards are very ancient, having originated prior to the birth of Christianity, the fact is they were invented in the luxury-loving courts of the dukes of Milan and Ferrara, in northern Italy between 1440 and 1450. Stewart Kaplan's Encyclopedia of Tarot, V. II, pages 3-6 provides copies of the documentation that establishes this beyond dispute.

Twenty-two picture cards, the 21 trump cards and the Fool, plus four additional court cards were added to the already-existing 52-card playing-card deck for purposes of playing a game called "trionfi" (triumphs) (Ron Decker  et. al., "A Wicked Pack of Cards", pages 27-28), which spread quickly, gained universal popularity, and soon became known as "tarocchi."

The 78-card standard tarot or tarocchi deck is thus closely related to but distinct from regular playing cards, and was invented for the purpose of gaming.

The game appears to have begun with the production of sumptuous, hand-colored and gilded trionfi decks painted for the high nobility by accomplished artisans. The great majority of the very early surviving cards are of this de luxe variety, but most of a single, mass-produced tarot deck has also survived in scattered pieces, and it provides evidence that the game was popular among all social classes of Renaissance Italians.  Dating from before 1500, this commoners' pack was printed from woodblocks and colored using stencils. Unlike the little masterpieces painted for the dukes of Ferrara and the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan, it's atrociously ugly (but historically priceless), and reproduced in full in Kaplan's Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume II, p. 272-74.

Playing cards predate tarot cards, having entered Europe in about 1365 from the Islamic world, in essentially the same form we use today -- four suits, each consisting of 10 numeral cards and 3 court cards.

The current understanding of the history of tarot cards and playing cards rejects all ancient Egyptian, Cabalistic, and other occult associations with tarot as misperceptions or deliberate fictions.

keep it in mind

Eram quod es.




Eris quod sum.

random cards @ mid month

The studious young Jack of Clubs is a personification of creative, highly-charged mental energy. Will this be something new?









  Seven Diamonds is the spiritual money card -- a real-life oxymoron. When it appears, we will wish to examine just how attached to our money we are, and cultivate a little gratitude for what we've got. This is a time when our faith in the abundance of the universe is tested.





Tarot trump IV, the Emperor, is a disciplined guy, in control of himself, and confident in his role as the head guy in charge of everything. But ask yourself, "Are we a bad leader? Demanding? Impatient? Unreasonable?" So don't say "My way or the highway," lest you find yourself set out upon that selfsame highway, going down that dirt road by yourself.

the way ahead

The queen is indicative of a person who is highly intuitive, well-organized, and possessed of the nurturing instinct. This is someone who may be high strung and impatient. All these traits, usually associated with females, are in reality not gender-specific.

The ten of hearts is the performers' card, but the type of performing alluded to here isn't specified. This ten is closely linked to the Jack of Spades, possibly the most creative of all the suited cards (as opposed to the tarot trumps), and he can signal initiation into a higher plane of existence than one has experienced up until now.

The six hearts is a peacemaking card, but peace only comes after the card's karmic prerequisites are satisfied. Six hearts demands that all outstanding obligations pertaining to love be discharged, and that one take responsibility for the words spoken, actions done, and feelings generated by the closest of relationships.

Then come the nines, which signify endings. Nine hearts indicates a personal loss of desired affection, either that of the special other, or a diminishment one's own affection for that certain someone. The nine diamonds is concerned with the material plane, and usually means the ending of an accustomed way of making money or otherwise supporting oneself.

A bifurcated reading, with resolution and endings below on earth, and new beginnings in the sky above. Click on the picture for a larger image.

Photo and images on cards ©Dave B, 2012.

lost in the woods

I'm lost in the woods. The funny thing is, I don't even care whether I find my way out again, and don't know where I'd go or what I'd do if I did escape. I feel captive in this lady's organic gingerbread house, even though this is where I asked to be, sort of. I guess I didn't know it would be as confusing as it is.