Posts tagged as:

Major Arcana

Tarot workshop

Following their successful Foundations of Tarot last year, Hilde Liesens and Cilla Conway are running A Journey through the Major Arcana on the 21st August 2010. They will look at the origins, myths, history and lore of the tarot, while guided visualisations allow you to vividly experience the myths and archetypes of the Major Arcana [...]

Read the full article →

Tarot and Astrology

For the last six months I’ve been producing illuminated manuscripts of the different astrological signs and have been fascinated by the links between tarot and astrology. The connections between the two systems are more tenuous than I originally thought, although there are some direct correlations between the symbols of the tarot and the ruling planets [...]

Read the full article →

Working with the Tarot for Self-awareness (continued)

The Wheel – traditionally The Wheel of Fortune. An ancient symbol, the Wheel represents the cosmos, time, fate and karma. The medieval concept of the Wheel of Fortune show man helplessly bound to the wheel of destiny, his fate either predestined, or, alternatively, subject to blind chance. In today’s Tarot, however, we can read it [...]

Read the full article →

Thirteen: Death or Rebirth?

Number thirteen is the sixth prime number, and many cultures find it portentous, if not unfortunate. Its negative associations can be seen as far back as Babylonia and ancient China, when an extra 13th month had to be added every now and again to keep the seasons in line with the solar year. In China [...]

Read the full article →

Twelve: The Sacred Gates

Twelve: 4×3; 6×2; 7+5, 10+2. We should now be able to intuit why the number is so potent when we look at the combinations of these numbers. Twelve is a culmination of the first part of the journey through the Major Arcana: a gateway between the physical world and the unknown. The Hanged Man is [...]

Read the full article →

ELEVEN: Master or Mute?

There is a significant difference of opinion in numerological circles as to the significance of the number 11. Many consider eleven to be an angelic or master number, a number for delving into the mysteries. Others see it as negative, forever caught between ten and twelve. The association of eleven with negativity may have emerged [...]

Read the full article →

Origins of the Tarot – Dai Léon (Frog Books)

Dai Léon’s Origins of the Tarot is a massive tome, the subtitle of which is ‘Cosmic Ordering and Principles of Immortality’. It is an academic book, and the reader may occasionally find the text confusing. Léon seems to wind round and round looking at the same issues from a different perspective each time. It is [...]

Read the full article →

Tarot Archetypes

If you’ve heard the term, but never understood it, you aren’t alone! Although archetypes are fundamental to the way our minds work, they’re not that easy to explain. Carl Jung, who coined the term, didn’t make it particularly clear either. He said they are preformed patterns in the psyche, based on instinct – i.e. very [...]

Read the full article →

Eight: the auspicious number

Eight has been considered an auspicious number from antiquity. It was thought that beyond the seven planets, there was an eighth sphere – that of the stars. As early as Babylonian times, the number was seen as connected to the gods (the god was said to reside on the 8th floor of the ziggurats). In [...]

Read the full article →

Beginnings

If you are trying to learn the Tarot, it’s easy to get flummoxed at the beginning by the sheer volume of cards. Seventy-eight of them – and then there are the reversals and combinations as well. I remember when I was thinking about growing vegetables: I bought a book on how to do so, and [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries