Last week I had the enormous pleasure of speaking with Chris Brennan of The Astrology Podcast about astrology and tarot as forms of divination. It’s a subject that has been of intense interest to me for many years: Where and how do we find meaning? What is the work of the oracle? How do we, as moderns, embrace work that defies the dominant Western paradigm of reality?
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“The Three Fates,” by Julie Cross
Orphic Hymn to the Fates - random audio project
So, you might know I have a sort of obsession with the Orphic Hymns; I’m usually memorizing one or another of them. I also have a sort of obsession with the Wheel of Fortune; it’s the closest thing I have to a religious symbol, and I have a Wall of Wheel in my office. Now to be fair, I have a lot of obsessions. But today—a day when I really should’ve been doing lots of other things—these particular two kind of collapsed into one.
Read More36 Secrets - my new book on the minor arcana and the decans!
Hi everybody! It’s been a little while, I know. As 2020 gurgled nastily down the drain, I was furiously driving myself toward a self-appointed goal: to complete this book before New Year’s Day. In the end I made it, with just 5 hours to spare.
Read More2020 Presidential Election spread
I’ve been thinking about doing the divination for the US presidential election for some time. Before doing this very consequential drawing, there were a number of issues to address:
- How do I set aside my (very definite) bias?
- What am I going to do about reversals this time?
- If the results are ambiguous, how will the cards express that?
- What if one person appears to win on Election Day, only for another to overtake him by the time results are certified? What if one of them gets covid (for the first time, or again) after the election? What if one person cheats? What if ‘one person’ refuses to leave office? What if what if what if?!
TSC interview on MamaTokTok's A Different Take podcast
During the summer, a Singapore-based blogger named AB Mambo reached out to me for an interview. AB’s podcast, “A Different Take,” is a freewheeling conversation with people around the globe who have interesting stories to tell - a more mainstream frame of reference for me than usual and a good starting point for anyone who’s just beginning to be curious about tarot and would like the answers to some thoughtful 101-level questions.
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TSC talks 8 of Wands on Between the Worlds podcast + Talismanic Luggage Tags!
What do you think of the 8 of Wands? Do you find it exciting? hopeful? flighty? a little dangerous? Well, you’re not wrong. In today’s episode of the Between the Worlds podcast, Amanda Garcia Yates and I converse at length about the charms and pitfalls of the Lord of Swiftness, its astrology and history, its symbolism and its magical uses - including my own personal riff on talismanic tarot, the 8 of Wands luggage tag (now available for purchase)!
Read More"Magician," by Rachel Pollack - a very special video collaboration
If you know tarot, you know Rachel Pollack - author of the tarot classic 78 Degrees of Wisdom, teacher, scholar, novelist, and godmother/midwife/muse to innumerable modern-day tarot creations. But not everyone is familiar with her chapbook of tarot poems, Fortune's Lover, a jewel box containing a dozen lyrical musings on the major arcana. In April 2019 at Readers Studio in New York, I had the rare pleasure of sitting down with Rachel to record a few poems from Fortune's Lover .
Read MoreNEW OFFERING! 4 Elemental Stories of Tarot
Folks, I have something new and exciting to share! It’s a 2.5-hour video (plus handouts) called 4 Elemental Stories of Tarot, and it’s available now for download. It all started years ago during an episode of the Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast. My co-host Mel and I were talking about Cups as a watery suit, and we got to thinking about how they might relate to the Hanged Man, which corresponds to elemental water. Whoa! I thought. What a fascinating idea. I made a note to myself to think about it later.
Read MoreAt Long Last, XIII; or, When Does Death Mean Change?
I finally drew the Death card today, for the first time this year. By May of most years, I’ve seen every card at least once during my daily draws. But this year, Death has kept his spectral distance, and given that we are all being stalked by a 0.12-micron-sized, coronavirus-shaped reaper these days, I’ve been okay with that.
But when Death surfaced this morning I knew there was a reason that had nothing to do with the depredations of covid-19. Just five days ago, Minnesota resident George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer. While it’s not wrong to say Floyd’s death was a tragedy, “tragedy” implies something inevitable, and I refuse to accept that we can only shake our heads and submit.
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