The Book of Maps Vitruvian Edition is going to be a significantly larger volume book than the First Ediiton, with new chapters.
A collection of those chapters are intended to showcase the more practical side of the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, especially how a professional tarot reader or one who reads tarot for others might be able put the deck into everyday use.
Continue reading “Reading Tarot for Others (Free Book of Maps Chapter Download)”
SIGHTSEE THE TAROT is a video series on my YouTube channel that takes you on a tour of the tarot, from discovering new books and tarot thought leaders to workshopping classic tarot spreads and tinkering with particular tarot decks.
Together, we’ll work through specialized reading techniques, provocative topics in the world of tarot, or explore notable perspectives and points of view. I’ll guide you every step of the way through these hands-on presentations. Pause as needed and resume the video only when you’re ready for the next step.
When you can’t have an in-person tarot instructor in your home with you or you can’t physically make it out to a tarot conference, this Sightsee the Tarot series is the next best thing.
In 2018, The Black Tarot launched a successful Kickstarter campaign. You can read more about the deck here on its official website. The minimalism of the deck is so intuitively well-attuned to our current zeitgeist, what with the KonMari tidying up speak joy method raging across the nation while every beauty, lifestyle, and health guru on social media is pushing the minimalism aesthetic. So the Black Tarot comes to us during interesting times.
Stay with me here: I envision a fashionista with her hair expertly tousled, smoky eyes, silver studded rings on every finger, wearing black and heather gray, boots, and telling me the story of my life and what’s to come with this deck. Something about this deck just feels so in tune with what’s going on around us at the moment.
The deck comes in a tuck box and one single card deftly sums up everything you need to know about its point of view and the structure of the suits.
The stunning and exquisite Falnama Oracle Cards by Asli and Polat Canpolat and published by Red Feather in 2018 has been flying under the radar and I have no idea why. I can’t believe these cards haven’t already become the next big thing among cartomancers.
The card backs are a beautiful, subtle green and feature three different designs, as you see above. I wasn’t entirely sure what the correspondence as between the different card back designs and what was on the card faces, but that could very well just be my own ignorance. =)
Falnama is a genre of Turkish and Iranian literature traced back to 17th century Iranian traditions. They’re books, and I saw several of them displayed at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul.
Continue reading “Falnama Oracle Cards (A Turkish and Iranian Divination System)”
Near the tail end of 2018, I shared some of my thoughts on the upkeep of a YouTube channel and whether I should continue my efforts there. See: The Mass Exodus Away from YouTube.
What I decided was to work on a six-part video lecture series to post on my YouTube channel and use the series for a social experiment. I told myself I would invest the effort, time, and dedication to craft this video series, put it out there, and study the public response to the series for making my determination on how I want to go forward.
I was never going to publicize any of this private data-keeping or air to anyone at all how I was feeling. But I follow Jessi Huntenburg on YouTube and she recently posted a provocative video, “Money Shadows in the Witchcraft Community.” Watching her video made me decide, yah, this is going up. Because she’s so right. And I feel my data confirms every point Jessi made.
But then it also made me feel like crap, because as a creator you want to be the kind of good-hearted person who puts out content for free and not expect anything in return, but then after you put out the content for free and actually not get anything in return, oh now suddenly I’m not happy with that? What happened to “I don’t expect anything in return”? And of course you’re smart enough to realize your own hypocrisy, so now on top of feeling bad, you feel guilt and shame. Because apparently, you’re not as good-hearted as you thought you were.
Continue reading “How Giving Are People & My Video Series Experiment”
The Angels and Ancestors Oracle Cards is a fun, beautiful New Age divination deck by Kyle Gray with art by Lily Moses. It’s a quintessential Hay House deck and one I’m really loving. These cards will pleasantly surprise you with resonant messages. Readings with Angels and Ancestors will bring clairvoyant images that leave you with a lasting imprint.
It’s a 55-card deck printed on heavy-duty cardstock in an absolute matte finish. Angels and Ancestors is a self-contained system and kit, which means you don’t need to know a darn thing about cartomancy to pick this deck up and begin working with it. The guidebook is a wonderful primer for the beginner.
Let’s see how you’re connecting to this deck, shall we? Let your eyes scan across the three cards–left, center, and right. We’re going to be following the ceremonial instructions provided in the companion guidebook. Take a moment to concentrate on your breath and continue scanning the cards, from one to the next. I’m going to rephrase the recitation a bit for the purposes of this exercise.
Start by reciting to yourself:
I am here in this space to forge a sacred bond with the Angels & Ancestors oracle deck today.
Now recite to yourself:
Guardians of the four corners,
Mother in the Earth, Father in the sky,
Angels, ancestors, sacred ones,
I call on you and welcome you here now.
The full transcript in the guidebook goes on further, but I think this will suffice for our purposes.
Bell Chimes In is baaack for 2019. =) And we kick off the series with #37, on shadow work.
Well, it’s not really about shadow work. I realize now in retrospect I never even actually addressed what shadow work is, or even what it is to me. I just jumped right in to my opinions and tangential thoughts.
Anyway, I want to conjoin that video chat with a blog post on the most recent thing to fire up the tarot, pagan, occult, and New Age communities: Doreen Virtue’s “An A-Z List of New Age Practices to Avoid and Why.” At first my response to that article won’t seem to relate to shadow work, but just stay with me. I’ll get there.
Which by the way, is totally okay. Shadow work, that is. It didn’t make it onto Virtue’s list of demonic things. So we’re good. Phew.
Continue reading “Shadow Work (Bell Chimes In #37) & Applying it Right Now to A-Z New Age Practices”
On the year of this blog posting, the Sacred Rebels Oracle deck is now five years old. I’ve had it for a while now, and only now have gotten around to sharing my impressions of it. The deck is by Alana Fairchild, one of the reigning voices in New Age spirituality.
Personally, I love the deck art, I love the spirit of what this deck is trying to achieve, and overall production design is lovely. However, it would be remiss of me as a person of color to not also mention that many people of color do have some bones to pick with Alana Fairchild decks. An argument can be made that she culls from the surface of cultural and religious traditions that she doesn’t fully study or immerse herself in, and then photoshops those traditions through a White lens. Instead of trying to sway you one way or the other, let’s just walk through the card images and you can decide for yourself how you feel.
Sacred Rebels is premised on the celebration of individualist spiritual paths, refusing to follow tradition, orthodoxy, or the mainstream, in pursuit of living your own personal authentic truth. I totally get behind all of that.
Continue reading “Sacred Rebels Oracle Cards by Alana Fairchild and Autumn Skye Morrison”
Spirit Keeper’s Tarot is a hand-illustrated 78-card tarot deck (with 2 additional versions of Key 0, for a total of 80 cards) inspired by late Renaissance woodcut prints, with symbology based predominantly on medieval European alchemy, Hermeticism, Zoroastrianism, astrology, the Kabbalah, Abrahamic angelology, Egyptian mythology, Sufism, and late Renaissance Christian mysticism.
The narrowly-tailored premise of Spirit Keeper’s Tarot is to transform tarot keys into calling cards for accessing a spirit world of beneficent immortals.
The artwork is original black and white line drawings done by hand, by me, in pen and ink, then digitally remastered to monochromatic sepia tones. The cards are bordered with a tea-stained parchment design.
All decks will be anointed with hand-crafted holy anointing oil made of Ceylon cinnamon, cassia cinnamon, myrrh resin, and sweet lemongrass.
R E A D :
F R E E D O W N L O A D S :
While the First Edition SKT deck was in black and white, a largely faithful scan of the original line drawings I did by hand, the remastered Vitruvian Edition is in monochromatic sepia tones with redesigned architecture.
The namesake for this edition comes from Vitruvius, who lived around 80 B.C. to 15 B.C. Vitruvius was a Roman architect who taught that every structure must exhibit three qualities: stability, utility, and beauty. These three qualities have come to be known as the Vitruvian Triad.
A millennium after Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci was inspired by the Roman architect’s works. One of da Vinci’s most famous sketches–rendered in sepia ink–is the Vitruvian Man (1487).
We will place our print run order based on the number of pre-orders we get plus a couple hundred extra to spare. That’s it.
After this print run is sold out, we won’t be reprinting. Even if a future SKT deck happens, it won’t be for many years and it will be different from this version. SKT will not be handed over to a mass market publisher anytime soon, either.
I craft my own anointing oil from essences and macerated oils I make myself from raw ingredients painstakingly sourced to ensure quality. The Ceylon cinnamon bark was purchased at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey. The cassia cinnamon leaf was imported from India. I use whole, highest grade myrrh resin (tears of myrrh) and lots of it (because making your own true essential oils requires a lot of myrrh). The lemongrass is fresh, local produce that is personally sun-dried over several months before the oil-making process even begins. And then the oil making process takes another several months before they’re ready. The olive oil is from Athens, Greece. Multiple layering of astrologically-timed ritual work is crafted into the anointing oil.
With the First Edition, over 95% of purchasers ordered the Premium Package that included the online video course series. That’s why I decided to make the online video course series public and freely accessible. I figured this would be most convenient for all and would spread around the good karma.
In addition to that video series already freely available, I will be producing another set of videos to go along with this redesigned deck, with new content tailored around the aspiration to make this deck more intuitively accessible so that you don’t feel like you need to be anybody other than yourself or to know anymore than what you already know (or are willing to learn) to gain access to all that this deck can offer.
The set of videos that went with the First Edition deep-dived unapologetically into mystical realms that required the suspension of rational skepticism, i.e., we were talking about your Holy Guardian Angel, ritual magic, angels, demons, the Akashic Records, and that kind of thing.
The new set of videos will be more practical and applicable to everyday readings. How do you interpret SKT court cards in readings? How do you actually and effectively integrate basic beginner-level astrology with tarot readings, using the astrological correspondence system that the SKT deck follows? How do you use your deck and Book of Maps together to do an I Ching and tarot divination?
Only the $65 Premium Package will come with the Book of Maps companion guidebook to the deck and it’s just a PDF digital file.
Everything in the Book of Maps, First Edition will still be in the revised Book of Maps, with updated card images, card entries, and some minor line-editing. You can read sample chapters from the Book of Maps here (scroll down to the bottom of that page for the hyperlinked sample chapters).
There’s also an additional 230+ pages to this revised edition of the Book of Maps. The new additions will include more on how to read the SKT court cards, working with the Olympic spirits, integrating astrology with the tarot, integrating gematria with the tarot, and an entire reference section on using the tarot and I Ching divination together. You will be able to look up short form I Ching oracles based on your SKT tarot card readings by consulting this Book of Maps. No additional I Ching texts required.
I will be sending progress reports, important updates, and everything related to your order of the SKT deck by the mailing list linked here: www.tinyurl.com/SKTnews.
From now until the pre-order window closes, I’ll also be sending exclusive previews, maybe some freebies, and who knows what else through that mailing list only.
Whether you’re just interested in staying up to date on the progress of the Vitruvian Edition or you’ve already pre-ordered your deck, get on this mailing list!
This isn’t some promo marketing thing. It’s 100% a my convenience thing. I can easily, by one click, send out notices to everybody who has consented to receiving e-mail notices and don’t have to keep track of or keep on updating any manually created email lists.
We are going to place a production order based on the pre-order quantity, plus some hundreds to spare and sell until they run out. And then that’s it.
We are not going to reprint this version of the deck. We might consider reprinting new versions of SKT way, way down the line in the future, for a possible five-year anniversary or ten-year anniversary special. In fact, there’s even the chance of never.
SKT will not be handed over to a mass market publisher. Maybe when J and I are so old and feeble we can barely hold a pen to write our own names, we might at that point give SKT to a publishing house, but it won’t happen anytime soon, so please don’t hold out for what you hope will be a cheaper version of the deck in two years.
Please e-mail your inquiries to abelldelivers@gmail.com.
Redesigning the box for my deck has been so much harder than designing the first edition’s box, because I love my first edition box design. I love the symbolism, I love the energy of it, how it very much feels specific to a particular historic period, and I love how it complemented the black and white deck itself (first edition). Being so attached to it means parting with it has been the hardest part.
Specs wise, the new box will be the same as the first edition box– a top and bottom lid format, absolute matte finish, and really sturdy quality. Anyone who has the first edition might be able to attest to how freakin’ amazing these boxes are. If you’re curious, to get this quality for your tarot box, the stock is 1200 gsm. Compare that to the stock for the tarot cards themselves, which is 350 gsm.
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