The second print run of SKT: Revelation will come with a complimentary Book of Readings, a workbook of 22 practica. But what about those with the first print run Revelation?
Many of the journaling exercises in this workbook build on previous exercises, and all based on the Immortal Order (there are a total of eight) that your Revelation deck will be assigned or sorted into.
As for those with the first print run Revelation deck– Can you still work through the Book of Readings with a first print run Revelation?
Yes, with the following preliminary divination exercise.
The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn by Pat Zalewski and illustrated by David Sledzinski is a Golden Dawn based tarot deck, keyed to the four color scales, and also a Stella Matutina deck. Stella Matutina, or Morning Star, is one of the daughter organizations that branched from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
If there is anyone creating a Golden Dawn deck to pay attention to, it’s Pat Zalewski. I’m familiar with his work through his 2002 Talismans & Evocations of the Golden Dawn and am super excited to be working with The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn, released by Aeon Publishing in 2022 (though I think this 2022 edition is a reprint of a deck by Pat and Chris Zalewski of the same name).
For the First and Vitruvian Editions of the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, I included a complimentary add-on with your order, and that was the Twenty-Two Weeks with the SKT workbook.
For the first print run of the Revelation Edition, I adjusted that workbook so that it was no longer confined to a specific time frame, and it became a straightforward SKT study journal.
For this second printing of the Revelation, I’m changing that SKT study journal and turning it into something that transcends all its former iterations, and I’m calling it the Book of Readings.
Fleshed out into a sequential journey of self-discovery while also guiding you through basic primers of various esoteric traditions tangential to the tarot, the Book of Readings is now a course. A journey.
I’m super excited about the Book of Readings. I’m so excited that I can hardly wait to print out my own spiral-bound journal of it and get started, going through a journey of my own and documenting it in a video series.
Since I made reference to some of these regions, below is an excerpted Appendix E from I Ching, The Oracle (North Atlantic Books, forthcoming 2023).
While the maps are not drawn to scale (I did them myself, by hand…) at least they help to give you a mental reference of where these kingdoms or states are located in geographical relation to one another.
Excerpt from Appendix E of I Ching, The Oracle (June, 2023):
First off, I apologize for the convoluted, loopity-doop link after link organization (or lack thereof) to these web pages. I had initially put the pre-order information page here, but it doesn’t make sense as a blog post, so I moved it here:
And now I’m going to re-write this page into an informal chat to give you some of the behind-the-scenes.
Consider these eight solar terms, their dates based on solar longitude (the path of the sun) and how they compare to close equivalents in the pagan Wheel of the Year:
The Four Beginnings 四立
1. 立春 Start of Spring Feb. 3–5
2. 立夏 Start of Summer May 5–7
3. 立秋 Start of Autumn Aug. 7–9
4. 立冬 Start of Winter Nov. 7–8
I apologize in advance if my mode of presentation here is going to be a bit overwhelming. In retrospect, I should have taken more time thinking on pedagogy and how best to organize this material so it’s less everything-all-at-once. =)
Now that I think about it some more, “witchcraft” is probably not even the right term to be using. “Folk magic” might be the better descriptive? What do you think?
Wayne Rodney’s Global Fusion Intuitive Tarot is quickly becoming one of my favorite contemporary tarot decks. If you want a case study for diverse representation in tarot art done well, look no further than Global Fusion.
Rodney is a Jamaican American painter and illustrator who runs a martial arts studio. As an artist his work is heavily influenced by Rosicrucian mysticism, values of cultural diversity, and what I found throughout the Global Fusion Intuitive Tarot– Taoist metaphysics.
In this deck, Rodney orders the Minors before the Majors. The Sticks correspond with Wands or Clubs, expressing the traits of creative will and intuition. Of the four temperaments, he connects it to the Sanguine. Gems, Pentacles or Diamonds, signify the Phlegmatic, of the sensory and the practical. Vessels, Cups or Hearts, correspond with Melancholy, with emotions and feeling. Blades, Swords or Spades, signify the Choleric temperament, of reason, logic, and thought.
The Endless Oracle is a hand-drawn myriorama deck by artist Eric Maille, creator of the Ink Witch Tarot and the Lenormand-inspired Paper Oracle. Myrioramas were 19th century picture decks intended as a game for children. You could rearrange the cards in any order to create different landscapes. The arrangements would then tell a story.
Thus, the Endless Oracle tells an infinite number of tales. The silhouette outlines around the card edges connect any order of cards together to form a seamless landscape–a brilliant feature by Maille.
Inspired by Greek and Arthurian myths, the illustrations tap into collective knowledge, rendering these oracle cards remarkably readable. The Fisher is symbolic of leisure activities and our hobbies. The Forest is straying from the beaten path to go on an unconventional adventure. The Gathering Clouds is an omen of a plot thickening. The Giants is wonder and grandeur. Thee Goddess is religiosity. The Graveyard is loss and endings. In The Graveyard card you’ll also see the constellation Scorpio.
Published through Schiffer Red Feather, The Poe Tarot by Trisha Leigh Shufelt is a delectable black and white illustrated deck that I’ve been eyeing for quite some time. I was one of those kids who loved Edgar Allan Poe. I’m also a big admirer of pen and ink illustrations.
The raven resting on the bust of Pallas Athena.
And I really love a narrative-driven and thought-out tarot deck that has clearly been rendered with depth, passion, and copious amounts of research.
So it’s no wonder I’d take so easily to The Poe Tarot, which is all that and more. Bringing her depth of knowledge in Poe, weaves his life’s work, his struggles, passions, and motivations into the tarot, presenting each card as a lens through which you will ultimately find personal meaning.
The deck art illustrates scenes and characters inspired by Poe’s classics, from The Raven and Annabel Lee to The Masque of the Red Death and many more, bringing to life traditional tarot archetypes through a macabre meets whimsical 19th century pen and ink style.
For instance, the Six of Wells (Six of Cups) pictured above illustrates Poe himself reflecting on a portrait of his childhood sweetheart and fiancee before his death, Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, with a quote from “Spirits of the Dead.” The composition itself was inspired by Poe’s short story “The Oval Portrait.”
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