This is Video 14 in an educational series on the tarot cards. Closed captioning is provided for all videos in this series. A written transcript is also provided as a free pdf download.
The transcript for every video lecture is provided. You can go to the Video Series Homepage, scroll down to “CONTENTS LISTING,” and download the PDF transcript notes for each installment.
I had the incredible opportunity of meeting Dr. Yolanda Robinson in London a few years back, where she gifted me with a copy of Studies on Mystical Tarot: The Court Cards, published in 2013.
Robinson is a professor of transformational psychology and a member of BOTA, the Builders of the Adytum, a western mystery school tradition dedicated to the study of Qabalah and the Tarot. Studies on Mystical Tarot explores the tarot courts through a Rosicrucian lens, contextualizing the courts through Hermetic Qabalah and modes of inner alchemy.
This Sightsee the Tarot video installment will guide you through two self-reflection meditative exercises with the court cards in your favorite tarot deck. The first will focus on the four Kings to reaffirm your personal power and the second will be working with the Page of Pentacles.
Continue reading “Court Card Self-Reflection Exercises with Esoteric Tarot”
The Lost Tarot of Nostradamus brings together tarot divination and the 16th century prophetic writings of Michel de Nostradamus (1503 – 1566). The better known work by Nostradamus is Centuries, which began appearing around 1555 and has remained steadfastly popular, inspiring thousands of published commentaries and hundreds of translations.
In 1558, Nostradamus published a third edition of Centuries and posthumously, a last volume of the work was published as The Prophecies in 1568. Purportedly, 58 additional quatrains exist, but couldn’t be found after his death.
The Cards: The Evolution and Power of Tarot by Prof. Patrick Maille was published earlier this year by the University Press of Mississippi. If your tarot bookshelf is populated by books such as Decker and Dummett’s A History of the Occult Tarot, or Robert M. Place’s The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism and Jung and Tarot by Sallie Nichols, then The Cards was written for you.
The book is subdivided into two main parts: Part I is a timeline of tarot origins and history, along with an overview of historically or culturally significant individuals that influenced the world of tarot, and Part II is about the tarot’s influence in arts and culture.
While the actual practice of reading tarot cards might not be as ubiquitous as other aspects of mainstream popular culture, Maille presents the argument that tarot cards have served as a powerful vehicle driving the progress of nearly all significant aspects of culture– art, music, television, and movies.
Specifically, Maille narrows his book’s focus down to four key areas where tarot has been influential: art, television, movies, and comics.
Continue reading “The Cards: The Evolution and Power of Tarot by Patrick Maille”
New to this video lecture series?
The above-linked Introduction page will give you an overview of what this series is about and provide a course contents listing.
The Sevens is the ninth of seventeen videos in this series. This is the realm of choice, mental reasoning, and philosophical discernment, where:
New to this video lecture series?
The above-linked Introduction page will give you an overview of what this series is about and provide a course contents listing.
The Sixes is the eighth of seventeen videos in this series, “Tarot Card Meanings with Benebell.”
New to this video lecture series?
The above-linked Introduction page will give you an overview of what this series is about and provide a course contents listing.
The Fives is the seventh of seventeen videos in this series, “Tarot Card Meanings with Benebell.”
These were prepared specifically for enrollees of the Witchcraft Fundamentals course, but maybe you might find them helpful, too. Pictured above is the back pocket folder I recommend you making with the last pages of your Doctrinal Basis workbook.
Oftentimes tarot books with card meanings focus on the practical, mundane indications of the cards. Heck, that’s what Holistic Tarot did, and did so almost exclusively.
That means when you’re using the deck for readings where the purpose is spiritual (meaning, directed more toward religiosity or aspirations of personal transcendence), reading for card meanings out of a text like…. well, I’ll just keep throwing myself under the bus… like Holistic Tarot is not going to be too insightful. Maybe a little bit. (I’m proud of that book.)
But trying to make sense of Pictorial Key or Book of Thoth if you’re not already acclimated to that style of writing may be presenting a barrier of entry that we can quite easily break down right now.
I’ve been at work on something, but in the meantime, wanted to come up for air and share this. Because I found it pretty cool, and suspect you might, too.
Well, the above is not it. That’s my own sketch of the Key based on Postel’s text.
Here’s the original illustration from the 1547 publication, Absconditorum Clavis by Guillaume Postel (1510 – 1581).
Postel was a truly fascinating figure and if you’ve got some time, read a biography on him. He also believed in the Eastern esoteric concept of soul dualism, though he framed it differently, i.e., instead of saying “yin and yang” aspects of soul, he said “female and male” aspects of the soul, with one being emotion and the other being intellect. Oh. Wow. Anima and animus, anyone? (Yeah, yeah, I know, not the same…) Nonetheless, bear in mind that Postel pre-dates Carl Jung by some odd 365 years.
Continue reading “Postel’s Key of Things Kept Secret (1547)”
As of this posting there are only two weeks left of the Reverie Tarot Kickstarter campaign, so please go here and support this psychedelic tarot pop-art project. The simplicity and minimalism here means you need to rely on your intuitive powers, which is what will help you dial up your clairs.
Constance Watkins has penned a dream-like world that brings tarot numerology to life. The Reverie Tarot and Midnight Reverie Tarot set is beautifully paired and would make a great gift to any poet, writer, or artist for them to keep close by on their work desk, especially since Watkins offers a guidebook of card meanings to go along with the deck. I wasn’t sent the guidebook to review and haven’t seen any of it, so you may want to reach out to the Kickstarter campaign for details.
With this deck, instead of examining the surface imagery of your situation, you examine its underlying numerological code. In fact, in addition to a classical tarot reading with the cards, also consider the numerological significance of the numbers splayed out in front of you.
Continue reading “The Reverie Tarot and Midnight Reverie Tarot”
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