Shamanism Meets Taoism: The Hidden Link in 3,000 Years of Magic and Mysticism
Let’s time travel and step into the mystical lineage of the Neolithic Wu 巫 shamans that laid the foundation for Taoist mysticism. This video lecture explores the birth of Taoist magic and the enduring legacy of Wu shamanism. We’ll decode Taoist occultism as it is practiced today to reveal the hidden history of how shamanism shaped the mystical practices of East Asia, preserving and refining early shamanistic techniques into a structured magical system.
Part video lecture, part written lecture notes for review, we’ll deep-dive into the history of Chinese shamanic practices to uncover the origins and birth of Taoist ritual magic.
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Holistic Tarot: A Companion Course
An online tarot course taught from my book Holistic Tarot. Enter the companion course at any level–beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Organize a tarot journal in a three-ring binder by downloading the study guides and handouts. Begin the course by watching the video lectures.
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Sightsee the Tarot
This is an ongoing video series that offers a tour of tarot spreads, reading techniques, books, and different decks, exploring the perspectives of notable figures and thought leaders in the field. From rational-based psychological approaches, journaling for introspection and self-reflection, tarot for integrative therapy to fortune-telling, ritual magic, spell-crafting, and mediumship, this video series will introduce you to the diversity of tarot reading approaches.
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Tarot Card Meanings with Benebell
This is an ongoing video lecture series that will cover card meanings and key symbology in the tarot for four systems: the Tarot de Marseilles, the Rider-Waite-Smith, the Thoth, and my deck, the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot. The objective of this course will be to facilitate familiarity of all four deck styles and for you to become proficient at reading any and all of the four systems. This primer is designed to help with memory retention of the cards in a more visually engaging way than studying the card meanings out of a book.
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Introduction to Chinese Occultism
Taoism is a nature-based religion, philosophy, and a 2,000 year old tradition of sorcery native to China since the Zhou Dynasty. In that same time, Buddhism enters China and a modality of it–esoteric Buddhism–is blended in with Taoist magic. Yet the roots of Taoist magic trace back even further than the dynasties of antiquity, back to Neolithic shamanism. This introductory six-video lecture series will delve in to Chinese occult practices that syncretize Buddhism and Taoism.
Video 1 is an introduction to the course and the distinction between exoteric and esoteric Taoist/Buddhist practices. Video 2 covers the history of Taoist and Buddhist mysticism in China. Video 3 gets into the cultural practice of Taoist sorcery while Video 4 gives you a crash course into Eastern metaphysics. Finally, Videos 5 and 6 will give a primer on practicing or integrating Taoist magic and esoteric Buddhism into your path.
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Practica of Esoteric Craft
This online course is essentially the Tinkering Bell video series plus follow-up written material for you to read, supplemental handouts, and most important of all, homework, or the practicum aspect of the course. After each video installment, there is a “Homework: Your Practicum” section for you to work through a guided working. “Practica of Esoteric Craft” is a consolidation of all Tinkering Bell episodes.
I’ve designed this series to be a collection of practical applications of craft for you to actually try out. Take notes during your process to document your own methodologies and also your impressions of the craft. When you’ve finalized something that works for you, take the time to add it to your personal grimoire. All written content and reference files are also provided so that you can write out a comprehensive page or page spread in your own grimoire after each practicum.
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Brief Introduction to Esoteric or Tantric Buddhism
The video lecture is under 20 minutes and the companion write-up sets forth three practica for you to try out that will introduce you to basic principles in Buddhist-based folk magic.
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Wu Xing: Five Movements 五行 · 오행
This is a crash course on the Wu Xing 五行, Five Dynamic Movements, though you’ll often see it called the Five Elements of East Asian metaphysics. These are five alchemical agents of change to describe how yin and yang qi create, destroy, and thus transform the physical world.
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Ba Gua: Eight Trigrams 八卦
This is a crash course on the Ba Gua 八卦, Eight Trigrams of East Asian metaphysics. The eight trigrams are the eight elements formed by the Wu Xing, five forces of change, which we express as Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, which is to say energy rises, expands, transforms, divides, disseminates, or it dissolves and disintegrates. These are the eight classical elements of Taoist metaphysics, explaining the fundamental material nature of all that you perceive.
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Spirit Keeper’s Tarot Video Course Series
This is a companion video course series for working with the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot deck and its guidebook, The Book of Maps. All videos are available freely to the public, though keyed specifically to those who are working with an actual copy of the SKT deck and own a copy of The Book of Maps. The course covers deck creator intentions, spirit interactions, kundalini awakening, accessing the Akashic Records, ritual magic, pathworking vs. astral travel, reading the SKT deck intuitively, and much more. There are also guided tarot reading sessions and a remote healing session that accompany this course. From this landing page, you’ll also be able to download for free the Little White Book and Medium White Book for either the First Edition or Vitruvian Edition.
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Learning the Opening of the Key
The Opening of the Key is a five-operation inter-disciplinary divinatory procedure rooted in the adept traditions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Today, given the publicly available records of the procedure, it can be used by tarot practitioners from all backgrounds. Learning the Opening of the Key (OOTK) isn’t about learning the OOTK. It is about deepening your understanding of divination. Through a series of eleven video lectures, a 50-page OOTK workbook, and a wealth of study guides, handouts, templates, and quick reference sheets, you will not only master the OOTK procedurally, but also learn basic astrology, numerology, and the Kabbalah.
Note: “Learning the Opening of the Key” was first offered during Tarot Summer School 2016 at the Tarot Readers Academy.
Tarot as a Tool for Craft
An indispensable course for any practitioner of craft seeking to develop a deeper and broader metaphysical connection with the tarot, this video plus workbook course will cover using tarot for self-empowerment and how to adjust form and mechanics of tarot reading when using it as a tool for divination, for amplifying psychic ability, for communion with spirit contacts, or for mediumship work. This is an intermediate course that presumes proficiency with tarot (also presuming the Rider-Waite-Smith system) and that you are a practitioner of or deeply interested in occult craft. Subject matter also runs into esoteric and mystical applications of the tarot, so the tone of the course might not be right for everyone. Also, just so you are aware: the tenor and value propositions of this course goes in a diametrically different direction from Holistic Tarot.
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Copyright Law for the Tarot Professional
Download either the PDF or DOCX file of this handbook on copyright law basics that would be helpful to anyone in the tarot industry. The handbook covers everything from what is a copyright, what constitutes infringement, defenses against infringement such as fair use, the DMCA, DMCA take-down notices, DMCA designated agents, how to deal with counterfeits and AI technology, boilerplate templates for cease-and-desist letters, and much more.
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Writing and Publishing Nonfiction
In this five-module multi-media course, learn about writing and publishing nonfiction books in the spirituality, New Age, occult, metaphysical, or mind-body-spirit categories. Through audio lectures, topical blog-style essays, handouts, and workbooks, this course is a wealth of resources and information that the aspiring author must have in his or her arsenal. Learn how to get started on your book writing aspiration, how to establish an author platform, how to finish your book, how to prepare a book proposal, all about both traditional publishing and self-publishing, and how to promote and sell your book. Finally, once you’re a bona fide published author, how do you optimize your publication credentials to earn money?
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Sole Proprietorship in the Sacred Arts
Download this PDF handbook and workbook hybrid on how to lay the foundation for a high-achieving and financially profitable business in the sacred arts.
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Reading the Akashic Records with the Tarot
This is not exactly a course. This is only access to the PowerPoint deck, presentation overview, and handouts that were provided at the 2019 Masters of the Tarot Conference keynote workshop on the subject. No online course equivalent is provided for that master class workshop, but for those who weren’t able to make it in person, you can still take a peek at the handouts.
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A Comparative Analysis of Fortune Telling and Divination in Tarot: A Chinese Perspective
Is there any value for a tarot reader to make a distinction between fortune telling and divination? How might Chinese perspectives compare to or inform Western perspectives? This workshop will examine the Chinese etymological origins of “fortune telling” and “divination,” apply medieval esoteric Taoist texts to tarot reading, juxtapose those texts with what Western occultists have said on the matter, and propose a theoretical framework through which to read tarot, as either a fortune teller or a diviner, though the two are not mutually exclusive.
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Triggering Creativity with Tarot: Using Tarot for Creative and Artistic Projects
Albert Einstein attributes his most ground-breaking insights not to logic or mathematics, but to intuition and inspiration or, as artists and writers often express it, to the muses. However, the one trait believed about the muses, about how intuition and inspiration hits us, is that it comes only when it comes, almost divinely, and the artist or writer cannot call upon it at will. Yet through tarot, we can learn how to harness intuitive-creativity at will. Tarot facilitates the transcendent experience needed for the muses to speak to us when we call upon them to speak. Learn how to use tarot to trigger your intuitive-creativity and apply the tarot fundamentals taught in my book, Holistic Tarot to remove creative blockages. This is the replay of a free 45-minute webinar hosted by North Atlantic Books back in 2015. The webinar also comes with a free 20-page handout.
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Self-Guided Intermediate Tarot Course: Integrating the Five Components of Circumstance
This is a self-guided intermediate tarot course on a cross-cultural interpretive framework for reading tarot. The Five Components of Circumstance is a cosmological theory based on the Chinese maxim that one’s fortune is based on five factors: 1) fate, 2) luck, 3) feng shui, 4) karma, and 5) education. That theory is a cornerstone in Chinese metaphysics and is used to diagnose an individual’s personal formula for success. By integrating Five Components analysis with tarot reading, the tarot practitioner will have a new set of vocabulary for interpreting a spread, any spread in fact, and can more precisely pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in a querent and what adjustments need to be made to expedite the querent’s goals. As a self-guided tutorial, you can go through the course at your own pace. Generally, the course should take about 25 minutes to complete.
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