Revolution is in the Air: The Significance of Pluto’s Ingress into Aquarius on March 23, 2023

Tomorrow morning at 7:13 Central Daylight Time (US), Pluto, the most remote planet in our solar system that archetypally expresses Death and Rebirth energies, the Hidden, and Underworld sojourns, enters the Fixed Air Sign of Aquarius. While there will be initial back-and-forth Retrograde periods that will have Pluto backtracking into Capricorn for several months this year, He (and I always refer to the Planetary Intelligences by the Gods They are named after) will stay put in Aquarius starting in January 2024 for a transit that will last until March 8, 2043.

My Year-Wheel Tarot Reading for 2022

Happy New Year! Here we are, trucking into year three of the global pandemic experience, but as Ifá revealed to me years ago, don’t let calamities in the outer world interfere with your Sacred Work of receiving your Ori- and Orisha-given blessings. Ashé! And so I abide by my annual tradition of detailed Tarot divination via my Zodiacal 12 Houses/Wheel of the Year spread. Come join me and peer betwixt those goodly pillars of Boaz and Jachim for some wise insights…

Happy Belated World Tarot Day!

Preparations for today’s Super Full Moon Eclipse in Sagittarius got in the way of my celebrating this yesterday, but happy belated World Tarot Day and may all your divinatory readings bring you joyous journeys of self-discovery! I decided, after emerging from my overnight ritual/puja/vigil whose focus was spiritual protection during the eclipse, to do a Tarot reading: 6 cards to detail what the next 6 months have in store for me, post-eclipse. Here are my results.

My Year-Wheel Tarot Reading for 2021

My time-honored tradition of performing divination to foresee the year ahead with my calendrical/zodiacal houses/clock face spread continues unabated. However, due to being very busy working New Year’s Eve and Day and needing yesterday to rest and decompress, I had to wait until today to actually do my Tarot spread. Come join me on this journey of (self-)discovery, won’t you?

My Year-Wheel Tarot Reading for 2020

Happy New Year and may this new decade bring vibrant health, joy, prosperity, and love to us all! Per my time-honored tradition, before commencing my revels last night I sat in silent contemplation, reviewing my notes on the yearly forecast Tarot reading I did for 2019 to gauge my accuracy and then doing my reading for myself for this year.

John Bauer Tarot: Initial Thoughts

I received my copy of the John Bauer Tarot (published by Lo Scarabeo, Torino, Italy) in the mail last night and I’m opening the deck now at my office (it’s a slow morning in my Big Pharma world, LOL). John Bauer (1882-1918) was a Swedish painter and illustrator; a great deal of his work was informed by his love of his culture’s folklore, which obviously informs the artwork of this deck. (His work to me is similar to the English artist Arthur Rackham; they were contemporaries.)

Review: The Traditional Witch’s Deck by Kelden and Maggie Elram (2019; Self-Published)

The first workshop I attended at Paganicon 2019, held last month in Plymouth, Minnesota, was a workshop on Traditional Witchcraft facilitated by a young Witch named Kelden, so that I was how I came to meet him and how I came to buy on the spot two copies (one for me and one for my BFF) of the oracle deck that he and his friend and deck co-producer, fellow Trad Craft Witch and artist and illustrator, Maggie Elram, just self-published: The Traditional Witch’s Deck (2019). I’m not surprised that an oracle deck has emerged that is exclusively dedicated to Traditional Witchcraft, given how popular the magico-religious practice has become within the landscape of today’s Paganism (chiefly as an alternative to Wicca); in the charming little paperback published book that accompanies the deck, Kelden explains that his aim was to “create an oracle steeped in history and folklore” (p.58). He and Ms. Elram have done a wonderful job!

Getting Started in an ATR: Letter Written to a Friend

I thought I would share verbatim my email reply to a friend I’ve only ever known on Facebook, one who knows I am an adherent of the African Traditional Religion (ATR) of Ifá. She reached out to me via email last night, asking my advice on how she can get started as she’s read a lot of books and has an affinity for several of the Orisha and Lwa but she wants to go about things the right way. This is how I replied to her questions this morning; her name, the state where she lives, and the name of a mutual acquaintance she and I share have been removed for privacy purposes. I’m sharing this correspondence here as this is something I get asked quite often and I would give the same advice to anybody.

My Year-Wheel Tarot Reading for 2019

Happy New Year, everyone! Last night I performed my time-honored divination ritual, casting my 13-card Year-Wheel/12 Houses of the Zodiac Tarot spread to see what 2019 has in store for me month-by-month as well as filtered through the aspects of life experience denoted in the zodiacal 12 Houses of Western astrology. I carved some space and about an hour to myself amidst the revels at a friend’s house, and I think he and his two adorable Havanese dogs (sisters from the same litter) proved to be good luck charms for my reading, as I haven’t drawn such an awesome spread in a long time!

My Year-Wheel Tarot Spread for 2018

Happy New Year, gentle readers! My time-honored tradition of casting this 13-card Tarot spread for myself as a forecast for the year ahead has continued unabated since 1989, I just realized. I was in high school at the time and used the Marseilles deck that was gifted to me by my now-late uncle Milan; it was my very first deck. If you’re familiar with that deck, you know how challenging it can be to study the meanings of Minor Arcana cards that aren’t Court cards; with little pictorial symbolism to go on, I went straight for memorizing the meanings of the numbers, wincing every time I would come to draw a Five card, irrespective of the Elemental suit, and rejoicing at the Aces, Sixes, and Eights.