This Tarot deck, published in Australia in 2014 by Rockpool, certainly isn’t new, but it’s new to me and I’ll share my review of it. This is the Bohemian Animal Tarot, a lovely boxed deck with generously sized accompanying paperback book. Text by Scott Alexander King and illustrated by Sharon McLeod.
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A happy and prosperous Lunar New Year 4722 to all, and many blessings and good fortune to those lucky enough to be welcoming the return of their “origin of life year” in the sign of the Dragon! There’s always a baby boom every 12 years in China as the majority of couples hoping to conceive a child try to have it born in the Year of the Dragon (2024, 2012, 2000, 1988, 1976, 1964, 1952, 1940), the most auspicious of all the signs.
Happy New Year, folks! This is such a potent time for performing acts of divination, for yourself or for others. My annual tradition of doing a Year-Wheel Tarot spread to see what the New Year has in store for me month by month is alive and well.
In my reading, if you’ve never read one of these forecasts before, I select a Significator card first to determine the overall theme for the year. Then I lay out in a circle, going counterclockwise and starting at the astrological Ascendant/Descendant horizon (or the “9:00” position of a clock face), 12 cards. They correspond with the months of the year and with the 12 Houses in a person’s natal chart, which are as follows: House 1 is The Self; House 2 is Earned Income/Resources; House 3 is Communications and Travel; House 4 is Home and Family; House 5 is Hobbies, Romance, and Children; House 6 is Work, Service, and Health; House 7 is Marriage and Partnerships But Also Open Enemies(!); House 8 is Sex, Death, and Other Peoples’ Money/Passive Income; House 9 is Expanded Horizons, Literal and Metaphorical; House 10 is Career and Reputation; House 11 is Friends and Group Associations; House 12 is The Occult, Undoing, and Hidden Enemies.
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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.
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…
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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.
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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?
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.
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.)
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!
amor et mortem 