WINTERSPELLS: Life on the Magical Path

Categories: Tarot

• My Sufi Initiation and Nigel Jackson’s Rumi Tarot

  My Sufi Initiation: Companions of the Musavir

  Song of the Reed by Rumi
  This poem is very hard to find in translation. My dance Director, Elizabeth Dickinson owned a vast library of rare books and I think it came from there. Click the button to stream it from the blog. It’s very short.
  [Audio clip: view full post [...]

• My Magical Timeline: North and East, Living Outside My Body

  The Call of the Otherworld

  During my early adolescence, the call of the Otherworld intensified to such a pitch that I had a very hard time being present. Vivid dreams assailed me, astral projections, and visits from the horned Spirit of the Woods upset my sleep. Perhaps my imagination was merely fueled by the constant reading [...]

• Interview with Tarot Historian, Paul Huson

  Paul Huson
  Paul Huson is one the most interesting writers on the occult. His approach to witchcraft has inspired many magical people since the publication of  his classic Mastering Witchcraft in 1970.  He is a proponent of ‘Traditional Witchcraft’ , rather than Wicca. The most apparent difference between these two approaches is that, while Wicca is [...]

• What Is Tarot and Where Does it Come From?

  The Devil’s Picture Book by Paul Huson

  Open the book. Read the first page.
  The classic 1972 book on the history of the Tarot Cards by Paul Huson called The Devil’s Picture Book, opens with one of the most evocative first pages about the “wicked pack of cards” ever written. So I quote the whole thing:
  “Whether you [...]

• Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Card Dealer

  by Mary Greer

  Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s first published poem, “The Card-Dealer,” was based on a painting by Theodore von Holst (1810-1844) called “The Wish” or “The Fortune-Teller” (1840). The poem, which epitomized Rossetti’s fascination with the theme of the femme fatale, was inspired by the painting that he described as being of [...]

• Mysteries of the Tarot: The Ship of Fools

  The Ship of Fools: Heironymous Bosch

  Ship of Fools, by Heironymous Bosch
  As a great fan of Heironymous Bosch, I could not help posting a whole boatload of Fools! Note the little head in the tree!
  I found an interesting source for the idea of the painting in a book called Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between [...]

• Mysteries of the Tarot: The Fool

  The Fool

  “…but we will speak only of those things which are difficult, and not to be grasped by the senses, but, indeed, which are almost contrary to the evidence of the senses.”
  Paracelsus, Archidoxi Magica

  Using my own handpainted Holy Grail Tarot, I will use this blog to teach the definitions of the cards and [...]