Shortly before my hard drive crashed this summer, and I lost all the data on it, I had posted the first part of a projected series on Tarot and Esoteric Initiation.  Response to that post suggested that I would need to expand on the concept and explain the difference between using Tarot cards for divination and using the symbols of the Tarot for esoteric initiation and magick.  The hard drive crash pushed the whole thing from my mind for a while, and now….

I hesitate to say that every tool that can be used for divination can also be used for magick.  Runes definitely can be, and so can Tarot.  There is some evidence that their use in divination came after their use in magickal work.  Words referring to divinatory methods frequently end with “-mancy,” such as cartomancy (card reading), chiromancy (palmistry), and pyromancy (scrying with fire).  At wordinfo.info, I found sixteen pages of definitions for -mancies.  I would guess that many of these would lend themselves to magickal conjuring or manifestation, some better than others, but runes and tarot are the ones I know best, so I will stick with them for now.

In divination we look for knowledge about the unknown.  The “random” or synchronistic turn of a rune, or fall of a card is read, and through intuition is interpreted, to gain information about what is or what will be.  For most people, this is the use generally associated with the Tarot.  In a magickal operation, the process is, in a sense, reversed.  One deliberately chooses a rune or a card that represents what one desires, and by focusing the consciousness on that symbol, manifests the desire.

The initiate’s journey through the 22 major trumps of Tarot, which I started in June with The Fool, is a magickal use of Tarot distinct from the divinatory use.  The objective is a sort of alchemical transformation of oneself into an esoteric adept by following the steps outlined in the ancient symbols of the cards.  Now, again, I am issuing this invitation to anyone who wishes to take that journey with us here.

I’ll be back soon, with more on The Fool, the starting point for the initiation.

PayPal

donations
appreciated

  Dingydarla

You asked about your relationship with your son, Lucas.

Problems there relate to money issues as well as to physical and mental health issues.  Solving them may cost money, and will require you to invest your time, attention, and effort.  Communication has to be mutual, including everyone who is involved.  You need to pay attention to what is being said and what is being expressed in ways other than words.  You also need to be sure that you are expressing yourself fully and accurately.  Don’t tiptoe around issues.  Exert yourself, reach out, go the extra mile.  Inspiration will hit and you will tap into just what you need to defuse the problems.

PayPal

XxzorroxX

First thing to pop into my head was, “There’s no hurry.”

You are on the threshold of a big move, to independence and creative fulfillment.  Rushing it could leave you wanting, vulnerable and lacking in a financial or material sense.  Impatience right now, if acted upon, could hurt people who are most important to you, and would not be in your personal best interest.

That you will make the transition, and move into your own, is a given, inevitable.  Even if it seems you’re being forced to choose between two relationships, two paths, you don’t necessarily have to give up one to have the other.  At the very least, you can withdraw from one gradually and ease into the new situation.  That would be prudent.

Two themes predominate in this reading:  maturity and creativity.  Maturity is happening, following its natural course, and that is one of the forces impelling you out of your old familiar patterns and places.  Creative expression, on the other hand, is not inevitable, but it is important — essential to your personal fulfillment and worldly success. 

To succeed creatively, you will be required to take risks, and to throw yourself into your work.  It will not be enough to just project the image you want.  You will need to live your ideals and reveal your real self.  If that’s ever scary, just have the courage to go ahead and do it anyway.  You’ll be amazed at how powerful such action is.

PayPal

Don’t worry.  Be happy.  Don’t worry.  Be happy.  Don’t worry.  Be happy.  Love.  Love.  Love.

(That probably wouldn’t take the entire 30 seconds, so I’d repeat it until I ran out of time.)

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

Apocatastasis

In that lifetime, you were born in the slums of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in 1948.  You had a fairly normal life for a black child in that time and place:  your father was absent, your mother was a non-functional junkie, and you were raised by your grandmother.

Some of the things about you that were not so normal were your high intelligence and the fact that your grandmother was not particularly religious.  You picked up unaccented “mid-Atlantic” English from TV, and could turn the ghetto talk on or off at will. 

In your late teens, you were arrested for drugs, and given the option of going to jail or joining the army.  You joined the army and went to Vietnam.  You enjoyed the ready availability there of high quality drugs, and you found the violence exhilarating rather than threatening.

You were unenthusiastic about the war, and mostly only fought the enemy in self-defense.  You felt that you had less of a quarrel with the other side than with some of your own officers.  You and a few other black soldiers conspired to frag a white lieutenant who had ordered the destruction of a village for no reason other than his own sadism.

You died by “friendly fire,” blown apart by a carelessly thrown grenade.

Nobody you knew in that life is involved in your current life.  That lack of karmic ties could result in feelings of alienation or persistent loneliness.

Experiences from that life could lead, in this life, to a fascination with war, or to anti-war or anti-government feelings, and/or to strong opinions on racial issues, poverty, and the like.

Literally, being independent means not relying on anyone else for anything.  To me, real independence is practically out of reach.  Interdependence is about the most I can manage.  Even if the social, economic, commercial and personal networks I now depend on were to collapse and I had to forage for my food, for a while (perhaps for the rest of my life) in that post-apocalyptic world, I would be snaring hares with steel guitar strings manufactured before the apocalypse. 

That is an extreme view.  Now I’ll get a bit more real.  I am reasonably independent now in matters of opinions and decision-making.  I make up my own mind.  Within the limits of the law and limitations imposed by my family obligations and my personal health and physical capabilities, I am autonomous, self-determined, and free to choose what I do.

I think I may need somewhat more of that kind of independence than most people do.  I have been led to that conclusion by observing the way most people live, in cities where the culture closes in on them and robs them of their autonomy.  I knew long ago that I couldn’t live happily that way, and gave up some of the “advantages” of civilized life, such as a job and little things like running water and indoor plumbing, to live on the edge of Alaskan wilderness.  In that sense, being independent means everything, life itself, to me.

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

kongsprout

You don’t require much to be happy.  Being out of school is a happy occasion, more because it frees you from a teacher’s control and influence than for any reason to do with education itself. 

Your material needs are met by someone who cares about you and gives affection, too.  It will be some time before you are prepared to be self-supporting and independent.

Maturity and your body’s drives are a source of emotional disharmony, but not overwhelmingly so.  Pursuing your life’s ambition is more important to you now than anything.  That is the drive that matters most to you.

For creative fulfillment and personal inner development, you need to keep some things in mind.  Your physical senses and intellectual reasoning provide only a limited view of reality.  Intuition is to be acknowledged, valued and developed.  Also, to fulfill your creative potential, you must work from your authentic self.  Masks, pretenses, borrowed ideas, all take you to creative dead ends.  Your best work will have the real you in it.
   

PayPal

Snooze180

Healthy, wealthy and wise, you are, more than you realize, certainly more than shows on the surface.  It is as if all that has gone underground, waiting to be manifest.  Learning didn’t stop when you got out of school.  So, you put out more effort than you get immediate returns, but that could turn around the other way at any time, especially if you speak up and ask for more.  As soon as you figure out what it is you need, make your needs known.  Not speaking up works against you.  A lot of your limitations now, in the material/financial/physical sense, are self-imposed.  Think things through, do research if necessary, get facts, communicate, and then watch what develops.

You have an ideal intimate relationship.  I mean you have a vision of the ideal partnership, one of equality, shared goals, shared responsibilities, shared growth.  You just haven’t quite got the knack yet of manifesting it, and your spiritual seeking or the spiritual or religious concepts you currently are questioning get in the way of manifesting the relationship you want.  That kind of manifestation requires decisiveness, making choices, committing yourself to one course or another.  The question isn’t how bad you want it, but which one you want.

You have taken an intellectual approach to spirituality.  You have studied it, given it a lot of thought.  You understand it as fully and can discuss it as well as anyone can on the intellectual level.  Inner peace and emotional harmony, clarity of mind, understanding, are not conducive to further progress and spiritual experience.  The thing that will impel your spiritual progress is emotional turmoil, a good shaking up in the heart department. 

There is a feedback situation between your spirit and emotions, one that can’t help but bring you interesting developments.  The spiritual situation results in unhappy feelings and the unhappiness spurs spiritual growth.  Your spirit, knowing what it needs, will keep your emotions in turmoil for a while, until you make your choice and turn it around.   My telling you this won’t make it happen.  You need to experience some more of that cycle before you really get it.

PayPal

poescrow

It looks like the end, but that’s an illusion.  You’re ready to change your mind… and/or the way you express yourself.  Inspiration is running high, and getting it into form isn’t working for you.  You know the routine from long familiarity, and yet you are making novice mistakes, losing the whole picture, getting hung up on details.  The key is to approach it as a novice, or to take up a new form, a different discipline, one where you are a novice.  In truth, nothing you ever do will begin from square one again, because you already know how to channel the creative flow.  You’re well supplied with transferable skills.

That’s the material level, where you live and work.  On the emotional/relationship level, you know what’s happening but you don’t want to acknowledge it.  It’s a happy crisis, full of joy and tears.  It’s not yet as intense as it will be.  You are dragging your feet, unwilling to break ties, denying what you see and feel.  Why not get on with it? 

Spiritually, it is all tied together.  You are hung up in your thoughts, on the threshold of a new direction.  You know you are ready for a change, and thinking about it all in the old familiar patterns you were taught hasn’t helped at all.  “Happy crisis,” the way blocks and downturns and uncertainties are impelling you to make necessary changes, which will enhance your health and well-being at all levels, is the theme of the time for you.

Navigating through this requires you to stop denying, acknowledge what you know, and work from there.  You can make it easier by viewing it as an adventure and having fun with it. 

PayPal

This is a repost of a piece I wrote in response to readers’ questions on SuSu, March 31, 2003.  Several readers asked about the procedure and significance of smudging.

It is a Native American ritual that has made its way into New Age and NeoPagan practice.   Indians considered (and some still do consider) smoke to be a way to send messages to the Great Spirit.  Scented smoke was (still is in some places) considered to have an influence on lesser spirits.  “Good” scents, the pleasant ones such as sweet grass, are said to attract beneficent spirits.  Such rationales are not unique to the Americas.  The use, in Europe, Africa and Asia, of incense in religious ritual predates Christianity.

One would think (at least this one here would so think) that if good smells bring good spirits, bad smells would bring bad spirits.  That’s not the way it is believed to be in those traditions.  The pungent smells of sage and cedar are believed to REPEL evil spirits.  I’ll take this as evidence that I’m not an evil spirit, because I love the scents of smudge, which usually mingle both the pungent and the sweet.  For me now, the scents evoke memories of medicine wheel gatherings, sweat lodge ceremonies, meditation groups, and the many sacred and communal events I’ve attended where smudge has been used.

As I wrote yesterday, I don’t do ritual, usually.   I prefer my communion with spirit to be spontaneous, conscious, and sincere.  For me, ritual does not provide that.  I would not, for example, recite a canned prayer.  My contact with Spirit comes from my heart, mind and soul, not from memory.  And yet, there are some rituals I perform when I want to set a particular mood for my work.

I was taught techniques for “grounding and centering”, for adjusting my mental focus, for relaxation… even the painswitch can loosely be termed a ritual because it is a learned technique repeated by rote.  I use those techniques, things which other people might consider a sacred ritual or a magickal rite, in the same way that I follow recipes in cooking or the procedures in computer troubleshooting, etc.

This morning, Doug was reading yesterday’s blog and the comments.  He asked what smudging does, how it’s supposed to work.  I told him the folklore, and then said, “It’s superstitious rigamarole.”  That’s how I see it.  Then Greyfox spoke up and said it’s the power of the placebo.  I’ll buy that, too.

However, when something happens such as having that “Authority of Ritual” card flip face-up while I’m shuffling a brand new deck, I pay attention.  Most of my professional colleagues have elaborate rituals they follow each time they remove the silk wrap from their Tarot cards.   My various decks are kept in everything from leather pouches to the cardboard boxes they came in from the factory.

Some readers never allow others to touch their cards, and keep them locked away in a hidden place.  I let my clients in my booths at fairs shuffle the cards.  Beliefs differ, traditions conflict, and my way of dealing with the conflict long ago was to eliminate the rituals and use common sense in the care of my cards.

But I also work with crystals, and I do psychometry.  I have learned by experience that “vibes” or psychic impressions can pass from person to person through the medium of objects.  Crystalline or metal objects pick up and store these impressions better than organic matter, but few Tarot readers would use a new deck of cards without some sort of purifying ritual.  So, I smudged my new deck.  Might not help, but it can’t hurt, right?

Enjoying the evocative scent, I went on and had some fun with it.  I tuned into Spirit and made the ritual REAL for me.  Any spiritual power in ritual is in the INTENT, the way we focus our attention.  After smudging myself and my cards, I stood and waited for the next impulse.  My dog Koji came over, so I smudged him.  I heard a snore from Doug, and walked over and did a purification ritual for my beloved son.  It seemed only fitting to turn and waft the scented smoke at the war news on TV.  Then I felt an impulse to step outside and do the usual winds-earth-and-sky gestures.

I’ve watched those movements performed by Native elders in buckskin, beads and feathers, and by various Pagan or New Age practitioners, skyclad or in flowing robes.  I’ve grown and gathered the herbs and tied bundles of them into sticks for smudging.   To me, none of that is any more sacred than the rest.  The sacred herbs grow from the sacred earth and we light them with sacred fire.  We draw in the sacred scents with our sacred breath.  All reality is sacred, to me.