Free Astrology/Tarot E-book

It's time for a publicity stunt!

From now until the end of 2011, I will make the e-book version of my new book, Better Living with Astrology and Tarot, available absolutely free to anyone who requests it. To request it, send an email to all DOT are DOT wonders AT gmail DOT com.

Better Living with Astrology and Tarot

My new book, Better Living with Astrology and Tarot, is now available at lulu.com. The book explains astrology and Tarot starting with basic concepts, and shows you how to use both for planning personal development.

What is Divination?

For the purposes of this article, we will assume that the universe was not the result of a random incident, but was instead designed. We will also assume that the design is holographic; that is, information about each item and event also exists at other times and places. We will assume further that events in the universe are not all the result of random chance, that at least some of them were planned by the designer to provide learning opportunities.

Divination, then, is the art of using tools that work with the interconnected nature of the universe to get information about events and any lessons those events may have been intended to teach. Two popular examples of divination tools are astrology and Tarot cards.

Divination is useful because by getting information about future events, we can decide to learn the lessons those events are intended to teach up front, therefore mitigating the effects of those events, or in some cases, rendering the events unnecessary.

As an example, let's say that John Doe goes to see an astrologer. The astrologer notices that the planets Saturn and Pluto will soon be in a stressful alignment to where the planet Venus was at John's birth. In astrology, the planet Saturn signifies restriction, selectivity and focus, and sometimes fear, while Pluto signifies transformation, and Venus signifies how we value things and people. The astrologer tells John that he should examine his attitudes about what he owns and the people in his life. He tells John this because the alignment mentioned above is known to cause financial stress and changes in relationships.

Now John had been in the habit of making unnecessary purchases using credit cards.  John has a choice at this point: he can take the astrologer's advice or ignore it. If he takes the astrologer's advice, he would probably think things over and conclude that it's more important to have nice people in his life than nice things. He could then decide to put away his credit cards and spend more time cultivating friendships. If he ignores the advice, he will end up in bankruptcy court around the time the alignment happens, and eventually reach the same conclusion, but he will have learned the hard way.

What's important to note about this example is that the astrologer didn't simply tell John what was going to happen. He told John something better: what to do about it. Most importantly, he gave John the opportunity to learn a needed lesson the easy way instead of the hard way. This is how astrology and other divination tools are meant to be used.

Update on Proposed Q&A Site

I renamed the Astrology Q&A proposal to Divination, and included Tarot and Numerology. There's a lot of synergy between the three, and all three will be used in the book I'm working on. If you're interested in having a nice place on-line to discuss any of these topics, I encourage you to visit the site and sign up.

EDIT: The stackexchange site didn't happen, but it turns out that there's a new site devoted to astrology questions and answers: astroknowlogy.com.

Work in Progress: Better Living through Mythology

Last Sunday, I was at a local Tarot group meeting. We were discussing correspondences between the Zodiac signs and the Court cards. Someone at the meeting asked for recommendations for a book covering the correspondences in detail, and none of us could think of any, so I decided to write my own. The correspondences will be the core of the book, but the book as a whole will be about the use of astrology and tarot to plan your personal development and spiritual path. At some point in the future, I'll have a draft on line. I'll keep you posted.

Divination and the F-word

I'm going to start this article with the f-word, just to prove a point. Here goes: fortune-telling. There, I said it. Those of you who do Tarot and/or astrology readings are most likely chuckling silently (or laughing out loud) right now, while the rest of you are wondering if you missed a joke. Well, you did. The joke is that tarot and astrology would be nothing more than slightly more effective psychoanalysis if they had nothing to do with fate and the future, but we as readers do everything we can to hide from that fact.

Let's start with an admission. All of us who do readings, if we are any good, at least at times know what is going to happen. We can argue about whether it's fated by the planets or our intuition is looking at a possible future, and we can hide behind archetypes and psychological complexes, but the basic fact that foreknowledge does occur is still there. And it's not going away.

Now that we've acknowledged the elephant in the living room, I'm going to tell you that it's not really an elephant. Here's what an old-school philosopher (Ptolemy) had to say on the subject:

For, first of all, it is necessary to consider that even for events that will necessarily result, the unexpected is apt to cause delirious confusion and mad joy, while foreknowing habituates and trains the soul to attend to distant events as though they were present, and prepares it to accept each of the arriving events with peace and tranquility.

This is true as far as it goes, but it leads to something we all as readers should consider: our clients worry about the future. That's why they come to us. If we can tell them what's in (or could be in) their future, they can stop worrying about it, and instead think about something more useful and important: what to do about it.

My Online Readings: an Update

I've been doing free readings online at The Free Tarot Network for a little over a month. The readings have gone well, and I've gotten some positive feedback. It still amazes me (though I know it shouldn't) that I can do a reading for someone thousands of miles away and have a relevant card come up.

I've also noticed that the reading requests tend to cluster around themes that are also active in my life. A couple of books that I've read said that would happen, so maybe that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it is what it is. In any case, I'm learning as much from the readings as the people I'm doing the readings for.

The most important thing I've learned so far is that sometimes having the right answer isn't as important as asking the right question.

Larry's Notes - Meditations on the Tarot: The Chariot

In this installment of my notes on Meditations on the Tarot, I will be talking about the Chariot. According to the book, this card represents the stage after overcoming the temptations against the three virtues, poverty, obedience and chastity. This is an achievement, but it presents the next temptation: getting an inflated ego and thinking you've reached the top of the mountain when you're actually just at a plateau. The antidote given for this temptation is the old Latin saying: ora et labora or "pray and work." This is effective because of the implicit recognition that there is something higher, and because of the effort expended to continue the journey.

Now this isn't to say that if you have reached that point, that you should take time out to feel the triumph and give yourself some credit for what you've done. At this point, you're living what you've learned and it's become a part of you. That's a good thing. But let's bring in a traditional Tarot interpretation of the Chariot, which is hard control. Control with a lot of effort of will on your part. What comes further down the line is soft control, without even having to think about it (Strength). And if we continue to work and pray, we'll get there.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The Lover

This installment of articles on Meditations on the Tarot is about The Lover(s). First, I'd like to talk about the two most common versions of the picture on the card. The oldest is on the Marseilles decks, and depicts a young man standing between an older woman on the left, and a younger woman on the right. There's a Cupid overhead, pointing an arrow at the young man. The newer version is on the Rider-Waite-based decks, and shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, with an angel watching over them, and the infamous serpent wrapped harmlessly around a fruit tree. The first represents a choice; the second, the results of one of the options (see the Devil for the other).

The choice is one we all must make. The first option is materialism: the belief that the physical world as we know it is all (or the most important thing) there is. The result of this option is the Devil card (the Waite version): Adam and Eve chained to a stone block with the Devil holding them captive. But if you have a copy of the card handy, note that the chains around their necks aren't really strong enough to hold them; Adam and Eve stay there partially because they want to. The point is that this option isn't permanent; we'll all eventually wake up and take the chains off. By the way, some of the links in the chains include materialism (of course), a belief in scarcity, and self-righteousness.

The second option is what I like to call recovery from materialism. When we take the chains off, we start to see the physical world differently and explore what's beyond and inside of it, and what's beyond and inside of ourselves. We look into quantum physics and find out that matter isn't really as solid as it seems, and that empty space isn't really empty. We experience coincidences and synchronicities that show us an underlying unity that we're all a part of. We realize that we are more and can do more than we ever imagined. And this new journey becomes the most important thing in our lives.

That leads me to what the book has to say about the Lovers card. The book also says the card is about choice, but a choice between vice and virtue, the virtue in this case being chastity. Since this series is shaping up to be a postmodern restatement of the principles given in the book, I will reinterpret chastity in this context as meaning purity of mind and devotion to the quest. It doesn't mean necessarily that we give up drinking and smoking and join a monastery. It just means that our lives are devoted to recovery.

This choice is not a one-time thing, and the book mentions temptation, specifically the temptations of Christ and the Garden of Eden story. We also have our temptations: the temptation to think we already know it all; the temptation to get sidetracked by day-to-day issues and lose our connection to the Infinite Light; and the temptation to satisfy the goals of what we think is our personality at the expense of growing into our real selves.

Well, that's it for now. Until next time, just remember that just like Adam and Eve on the Rider-Waite Devil card, we can always take the chains off our necks.

Book Review: Learning Tarot Reversals

If you've read Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners and worked through the exercises and remember at least one keyword for each card, you'll be able to do effective readings. To take your readings to the next level, you can add depth by knowing how to handle reversed cards. This is where Learning Tarot Reversals by Joan Bunning comes in. This book is not for beginners. There's nothing about spreads or even how the cards work, so it's not for you unless you're already comfortable doing readings, at least for yourself.

Unlike some Tarot systems which take reversals to mean the opposite of what the card would mean upright, Ms. Bunning's system keeps the upright meaning, but takes reversals to mean that the energy represented by the card is not fully present. What's unique about her book is the concept of energy phases. The energy of each card starts low, increases, then decreases again, roughly in the form of a sine wave. Reversed cards represent the beginning and ending of the wave. They can also mean that the energy isn't perceived at all (denial).

Every Tarot reader has a different way of using (or ignoring) reversals. Ms. Bunning's system has given me good results, and it should also work for you.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The Pope

In this installment of my notes about Meditations on the Tarot, I'll be talking about the Pope, more commonly known as the Hierophant. The key concept given by the book for this card is benediction, or blessing, which takes place in response to prayer on our part. Both are necessary because of what I wrote in the last posting about free will. Just to recap, the theory given in the book is that God influences the world in response to our willingness for him to do so, because only in that way can free will be preserved.

There are a couple of prerequisites, according to the book, to aligning our will with the Divine will so that Divine Magic can take place. The first is closing what the book calls the "five wounds," which correspond to the five wounds suffered by Our Lord on the cross. These five wounds are wounds in our soul, the desires "for personal greatness, to take, to keep, to advance, and to hold on at the expense of others." The book talks about acquiring five wounds corresponding to giving up those desires. My contention is that the desires themselves are wounds and need to be closed. But that's just a difference in terminology as I agree with the basic concept.

So how do we close the five wounds? The answer given in the book is "the practice of the three traditional vows, namely obedience, poverty and chastity." (Didn't expect to see that in a book about Tarot, did you?) Obedience in this context means what you think it would. Poverty and chastity require more explanation. Poverty is explained in the book as "the practice of inner emptiness." I prefer to think of it as "emptying your cup" as in the story of the man who went to see a sage, but was so full of his own opinions that he didn't have room for the knowledge he was seeking. Chastity is explained as living "without covetousness and without indifference." It sounds like a tall order, but it's really about purity of will; about the quest you're on being more important than anything else.

The best thing about the three vows is that you don't need to join a monastery to practice them. You can (and should) lead what seems to others to be a normal life. Stay tuned for the next installment about the Lover (not what you think).

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The Emperor

Today I'll be covering the Emperor card and some of what Meditations has to say about it. The Emperor is naturally associated with authority, and that's the first thing the book talks about. The key concept given in the book is that authority is based on the consent of those governed. The Emperor never actually forces anyone to do anything himself, but the people who work for him do. This implies that free will is essential to authority, that without free will, there can only be power, of the type that you might have over your car. You press the gas pedal and it has to go faster if it can. In fact, according to the book, free will is so important that God sent his Son down here and put Him at our disposal, to do with him as we will, up to and including suffering physical death at our hands.

Now we as recovering materialists don't have the concept as God as being "the Old Man in the Sky," or in other words a more powerful version of ourselves as we know ourselves. Those who do have this concepts are really materialists in denial. So we don't necessarily need the Crucifixion story to be literal truth. The important thing is that we are in general left to our own devices here, and divine intervention isn't given to us unless we ask for it, or at least be open to receiving it. Being open to divine intervention is just another way of saying that our will is aligned to the divine will, which as you may remember from my last post is the essence of divine magic.

That brings me to the fourth step in the sequence: after mysticism (experience of essential unity), gnosis (setting up a model of that unity with ourselves) and divine magic (aligning our will with that of unity) comes what the book calls "Hermetic philosophy," or integrating the experience of the first three steps within ourselves. The book says that this kind of integration also can and should be done with the Gospels, by reading them as if you're living inside of them as an observer.

I'll go even farther than that and say that the technique can also be used with profit on certain fantasy novels. These novels have either explicit or implied references to mythology, qabalah and alchemy. The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber) would be a good place to start, as would On a Pale Horse (Incarnations of Immortality, Bk. 1). Try American Gods: A Novel if you'd like to get in touch with your shadow side. The point is that at some point we have to start living what we've learned, and these books provide examples (albeit fictional) of how to do that.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The Empress

If you've been following along with this series, you will remember that we stepped out of conventional belief systems, saw the Big Picture, and got a copy for ourselves. So what's the next step, according to Meditations on the Tarot? Doing something with what we've experienced so far by what the book calls "divine magic", more commonly referred to as "miracles."

Now A Course in Miracles says that miracles are natural, and that if we don't experience them on a regular basis, something is wrong. The Course has a slightly more expansive definition of miracle than the rest of us; a sudden change in how a situation is seen is just as much of a miracle as curing disease. So what's wrong if you don't see any miracles? As Maryanne Williamson puts it in Everyday Grace, "thoughts of judgement block the light." This is really saying the same thing as Meditations, which says that divine magic requires the union of divine will and human will. More on that later.

Meditations distinguishes divine magic, which has its source in the Divine, from personal magic, which uses the magician's own power, or sorcery, which uses elemental or unconscious sources. Naturally divine magic is superior. Just so it's clear exactly what is meant by divine magic, the book gives an example (Acts 9:32-34):

Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints that lived at Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years and was paralyzed. And Peter said to him: Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed. And immediately he rose.

The book goes on to say that the power behind the cure came from the Divine Will, but was enabled to act through the will of Peter. In other words, God works through us to the extent that we let Him. More on this next time.

So what does this mean for us? The New Testament is also meant in my opinion to serve as an example. Meditations puts divine magic forth as just another part of the program. We're supposed to be doing this too, at least on the small scale of enabling changes in how situations are perceived. But that's only the beginning.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The High Priestess

Next in the series of Tarot meditations is the High Priestess. The High Priestess is number two in the series, and a key concept associated with the number two in the book is reflection. In the discussion of the Magician, the essential unity of all things was given as a key concept, and it was implied that the experience was only the first step. The next step is to hold a mirror up to the first. The mirror is you, and the result is called gnosis in the book. This also allows for the experience of love, which inherently requires two parties.

Christ-consciousness allows for this experience of love, which is why the book says it is superior to the Nirvana experience. The book quotes Jesus as saying "All those who came before me are as robbers and thieves," and this is because, according to the book, the prior esoteric philosophies all aimed at the experience of unity, which did not allow for love because there was only the one thing. And that's the problem with non-duality.

On the other hand, if we retain our individuality, we will be able to make this experience part of our daily lives, which allows us to progress further along the path. Christ-consciousness is what I think is meant when Jesus said: "If a man believes in me, then the things that I have done, he will also do, and greater things than these will he do." I think it's better translated as: "If a man believes with me," meaning that he shares the same level of consciousness, but that's for the next installment in the series.

Book Review: Paths of Wisdom

The Mystical Qabalah is the canonical textbook for anyone on the Hermetic Path. Unfortunately, the book isn't very accessible to newbies. To be honest, Paths of Light: A Guide to the Magical Cabala by John Michael Greer, isn't much more accessible, but it's more modern, and could make a nice stepping stone after reading something like The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante's Guide to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist.

As you may expect, the book focuses on the Tree of Life. (If all you know about the Tree of Life is that it was in the Garden of Eden, read The Chicken Qabalah first.) One difference in the treatment of the Tree of Life is the use of the Hebrew letters that spell the name of God associated with each sphere. Each letter is explained in terms of the associated Tarot card, but this isn't a Tarot book, so the associations aren't made explicit. There's also a nice explanation of the Veil of Paroketh, which separates our mundane life from the higher levels of the Tree. The key concept is that the Veil is at least partially composed of our belief systems.

The treatment of the Tree is quite thorough, including even the four color scales and magical images. An instructive exercise for the artistically inclined would be to paint or draw the magical images. The Yeziratic Texts (an obscure description for each of the spheres and paths) are covered, and these can be hard to make sense of, but the book provides good explanations. The Golden Dawn models of the Garden of Eden before and after the fall are also included and explained.

So what's the bottom line? I recommend this book for serious Hermeticists who have read at least one (preferably three or more) books on the subject already. But you still need The Mystical Qabalah.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot: The Fool

Continuing my series about the chapters of Meditations on the Tarot, tonight I want to talk about the Fool. Meditations has the Fool as next-to-last in the series, so why is he the second installment in my series? Because he should have been first, but I wasn't really sure about it until I finished reading the book for the second time. And it's not just because the Fool is numbered zero.

To really understand why the Fool should be first, let's look at two literary figures Meditations refers to in its discussion of the fool: Don Quixote and Dr. Faust. I started reading Don Quixote again a couple of months ago, and stopped about halfway through because it was like watching the Detroit Lions play football. Now if Don Quixote's problem is self-deception, Dr. Faust suffered from deception at the hands of the demon he summoned, which really amounts to the same thing.

I apologize in advance because this will sound trite, but these two literary figures are important because they are metaphors for the human condition. We deceive ourselves and have been deceived by others, and deceive them in turn. The road to recovery involves recognizing the deception and stopping it. This brings me to a third literary figure discussed in this chapter of the Meditations: Arjuna from the Bhagavad-Gita. For those of you who don't know the story, it's set in ancient India on a battleground. Arjuna is about to lead his army into battle, but is somewhat reluctant. Krishna, a god who for some reason is acting as Arjuna's chariot driver, explains to Arjuna why he must fight, along with a bunch of other things. My take on the story is this: Arjuna represents the ego, Krishna the higher self, and the assembled soldiers are the components of Arjuna's belief systems. All of the belief system must be slain for Arjuna to be left with his higher self.

So how does this all relate to the Fool? Remember what I said above about deception, and in the prior paragraph about destroying our belief systems. The word "our" is key, because these belief systems are shared. Stepping outside of them will make us appear to be fools to those not on the journey. And that's exactly why being willing to do so must be the first step.

Book Review: Tarot for Everyone

Tarot for Everyone by Hajo Banzhaf is a tarot book geared to beginners. In addition to basic tarot theory, the book presents three basic layouts: the Compass, the Blind Spot, and the Oracle of Love. Descriptions are given of the 78 cards, with specific interpretations for the position the card falls in in each of the three layouts. Twelve additional layouts are given in the appendix. One interesting feature of the interpretations is that the upright and reversed meanings seem to be combined, and one or the other is used based on the position of the card in the layout.

I bought the book a few months ago and tried a couple of spreads with mixed results. I was trying the spreads with a new deck, so that might have had some effect. A couple of weeks ago, I picked up the book again and tried the Compass spread. This time, it just worked. To be honest, I'm not sure why. I got similar results with the Oracle of Love and the Blind Spot.

Based on those results, this book deserves mention as another option for beginners. The sheer volume of information that's needed to do effective tarot readings can be intimidating, and anything that helps get results without memorizing hundreds of pages of information shouldn't be overlooked just because it seems to have a superficial approach.

Book Review:1-2-3 Tarot

I've noticed that the tarot and astrology sections of the bookstores I frequent are starting to thin out, with more space devoted to the paranormal, 2012, and "The Secret" type books. I wonder if this is because both tarot and astrology require large investments of time and energy to attain any proficiency. Or maybe everyone is using the free courses available on the internet instead. Anyway, for those of you who still like dead trees, I have an introductory book for you: 1-2-3 Tarot: Answers in an Instant by Donald Tyson.

The book has a simple but effective method of reading the cards. Each card is given possible meanings as either a noun, a verb, or an adverb, and the combinations create sentences. The selling point of the book is that this method makes it possible to do meaningful readings without knowing anything about the cards. This seems to fit in to the American propensity toward instant gratification, but it actually works if taken as a starting point. The book starts with a three-card spread, then moves on to more complex spreads that form multiple sentences. I've done some experimentation with the method as applied to the traditional Celtic Cross spread, and it yields some useful interpretations.

The verdict? If you're a beginner, buy the book, but don't stop there or you'll miss the other advantages that Tarot has to offer. If you've been reading for a while, the book will give you a fresh approach that you'll be able to integrate into your current methods.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot: The Magician

I started reading Meditations on the Tarot again recently, and realized that it was a course of study in itself. As such, it's a perfect candidate for a new series of posts called "Larry's Notes." It's not a summary like Cliffs Notes, but instead I'll talk about key points in books that are helpful to us as recovering materialists.

This book uses for discussion the twenty-two cards of the major arcana from the Marseilles Tarot deck. So first, let's talk about the word "arcana" and what it means. The dictionary lists it as the plural of "arcanum," which means "secret." This book, on the other hand, says that these arcana aren't secrets; they're tools. They are things you need to know to progress along the path. By the way, the path outlined in this book is called "Christian Hermeticism," which is, in fact, the hermetic path that some of us are on, but with Christian (and specifically Catholic) emphasis.

The first point from the chapter that I want to talk about is illustrated by this quote:

Now Hermeticism, the living Hermetic tradition, guards the communal soul of all true culture. I must add: Hermeticists listen to-- and now and then hear--the beating of the heart of the spiritual life of humanity. They cannot do otherwise than live as guardians of the life and communal soul of religion, science and art.

This quote calls to mind the Vestal Virgins, whose job it was to keep the flame in the temple lit at all times. They devoted their lives to the maintenance of the temple and the flame, and their function today has been taken over metaphorically by various writers and occultists. And, what's best of all, because you're sitting there reading this, you're also helping to keep the flame burning.

The next point is that some concept of the essential unity of all things is necessary to even take the first step on the path. The good news is that just holding this concept on an intellectual level is sufficient for starters. After all, if you had continual experience of essential unity, you wouldn't be starting on the path; you'd be close to the end. The essential unity is presented in this chapter in the form of a section of the Emerald Tablet: "That which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing." Again, this is a good starting point, and if you're especially materialistic, you can interpret the "One Thing" as referring to the zero-point energy field, which is from where matter is thought to arise. There's also the "One Mind," but that's a topic for the next post in the series.

The final point is the attitude toward the work:

Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light!

The attitude should be one of adventure, wonder and discovery; if it's boring, you're doing it wrong. The example of a child at play is given in the text. Children at play can be very intense, but it's still not work to them. There's a lot we can learn from that.

Well, that's it for this installment. Next I'll be talking about the High Priestess. Stay tuned.

Book Review: The Tarot Court Cards

My readings have in general gone well, but I had been having a hard time with the court cards. I recently got a copy of The Tarot Court Cards: Archetypal Patterns of Relationships in the Minor Arcana by Kate Warwick-Smith, and it seems to have helped. The book gives four easy-to-remember keywords for each of the sixteen court cards. I should first mention that this book isn't for beginners. If you're just getting started with tarot, Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners or Tarot Awareness: Exploring the Spiritual Path would be more appropriate.

After some basic history of the court cards, the book gets into the theory underlying the meanings: the four worlds of qabalah. The four worlds are the four steps in creating the universe and everything in it, from archetype down to manifestation. The kings represent the world of archetypes, the queens and knights intermediate steps, the pages the material world. The suits correspond to spirit, love, knowledge and power (in the expected order: wands, cups, swords and pentacles). The combination yields four keywords for each card: two roles, one positive and one negative; and two characteristics. For example, the King of Swords has two roles: adviser and dictator; and two characteristics: pragmatism and ruthlessness. The roles and characteristics also correspond nicely to the positive and negative aspects of the Zodiac signs to which they are attributed (e.g. the King of Swords = Aquarius).

If you are having trouble with court cards in your readings, this book may help.