magic – Just the Tarot

How to Choose an Oracle Deck

Factors to consider in choosing an Oracle deck.

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with Colette Baron-Reid’s Wisdom of the Oracle deck lately. They seem to be highly accurate and the illustrations are really magical.

There are, of course, about 80 kazillion different decks out there by now, so it can be difficult to decide which one to get. On average, they’re about 20 bucks a pop, so it’s not like most people can order a dozen of them and figure it out later. If you’re in the market for a new deck, here are a few things to consider.

ARE THEY REALLY ORACLE DECKS?

That’s not as silly as it sounds. There are quite a few decks that really have nothing to do with, “fortune telling.” For instance, Louise Hay has several decks like, “Heart Thoughts Cards: A Deck of 64 Affirmations,” which are collections of affirmations printed on separate cards. They’re lovely, inspiring thoughts, but they have nothing to do with predicting the future or understanding the past.

“Healing the Inner Child Oracle: A Transformative Quest,” is another example. It’s a charming deck that offers words of solace for anyone with a wounded Inner Child, but it isn’t in any sense, “oracular.” Basically, what we’re looking for in an oracle deck is one that’s capable of saying, “You are here. This is how you got here. This is what’s going to happen if you keep on your present course.” If it can’t fulfill those simple parameters, it’s not an oracle deck.

DO YOU TRUST THE AUTHOR?

A little bit of research can tell us a lot about the author of a deck. Some basic questions we can ask are: is the author experienced? Does the author have some sort of psychic ability that would lend her credence in designing a deck of cards? Is the author in a positive flow of energy?

Colette Baron Reid, for instance, is a psychic and has been reading cards professionally for 25 years. (Check out her web site here: https://www.colettebaronreid.com/)\]. For me, personally, the fact that she’s gone through some serious shit in her life and emerged with a positive message and positive energy adds greatly to her credibility.

We can contrast that with Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot deck. It’s a well designed deck and Crowley had a deep knowledge of occultism. He was also deeply involved with black magic, sacrificed animals in his rituals, and was a heroin addict. I wouldn’t want his deck or his energy anywhere near my house.

IS THE DECK MAGICAL?

This is obviously highly subjective. The question here is, “Does the deck call out to your Deep Mind?” Does it stir something inside of you that resonates and feels magical?

I would answer, “absolutely,” with Baron-Reid’s deck. The illustrations are by Jenna DellaGrottaglia and her art is like something channeled from another world. The second I picked up the deck I could almost feel it vibrating in my hands.

They’re whimsical, thought provoking, and perfect illustrations of the situations we find ourselves in on a daily basis. You can see more of her art here.

On the other hand, we can look at cards like those from Doreen Virtue’s original angel decks and feel a resounding, “Blechhh.” They’re really just Hallmark greeting cards compiled into a deck. Despite the fact that they sold in the hundreds of thousands, they’re flat and low vibration.

ARE THEY ACCURATE?

Although this is, of course, the most important question, it’s hard to ascertain without actually buying one of the decks and trying them. We can try to get a, “feel,” for them by reading the reviews on sites like Amazon, but even those can be highly suspect.

If you’re just starting out on your card reading adventure, one indicator you might use is how long the deck has been around. Decks that don’t work tend to disappear fairly quickly. The Waite Tarot deck, for instance, is pretty much the gold standard for accuracy and was first published in 1909. The much, much older Marseilles deck has been used for centuries, but is a little more difficult for beginners to work with.

In the limited period of time that I’ve been using Baron-Reid’s deck, I’ve found it to be highly accurate. I inquired, for instance, about the outcome of the presidential election here in the U.S. and drew a card titled Conflict and Chaos. Perfect.

WHAT ARE YOU USING THEM FOR?

Finally, it’s good to consider how we’ll actually be using the cards. If we’re deeply into metaphysical inquiries and are looking for the underlying currents in life, we might want to go for a deck that relies heavily on archetypes. One example is Baron-Reid’s Goddess deck. Or we might want to go straight to the source and use an archetype deck like this one from Caroline Myss.

I tend to use my cards much more for mundane inquiries than for metaphysical explorations. In other words, my questions are more like, “What in the hell am I supposed to be doing this week?” And less like, “What is the meaning of life?”

Which is another reason why I particularly like this deck. The cards are mainly flat out, practical, day to day advice, like, “You need to get more rest.” Or, “this venture isn’t going to work so make a u-turn.” Or, “use your imagination, not your logic.”

We can achieve much the same result by taking a classic Tarot deck like the Waite deck and simply removing all of the Major Arcana (archetype) cards. When we use only the Minor Arcana, we’re only looking at the mundane, practical factors in life. That’s kind of a hassle but it works.

Ultimately, the deck you choose will be all about you. If it calls out to you, if it resonates with your vibrations, if you trust it, that’s your deck.

How to Lighten the Fuck Up by Fooling Around with Magic

A Quick Look at the Playful Nature of Magic.

Magic.

What is it, anyway? We talk about magic a fair amount. We say that something, “felt really magical,” or we, “feel a lot of magic,” when we’re with another person,” or a solution to a problem appeared, “just like magic.” But what, exactly, is it? Is it just a feeling, or is it a real thing that exists in the world independent of our feelings?

In The Magician card, we see a person channeling magical energy from, “above,” into the material plane. He’s using his concentration, his will power, and his skills to pull that energy into what he wants to manifest.

Which, of course, is a major clue. Magic is an energy, just like light, sound, radio waves, or solar flares. What’s more, it is it’s own energy, meaning that it’s distinct from other energies.

We tend to get it mixed up with other energies, because it appears coincident with them. When we’re madly in love with someone, it feels magical, and so we tend to mix magical energy up with being in love. When we’re joyous, it feels magical, and so we tend to mix magic up with great happiness. But magic is it’s own energy that appears with joy and love, but isn’t just joy and love.

We can see an analog of this with emotions and brain chemicals. When we have a lot of serotonin in our bodies, we feel happier. When we have a lot of cortisol and adrenaline in our bodies, we feel more stressed and anxious. But . . . happiness causes serotonin to appear and serotonin causes happiness to appear, so it’s a definite, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” situation. They’re not equivalent – they just appear at the same time.

Reductionists would have us believe that serotonin = happiness, but it’s not true. Antidepressants, which increase serotonin levels, can be a very effective band aid for depression, but they pretty much have to go along with good therapy to deal with the underlying problems. If we don’t build in the therapy, the happiness goes away when we stop taking the antidepressants because – guess what? – the things that were making us unhappy are still there.

In very much the same way, magic appears in our lives coincident with love and and joy, but the love and joy don’t cause the magic. Nor does the magic cause the love and joy. They just appear at the same time.

There are some other clues we can find that point to what magic actually is. Two major markers that appear in our lives when we’ve got magical energy flowing through us are synchronicity and serendipity. Synchronicity and serendipity are really just short hand for, “life is easy.” Solutions to our problems appear out of nowhere. People, places and things that feel like gifts from the universe manifest with no effort at all.

And, “life is easy,” is really just short hand for, “life is light. Life is playful. Life is fun.”

Which are some more major clues about what magical energy really is. In the same way that magic tends to appear when we’re joyous or in love, magic tends to appear when we’re happy and playful. It’s almost as if the universe is saying, “You know, you really need to lighten the fuck up if you want me to play with you. I get that you’re all sad and dour, but it’s a drag and I can find someone else to hang out with.”

So magic is an energy that tends to appear in our lives when we’re loving, joyous, happy and playful. It doesn’t cause them and they don’t cause magic, but they definitely appear at the same time.

Which brings us to another card, The Fool.

The Fool is FULL of magic. He’s dancing along at the edge of a cliff and he really doesn’t give a fuck about the danger because he’ll just float right off into the air and keep dancing. His little dog is picking up on his joy and dancing right along with him, in just the way that dogs always will.

Now, the interesting thing about The Fool is that he’s the Zero card in the Tarot deck. Every other card has a number, but The Fool is Zero. Which means that he doesn’t belong anywhere and he belongs everywhere. We can literally take any card in the Tarot deck, drop The Fool on top of it and things will start to get better. Even extremely bad cards like Death and The Tower start to improve the second that we bring in magical energy.

There are people in the world who will tell us that life is insane, tragic, and brutal and that there’s very little to be optimistic about. And, when we look at the daily news, it can be hard to argue with that view. Believing in love, joy, playfulness, happiness and lightness can seem downright . . . Foolish.

But that’s the point. No matter how bad the situation may be, if we start to drop The Fool on it, if we start to increase the magic in our lives, it will get better.

Magic brings love, joy, happiness, playfulness, easiness, and lightness with it.

Yes, please. I’ll have some of that.

My e-book, Just the Tarot, is still available on Amazon at a price that’s SO reasonable that it would be downright Foolish not to buy a copy.

The Magician, Apples and Bears and Cat’s Eye’s Marbles

The role of paying attention in magic.

Not too long ago a friend asked me, “Well, what IS magic, anyway?” And it’s hard to explain, you see, because magic is all about bears and apples and cats eye marbles.

We encounter images like The Magician Tarot Card or Hollywood depictions of wizards and witches and we think that magic is very mysterious and as rare as a mustache on a frog. It’s certainly nothing that those of us who are ordinary mortals will encounter, unless we trip over a bottle with a genie in it.

Not true. Not true . . . magic is everywhere. We just don’t pay enough attention to see it.

I live in the mountains of Northern California and one of the things that comes along with mountains is bears. Yes, large, furry, fearsome, 500 pound ursine critters with giant claws and paws and huge, scary teeth.

But it’s not so bad. For the most part, bears mind their own business and humans mind theirs and seldom the twain shall meet. You might occasionally step out on your back porch at night and say, “Oh, shit, it’s a bear.” No problems. The bear stares at you, you stare at the bear, you slowly step back into your house, close the door and repeat, “Oh, shit, it’s a bear.”

I don’t doubt that the bear is probably standing in the yard thinking, “Oh, shit, it’s a human.”

The one time that bears can become problematic is in the Autumn when they need to fatten up before they hibernate. During that brief period of time, they will destroy anything that lies between them and food. If you have a shed with trash cans in it, they will rip the roof off to get to the garbage. They will eat goats and sheep if you leave them lying around at night. They’ve been known to tear the doors off of cars because the owner left a bag of dog kibbles inside. And they love, love, LOVE apples, which coincidentally ripen at exactly the same time that the bears get hungry.

When my partner, Carol, and I first moved to the mountains we purchased an old ranch style house. It was built in 1950 and several generations of several families had lived in the house before us. The deserted tree houses and forgotten toys lying in the weeds were testaments to the fact that many children had lived in that house and romped around on the surrounding property.

One of the things we were most excited about was that we had our very own apple grove on the hill behind the house. There were about a dozen, gnarled old trees and we were thrilled when they burst into beautiful white and pink blossoms during our first Spring there. The aroma of the blossoms was like something out of heaven. Fat, black and yellow bumble bees buzzed and droned from blossom to blossom and life was mellow.

As the summer progressed and the apples began to form and grow, we fantasized about harvesting them in the Autumn. We knew we’d make apple pies and apple fritters and apple butter. Perhaps we’d buy a small wine press and make apple cider or bottle apple vinegar. Maybe we’d fill the bathtub with apple sauce and just squish around in it.

Oh, we were feeling very organic! We were living in the country and we had a huge crop of apples coming ripe on our little farm. Which actually began to worry me a bit, as I strolled through the grove, counting the apples. I realized that, even on those few trees, there were hundreds of apples. Maybe thousands. It slowly began to dawn in the recesses of my mind that maybe thousands and thousands of apples coming ripe at the same time might not be such a swell idea. What in the holy hell were we going to DO with all of them?

It was right about then that I first heard about the bears.

One of our new neighbors dropped by unexpectedly and I was standing in the yard with him pretending that I liked it when neighbors dropped by unexpectedly. He was chewing on a match stick, eyeing the apples trees critically and he said, “Best keep all of them apples picked up when they fall or you’ll draw every bear in the county.”

Gulp. “Bears? We’ve got . . . bears?”

“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “The goddamned county is full of goddamned bears. Better not go out at night without a gun or they could tear you apart. Of course, they’re not near as bad as the mountain lions. The goddamned mountain lions like to jump out of a tree, bite your head and crush it like a goddamned egg. Goddamned, son of a bitch bears and mountain lions. Best keep those goddamned apples picked up or you’ll be goddamned sorry.”

All of which leads up to the fact that I could not, in fact, keep the goddamned apples picked up despite frantic, manic efforts. Apples fell like rain and covered the ground. They fell into the rain gutters on the house. They fell into pots full of flowers. They fell on my head and shoulders as I rushed through the apple grove with a rake and wheel barrow. They were everywhere. Whoever said that an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree never had a goddamned apple tree.

Now, I only mention this because of the cat’s eye marble.

As it turned out, the neighbor was right about the apples and the bears. There came the inevitable night when the dogs were howling and there was much huffing and puffing and the sounds of branching snapping in the apple grove. When I ventured out the next morning, several of the trees had been thoroughly trashed. The goddamned bear, not content to eat the goddamned apples that were on the ground, had ripped down dozens of branches and they lay broken and scattered around the grove.

As I stood there, muttering to myself and examining the humongous mounds of bear shit, there was a loud cracking noise to my immediate right. One of the larger branches had been broken nearly in two when the bear scaled the tree and it suddenly sagged almost to the ground.

And there, partially embedded in the wood at the point where the branch joined the tree, was a single cat’s eye marble.

I reached over and easily pulled it loose from the tree branch. As I stood there staring at the marble in my hand, I felt a shiver run up my spine and the hair on my neck stood on end. I realized that at some time, many, many years ago, a child stood by that very tree. Perhaps it was getting dark and her mother called her in from playing. Perhaps she was leaving a gift for the fairies. For whatever reason, she had carefully balanced a marble at the convergence of the tree and branch and then forgotten about it.

Through the years, the tree grew and grew and the branch gradually enveloped the marble, holding it there safe inside of the tree. Until I happened to be standing exactly next to the tree at the exact moment that the tree branch broke and revealed its treasure.

I felt as if the ghost of a small child was standing right there next to me, handing me that cat’s eye marble and saying, “Look what I’ve got, Mister.”

And that’s magic.

The odds against that happening are staggering. It’s impossible. Can’t happen.

But it did.

The thing about it is that I didn’t cast a spell or wave a wand at the tree or ask the elementals to perform a magical feat. It just happened and I was paying attention, so I saw it.

Maybe it was the ghost of that long ago child, but more likely it was the Universe laughing and saying, “Look what I’ve got, Mister. Can you see? Are you paying attention?”

Magic is out there. It happens all of the time. We just have to learn how to see it and when the Universe asks us to play with it, gather up our marbles and go.

*. *. *

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT MY E-BOOK, “JUST THE TAROT,” IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON FOR LESS THAN THE PRICE OF WHOLE BAG FULL OF MARBLES. YOU SHOULD BUY A COPY – IT’S MAGICAL!

The Canyon of the Vaginas, The World Card, and the Loss of Male Magic

A friend gave me a book for Christmas called, “Ducks Flying Backward.” It’s a wonderful collection of essays by Tom Robbins and the first entry is called, “The Canyon of the Vaginas.” It’s about his quest to find a mysterious, obscure canyon in Nevada, the walls of which are covered with Native American petroglyph carvings of . . . well . . . vaginas.

Imagine that: hundreds of Native shamans going to this one site over hundreds of years to carve depictions of vaginas! And keep in mind, the Native petroglyphs weren’t casually done. They were considered sacred symbols and it took considerable effort to incise them in the rock.

It started me musing on The World Tarot card. It’s a card of rebirths, new beginnings and the successful gestation of projects. It depicts a semi-nude woman emerging into the world with a magical wand held in each hand, a symbol not just of power but of balance.

The most interesting feature of the card, though, is probably the oval shape surrounding the woman. Although it’s disguised as some sort of a wreath, it’s quite obviously symbolic of a vulva, complete with a clitoral bow perched at the top. This card is really about the primal, archetypal, universal experience of birth.

Now, the Tarot also has a Death card and there’s nothing at all ambiguous about it. It’s labeled, “DEATH,” and it has a grim reaper astride a black horse. Why, then, would The World not have been labeled, “BIRTH?” Or, if you wanted to extend that idea into our daily lives, “REBIRTH?” Why disguise the vulva as a wreath? If you wanted to depict the moment of birth, why not just do a painting of a baby emerging from a vagina?

The wreath is, of course, a symbol and, like all symbols, points toward a truth without actually expressing that truth in words. As the Tao Te Ching says, “the word that can be spoken is not the eternal word.” The moment that we try to express a symbol in words, we lose its essential truth, which is to say, the essence which is its truth.

Birth, in all of its forms – but particularly human birth – is one of the most deeply profound and mysterious events in human experience. Science has, with its usual methodology, attempted to reduce that experience to the mere phenomenon of a sperm cell penetrating an egg, but no amount of reductionism can lessen the wonder of the process. How do a few cells multiply into the complex, complicated, astounding beings we call, “humans?” How do a sperm and an egg end up being a Buddha or a Mary Magdalene, an Einstein or a Marie Curie?

It’s a mystery. Moreover, it’s a mystery which is contained primarily within the female body. Yes, of course, men contribute sperm cells and the attached DNA but the process of actually creating a new human being is uniquely female. And powerful. And magical.

If that process remains mysterious to us, with all of our instrumentation and ability to scan a fetus virtually from conception to birth, we can only guess what it must have felt like to our primitive ancestors. It’s not hard to imagine a cave dweller gaping at a woman who had just given birth and exclaiming, “How in the hell did you DO that?”

Somehow in the course of our evolution women’s bodies became much more deeply connected to our universe than men’s bodies. We see that plainly in the lunar cycles that cause oceans to rise and fall and women to menstruate whereas men feel . . . sort of uncomfortable . . . when the moon is full.

That’s not a subject for debate or sexual politics, it’s just a fact. We’re at a point where our old buddy Science is beginning to document the very real differences between the state of a woman-being-in-the-world and a man-being-in-the-world. For instance, we’re finding that women generally tend to have a much stronger connection between the two hemispheres of the brain than men and, therefore, a much deeper connection with intuition and symbolism. (For more on that, see my post, “The High Priestess and the Hallway in Our Brains.”)

We can see these differences, we can observe them, but we still don’t fully comprehend them. There’s still that very primitive sense that there’s something magical happening with the female spirit that’s NOT happening with the male spirit and it eludes us. We could make a very strong case that the whole sorry history of patriarchy, treating women as property to be taken and enslaved and raped, and our current marriage laws spring straight out of that male desire to somehow capture that magic that males are missing in their own souls, even if by force.

The most visited painting in the Louvre right now is called, “The Origin of the World,” by Gustave Courbet. It’s usually surrounded by crowds of tittering, semi-embarrassed Americans, gaping at the realistic portrayal of a woman’s genitals. It might be tempting to brush this off as casual prurience, as prudes seizing a chance of peeking under a woman’s panties, but in it’s own way it’s become a sort of a shrine and the people have become pilgrims. It’s not too hard a stretch to connect that painting with ancient Native Americans carving hundreds of vaginas into canyon walls.

The bottom line on it, I think, is that males have become so totally alienated from their own Divine Feminine that they have to project it outwards as a symbol. They then worship it or attempt to capture it or – as in much of our pornography – degrade and devalue it. As long as men continue to view the Feminine Principle in purely symbolic terms – a vagina rather than a spirit – instead of fully integrating it into our consciousness, women will continue to be objectified as the unwilling, symbolic bearers of the magic that men have lost.

When we take a final look at The World card, we can note that the woman’s genitals are covered by a sort of a free-floating cloth. The mystery remains concealed. At least for now.

The Law of Attraction, The Magician Card, and Dumping the Scientific Method

Looking at the wonderful messiness of magic.

I love this little section from Genevieve Davis’ Becoming Magic: A Course in Manifesting an Exceptional Life (Book 1)

“Is magic unscientific? I don’t care two hoots one way or the other. I have no desire to make what I do fit with a scientific world view. I don’t give a flying fig whether it does or doesn’t fit in with quantum physics or Newton’s Laws.”

We all grew up learning the scientific method and so we know the general ideas involved with it. In order for something to be a scientific law, it has to be predictable and verifiable and universal. In other words, if we’re talking about the Law of Gravity, then we have to be able to predict that when an apple – any apple – falls off of a tree it’s going to come straight down and hit the ground. Over and over and over again. And everyone has to be able to see that that’s the way that apples fall and they have to fall the same way in Tierra del Fuego as they fall in Texas.

If some apples fall halfway to the ground, turn sideways, and zip off into the horizon, then we’re fucked as far as gravity being a universal law. Then we have to go back and re-examine our theories, do thorough, scientific studies on apple-ness, and try again. That’s called, “revising your hypothesis.”

Now, for some reason, many people who are involved in metaphysics and spirituality have ALWAYS craved the approval of scientists. I don’t really know why, because most of the scientific folks I’ve met have been pretty boring, one dimensional people with whom I would not care to share a beer or a joint. Perhaps it’s because scientists are always hopping up and down and screaming, “You can’t PROVE that there are ghosts (or angels or fairies or spirit guides or the astral plane, etc., etc., etc.)” Perhaps some people who are involved with spirituality have developed a sort of a Stockholm Syndrome where they really, really want their abusers to love them.

Or maybe they just really, really want for magic to be predictable and verifiable and universal. Which it isn’t.

There’s that word, “magic,” again. Let’s talk about it a little bit, in terms of the famous, “Law of Attraction.”

The Law of Attraction IS, essentially, magic. If you can make something appear out of thin air with the power of your mind, that’s magic.

The Law of Attraction is NOT a law, and that’s where a lot of us get screwed up and where a lot of us give up.

The point is that it’s a Not-A-Law that works most of the time, which is why we shouldn’t stop using it and exploring it.

When we first learn about the Law of Attraction, this is how it usually works. We encounter someone who says something like, “If you only think of good things, then only good things will come into your life.” And so we try it and it works pretty well and we’re feeling pretty damned jazzed about it. “Hey, you know, only good things come into MY life!”

Then life turns into a shit sandwich and we go back to the person who told us that we should only think good things and ask them why all of this crap just floated into our lives. They start suggesting flaws in our approach to only thinking good things, such as:

-Did you write down exactly 25 affirmations in the morning and 22 and ½ before you went to bed?

Did you use a vision board?

Maybe you were thinking 7 good things and 285 bad things and your bad thoughts overwhelmed your good thoughts.

Do you put a lot of emotions into your visualizations?

Did you try dancing on one foot when you were visualizing and holding an amethyst in one hand and a tourmaline in the other?

Again, that’s called, “revising your hypothesis.” If only good things are supposed to come into our lives when we think good thoughts and bad things start happening, then it must somehow be our fault. We must be doing something wrong, because the Law of Attraction is a LAW, by god. And that means it always works and it’s predictable and it’s verifiable.

Eventually a fair number of people become dejected over the fact that the Law of Attraction doesn’t always work and they just quit trying. Which is a drag.

It’s not a Law. And that’s okay. It’s magic. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but a lot of the time it does. Just like magic.

Let’s take a look at the Magician cards from a couple of different decks.

The first is the Magician from the Waite Deck, which was designed about the turn of the 19th/20th century, the dawn of the Scientific Age.

He’s dressed in perfect, dramatic ceremonial robes, he’s holding a wand aloft to gather in Universal Energies and he’s directing those energies into manifestation on the material plane, as represented by the four objects on the table. He’s magnificent, he’s powerful, he’s in control. His magic is verifiable and predictable because he KNOWS HIS SHIT. His magic works every single time.

Now let’s take a look at the Magician from the ancient Marseilles deck.

He’s kind of goofy looking, his clothes look like they were sewn together from rags, and look at all of that weird stuff he’s got spread all over the table! The expression on his face isn’t so much one of being in command and control as of, “Um . . . did I forget something? Was there an Eye of Newt in this spell? I just can’t remember . . .”

The Magician from the Waite deck really exemplifies the type of magic that many purveyors of the Law of Attraction would like us to believe. The Universe is an orderly, positive place and if we behave in an orderly positive manner, then only orderly, positive things will happen to us.

If I’m doing a magic spell, then I MUST draw a circle that is EXACTLY nine feet across and place four white candles in each of the cardinal directions. I have to have a knife and a chalice on my altar and a specific kind of incense burning and the spell has to happen at a specific time of the month or IT JUST WON’T WORK. If I do all of those things just exactly right, though, then my magic will be predictable and verifiable. You know, like a Law.

The old Magician from the Marseilles deck is much more like what magic is really about. He’s slinging together odds and ends and making it up as he goes along. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but he’s NOT going to walk away from his table because most of the time it DOES work and he’s having a hell of a lot of fun.

The old Magician recognizes the Sacred Dictum passed down to us from the Ancients: sometimes weird shit happens. Magic, like life and emotions and love, is NOT always predictable. That’s why all of the old cultures had trickster gods like Loki and Coyote and Raven, because sometimes life just jumps up in our faces, yells, “BOO!” and then laughs it’s ass off at us.

Here’s another interesting passage from Genevieve Davis, this one from her book Doing Magic: A Course in Manifesting an Exceptional Life Book 2

“There is a reason that women are particularly good at magic . . . the slightly chaotic nature of women, often negatively deemed ‘irrational,’ is actually a desired trait when doing Magic. Embrace irrationality, embrace chaos, allow things to just turn out in whatever higgledy-piggledy pattern they please and you will find this SO much easier.”

The Law of Attraction ISN’T a Law. It’s a general principle that if we act and think in a mostly positive manner then mostly positive things will mostly come into our lives. Most of the time.

And that’s not only good enough, that’s GREAT!

We don’t need no stinking laws!

Being Your Own Magician: The Magician Tarot Card

“If we do not consciously live our best lives we are destined to unconsciously live our worst.” – Sylvan

I was recently reading about Dorothy Maclean, cofounder of the Findhorn Community and author of, “To Hear the Angels Sing: An Odyssey of Co-Creation with the Devic Kingdoms.” She’s done extensive channeling with the Devas, the beings that oversee the development of forms, for instance of plants. These two quotes really jumped out at me because of messages I’ve been receiving from my guides:

What I would tell you is that as we [the devas] forge ahead, never deviating from our course for one moment’s thought, feeling or action, so could you. Humans generally don’t seem to know where they are going, or why. If they did, what powerhouses they would be! If they were on a straight course, how we could cooperate with them!

Why go around like zombies, following this or that external guide when all the time your only guide is within you?

The Magician Tarot card premises that each person is his or her own Magician. In other words, we all – individually – channel down energy from the Astral and use it to create our lives and our environments. We don’t need to hire anyone to do it, we don’t need to consult with a priest or a shaman to do it, we don’t need to have any secret knowledge to do it. We ALL do it, ALL the time. We are creating our worlds every single day, whether we know it or not.

And for the most part, we don’t know it.

Here’s how therapist Gay Hendricks put it:

. . . one thing I want you to accept about yourself is that you’re already a manifestation genius – I guarantee it. Now all you have to do is hitch your genius to your heart’s desires instead of your default programming.

In other words, we are manifesting our lives and our environments every single day but, because we don’t realize it and don’t realize what we’ve been programmed to believe about ourselves, many of us are manifesting a load of crap. If, for instance, you were raised in a highly critical family and your parents were always telling you that you’d never succeed, guess what? You’ll manifest a whole lot of failure because that’s what you were programmed to do.

So step one in being your own Magician is realizing that you ARE your own Magician. You ARE manifesting your world right now and, as Hendricks said, you’re already a genius at it. You don’t need to practice because you’ve got it down.

Step two is getting really, really straight in your mind and heart about what you WANT to manifest in your life. And, yes, a lot of us have trouble with that. It can go something like this:

What I want more than anything is to be happy. And to get into Debbie’s pants. Of course, Debbie makes fun of me and we’re really not compatible so if we have a relationship I won’t be happy. I could lie to her about wanting a relationship and then I could get into her pants and that would make me happy. Only then I’d have to admit that I was a hypocritical jerk and I hurt her feelings just so I could get into her pants. And that would make me unhappy. On the other hand . . .”

Or as the Devas put it: Humans generally don’t seem to know where they are going, or why.

The trick – the Magic Trick – is to manifest consciously. To take the time to do the self examination and thinking about what you want, where you want to go, and why. Take the time to figure out what you were programmed to be when you were a child and see if that fits with what you really want to be. Take the time to meditate and learn to listen to your heart and your spirit guides. And then make your magic happen. Be your own Magician.

Why go around like zombies, following this or that external guide when all the time your only guide is within you?

“Just the Tarot,“available on Amazon.com

The High Priestess and Growing Your Intuition

A discussion of intuition as a function of the right hemisphere of the brain making sudden contact with the left hemisphere and The High Priestess as a representation of that mid-brain connection.

The High Priestess represents our connection with what some people call, “deep mind.” She is our – frequently unconscious – connection with the higher realms of spirit and magic. She is the exact point where the truth travels through the creative, feminine right brain and emerges in consciousness in the linear, masculine left brain as a flash of, “intuition.”

It all sounds very complicated but it’s not. It’s actually hardwired into our system but we’ve taught ourselves to ignore it. Our language, however, is replete with phrases describing it.

“I had a hunch . . .”

“I just had a feeling . . .”

“Something told me . . .”

“I just knew . . .”

What all of that describes is suddenly reaching a firm, undoubtable conclusion without any preceding rational thought. And, yes, it seems magical for exactly that reason: it seems to burst out of nowhere.

Another way that it manifests is as a, “sixth sense.”

If you’re hiking in the woods and a predator is watching you, you somehow, “know,” it and the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Combat soldiers describe the same feelings just before the enemy starts shooting at them.

A classic example is thinking of someone you haven’t seen in years and the phone suddenly rings and it’s them.

A silly example is that if a man is walking behind a woman and stares at her butt she will always know that someone is staring at her butt. I don’t know how women do that, but it’s true.

Now, to a rationalist all of that is impossible. You can’t, “sense,” that a mountain lion is watching you or that a guy is staring at your butt or that an old friend is about to call. But we still do. It happens and we all KNOW that it happens.

So, two thoughts on, “intuition,” that we should probably keep in mind. First of all, we live in a society that denigrates it and treats it as if it’s irrational. It’s not irrational, it’s NON rational, or perhaps META rational. It has nothing to do with the left brain, logical, linear thinking process that the western world worships. It, “arrives,” out of thin air, like a telegram from an angel. But it’s also not a metaphysical belief.

It’s important to be clear about metaphysical beliefs. I’ve known christian fundamentalists who believed that Jesus is right there at their sides 24/7 to solve each and every problem that they’ll ever have. And that this beautiful world of ours is positively dripping with devils and demons who have nothing better to do than make people have, “impure thoughts,” about their neighbor’s wives.

I think fundamentalists are total fruit cakes but, hey, they’re welcome to believe whatever they want.

I believe in ghosts and spirit guides and totem animals and the Goddess, and I’m sure the christian fundamentalists think I’m a total fruit cake.

The point with either set of beliefs is that they are metaphysical and totally unprovable one way or the other. They are NOT demonstrable facts. They are beliefs.

Intuition, on the other hand, operates daily in the physical world. There are millions of reported incidents of it and anyone who says it’s not real is either in denial or an idiot.

Second, we can all do it. And we can get better at it. That’s important.

We tend to think that some people are psychic and some people aren’t. Some people can read Tarot cards and some people can’t. Some people can achieve enlightenment and some people never will.

It’s not true. It’s just a function of time and effort. I guarantee you that if you sit down every day and concentrate on your brow chakra for 15 minutes you WILL start to see some magical, astral scenes. If you read Tarot cards over a period of time you WILL become more psychic.

It’s exactly the same deal with intuition. It’s something that you were born with and it’s just a matter of practicing. Start paying a little more attention to your feelings. Start asking the universe (or your angels or your spirit guides or your totem animals) for answers when you’re puzzled about something. And the answers will appear. Just like magic.

You are The High Priestess. You just forgot.

The Magician and Channeling Down Energy

The Magician Tarot card and channeling spiritual energy into our lives.

The person in the Fool Tarot card is infused with pure cosmic energy and he’s dancing with the pure joy of it.

The Magician, on the other hand, is directing that energy. We see him standing there in his robes, one hand pointed to the sky and the other pointed to the ground. On his table are the four elements of the Tarot: wands, cups, swords, pentacles, also known as ideas, emotions, energy, and material.

He serves as a reminder that we are not alone. We are not limited to our personal resources, our bodies and minds, as incarnate in this earth plane. There are other realms of being and there is an infinite amount of energy available from those realms, energy far beyond what we think we possess.

And you can take a very, very, simplistic approach to that. You don’t have to be a Master Occultist with secret knowledge of the Astral Planes and how to manifest that energy onto the Earth Plane. You don’t have to go Full Wiccan and set up a Magic Circle with white candles at the quarters. You don’t have to be a Theosophist with intricate explanations of how the universe works.

Just start with three simple facts:

1 – you exist;

2 – there’s another realm of infinite energy;

3 – you’re connected to it.

No matter how beaten up or beaten down we may be, no matter how physically and spiritually exhausted we are, we have access to all of the energy we need any time we want it.

Don’t get hung up on names for the other realm. Call it whatever you like – heaven, the astral plane, the angelic realms, foreverland . . . whatever. I personally like the phrase, “Spirit World,” because it’s descriptive short hand without trying to put it in a box of faiths, creeds, or religions. But call it whatever rings true to you.

Don’t get hung up on methods for contacting it. There are about a zillion religions and philosophies out there and they all claim to have the EXCLUSIVE method for getting in touch with Spirit World. Bullshit. Try to think of it the way the Tibetan Buddhists describe it: at the level of our core being we are all beautiful, unique, crystals. The Light will shine through each of us in a different way. For some, that light may be Reiki. For others, formal religions. For others, Wicca. Look around, experiment, and you’ll find what’s right for you.

In the meantime, there are simple, well established ways to get started with expanding your connections to the other realms. Prayers work for some people. Meditation for others. Simply sitting quietly in nature and letting their hearts open works for others. Dancing and shamanic drum circles may be your path.

Personally, I like meditation. Rajinder Singh has an interesting book on meditating on the Third Eye (or brow chakra) called Inner and Outer Peace through Meditation and that can take you on a Magical Mystery Tour.

Or you might want to try meditations that are more heart centered. Tara Brach has many, many FREE downloadable guided meditations here.

The path is always there, waiting for you, full of joy, love and energy.

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The Magician Tarot Card

The meaning of The Magician card in the Tarot.

There are a couple of elements involved in this card because it really operates on two levels. The first, more mystical, level involves the ability to use your powers of imagination and concentration to make whatever you want to manifest on the material plane. This card indicates that the questioner is at a place in life where all of the elements are coming together for a successful new enterprise. The individual involved literally has the ability to visualize what he or she wants to happen and bring it into being. It’s a very strong card and shows that a lot of magic is operating in the questioners life.

A secondary meaning can be gleaned from the name of this card in the older Tarot decks: The Juggler. He isn’t simply The Magician in the mystical sense, he’s also The Magician in the sense of a magician’s stage show. He has the ability to juggle a half dozen balls in the air and dazzle you with illusions. In this sense it shows that the questioner not only has the ability to make a new project manifest, he also has the ability to promote it successfully and sell it to the people who can back him financially or emotionally

If this card shows up when you’re wondering if a new or different idea might work, there’s a very simple answer: GO FOR IT!

REVERSED: This is still a very powerful card but it comes with several warnings. Be very sure that any new project is in alignment with your Higher Self and you aren’t simply acting out of ego or greed.

If you’re dealing with someone else’s new project take a very careful look at it before you commit to backing it. Be sure that the magician you’re dealing with isn’t a con artist who’s shilling you for support but will never complete the project.

There is also a strong warning to stay alert and not miss new opportunities that are right under your nose.

If you have questions about this card or its meaning in one of your readings, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

A couple of additional thoughts about the Magician:

One of the issues that you need to think about when you’re dealing with this card is, “What is magic?”

We all know the magic of nature. Any kind of newborn is magical, from a baby to a kitten. The magic of love. The beautifully transient magic of a rainbow or a shooting star. A hidden waterfall in a silent forest.

But how does personal magic work? Aleister Crowley defined magic as, “”the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will”, including both “mundane” acts of will as well as ritual magic.

In other words it’s using your will power to make something manifest in your life. You can view it as something as simple as lying in bed in the morning and contemplating how you’re going to make coffee manifest in your life. “I’m going to get out of bed. I’ll put water in the carafe, I’ll put the filter basket in the coffee maker, I’ll put the coffee in the basket, and I’ll press the on switch.”

Of course, we don’t go through that sequence of thinking. We just DO it because we already know how to do it.

Magic involves making something manifest in your life when you don’t know HOW to do it. But there is a basic pattern, a framework that you can use even if you don’t know exactly how to make it come about. You start by visualizing it. Try to get as clear a picture in your mind as you possibly can of what you want.

Then pour energy into it. You actually have to take some time – even a little time each day – to visualize what you want and imagine it coming into being. If you belong to a particular tradition such a Wicca or Neo-Paganism you may have rituals you’ll want to do at this point such as burning particular herbs or incense and gathering minerals and crystals for extra energy

Feel it. Visualizations don’t work if all they are is an idea. They need feelings, the deeper and stronger the better. While you’re visualizing what you want to come into being try to summon as much joy and happiness as you can. If you’re a more physical person you may want to dance or chant to enhance the emotional depth.

Wait and watch. Remember: this is something that you want but you DON’T KNOW how to make it happen. You’ve started at point A with, “This is what I want.” You’ve gone to point C with the visualization of it. All the intermediate steps to your goal that you might call Point B will be provided as you go along but you have to watch for the signs and omens for what you should do next. And that’s the magic of it: knock and the door will open and a pathway will appear.

One more quick thought before we move on from the Magician and that’s about the Magician reversed. In most of the New Agey Tarot definitions you’ll find that it’s defined along the lines of being out of harmony with the universe or a failure to concentrate on the task at hand or perhaps a caution that someone you’re dealing with is a con artist.

There’s also another meaning which isn’t much discussed anymore and that’s plain old Black Magic. Just as you can heal someone by intently pouring loving energy into them, so you can sicken someone by intently pouring hatred into them. It’s very real.

We think of Black Magic in terms of what see in the movies. An old woman sticking needles into a voodoo doll or a black robed man chanting incantations. Oddly, a much more common version of it is everyday prayer or mental obsession. I knew a woman who claimed to be a very devout Catholic who would regularly sit down, say her rosary, and pray for terrible things to happen to people who had offended her. She didn’t get that what she was doing was Black Magic. She was sending concentrated hate energy at the people she was, “praying about,” and her rosary was her ritual tool.

In the same sense, if we become obsessed with someone having hurt or offended us and we go through the day wishing them nothing but ill, we’re sending hate. It’s Black Magic, albeit on a very amateur, informal scale. So if you get the Magician reversed in a reading you’re doing don’t automatically assume that it’s about ego trips or missed opportunities. It may point to something more sinister going on.