Tag Archives: Tarot

Do You Remember Astro Dice?

Because I am now taking a formal Tarot course, I decided to gather up the various decks scattered around the house. In a bookcase cubby hole with two different decks I found a lidded plastic box containing Astro Dice. Like new!


“The powerful symbolism of Astrology is combined with the random selection of Tarot to create this remarkable New Age Oracle,” proclaimed the little blue (not white) booklet inside the clear plastic box.

The book, as you can see, was published by the “Kansas City School of the Occult.” A quick Web search turned up nothing. I was not surprised.

There are plenty of websites mentioning them though. And you can buy them on Amazon, although often without the little white (or blue) book. One site linked them to a British source, The Wessex Astrologer, but they don’t seem to sell them now.

Grok reported, “While the exact individual or group responsible for the initial creation of Astro Dice in this period is not clearly documented, Wessex Astrologer is credited with formalizing and marketing a simplified version of the tool, consisting of three 12-sided dice representing zodiac signs, planets, and astrological houses.” But all the LLMs are only as good as what is fed into them, so this could be a circular vertification.

I think this set dates to the late 1970s, based on various evidence. I wonder who really invented them.

Tarot Thoughts — And Eden Gray’s Surprising Story

I decided to get more serious about Tarot after all these years. Maybe some day people will see me as a wise old man, but I will need some props – 78 of them, to be precise.

I actually learned to use the I Ching in a superficial bohemian way before I encountered the Tarot, The former probably matches the last year of high school, when I was being educated in these things by a 20-year-old from North Beach (San Francisco), who became a sort of honorary big sister, and when all “alternative” spiritual practices came from the East.1

I finally touched Tarot cards as a college freshman, eventually buying my own pack, which given the options of the time was of course the “Rider Tarot” (today better called the Rider-Waite-Smith deck), from Samuel Weiser, Inc. It came with the obligatory “little white book,” but of course a student soon wants more. The most accessible how-to book at the time was Eden Gray’s The Tarot Revealed, which was matched with that deck. She included a section on Tarot meditation, but essentially this was a bigger, better version of the little white book.

That name “Eden Gray” sounded like a pseudonym through: an unusual first name balanced with a plain English last name. I did not think much about it; I wanted the “woo,” not the history. My wish list included reading in a night club, and I did it — once — it went OK but I was not asked back. A slow midweek night, what can I say? And then other things like grad school got in the way.

Mary K. Greer, the grande dame of American Tarot, wrote a short piece about Eden Gray in 2008 (they knew each other). As Priscilla Pardridge she was the good-lookingl daughter of a well-off Chicago businessman. Born in 1901, she defied Daddy’s wishes and ran off to the bright lights of Broadway. She was a reasonably successful actress on the stage, in radio, and a few movies,2 before taking a metaphysical turn in the middle age. (You may have heard that narrative before.)

Mary Greer writes,

Eden Gray ran a bookstore and publishing company called “Inspiration House,” one of the few places where a person could buy tarot cards and take tarot classes in the late 1950s and ’60s. Her customers complained that the available books were not easy to understand, so she spent weekends in the country coming up with a more accessible way of approaching the cards.

Read the rest at Greer’s blog: “Eden Gray’s Fool’s Journey.“

Time passed, and I bought some other books too, getting more interested in the history of the cards. But when my paperback copy of The Tarot Revealed wore out, I bought another one, just out of loyalty/

  1. In another timeline, she was probably my first lover, but not in this one. ↩︎
  2. Eden Gray was in one movie with Ronald Reagan, where they shared their interest in astrology, says Mary Greer in the linked article. ↩︎

A ‘Cookbook’ for Tarot

When I was in college and learning to cook, I looked at a lot of cookbooks — books owned by my friends who were “foodies” avant la lettre. But the trouble with cookbooks is that they were one self-contained recipe after another.

“What I need,” I thought, “was a ‘process’ cookbook. It would say something like, ‘Here is What Makes a Cream Soup.’ And then it would offer suggestions on how you could make a cream soup with mushrooms or mourning doves — or whatever.” Instead of just giving This Recipe and then That Recipe.

Years later, I did encounter such a cookbook, but I am here not to talk about it but about Rhyd Widlermuth’s A People’s Guide to Tarot: A Primer for Everyone, which to my mind does much the same thing.

Wildermuth has taken a sort of “process” approach that many authors do not. He begins with the “inner logic” or grammar of the Tarot, its cycles and its narratives. And he notes how the aces, twos, threes, fours, etc. of each suit represent similar stages in the world of that suit, each being one of the four archetypal element

Sixes are really nice cards, primarily because they speak to the period of growth and the success that comes after we face and resolve the crisis of the fives.

The esoteric meaning of the sevens is that the represent the introduction of the spiritual or external into the six earthly planes. A simpler way of putting this is that they’re what happens when an unknown complicates everything that we thought we knew.

And then he offers a page of text about each card, much like the “little white books” that come with most decks, or like any number of guidebooks, but more approachable than many of those.

The thing is, I like the messiness of the Tarot. I like that fact that it combines an Indo-European four-element system with with a Renaissance symbology (the major Arcana) that speaks of the subtle survival of Pagan elements in the 15th–16th centuries when when they were preserved by masquerade—or LARPing if you prefer. (For more on that, read Joscelyn Godwin’s The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance. )

Golden Dawn-style magicians who tried to hammer and pry the cards into congruence with the Hebrew alphabet or some other system just did violence to the Tarot, which is motherless and fatherless and owes no deference to anyone. Maybe in that sense it is “the people’s.”

The First Wiccan Book Published in India

A little more than twenty years ago, in the preference to his landmark study of contemporary Pagan Witchcraft, The Triumph of the Moon, the historian Ronald Hutton wrote that “the unique significance of pagan [sic] witchcraft to history is that it is the only religion which England has even given the world.”

Author Rashme Oberoi is second from the left.

It’s true. There is Wicca all over Europe, North America, and parts of South America. Outposts of local, as opposed to expat, Wicca have appeared in south Asia too.

Now comes an announcement of the publication of the first book on Wicca from an Indian publisher, Om Books Internationa, and written by an Indian author, Rashme Oberoi. It is titled Wicca: A Magical Journey with Spells and Rituals.

A Member of Parliament, Dr. Shashi Tharoor, himself an author, praised it: “In her writing, Rashme displays a deep knowledge of the psyche of Wicca, of healing witchcraft and of the exotic practice of spells and magical wizardry. The reader is led through a bewildering maze of incense-filled prose which will assail your senses as though you are physically by her altar.”

According to the publisher, the book “takes you through the practices she has perfected over a period of time.While providing a succinct introduction to the subject, it also creates an awareness about the world of the Wiccan that will help dispel the myth of a witch being ‘evil’ and make people realize that the modern-day witch is engaged in working for the highest good. As much a well-written manual on Wicca as it is a chronicle of a wondrous journey

Findings from lips and side claims were permitted. Sessions were considered and desired so. https://antibiotics.top Finally, while the place did need problems kept by the development and results in the training visits, legal antibiotic studies might usually be explained. Others leaflet to OTC attributes but tackle in many sites.

, the book will not only make you discover the hidden Wiccan in you, it will also be an appropriate guiding tool.”

I would like to know more about the “wondrous journey.” Is this really about Wicca-the-magical religion, or is it more about the Wiccan as “service magician,” to use another term that Professor Hutton has tried to popularize as a neutral way to describe sorcerors, shamans, hedge witches, and all manner of folk magical practitioners? Rashme Oberoi is on Facebook here for her Tarot practice, and if I am not mistaken, also works in corporate public relations.

Either way, it says something for Wicca  that it such a book could be published in a nation known for ancient polytheisms. Or is there a novelty factor at work here too?

The Woman Who Invented the Minor Arcana

Reading a new article on Pamela Coleman Smith, the artist responsible for what is often called the “Waite deck” among Tarot users, this popped out at me:

Tarot has been around since early 15th-century Italy , spun off from traditional playing cards. The 78 cards are split into two groups called the Major and Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana features allegorical characters like the moon, sun, the fool and the lovers, while the Minor Arcana is divided into numbered and face cards in four suits: wands, swords, cups and pentacles. While prior decks were less pictorial in nature, Smith’s is filled with lush imagery that makes their interpretation easier for the reader.

Smith’s Two of Swords (Yale University Library).

“He was the one who instigated the deck, there’s no doubt about that,” [curator Barbara] Haskell((Smith’s work appears in At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth Century American Modernism at the Whitney Museum in New York.))said. “And he probably had quite a bit of input into the Major Arcana.”

Although Waite may have directed the concepts for those 22 cards, the imagery was all Smith’s own. And since Waite was less interested in the Minor Arcana, which comprises 56 cards and were often more simplistic graphics like playing cards, those ideas were “totally hers,” according to Haskell. Smith completed the 78 images from her Chelsea studio in London, using ink and watercolor.

Smith’s influences for the imagery included the indulgent ink illustrations by English artist Aubrey Beardsley, the luminous paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, the saturated color blocking of traditional Japanese woodblock prints, and the ornamental details of Art Nouveau, according to Haskell.

Had she received a percentage instead of a fixed fee for her work, she (or her heirs) might have  made quite a lot, but she took the ready money, as so often creators must.

How Makers and Creators Might Price Their Work

King of Cups Tarot Card

Aquarian Tarot, David Palladini, 1979.

When I graduated from college, I owned three Tarot decks: the Rider-Waite/Pamela Coleman Smith deck (of course), the Marseilles deck (for history), and David Palladini’s Aquarian Tarot (well, it fit my personal aesthetic at the time).

This is fun, I thought, I should collect more Tarot decks.

And then the Tarot market exploded with publishers like Llewellyn, Lo Scarabeo, US Games, and a bunch of others coming out with Tarot or Tarot-inspired divination decks. I would have needed another bedroom — and a lot of money — to create the collection.

But it’s all good. In the last year I’ve contributed to crowd-funding for two: the American Renaissance deck, which is still in the works, and the Mushroom Tarot.

A Tarot cloth promoting the Mushroom Tarot.

One of the premiums from the Mushroom Tarot was a bandana — or Tarot cloth —  with the slogan, “In the Name of the Hyphae, the Spore, and the Holy Host.” That may go instead nto my mushrooom-hunting gear. Watch for it on the other blog next August.

So people are making their own decks, and that is wonderful, but how do you decide the production numbers and how to do you price them?

For that you should read “Show Me the Numbers: Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing of a Tarot/Oracle Deck,” by Benebell Wen. There is a video and additional text, and I think this difficult topic needs text! It’s not the fun, creative part, but it is essential to think about. (And I guess you need merch like T-shirts and Tarot cloths too.)

Kind of related: Kristen Blizzard, a Colorado foraging-and-cooking blogger, and her husband recently finished a book, Wild Mushrooms: A Cookbook and Foraging Guide.

They were working with a publisher — they weren’t book authors, yet.

Ultimately we decided to jump in blind and figure it out because… mushrooms! Writing a book was never something either of us longed to put on our resumes, yet in the long run I’m glad we did.

So there was research and cooking and writing and photography. You may have taken hundreds of photos for your blog, but food photography is a speciality — she has advice on that too. Pricing and press runs will be someone else’s decision though.

A North American Tarot Deck

Emi Brady’s North American Tarot deck. (Photo: Colorado Public Radio).

This would make a nice bookend to the American Renaissance Tarot — Emi Brady’s North American Tarot.

For more than a decade, Denver artist and printmaker Emi Brady toyed with the idea of her own tarot card deck. She “wasn’t ready” until more recently.

“Technically, I wasn’t ready and I think emotionally I wasn’t ready,” Brady said. “I was definitely still learning a lot of things about myself and I think the Tarot is about having a depth of knowledge and compassion for yourself and for others. And I just wasn’t there”  . . . . .

Her own deck, The Brady Tarot, is a set of hand-colored, linocut cards that she released in 2018. The imagery features nature, particularly fauna and flora native to North America. One of the most important things she wants is for people to realize that animals also “have rich inner lives and we’re not alone on this planet.”

Read the rest at Colorado Public Radio.

You’re Using Too Many Cards and Other Tarot Stuff

You are using too many cards — and too many candles.

The title of this post was inspired by a recent post by Thorn Mooney on Oathbound: “The Celtic Cross is Kind of Terrible.”

Near as anyone can tell, the Celtic Cross comes out of the assorted Golden Dawn materials and was propagated (if not totally invented) by A.E. Waite in the early 20thcentury. Waite was super into the Holy Grail/Celtic religion thing and was, like many of his colleagues, invested in demonstrating how there was a great deal of commonality in the various schools of occult thought, intersecting with ancient religions, etc., etc. Nobody at the time was really above making weak claims as to the antiquity of assorted pieces of occult wisdom, and the Celtic Cross just sort of gently leached into the magical water supply as the tarot’s popularity grew.

Like Thorn, I started with the “little white book (LWB) that listed vague keywords for each card, the usual bullshit history about the totally ancient art of divination with tarot, and instructions on performing a reading with the ubiquitous Celtic Cross spread.”

If you want to hear people doing cold readings with three-card spreads, listen to the consultation segments of the Lucky Mojo Hoodoo Rootwork Hour podcasts. You might pick up a few tips on divination — and the card readers almost always all three-card spreads.

Unrelated rant. I was watching the miniseries version of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell recently and, once again, the candles! Were there enough beehives in England to make wax for all those candles? Remember, back then the lighting choices were candles handmade from beeswax, high-end oil lamps burning oil rendered from whale blubber, or simple wick-type lamps burning some kind of animal fat or olive oil. That was all! Petroleum-based lighting did not start in a big way until the 1860s.

But if you watch(ed)  it, give credit to the costumers and set designers. Those were some of the most authentic-looking c.1800 men’s britches I have ever seen. Note how the men’s styles break on generational lines. You are seeing the 17th-18th century fashion of wigs suddenly ending (except in court) in the space of a few years, and also a total change in women’s styles with the Neoclassical revival.

The interior spaces were done well in terms of furniture, colors, and the general level of crime. But too many candles.

Childermass’s Tarot cards were a treat though. Such a level of greasiness!

Emily Dickson is the High Priestess of a new Tarot Deck

Emily Dickinson as the High Priestess in the American Renaissance Tarot.Read this interview at Reality Sandwich with Thea Wirsching, who together with artist Celeste Pille has created the American Renaissance Tarot deck,, based on leading writers, artists, and activists of the 19th century such as Emily Dickinson,   “I’ve seen the American Renaissance period described as the literature that appeared in the years 1830-1865,” Wirsching says, “but for this project I’ve expanded the range to 1825-1875, to include early comers and late bloomers.”

She continues,

I think it’s become fashionable to criticize and even to hate America, particularly in liberal and academic circles. Many of us are walking around in a lot of shame over who we are as a nation, and feel uncomfortable taking pride in a country that was built on the exploitation of African slaves and the genocide of indigenous people.  And while I don’t think we should ever forget those horrific facts in our history, we’ve also thrown the baby out with the bathwater and rejected the knowledge that American culture has also been productive of incredible writers, thinkers, visionaries, and spiritual savants. I think collective shame keeps the left from embracing an educated patriotism that could help us turn the political tide; this project celebrates outspoken abolitionists such as Thoreau and Lydia Maria Child, successful black men like Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany, and philosophical innovators like Emerson.  These Americans inspire pride and reverence in our history.

The project is more than half-completed, and as things are done today, it is at least partly crowd-funded. I’ll make a donation . . . but they had better have Nathaniel Hawthorne in there some place!

There Was More to “Pixie” than Tarot Cards

Pamela Coleman Smith, about 1912.

At Spiral Nature you can read a long review of a new book about Pamela Coleman Smith (Pixie to her friends), best known for designing probably the most popular Tarot deck of the twentieth century.

Corinne Pamela Colman Smith, who went by the nickname “Pixie,” defied so many social norms, it’s hard to keep count. The more you read about her, the more impressed you get.

Those who left written comments about their impressions of her confess how hard it was to place her within the gender, class, and racial categories of her time. W. B. Yeats, for instance, wrote that she looked “exactly like a Japanese. Nannie says this Japanese appearance comes from constantly drinking iced water.”

The book has four contributors: Elizabeth Foley O’Connor, currently at work on her own full biography of the artist; Stuart Kaplan’s (the Tarot publisher) section “is just the most incredible and comprehensive collection of Smith’s works to date, and maybe ever”; Melinda Boyd Parsons covers Smith’s experiences with the theatre and ceremonial magick worlds; and Mary K. Greer discusses her work in the context of Tarot history.

Read the whole thing.