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Fotografie: Heaven and Earth Workshops

Werken van Juliet Sharman-Burke

The Complete Book of Tarot (1985) 155 exemplaren
The Mythic Tarot Workbook (1988) 154 exemplaren
Beginner's Guide to Tarot (2001) 64 exemplaren
The New Complete Book of Tarot (2007) 37 exemplaren
The New Mythic Tarot (2011) 36 exemplaren
Beginner's Guide to Tarot (2017) 15 exemplaren
The Complete Tarot Pack (2007) 14 exemplaren
The Mythic Tarot: Tarot Deck Only (1986) 14 exemplaren
The Sharman-Caselli Tarot Deck (2005) 11 exemplaren

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1952
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female

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…. N.B. So yes: this is the first time I’ve cataloged and reviewed a tarot deck and its real-book accompanying guidebook (I’m not talking about a little white book with like eighty pages and each page is one inch wide and has two words on it—its guidebook was a moderate-length book), and I have to admit it does LOOK funny, because LT considers the book and the deck to be one book, whereas I consider them two books that just go together, so to speak…. In this particular case they seem especially different, since the book is what I would call psychoanalytic tarot theory, whereas the deck itself isn’t really something I can consider psychoanalysis, you know. That’s my interpretation.

……..

Reading/Meditation:

—Dionysos/the Fool must be the Initiate; he’s the Twice-Born….

…. —Hermes the Magician: I heard Hermes (not in like an intrusive, schizophrenic voice; it’s very different) tell me, you know, how he loves his brother Apollo, right; Apollo’s a cool cat; I forget what he said—but it’s funny how it makes my notes messy; it’s not like Dionysos—Dionysos, Hermes—Hermes, anymore, right: I feel like that’s why I resisted writing it down at first….

…. —Demeter/the Empress & Zeus/the Emperor:
I haven’t had a lot of groundedness, or true strength, with me in my life, haven’t had that modeled for me, you know: although I’ve certainly met a lot of gendered energy (I guess everything is gendered, one way or another), lots of fathers and mothers who weren’t healthy…. Although in the end, they just weren’t real: before any of that persuading me to let them hurt me, in one way or another, was their simply not being real…. Not being real, like the Empress & the Emperor are real.

…. —It is kinda curious how the Trumps are ordered in the Mythic Tarot book, like, the pairings: basically the Major Arcana if there had been no such thing as the Hebrew alphabet, basically…. It’s different….

—Persephone/The High Priestess & Chiron/the Hierophant:
Even more so than is the case with the feminine and masculine ways of power, I think, it is hard, with the feminine and masculine ways of knowledge, to respect one without really, hating and excluding the other, and especially in our current unbalanced society, you know….

…. It’s also curious, (odd that I’m going to specifically mention the Hierophant only, since IMO I feel more drawn to or at least more positive about the High Priestess, usually: very very often, at least), that, I mean, obviously the Mythic Tarot Hierophant could I guess still mean a “pope” or orthodox priest type, since I don’t know who else would signify that, you know—normie brain beliefs, right—but the native image of the Mythic Tarot Hierophant seems to suggest more a philosopher, an independent thinker, more tempted to dryness than superstition, right…. I really am starting to think that each deck has a certain sort of ‘character’ set or vibration that it’s best suited to, right—different races and gender norms, different cultures in more difficult to pin down senses….

…. But yeah, the High Priestess gets a little ‘dark’ when somebody wants to intrude and find out her secrets, (so they can punish her!); the Hierophant gets a little ‘dark’ when people don’t sit down and shut up and receive his outpouring of knowledge, right….

…. — Hera/Athena/Aphrodite~ The Lovers & Ares/The Chariot

Aphrodite is nice, no lie: but I’m wondering about getting that armor off Athena…. It’s fascinating that she entered a (pretty lol thing, but whatever) beauty contest, of all things; not the stereotypical Athena image…. Right?…. It’s true what Karen Horney (not to be confused with Horny Karen) once said, that all of us once believed in love, even if we later came to find more profit in other things….

…. Ares is the Other Hermes, right: he is the man’s man; and yet Aries is the little boy of the zodiac, the little warrior…. No one’s more feminine, in an unformed, childish way, than a little boy, he is not all masc-y at all…. And yet, no one will put his light saber in your gut and kill you quicker than a young boy; he is too young not to be all masculine; he has never known a goddess….

I suppose Ares is two horses, two very, very different horses—although I know that they are both wild….

A VERY different case from the 1909 Chariot, the Greek one is much more primitive and raw; I don’t know if Arthur & Pam’s chariot was supposed to be Greek, although nothing was supposedly more prosaic and native back then than Greek things, although they had ceased to understand them at all…. Even Plato imagined something like this having a role in the life of his philosophers, although learned commentators of the critiques of Kant could scarcely imagine it, if only they knew, right….

…. Athena/Justice & Iris/Temperance

I think it’s VERY funny—I don’t record every synchronous thing, because even EYE don’t think that anyone will ever care about Every Synchronous Thing—but I think it’s SO MUCH that I finish writing the review/reading Fred’s The Antichrist on Valentine’s Day which is also the first day of Lent on the year I turned 35 on the first day of the lunar month when both the Sun and the Moon were in Aquarius. And then I do my Tarot meditation and it’s these two cards, the female Zeus and the female Hermes, and the two female Moral Lessons out of the Four Moral Lessons in the (Mythic) Tarot.

I haven’t achieved all my goals yet—the average successful person achieves their goals by the time they’re like 65–but everywhere I go, the gods smile, the Goddess flirts and then runs away like a shy girl, and I am very happy, you know.

…. Iris/Temperance is what I imagined Jane Austen as being—you know, the Young Romantic wants the Girl of Girls, the Gender Guardian, or something, although really I suppose she was also Athena/Temperance, the universal woman, with a masc-y mind….

…. Athena is mostly craft, although her owl comes from nature; Iris is basically out in nature, but her cups are the product of civilization….

…. Heracles/Strength & Cronos/The Hermit:

—The Heracles and the Lion card is a good example of the Mythic Tarot being more primitive, basically, than the Edwardian, if you like, deck (1909), which is an accurate sense of what the Greeks were essentially like, you know. It’s a different energy.

From a goddess/dissident POV, it’s curious that in the classical period, that there were still kings who favored the Goddess, (Eurystheus), although essentially the classical interpretation of things is to say, Why worship Hera, when she’s the problem? ~you know.

Although the story of the Lion-Man or whatever is a pretty boss story, really. It CAN even represent growth—becoming less like Hitler, or whoever, instead of more like him. The god’s way isn’t the only way, but that is one of the gifts of the god.

—With Cronos it’s easy to become fixated on the weirdo-sex yet buzz-kill-y nature of the myths, (the fucking son, right—you want the, boy, to do that?), but there is a lot more going on. Cronos is the god of earth, time, limitation—big-ass shit, far-away shit, right. Time and limitation. You can only know the infinite through limitation.

…. I know that this is going to sound like bullshit, like when people bring in Kierkegaard to explain Shakespeare or whatever, while playing chess and so on, refining your pronunciation of French, etc—but I wonder if the cave of Heracles’ lion is like Plato’s cave. The cave of the battle is a primitive place, some people would probs experience it as a shitty place: and Plato’s cave is a primitive place, basically it’s Greece, Primitive Greece, a place he wanted to leave, if only in his mind…. It’s a good example of mythology not being a Georgian or whatever period drama—“thank god everyone is white and everything is good” you mouth to your partner silently—but I wonder if Plato missed out on the vigor of the primitive, you know, the pleasure of it….

It’s like, “Before the Irish Became White”, you know. Fuck HOW they became white, and all that. 😷

🦹‍♂️

…. The kings of the gods that came before Zeus are so ~mysterious~, you know: it’s like they were the kings of Atlantis, or something….

…. The primitive race is one.

…. The Fates/the Wheel of Fortune & Prometheus/the Hanged Man

This doesn’t come from the reading/meditating yet per se, but from my morning “routine” and the ordinary psychology I read, but basically: perfection includes imperfection….

Although I am surprised by how well it fits in with my both my morning, and my other reading—although I gave up, you know, a long time ago, trying to journal in the ordinary way and to write psychological sayings into them, both because it’s easy to make the synchronicities of daily life seem imaginary at best—or at least, boring; often they’re a little boring once they’re finished, or at least, I feel like they’d come off that way to others—and because it’s easy to make even non-woo-woo psychology sound like gobbley-gook, you know: you strip it of all terminology and strangeness, and you offer it to your friend, and it still just seems like the opposite of ‘reality’, you know…. And that can be a helpful experience: realizing just how far off the beaten track you are just by not being unaccountably crazy; and yet that other time—not because of sudden change, and yet still, it’s “like another lifetime, or somebody else’s life”, although somehow we can fail to perceive that…. Like, THAT was the “explicable” thing, to be expected, and not this…. So, yeah, what’s a morning routine, right. Your precious, precious morning routine, where everything is quiet and clean 🧼 🤫…. It’s odd, it’s easy to react to it as though you’d raped somebody, or at least seduced them or sex-ed up somebody, right….

But really: perfection includes imperfection.

…. But yeah: different individuals and groups have different ideas about ‘fate and free will’ and obviously it is one of the most tiresome things to discuss, let alone ‘prove’. I guess I believe that fate isn’t fully fixed, but is probably partially fixed, or mostly fixed. I wouldn’t understand the meaning of life if we had no ‘wiggle-room’, but nor could I explain the results people have in life if I thought that we had a great, or large degree of freedom in any one life…. But yeah, the Fates are what people fear, the ‘Night’ that is mysterious and passive and dark, and which men by instinct call evil.

…. It would certainly be wrong to think that there was never a pagan Christ, or to think that many times a good god has not come—Tiphereth (spelling? from Kabbalah), or Prometheus, or even the Jesus of the Christians, you know…. I suppose the ‘results’ of Christianity are not so much a result of the archetype itself as, by supposing that they are wicked themselves and cannot do it over again—‘greater things than this you shall do’—with the ceaseless coming and going of day and night they replace the good Tiphereth, the god in the middle of the Tree, with a sort of false Tiphereth, a false Jesus—a false god, a demon—since, “we are all evil and cannot do good unto the children of men”, you know.

…. Wow, the little man at the top of the Wheel is sitting pretty as though he were Brahma or something, you know: like he created a nice little Indian robe for himself at the end of the Creation of the World, right…. But then, what becomes of him…. And what does the little man get for all of it, one puny little temple for the whole subcontinent, since he such a little, little god who made all things: so vague, almost, the god of all wisdom and all success….

…. There is someplace out of the world and far away, where things are decided, most things, really: although it is also because of what we do, that reaches that other place….

…. And then there is simply the world, where things are done and suffered, though it is a “card” I cannot explain….

…. Hades/Death & Pan/the Devil:

“When we change, a new attitude or new circumstances may come, but the old way is dead and will never return in its original form.”

In a sense this is something I do not dispute at all: it is a bedrock of creativity over historicism, an understanding Wicca has IMO, that if you like less creative forms of religion, whether pagan or not, usually lack. Life is a wheel, and it comes round again: but it never turns back. It is always doing something new…. And therefore, there is death, you know.

But for someone who’s changed several times over the course of the lifespan up to this point, someone who has let the old self die more than once—when I stopped being a Christian I handled it rather well; I slipped into temporary agnosticism with a certain grace, allowed myself that privilege of letting go, and not knowing without raging—and yet for all that I feel a little strange, half-developed, as one who does not ~really~ understand all the wisdom I have wielded, you know. It is not my habit to trust ‘death’, to trust risk, you know…. Not surprising, I guess, since most people are loudly terrified of all forms of death, though they deny this in various ways…. But though usually death and rebirth need only happen little by little, it is practically very single time with me that I can only take a very, very little of it at a time, you know.

…. Pan is another god easy to deceive oneself about, you know. It is easy to consider him all good or all bad, perhaps in turns, raging at the dirty capitalists and their slutty daughters, and laughing at the Buddhist addiction counselor in turns, not really knowing which side we’re ‘really’ on, you know…. Though on the very bottom is probably some form of shame, you know. I think that when we respect Pan, and don’t try to shame him and annihilate him, we can speak to him in a more fitting, sensible way, you know. When you don’t insist that it is all wickedness that does nothing but hurt you, since it hurts you in your imagination, it’s easier to see to it that no harm or disfigurement results…. Naughty sex things don’t have to be a bad use of…. Energy…. But usually they are harmful because people are acting out shame and cannot distinguish between harmful shame/desiring shame, and wanting something that’s been put on the naughty list, you know: like you’re seven again and secret Santa is openly shaming you, you know….

But yeah, easier said than done. Even people who enjoy sex and sexual fantasies often only like them when they seem strong, almost noble, very powerful and twistedly romantic, you know: a world is born and dies when you sit in the seat of the devil and (cougheroticwordscough), you know. It’s hard to like Pan when he/she is just dirty and ordinary, even if they are physically excellent; one only wants the birth and death of worlds for the nobility in it, right…. But even sexual activities can be a LITTLE ordinary, you know. You do not want to merely act out your desire to hate and uselessly disfigure yourself, you know; and whatever you are in doing, and whether it is a payout of feelings and psychism or anything else, one wants a decent return on whatever kind of energy one invests, you know….

Which isn’t to say it’s all calculation, you know. Sex isn’t ~completely~ ordinary. But religion is feeling—computers have no religion—and sometimes the overwhelm of feelings of disgust, of one’s slighted dignity, that come from religion, or perhaps felt philosophy, or emotional family or societal instruction, just overwhelm all sensible borders one might place, you know—the Edwardian manor house isn’t supposed to have a front door answered by a female or maid, no matter how they’re dressed, because looking at a woman in public isn’t quite as dignified and controlled, potentially; it’s just…. Well, I mean, people are bullshit; there’s no sense trying to make sense of it. But yes, even the world’s ‘sinners’ often only want a certain image of their ‘sin’, and do not want to think of themselves as being ordinary mammals with the average amount of hair or whatever it is you don’t like about them, you know….

And not that my ~words~ are necessarily untrue, but yet these Are the words of someone, who does ~not~ know, you know….

…. And the other side of death is life, the other side of the river; it really makes a difference, the card in full color vs the greyscale in the book….

…. Hades is the god that we have hated, though he has done us no wrong…. ‘How you live is how you die’, isn’t that what that California Buddhist girl said?….

…. (screams and flutes)
(British TV person) What is that~ awful noise!
—Oh, that’s just the devil, making his music….

…. People are funny, you know. ~For anyone to represent Death and the Devil, you’d have to be (draws out word) e-vuhl…. I do NOT want death; and I do NOT want animal life…. C’mon, what else you got? “Sandwich?” Sure. (bites). What sandwich is it? “Dead animal kind….”

…. the Labyrinth/the Tower & Pandora/the Star:

No special thoughts from reading about these two. The Tower is another one of those jump-scare cards for some people, but actually it is the downfall of evil and not its reign. It is useful how Juliet (such a feminine name, although I imagine an Athene as the author, if not an actual man!) calls the Tower ~the one man-made structure in the Major Arcana; and representative of false morals or values (and their fall from power). The myth of Pandora given in the card of the Star—the popular, generally-given one—is actually a patriarchal form of the story, which seems much less attractive to me than the obscure form given in “Lost Goddesses of Early Greece”. Still, it’s an attempt to make something of that famous myth of the fathers, you know.

…. I never saw it before, but I guess Poseidon’s trident is pretty lunar in symbolism; I guess the Mythic Tarot Tower could be seen as a very ‘my moon, my enemy’ kind of card, then.

…. And, yeah: trust a patriarchal-age writer to say that the gifts of the Goddess are disgusting insect critters, and an abstract concept, right. (weary smile) But that is, of course, one stage of consciousness….

I mean, yeah: it’s more the (of course) related concept of pessimism, than the “upright” (I know this deck doesn’t use reversals, just go with it) concept of optimism, you know. But it’s the myth of the fathers, and pessimism is essentially masc-y in character, and optimism essentially femme-y…. I hate being asked to choose, sometimes: but there you have it….

…. Hecate/the Moon & Apollo/the Sun:

In terms of the mythology retold, the Hecate stuff is kinda patriarchal, you know, although the stuff about psychology and the unconscious, and the card’s link with the High Priestess and the Wheel of Fortune, is good. It is true that the Moon is like the more ‘negative’ and impersonal version of the High Priestess, you know.

I feel weird saying anything about Apollo, perhaps the great masculine principle, in such a patriarchal context, although certainly there is masculinity apart from ‘all that’, you know. Robert Graves said, ‘goodbye to all that’, you know, but whatever it is still hasn’t left the room, you know, nor have we. But yeah: the Sun is almost always a ‘better’ card than the Moon, and people are even more likely to see it that way, you know. (Even the average person has an opinion about what the cards ~refer to~, right.) Sometimes I wonder if that’s because the masculine principle is free, and the feminine principle needs somewhere to store its pain, right…. And then I decide I’m being too speculative, right.

…. I don’t like the Moon card; it’s too yellow. I feel like that Coldplay song should be playing, right…. The psychoanalysts aren’t stupid and they’re not bad, but sometimes they don’t get the femme principle, right. Most scholars and people don’t necessarily get close enough to it for that to become obvious, perhaps, but still….

…. But the Apollo card is nice. It’s very nice.

…. Hermes the Psychopomp/Judgment & Hermaphroditus/the World:

But yeah: the Goddess is the one who is always with you, and she is that which is attained at the end of desire; but HERMES is the one who plays with you when you’re a little psycho baby duckling, and he’s the one who reveals Da Truth to you as the Psychopomp, at the journey’s end, right.

…. Hermaphroditus is an interesting symbol, but…. Maybe they could have just made her/him seem, androgynous? There’s non-binary, and then there’s…. Man, you can’t have that many eyes: you can have four eyes if you got glasses, motherfucker. Not cause you got two heads! 😒

It would be nice to be able to portray someone as both truly gender non-conforming/ambiguous, and yet also beautiful…. But this is not it, homies.

…. (Begins meditation) OMG, he’s like an Indian guy; this is great: “improve the monetary success with music of Hermes” it’s like ~ 🇮🇳 ~ dude: I feel special…. Maybe now that Russia is Stalin again and everybody knows, the Indian accent can take the place of the Russian accent in the pleasantly foreign category, right: like, where the Irish used to be, right, before the Irish became like pizza slice normal, right…. I mean, Eastern European empires weren’t as successful; I don’t want to hate/other, but there’s only so much Europe, right: eventually you’ve got to move on, keep moving, accept another group, right…. 🪽 👟 🪽

…. In death, there is no judgment: only learning…. Perhaps critique, perhaps a little disappointment, but only for the majority, lol…. But judgment does not have to be dah na na na…. JUDGMENT!! 👹

Right?

…. Yeah, and I just don’t like the Mythic Tarot card the World, right…. Sometimes the thing with psychoanalysts is that they tend to get just close enough to beauty for their lack of beauty-sense to become an issue, right; “I fumbled it when it came down to the wire….” They’re not philosophers, and they’re not…. What DO you call someone with beauty-sense, anyway? An artist? A model?…. A priestess? A priest?….

…. But yeah, that’s the Major Arcana; I might comment sporadically on the other cards, but not as regularly. I will read and meditate on the numbered cards, but basically with one more review I think it will make sense which part of the story of Psyche, Jason, Orestes, or Daedalus is being showed, you know…. It is different, and I’m not trying to be like some Marseilles-era pedant who thought that only those 22 cards mattered, right, but: this deck seems much more divergent in the big 22, even though the numbered ones are more different from 1909 than in some decks. I mean, if you didn’t stop and think about the gods for the Trumps, you’d not know anything about the specific Mythic Tarot qualities of the deck. But with the numbered ones, a very little recollection suffices, usually, I think. The Court Cards are in between, naturally I guess: I will mark down who they’re supposed to be, but I think I might not comment at all on some of them; some of them I don’t know, anything about to speak of, right. I don’t say that this is correct, but my bias from early childhood and 7th grade lit class and so on, is that mythology is “supposed to be” about the gods, not the heroes, right: which tells you something about my knowledge, probably, if nothing else…. So yeah. It’ll take awhile to finish, but the writing is mostly done, maybe, although I have to wrap up with 3-11 random cards, to do a reading to let the Mythic Tarot tell you about itself, with as little directed choice as possible, right….

…. I guess I’ll also note the divinity for each ace.

Ace of Cups—Aphrodite

…. Two of Cups—very primitive. I feel like someone situated well enough to be a merchant or something in what we might almost call the early (printed) Tarot centuries, the Renaissance or whatever, might have had a much better experience of life than the average Greek of Apollonian/Zeus-centric days, you know. Although maybe the bottom was lower in the Middle Ages too, like for some people the card WAS the same, only Eros lets her die, and up, that’s it. (discards the entire suit of Cups). “Go to cherch!!!!”

…. Psyche is borderline ugly in this, something about the eyes, although one hates to insult any woman, and especially the like, one woman who’s the hero character for a suit, out of the four, right…. Still, Jungians, right: there’s something about the Jungians; one is always suspecting one will find them waxing pedantic with the help of an Atlantic slave trade ship captain, about some girl who’s borderline ugly, you know….

But the image of Eros is great. Very classic and attractive. I would like to look like that, ok.

~Trumpinator Bobblehead approves this message…. C’mon guys, I expect ~targeted ads, now: do your research, spy spy spy: be the spymaster god, don’t just fling worthless random crap at me…. (Tom Cruise climbing through ventilation tubes, looking through vents, whatever…. Okay, he’s looking for music to charge his crystal to; let’s see: he probably doesn’t want a Trump ad…. (Bot) “Truminator Bobblehead as, narrated by The Donald.” (Tom Cruise, you’re hurting me rage) “I said he doesn’t want a Trump ad! He doesn’t want the bobblehead!”

…. (Three of Cups) Is that the same girl? Wow, fuck some of this artwork, right…. It’s like an aging marriage counselor did it during analysis hour or something…. I try to not to dump on the psychoanalysts, right: but make it easy for me, holy shit….

…. (Six of Cups) This card kinda makes me wonder about the whole thing of not really relying on numerology and Kabbalah and having the cards be phases in a relatively normal (to a psychologist) linear story, albeit a mythological one. Six is one of Pythagoras’s “perfect” numbers; it’s the perfect number that’s in the decad. It’s not the end of the 1-10 story, but is a beautiful number. Among cups/emotions, it is children and cups and flowers. It’s beautiful feelings. It’s not just Psyche’s consolation prize for not slitting her wrists straight off. That seems like quite a cynical take…. Sometimes psychoanalysts, I will soon know (vegan version of, “I don’t know”, cf Jen Sincero), it’s not that I think they’re on the wrong road, exactly: there is philosophical worship of the gods, of seeing the god as Idea, rather than as Person—that has always been a possibility, regardless of what humans do or do not see—but they usually have not gone to the end of their path, or necessarily very far at all, really…. Richard Rohr liked to talk about “unpacking” Christianity; I hate to compare anyone to the Christians, (even if Richard IS a relatively decent sort), but really psychoanalysts have some unpacking to do, as well….

…. (Seven of Cups) Visually it’s a terrible card in this deck, because Psyche looks like she’s about seven years old, not like she’s going to get married in a few weeks, right. I mean, she regressed from like 20 to 7, right.

It’s also terrible symbolically, or in association, because the Seven of Cups is indeed supposed to be ‘castles in the air’, but that is surely not what’s going on here. Castles in the air is, “Do I marry Jo, or do I marry Amy”, right: you’re mad as a March hare with possibilities, none of which are anything but very fuzzy, at best. This part of the Psyche story is different though: Aphrodite gives Psyche a tangible quest; she gives her no uncertain marching orders, right. It’s just not the same situation.

It’s just too arithmetical; it’s not really numerological. It’s too rationalist-heavy; it’s like imagining one’s career progress as a series of HR interviews, right. That’s probably what you’re educating into believing, right, probably what some people do believe—it’s a very legal civilization, and HR is part of that; it’s law, not psychology….

But yeah, at some point I’m going to have to get some other Greek Tarot type deck; this one…. Yeah.

…. (Nine of Cups) Aphrodite is so much more attractive than Psyche in this picture. Now, maybe I don’t really mean this—every god is a little Zeus and all that—but it does seem profoundly unfair to the girl falling in love or whatever to have the goddess of love standing more or less right next to her as it’s happening, looking much more fuckable, basically.

It’s kinda funny, you know. Jungians should read the odd crappy book now and then—watch a season of a middling TV show, you know. Figure out what the deep profound stuff refers back to in mundane, ordinary situations, right. As it is, they tend to miss the point. Sometimes spectacularly, you know: real goofy shit. 👨‍🎨 🖼️ 🪂

…. Page of Cups—Narcissus

…. Knight of Cups—Perseus

…. Christianity and the gossips and so on, the post-Christians, you know, the fault finders: they couldn’t deal with Narcissus, you know….

…. Queen of Cups—Helen

…. King of Cups—Orpheus

Incidentally I just got the similarly named (and also Greek-themed) but really rather different Mythos Tarot, and I have to say it’s what this deck should have been. It’s boss. It’s more beautiful, and less confusing/unclear/inappropriate, you know. It does have a book—a real book, not a “little white book”, but it is very much a deck with a book, whereas this is much more a book with a deck, and that’s just…. I mean, ideally, both would go above and beyond, but if you have to choose, I know which side of that equation is missing the point, you know.

…. Ace of Wands—Zeus

…. (wands—just in general) The suit of wands doesn’t seem ruined like the suit of Cups, however after seeing Juliet’s theory at work in Cups, I have to say I’m decidedly unenthused, to say the least, about seeing (what Crowley calls) the “small cards” depicted as a relatively normal linear story, you know…. It makes it sound like there was once a story that was pure-small-cards-of-the-same-suit-lined-up-in-order, and once you say it like that, that doesn’t seem like even the son of a god would have a story that pure and abstract upon the earth…. The numbered cards of a suit do kinda tell a story: but it’s not a story that happens like, Yup, here’s your spread: One Two Three…. (4-8) Nine Ten of Wands. Okay: this is what might happen to you….

Just like reading too many books, you ruin the suit or Cups, you also make things too…. abstract/pure/perfect, you know.

Jungians! (gif of someone smoking)

…. The Four of Wands seems inappropriate. In general the idea of Jason isn’t too far off—an archetypal adventure story as the story of fire, right—but this is a good example of the bad trade of exchanging the abstract, I guess you could call it: the stable, merciful fire, vs just a semi-arbitrary point along a specific journey. There IS something in fire’s story, after all, that isn’t adequately summed up in, “what’s between Bree and Rivendell”, you know—lots of orcs, and not one bit of the adventure of love, Jesus be praised!, you know. And the kid looks weird, and the symbolic people aren’t symbolically balanced, you know.

Of course, the six is perfectly fine in the distinct Greek-primitive style, and the five is actually rather beautiful, really—the dark mother and the great warrior and the dragon-fight…. But yeah, I don’t mean to unload on the four. I was walking towards the lobby to check out before I got there, and even a totally flawless Wands suit wouldn’t have made me a fan of a deck with a whole 1-10 sequence which is garbage, you know.

…. The Eight and Nine of Wands are pretty cards, although I’m not attached to them.

I actually think there should be a temporary happiness in between the final trials of the Nine and the overwhelm of the Ten, at least if we’re lol thinking that we can tell this story of people in a linear way, you know, rather than as numerology, (lol—“but I’m doing both!”), which would actually be the Four, you know—the hero’s reward. Numerology does have to do with numbers, but it’s not arithmetic.

…. The Seven of Wands is kinda dumb looking, but I’m not gonna go there. 😹

…. Page of Wands—Phrixus

…. Knight of Wands—Bellerophon

…. Queen of Wands—Penelope

…. King of Wands—Theseus

…. Penelope looks pretty boss, like a real hero; and Theseus looks very much like I imagine an Athenian being, very noble, I guess….

…. It is slightly weird, of course, how the Kings and Queens aren’t married/partners, but it’s not the best deck, and even in a really good one, that might be a tough thing to juggle, you know….

…. Ace of Swords—Athene

…. (4-6) It’s uncanny; it’s almost enough to make me wish that I didn’t meditate through all the cards so much, for hope I wouldn’t get all of them—ah, but that is folly….

But yeah: it is kinda like the Bhagavad Gita or something. Because how can your enemy not be your mother, basically? Is anything separate from anything else? How could you ever exclude anything…. Ever, really, you know?…. And yet sometimes, you must fight, even if you must fight yourself: even as if it were your own flesh and blood…. But I can’t explain it.

…. (1-10 of Swords in general) I don’t believe the Mythic Tarot numbered cards rests on a good theory, so it’s amazing how well it fits, in the case of the suit of Swords. How much better it works than the Cups! It’s good that they did some things well, and yet the lack of balance is striking. I’m not sure I’d like using a deck where the best-thought-out suit was Swords, you know. Not that Swords is a ‘bad’ suit, you know—all la-di-da garden party, you know…. Actually, although the accumulation of wealth IS a good thing, the way it’s inherited in our society—the way it’s meant to be passed down with a minimum of struggle~ without any sort of test; it’s not based on killing the old king and marrying his daughter, like in some matrilineal fairy-tale kingdom, with vigorous men and free women, you know (cf Crowley’s Tarot book), you know: that part IS a little questionable, the whole “institution of the family”, I guess you could say…. But yeah, a ~lack~ of Swords can be awful: you can’t figure anything out, have any agency, or GO anywhere, you know…. But some people are positively uncritical in their support of the mind-war suit: the worse it treats them, the better they like it…. I’m not sure I’d like a deck where the best-thought-out suit was Swords, you know….

…. (Seven of Swords) Really I guess I was lingering on the Seven because my mind was wandering: I have things to do; part of me wants to jump ahead a few days instead of meditating…. (cue for jackass Zen master to sneak up behind you and thwack you with a stick) You weren’t meditating! You were spewing words inside your mind! ~ But yeah, it’s funny how the Seven is like where things either reaches out towards their conclusion and towards success: makes the final preparations before the ‘home stretch’, or else kinda…. Implodes and turns suck-y, you know. The 7 of Swords is betrayal, or guile. The 7 of Pentacles is failure, or drudgery. The 7 of Cups is fantasy, or illusion. The 7 of Wands is in-fighting, fighting over the spoils of victory…. It’s like you’re practically three-quarters of the way to victory: but it’s also a great place to fall on your ass and get defeated, right….

…. (Nine of Swords) I realize Wagner was more heathen/northern than Mediterranean/classical, but this looks like it NEEDS some mythological opera music courtesy of the world’s most culturally insensitive composer of symphonic music, right….

…. But yeah: I feel like the Swords are more linear than the other suits, basically…. It’s how a scientist or a philosopher, or maybe a historian, thinks that the world is “really is”, or maybe “Should Be”, right…. (tinny sing-song voice) ~Everything happens in a linear fashion, my boys: in a perfectly logical straight line….

…. But yeah: the ~best~ Swords card is the Six, no question: the movement on the sacred journey; the coming of knowledge; as a Six, it’s very beautiful, you know…. But it’s easy to malign the Seven, hard to come up with a problem-free alternative. “Are there any Jews in this house?” “Oh, yes: we’re hiding five Jews in our house—they’re right over there. The Bible has some hard sayings that I don’t think that Hitler would be able to disprove…. Of course, it also clearly disapproves of lying!” 🥀 🦄

…. Page of Swords—Zephyrus

…. Knight of Swords—Castor and Polydeuces

…. Queen of Swords—Atalanta

There are problems sometimes with ancient-patriarchy stories, and I feel like I enjoy Queen of Swords energy more than a lot of people do, but I feel like I understand now what they I guess were trying to communicate. (Although I don’t think the card conveys that idea visually, which is a weakness of this deck, especially in most of the Court cards, with a few exceptions probably say the Page of Swords.) Atalanta isn’t “proving” her worthiness or displaying her mastery, like an athlete, almost, or bragging on herself and enjoying herself, by defeating all those men, you know. She just has impossible standards, and she considers people to be unworthy. She’s not getting enjoyment out of it. It’s not a “game”—she’s like one of those sporty guys who yells and screams their voice out at the ref, and sulks when they lose, etc…. She’s not enjoying defeating men; she just doesn’t enjoy that much in life, so she keeps people out. It’s two very different energies. Really, it’s trauma, you know. And of course, there’s the aspect that a patriarchal Greek would have trouble imagining a really happy woman who had that unconventional vibe, you know. Traumatized girls they could get, maybe even have insight into, but not really happy, vibrantly alive non-conformist ones, basically.

…. King of Swords—Odysseus

I have read Homer, and looking back I have to say that if Odysseus is an intellectual, he is certainly a very ‘primitive’ intellectual, and the modern rationalist intellectual of today, would not really appreciate Odysseus if he were really before them. When I read Homer it occurred to me that I did not really appreciate Odysseus, although I didn’t hate him. Now…. I’m not sure. One day I shall know better. But yeah: the average intellectual likes Odysseus very much because “that’s what you do”, you know. It’s not a conscious/honest reaction. He was quite unlike what we value today. He didn’t really build an empire or become rich or anything like that. His story is profoundly unproductive: he doesn’t “accomplish” anything other than solving problems because he likes the riddle-solving experience itself, and doing what he damn well pleases because he is a prince, even if he has not “accomplished” much at the end of his story. But I’m also not convinced that what we value today—build an empire; “show me the money”; “progress is everything”—is necessarily better, you know…. A lot of contemporary classics scholars are apparently also saying this today, but I do think it can very very misleading, even though in a sense I suppose there is a “Western” culture, but it can be very misleading to assume that we understand the Greeks, you know. It’s probably better to assume that we don’t understand them, as they are in themselves, however much they’ve changed our lives, you know.

…. Ace of Pentacles—Poseidon

And, yeah—as much as I do kinda feel weird being the pedant from the dawn of tarot book days, saying symbolism is ‘correct’ or ‘not correct’, still there is…. KINDA…. correct and incorrect, right—I don’t know whether the symbolism is that representative of how things really are: it seems better than the Cups, and not as good as the Swords, which I guess fits in with the masculinist theme, right…. And yeah, it’s funny: pentacles are “supposed to be” feminine, but this suit for this deck is very, very masculine, kinda like how work is perceived by the general culture, you know—them not having the idea of ‘four things, two masc-y and two femme-y’, right: the general culture is kinda like, Girls, you go ~love~ something, right…. I’ll handle everything else…. I realize Athene ~presides over Swords~ in this deck, or whatever, and Athene is a great deity, nothing wrong with her: but it’s like, sacred matricide in Swords followed by a Men At Work sign on the side of the highway, right…. “What a perfect, wonderful, ~Balance~…. All things are in balance…. Can you feel the balance….?” Oh yeah…. 🤢

But in terms of tarot numbers to tarot images, chaining it to a linear story doesn’t seem to have caused as much problems as for Cups, or even Wands, maybe…. But yeah, it’s weird….

…. And it’s too bad, because Poseidon is a great god too, you know: earth-shaker; money mover, I guess…. But yeah, it’s just not a great thing, what the Greco-Jungians have put their heads together and done for us, here….

(Seven of Pentacles)

(Queen Pasiphae) (“HomeGoods is my favorite store” expression) I want to have sex with the bull.
(Daedalus) I wonder what the Republicans would say about this….

I say we let the Republicans and the angry normies win this fight, Daedie…. Pick your battles.

And I just don’t get this as the Seven of Pentacles—isn’t this card “Failure”, for Crowley? The 1909 card is kinda polite/censored, but it basically shows an agricultural worker suffering in the heat. (The Tarot of the Old Path isn’t a great deck, but I think they improved that card in it.)….

The way that card is described in the book is just…. It is true that intellect can unlock the gates of sex, those supposedly barbaric gates, and that sometimes custom becomes rabid and actually over-emotes while simultaneously forbidding emotion…. But there’s not assigning inflatedness to sex, and…. I mean, generally people should be allowed to do things in private that look disgusting: “journalists” shouldn’t break and enter and say, “that’s disgusting!”—it’s like, this is not your home…. But you can’t help someone do that because she has some alcoholic-spiritual vision, you know.

(8-10 of Pentacles) And the other cards are just, I’m Daedalus. I’m a male. I have value. My bank balance reflects that. ~Like I talked about I guess, there’s a vast gulf in terms of validity, I guess you could say, between the market as the fair and expansive feedback on people’s, at least, physical choices, and just the money system as the reification and solidification of people’s prejudices, you know…. And yes, my dear friend Carlos Marxista, my dear friend the mad hatter in the attic, sometimes it is the latter, instead of the former….

…. Page of Pentacles—Triptolemus

Oh, wow, Garden Boy. I wonder what his story is.

(He’s there when Persephone gets abducted by the king of hell.)

(his brother or somebody) “That’s some serious trauma, bro…. Gonna be nightmares.” 😓

…. Knight of Pentacles—Aristaeus

…. Queen of Pentacles—Omphale

The woman who owned Hercules: word up! 😗

…. King of Pentacles—Midas

I don’t care what anybody tells me: Midas is ~boss~, yo.

*clicks item*

—“Turn to gold?”

A: Yeah man: turn to GOLD!!!
B: Nah bro. It’s food or something.

*Yeah man: turn to GOLD!!!*

(does a little dance, brandishing his golden wood) Hell yeah, motherfucker! Woot!

Perfect final card lol.

…. So, yes: I like to do a reading with the deck that is it telling me about itself, after I’m done meditating through the cards: RNG says I’ll take five cards. They are:

The Chariot, Temperance, Ace of Pentacles, The Devil, and the Seven of Cups.

There’s really no set spread I use for these “deck tells about self” readings, so I guess I’ll just divide them into Major and Minor Arcana.

The Seven of Cups kinda reminds me why I don’t want to use this deck. The Sevens are starting to seem to me to be cards of misfortune, and the Mythic Tarot Cups just seem terribly done, not least this card. It’s just…. Weird. The Ace of Pentacles isn’t terribly designed, and it’s curious to think that I could work with Poseidon for wealth, and the Ace is maybe the best designed card out of the 1-10 Pentacles sequence in this deck, but I feel very ambivalent about it for promoting the whole “wealth is essentially male” thing that normal culture has, that seems to have a lot more to do with prejudice than true symbolism, really. So not something really great, the minor arcana of this deck, and sometimes pretty bad.

The Major Arcana—Chariot, Temperance, and the Devil, kinda underlines the sex-culture dimorphism that I guess is here, given how primitive and ancient this tarot interpretation is. I used to be more nervous about sex-culture dimorphism than I once was, you know: I was in church yesterday and I heard a woman dismiss a Christian book she read to another woman, as kinda airy fairy philosophy, or whatever she said, and there was a time when that would have made me feel both uncomfortable and kinda afraid for her: like she was gonna kinda mess up and/or miss out on, the great mystery of the knowledges, you know…. Now, I kinda get it, to a certain extent. But I do think the majority of people don’t need to be told that, that they’re already too inflexible in their ideas, both in general and often especially in the aspect of sex-culture, so seeing Iris the healer and Ares the killer next to each other: it’s not ~wrong~, exactly, but it’s…. Not worth supporting. And then Pan as the Devil, the hairy, ugly, primitive goat, you know…. I feel like sometimes in ancient times there was much too much of that primitive hairy ugly goat sex-culture, and that the women just fled before it and hid, almost, you know…. And then the Jungians come and they kinda…. Like, they rationalize, you know. They disapprove of nothing because they feel nothing deeply, which isn’t ALWAYS, the answer, you know: it’s appropriate for a therapist, and most people make the opposite error, which is at least as bad, if not worse, but…. Just to approve of behavior because life doesn’t really happen for you: I don’t know. There has to be a difference between that mask you wear as a therapist, or perhaps as a stranger: and something else…. I feel like the stars are in a different place since the dominance of the sex-culture of the ugly and primitive in ancient times was the best and only thing, you know: and indeed, since the time when feminine frailty was set up as its corollary.

Let’s see, bonus cards: Knight of Wands…. And the next Trump is the Hanged Man: yeah, I feel like this tarot deck should go on a journey; be “sacrificed” (given away anonymously)….
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
goosecap | 2 andere besprekingen | Mar 4, 2024 |
N.B. No reversals in the Mythic Tarot. I find nothing wrong with reversals in general, but I’ll honor the wishes of the editors and not use reversals when using this deck.

This will be the review for the normal-sized book, the guidebook, for the Mythic Tarot. I will review the cards themselves, the cards in use, if you like, separately, later.

I would say that this is a psychoanalytic or Jungian book, rather than a Greek Wicca (I assume that there are Greek Wiccans, in addition to vanilla, Celtic, and Norse ones, right?), Greek Recon, or some other Neopagan religion. The authors don’t worship the gods as gods but see them as manifestations of the unconscious and archetypes of the personality, which I think is part of what they are. Maybe it doesn’t matter, as you could certainly use the cards as a pagan, but I think it’s of note that the theory of the people who wrote this book is not religious, but psychoanalytic. Of course, I think that the deck of cards themselves wouldn’t actually be psychoanalytic like the book, but a general spiritual psychology thing (new age, if you like). Tarot cards aren’t really a part of psychoanalysis per se, even if it can be more welcoming and allied to the uncanny or whatever than say Albert Ellis (a straightforward son of the philosophers). But I can’t see a straight Jungian really practicing that like a psychic (let alone a witch)—just talking about it. [At least, that’s the image in my mind from my own admittedly limited life experiences.]

Anyway. As for the general approach of the cards, (which I have not used yet), I think it’s fair to say that there’s less numerology and Kabbalah in them; I suppose you could say that mythology or literature has taken their place (a trio of Greek tragedies, for example, for the Swords); it is true that the Major Arcana are basically kin to the classic deck, although they are ordered rather differently in the book and not numbered at all on the cards themselves, but the Minor Arcana are rather different in truth, being more stages in a story, not an abstract story but one from literature, the adventures of Psyche, or the adventures of Jason, and so it’s not really intuited from study of Kabbalah and numerology.

I’m not sure if I like it, or how well I like it, or if I’ll be able to use it eventually, but I have to say it’s quite surprising, you know. Everybody thinks they know Greek mythology, but probably the better you delude yourself that you know the more deceived you are, basically. I don’t know. It requires study, even at its most familiar.

…. This might not come across to you the way I experience it, but if there’s something in Greek ideas, not least the mythology but in my opinion present throughout, even in Plato for instance, that marks it as different from what succeeded it—and this is something that we tend not to understand, and often stereotype away, and in the recent past told the most outstanding lies about—it’s the ~primitiveness~ of Greek civilization, you know. The first flower, in that part of the world…. The civilization of the Middle Ages and after isn’t better or worse for trying to heap up more power and a new God with more conscious control and more people with refined airs and all the rest of it, but there are disadvantages to that. After a certain point (Christianization? Industrialization?) people started to forget how things had been at the beginning of time, or the beginning of human life, human culture. The Greeks didn’t forget. Even after there started to be philosophers, they hadn’t forgotten that rough basement down there, the raw beginnings of human consciousness. And maybe it’s there for a reason….

Strong, rough, powerful males, and passive, weird, omnipotent females. The un-reason, the primitive. The beginning. Foundation.

…. I love how there are two Hermes cards, the Magician and the Psychopomp (Judgment). I’ve mostly thought about Hermes the child, the magician, and thought little—consciously, at least—about the out-of-the-world Hermes, the Hermes of the dead and the spirit world. Once I just wasn’t interested in very-spiritual things; I was young, young-young: and more recently I guess I thought of Hermes so named as being the child/magician, and my Christian books about the future life as being the Hermes-not-so-named, you know….

But there are differences between the judgment of Hermes Psychopomp and the Christian notion of hell (and heaven, of course—gotta keep the lemmings hoping). Even apart from the long long things I wrote trying to disentangle the judgment of the dead in Christianity from the racist-version-of-hell: and you could spill a lot of ink on that, and at the end of the day, the folk-custom-verdict is still going to be, ‘I wasn’t really listening; change things to make them bloodier, or not at all…. Yeah, I wasn’t listening, bro.’—there’s also the (more popular, of course: but this is not a logical necessity to be a point against it) more psychologically fundamental point that we make our own judge: the judge comes from inside us. Once we have fashioned our judge, he must judge us without brooking lies—lies, idiocies, and childishness—but it is not some ‘objectively true’ thing that was fated for us when some old man wrote a book in another millennium, so that people could pretend to be very ‘merciful’ and ‘good’, and then of course beat all the mercy and goodness out of it in daily life (and therefore, in the fine legal print), because the business of conquering the world had left them a little busy, you know. A little harried.

There is more than one Hermes. There’s the Good Child Hermes. There’s the Mercury Retrograde Hermes, when he’s a little girl bitch to people, when he pleases to be, you know. And there’s the Hermes of spiritual truth and transcendental knowledge, who embodies all truth and fairness and kindness, because he loves man and woman, you know.

…. Incidentally, it’s very psychological. (For the Major Arcana), two larger sections, one on mythology (or literature, maybe they consider it), and one on symbolism (or psychology narrowly considered), and a short wrap-up for divination as a conclusion, and plenty of references to the unconscious…. And I do call this psychoanalytic tarot theory, (the book, that is, is theory), and not Jungian tarot theory, because psychoanalysis is basically the child of Freud, to the extent of it being anybody’s baby, you know; Jung just came along and realized, though Siggy didn’t thank him for this, that Freud was bigger than he himself realized that he was, you know. Ironically, of course, given the unconscious theme, right….

…. It’s different to see each Minor Arcana suit ace to ten as a story; people say they can see the vanilla (1909) Minor cards as a story too, but it’s a lot more obvious when it’s explicitly based on old plays and myths and so on. Makes me want to read more of those old books, even though I know I shouldn’t read only the classics anymore, lol….

…. The Six of Swords is such a beautiful card in any decent deck, you know. If you can tame the mind and be optimistic, you can be optimistic about anything, even the mind….

…. The old Greeks were a patriarchal people, albeit one that did not completely deny the female principle—thus the conflict so prominent in the old myths…. Indeed, conflict is a part of life…. If God is only the originator of the good, is he the originator of the world? If he is only the author of the good, is he the author of the world?

…. The Greeks were a patriarchal people. Even several centuries, a good number of centuries, before Christ was even born, the Goddess or the feminine principle, while it still existed, was basically a slowly aging crone already on her way out; during the conversion period she experienced death; then in the Middle Ages, among tarot/alternative groups, a brand new little femmie/feminine principle was born; by the time of Jane Austen and the Brontes she went to high school; in the ‘60s and ‘70s she went to college; and now she’s trying to get a job. She’s not a ‘mother’ yet, you know.

It’s a process.

…. I’m not reviewing the actual deck of cards here, just the guidebook; I’ll review the cards themselves after I meditate on the images—and actually it will be a sort of lectio divina, meditation with reading, since I think I’ll have to re-read at least a little bit from the guidebook before meditating on the cards, right. Because it is a very ~literary~ deck; it’s not just having the Page of X be a generic sixteen year old boy with no money and a vague theme; he’s Mr. Leaflet, a character from the Greek lands with a very specific mythology, right. I don’t think I’ll ever throw away a real book that’s a tarot deck guidebook—this one’s about 250 pages—for a deck I keep, but in this case, it will be especially important to keep it handy, right…. It’s not quite as impenetrable as the Thoth Tarot, but it’s not as delightfully straightforward as the classic deck, you know. You could ignore some of the more divergent bits and still get a basic sense of it, but there’s a definite extra layer of idea-frills, you know. A step up in complexity. It’s semi-divergent, you know. A slight step up in differentness, although not overwhelmingly weird (if you’re familiar with the 1909 deck).

…. It is interesting how it’s a psychoanalytic book, and not a Wiccan/Druid etc. book. I remember when I thought that psychoanalysis was too scholarly for my then-ignorant practice of what I called “witchcraft”—not that anyone else has the power to tell you it doesn’t qualify…. But you still have to live with your results—and then later I decided that psychoanalysis was too earthy for my Wisdom Jesus/Buddha-lite practice, you know.

(shrugs) And now, here I am.

…. I do like Greek myths/religion. Other people have other paths, but I’m glad I don’t spend too much time on the high parapet of science, scornfully surveying the realm of peasant pretenders, you know, although I’d like to think of myself as a sort of ‘sciencer’ or dabbler, though not a scientist…. And I’m glad I’m not a vanilla new ager, although some of them are wonderful, advanced people that I learn even more from, but they sometimes fall into the delusion of thinking that society is five years away from becoming non-retarded, because meditation is 11% as popular as some sports or whatever, sometimes…. “Like, you can go to a tennis match, and if you ask if the person meditates, they don’t spear you! Maybe in five years—“ “Tennis? We’ll reach the masses through tennis? And they don’t spear ANYBODY; they wouldn’t spear a spearman, right….”…. And that’s the great delusion of Christianity/socialism, too: the red revolution/return of flowing robes Messiah, is maybe five years away, right…. And although I want to be kind to both little baby salty crackers, of both the more and less psycho varieties, and the proud, dignified dark children of the brown earth, right…. But sometimes it’s illuminating to subtly, prudently join a religious minority, and observe that we’re not really that close to the non-suck transformation of the masses, you know. It wasn’t prudent to be a Wiccan/Druid, five years ago, and in five years, you’ll still have to deal in a concealing, superficializing way with at least 99% of the public, you know. You won’t be a reactionary Christian, or cool kid Christian/Buddhist etc. saying, “Maybe some of these people, if persuaded….” Yeah, with us it’s like, “If the worse happened, maybe the fuckers could be convinced that I’m not mentally ill because of this, right. If they were a therapist, probably. If they were someone who knew zilch about mental health and illness, they would be SURE that you needed a doctor, right: and that’s not even worse-casing it, even today….” So, ironically, through fucking Greece, we finally know what Black people mean with their “still” statements and their “even after all these years” statements, right.

(shrugs) But at least there’s a sort of power to that experience, right.

….

—The future/fate is not an unchanging, iron-bound thing; understand the nature of time.
—Respect the cards, metaphorically and also literally

…. I think I might use the Planetary Spread at some point….

(Hermes: he gradually enters the camera view from the bottom, by floating up) Gods are friendly; they love us. Ooo, a cookies. (takes your cookie and bites into it) (shakes head, gives cookie back) Get better cookies next time, friend. “But; it was mine….” Oh. Well, sorry, friend. (He exits the camera view via the bottom of the frame).

…. “Although we are all individuals with a unique personality and a unique destiny, the experiences that life offers us are not infinitely varied in essence, but only in form; they follow certain patterns which are ancient and inbuilt in all of us, which are part of the process of living as human beings.”

Jungians are cool. Being a witch—or however you interact with the cards, whatever the framework is, that you choose—is not just about ‘adult’ things, or any single aspect of life; really it’s about being a grown-ass grown-up, you know….

…. One of the wonderful things about the gods is that that framework, that theory, isn’t the only great thing, you know. Some people might choose to see Hermes as a holy god, others as a cartoon character, a third person as something else, and one isn’t necessarily better or worse than another.

…. Afternote: I’m now in the middle of meditating my way through the actual deck of cards, and I find that I’m starting not to like them, at least for the Minor Arcana. It certainly is educational to read about, and she had some good ideas, certainly, but I don’t think that Juliet Sherman-Burke really executed her Tarot deck very well—I realize she wasn’t the literal artist, but I feel like it was her idea, and she must have approved of everything: and a lot of it is kinda visually ugly at inappropriate moments, or just visually inappropriate, and for the numbered cards too, almost arithmetical rather than numerological—and I don’t think I’m going to get any of her other decks. I’ll probably discard this one too, eventually, to be honest.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
goosecap | 2 andere besprekingen | Feb 8, 2024 |
This is an averaged rating: I'd give 4½ stars to the first seminar and 3½ stars to the second one. In Part One, "Images of Mother and Father in the Natal Horoscope," Sharman-Burke discusses each planet and Chiron in the 4th and 10th houses and what these indicate about the native's view of their mother and father. In Part Two, "Zodiacal Myths and Their Correlation with Parent Images," she tells a Greek myth for each sign of the zodiac and then relates it to how it might describe a parent if that sign were on the MC or the IC in the native's chart. In both seminars, audience members contribute many personal anecdotes of how they've experienced these planets and signs in their 4th and 10th houses.

I found the first seminar more useful than the second one. The connections between the planets and the parental images were more clearly spelled out and the participants spent more time with each example. In the second seminar, I think the point could've been made just as well if Sharman-Burke had discussed each sign through the 4th and 10th houses and not bothered with the myths. Or more accurately, I would rather have read more examples of how these combinations behave in real people's lives rather than read through retellings of myths I was already familiar with from other books. But both seminars were interesting, and I recommend this book to astrologers interested in how family psychology shows up in charts.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
Silvernfire | Apr 15, 2015 |

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