Card Cuts

I said it again, and I’ll repeat myself, as it bears repetition. When things go wrong in a reading with the cards is when the agency gets fucked up. Although it may seem that we always know who is doing what to whom, this is not so. Not because we can’t see what’s happening, but rather, because we prefer a different embodiment. Look first at the line of four cards here, at the center of this…

The famed Pam-A deck in my private collection, first edition, 1910 There’s a new fad in town: card combinations with the Rider Waite/Smith Tarot. All fine, if the practice actually went somewhere. But it doesn’t. We’re being hit over our heads with kindergarten approaches to what amounts to silly games. If I objected that his has zero to do with divination, I’d be told to stop being difficult…

As it happens, my New Year starts off rather colourfully. First off, my head is buried in a very fine church incense blend, made according to some monks’ idea of alchemy. Why they would use kitchen spices to color the frankincense from Oman red and blue is anyone’s guess, but overall, it all smells divine. The monks of yesteryear got it just right. Then, to honor people’s generosity, I take for…

Marcos Rodriquez, soundscape man and shaman from Chile at the Body, Mind, Soul Fair in Copenhagen, watching me banging on his drums: – ‘Where are you from? You don’t look Danish.’ – ‘I’m from Romania.’ – ‘A Romanian witch.’ – ‘I wouldn’t go so far.’ – ‘You are what you are, and what you are catches up with you. If you’re not a witch, you’re a magician.’ – ‘Wise words, my man.’ – ‘And your friend…

‘The King of the Fairies approaching his domain’ is a higher conceit of the other symbol ‘The university professor lecturing to his students.’ When Mars enters Scorpio one degree off the Descendent, all calculations get suspended. Raw action penetrates Pluto’s fiery and bottomless pit, and what we think is the perception of the Other in Seven is force. The kind that lulls you into spying on…

Something struck me today. Something was missing from the cartomantic community. A voice, or some voice anyway, that registers the sentiment, or as za French say, le sentiment, around what’s happening in the world of cards. I decided to try my hand at it, and in collaboration with the cards, see if I could answer a few questions that address some current issues and debates over the…

The advantage of taking sacred objects out of their reliquaries and placing them before your cards, if reading cards is what you want to do on a quiet evening, is that it makes you consider the function of these objects beyond the ritual of ‘I swear that I’m having a sublime time right now’. Some smart folks long before us have figured out that the reason why we want to read cards, look at the…

I read the playing cards for two people at the same time. They take turns to tell me what’s happening. The man says: ‘the research center is closing due to differences between the director of studies and the university chancellor.’ ‘Yes,’ the woman says, ‘there is also a rumour,’ she then adds. ‘It’s not a rumour,’ the man says, ‘it’s more like a blatant abuse of power.’ While each of them…

One of the reasons why I like to collect cartomancy decks is because they always greatly amuse me in their take on the difference between men and women. Most often the gist of this difference can be summed up as follows: seek the company of men, and run away from women as fast as you can. As most of these decks are meant to be read with both, upright and reversed cards, we can see how this…

For my grandfather, who died at the tender age of 47, a mad man. When my sister comes to visit me and I’m alone with my dog, we work. By this I mean that we do stuff that most people don’t. What we are particularly good at is detective work. We dig into issues and concerns, but we don’t stay put. We cross hedges, bust boundaries, and laugh at the incredulous. This latter laughter is part of the…

Sometimes I do things to please myself. Creative things, they call it, when you use your hands and imagination in order to give form to an idea. As it happens, for all my sitting all day long with words, I like to make things. Some fifteen years ago I designed pretty much all my clothes, created paper patterns for them, and did all the stitching. My living room looked like a clothes factory,…

Today is the day of a super moon. Or as others put it, the day of the super-duper moon. Without going either with the super or duper, I thought, however, of doing a reading for myself and asking the cards what they thought about a book project that a few friends have been enticing me to embark on. My concrete question went to the Council of 13: What does the council advice about this particular…

Some have been enjoying my latest spell work, published on my other blog, Fragments, where I used to muse about life, people, animals, and places. I find particular pleasure in creating talismanic art and magical objects that are useful. I like to allow myself to be seized by the cards. Put my words in the service of my mind, but let my soul sing the image. So here is In the Name of Love, a…

Sometimes it’s not just students who are on the fence about their education. The teacher can also experience a similar thing regarding teaching. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to do this,’ a cartomancy student said, when I announced that I was going to have a cartomancy club devoted to the art of reading like the Devil in a forum conducive to solitary contemplation. ‘Say what?’ some may ask,…

Sometimes you've got to dig up your dead by yourself, and move them.

Yes, you heard that right, grave digger, not gold digger. Let me explain. Two days ago I was a grave digger. Or rather, I was exhuming a dead body. In a dream. I dreamt that my sister and I were deeply at work digging around my father’s coffin. The aim was to move him. After some heavy work with the shovel, going though an altogether unpleasant feeling, I stopped and put my hands over my hips in…

A review and application of Charles Porterfield's book, A Deck of Spells.

This week Aradia Academy has opened registration for the Read Like the Devil series of foundation courses focussing on the Playing Cards module, a series that is taught by The Janitor, Bent Sørensen, this time around. He will present 6 video lectures based on my Playing Cards volume of the Read like the Devil trilogy of textbooks. For fun I here share some of the specialised material he has…

When the inner voice is a dimwit

WHEN THE ‘INNER VOICE’ IS A DIMWIT Have a look at these cards above: The Devil says: ‘You can do anything.’ Circumstance says: ‘Today you hang.’ Temperance in the middle says: ‘Know how to mix these voices.’ In the Devil’s voice, what appears a manifestation of confidence is actually a bidding for overconfidence. Just look around: how many manifestations of hyperbolic speech did you experience…