Tarot University ArkLetters

ArkLetter 54

tarotarkletters.com

By Christine Payne-Towler
ArkLetter 54, August 20, 2009

IN THIS ISSUE:

I.  World Servers' Spread, August, 2009.... Paul Huson is a friend of the Tarot. There is no other way to say it. Today we'll be enjoying some contact with his Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot, which follows upon Huson's perspective-broadening book Mystical Origins of the Tarot.  Once we hit the dog days of summer, I needed something to pull my overheated, humid brain away from the smell of apples roasting on the trees and the drone of the crickets mating in the cow pastures.  So I acted on a long-felt impulse to acquire this pack of cards and see what all the shouting was about. Wow, am I glad to have finally followed through! ...
http://www.tarotarkletters.com/2009/08/world-servers-spread-august-2009.html

II.  New Moon Notes - August, 2009 ..High summer indeed!  Depending on where you are, the weather may be wacky, but the consistent theme for this month is about hitting our extremes. It's all or nothing these days, both high highs and low lows -- much of a muchness, or a hollow ringing sucking void.  No rest for the weary!  But since it's the end of summer, the peak of vacation time, I'll keep this short for everybody's sake. ...
http://www.tarotarkletters.com/2009/08/newmoon-notes-august-2009.html

tarotarkletters.com

By Christine Payne-Towler
ArkLetter 54, August 20, 2009

IN THIS ISSUE:

I.  World Servers' Spread, August, 2009.... Paul Huson is a friend of the Tarot. There is no other way to say it. Today we'll be enjoying some contact with his Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot, which follows upon Huson's perspective-broadening book Mystical Origins of the Tarot.  Once we hit the dog days of summer, I needed something to pull my overheated, humid brain away from the smell of apples roasting on the trees and the drone of the crickets mating in the cow pastures.  So I acted on a long-felt impulse to acquire this pack of cards and see what all the shouting was about. Wow, am I glad to have finally followed through! ...
http://www.tarotarkletters.com/2009/08/world-servers-spread-august-2009.html

II.  New Moon Notes - August, 2009 ..High summer indeed!  Depending on where you are, the weather may be wacky, but the consistent theme for this month is about hitting our extremes. It's all or nothing these days, both high highs and low lows -- much of a muchness, or a hollow ringing sucking void.  No rest for the weary!  But since it's the end of summer, the peak of vacation time, I'll keep this short for everybody's sake. ...
http://www.tarotarkletters.com/2009/08/newmoon-notes-august-2009.html

tarotarkletters.com

By Christine Payne-Towler
ArkLetter 54, August 20, 2009

IN THIS ISSUE:

I.  World Servers' Spread, August, 2009.... Paul Huson is a friend of the Tarot. There is no other way to say it. Today we'll be enjoying some contact with his Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot, which follows upon Huson's perspective-broadening book Mystical Origins of the Tarot.  Once we hit the dog days of summer, I needed something to pull my overheated, humid brain away from the smell of apples roasting on the trees and the drone of the crickets mating in the cow pastures.  So I acted on a long-felt impulse to acquire this pack of cards and see what all the shouting was about. Wow, am I glad to have finally followed through! ...
http://www.tarotarkletters.com/2009/08/world-servers-spread-august-2009.html

II.  New Moon Notes - August, 2009 ..High summer indeed!  Depending on where you are, the weather may be wacky, but the consistent theme for this month is about hitting our extremes. It's all or nothing these days, both high highs and low lows -- much of a muchness, or a hollow ringing sucking void.  No rest for the weary!  But since it's the end of summer, the peak of vacation time, I'll keep this short for everybody's sake. ...
http://www.tarotarkletters.com/2009/08/newmoon-notes-august-2009.html

World Servers Spread - August, 2009

By Christine Payne-Towler

ArkLetter 54, August 20,  2009 
World Server's Spread

For an introduction to the World Servers' Spread see ArkLetter 5 

Paul Huson is a friend of the Tarot. There is no other way to say it. Today we'll be enjoying some contact with his Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot, which follows upon Huson's perspective-broadening book Mystical Origins of the Tarot.  

Once we hit the dog days of summer, I needed something to pull my overheated, humid brain away from the smell of apples roasting on the trees and the drone of the crickets mating in the cow pastures.  So I acted on a long-felt impulse to acquire this pack of cards and see what all the shouting was about. Wow, am I glad to have finally followed through!

If you haven't got the pack or book at hand, lovely introductions can be found at:
http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/paul-husons-tarot-world/
and
http://www.winterspells.com/2009/06/06/interview-with-tarot-historian-paul-huson/

In this book, Huson surveys the historical development of Tarot divination, from the early practice of drawing lots (basically a one-card reading method called sortilege) through the works of Etteilla in the late 1700's. In the process he presents us with every significant early convention that we know became attached to the cards (names and images mostly) before the emergence of the Waite/Smith pack.  To make the book more accessible to 21st century users, he cross-compares the Etteilla canon of divinatory meanings with those elaborated by Waite, Mathers and the Golden Dawn, which certainly adds heft to the book.  In the process, Huson demonstrates how utterly beholden the English school packs are on the Continental tradition stabilized by Etteilla a century before the OGD.  (Mary Greer amply demonstrates a similar point in her excellent comparative synthesis Tarot Reversals.) 

But for my money, the most useful aspect of this volume is the perspective it grants us on the first centuries of Tarot in the hands of its users. 

NewMoon Notes - August, 2009

By Christine Payne-Towler
ArkLetter 54
NewMoon Chart, August 20,  2009

High summer indeed!  Depending on where you are, the weather may be wacky, but the consistent theme for this month is about hitting our extremes. It's all or nothing these days, both high highs and low lows -- much of a muchness, or a hollow ringing sucking void.  No rest for the weary!  But since it's the end of summer, the peak of vacation time, I'll keep this short for everybody's sake. Who has time to sit at the computer and read long screeds about esotericism, anyway?  (And yes, I'm a lazy chicken-butt in the heat.)

Taoism speaks very eloquently about how the excess of one thing brings about its opposite, and this month we have a chance to study the process up close and personal.  This NewMoon chart looks like a big X made of crossed oppositions, or a series of seesaws sharing the same fulcrum. Literally every planet is paired with something in its opposite sign:

•     Late Leo NewMoon, opposite Jupiter/Neptune
•     Uranus retrograde in Pisces opposite Saturn/Mercury
•     Mars in Gemini opposed retrograde Pluto in Capricorn
•     Venus conjunct/opposed the Nodes