A Big Misconception I See Come Up A Lot Is That Tarot Can Predict The Future. In A Sense, It Might, But

When deciding what the properties of a crystal are, please do yourself a favor and look up why. WHY is obsidian associated with cutting ties with things or reflection? Ohhhhh it’s because the Aztecs used it as sacrificial knives and reflective mirrors. WHY is rose quartz associated with love? Ohhhhhhhh because the goddess of Love (Aphrodite) had a lover who bled out onto the stone. WHY is amethyst- ok you get the point. Context is EVERYTHING. Otherwise it’s just meaningless regurgitation of concepts missing their original relevance. Then, after you figure out why they are associated with certain attributes, decide for yourself if you subscribe to this. If YOU feel a difference in energy then obviously use it differently.

Types of meditation

1. Mindfulness meditation: Focus on your breath or a specific sensation, bringing your attention to the present moment.

2. Loving-kindness meditation: Cultivate feelings of love and compassion towards yourself and others.

3. Transcendental Meditation: Repeat a mantra to achieve a state of relaxed awareness.

4. Body scan meditation: Direct attention to different parts of your body, releasing tension and promoting relaxation.

5. Zen meditation (Zazen): Sit in a specific posture, focus on your breath, and observe thoughts without attachment.

6. Guided meditation: Follow a recorded or live guide's instructions for visualization and relaxation.

7. Vipassana meditation: Develop insight by observing bodily sensations and thoughts with non-reactive awareness.

8. Yoga nidra: A state of conscious relaxation achieved through guided meditation while lying down.

9. Chakra meditation: Focus on energy centers in the body, visualizing and balancing them.

10. Mantra meditation: Repeat a word, phrase, or sound to quiet the mind and enhance concentration.

Something I feel like people getting into folk magic need to understand, for many people of many backgrounds, is folk magic started as a means of survival. It was struggle magic, and it is still struggle magic.

Where I'm living now and where I'm from, people planted by the signs to ensure their crops wouldn't go bad before harvesting. People used ocean water to soothe joint and muscle pains when they got old. People studied the native plants for medicine and were mindful to only take what was needed. People did little rituals and minded their grannies' words to keep their good luck. If they didn't know how to do something (or couldn't), they went to people who did.

Learning folk magic to reconnect with ancestral traditions from before your time is valid. Learning folk magic to connect with and work with the land is valid. There are many valid reasons to take up folk magic. Still, understand that folk magic is survival, and folk magic is community.

🏹 Artemis 🏹

“What do I do if I want to—“

Go into the woods.

“How do I—“

Go into the woods.

“I am going through—“

Go into the woods.

Or if you live next to the sea, to the sea.

Or a desert, into the desert.

Or a grassland, into the grassland.

Or a park with as much treecover as you can scrounge- better yet, make a day of it, leave the city, and go into the woods/the sea/the desert/the grassland then.

Any answer to your question won’t come from another person, but from going into the wilderness. So stop talking, stop asking and babbling, and go.

You are not, in fact, the granddaughter of the witches they couldn’t burn – Going Medieval

Going Medieval

You are not, in fact, the granddaughter of the witches they couldn’t burn

Say you are me (sorry about that) and you are minding your own business online, just trying to survive in a world of unrelenting horror when

Made this a while back and never posted it, but I figured I should now that I actually started T!!!

(Not a self portrait, this is just some guy)

How do cards gain meaning in an occult sense? Like, both tarot and french-suited playing cards started as game pieces, but they have gained an understood meaning. Is it just someone whips up an organized table of connected ideas or is each card interpreted from a certain framework?

Oh good question!

Many things that we now consider staples of western magic are ideas that have been added to over generations by several layers of thinkers. Tarot Divination specifically is an excellent example of this!

In 1770, A french printmaker and occultist going by Etteilla published a book about how to do cartomancy with a 32-card Piquet deck. He writes down some simple but strict associations for the cards, and makes what is probably the first mention of reversals in carotmancy. He said that he learned the system "from an Italian." Now, its unclear how much of the system is his own invention, people have been doing cartomancy for as long as there's been cards, but the text presents a larval, bare-bones version of the cartomancy methods we know and love today.

Its 1780-ish. The Rosetta stone hasn't been discovered yet. Occult-inclined Europeans are obsessed with Egypt. That's where our boy Trismegistus is from! There's a concept in Egyptian mythology called The Book of Thoth, a mythical book of spells penned by the God of Knowledge himself. This was the Holy Grail for European Occult Egpytaboos.

In 1781, Antoine Court de Gébelin claimed that Tarot cards were the "original book of Thoth," Saying that Tarot cards had been used by ancient Egyptian priests for their own magical ceremonies, and that their designs contained ancient mystical secrets. This is 100% not true, but he writes a pretty fun pseudohistory for Tarot that involves Romani people bringing the decks to Europe through the Levant where they then taught its esoteric secrets to several Popes.

Then in 1783, Ettellia responded with another book. Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots ("Way to recreate yourself with the deck of cards called tarots") Where Ettellia basically claims "uhm actually I knew about tarot divination way before Court de Gebelin published that big ass book. But anyway here's an interpretation of Tarot symbology that includes multiple references to Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Greek mythology." But the smartest thing he did was include spread methods that involved Thoth and Numerology. Napoleonic Occultists fucking loved Thoth and numerology.

In 1788, he formed a little magical society for the express purpose of discussing and workshopping ideas for Tarot divination. In 1789, he made a TRULY smart decision, and published a Tarot deck that was Specifically For Magic, and that basically cemented Tarots place in magical history.

Occultists just kept iterating! Someone would speculate "maybe the suits correspond to the elements" and people went "yeah, they correspond to the elements! That makes this tool even more fun and interesting to use!" Then people go "What if the suits and the elements also correspond to parts of the Self?" and people went "Sure they do! That makes this tool even more interesting!"

But its also not just one thread. Eventually you get the Golden Dawn saying "The Major Arcana correspond to the nodes and paths on our version of the Quabbalistic Sefirot, you know, the hermetic version with a Q." and some occultists responded "Idk about that! Love what you've done with the color symbology though!"

The development of magical ideas is an iterative process. It is people whipping up a table of correspondences, but that table needs a mythology to keep it together. Originally, the mythology that gave tarot "power" was its Egyptian pseudohistory, but these days its the fact that occultists have been iterating on and fine-tuning this system for hundreds of years.

Humans don't think in tables of information, they think in stories. The cool thing about stories is that they're flexible. If magic is anything, its learning how to engineer stories to make the tables of information more effective.

I'm gonna plug my patreon where I post all of my occult research if you wanna see more stuff like this

I can't believe in the year 2024 we are still having to remind people not to put essential oils on their skin without diluting it with a carrier oil first

STRENGTH

8 trans women of color have been killed in 2017. This card pays homage to their strength, and to that of others that continue to strive to live their lives as their authentic selves.

Alphonza Watson Jaquarrius Holland Chyna Gibson Ciara McElveen Mesha Caldwell Jamie Lee Wounded Arrow Keke Collier Jojo Striker

#DeltaEnduringTarot