Following my June contribution to JCF’s MythBlast essay series, a friend asked about Joseph Campbell’s personal experience with tarot. According to Campbell, his introduction to the tarot occurred in 1943, as friend and mentor Heinrich...

According to the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, the fifteenth Arcanum of the Tarot introduces us to the “intoxication of counter-inspiration” (p. 401). Throughout this year’s MythBlast series...

The cards haven’t changed as much as we have.  Back in the day, the owners of the tarot decks tended to be royalty and nobility; indeed, the first tangible evidence of their use dates from...

Once upon a time the devil was looking for the most effective weapon against God. The first demon proposed to tell people that there is no God. Another said it’s better to tell them there...

Some tarot cards conjure dread in folks who have just a passing understanding of them. Either the image itself or the card’s name can be enough to evoke negative associations. In the major arcana, for...

Our MythBlast essay series continues to explore the archetypal imagery of the tarot, focusing this month on Card XV in the major arcana: the Devil. For almost two thousand years those who practice the occult...

Like all the tarot cards, the Chariot contains a complexity of sub-images and details. We can safely assume that each sub-image is not merely a random or decorative item and that there’s a purposeful and...

“You’re going on a trip,” Great-Gramma Jennie told my mother. Mom was a child then, in the prewar years of the Great Depression. Grampa and my uncles left during the day for work and school,...