Discover Your Destiny Read online

  TAROT LIFE

  MONTH 1

  DISCOVER YOUR DESTINY

  Marcus Katz & Tali Goodwin

  Published by Forge Press (January, 2013)

  1 Wood Cottage, Old Windebrowe, Keswick,

  Cumbria CA12 4NT

  Cover: ‘Hermit’, Tyldwick Tarot © by Neil Lovell

  http://www.malpertuis.co.uk/tyldwick/

  Tarot

  Life © Marcus Katz & Tali Goodwin, 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without written permission from the publisher.

  Tarosophy® is a registered trademark

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  Also check out the Tarot Review at www.thetarotreview.com and the Tarot Book Club at www.tarotbookclub.com.

  For further Tarosophy education, the 2-year Hekademia Tarot course is open for enrolment at www.tarosophyuniversity.com.

  We also offer Tarosophy Certificate and Diploma courses at our main site www.tarotprofessionals.com.

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Changing Your Life

  The Key Stones to Tarot Life

  Discover Your Destiny Card

  The Destiny Path Method

  Conclusion

  Bibliography

  Websites & Resources

  TAROT LIFE: 12 STEPS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE

  A linked series of Gated Spreads to be carried out over a full year.

  Introduction

  In this series of Kickstart books of Tarosophy teaching, we take a break from the reference work of Tarot Flip, the seventy-eight innovative Tarot methods in Tarot Twist, and the spiritual considerations of Tarot Inspire to offer a unique practice of our work.

  You are about to change your life with Tarot, and whether you are a newcomer to tarot or experienced reader, you are about to do something totally new. In using what we call a Gated Spread – a linked sequence of tarot readings whose questions are determined by the results of real-world activities – you are going to fundamentally alter the way you experience your life.

  We have combined here the wisdom of the Tarot with years of practical testing and the latest research in psychology and the biology of willpower, belief, habit and other aspects of our being.

  This series is designed to be experienced a month at a time, and in the sequence given. You can start at any time, although New Year, your Birthday, or the Spring Equinox are all powerful starting times.

  This series is accompanied by a closed Facebook group for discussion and questions about your experiences as you make this journey. We look forwards to your engagement of tarot with your life – it is about to become a truly Tarot Life.

  Marcus Katz, The Tarosophist &

  Tali Goodwin, TaliTarot

  Changing Your Life

  “When you’re at the beginning, don’t obsess about the middle, because the middle is going to look different once you get there. Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving”.

  Chip & Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (2010) p. 93.

  In the practice of change, the most important element is Will. A single-minded direction, focused in laser-like intensity, can carve out a life beyond what you can yet imagine. In this year-long practice, you are going to use the Tarot as a living lens to focus your will, in a series of gates, or spreads, which build and join together to accomplish more than the sum of their parts.

  However, it also has to be easy and accessible – for some parts of your brain are geared to choose the easiest and most habitual option. So we have designed this practice to be interesting, engaging, and a lot lighter on the surface than the deep changes it will cause.

  It is also essential to have stepped and possible actions which lead to the desired change – a reason that gated spreads are designed to feed from activity rather than vague questions about an imagined future. The cards will become living signposts and be present in your everyday activity, guiding you and leading you – the very essence of Tarosophy; Tarot to engage life, not escape it.

  We will also be teaching you some interesting aspects of Tarot along the way, so get ready for something quite special as you follow the spreads every month, taking us from discovering your destiny to the depths of divininty.

  Take a moment to think about what you first wanted to be when you were young – whether that was an astronaut or a nurse, an explorer or a lorry driver, a mother, or a businesswoman. What is the essential value of that profession to you – what is at its core?

  These are the questions we will be asking through the tarot as we progress to create a tarot life for ourselves over the year. You may already wonder which of the Court Cards your early childhood professional ambition belongs to? Did you want to grow up to be a Queen of Cups or a Knight of Swords? These are fundamental patterns written into our very being, and you are about to experience how Tarot can unlock them and open the gates of possibility once more.

  The Key Stones to Tarot Life

  “Most of us keep on making blunders, in spite of what we sincerely believe to be our best intentions. What we are really doing, under these conditions, is functioning wrong side out”.

  Muriel Bruce Hasbrouck, Pursuit of Destiny (1949) pp. 33-4.

  If you have never read Tarot before, here are some useful keywords with which to build your readings. We will show you how to use these in general readings as well as for Tarot Life itself.

  If you have any experience in reading tarot, you may like to utilize these particular aspects of the cards, as they may be new to you. We are particularly interested in the way in which the cards describe our personal energies and patterns, so have used the key words provided by Muriel Bruce Hasbrouck (1890 – 1981) in a lesser-known book entitled Pursuit of Destiny, written in 1941.

  You can find out the details of this book, and others we have referenced, in the bibliography of each pamphlet in this series. Hasbrouck was a student of both Aleister Crowley and Paul Foster Case and her work is dedicated to these two and “Pulch”, Charles Lazenby – who was associated with the “ten-day cycle” concept of her book.

  Hasbrouck also had correspondence with Israel Regardie, who provided her Book T Tarot materials and Kabbalah information from the Golden Dawn. She further developed a model of Space-Time Forecasting, which she and her husband utilized to provide stock market predictions. Interestingly, her idea of 36-year cycles of financial turmoil, which she wrote about in the 1970’s, would have planted the next turbulent time in 2009, i.e. the exact middle of the “credit crunch” crisis. As we can now see that happened, we suggest with only a little tongue-in-cheek that we start preparing for 2045, the next financial upheaval predicted in this model.

  So here are Hasbrouck’s correspondences and key-words, to which we have added Court Cards and Aces for convenience. These were not necessary in her book as it dealt with the Decans only. We have also added keywords for the Majors for beginners who may not have Tarot Flip, which gives keywords for all cards based on a survey of hundreds of experienced readers.

  The Qualities of the Four Elements/Suits

  Pentacles/Earth

&
nbsp; Practical Sense

  Swords/Air

  Mentality (Thinking)

  Cups/Water

  Flexibility (Emotions)

  Wands/Fire

  Dynamic Energy (Imagination)

  The Ten Numbers/Potentials

  Ace

  Inspiration, Innovation, Originality

  Two

  Initiative, Adaptability, Uncertainty

  Three

  Determination, Intensity, pride

  Four

  Stability, order, restriction.

  Five

  Activity, power, opposition.

  Six

  Ambition, leadership, egocentricity.

  Seven

  Versatility, dominance, fear.

  Eight

  Sagacity, prudence, short-sightedness.

  Nine

  Forcefulness, capability, obstinacy.

  Ten

  Persistence, conservatism, self-will.

  The Seven Frequencies of the Planets

  Mars

  desire for action; energy, impulsiveness.

  Sun

  desire to achieve; ambition, pride.

  Venus

  desire to create; productivity, extravagance.

  Mercury

  desire to reason; sagacity, cunning.

  Moon

  desire for change; adaptability, instability.

  Saturn

  desire to integrate; constructiveness, intensity.

  Jupiter

  desire to stabilize; order, caution.

  The Four Powers/Energies of the Courts

  Pages

  Crystallizing, Absorbing,

  Counterbalancing

  Knights

  Active, Manifesting

  Queens

  Receptive, Fermenting, Transmitting, Enduring

  Kings

  Swift, Violent, Transient, Rushing

  If you are using a Thoth deck or similar, you may find these cards are labeled in order as above as Princess, Prince, Queen and Knight. We have used the keywords from Crowley in this case to accord with our theme of will-power and the structure from which Hasbrouck was also working.

  The Keywords for the Major Arcana

  I: Magician - Success

  II: High Priestess - Revelation

  III: Empress - Cultivation

  IV: Emperor - Endurance

  V: Hierophant - Teaching

  VI: Lovers - Union

  VII: Chariot - Momentum

  VIII: Strength - Action

  IX: Hermit -Solitude

  X: Wheel - Movement

  XI: Justice - Accuracy

  XII: Hanged Man - Surrender

  XIII: Death - Life

  XIV: Temperance - Assessment

  XV: Devil - Withholding

  XVI: Blasted Tower - Acceleration

  XVII: Star - Enlightenment

  XVIII: Moon - Ignorance

  XIX: Sun - Demonstration

  XX: Last Judgment - Awakening

  XXI: World - Beginning

  0: Fool - Frivolity

  A Simple Method for Beginners

  Throughout the year, you may want to carry out readings for yourself or others. Here is a simple method for general purposes – and we will provide other methods as you progress during the year.

  Shuffle the deck and select out three cards. Lay these face up from right to left. The first card on your left is what will happen given no changes to the situation; the second (middle) card indicates something the tarot is telling you that you could do to make changes; the third card on your right is what will happen if you make those changes.

  That is to say:

  1. What Will Happen.

  2. What You Can Do.

  3. What Will Change.

  This spread is very suitable for the keywords we are using in Tarot Life and for general readings.

  Here is an example reading of this spread.

  Should I do anything about X who may cause me trouble?

  1. What Will Happen – King of Wands

  2. What You Can Do – 6 of Swords

  3. What Will Change – V The Hierophant

  Here we immediately see that what will happen is that the energy will remain combustive but however be short-lived; a violent and expressive aggression which comes to nothing permanent.

  What can be done, is balanced reason, movement and exploration. Perhaps expose the situation in clear light whilst moving steadily forward oneself. It should also be seen in the Waite-Smith image of this card that I must tale everyone else with me!

  If I take the action – which seems advised in this case – the Hierophant will emerge. I will maintain a teaching position and preserve a tradition, perhaps even a sacred trust.

  This spread can be very useful and very practical. It ensures that one either takes action or not, but even if not, it is a willed decision.

  Discover Your Destiny Card

  We begin our Tarot Life with discovering our destiny card. This is the card which is linked with your birth date. In Astrology, there is a concept known as Decans which splits the year into 36 sets of 10 degrees, making a full circle of 360 degrees. Through the magic of correspondence, we can associate the Tarot cards of the Minors, from Two to Ten in each of the four suits (9 cards in 4 suits is 36 cards) to each of the 36 Decans.

  We then look at which Decan your birth falls into and discover the associated Tarot card. Whilst this is reasonably common knowledge in tarot circles (see Who Are You in the Tarot in the bibliography) we here give it a new twist and particularly use the aspect of personal will within the cards – to turn your fate into your destiny.

  Sidenote to advanced students: We have used the Chaldean Decans.

  The 36 Decans: Zodiacal Signs and Planets

  Aries 1

  Mars

  21st - 30th March

  Aries 2

  Sun

  31st March - 9th April

  Aries 3

  Venus

  10th - 20th April

  Taurus 1

  Mercury

  21st - 30th April

  Taurus 2

  Moon

  1st - 10th May

  Taurus 3

  Saturn

  11th - 21st May

  Gemini 1

  Jupiter

  22nd - 31st May

  Gemini 2

  Mars

  1st - 10th June

  Gemini 3

  Sun

  11th - 21st June

  Cancer 1

  Venus

  22nd June - 1st July

  Cancer 2

  Mercury

  2nd - 12th July

  Cancer 3

  Moon

  13th - 22nd July

  Leo 1

  Saturn

  23rd July - 1st August

  Leo 2

  Jupiter

  2nd - 12th August

  Leo 3

  Mars

  13th - 23rd August

  Virgo 1

  Sun

  24th August - 3rd September

  Virgo 2

  Venus

  4th - 13th September

  Virgo 3

  Mercury

  14th - 22nd September

  Libra 1

  Moon

  23rd September - 3rd October

  Libra 2

  Saturn

  4th - 13th October

  Libra 3

  Jupiter

  14th - 23rd October

  Scorpio 1

  Mars

  24th October - 2nd November

  Scorpio 2

  Sun

  3rd - 12th November

  Scorpio 3

  Venus

  13th - 22nd November

  Sagittarius 1

  Mercury

  23rd November - 2nd December

  Sagittarius 2

  Moon

  3rd - 12th December

  Sagittarius 3

  Saturn

  13th - 21st December

  C
apricorn 1

  Jupiter

  22nd - 31st December

  Capricorn 2

  Mars

  1st - 10th January

  Capricorn 3

  Sun

  11th - 20th January

  Aquarius 1

  Venus

  21st - 29th January

  Aquarius 2

  Mercury

  30th January - 8th February

  Aquarius 3

  Moon

  9th - 18th February

  Pisces 1

  Saturn

  19th - 29th February

  Pisces 2

  Jupiter

  1st - 10th March

  Pisces 3

  Mars

  11th - 20th March

  The 36 Decans: Tarot Card Correspondences