Discover Your Destiny
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.
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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