Llewellyn Publications's Blog, page 67

I’ve often heard tarot readers say they wish there were more novels with tarot readers in them. Well, here’s one to add to your summer reading list, especially if you like cozy mysteries with big helping of humor.

The White Magic Five and Dime, by Steve Hockensmith and Lisa Falco, is the first in the new A Tarot Mystery series.

The main character, Alanis, learns that her estranged mother died and left her an inheritance: The White Magic Five and Dime, in Berdache, Arizona who slogan is: Divination, Revelation, Bargains. When she arrives, she begins to smell something fishy about her mother’s death and sets out to investigate. While snooping around, she decides to keep her mother’s store open. Alanis was raised by cons and is convinced that tarot is just another way to separate suckers from their money.

In order to do readings for clients, she reads a book she found in the shop, Infinite Roads to Knowing by Miss Chance (Note to my readers: this is not a real book). As Alanis works with the cards, they start to work their magic on her. Does she end up a believer? Does she end up with the hunky cop? You should read for yourself and find out.

But I assume most of you reading this blog are curious to know if the tarot in the book “correct” or “real.” Not only is it correct but the excerpts from Infinite Roads to Knowing are hilarious and insightful. There is an excerpt for each Major Arcana, one at the beginning of each chapter. The book itself is illustrated with cards for the chapters and for the readings throughout the book.

Here are a couple of examples:

For The Emperor, Miss Chance says:

“Grim, stiff, stern, humorless—the Emperor is the Law, and is not amused. Do as he says and you will be tolerated. Defy him, and you will regret it…or so he’d like you to think. See that barren wasteland behind the throne? That’s the old fart’s kingdom. Follow all his rules, and you get to live there. Yippee! Or not.”

For Temperance, she gets really excited:

“Talk about an angel—this one’s fixing us a drink! A martini, perhaps? A cosmopolitan? Cool, refreshing pond scum with a dash of yummy mud? It doesn’t matter. The important thing is the angel’s a mixologist—in more ways than one. Just check out the feet. One’s on land, one’s in water. True balance is found by having a toehold in more than one place, more than one world, more than one outlook. Who cares if they’re supposedly incompatible? What do gin and vermouth have in common? But throw them together with an olive and you’ve got something that’ll rock your world.”

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Bernie Ashman, author of Sun Signs and Past Lives, SignMates, and the new Intuition and Your Sun Sign.

I have been intrigued by the Neptune in Pisces cycle that started April 4th, 2011, and which will be with us into 2026. Neptune spends about fourteen years in an astrological sign, and it happens to also be the ruler of Pisces. Both the planet Neptune and the sign Pisces are part of the water element, which is directly connected to intuition. I have noticed in astrological charts that Neptune has been a key player for artists, healers, and those practicing the metaphysical arts. The last time Neptune was in Pisces was in the 19th century (1847-1861), which is when impressionism started to rise as an art form in Europe. The Neptune in Pisces cycle prior to that gave birth to much of the modern metaphysics that we are enjoying today!

The current Neptune in Pisces cycle is what inspired my new book, Intuition and Your Sun Sign. The evolution of intuition as a growing necessity for each of us to get more out of everyday life is on the rise. I said in my previous Llewellyn guest blog post (shared in 2010 with the release of Sun Signs and Past Lives), that I was an optimistic Sagittarius. I still am! The world is slowly recognizing that developing an inner awareness is just as vital as outer success. Tapping into a greater use of our intuition is good for our health and for finding the harmony we seek. Our mental insights are sharper when allowing intuition to guide our thought processes. The creative process when guided by intuition can lead to exciting new discoveries.

Before I started writing Intuition and Your Sun Sign, I realized that there were not many astrology books previously published that addressed intuition as a major theme; intuition simply was not covered in great depth. I wanted to connect the concept of planetary energy traveling along paths in our consciousness to what (in acupuncture) are known as meridians. I thought it would be interesting to show how the planets move along the meridians to stimulate our creative self-expression and increase our mental clarity. I show in my new book that no matter what your Sun sign, you can benefit intuitively by growing in awareness of each of the planetary meridians. What I found interesting that while writing this new book that my own intuitive awareness intensified and I felt pushed to keep trusting my intuition. I am hoping that my new book will do the same thing for my readers!

Our thanks to Bernie for his guest post! For more from Bernie Ashman, read his article “Planetary Meridians: 10 Gateways to Empowered Intuition.”

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Aaron Leitch, author of several books, including Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires, The Angelical Language Volume I and Volume II, and his new Essential Enochian Grimoire.

As many of my readers know, I am a practitioner of the Old Magick. That means I have abandoned the “psychological model” of magick (the belief that magick is strictly an art of the mind, and that spiritual entities are simply parts of our own psyches) in favor of the “spirit model” of magick (the belief that spiritual entities are very real and objective beings).

What that means is that my magick includes protocols for approaching the angels and spirits, methods of making offerings and caring for them, building relationships with them and convincing them (via mutual respect) to work with and for me here in the physical. It is, primarily, a form of shamanism—drawing techniques from ancient cultures and indigenous folks magicks. If you want some good examples of how I work (including photographs of the offering altars), check out these links:

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With the Solstice approaching, I thought I’d share the spread for this day from Sasha Graham’s new book, 365 Tarot Spreads: Revealing the Magic in Each Day.

For each day, Sasha includes interesting tidbits about the day and about tarot, as well as a spread.

The tidbits for June 20 include:

“Russian witchcraft states the most powerful botanicals are ritually harvested on Midsummer’s Eve. Unique plants like the fern seed offer invisibility on this night only. Now is a magical time for divining, finding true love, and flirting.”

And:

“The Sun card corresponds to the high day of summer. On an intellectual level, the sun represents being able to communicate, while on the physical plane it represents victory, success, recognition, and glory.”

This spread is based on the seven sacred directions, a time of quiet reflection during the high energy of midsummer’s magic, manifestation, and abundance. Sasha recommends that after you complete this spread, you go outside and pick flowers or a bouquet of herbs and bring some of the splendor of summer inside your home.

1. East (Air): What do I know?

2. South (Fire): What is my potential?

3. West (Water): What do I understand?

4. North (Earth): What should I nurture?

5. Above: What divine wisdom is mine?

6. Below: What do I inherit?

7. Within: How do I connect with what is inside me?

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Lupa, author of New Paths to Animal Totems the new Plant and Fungus Totems.

Many of you readers may be familiar with animal totems, archetypal beings that embody the qualities of a given species of animal and that watch over the physical animals themselves. But did you know plants, fungi, and other living beings have totems as well? Okay, so they’re not as popular as their critter counterparts, and we often see plants and fungi as scenery rather than active parts of nature. However, we have as much to learn from them as anyone else.

It’s easy for us to be so animal-centric that we forget we’re not the only important ones here. It may be more challenging for us to wrap our minds around the priorities and worldviews of beings so different from us. They don’t run around like we do, and they absorb nutrients from their environments in very different ways.

But sometimes the best thing for us is to be shaken out of our comfort zones a little. We can acquire new ways of viewing the world and approaching our own problems, too. What can we learn about a place by observing it from one spot for a long period of time, instead of just seeing it as the scenery flying by while we zip from point A to point B? What can that deeper understanding teach us?

Moreover, when we see fungi and plants as equally important parts of ecosystems, we learn more about just how intricate those systems are, with their many interlinked relationships. Animals don’t exist in a vacuum; they rely on the plants, fungi, and other living beings as much as other animals. When you remove one species from an ecosystem, you harm all the rest, too.

And by learning to place more importance on others, not just ourselves as humans or as animals, we can be more aware of how our actions affect everyone. Plant and fungus totems can help us with that awareness. They are intermediaries between their species and the rest of the world, humans included, and just like animal totems, you can contact them to see what they may have to teach you. But more importantly, in this era of environmental destruction, you can ask them what you can do to help their physical counterparts, and the ecosystems they’re a part of, for the benefit of all.

In doing so, we start the long but rewarding process of rejoining the community of nature, not just to grab from it what we can, but to regain our place as Homo sapiens, being one particularly smart and handy ape among a vibrant global community of unique life forms.

Our thanks to Lupa for her guest post! For more from Lupa, read her article “Leaves and Caps: 5 Ways to Honor The Sacred Remains of Plants and Fungi.”

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Jean-Louis de Biasi, author of Secrets and Practices of the Freemasons, The Divine Arcana of the Aurum Solis, and the forthcoming Rediscover the Magick of the Gods and Goddesses. Jean-Louis is also Lifetime Grand Master of the Ordo Aurum Solis and Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross.

Every child in the United States, as well as every new US citizen, knows “The Pledge of Allegiance,” written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

In 1942, the United States Congress officially recognized the following declaration: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

As you can see, no mention of any God was present in either version.

The Knights of Columbus is a worldwide Catholic organization organized in 1882 as a fraternal benefit society dedicated to providing charitable services. It borrowed many things from Freemasonry, including initiations, degrees, an oath, a restriction to men, etc. Like Freemasonry, they had three degrees and later added a fourth one. Even with its activity focused on philanthropy, the KOC has also had, from its inception, a strong political influence.

It is not surprising to discover that this organization lobbied the U.S. Congress for three years to add “God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. In 1954, President Eisenhower signed the bill into law, saying: “From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.” The text of the pledge became: “…one nation, under God,…”

But is the nation really under God?

In my book Secrets and Practices of the Freemasons I talked about the Capitol in Washington DC, calling this building the “Temple of Gods.” Following the text of a Roman architect, the Capitol was built at the east end of the Mall, and the building is perfectly aligned to the four directions. Standing at the center of the rotunda, you will be amazed to discover symbolism very far from the ideology of the Knights of Columbus: four arches open to the four directions; the astrological symbol of the sun on the floor at the center of the rotunda; the crypt under the rotunda; and, directly above the sun symbol, a golden metallic sun composed of a major rays and sixteen smaller one, surrounded by eight large tiles assembled in circle.

If we come back to the level of the rotunda we will again find the important number eight, with eight large paintings representing eight symbolic steps of American history.

So, if we stand at the center of this sun, are we “under God?”

To find the answer, just raise your head and you will discover Constantino Brumidi’s realization called the Apotheosis of Washington. This painting depicts Georges Washington as Zeus between the representations of Liberty and Victory. He is surrounded by five Greek divinities: Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, Hephaestus, and Demeter (Freedom is symbolically associated to Ares). Astrologers will be interested to find the hermetic correspondences of these divinities (Aries, Pisces, Cancer, Libra, and Virgo). These divine representations can be seen as the real protectors of the city and the country. Above all, at the top of the building, the statue of Freedom faces the East and the sunrise, attracting the divine power of the Light.

Keeping all this powerful symbolism in mind, maybe “under Gods” could have been more appropriate addition to the Pledge of Allegiance!

Our thanks to Jean-Louis for his guest post! Visit Jean-Louis de Biasi’s author page for more information, including articles and his books.

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Melissa Grabau, PhD, author of the new Yoga of Food.

Certainty of conviction. Grim warnings of hell and damnation if we are to continue our misguided ways. The priest on high preaches the perils of . . . . gluten, meat, corn, soy, hydrogenated fats, sugar, alcohol, caffeine . . . . The perils of pleasure. The cost of consumption. We writhe in shame. Sinners in need of redemption! Spare us the damnation of diabetes, heart disease, dementia . . . We fall on our knees and give ourselves over to the gospel of Veganism, Paleoism, Raw foodism . . . Save us from the intractable cravings of our flesh! Then we watch in slack-jawed horror as the sinners parade themselves, half naked, before our shocked eyes. Evidence of their indulgence layered in waves of flesh cascading down their slack bodies. The scale registers their shame. We continue to watch as they suffer their repentance—hurling their monstrous bodies through gruesome machinations meant to undo evidence of their gluttony. We witness their torment with a mixture of horror and delight, vowing not to end up like them, we will do better, we promise. The scarlet letter A has been replaced by flashing numbers on a scale, announcing to all the degradation of the sinner.

I find it quite ironic that at this point in history when we are blessed/cursed with a plethora of food, it is damaging our health and preoccupying many of us in ways that are distracting and troublesome at best and can be life threatening at worst. Leave it to us humans to make a mess of things and to turn something pleasurable and life-sustaining into something rife with conflict, danger, guilt, and fear. Does this remind anyone else of sex? Mark Twain said, “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” So as the Paleos and the Vegans duke it out, we may find ourselves wondering: “Was Jesus God or human? Is gluten the downfall of humanity, akin to the shiny apple Eve brought to Adam? Or is succumbing to the pleasures of a juicy steak the gateway to Hell?” In our confusion, we look outside ourselves to someone who knows better, seeking an antidote to our own foolery and depravity. Instead of a religious text, we now look to this or that nutritional study in search of a guideline for how to live right without suffering at the hand of our own indulgences—only to find that for every nutritional “fact” out there, one can find another “fact” to contradict it. It appears there is a big cosmic joke, with the punch line being that our so-called knowledge has cancelled itself out, leaving us none the wiser.

Good sex requires good communication and good nutrition requires the same. There is a language of the body, and it is a language of love. It starts from a place of trust and acceptance rather than fear and correction. The yoga of food is a movement toward union of mind with body, health with eating. It is a path of healing that starts from the premise that your body is good and that you can trust your own wisdom as you tune into the language of your body. I suggest that you start this process away from the dinner table, as food often triggers the deafening noise of the shoulds and shouldn’ts, fear and repentance. Instead, start with stillness, breath and gentle movement. As you engage with this flow, you begin to hear the music of your own Being and so fall in love with yourself. Eating then becomes an act of love based upon communication with your needs and an affirmation of your human right to pleasure and vitality.

Our thanks to Melissa for her guest post! For more from Melissa Grabau, read her article “How Yoga Practice Can Transform Your Relationship To Food.”

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Lon Milo DuQuette, author of Low Magick: It’s All In Your Head … You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is and the forthcoming Homemade Magick: The Musings & Mischief of a Do-It-Yourself Magus (August 2014).

Do you believe in reincarnation?

I do.

Perhaps the word “believe” is not quite the right term to use. Existence doesn’t demand belief to exist. Is it a matter of belief that I was a five-year-old child in 1953 kindergarten? Did that little Lonnie DuQuette die to become high school Lon or adult Lon?

If we are thinking in terms of linear time, we might be obliged to answer with a qualified, “Yes! Little Lonnie is dead and gone. His tiny body has passed away; the DuQuette home no longer rings with his laughter or the patter of his little feet. Every cell in his childhood body is now gone—dust, lost in dust.”

But when exactly did little Lonnie die? Where did my consciousness go in the mysterious “time” between my childhood incarnation and my adult incarnation? The reasons these questions are unanswerable is because time itself (as we are accustomed to thinking about it) does not exist. It is always NOW. Little Lonnie did not die…his NOW just continued to shift. When we remove the non-existent and illusionary factor of linear time from the equation, there is no previous life, no future life … only a continuous now life.

The fact that we are conscious of the perpetual now-ness of life should be our first big clue that the nature of the cosmos—the nature of reality—the nature of existence itself is consciousness. Every new revelation of quantum physics reinforces this assertion. But in order for us to wrap our meat brains around this most self-evident (yet frustratingly abstract) reality we must invent for ourselves a flickering hide-and-seek game of consciousness we call “Life and Death”—and pretend the great continuous consciousness experience is a series of sequential episodes.

As the result of a number of crib-memories and childhood visions and experiences too personal and complex to itemize here, I am reasonably certain that I am my own great uncle who died a few years before I was born. At first this realization seemed like a straightforward textbook example of reincarnation (move over Bridey Murphy!). But in my later years I’ve come to see that reincarnation is more complex and elegant than that—a sleight of hand illusion of genetic memory and quantum physics. (After all, if two particles can be in two places at the same time, then it follows that one particle can be simultaneously in two times.) In other words, all our incarnations are happening simultaneously within one Supreme Now, and that what we do to change our individual now changes both the past and the future.

In any case, now will always be the only time with which we have to work.

Every culture and civilization, from prehistoric times to the present day, engages in some form of ancestor worship. It seems that as human beings we are just hard-wired to recognize and honor our ancestors. The idea I will leave with you in my little blog today is this:

What if we are our own ancestors?

What if our present efforts at self-perfection are serving to correct, repair, and redeem mistakes and missteps of our past and improving our condition in the future?

What if the plot of the hilariously profound movie Groundhog Day is at least in part an accurate view of the nature of time and our incarnational duties?

Is it possible that we will all wake up one day to the realization that we are our own ancestors?

Is it possible that the final great revelation is that we are a single and supreme consciousness …and that for an eternity we’ve been each other all the time?

Our thanks to Lon for his guest post! Visit Lon Milo DuQuette’s author page for more information, including his books.

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Donald Tyson, author of a vast number of books, including The Serpent of Wisdom, The Demonology of King James I, and Necronomicon.

Schools of magic begin with the inspired leadership of one human being. That person is always guided by spirits, who are the true teachers of the school. We see this again and again throughout the history of Western occultism. A school rises under the leadership of an individual who psychically receives esoteric revelations. It prospers for a number of years, then usually dies when the individual who led it comes to the end of life. Sometimes, however, there is a transfer of authority to another person, or group of persons, who carry on the school in a slightly different direction, and who claim the mentorship of the same spiritual teachers.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in 1888 by three Freemasons, but its magical teachings were received almost exclusively by one of the three, Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers, who sometimes relied on the mediumship of his wife for help in receiving this secret mystery tradition from a shadowy group of spirits known to Mathers as the Secret Chiefs.

The notorious magician Aleister Crowley, who studied magic in the Golden Dawn, attempted to wrest control of the Order away from Mathers, but he failed. We may assume that the Secret Chiefs denied his succession, although he always claimed in later years to be guided by them. Crowley founded his own occult lodge, which he called the Order of the Silver Star, using the teachings received from the Secret Chiefs by Mathers. Later, he was able to establish a psychic link with a spirit he called his Holy Guardian Angel, and from this angel received his Book of the Law, which carries forward Crowley’s own esoteric current of Thelema.

The legitimate succession of the Golden Dawn passed to Mathers’ wife, Moina, who was a woman of uncommon mediumistic abilities, as well as an artist. It is to her talents that we owe the Golden Dawn Tarot. When Moina Mathers died in 1928, there was no one to carry on the esoteric current of the Secret Chiefs, although several individuals made the attempt, and the Golden Dawn died, for a time at least. Schools using the same teachings have arisen in more recent decades. Whether they have the blessings and guidance of the Secret Chiefs is debatable.

Schools of occultism do not always expire with the death of their founders. Sometimes they become religions. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a medium of considerable ability. She received her teachings psychically from spiritual beings, just as Mathers had. She called them Mahatmas, or Great Souls. When she died in 1891, those who took up leadership of Theosophy could not sustain the psychic link with these spiritual teachers, and effectively Theosophy died as an occult current, even though it continues as a religious organization.

The most successful example of an esoteric lodge that expanded after the death of its founder into a religion is Mormonism. Joseph Smith was a medium who talked to spirits and received their teachings. He communicated with spirits through “magic rocks,” which he placed inside a top hat. After his death in 1844, the direct psychic connection with these spirits was broken, but Mormonism solidified into a religious cult. Attempts were made to suppress its origins as a school of magic, but the mediumship of Smith could never be completely hidden.

Our thanks to Donald for his guest post! Visit Donald Tyson’s author page for more information, including articles and his books.