Tarot Image Quotes

Both the five-year-olds looked at me with bewilderment and a bit of fearful uncertainty. I had a sudden horrifying image of the woman I might become if I'm not careful: Crazy Aunt Liz. The divorcee in the muumuu with the dyed orange hair who doesn't eat dairy but smokes menthols, who's always just coming back from her astrology cruise or breaking up with her aroma-therapist boyfriend, who reads the Tarot cards of kindergarteners and says things like, "Bring Aunty Liz another wine cooler, baby, and I'll let you wear my mood ring...

The cards give you images and symbols to focus your vague intentions and transform them into action. Your will is the magic. In other words, you are the magic. If you can create something in your heart and then act on it to make it happen, that is magic. Very simple, very straightforward—no witches, no spells, and no broomsticks.

The stories of tarot are the reason for its existence. With a deck of cards, we can tell the stories of where we come from, how it is that we are here, what awaits us, and what we will or might become. Tarot tells the story that we are made in a divine image, and that the world (at least the world as we experience it) is made in that same image, so that in some subtle way God, humanity, and the world are all the same shape and are made of the same things. if that is true, then to be a student of tarot is to be a student of everything.

The gunslinger came awake from a confused dream which seemed to consist of a single image: that of the Sailor in the Tarot deck from which the man in black had dealt (or purported to deal) the gunslinger’s own moaning future.

You had an image of life inside you, a belief or an ideal, that you were ready to do good deeds, to suffer, and to sacrifice – and by degrees you noticed that the world had no need of your good deeds, or sacrifices, and such like; that life was not an heroic tale, with roles for heroes, and such like, but a comfortable bourgeois parlour, where one is perfectly satisfied with eating and drinking, coffee and knitted stockings, tarot readings and music on the radio. And he who wants otherwise and has the heroic and the beautiful inside him, the veneration of great poets or the adoration of saints inside him, he is a fool and a knight errant, a latter day Don Quixote?

Do not confuse the 'subconscious' with the 'unconscious', whose attributes include courage as well as true knowledge. A great deal of confusion has resulted from the use of these two terms as synonymous. I am using the term 'subconscious' here to stand for material -desires, anxieties, fears, hopes - repressed by the conscious mind as it deals with the outer realities of life. 'Unconscious' means the absic energy of life, that area of being beyond the ego. The subconscious, despite its hidden qualities, is really an extension of the ego. In a sense, it embodies the ego's absolute domain, that realm where it makes no compromises with reality. Because it does not concern itself with consequences the subconscious will walk you in front of a truck to avoid an unpleasant conversation. The unconscious on the other hand, balances and supports us by joining us to the great surge of life beyond our individual selves. The Hanged Man in the Major Arcana gives us a powerful image of this vital connection.

Mouse, the seventy-eight cards of the Tarot present symbols and mythological images that have recurred and reverberated through forty-five centuries of human history. Someone who understands these symbols can construct a dialogue about a given situation. There’s nothing superstitious about it.

My compass of preference was a Tarot deck—seventy-eight cards, each with their own unique images, which arranged themselves into spreads I could decipher with remarkable success. Whether the cards aligned properly out of luck, coincidence, or because secret fairies made it so, I never much cared.

However, what stores like Urban Outfitters—and every mall goth’s favorite, Hot Topic—offer is unprecedented access to subcultures often out of reach for young people. Those in rural areas without a local witch shop or knowledge about the occultic side of the internet can be introduced to an entire subculture through these stores. Perhaps they will pick up a tarot deck first as a gag gift, and then look further into the ancient practice of divination, and maybe even learn about the feminist history of Pamela Coleman Smith, a member of British occult society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who is responsible for creating the iconic images on the ubiquitous Rider-Waite deck. Where democratic dissemination ends and exploitation begins is tricky territory.

It may sound like a cliché, but love begins at home. No amount of one-night stands will compensate for not feeling okay about yourself. Anyone who tells you that they are still looking for the 'right' partner so that they can practice sexual magic 'properly' still hasn't cottoned on to the basic facts that so-called sex-magic 'power' does not reside in other people, techniques, or in occult 'secret teachings.' All magical 'power' comes from within, and cultivating Self-Love is a first step to unleashing this power. Which is not to say that it is easy—it often isn't, and many people spend years struggling to like themselves. Self-Love requires that you accept yourself—warts and all, rather than trying to live up to a self-image which is unrealistic and unbalanced. Self-Love enables you to relax so that you are not continually flogging yourself with internal criticism, and, significantly, you do not feel an overwhelming need to have other people's approval. Self-Love changes the way we relate to others, so that we no longer use other people as props to support our fantasies, but begin to see them as independent agents. If you do not love yourself, then you will find it difficult to love other people—you will continually use others to prop up parts of your ego.

At the time, I paid no heed to the emblem above the door of a compass crossed with a square; the library had been founded by Masons. There, in the quiet shadows, I read for hours from the books that the kind librarian allowed me to take from the shelves: fairy tales, adventure stories, adaptations of classics for children, and dictionaries of symbols. One day while browsing among the shelves I ran across a yellowed volume: Les Tarots by Eteilla. All my efforts to read it were in vain. The letters looked strange and the words were incomprehensible. I began to worry that I had forgotten how to read. When I communicated my anguish to the librarian, he began to laugh. “But how could you understand it; it’s written in French, my young friend! I can’t understand it either!” Oh, how I felt drawn to those mysterious pages! I flipped through them, seeing many numbers, sums, the frequent occurrence of the word Thot, some geometric shapes . . . but what fascinated me most was a rectangle inside which a princess, wearing a three-pointed crown and seated on a throne, was caressing a lion that was resting its head on her knees. The animal had an expression of profound intelligence combined with an extreme gentleness. Such a placid creature! I liked the image so much that I committed a transgression that I still have not repented: I tore out the page and brought it home to my room. Concealed beneath a floorboard, the card “STRENGTH” became my secret treasure. In the strength of my innocence, I fell in love with the princess.

Okay, so you start with a symbol, then you add in ceremony. The idea the wand is the symbol of the cock, which we use to create life. Some fucking caveman shaman starts carrying around a big stick because he's smarter than the other cavemen and he's the one who can tell the what things mean. Now Harry Potter's running around with a little dick in his hand shooting out magic cum, and that image carries all the meaning of all those ten thousand years of history and connections. It's a shortcut that connects you to a larger continuum of symbolism and ritual. Different societies had different beliefs. . . . But in the end, there were still common symbols with shared meanings. Like the Sun, or water . . . or a big fucking juicy cock.

Lady Harris's Fool is a cornucopia of sacred images, many of which reveal themselves only after long meditation (and the aid of a magnifying glass). He bursts into midair of existence from behind three swirling rings that issue from and return to his heart. These are the three veils of negativity (Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur)23 that Qabalists teach gave birth to the singularity of creation. His satchel is filled with the entire universe in the form of planetary and zodiacal coins. The Fool is the Holy Spirit itself. The dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit; the butterfly, symbol of transformation; winged globe, symbol of Mercurial air; and the Egyptian vulture-goddess Mauf24 pour from the Holy Grail in the Fool's right hand. Like the Virgin Mary, Maut became impregnated by the spirit (breath) of the wind. “The whole picture,” Crowley tells us, “is a glyph of the creative light.

David Greene was kind, and he had a sense of humor. He made your mother laugh.” That was all Gran could muster up? “Did you not like him?” “He wasn’t a big believer in Tarot. Humor aside, he was a very practical man. From New England,” she added, as if that explained everything. “I’d been wearing Karen down about the Arcana—until she met him. Before I knew it, your mother was pregnant. Even then, I sensed you were the Empress.” “He didn’t want us to live up north?” “David planned to move there.” Her gaze went distant. “To move you—the great Empress—away from her Haven.” That must have gone over well. “In the end, I convinced them not to go.” ...... I opened up the family albums. As I scrolled through them, her eyes appeared dazed, as if she wasn’t seeing the images. Yet then she stared at a large picture of my father. I said, “I wish I could remember him.” “David used to carry you around the farm on his shoulders,” she said. “He read to you every night and took you to the river to skip stones. He drove you around to pet every baby animal born in a ten-mile radius. Lambs, kittens, puppies.” She drew a labored breath. “He brought you to the crops and the gardens. Even then, you would pet the bark of an oak and kiss a rose bloom. If the cane was sighing that day, you’d fall asleep in his arms.” I imagined it all: the sugarcane, the farm, the majestic oaks, the lazy river that always had fish jumping. My roots were there, but I knew I would never go back. Jack’s dream had been to return and rebuild Haven. A dream we’d shared. I would feel like a traitor going home without him. Plus, it’d be too painful. Everything would remind me of the love I’d lost. “David’s death was so needless,” she said. “Don’t know what he was doing near that cane crusher.” “David’s death was so needless,” she said. “Don’t know what he was doing near that cane crusher.” I snapped my gaze to her. “What do you mean? He disappeared on a fishing trip in the Basin.” She frowned at me. “He did. Of course.” Chills crept up my spine. Was she lying? Why would she, unless . . .

Crowley recognized in the images, symbols, and structure of tarot a unified field theory of Qabalah and Hermeticism—an illustrated guidebook of the soul that neatly synthesizes the essence of the Western Mysteries.

Spirituality means many things to many people,” Klara said. “It’s a firm conviction that there is a God. In the New Thought movement, there are people who insist on finding euphemisms for God. Cosmic consciousness, universal intelligence, higher power, all these are just other words to be employed by those who are afraid to call it God. “God is a perfectly valid English word that embodies everything of which these people speak. Religion adulterates the term. It turns that word into the image of a white-haired, long-bearded sage sitting on a throne in the clouds, which is absurd. God can have no face. Does He have a penis and testicles as well? What need has He for those? Even the one time He is said to have fathered a child, He didn’t do so in the conventional way. At least Greek and Roman mythologies have gods who enjoy their genitalia.

While it’s impossible Michale’s spent his life masterminding the image that he’s dumb as tar, I’m betting that’s just an insult to tar.

wish space allowed me to discuss The Vision and The Voice in detail, but that has been done admirably in The Vision and The Voice with Commentary and Other Papers61 It provides an in-depth study of these wondrous visions and brings the spiritual reality of many tarot images to life.

The tarot can put a life situation in images in the same way that journal-writing can bring pattern and order to strong feelings and experiences. The randomness of a tarot reading forces the imagination to look at alternatives,

In a letter she wrote to Alfred Stieglitz in November of 1909, she says, “I’ve just finished a big job for very little cash! A set of designs for a pack of Tarot cards 80 designs. I shall send some over—of the original drawings—as some people may like them!” Today this note strikes a chord that’s both sweet and sour. The thirty-one-year-old writing it had no inkling how renowned her images would become after they were published in 1910. The Rider-Waite tarot deck, as it came to be called (after Waite and the publisher, William Rider & Son), is now arguably the most successful and recognizable deck ever made, and it is the number-one-selling deck in America and England. Her complex, symbolic artwork has been a source of inspiration and deep meaning to card readers for more than a hundred years, not to mention its numberless appearances on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs to haute couture dresses by Dior and Alexander McQueen.

Temperance reconciles water and fire for Waite; it is the “cleansing” and the “saving” of divine connection. As such, it is a far more alchemical understanding that Waite had of this card than the version Pamela painted for his first deck. In fact, his second version of Temperance, in the Waite-Trinick images, shows a far loftier concept of the card. The Golden Dawn had two images of this card, and Crowley took from the alchemical version as Waite did with Trinick, but not with Pamela

He sat in the reading room by himself, the diffuse morning light rendering him soft and dusty. He had removed one of the tarot decks from its bag and lined all of the cards faceup in three long rows. Now he leaned on the table and studied the image on each, one at at time, shuffling on his elbows to the next when he was through. He looked nothing like the Adam who'd lost his temper and everything like the Adam she had first met. That was what was frightening, though⁠—there'd been no warning.

Could you explain to us what the tarot really is? The tarot is a metaphysical machine. An organism of images and forms that is very difficult to summarize, one of humanity’s first optical languages.

No living creature, and therefore no man, can manifest anything other than what he himself is! His every remark, thought, word and deed reveal only what he himself is. His handwriting, his gait, the smallest of his gestures are the result of the forces at work in him. Nothing is chance, everything is the direct manifestation of the conscious or the unconscious Self. Hence, it is not mere chance how a person picks up the tarot cards, how he shuffles them, how many cards he lifts when cutting and in what sequence he consequently spreads the cards. Men discovered these facts already in ancient times or they learned them from initiates! That is why the art of spreading cards for the purpose of exploring a man's inner image and his future prospects is as old as mankind.