The card known as Temperance or as Art in the Thoth deck and in my Tabula Mundi Tarot, is called The Arc in my new deck Pharos Tarot. The title refers both to the Arc of the rainbow, the Ark of the covenant, and to something called “the Arc of Visibility”. That’s a nautical term that refers to the portion of the horizon over which a lighted aid to navigation (ie a lighthouse or a star) is visible from seaward.
The Hebrew letter Samekh means “prop”. The Arc is upheld by a skull shaped prop showing that the Death card is the foundational stage preceding it.
A sneak peek at a card from my new deck-in-progress, Pharos Tarot. The Foghorn is also known as The Moon. It’s the full moon here, for the zero degree, on the Pisces/Virgo axis.
The fog glows, but you cannot see the moon.
The horn sounds silently, and something vibrates at the back of your head. Something comes up from below. Will you heed the call?
Brought to you by Pisces, and the letter Qoph. Qoph means “the back of the head”, and the path forward – assuming you get by the kraken – leads between the back of the Anubis figures’ heads.
It’s hard to capture the look of the original watercolor painting with a scan in this case. I have an inexpensive scanner and this is the best it could do. Most things it does fine, but fog is a little too subtle for it. In the original, the fog looks more ethereal and almost real. But the test print looks good. I’ll just have to redo it at some point. But you get the idea of the card anyway.
This is what the cards might look like borderless if I used the alternate titles (but there won’t be a watermark, no copyright info will be on the cards). But the image could be cropped and borders added instead, like in Tabula Mundi. Or it could be borderless and have a regular title of The Moon.
The fog is too thick tonight to decide which way to go. Next we seek the light.
For the cross quarter holiday and Thelemic holy day, the Feast of Stars, also known as the Feast of Nuit, and Imbolc, I bring you the Dweller Between the Waters, the Daughter of the Firmament. Here is The Star card from my new deck-in-progress, Pharos Tarot. I call this one The Way.
The Star shows the Way, a beacon of celestial navigation. In the Milky Way she dwells, washing herself in a river of dew, using her solar cross window to make thunderbolts…
The Hebrew letter is Heh, meaning “window” (as per the Thoth system) sp the goddess is filtering starlight through a solar cross window. If you want to use tradition, it’s Tzaddi, meaning “hook”. The stars as they pass thru the window and forming swirling thunderbolts with hook-like edges.
Two versions, as two different scanner modes used. I’m undecided. The top one has better detail in the Milky Way edges, but I like the dark blue in the second one as it looks more “night sky”.
” Then there was another passage which was really too secret for anything; all I shall tell you is, there was the most beautiful Goddess that ever was, and she was washing herself in a river of dew. If you ask what she is doing, she says: “I’m making thunderbolts.” It was only starlight, and yet one could see quite clearly, so don’t think I’m making a mistake. ” ~ Liber XCV, The Wake World, by Aleister Crowley
The colors are Violet, Sky Blue, Bluish Mauve, and White Faintly Tinged Purple. I took a bit of artistic liberty in that “Sky Blue” here ranges through all shades of blue one might see in the sky, as I wanted it to be a night sky. The violets and bluish mauve form the nebulae. The stars are “white faintly tinged purple”.
You can see all of the cards posted to date on the Pharos page. More cards to come over the next few days, as the moon wanes and prepares to renew.
A preview of my new work in progress, Pharos Tarot. In honor of today’s auspicious astronomical event, the Mercury-Sun cazimi, I wanted to send out a communication (Mercury) and give you a preview of one of my favorite Pharos Tarot cards, The Sun. I call this one The Lamp. It’s a glyph of illumination and liberty: Light, Love, Liberty, and Life.
The Hebrew letter is Resh, meaning head – the central or front of the head or face. Light enters the face and head, into the pineal gland, through the eye.
The lamp shows the four stations of Liber Resh vel Helios, Crowley’s solar adoration ritual performed four times daily, at each of the stations of the Sun’s journey: sunrise to Ra in his strength (shown by the sun symbol and serpent), noontime to Hathor in her beauty (shown by her horned crown at the apex), sunset to Tum or Atum in his joy, (shown by his white crown), and midnight to Khephra, in his hiding (shown by the winged scarab beetle at bottom).
Twin children dance on the solar barque at the bottom, representing the solar twins as dual forms of Horus or Heru. The active form holds what looks like a one – the pillar. The passive form holds what looks like a zero – the void. Yet they are also the letters I and O, and along with the A between them spell the magical formula IAO. IAO is also another name for the Tetragrammaton, known as the Bringer of Light, and as a godform as a sun god and a gnostic god of the mysteries.
The two V’s on the barque transform IAO into VIAOV. Crowley, adapted IAO for the new Aeon, adding the Hebrew letter Vau to both ends, which he then called the “proper hieroglyph of the Ritual of Self-Initiation in this Aeon of Horus” VIAOV enumerates to 93, like Thelema and Agape. Crowley calls this person who travels through this new process, “Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world.”
The colors are Orange, Gold Yellow, Rich Amber, and Amber, rayed red. More to come on that later.
This post will be added to the main section of this site for the Pharos Tarot, on the tab called “Pharos” above. You can go there to see all of the posted cards in one place, with all updated information
UPDATE August 2019: The page previously linked here below is temporarily password protected, as I am in process of redoing several of the cards. You can see some of the original cards in the regular posts, beginning with the previous post titled, “It begins with The Sea”.
Pharos Tarot has been given it’s very own page, with a link at the header of the website. Future posts on the deck will be consolidated there as the cards are revealed. Please check there, for new expanded information on the first card revealed (the Hanged Man), and for an overview of the concept of this deck.
As we go through the journey of the Major Arcana, these individual posts on each card will be added to the link above, making the information easier to find in one place as we travel.
You can follow along one episode at a time, with the individual card posts, or see them as a collection of posts on the summary Pharos tab above.
Have all the little things gotten you down? Things not going your way? Work stuff, holidays, post holidays, overall blah? The dark days, the altogether too short planetary hours?
If in the northern hemisphere it is just too dreary. In the southern hemisphere maybe it is the sweltering heat. If in the US, then it could be all sorts of things getting you down.
Magickal constipation? Too much Capricorn in the air? Artistic struggles? Either way something has harshed your mellow.
Local artist p.BKr channelled that feeling of discontent and created a new sculptural series. Introducing the Harshmellows:
The Harshmellows. By artist p.BKr
Handmade, upcycled, made of ultimately recyclable materials.
The Harshmellow family knows how you feel, because they were created out of stress and compressed paper napkins.
Contact Atu House if you would like to adopt them. They have a good home but they are never content.
This is the first card I chose to post for Pharos Tarot, a new tarot journey and deck in progress.
I thought it should start by showing a Mother letter, as after all everything comes from them. Since this is a journey of water, I thought the Hanged Man is a good place to start. I call this card The Sea, where it begins.
The Hanged Man is Mem, one of the three Mother letters, corresponding to water. Pharos Tarot is a watercolor deck, and watercolor is all about the interplay of water, pigment, and light. One could say even that as a medium it best describes the elemental journey. It certainly involves water, and fire (light) but also air as it dries and earth in the form of pigment.
This deck is about my exploration of the medium of watercolor. It felt like the medium that would be best for this deck, as it is also an exploration of color, and watercolors are known for their luminous quality as light plays through their transparency. Watercolor is a medium I’ve never used much before, so it is very new to me and it is extremely challenging. I wanted an artistic challenge. But that means making a lot of mistakes. I have a lot of cards done, almost all the Majors, but several of them are going to be redone, as along the way the seas have been rough. I’m learning to ride the waves.
At the end of September, ATO House publishing, my imprint, had a booth at the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival. It was the first time I’ve done such a thing. I made a TON of matted art prints to decorate the booth, and not all of them sold out so I still have a bunch of prints of both Tabula Mundi and Rosetta Tarot, matted to fit standard frames in 8×10″, 11×14″, and 16×20″. Plus a few cards matted to fit a 5×7″ frame. So what to do with all these prints? Well some of them will be used for our give aways, where we give out prizes every week on our Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast. Patrons at the Fortune’s Wheelhouse Patreon site at the $3 level and above are automatically entered to win. But I can only give away so many there, and I don’t want to just stuff all this colorful art in a closet. So for the rest of the month of October or until these run out, there will be a special BOGO or “Buy one – Get one free” at www.tarotcart.com. Here is how it will work. You buy a print, whichever one you want, any size, using the drop down card selection on the site. I’ll then send you a free one, in the same size, from the available selections already made for the Garlic Festival. For the second one, you can make a request of a few cards of either deck you might prefer and I’ll fulfill the request if I can, but otherwise I will select for you based on what prints I already have made. Because the idea for this sale is to move some of these already made matted artworks to an appreciative home. These make a great gift, and are inexpensive to mail, and I’ll ship both for the cost of the shipping one, so you could buy one for yourself, then re use the shipping envelope to send the free one to a friend! Your holiday shopping done, almost for free!
All you have to do to get this offer is buy a print on www.tarotcart.com, and in the comment field, say BOGO and tell me if you have any preferences for the free one, or would just prefer a surprise. As I said it is first come first serve and I cannot guarantee your free print will be able to be your choice, but I printed most of the majors in each size, of each deck, and some of the minors. They are all nice though, trust me! They are matted and ready to frame and printed in vibrant, 100 year archival color inks, and signed.
I also made those “prayer flags” out of the extra large majors edition of Tabula Mundi, both the black and white and the color edition. You can see them hanging to decorate the booth. The cards are permanently attached to a 3 inch wide double satin ribbon, with grommets attached every few cards, and thin satin ties to hang them. The cards are centered in an area about 8 ft 8 inches long, with extra ribbon on each side making it around ten feet long but adjustable down to the card area if desired. So they will fit along any size room’s wall, pretty much. I have two in color and two in black and white. You can see them below in the first two pictures. Those are available first come first serve, by request, for $77. Just send an email if you are interested, to the info(at)tarotcart email (or any one of my others including mm at this site.) I have a black and white one custom made for a room in my own house along one 12 foot wall.
See the whole progression, from Fool to Universe, all at once!
In my Crowleymas post earlier today, I include a picture of a book I made, a re binding of Liber AL vel Legis (Crowley’s Book of the Law). It started its life as a standard paperback edition that looks like this. In the fiery third chapter of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, one of the last verses (v. 73) of the book reads “Paste the sheets from right to left and from top to bottom : then behold!” So I did just that, taking the book completely apart first, then putting it back together. The paperback was perfect bound, so after removing the original cover I was left with individual pages. They had to be separated into “signatures” (groups of pages for sewing a book), then the right side of a double page spread glued to the left side. Each signature was then pierced and sewn with Coptic stitch – top to bottom. And behold!
The Coptic stitch ensures that the book will lay flat when open. The three chapters were each given a ribbon marker in an elemental color. This one was given to Lon Milo Duquette, for his participation in our Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast meet up last month. I made it for Lon because in one of his books (maybe it was Ask Baba Lon or Low Magick but I am not sure now) he describes how he got his first Liber AL, gluing all the pages together per the instructions, then destroying it via burning per the admonition. It was one of the funniest things I’ve heard him say (out of lots of funny things he says) when he describes watching each page separately burning away (due to the glue) as a “magickal version of the opening of Bonanza“. That made be laugh so much I thought he should have this one. I hope he doesn’t feel the need to burn it! Anyway speaking of dear Lon, his latest book Son of Chicken Qabalah is just hitting the store shelves. I’m sure it will be both funny and insightful, so am looking forward to reading it.
I made a few other special hand made books as gifts for the organizers of the Fortune’s Wheelhouse meet up. They are an exact duplicate of my own personal ‘magician’s journal’ that I keep on my altar for ritual use. These books are divided into 7 signatures, one for each of the 7 traditional “planets”, each corresponding to a day of the week. Each signature is bound in the color of that planet’s sephira, per the Golden Dawn Queen Scale of color, and each has an appropriately colored ribbon binding. The chapters are in descending Chaldean order of the planets from slowest to fastest (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon), and each ribbon is longer or shorter depending on the planet’s length of orbit.
Magician’s Planetary Journal showing color correspondences to the 7 planets incorporated into the 7 bindings and 7 ribbon markers. Shown on the Friday altar in the elemental colors for Venus/Empress. Venus gets an Emerald Green ribbon, the color of the sephira Netzach in the Queen Scale.
In each section I’ve put everything a practicing planetary magician needs at their fingertips, including information on all the most useful astrological correspondences in the worlds of plant, animal, mineral, and mankind, planetary sigils and seals, geomantic figures, magic squares, and a translation of the planet’s Orphic Hymn. Plus there is blank paper, graph paper, and vellum paper inside at the end of each section for recording more information one finds useful. Here is a picture of today’s altar, done up in the Golden Dawn color scale colors for Venus, since today is Friday, Venus’ day. The colors are Emerald, Sky Blue, Pale Green, and Bright Rose, rayed pale green. In addition to being Venus Day, it is currently also Venus’ season, and Libran Aleister Crowley’s birthday. The altar has all sorts of Venusian offerings: a green candle in a copper holder, mead (honey wine), rose petals, 7 rose hips, and sea water and scallop shells gathered during Venus’ day and hour. The journal is open to the Orphic Hymn for Aphrodite.
Those of you who have been reading here for a while know that I am pretty much obsessed with the Golden Dawn color scales. I’ve painted both Rosetta Tarot and Tabula Mundi Tarot by faithfully following them, and in the process lots has been revealed. My third deck in progress is also being painted with them, and taking it even further as an exploration of watercolors and light. (Coming soon!) For those of you who received Part I of my article on the color scales and have been waiting for Part II of the article, I apologize it is taking so long. It is really that I’ve discovered there is so much to say about them that it has turned into a much larger topic I really want to address properly. So it will come, but maybe will be more than two parts, or even a book of it’s own, or a chapter in my next book. Rest assured I am working on it.
Taro as Color by Ithell Colquhoun has four available binding colors for the elements, Red, Blue, Yellow, and Indigo. I got the red one for Fire.
Which is why I was delighted to recently discover the book Taro as Color, by Ithell Colquhoun 1906-1988, with an introduction by Amy Hale. As it is fully illustrated in color, it is a bit expensive. But I could not resist getting it since this is my area of fascination and expertise. Because in addition to planetary magic, I also am a practitioner of color magic. Ithell Colquhoun was a fascinating artist and occultist, who created a tarot deck consisting of pours of enamel paint in elemental colors for each card. These were exhibited only once, in a village of Cornwall, in 1977.
I discovered this book through the Occulture podcast and the episode, which aired in August, is linked here if you want to have a listen. Ryan the host, even mentions to the guest during the episode sending a link about the book to Susie, my co host on our Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast! I wish one of them had sent it to me so I would have found it sooner, as hey this topic is in my Wheelhouse for sure! I’ve only been obsessing about the GD scales for 7 years or so. But hey I stumbled across it thankfully via Ryan’s show, and I am so glad I did. It is a gorgeous book.
And what is really interesting to me is that last year, and this spring and summer, I was playing around doing the exact same thing as Ithell, just for fun, without even knowing she had already done this making of poured paintings for each card.
Here is her poured painting for “The Spirit of Aither” (or Aether), otherwise known as the Fool, followed by one of my paint pourings made last year for the Fool card.
Ithell Colquhoun’s pour for the Fool card, from the book TARO as Color
One of several pours I did for the Fool card, using the Golden Dawn color scale colors for the Fool: Bright Pale Yellow, Sky Blue, Blue Emerald, and Emerald, flecked gold.
So you can see a similar approach. She used the same colors but with the Bright Pale Yellow of the King Scale as the center, where I used the Bright Pale Yellow to cover the entire canvas before pouring the other colors of the scale on. She dotted the Emerald with gold enamel to achieve the “flecking” of the Princess Scale. I mixed gold powder into my Emerald to achieve the flecking (which looks better in person than it shows here).I also blew air over the painting with a straw, for additional reinforcement of the Air element the Fool corresponds to.
I’ve not yet finished all the pouring, as I had to give up on them for a while to work on my other tarot, which is a more representative art deck instead of these abstract works I did for fun. That one I’m currently painting in watercolor, in the Golden Dawn color scales, and it is coming soon!
I did the paint pourings in acrylic, rather than Ithell’s enamel. I don’t think acrylic was available in 1977, and she used enamel as that is what the Golden Dawn was using then to achieve the brightest purest colors available at the time. It is a very messy process (at least when I do it) so I have to do it outside. Sometimes there is extra paint left, and I don’t want to pour it on the ground. I had to pour it on something to dry, as once it is dry it is inert and pretty harmless. So I’ve been pouring all my colors on this wooden block, rotating it so it has paint on all six sides. I guess I could call it the Cube of Space when it is done, as eventually it will have all the colors of every card, even if they get hidden under each other each time I do another pouring!
