Category: Products

Image Courtesy of Living Magick

As most of you know, in November 2010 I started “The Living Magick Tarot Challenge”. The folks at Living Magick were kind enough to send me a copy of their tarot self study flash cards, and so I decided that I would chronicle my attempt to once and for all learn the tarot with monthly updates here on The Magical Buffet.

I’m pleased to say my progress has been slow but steady. About 10-15 minutes a day has me on track to eventually have a general understanding of the traditional interpretation of the tarot cards. Something that has been a long time coming. And something, thanks to my horrible memory, will be a long time to fully achieve. Recently I found myself thinking that perhaps having you all read these updates monthly might get a little boring. Of course, there was the larger realization. One that I suspect real tarot readers have known all along.

I don’t think you ever stop learning the tarot. You learn all the traditional meanings and interpretations, but every time you spread the cards there is going to always be something else to learn. The way one card influences the others seems like it will be an endless learning experience. One that I’m sure will take me years to even brush the surface of. And as much as I like knowing what one article a month will be about, I don’t think I’m going to have enough entertaining or enlightening insights to warrant a monthly update for the unforeseeable future.

However, I do want to say a few things before I step away from the official “Living Magick Tarot Challenge”. First, I want to say what great folks are over there at Living Magick. They are filled with enthusiasm for their work and incredibly kind for giving me their cards to play with. Second, The Living Magick tarot learning cards are just wonderful. This really is a product long over due. It seems like something useful for beginners like me, and even for seasoned tarot readers. If I was well versed in the tarot, I would consider the occasional run through this deck as a tarot “check up”. Perhaps a way to get a fresh perspective on the cards themselves. Lastly, as always, I want to thank all of you for reading my monthly updates! I can’t claim as to know why, but you all kept reading them, and I appreciate it!

And now, the future!

Images Courtesy of Living Magick

Yikes! Is it the end of February already? Where the heck did this month go? I’ve had a busy February working on The Magical Buffet, dealing with my assorted health dramas, and trying to learn Spanish, but more importantly, I’ve also had some time to work with Living Magick’s “self study flash cards”!

I’m afraid the rest of this article is going to seem anticlimactic, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a success. This month I worked on retaining what I’ve learned so far, which is the Major Arcana (but not their reversals), and I added the Page, Knight, Queen, and King of Cups into the mix. At first I thought I would add in the entirety of the Cups suit, but quickly realized that I was biting off more than I could chew. I opted for slower, but hopefully more meaningful progress.

As you can see here, the art for the Minor Arcana is still minimal. I think these days who knows what the art for any given tarot card will look like. For me, I feel it’s better to try and associate with names in case you decide to change decks or haven’t yet committed to a particular deck, which makes these cards perfect.

Looking at the back you can see why I opted for the less is more approach. You’re given what Pages represent, what Cups represent, their association with water and the astrological correspondences, along with keywords. That’s a lot of totally new information for each card! However, by learning these I can now already be steps ahead on other cards.

My routine of 10-15 minutes of practice most days seems to have me slowly but steadily progressing. My next challenge will be adding in the rest of the Cups while still working on retaining all the information I’ve already learned. This will be a pretty big jump, I’ll let you know how it goes next month!

Curious as to what the heck this is all about? See how the Living Magick Tarot Challenge began here.

Image Courtesy of Living Magick.

Here we are again folks, but I’m happy to say I’m back on track. You may recall that last month I confessed to doing just about nothing with my cool Living Magick tarot learning cards, despite committing to working on it just one month prior. I may lack discipline, but at least I’m honest.

This month I did a much better job of working with the flash cards, but it was frustrating because I’d forgotten much of what I had learned in November! So January was about relearning the Major Arcana, and I’m pleased to say that with regards to that I’m now in good shape. I know the general theme of each card, its astrological association, and some other keywords associated with each card. Once you remember the general theme, the keywords are pretty easy to recall since they’re generally off shoots of the general theme. The astrological associations were a bit tougher until I remembered what I had learned from “The Magical I Ching” by J.H. Brennan.

For a class I needed to learn the basics of working with the I Ching and Brennan’s book was the main text for the class. In learning the trigrams he suggests coming up with visual cues for each trigram, and the more bizarre, the more likely you are to remember the meaning. For example, his text about the trigram of Gentle or Wind is as follows:

To help you remember the trigram itself, I noted that it was broken at the bottom. There are few things you could imagine quite so rude as breaking Wind from your bottom.

I know, I know, this sort of image is thoroughly unsuitable for a sober tome on a spiritual oracle…but you’ll never forget that trigram now, will you? And by the way, if you must break wind, do it gently. That way you’ll remember the other title of the trigram.

I love me some Brennan! Now Living Magick’s tarot learning cards do not have images, which I rather like because these days who knows what image will appear on any given card of any given deck. However, I was still able to use absurd associations to help learn the astrological signs for each card.

For example, the astrological association given for The Fool is Uranus. I immediately thought about how young kids (and well, many adults) will always chuckle at Uranus. You said Uranus…heh, heh, heh. So obviously a fool says Uranus. Is it sound logic? No. Has it worked? Yes. More bizarre still was while learning a favorite card of mine, The Hanged Man, its astrological sign is Neptune. What odd string of logic did I use to remember this? The Hanged Man’s legs are generally drawn with one leg straight and the other bent. It’s kind of trident-esque and the trident is often depicted with the god Neptune. It’s totally weird and embarrassing to admit to, but it’s getting the job done.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to apply this “logic” to learning about Cups in the Minor Arcana, but I’ll obviously let you know how it goes. And again, thanks to Living Magick for the great deck! It’s a real boon for a beginner like me!

You may recall that last month I started “The Living Magick Tarot Challenge”, where I use Living Magick’s awesome “Tarot Learning Cards” to finally learn the tarot and chronicle my progress monthly. November had a very strong start and I felt confident that by the end of December I would have the Major Arcana down cold, and would be well on my way to knowing the entire suit of Cups from the Minor Arcana. Yep, that was the plan.

Well, we might as well call this update what it is, bull crap. I have loads of excuses and no results. My illness from November is still a problem in December. My husband has spent the better part of December sick on our sofa. My work situation got pretty crazy in December. And of course, there were the holidays. Not only did I fail to maintain even the slightest bit of discipline with using Living Magick’s “Tarot Learning Cards”, I just fell off the wagon entirely and didn’t even touch the cards the entire month of December.

So why on Earth am I writing this update when I have nothing to share? Essentially to keep me honest. I could sit here and lie and odds are good no one would ever realize I hadn’t learned anything, but what’s the point in that? I dropped the ball. I suck. And now I’m moving on.

The holidays are over. My health, although still shaky, is certainly manageable for the moment. The husband is out of sick days to use for work. And my overall work load has become something I have much greater control over. Enough about December and all its failings, and on to January! We’ll talk about this again soon, I promise.

Images Courtesy of Living Magick

A few months back I found myself thumbing through a magazine and I found an advertisement for a company I’d never heard of called Living Magick. Their ad touted the release of “self study flash cards” for astrology, runes, and tarot. I said to myself, flash cards! Brilliant! Why haven’t I seen anything like this before? The “Tarot Learning Cards” in particular really got my attention.

It’s no secret that I love me some tarot cards, but I’ve repeatedly lamented, online and otherwise, that I cannot sit down and do a basic tarot reading. I don’t feel psychically inclined so the idea of using intuition to read the cards, which seems pretty popular these days, holds no interest to me. I’ve wanted to really learn the cards and be able to give a technically correct reading. I know that kills a lot of the romance of tarot cards but what can I say, I’m an occult fan girl, it’s the technical aspect of these things that matter to me. So I sent an email to Living Magick pitching them the idea that I get a deck of their “Tarot Learning Cards” and I’ll chronicle my attempts to finally, at long last, learn tarot. The folks at Living Magick were terribly nice and very enthusiastic. Next thing you know, I’ve got myself a deck of “Tarot Learning Cards”!

Despite how excited I was to get the deck I made sure to wait until November 1st to open the box. I wanted to be able to give a 100% honest account of what I accomplished with the deck in the first month. Here we go!

I opened the box and thumbed through the cards. The most obvious thing was that the cards are not playing card sized or the traditional tarot card size. The cards are more square, very much like a deck of flash cards you may have used in school to learn math or letters. For those of you truly curious, the dimensions of the cards are 3.75″ x 5.25″. They are very basic in appearance, with the Major Arcana having the name of the card with its corresponding number in Roman numerals on the front and a nice brown and white border. The Minor Arcana are the same, but instead of the Roman numerals they have an image of their suit; cups, swords, wands, and pentacles. The backs contain information about the card, but more on that later.

After taking a look at the tarot card portion of the deck I turned my attention to the six supplemental cards that came with the deck. The cards included information about the associated elements to the various suits, numerology, terminology, information about reversals, general information about the Court cards of the deck, a list of recommended reading, and most important to me and my task at hand, how to use the deck.

Since I wanted to give you guys the real deal on how Living Magick’s “Tarot Learning Cards” worked I decided to follow the advice on the card about how to use the deck. They suggest that you break the deck down into manageable parts, adding that the Major Arcana is good place to start. I thought that sounded like a good approach so I dedicated November to learning the Major Arcana with the idea that next would be each suit of the Minor Arcana, then the Court cards, and then start over to work on the reversals, as was outlined on the “how to use the deck” card.

I had thought that like an elementary school student I would need someone to run me through the flash cards, but actually with the sturdy cards I really could run myself through them without needing someone else to hold the cards to “keep me honest”. The back of each card lists the theme, astrological association, and general keywords associated with the card. I’m happy to say at this point I am familiar with the overall theme of each of the Major Arcana cards and their astrological associations. I’m still struggling to remember a few of them, and I definitely still need to work on remembering more of the keywords. However, knowing the themes goes a long way to figuring out at least some of the keywords associated with each card.

You might be thinking geez Rebecca, a whole month and you couldn’t learn 22 stinkin’ cards? Here’s the thing, I had a few setbacks this past month. Generally I would devote 10-15 minutes an evening to run through the cards, but often times I skipped weekends, and I lost a week to illness. I think if I had that lost week back I would have the Major Arcana down cold. As it is, I’m rather pleased with what I accomplished. I have a terrible memory, so getting as far as I did in one month probably means that an average person could already be onto another section of the deck by now. Yes, the deck really does work; all you need to do is be able to dedicate 10-15 minutes a day to the task.

I’m thrilled with my progress this month with Living Magick’s “Tarot Learning Cards” and I can’t wait to learn more! The tarot deck is working so well for me that I’m seriously considering tackling astrology or runes too, at some point. I plan on sharing with you my progress each month so you can see how the deck works out for me.

Yes my friends, Rebecca has taken on yet another challenge! First it was “The Colbert Healthcare Challenge”. Then it was the “Everyday Dharma Challenge”. Now I’m proud to introduce the “Living Magick Tarot Challenge”! Stay tuned!

This review is way overdue. For months now the adorable box for the “Sun and Moon Tarot” by Vanessa Decort has been sitting on my desk, continually being reached over, moved to different stacks on my desk, and just generally being overlooked. I kept meaning to open it up, but other stuff managed to always force its way past the box to the front of the line.

I’m sorry “Sun and Moon Tarot”; I should have opened you sooner because now I see what I have been missing. The “Sun and Moon Tarot” may be the most adorable tarot deck of all time. Vanessa Decort’s art for it is just so darn cute! She definitely colors outside the lines with her artistic interpretation of the tarot; playing with various cultures in her work. I wish I could sit here and wax poetically about it, but every time I look at a card I just find myself smiling and thinking, that is so damn adorable!

I mean here, look:

Has a Five of Swords ever looked cuter?

Or how about this?

How awesome is that Hermit?

Beside the art, (Did I mention how much I love it?) the “Sun and Moon Tarot” integrates numerology and Sephirot, the tree of life in Judaic mysticism, so each card in the Major Arcana is linked to a symbol from the 22 character Hebrew alphabet.

I decided to try out numerology to find my personal archetype following the instructions that Decort outlines in 40 page booklet that comes with the deck. Here we go:

Count up the numbers of your birth date, including the date, month, and year. Following her example I take my birthday May 29, 1976 and break it down.

5 + 2 + 9 + 1 + 9 +7+ 6 = 39

If the number is higher than 21, you add the numbers together again, like this.

3 + 9 = 12

This number is The Hanged Man in the tarot.

Oddly, I’ve always had affection for The Hanged Man. I’m not entirely sure why, perhaps it’s because he always looks at peace despite hanging there. Intrigued I flipped through the booklet to see what Decort says about The Hanged Man.

“Linked with Neptune. Associated with breaking away from old patterns, or reversal. You can flip the values of society or break through them. Hold on to something that is larger than your personal power, namely a higher belief, or a new point of view. The tree symbolizes the kabalistic tree of life, or the Sephirot in Judaic mysticism. The ankh is the Egyptian symbol of infinite vitality. The yoga pose, shown upside down, is the Tree. The Hebrew character Mem represents water.”

And now my affection for The Hanged Man is even greater than before.

I can’t tell you how much I adore the “Sun and Moon Tarot”. It’s simple, whimsical art gives way to rich symbolism and well thought out design. Buy it now.