[caption id="attachment_80072" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Reflection by Mark Round[/caption] My first favorite hermit was Obi-Wan Kenobi, who came to the big screen in the early summer of ’77. I suppose I was drawn to the whole...

[caption id="attachment_79989" align="alignnone" width="950"] Kerr Eby, The Lantern, 1931, etching on paper, plate: 10 x 12 1/2 in. (25.4 x 31.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Katz, 1971.417[/caption] As...

[caption id="attachment_79938" align="alignnone" width="900"] Image via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] In 1862, John Henry “Professor” Pepper summoned a ghost in front of a live audience. Though the illusion he used dated back at least as far as...

[caption id="attachment_79874" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Photo by Vlad Bagacian[/caption] When I began structuring this essay in my mind, trying to make a rational attempt to contemplate the meaning of the hermit's card (number 9), a song...

[caption id="attachment_79804" align="alignnone" width="450"] The Hermit from the Rider-Waite Tarot by Pamela Colman.[/caption] As nights lengthen in the Northern Hemisphere and envelop us in darkness, my introverted nature celebrates the invitation to turn inward. The...

[caption id="attachment_79728" align="alignnone" width="450"] Life and death. Oil painting. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.[/caption] I pulled the card, turned it over, and there it was…Death. My stomach turned at the sight of it. It was a...

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. – Percy Shelley,...

[caption id="attachment_79509" align="alignnone" width="350"] The Death Card from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck[/caption] Some may think it presumptuous for a living person to write of death, and while I agree writers should save paper and time...

[caption id="attachment_79428" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Still from Barbie (2023) from Warner Brothers[/caption]  “But the human being is the only animal capable of knowing death as the end inevitable for itself, and the span of old age...

[caption id="attachment_79336" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Andy Mitchell from Glasgow, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] The problem with towers is that they’re already high up. And then there’s this other problem called gravity, accompanied by its...

[caption id="attachment_79280" align="alignnone" width="482"] The Tower from the Thoth Deck by Aleister Crowley[/caption] September smuggles us across the Equinox, the border between Summer and The Fall. That phrase, The Fall, does a lot of work...

In the intricate tapestry of the Tarot, the sixteenth card stands as a potent symbol of upheaval and transformation, the tumultuous nature of the human journey. This card, known as The Tower, resonates deeply with...

Following my June contribution to JCF's MythBlast essay series, a friend asked about Joseph Campbell's personal experience with tarot. According to Campbell, his introduction to the tarot occurred in 1943, as friend and mentor Heinrich...

[caption id="attachment_79029" align="alignnone" width="900"] Devil's shadow by Herby_Fr[/caption] According to the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, the fifteenth Arcanum of the Tarot introduces us to the “intoxication of...

[caption id="attachment_78964" align="alignnone" width="884"] Iterations of The Devil in the Marseille Deck.[/caption] The cards haven’t changed as much as we have.  Back in the day, the owners of the tarot decks tended to be royalty...

[caption id="attachment_78896" align="alignnone" width="400"] The Devil - William Thomas Horton - Public Domain[/caption] Once upon a time the devil was looking for the most effective weapon against God. The first demon proposed to tell people...

[caption id="attachment_78593" align="alignnone" width="450"] AI Art created by Scott Neumeister in Midjourney[/caption] Some tarot cards conjure dread in folks who have just a passing understanding of them. Either the image itself or the card’s name...

[caption id="attachment_78549" align="alignright" width="325"] Haindl Deck Copyright 1990 by U.S. Games Systems, Inc.[/caption] Our MythBlast essay series continues to explore the archetypal imagery of the tarot, focusing this month on Card XV in the major...

[caption id="attachment_78505" align="alignnone" width="900"] The Quadriga of Freedom by Slices of Light[/caption] Like all the tarot cards, the Chariot contains a complexity of sub-images and details. We can safely assume that each sub-image is not...

[caption id="attachment_78430" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash[/caption] “You’re going on a trip,” Great-Gramma Jennie told my mother. Mom was a child then, in the prewar years of the Great Depression. Grampa and...

[caption id="attachment_78311" align="alignnone" width="900"] Crossroads by Adam Meek. CC by 2.0[/caption] The Chariot card is traditionally designed with the image of a strong male figure in a car conducted by two sphinx-like beasts; the dark...

[caption id="attachment_78208" align="alignnone" width="300"] The Chariot from the Rider-Waite Deck by Pamela Colman. Public Domain[/caption] For the month of July we will be looking at what, in most tarot decks, is the seventh trump or...

[caption id="attachment_78153" align="alignnone" width="400"] Wheel of Fortune from the Rider-Waite Deck by Pamela Colman. Public Domain.[/caption] The Wheel of Fortune tarot card serves as a poignant pointer to the sobering fact that we do not,...

[caption id="attachment_78113" align="alignnone" width="390"] Engraving by Raffaello Guidi before 1600.[/caption] In Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce, Campbell embarks on a mythically based, archetypal study of James Joyce, beginning with Portrait...

[caption id="attachment_78060" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Galaxy M74. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team; ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. ChandarAcknowledgement: J. Schmidt[/caption] One day, long ago, the ever-spinning Wheel of Fortune found me sitting...

What, if any, is the value in consulting the tarot? In an age where the rational mind reigns supreme, all forms of divination would seem little more than the fading traces of archaic superstition. After...

[caption id="attachment_77925" align="alignnone" width="400"] "Women Playing Music" Giovanni Boccaccio, Early 15th century, Public domain[/caption] The JCF theme this month of lovers, against the background of Campbell’s early academic work on medieval literature, has provided an...

[caption id="attachment_77814" align="alignnone" width="900"] "Morning Sun" by Edward Hopper. 1952. Columbus Museum of Art[/caption]   There’s a story to every scar, physical or emotional. And the scar tissue almost always remains (in some form or...

[caption id="attachment_77759" align="alignnone" width="400"] The Lovers from the Modern Way Tarot by Jiri Bindels and Neil Fernando[/caption] I am not exactly sure when I first heard “Wedding Song (There Is Love)” by Paul Stookey of...

[caption id="attachment_77678" align="alignnone" width="400"] "The Lovers" from The Rider-Waite Tarot Deck by Pamela Colman Smith. Public Domain.[/caption] Joseph Campbell’s work is full of reflections on love. I like to think this is due to his...

[caption id="attachment_77626" align="alignnone" width="396"] Dean Cornwell - The Other Side, 1918[/caption] Have you ever been in love? I was. I fell in love with an angel kissed by a demon. That’s how I experienced the...

[caption id="attachment_77615" align="alignnone" width="450"] Oluf Olufsen Bagge - Yggdrasil, The Mundane Tree 1847 - full page.[/caption] “Therefore, our first impression of the Card plunges us into the heart of the problem of the relationship between...

[caption id="attachment_77588" align="alignnone" width="473"] Leonora Carrington, The Hanged Man, ca. 1955, © Estate of Leonora Carrington/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.[/caption]                         Now this...

[caption id="attachment_77584" align="alignnone" width="460"] National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of an anonymous donor, 1967[/caption] Suspended between Strength and Death is the Hanged Man. He doesn’t look particularly concerned. The illustrator of the emblematic Smith-Waite...

[caption id="attachment_77534" align="alignnone" width="400"] "Le Pendu" The Rider-Waite Tarot Deck by Pamela Colman Smith. Public Domain.[/caption] No one, I imagine, would like to draw the cards of Death, the Devil, the Tower, and the Hanged...

[caption id="attachment_77470" align="alignnone" width="900"] "At Sunset" by Giuseppe Milo. CC by 2.0[/caption] Before diving into the symbolism of the Star card of the tarot, let’s first consider its predecessor the Tower, whose sudden onslaught of...

[caption id="attachment_77403" align="alignnone" width="375"] "Le Stelle" from the Soprafino-Gumppenberg Tarot. Art by Carlo Della Rossa (1840).[/caption] Hence in a season of calmer weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal...

[caption id="attachment_77300" align="alignnone" width="592"] "Man and Woman" Boris Lovet-Lorski; (c. 1930-1935); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966[/caption] These days engaging with myth, for me, can be...

[caption id="attachment_77224" align="alignnone" width="900"] "Church in the sea" by Aaron Crowe. CC 2.0[/caption]   “Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body.”  —Martin Ruland the Younger Arthur Edward Waite, the famed esoteric...

[caption id="attachment_77150" align="alignnone" width="300"] The Star from The Rider-Waite Tarot Deck by Pamela Colman Smith. Public Domain.[/caption] In The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers remarks that the Lord’s Prayer begins with, “Our father, who art...

[caption id="attachment_63539" align="alignnone" width="370"] Jean Erdman in Medusa. Photo c/o Barbara Morgan[/caption] Jean Marion Erdman, choreographer, director, co-founder of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and wife to Joseph Campbell for 49 years, was born on February...

[caption id="attachment_77005" align="alignnone" width="354"] The Magician. Visconti-Sforza Deck, Bonifacio Bembo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] Epigraph to Letter I: The Magician from Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism:   “Spiritus ubi vult...

[caption id="attachment_76934" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Image by Freepik[/caption] The magician made a modest request. Could he and his friends from the local chapter of the Society of American Magicians perform the “broken wand ceremony” at my...

[caption id="attachment_76839" align="alignright" width="341"] The Magician from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck by Pamela Colman Smith. Public Domain[/caption] The wheel of the year ROTATes and the next card in the TAROT pops up. What card did...