Yesterday, while listening to the beautiful Medusa by Brendan Perry, I felt the impulse to draw a Tarot card. The card was the Queen of Pentacles. The image that immediately arose was that of a tear falling onto the earth, slow, dense, laden with memory. Perry’s voice seemed already to contain that gesture, especially when…
In the previous article, I mentioned that my recent readings had been lacking a certain lightness. Curiously enough, the Tarot seemed to take that remark personally and answered with a touch of mordant humour. In one reading made over the past few weeks, for personal matters, the first card I drew was the Five of…
A few years ago, when I first began to handle the Tarot, I did so with the lightness typical of a beginner, with that blend of scepticism and playfulness which protects the spirit when it comes close to the invisible. There was no fear, no heaviness, only curiosity and fascination with the forms. I used…
The 4 of Cups belongs to the element of Water, therefore to the plane of Briah, the sphere of Creation and Emotion. As a four, it closes the Pythagorean cycle initiated by the Ace (as Yod י and Monad), continued in the Two (as He ה and Dyad), and in the Three (as Vau ו…
The letter Tau (Τ) occupies the nineteenth place in the Greek alphabet and contains one of the most ancient seals of consecration in the sapiential tradition. From the prophets to the initiates, its cross-shaped form is a sign of election, boundary, and passage. In Ezekiel 9:4, the Lord commands the angel: “Go through the city,…
The fifth ternary of the Major Arcana in Tarot is composed of XIII Death, XIV Temperance, and XV The Devil. In Papus’ ternary system, any triad expresses the dynamic of י (Yod), ה (He), and ו (Vau): impulse, receptivity, and synthesis. Not only that, but it exactly reproduces the zodiacal sequence of Scorpio, Sagittarius and…
I have noticed the Knight of Cups appearing with persistence. The card has accompanied these past days of emotional tides, of sensations rising and falling in restless rhythm. Within the Kabbalistic structure, the Knight of Cups corresponds to Yetzirah within the Element of Water, the Air of Water, the imaginal world of feeling, the realm…
This is the first text I have written in the first person. In the The Mirror of Sienna, the voice usually comes from elsewhere, more distant, veiled, impersonal. I prefer the tone of the third person, which allows the symbol to breathe on its own, without the author weighing upon its body. But there are…
The Ace of Swords is the moment when the Word separates itself from the flesh in order to know it. It is the blade of discernment, the first gesture of light cutting through the undifferentiated mist. To separate the wheat from the chaff is an apt image: the sword cleaves the field of consciousness to…
The Justice card as the work of Tikkun: Venus in Libra, path of Lamed between Geburah and Tifereth, restoring divine balance through learning and light. I. The Sign of Libra and the Breath of Equilibrium Libra opens one of the four gates of creation, as it is Air Cardinal, the first impulse of the mind…
