I drew the Knight of Pentacles as my card of the day. First, it is a court card related to the material, to the physical, to Earth (Pentacles). Earth is cold and dry, feminine, heavy, inward-moving, and resistant. It is the element of form, matter, limits, weight, and duration. Things that belong to Earth grow…
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…
One of the towering monastic figures of the twelfth century in Europe, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was the spiritual architect of Cîteaux’s renewal and the driving force behind the Cistercian expansion across the continent. His influence reached far beyond the cloister, as he became counsellor to popes and kings and shaped the ethos of knighthood…
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 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…
