Sacred Mathematics and Geometry

My recent journey into learning to read ‘pips’ (as in playing cards or when the number cards in the Tarot Minor Arcana are not scenic, per se), has led me to a concurrent marvelous exploration, specifically, thanks to my Old Gods Tarot’s accompanying guidebook. I can’t even begin to describe how grateful I am to Cilla Conway for the research she does in creating her decks and then shares what she’s explored and learned!

But let me back up a bit. Most of the references I’ve seen (videos as well as books) to learning Tarot pips-style decks come at it very mechanically with regard to the numbers, i.e., 1 is new concept, 2 is choice, 3 is growth, 4 is stability, etc. And, honestly, this has been a huge turn-off for me, try as I might to make it stick and feel right. I’m with Michael Schneider when he writes:

“Math was dry and mechanical and had little relevance to my world. If we had looked at numbers to see how they behave with each other in wonderful patterns I might have liked math. Had I been shown how numbers and shapes relate to the world of nature I would have been thrilled. Instead, I was dulled by math anxiety and pop quizzes.” [emphasis mine]

The two advanced math classes I was required to take in high school were completely, maddeningly dead to me. I was a straight-A student and the only C I ever got for a class grade was in math; I felt like math was some sort of arcane torture!

Back to divination, I read The Marseille Tarot Revealed by Yoav Ben-Dov because I was trying to see into the patterns of the pips (as well as other scenic cards in the decks) and the way he describes some of the cards was quite helpful to me. I leaned into my own intuition, asking myself “what does this image remind me of” or “how is the energy moving here”? Definitely helpful.

Then came The Old Gods Tarot where Cilla has a section on “Sacred Geometry and Numerology” where I felt a glimmer of resonance upon reading that well-articulated text. In her bibliography, Cilla provides a few recommendations, one where she remarks: “The archetypes of number. Unmissable.” I instantly ordered that book, A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science, written by Michael Schneider, and … wow. I feel like once I’ve read this book, the Tarot pips — for that matter, all of my creative endeavors — will be significantly enhanced and, hopefully, begin to be understood on a level previously a tremendous struggle for me. Schneider writes:

“Nature labels everything with a cosmic calligraphy, but we generally don’t suspect even the existence of the language. It is an open secret, fully in view but usually unnoticed.”

It’s clear already — from the quotes Schneider puts in the margins throughout from Plato to Cicero to Galileo to DaVinci to Zohar (and many more) — that philosophers and ‘true’ scientists across history were extrapolating far more from mathematics than the dry, dusty particles taught by rote to us poor school kids, many like myself who have shunned anything to do with numbers or ‘math’ ever since. Indeed, Schneider refers to how and what I was taught as ‘secular mathematics’ — useful for calculating and counting in our mundane world but vastly limiting in scope.

Thankfully, what he will be sharing in his book is ‘symbolic mathematics’ so that I can learn to ‘read’ nature’s visible signs more clearly and that can help me to read Tarot more vibrantly and deeply as well. His third category called ‘sacred mathematics’ also referred to as ‘sacred geometry’ is one he describes as a spiritual path involving consciousness; not so much taught as felt and experienced once we understand ‘symbolic mathematics’. It’s like his book is potentially bringing those darned numbers back from left-hemisphere stagnation and certainty into right-hemisphere wholeness (see Iain McGilchrist’s work).

I’m so excited!

The Old Gods

My latest Tarot deck — The Old Gods Tarot — by the brilliant, enormously talented Cilla Conway has caught me completely off-guard. It shouldn’t have, since I’ve been in love with Cilla’s Shimmering Veil Tarot from the moment it arrived in my hands back in November 2021, and I adore all her other decks as well. Nevertheless, when The Old Gods arrived today and I began to explore the cards, I was breathlessly mesmerized. I felt a pulse-pounding energetic connection with The Old Gods similar to what I experience with Shimmering Veil but of course their frequencies are distinctly different from one another; even a quick glance at the images can reveal how unique they are in and of themselves.

The Old Gods Tarot was released back in December 2022 and I did watch Simon’s unboxing. But during that month, I was sitting hospice with my mom, living in her house as she moved through the dying process. So, needless to say, I wasn’t very focused on anything but how I could help her. Later, a few months after Mom died in January, I remember going back to look at The Old Gods and decided that I would get the deck eventually but would wait until Cilla’s latest oracle was available to save on overseas shipping costs. One of the reasons I felt less drawn to The Old Gods was because the Minor Arcana were in the pip style, something I wasn’t attracted to at that time.

So I delayed and waited. During the interim, however, I found myself becoming curious and learning more about reading patterns in pip decks, starting with the Tarot de Marseille and older Italian decks with non-scenic Minor Arcana.

Then, at the first of this month, I felt it was time to acquire The Old Gods Tarot when I placed my order for Cilla’s Oracle of the Future.

I find myself absolutely shocked at my passion for The Old Gods Tarot! I was giddy with delight! I guess this is one of those examples of how when the time is right, we find connection. Plus, for anyone on the fence about this deck after watching some of the videos on YouTube, none of those come close to doing justice to the exquisite clarity and vibrancy of the images in this deck. Because I’ve spent decades reading about and ritually working with many Goddesses and Gods of antiquity, I am thrilled to see so many of them shining through this deck; even the pips are so much more than just a specific number of shapes, each expressing beautiful archaeological meaning and insight. The accompanying book provides an abundance of details regarding the images in the cards, written in Cilla’s usual evocative, insightful (and often sassy) style. I envision many fabulous days ahead listening to The Old Gods speak to me through these gorgeous cards; I’ve already asked The Old Gods for a message and had no problem understanding their response.

This deck quickly claimed its spot in the special mahogany box that rests next to my reading table; wrapped in black silk, it resides with Shimmering Veil and a half-dozen other special decks set aside for primarily personal/spiritual conversations.

The Book

While reading The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist, I came across the following that struck me as pertinent to our divinatory process in relation to both the Book as symbol as well as the cards as Book:

“Perhaps an analogy would be the relationship between reading and living. Life can certainly have meaning without books, but books cannot have meaning without life. Most of us probably share a belief that life is greatly enriched by them: life goes into books and books go back into life. But the relationship is not equal or symmetrical. Nonetheless what is in them not only adds to life, but genuinely goes back into life and transforms it, so that life as we live it in a world full of books is created partly by books themselves.”

In the Lenormand card system of symbols, we find The Book. This symbol can express as: knowledge, secrets (like in a grimoire), confidentiality, and perhaps the changes that are inspired by the text. For a more mundane interpretation, it could be a writing project or compilation of data.

The book as symbol is also found in The High Priestess (La Papesse) of the Tarot. In that card, the book may mean the “ability to understand express ancient or traditional knowledge in words” [Ben-Dov] and/or that “the Seeker is one with powerful unconscious knowledge and that the Seeker must activate intuition to retrieve that knowledge” [Ben-Dov]

and, further, “in a psychological method of attribution, The High Priestess is associated with memory, the maintaining and processing of information within. She represents how we encode, store, and retrieve our experiences.” [Wen]

In addition, many consider the Tarot itself as a ‘book’ that we read: this might be the Akashic Records or one of the Unseen ‘dictating’ to us or a present life that, of course, changes dependent upon the context of the seeker or querent.

McGilchrist continues: “This metaphor is not perfect, but it makes the point. In one sense a book, like the world according to the left hemisphere, is a selective, organised, re-presented, static, revisitable, boundaried, ‘frozen’ extract of life. It has taken something infinitely complex, endlessly interrelated, fluent, evolving, uncertain, never to be repeated, embodied and fleeting (because alive) and produced something in a way very different that we can use to understand it. Though obviously far less complex than life itself, it has nonetheless brought into being an aspect of life that was not there before it. So the left hemisphere (like the book), can be seen as taking from the world as delivered by the right hemisphere (unconsidered ‘life), and giving life back enhanced. But, on the shelf, the contents of the book are dead: they come back to life only in the process of being read … but always becoming something else.”

In fact, I have found McGilchrist’s book to be enlightening for all aspects of my eclectic spiritual path as a truly holistic one. The way he understands how our brain hemispheres receive messages from Mind (incorporeal) resonates and reveals the ideal spiral journey (the dance from right hemisphere to the left and the necessity of reintegrating into the right) of how we experience the whole world when we don’t become stuck in dominant left-hemisphere certainty. This definitely informs my own path in reading Tarot and other oracle systems.

“The left hemisphere, the mediator of division, is never an endpoint, always a staging post. It is a useful department to send things to for processing, but the things only have meaning once again when they are returned to the right hemisphere.”

McGilchrist points out quite clearly in his book that he does NOT “mean to suggest that the brain causes human experience.” Indeed, he states that, “The restrictive bringing into being of something by the left hemisphere depends still on its foundation in something that underwrites it in the right hemisphere (and both of them on something that underwrites them both, outside the brain).” I emphasize this because one might tend to think his view is that of the reductionist or materialist (the left-hemisphere, as it happens) when that is absolutely NOT the case. His many video interviews reveal this a lot more clearly than does The Master and His Emissary. I do look forward to eventually reading his follow-up tome The Matter With Things as that book has a section specifically on The Sacred.

I hope you found this helpful. I’m a seeker, drawn to the questions even more than the answers, because the so-called answers merely lead me to further questions. If you’re reading this, I feel a kindred spirit near.

Re-enchantment Through Divination?

“For more than 99 percent of human history, the world was enchanted and man saw himself as an integral part of it. The complete reversal of this perception in a mere four hundred years or so has destroyed the continuity of the human experience and the integrity of the human psyche. It has very nearly wrecked the planet as well. The only hope, or so it seems to me, lies in a reenchantment of the world.” ~ Morris Berman

Most of my interest in divination — indeed, for the rest of whatever years I have left — is to explore spirituality (in the broadest sense, and one that embraces magic, mystery, wonder, and enchantment): spirit and soul in nature, cosmos, the Unseen, and myself. While seeking to understand the common events in our lives through the cards has its place, I’m more interested in understanding what the Unseen wants to express to me, either of their own perspective or how I can respond to an experience for soul growth. And I don’t mean these comments to be reductive or to isolate/separate the mundane from the spiritual or ethereal; I’ve been a holistic lifestyle and health care person since the late 1980s. However, the modern ‘machine’ is extraordinarily invasive and parasitical, so I try to stay aware of those external influences and conscious of the blessings from Divine Source, from Gaia, from the Unseen, from all aspects of spirit. In Ayurveda, I was taught that the tanmatras are essentially the pre-material forms of the five elements and this, too, influences how I experience the world.

Metanoia Marseille

With these things in mind, I’m currently learning as part of my spiritual divination practice to sense into the patterns within the card images. And one of the systems I’m using for that effort is the Tarot de Marseille (along with other pip decks). I find this isn’t so much ‘trying’ as ‘allowing’ for optimum results.
As I’ve found with other card systems I’ve learned, I can review quite a few teachers before I suddenly feel one resonates with me for my foundation. After all, we are all born different with varied innate prakriti (constitution and temperament) even before life experience affects our views. The book I’ve found that currently speaks most clearly to me for patterns is The Marseille Tarot Revealed by Yoav Ben-Dov, where he writes:

“Yet something in the elusive and mysterious character of the tarot may inspire us to go beyond purely psychological explanations. We can at least play with the idea that there is something more to it. Maybe there is a meaningful pattern originating in another level of reality, which the tarot cards channel and express at the human level.”

Ben-Dov also taps into my own approach to reading cards when he says that, “Just as the reading space needs to have a special quality, much like a temple or sacred space, so the time of the reading should also be clearly marked to separate it from the mundane time of ordinary reality.”

Anyone who has read some of my material on this blog will easily see that my nature is “feet on the ground with head in the clouds” (maybe why I’m so very enamored of trees). Indeed, during my deep journey a few years ago with Saint Hildegard of Bingen, I had no problem imagining myself in a previous life possibly living in a small, intimate convent (and I brought that aspect into my second novel in my Chantilly Lace trilogy).

Many modern card readers refer to shuffling as a method to make sure the cards are ‘randomized’ according to mechanical view, and they stop with that concept. I feel shuffling is far more than this; handling, shuffling, shifting through the cards is an energetic connection between me, the cards, and the Spirit infusing them for the specific reading.

Ancient Italian Tarot

I’ve also found the many ideas around framing our questions to be intriguing. Ben-Dov says: “Many tarot books attach much importance to the explicit formulation of the question, as if the cards were somehow obliged to answer the exact wording of the query. But … we should regard it only as a starting point. … we may arrive at a focused question … but we may also just describe the situation … and see where [the cards] lead us.” I don’t see myself as ‘in charge’ during a reading and that includes the question, so I really liked his comment.

And, since I’m NOT a ‘numbers’ gal, I particularly appreciate how Ben-Dov, while bringing in a bit of numerology, to me focuses more on the symbolic and visual context of how a gathering of objects in an image can express an energy or vibration that one can feel. Maybe I’m projecting my own sense onto his work, but this is simply how I perceive it. I feel like Ben-Dov’s book is helping me create my own unique foundation for reading/receiving the TdM/pip decks.

I look forward to my continued journey into divination, and wanted to also offer a moment of gratitude to two women with video channels who have inspired me to explore the TdM/pip cards: Readings by Diane and Marilyn from Tarot Clarity. Both offer wonderful insights and decades of experience, even though I’m already reading the cards in a different way than they do (as we all seem to do). More specifically, Diane introduced me to the lovely Metanoia Marseille Tarot deck, while Marilyn brought the Ancient Italian Tarot to my attention; these are proving to be a few of the good decks in this style, for me, since the bold, sharp, too-bright, red and yellow predominant colors in the CBD Tarot de Marseille is definitely not my aesthetic.

Voices in the Cards?

Everyone reads and experiences the cards differently during divination and/or fortune-telling, so I’m taking a moment to share where I’m currently at in my own practice.

Because I only read for myself, I have the opportunity to take my time and explore the messages slowly if I want to do so. I’m also retired with a dedicated reading table, thus, it’s simple to ask for messages via the cards and then leave them out (although I do cover them with a silk cloth if they remain on the table overnight). I tend to also journal about my readings, so this works well for me.

As a thoughtful and reflective storyteller by nature (think “turtle-style”), I enjoy large spreads, often expanding them with further questions beyond the initial one that I received an answer to. This usually leads to inviting to the table multiple decks and systems, the variety of voices enchanting me with their perspectives on the issue or topic. Generally, I begin with a basic spread that feels appropriate — I have maybe half a dozen as my go-to layouts — but from there the sky’s the limit. That foundational spread often receives layers of incoming voices, intuitive layouts interwoven with traditional ones. This is just one of many reasons that I thoroughly enjoy the variety of decks and systems at my fingertips. And, for each expansion into another question that I overlay onto the previous one, I use a whole new deck so that all the cards are available to bring their message.

So, for the way I read the cards, instead of trying to merge the meanings or correspondences of the different systems into a single cohesive expression, my intention is to leave them with their own voices. I feel this creates greater dialogue across the board, especially for large readings. For example, for me, a Waite-Smith (RWS) Tarot deck evokes story; Lenormand evokes more concise symbol-words; Tarot de Marseille (TdM) (my newest study) reveals patterns that evoke energy; Playing Cards evoke elemental mysteries. And then there are all the decks either with their own more unique system or none at all! However, this is also why I focus on learning one new system at a time after I feel pretty solid in the previous one(s).

Part of why this practice of inviting in ‘voices’ (via different decks and systems) makes perfect sense to me is because this is a practice of calling to Divinity and/or the Unseen to speak to me (most of the time, I’m not seeking dialogue with my own Higher Self). Now, sure, the many Unseen could also speak through a single deck or even no deck at all but through stones or trees or without any substantive assistance. However, my own nature is such that, at least right now, I not only enjoy the visual variety but I need it to listen as clearly as I can. I give attention to patterns, symbols, images, elements, archetypes, the liminal of what isn’t seen but felt, although rarely to ‘numbers’ per se. This may change in the future. Time will tell.

There’s no doubt that my divinatory practice with cards is influenced by my early training decades ago in Wicca and holistic health. Homeopathy brought in Hippocratic Temperaments and the work of Paracelsus; Flower Essences brought in powerful connections to elements, elementals, and Devas; Ayurveda/Samkhya brought the elements from a different realm; Reiki brought a pure, vibrational awareness. These all clearly affect how I relate to the cards and their systems (or lack thereof). Most of the above trainings were in-person and thus offered a deeply personal attunement to those systems as well as their vibrations and correspondences. By not mashing those health systems together, I honor their individuality while also receiving benefit from where they cross over. I feel similarly about reading cards.

One could also envision the distinct decks as a council gathered to express themselves toward a consensus of enlightenment about the questions we ask. They create and awaken us to synergy within the answers.

A Layout for Listening to The Unseen

One of my joys in reading the cards is its versatility and pliancy. The dance between how I listen to the many voices of The Unseen through the cards is one of presence, intention, compassion, and much more, not the least of which is selecting the decks I feel they wish to speak through (more on that in a later post) in order to transmit a clear message. Following is a layout (I won’t go into the specific metaphysics of how I approach readings or the situation itself herein) that seems to hold the transmission of energies well, especially for readings on paranormal type situations.

First, four playing cards — here it’s the Doors of Somlipith — are drawn top to bottom and placed on the right. Second, from those cards, Geomantic symbols are developed (in the manner described by the creator of the deck) and placed right to left along the bottom. This reversed “L” forms the overall energy of the reading. Next, I use a “symbol” deck (Lenormand or other — here is it the Mildred Payne’s Secret Pocket Oracle) and create a 3×3 box spread in the center — this is the core message of the answer I’m seeking.

After that, I may, depending upon the answer and additional inquiries that emerge, continue to layer with other decks in a variety of ways, allowing intuition to lead me forward to clarity. In this particular reading, I used the Rusted Lenormand layered upon the original layout to gain further insight.

However, this was quite an in-depth reading so more questions arose around the situation and led to even more layering, using both Nellie’s Deck and the Madhouse Tarot.

One of my intentions for readings on The Missing and/or The Paranormal (in all its guises), beyond seeking Truth, Understanding, and opening to Listen, is to remember The Missing or The Unseen, to honor them and their final chapters or current journeys in all realms (if one believes in non-linear time, then all of these events are actually occurring now), to send peace to those who were left behind to wonder and/or who were affected in some way. We are all interconnected — exploring those connections of material as well as incorporeal helps all of us.

Blessed Be

My Books in Tarot

On Winter Solstice, I felt called to shine a light on which Tarot decks might mirror the essences, energies, and/or imagery held within the four novels and one novella I’ve written. When I write, I give an intention to the stories for conveying healing to readers with gratitude to Spirit, Goddesses, Gaia, and the Ancestors. Of course, my tales contain many aspects beyond the primary theme, so I actually found myself drawn to several decks per book. So, without further ado …

The first novel I completed and published in 2008, is Earth Maiden. The primary theme is one of going on a journey and leaving the known world behind; the deck, and especially its 0. Pilgrim (The Fool) card, that depicts this is the Witch’s Wisdom Tarot. Runner-up decks were Tarot of Strange Branches and the Forest of Enchantment Tarot.

My second novel, published a decade later (after writing several memoir and essay collections between times) in 2018, is Pie in the Sky: A Chantilly Lace novel. This story’s primary theme is one of seeking belonging, of dreaming of finding a community of one’s own, but also has elements of ‘father wound’ and natural healing modalities. I came across a tie really; one deck is Dreaming Way Tarot that distinctly feels like the protagonist’s inner journey, dream, and desire, but the second deck is Light Seer’s Tarot that depicts the modern energies.

Three years later emerged An Extraordinary Legacy: A Chantilly Lace novel. I wrote this story focused on women — what we create and leave for others, and how to defend that legacy against external forces. There is another tie for the primary focus: both Our Tarot and Circle of Doors Tarot share, in their own ways, strong feminine energy, and draw in the broad spectrum of women in the book. The story also, however, is rooted in religion and spirituality so the third deck is the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot.

And last year, an intensely creative year for me, I produced both Exhaling Metaphor: A Chantilly Lace novel and a novella. The novel is a bit dark, maybe, exploring a woman going through a spiritual emergence while also escaping an abusive husband — and her recovery process. Interestingly, the first deck that came to mind quite quickly was the Linestrider Tarot and its no-face Fool card. A tie for the second deck includes both New Era Elements Tarot and Madhouse Tarot.

Lastly, the novella — in direct contrast to the intensity of writing Exhaling Metaphor — is a lighthearted tale: Mystery at Aspenglow Chateau. Only one deck came to mind immediately and that is the exquisite John Bauer Tarot with its gorgeous illustrations taken from mythology, folk, and fairy tales for books at the turn of the 20th Century.

Clearly, anyone who knows and collects Tarot decks will understand that there are many other decks that could express the themes, energies, and intermingling stories of my books. These are simply the ones that came to me on the Winter Solstice.

Blessings to you all in the coming year!