There are two types of people who want divinatory readings:

• Those who want a specific answer
• Those who want to know the answer

Do not ask for divination if you are in the first group – ask if you are in the second group. Divination is to help us prepare for what is coming, not to reassure ourselves it’s going to be puppies and rainbows (unless you are asking about getting a new puppy, then the answer is: yes).  The ancient oracles were never celebrated for giving happy answers, and the nature of divination has not changed much since the days of Oedipus.

Do ask if you want to know what is most likely to happen so you can plan and save. The future isn’t always what we want it to be, but the more you know, the more you can prepare.

How have you been feeling the effects of this Mar’s retrograde? Halfway through is always a good time to take a moment to reflect on what has happened and what you can expect for the rest of a retrograde. This week I’m going to take a look at the Mars, Uranus, and Neptune retrogrades we’re currently experiencing; starting with Mars.

In a retrograde we can feel a blockage or redirection of the normal planetary energies. With Mars, the urge for movement, goals, energy, and strength can seemed stalled – often by fires. Add Gemini’s fast movement, and it can feel like you’re just putting out fire after fire without making any progress. This constant drama will make it hard to express our desires and give us shorter attention spans. But how it will express in your life depends on your natal chart.

There are three places I like to look to see how a retrograde might affect me:

• The sign it’s retrograding in
• The house that planet rules in my chart
• What aspects it is making to my natal placements

The first is easy, simply look to see where Gemini falls in your chart. For example, if you have Gemini in the first house, you are going to have more trouble expressing your own desires and goals. If Gemini falls in your tenth house, expect those fires to be mostly career related.

The second is a little trickier. Mars traditionally rules two different signs:

• Aries for day charts (that is you, you were born during the day)
• Scorpio for night charts (you were born at night)

In my experience, both of these areas are going to feel the effects of the retrograde, but one will be stronger depending on if you’re a day or night sect.

The third requires looking up the current transits on your chart (I really like Astro-seek as a free chart calculator).

With all retrogrades, the important thing is to remember it’s transitional: this too shall pass.

To compliment the previous post, here are a couple of invocations from the Greek Magical Papyri that can be used for dream spells.

“Hermes, lord of the world, who’re in the heart,

O circle of Selene, spherical

And square, the founder of the words of speech,

Pleader of Justice’s cause, garbed in a mantle,

With golden sandals, turning airy course

Beneath earth’s depths, who hold the spirit’s reins,

The sun’s and who with lamps of gods immortal

Give joy to those beneath earth’s depths, to mortals

Who’ve finished life. The Moirai’s fatal thread

And dream divine you’re said to be, who send

Forth oracles by day and night; you cure

Pains of all mortals with your healing cares.

Hither, O blessed one, O mighty son

Of the goddess who brings full mental powers,

By your own form and gracious mind. And to

An uncorrupted youth, reveal a sign

And send him your true skill of Prophecy.”

(Betz, 137 – PGM VII 664)

This second prayer is for general spell use, but as Selene is a goddess of dreams, it can work well.

“Come to me, O beloved mistress, Three-faced
Selene; kindly hear my sacred chants;
Night’s ornament, young, bringing light to mortals,
O child of morn who ride upon fierce bulls,
O queen who drive your car on equal course
With Helios, who with the triple forms
Of triple Graces dance in revel with
The stars. You’re Justice and the Moira’s threads:
Klotho and Lachesis and Atropos
Three-headed, you’re Persephone, Megaira,
Allekto, many-formed, who arm your hands
With dreaded, murky lamps, who shake your locks
Of fearful serpents on your brow, who sound
The roar of bulls out from your mouths, whose womb
Is decked out with the scales of creeping things,
With pois’nous rows of serpents down the back,
Bound down your backs with horrifying chains
Night-Crier, bull-faced, loving solitude,
Bull-headed, you have eyes of bulls, the voice
Of dogs; you hide your forms in shanks of lions,
Your ankle is wolf-shaped, fierce dogs are dear
To you, wherefore they call you Hekate,
Many-named, Mene, cleaving air just like
Dart-shooter Artemis, Persephone,
Shooter of deer, night shining, triple-sounding,
Triple-headed, triple-voiced Selene
Triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked,
And goddess of the triple ways, who hold
Untiring flaming fire in triple baskets,
And you who oft frequent the triple way
And rule the triple decades, unto me
Who’m calling you be gracious and with kindness
Give heed, you who protect the spacious world
At night, before whom daimons quake in fear
And gods immortal tremble, goddess who
Exalt men, you of many names, who bear
Fair offspring, bull-eyed, horned, mother of gods
And men, and Nature, Mother of all things,
For you frequent Olympos, and the broad
And boundless chasm you traverse. Beginning
And end are you, and you alone rule all.
For all things are from you, and in you do
All things, Eternal one, come to their end.
As everlasting band around your temples
You wear great Kronos’ chains, unbreakable
And unremovable, and you hold in
Your hands a golden scepter. Letters ‘round
Your scepter Kronos wrote himself and gave
To you to wear that all things stay steadfast:
Subduer and subdued, mankind’s subduer,
And force-subduer; Chaos, too, you rule.
ARARACHARARA ÊPHTHISIKÊRE.
Hail, goddess, and attend your epithets,
I burn for you this spice, O child of Zeus,
Dart-shooter, heav’nly one, goddess of harbors,
Who roam the mountains, goddess of crossroads,
O nether and nocturnal, and infernal,
Goddess of dark, quiet and frightful one,
O you who have your meal amid the graves,
Night, Darkness, broad Chaos: Necessity
Hard to escape are you; you’re Moira and
Erinys, torment, Justice and Destroyer,
And you keep Kerberos in chains, with scales
Of serpents are you dark, O you with hair
Of serpents, serpent-girded, who drink blood,
Who bring death and destruction, and who feast
On hearts, flesh eater, who devour those dead
Untimely, and you who make grief resound
And spread madness, come to my sacrifices,
And now for me do you fulfill this matter.”

(Betz 90 – PGM IV 2785)

Edited by Hans Dieter Betz. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Using magic to gain dream revelations has been a time-honored tradition going back centuries. There are multiple examples of such spells found in the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) – a collection of papyri dating from between 100 BCE and 400 CE.

But ancient spells come with some quandaries: do you follow a spell exactly or try to make it your own? With ancient spells I prefer to follow exactly (at least in the first go around), but when working with older magical spells the problem of ingredients can pose a block (where do you buy an organically sourced, fair-trade mummy head these days?). Or even if you can find them, there can be ethical complications (I’m not going to drown a cat to create a revenge spell, I don’t care what Helios says). I often fall back on deconstructing the important aspects of older spells to try and find something I can ethically afford to cast.

When I pour through the dream spells in the Greek Magical Papyri I find these common themes:

Symbols:

• Myrrh
• Linen
• Papyrus
• Reeds
• Laurel leaf
• Lamps

Gods and spirits invoked:

• Selene
• Anubis
• Hermes
• Thoth
• Osiris
• Serapis
• Archangel Michael

So let’s look at some dream spells.

If you would like to stick with a traditional spell, PGM VII 359 is accessible for the modern practitioner:

Take a strip of clean linen and write on it the following name: HARMIOUTH LAILAM CHŌOUCH ARSENOPHRĒ PHRĒU PHTHA HARCHENTECHTHA” Roll it up to turn it into a wick, cover it with olive oil, and light the whole thing on fire.

Purify yourself in the evening, then when you are about to go to sleep, light a lamp and say the following seven times: “SACHMOUNE PAĒMALIGOTĒRĒĒNCH, the one who shakes, who thunders, who has swallowed the serpent, surrounds the moon, and hour by hour raises the disk of the sun, ‘CHTHETHŌNI’ is your name. I ask you, lords of the gods, SĒTH CHRĒPS: reveal to me concerning the things I wish.”

Extinguish the lamp and crawl into bed. (Betz 127.)

If you would prefer to create your own, here are a few ideas:

• Light some myrrh incense, pick your deity of choice, and right before bed ask them to send you a specific dream or answer a specific question. Find or write a prayer to recite while you meditate before the candle.

• If you’d like to get fancier: buy some linen or papyrus. Light a candle and burn myrrh over it while you write your question on your fancy paper.

• Write your dream question on a laurel leaf and place it beneath your pillow.

You can use any of these elements to make your ritual as simple or complicated as you prefer. I always suggest siding towards the more complicated end; the more work you put in, the more you are likely to get back.  

* Edited by Hans Dieter Betz. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

There seems to be some debate online about if you should cleanse your tarot cards, and how to do it. To me, this requires the answer to a deeper question: do you see your cards as friends or tools?

Most voices I see online lean towards the tool side of the debate. I, however, consider my decks friends with their own distinct personalities, opinions, and levels of sass. Even among the same decks: my twenty-five-year-old Medieval Scapini deck is a grumpy old man who gives harsh, but well-meaning advice; it will also stop reading for me if I ask one too many romantic questions. My two-year-old Medieval Scapini deck is a shameless gossip who cannot get enough of giving relationship advice, and did you know what Janice is saying about you behind your back?

So here is a quick breakdown of how I “cleanse” my tarot cards.

When I think about cleansing my decks, I’m not thinking about it in terms of clearing away the negative vibes and energies. I’m thinking about cleansing in terms of giving my friend a spa day to recharge.

When I open a shiny new, bright out of the box deck, I go straight into a reading. No crystals, no sage, just right into saying hello and getting to know the cards. I’d do the same if it was a used deck someone gave me. I want to get to know the deck as it is. I don’t want to change the deck or remove anything. Then I find it a home. My most used decks all have nice wooden boxes with soft silk scarves, or fancy clothe wrappings to keep them safe and warm.

If I read a deck for myself or a close friend, I simply return the deck to its home when I’m done. If it has been a particularly hard and long reading, or I’ve read for a client, I will give it a spa of sorts. I will spread them out on the altar so they can breathe a bit, light some cinnamon incense (I’m going for a nice smell more than a cleansing herb), and let them soak in some moonlight.

Readers who consider their cards tools are going to have a very different approach. Personally, I find the human capacity for anthropomorphizing and empathizing with non-humans one of our finer traits. I have no compunction against applying it to the cards I work with every day; I think it brings us closer and makes my readings stronger.

Writers are known for their insane writing rituals; completely necessary – and completely inexplicable – ceremonies required to get them in the head space to write. But the why of the ritual is a useful practice to delve into – especially when you realize it can be applied to any creative discipline.

So why the arcane rituals for writing? Creating requires a certain state of mind. What lays behind all the disparate writing rituals is their ability to get the writer into the specific headspace. Reading the cards is no different: how well your intuition finds the correct meaning from the images in front of you, is going to depend on your mindset. Though, you probably don’t need to follow Dan Brown’s habit of hanging upside down. Instead, I suggest taking the time to build a ritual that works for you.

In The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin, he breaks down a process that I have found incredibly useful: find what gets you into the right frame of mind, then work on turning that into a small ritual. For example: my intuition works best after a long walk and some meditation. This, however, can take a long time, sometimes hours. I want to be able to snap into the right mindset for throwing cards in five minutes or less. So, the trick was to condition my brain to snap quickly; basically training a Pavlovian response to something. After a long walk I started adding a cup of tea to my meditation sessions. I did this every day for weeks, training my brain to association the tea – the waft of steam, rich taste, and warmth of the cup – with the state of mind I wanted. Then, slowly, I started to shorten the walk and the meditation and kept the tea. It can take a while, but eventually I arrived at the point where five minutes meditation with a cup of tea on my couch is enough; and now that’s my ritual.

So that is today’s advice for reading: find your tarot ritual. Find the steps that get your brain ready to interpret symbols and sends you the correct messages. Break it down bit by bit, and then rebuild the steps into something pleasurable and Pavlovian. The best part is, this works for any focus-hungry task you want to do: writing, drawing, music, carpentry…the list is endless.

This week may feel like a bit of a slog, but there’s good energy waiting at the end of it.

The beginning of the week is going to feel like important issues slipping through the cracks – like banging your head against your projects without making a dent or an iota of movement. It’s a heavy kind of energy – things just don’t feel like they’re going right. Authority figures are obstinate and there seems to be a block at every turn.

Thankfully, it doesn’t end that way. It turns out all that head banging did move things forward. The lack of control you felt at the beginning melts away as you grasp something important that’s been eluding you all week and claim the prize.

1. Three of Wands – R
2. Eight of Pentacles – R
3. The Magician
4. The Emperor – R
5. The Empress – R
6. Ace of Pentacles

Deck: Golden Art Nouveau

Energy for the week: Low energy brought on by emotional clarity is the theme for this week. You may feel tired, but rest can bring healing and understanding. If we’ve been blinding ourselves to specific problems, those blinders may drop off this week and we can see the patterns that have kept us unhappy. We rarely blind ourselves to happy emotions, but it’s when we look honesty at them and ourselves that we can start to heal.

1. Knight of Wands – R
2. Two of swords – R
3. Ten of Cups – R
4. Knight of Cups
5. The Sun – R
6. Five of Cups