start here

anyway you have to start somewhere.

i had intended to begin this project more than a year ago.  had a couple of false starts.

the original idea was to take three cards every two weeks and work through the entire seventy-eight over the course of twenty-six fortnights, roughly thirteen lunar months, not quite a solar year.  articulate my own understandings of each card, maybe do some sketches toward my own deck.  along the way creating what might amount to a "white book."

i very quickly abandoned this approach.  where i am now is to just write what comes, start in the middle, work in whatever direction unfolds.

the larger concept would be to explain my understanding of tarot in terms that would be approachable by a skeptic, in i guess the cartesian sense.  maybe moving the reader toward a more philosophical skepticism.  magical thinking may or may not follow.

so at this point i am thinking there would be a collection of somewhat unrelated essays, the introductory sections dealing with the nature of knowledge and doubt, some stuff about qabala, numerology, astrology -- descriptive, so the reader can place the cards in some context, not requiring belief, etc.  some treatment of reversals and dignities.

and then of course marching through the cards, for which i would likely use meanings derived in some fashion from mathers, crowley, waite, case, et. al.

but i am likely to generate the actual writing in some other sequence and impose organization later.

so i am opening this blog as a sort of discipline to get the project started.  commit to posting something a couple or three times a week, a few hundred words, etc.