Black Mirror Alchemy: The Path of the Digital Hermit

Welcome back to The Hermit's Journey! In this blog post, we will discuss the significance of ritual in our lives and how tarot can aid you in engaging in ritual for psychological benefits. Ritual plays a crucial role in our human experience, allowing us to connect with the hyper-real in a controlled space, keeping us oriented to the real world. So, in this week's post, we will explore the definition of ritual, how tarot can help you establish your own rituals, and some next steps for nurturing your spiritual life. Ritual Rituals can be seen as a series of formalized acts and utterances that create a holistic performance. According to Dr. Matt Rossano, ritual has been instrumental in the development of our social-cognitive functions, helping us understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. Typically, rituals possess four characteristics, which serve as key indicators for creating our own tarot rituals: Rituals are meant to be attention-grabbing to outsiders. Rituals fol...

Welcome back to the Hermit's Journey! Today, we will be discussing the Minor Arcana suits and exploring how to best interpret these important cards. For reference, this discussion will encompass the aces up to the king cards in the suits of swords, wands, cups, and pentacles. The Minor Arcana cards can be quite intimidating for those learning tarot, as they make up the bulk of the full tarot deck, and sometimes their meanings can blur together a bit. As a beginner, nuance is not your friend, so I will do my best to provide clear guidance to help you navigate the essence of tarot. As mentioned previously in the blog, there are two ways to divide the Minor Arcana. The first is through numerology, which we have already covered in depth. We know that each of the four sets of cards in the Minor Arcana can be clustered together with a shared meaning. For example, when it comes to the 3s, we know that each of them deals with some sort of creative burst of energy. But, what is that energy ...

 Welcome back to the Hermit's Journey!  In today's post, we will explore the theoretical underpinnings of tarot cards to understand how they might work and why your readings tend to be correct.  When I first started to explore tarot cards, I immediately began to notice that my readings tended to be more accurate than not. While this was incredibly affirming to me and helped keep me motivated to learn more about the tarot, it did cause me to question the forces that were at work which made these readings so spot on. Was Satan himself picking the cards out of the deck for me? Was this an elaborate game of self-fulfilling prophesy? Or was there something more mechanistic in the architecture of the deck at work here?  In the past ten years I've tried to answers these questions and find my footing with regards to tarot. Over my life I have found myself in a particularly awkward position where I was raised southern Baptist with all the dogma and superstitions which come al...

Welcome back to the Hermit's Journey series.  Today, we will discuss the Major Arcana cards in your tarot deck in a little more depth. The Major Arcana cards can be thought of as cornerstones in a reading as they take precedence and influence all of the Minor Arcana cards. I liken the Major Arcana to waves in the ocean. They are forces of nature that we cannot control, but we do have the choice of how we deal with them. Will they toss us into the tide and drag us out to sea, or will we choose to ride the wave and see where it takes us? Either way, the Major Arcana will be taking us to our destination, willing or not.  As mentioned briefly in the first Hermit's Journey, there are a few ways to interpret the Major Arcana cards. In this post, we will explore deeper into two of the three methods: archetypes and astrology. However, these methods are not mutually exclusive. In my readings, I often layer the meanings on top of each other to provide a more comprehensive interpretation...