Tarot: Gold & Black and Black & Gold Edition by Arthur E. Waite, Art by Pamela C. Smith

These are my first Tarot Cards, and this is my first Tarot experience.

My first impressions of the packaging and cards themselves is a little mixed, to be honest. These are gold foil embossed Rider Waite cards and the artwork is created by Pamela Colman Smith, published by Lo Scarabeo with the each edition of the deck an inversion of the other. The packaging is very premium in appearance and both sets include a premium booklet with instructions on how to use the decks and and an explanation of the card meanings. It is worth pointing out the the edges of the cards are not gold, nor are they black and are rather thin. But they are nonetheless very beautiful and well presented. I have no other Tarot cards to compare them to currently.

 Like a lot of people, when I was a child I have memories of my Grandmother performing readings of Tarot for friends and family, but I was such an age that I never understood what was actually happening. Nor do I think I could even grasp the premise of the very act of reading the Tarot. But I do remember everyone being incredibly curious, interested and engrossed with it.

                                 

                                                                 

 I also remember that my Grandmother was extremely protective of her Tarot cards, no one was allowed to touch them and they had to be stored wrapped in a cloth and in a small wooden box. I was told that if anyone else used them or played with them (a child for example) the cards would no longer work as intended. It must be said that I was raised to believe in spirits and ghosts, the paranormal and supernatural. Religious to some degree, but never was I forced, so I did grasp the concept of energy and forces of the unknown. But that is all I knew about Tarot. And until very recently, upon beginning this new path of discovery I have embarked upon, I never really gave much more thought into the subject aside from some pre-conceived ideas. Of which are that Tarot is supernatural and cards are used to invoke spirits and paranormal entities to be able to see into the future, fortune telling by means of looking up the rigid meaning of the cards that happen to show up during the process. Well...how wrong was I? Probably about as wrong as anyone can be from a typical laymen point of view.

 The Tarot cards are not supernatural, nor can they predict the future, is what I am currently learning. I have been looking for a good entry point into which to begin my Tarot education, and there are countless Youtube videos, articles and books available on the subject, even online courses are out there. I decided to settle on that of which seems the most common beginner deck which is the Rider Waite Tarot, and I purchased A book written by Arthur Edward Waite to start with because it made more sense to go right to the source. But while trying to read and understand exactly what it is he writes, it became clear that I'm not able to absorb it with any degree of practical use, for modern times. Just the antique language of the book in which it is written I find rather complicated and difficult to read when trying to grasp the fundamentals. So instead I have decided to choose the deck that caught my eye the most and simply get stuck in.

 I did do a bit of bare minimum research, by watching a couple of short videos and read an article or two. I learned that to truly be able to read the cards, I have to utilize my own intuition in order to best interpret what I see in the cards spread in front of me. So with this in mind, I can officially say that I have performed my first Tarot reading, on myself. And decided that it is probably best, for now, to use the included book to refer to. I simply have no understanding of the cards to relate any meanings to, intuition or not.

 I began by shuffling the deck, with a completely (as close as I could get) clear head, for a substantial amount of time, with no expectation nor questions in mind, for around 15 minutes, to feel the sensation and vibrations of the cards, and attempting to impart a part of my soul into the deck. I did drop them once (accidentally), which I picked back up in the order they landed as none were facing upwards, but some of the cards for sure were upside down in the fall. I split the deck into three and flipped the top cards them over from right to left.

 The first card revealed itself to be the "Queen of Swords" and so I referred to the included guide. "Wisdom imparted with kindness and precision. Telling others exactly what you think without mincing words, honesty without cruelty. Self-expression in all areas. Calling a person or thing out for what it is. Articulate. Precise. Intellectual. Welcoming. Knowledgeable." How do I view this card in relation to myself? Well...surprisingly, it sits into my current life extremely well. Firstly, I am autistic, among other things, it is relevant and best to get that part out of the way and done with from the beginning. Interestingly, I am currently doing A course on autism and learning all kinds of wisdom and knowledge, of which I am relaying to online communities in an effort to help others, based on factual advice gained from it. I am trying to do this in the warmest and kindest manner I possibly can. If you are reading this blog, then you may likely to already be aware that I am indeed brand new to everything you see and read on EsotericStudent.com. I am the student, and are sharing with you my own journey of discovery as open, and as honest as I can possibly be while trying not to offend, confuse or force any of my experiences and opinions onto anyone else. I try to articulate and intellectually communicate my findings the best that I can factually do. Which is including regularly making available esoteric and occult digital format books free to download via the Esoteric Student Facebook group because it is information that I strongly believe should be available to everyone, to make of what you want, regardless of barriers such as language, background, and cost. So as you can see, I can relate to the "Queen of Swords" card as defined within the decks included manual with quite a high degree of accuracy.

 The second of three cards to reveal itself to me is "The Emperor" upon which I again turn to the included guide to define it's interpretation. "The father archetype of emperor reflects creating solid foundations in life on which to build the world of our dreams. It is creativity grounded by form and the organization of your lifestyle. Fatherhood in every way. Authoritarian. Rules. Order. Stability. Structure. Opinionated. Head Strong." This again resonates strongly with me. In 2018 I lost my Grandfather to cancer. He brought me up, for all intensive purposes he was my Father, the only one I had ever known. Prior to losing him from this world, my life had spiralled downward and out of control. There were no positives, including addictions. I eventually had to move back home, to my Grandparents house where I had grown up. They took care of me and gradually things improved. I withdrew from my old life and the things and people that were in it and became to find new interests and hobbies, such as learning how to build websites and develop online communities and friendships, which at the time held no real significance for my future. Between this and working nights in a supermarket stacking shelves, it was enough distraction to keep me out of trouble, but I was building skills none the less. When my Grandfather passed away I took it really badly and nosedived into a deep depression, no doubt triggered by the trauma of the event that took place as he was taking his final breaths in front of me (which I will not go into here.) It led me into a total breakdown, and the decision that working the job I was, was no longer suitable at all. Which (with my already included born physical disabilities) led to my diagnoses' of autism and ADHD, manic depression and anxiety disorders. In the time since this period, and thank you to the inspiration from my Grandfather having left me a tin of vintage cigarette cards, I have been inspired to create my own job, selling collectables. It completes the circle of suiting to me needs (and conditions). It involves organizing, cataloguing, building upon solid foundations and using the rules of all the skills I had learned while being looked after by my Grandparents. To which I am doing to this day to build my dream life. Currently I am sole carer for my Grandmother who is also losing her battle with cancer. She too has helped me no end in surviving suicide  and in building the foundations, stability and structure of a life sculpted to help me in living a life without them, on my own. And for that I am eternally grateful.

 The third and final card I turned over was "The Four of Wands" and in reference to the guidebook, is described as "Stability of passion and early success gives reason to celebrate. Remember those who help you get where you are. Work should be tempered with play and pleasure. Your life's work can and should feel like play at times. Celebration. Party. Gathering of like-minded people." It looks like we have a hattrick because likewise to the two cards before, "The Four of Wands" I can relate to in very recent terms to my life. In essence, the very thing you are reading is a passion of mine. Writing, being creative, learning. While I write to earn a living, it has always been a skill of mine. Verbal communication has always been an issue, so written word has been the most success I have ever had in order to communicate with others. I won awards for it at a very young age and has been a life-long accomplishment for me. I will also never forget those who helped me get to this point, as I stated up above, my Grandparents are the exact definition of those who have helped me. And Esoteric Student is the essence of my pleasure and is the play (that's not to say I don't take this seriously because I do) of my written work. Extremely recently I have come to become acquainted with incredibly like-minded people, who gather online to celebrate one another's work in the form of writers guild designed especially for neurodiverse individuals who share the same conditions as I do. It really is uncanny in description.

 To sum this up, while my method may be incorrect, and while the descriptions of the meaning of the cards included may be written in a such a way as to be able to read and interpret every one of the Tarot cards to a part of every persons life, which can be utilised as a past, present and future determination, Tarot now certainly has my interest. I will be continuing to use them regularly and be keeping a journal of the whole process by logging the cards turned, the definitions, relatability and accuracy. I will also be exploring the various methods in which to use them correctly.

 I am thoroughly impressed of my first experience but until I become acquainted with each of the cards and interpretations it is impossible for me to form an opinion in any direction, but I can certainly see the attraction and appeal of such widespread interest that reading the Tarot has.

 As to the decks themselves, its not for me to decide if they are a correct choice for you. I am attracted to new shiny things, and I have my eye on some other Tarot decks that are also of the shiny nature which I plan on picking up, which will give me more understanding of the nature of quality available out there.

What Do I Believe? What Do You Believe?

What I believe in, prior to starting this brand new adventure of self and solo discovery…

I think, given that this journey is for me, just beginning, it makes sense to make my beliefs known before I become consciously and subconsciously influenced by any (if any?) of the research I do. I am finding this quite difficult for me to put into words, what I can only feel, writing a blog is also brand new to me. In the past, I have thought long and hard over how to write about it because I feel this is genuine and quite A unique take on everything. It will sound ridiculous to some, and I can’t even name the specific point in time where this revelation truly dawned up-onto me. My own personal belief just seems to make complete sense to me, but it is also a lonely place to be in some aspects of having such an individually soloistic idea.

It is with this personal system that I venture out to search for the answers to questions of mine that reinforce, re-awaken and develop, also while being completely open-minded about everything I encounter on the way. I might not find answers for anything at all, and I might end up dismissing what I thought I knew for an entirely new personal system of beliefs! Personally, I do go into this with hope, and I hope I can reinforce and adopt much new. So forgive me if the following of what you read doesn’t make much sense in scholarly or literal terms and reads like the ramblings of a crazy person. I won’t be diving into any of the experiences that have led up to me forming this idea, and remember this is just one uneducated opinion. And the views expressed therein from now are solely my own and are not meant for anyone else.

In life, as we know it, each living thing has its own biology, its own ecosystem. You can see and know that even within the smallest of lives you have forces for good, and forces of bad at play, even with plants. Let me explain, in your body, you have 10 times more microbial cells than your very own human cells, according to scientific literature. It is estimated, based on that figure that the human microbiome has around 100 trillion bacterial cells and approximately 10 trillion human cells. If you consider that there are approximately 7.9 billion humans in our world, the bacterial world begins to take the shape of an image that is very different. But even those are full of light and darkness.

Cells through to humans all have their functions, it isn’t, on a basic level, learned nor communicated, it is simply inherent. The way an animal behaves is its nature and does what it has built within to do. Even humans can only learn what has already been learned, which is a natural process of our function. There are, much like bacteria and cells, good humans and bad humans. We can create, we can love and give light, we can act on anger and darkness, and can create damage and hurt or destroy with war. We all know too well that people are either good, bad or in-between, but each has their role to play and performs that which comes naturally to them. It is just who they are.

With certain esoteric systems, I have thus far not been able to accept the model of the structure of everything. Take, for example, the Qabalistic tree of life. I get that there is a single point from which everything comes, that is impossible for anyone to be able to comprehend, but why are there so few layers to the said tree? I believe we need to think much bigger, and it is very possible to do it within context. If we look back at the mind-bending figures written above and expand on them. Humans are, like good and bad bacteria, within the context of the damage being done to Earth by the bad cells, like a disease. But there are good humans who are trying to fight for the light and repair our broken world, but by far the bad bacteria are winning the fight, like cancer we can’t yet cure. The bad trigger the opposite reaction, which is good, exactly at the moment it comes into creation, quantum-like. It's eternal war.

My point is that if we, for a moment take a step outwards; into space and look at that, the dark matter, the stuff which fills the void between the solid object we can see (in space), touch, and feel, the dark matter begins to look a lot like blood and liquids. With that context in mind, the planets become to be a lot like bacteria, (although bacteria are single-cell organisms unless we look at them on a quantum level) and humans are that from which bacteria is formed. Quantum levels are much of the same idea. On a quantum level, there are many more worlds we can’t understand or comprehend even.

People often ask questions, that in my point of view are the wrong ones to ask. What is the meaning of life? for example, holds little to no academic merit within the scope of my own point of view. Firstly, I think when people ask that question, they are asking it within the context of themselves, a human. But like all living things, they simply do what it is in their nature to do, subconsciously and consciously, good or bad, we react to our wants that are inherently pre-programmed into our being. So the meaning of life, in my opinion, is to simply do what comes naturally to you, just like everything else does. It is the function of your existence. The real question is, what is it that we are a part of? It is obvious to me that we are a part of a much larger creature, and that creature is part of a larger world, where there are other living beings, and inside those, there are others like us and all the living things that we know of around us.

Expand on that idea and you will come to realise that the living thing we are a part of will also be in a world of their own, within an even greater living creature, all playing the roles of their pre-programmed nature, and that within its own space, and time, and the universe. I believe that the big bang idea is ridiculous unless you view it another way. If you view it as a literal birth into being, in the exact same way, we ourselves and every living thing in our world are born into creation and grow as what we conceive as time goes forward until death. This process will be happening infinitely. Everything in our universe, forces we can see and those we can not is just a part of something bigger.

I do agree that it had to start somewhere, maybe that is the one true God, but It would be a hyper-quantum molecule of something, that really is impossible to comprehend or to ever be able to answer, rather than a being as most would like to believe. But that doesn’t mean that the hyper-molecule didn’t grow into something of being.

To sum this up, ancient Gods… could very well have visited us, they could be like medicine being introduced to our world, much like (or literally) a pill or injection is introduced to our own bodies. Much like we have good and bad bacteria and cells creating and fighting. Perhaps it would explain AUP/UFOs, aliens and “heavenly” visits and come to commune with our world, trying to fix, help and steer us back to health. But that is for another time in a future post. I hope, if you read this, that I have communicated well enough my own concepts of belief to you in a way that is easily digestible and meditated over. I will elaborate upon this idea extensively in the coming months, including the layers that which we can not see.

What do you make of this take on the theory of everything? What are your beliefs? I’m very interested to know.

Thelema: An Introduction to the Life, Work & Philosophy of Aleister Crowley by Colin D. Campbell Book Review

The second book on my journey of spiritual development is all about Aleister Crowley and Thelema.

Esoteric Definition Within the Context of EsotericStudent.com

The word esoteric is defined most commonly as a subject intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.

With Esoteric Student you can expect to see content covering subjects from traditional esoteric topics such as rituals, religion, science, philosophy, nature, meditations, history, astrology etc. But no doubt about it, there will be a plethora of others, like magick, UFO's, consciousness, conspiracy theories, health, the occult, music, drug use and all that is in-between.

There will be reviews of books, documentaries, Youtube channels, and other resources available... websites, Facebook groups, events, music. What exactly will be covered and when is something that I currently can't say because I am just beginning this adventure and following where-ever it may lead. So stick around and sign up to regular updates. There is also an Esoteric Student Facebook page and group which I hope can be made good use of to build a community of like-minded, free-spirited individuals who will join me in this adventure. 

Lost in A Sea of Doubt

Past experiences in my life I can't easily explain away