Gateway to the Divine Tarot

Legacy of the Divine Tarot came today.

Up to that point, my day had not been going well. I'd gotten little sleep the night before, my migraine had ramped back up from a low five to a high seven, and I'd spent most of the morning discovering that the academic hoops I will have to jump through to maintain my standing at my university to be far more numerous than I'd originally anticipated.

I was fighting panic with virtual retail therapy when my mother called up the stairs.

"Your package from Amazon is here!"

I perked up, immediately abandoning my computer on my bedspread to scramble down the stairs and out the front door, ignoring my lack of attire suited to being in public at 3 PM. The brown box was, indeed, on the stoop, small and inconspicuous and the most exciting thing to happen to me in the past week.

More exciting than I knew.

The package contained a book, in addition to the cards I expected: Gateway to the Divine Tarot. I didn't think much of it at first; it is not unusual for decks to come with companion books beyond the traditional LWB.

I set the book on a shelf as I returned to my room, tearing the deck free from its plastic wrapping and settling onto the bed to examine the cards in all their tangible detail.

The deck was larger than I remembered, the colors darker, and the artwork more ominous. But the energy was still there. If nothing else, the connection was as I remembered it.

The artwork, I realized, was almost steampunk in design. There was a rationalized romanticism to the deck - all sleek gleaming metal, sharp lines softened by jewel-tones and unmistakably pagan markings. Each card contained the arcane symbols that have come to denote my life in the past few years - the runes, the colors, the serpents, the apples, the crystals, the wings, the elements, the zodiac, the planets, the angels, the deities, and so many more. I was drawn in.

Hours later, after I had contented myself with the feel of the new deck, I picked up the book.

I was surprised to discover that it started off with what appeared to be a story, as opposed to the standard droning introduction about the history of tarot and the system of symbolism the author chose for the deck. Barely interested, I started reading, skimming through the first chapter regarding a dream that actually occurred. When the author began to delineate a sketch of an advanced civilization in its final years, taking steps to preserve itself, I slowed, enjoying what seemed to be a fanciful construction. It was not until he began to reveal how he discovered this "fanciful construction" that I began to take the story seriously.

With a notion that what I was about to read was going to change my life, I stopped. I set down the book. I went downstairs and prepared chai tea, adding sugar, milk, and, on a whim, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a tiny drop of peppermint extract.

I settled back on the bed, my carnelian heart on one knee, my cup of tea on the other, and let a history, a series of truths simultaneously alien and familiar, unspool from the pages into my conscious.

What is now, has been before, and will be again. We invent nothing - we discover everything. We change as we have changed before, using our pasts to propel us into our futures. We learn nothing that we are not yet ready to learn, and we will be confronted again and again with lessons until we have internalized them. These are the fundamental truths of tarot, magick, and life.

I suspect that I have far more to learn from the Legacy of the Divine Tarot than I ever had reason to believe.