Sol Ascendans – The Website of Alex Sumner

Influential occultist in her own right Rihanna, who appears in the song “The Monster” by Eminem.

I’m just relaying what the voice in my head’s saying
Don’t shoot the messenger…

Eminem

So there I was, navigating some of the more recondite backwaters of the astral plane, when someone whom in waking-life I strongly suspect of being a Secret Chief gave me three new Tarot decks as a present. “Aha!” I thought, when I returned to this planet. “This gives me an idea for a blog post!” So here is a little magical technique which I have developed in my own practice, for incorporating the Tarot with Spellcasting.

Method

This is suitable for all general Magia spells. I have dealt at length with using Tarot for Theurgia in my book Taromancer. The principles are simple enough, although it does assume that one is already familiar with the basic techniques of ceremonial magick. It goes like this:

1. Carefully form a clear idea of what it is you want to achieve with your intended spell.
2. Perform a Tarot divination for yourself, using the following as the question: “I intend to cast a spell to…” [INSERT SPELL INTENTION HERE]. “What will happen if I do so?”
3. Now as you are performing your Tarot divination, it will start to become obvious that at least one card is more important in the spread than all the rest – I shall refer to this as the “Key Card.” Now it could either be a Positive Key Card or a Negative Key Card, i.e.:
   • A Positive Key Card is the card that most points to success;
   • A Negative Key Card, on the other hand, represents the one thing that is most preventing you achieving success.
4. Armed with this knowledge, you can now put together the magical ceremony to achieve your spell intention, basing it around either invoking the energies of the Key Card if it is a Positive one; or banishing if Negative.
5. You may also consider that more than one card in the spread has the potential to be a Key Card, as it were, so it may be appropriate to do a more sophisticated ritual involving multiple invokings / banishings.

Now the GD system of magick has the advantage that because each and every one of the 78 cards in the Tarot deck can be related to the Qabalah, it is possible to formulate a very specific invoking / banishing ritual, to wit:

• For the Major Arcana –
  • For the elemental cards, i.e. The Fool, The Hanged Man, Judgement (both qua Fire and qua Spirit) and The Universe (qua Earth), use an appropriate elemental Pentagram Ritual;
  • For the zodiacal cards, i.e. the Emperor, Hierophant, Lovers, Chariot, Strength, Hermit, Justice, Death, Temperance, Devil, Star, Moon, use a Zodiacal Pentagram ritual;
  • For the planetary cards, i.e. the Magician, High Priestess, Empress, Wheel of Fortune, the Tower, the Sun, the Universe (qua Saturn), use a Hexagram ritual.
• For the Minor Arcana, you need to use two rituals, i.e. –
  • the elemental Pentagram ritual corresponding to the suit; and either
    • the Hexagram Ritual of the Sephirah corresponding to the pip number of the card; or
    • another Pentagram ritual for the Court cards (i.e. Princess = Earth; Prince = Air; Queen = Water; King = Fire).

Remember, the Hexagrams for the Sephiroth are those of the corresponding planets, but with the Sephirothic names and attributions instead of the planetary ones. The Saturn Hexagram is used for the Supernals, whilst the Luna Hexagram is used for both Yesod and Malkuth.

Example from my own practice:

Some time ago a lady of my acquaintance had lost her job, and was getting quite desperate to find a new one. I therefore did a tarot divination for her, and came to the conclusion that her chances of getting a new job would be quite high… were it not for an awkwardly placed Five of Swords (Defeat) in the spread. I therefore performed a ritual (in private) to “banish” this card. This included me performing an opening,  the Supreme Banishing Pentagram of Air Ritual (for the suit of Swords); the Supreme Banishing Hexagram of Geburah Ritual (because it was a 5); and then closing.

Within a week, she had found a job, and texted me news of her “unexpected” good fortune. 😉