Cauldron Column
0 = 1
By Troy Andrews
Jun 4, 2008, 21:00

I came to the Tarot after I left Christianity. It was exciting – handling something that just months before was considered dangerous, Satanic, Occult. Before, it was a tool of The Devil. I found my first Tarot deck and lo and behold, there was a card called The Devil. I wasn’t afraid, because I thought I would treat the Tarot as a sort of par lour trick – something I could break out at parties to tell your fortune.

But I didn’t understand it. I knew I was supposed to memorize the cards, but it was hard and just looking at them it made no sense. A friend recommended a store that sold books and things that might help. The Mystic Candle Shop, of all places. I went and the owner took me very seriously. He recommended C C Zain’s The Sacred Tarot and Crowley’s The Book of Thoth and that I buy a pack of Crowley’s cards. That was a good idea – the cards are beautiful and accurate. And labeled.

I set about reading the books and looking at the cards and many things happened. The writers were so serious that I was forced to take them seriously. I read of the Qabalah for the first time. I learned about Temple Magic. And I realized I needed to keep my mouth shut about what I was doing. It would be a year before I would attempt to read someone’s fortune. And several years before I would tattoo the moon from The Golden Dawn Tarot onto my forearm.

And now I am starting over. Learning it from the beginning, but with everything I learned before still lurking in the dark corners of my mind. There were years when I would not leave the house for any period of time without the cards, when I would consult them at every possible decision. I would certainly never travel without them. I used to keep track of my friends by asking the cards what was happening in their lives as the moment.

That changed, and during the last few years, I don’t think of the cards that often. But that seems to be changing again. After that trip to the ocean, I feel the cards again. I feel them whispering to me at night.

So I am starting over. I took the cards out of their cloth bag – a bag I sewed myself made of black fabric covered with white, crescent moons and orange stars and red circles and lined with red velvet and closed with a thick black drawstring and a large green wooden bead. The bag and the cards smell of incense and oils and handling them alerts me to…something.

I come to them with knowledge, of course, so learning them again will be different. But I will learn them again. And I will start from the beginning.

I started by rearranging the cards. I put them in this order: Key Cards, 0-21; numbered cards, Ace – 10, Face Cards, ordered by suit.
The first thing I noticed about the Key cards was color. The yellow background of The Fool and The Magician, the blue background of The High Priestess, and the dark green of the Veil itself that hangs behind The Empress and The Emperor.

The Veil and the light on the other side of it that comes from The Gods themselves – the bright white-yellow of that light. Wang calls writes that “THE FOOL is the initial potential for that thought which transcends reason.” (Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot) How lovely.

The first time, the cards seemed confusing, strange, and difficult. This time, I know so much more. And they seem confusing, strange, and difficult, as they should. As any spiritual thing should. The danger is always in pretending that we understand completely. All of these years, all of the tarot spreads I looked at, to come to this. The deck in order, the symbols ready to be delved into, the secret meanings to be pried from the pictures.

I can’t wait to see what I see next.

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Biography – Troy lives in Sacramento with the cat Roxy and three redheaded Scorpios – Jess and The Twins, Julia and Jackson. He can be reached at citywhich@sbcglobal.net.