I am fortunate to count among my correspondents the wonderful and wise Rachel Pollack. She dated a recent letter to me as Hierophant Lovers Judgment Judgment (May 6, 2020), which led me to thinking about Tarot and dates while I lay awake the other night. (Insomnia can be productive, although you do have to sleep at some point.)

Several writers (self included!) deal with the numerological year when doing annual readings (New Year’s, birthday, anniversary, etc.). For example, 2020 reduces to 4, so this is an Emperor year. While the Emperor didn’t come up in my annual reading, when interpreting the cards in those annual spreads, I can keep in mind the Emperor’s influence and how each card I did draw interacts with the Emperor.

For birthday readings, you can use your age to calculate the card for your personal year. I turned 57 in January, so I am in a Hanged Man/Empress Year:

5 + 7 = 12, so Hanged Man

12 is also 1 + 2 = 3, so Empress

James Wanless views ageing as a cycle of moving from Fool through World on a 22 year cycle. At age 57, in Wanless’ system, I am in a Death year. (The last Fool year was age 44, so 57 – 44 = 13, Death.) (Side note: because of the year of my birth, my Fool Cycle year has matched the calender year numerologically for most of my adult life, which is really interesting and/or really intense, depending on the year.)

So I am having a Death-Hanged Man-Empress personal year in the global Emperor year—or the Judgment-Judgment year in Rachel’s system.

Rachel’s date notation started me thinking about the days and dates as Tarot cards, and how I could work with that.

For the big picture, thinking about the year 2020 as Judgment-Judgment, it fits quite easily with what is going on this year—humanity is being called to account for our past actions, and required to re-think our way of being in this world as the supposed dominant species. We cannot progress as a global community without a thorough and thoughtful restructuring of what is acceptable conduct from individuals, corporations, and governments.

Looking ahead, 2021 is Judgment-World—our year to continue the work of assessment and to put into place the new ways of ordering our societies and selves to live in better harmony with the earth and each other.

Each month is influenced by its matching Major Arcana card. So, January would be the Magician month, February the High Priestess month, etc. With that in mind, I reviewed my New Year’s reading, and would you look at that?—October came up with the Wheel of Fortune. Now I’m that much more prepared for October. Well, as prepared as one can be for a double Wheel of Fortune month.

An example of dealing with this approach on a daily basis, I started writing this post on

May 17, 2020, or

Hierophant Star Judgment Judgment.

Applying those cards to my day, I would suggest to myself that today is a good day to learn, to refresh my soul, to have hope, and to be open to new ways of being. It’s a way to do a daily draw without drawing cards—simply figure out which cards correspond to today’s date, and take their advice.

This has some interesting potential. For example, February 20, 2020 was

High Priestess-Judgment, Judgment-Judgment

which is probably all the Judgment necessary for one day. On that particular day, a long-term project I had been involved with had its post-project review meeting, and that was all kinds of Judgment—reviewing, reflecting, and making notes about how to do it better the next time.

However, most Tarot decks end at card 21, and all the Julian calendar months have more than 21 days.

So, the 22nd would be High Priestess-High Priestess. The 25th (my birthday, for example) would be High Priestess-Hierophant. Well, that explains a lot that I hadn’t considered before.

You could also read the year as the individual card numbers, so 2020 would be

High Priestess-Fool-High Priestess-Fool

and that also fits rather well with what’s going on.

In that case, May 17, 2020 would be

Hierophant-Magician-Chariot, High Priestess-Fool-High Priestess-Fool.

I would advise myself that today is a good day to learn, to try something new, to create, to do one thing to move forward with my life, and to take time for my spiritual practice. Wow, all that, and I need to do laundry. Laundry is going to wait until tomorrow.

All credit must go to Rachel, so I am dubbing this Pollack’s Tarot Time. Reading it in line with Rachel’s letter is “Pollack’s Standard Tarot Time”, and reading it the other way is “Pollack’s Alternative Tarot Time”. Or you can combine the two, and have “Pollack’s Mixed Tarot Time”!

When people ask for my temporal frame of reference, instead of saying something like “Pacific Standard Time”, I will now reply with “Pollack’s Standard Tarot Time”!

I Will Not Give Thee All My Heart
~ Grace Hazard Conkling

I will not give thee all my heart
For that I need a place apart
To dream my dreams in, and I know
Few sheltered ways for dreams to go:
But when I shut the door upon
Some secret wonder—still, withdrawn—
Why dost thou love me even more,
And hold me closer than before?

When I of love demand the least,
Thou biddest him to fire and feast:
When I am hungry and would eat,
There is no bread, though crusts were sweet.
If I with manna may be fed,
Shall I go all uncomforted?
Nay! Howsoever dear thou art,
I will not give thee all my heart.

Like most museums worldwide, the Royal Institution of Science building is closed to visitors. However, they offer a weekly lecture series with speakers from various sciences providing accessible and interesting science lectures.

They also have a monthly online science book club, hosted by Jennifer Rohn of Lablit.com, reading “great fiction books with a science theme”. LabLit itself is quite interesting, focusing on “The culture of science in fiction and fact”, so it’s also worth checking out!

The RI also have an online virtual tour of Michael Faraday’s magnetic experiments lab, which was great fun.

Even if hard science is not your strongest subject, the RI site has a great deal to offer non-scientists in terms of education and entertainment.

Enjoy!

[Image description: A square with the letters R and i in it. The words “The Royal Institute” are to the right of the square, and below them is the phrase “Science Lives Here”.]

My dear friend and honored colleague Corvid Longcoat pointed me to this piece on “Ethnic and Cultural Identity” as defined by archeology in the early Celtic period as part of a larger discussion about racism in modern paganism, and particularly in the Norse/Heathen traditions. We engaged in discussion, and this blog post is the result.

The article examines the generalities of early historians (Roman, Hellenic, etc.) in describing “the barbarians” by various, and often interchangeable, names—”Celts”, “Germans”, and “Gauls” being the most commonly used. As these tribes also fought against the Roman and Hellenic armies in league with Scythians, Getae, and Galatai, people from a variety of geographical areas and cultural backgrounds were lumped together as one unit.

“In sum, the classical sources often mention the ‘Celts’ as an undifferentiated and largely unknown mass. When subdivisions are mentioned, the extent to which these reflect indigenous circumstances is entirely unclear. We may say with certainty that the classical authors considered the northern barbarians to belong to one very general cultural group or category, that the variation among individual ‘Celtic’ groups was poorly understood, and that the classical sources impose a view from without on a people who undoubtedly saw themselves in a very different light (Chapman 1992, 35).”

The idea of national identity can also be fluid. For someone who becomes a naturalized citizen of France, even today, once you are a citizen of France, the Gauls become your ancestors. Not genetically, of course, but culturally and socially, because you have become a part of France, which derives its cultural and social identity from the early Gauls.

Hope
—Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Wild seas of tossing, writhing waves,
A wreck half-sinking in the tortuous gloom;
One man clings desperately, while Boreas raves,
And helps to blot the rays of moon and star,
Then comes a sudden flash of light, which gleams on shores afar.