Here’s the gist: I’m moving Exploration Project to a dedicated website on Podia, and September will be the last month I send EP newsletters.

Substack is a fantastic platform for many uses, and I’m still publishing other projects here—but it’s just not a fit anymore for EP. So I’m inviting you all to join me in another venue.

That’s the simple part. O…

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It’s one of those years when the 22nd (my favorite) day of September is also the Autumnal Equinox—a moment of earthly balance when light and dark are in quiet equilibrium, before the balance tips toward the coming season.

A threshold day, a liminal space, a time to focus equally on clarity and mystery, simplicity and complexity, past and future.

As I sta…

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But here’s the gist: I’m moving Exploration Project to a membership model on Podia, and September will be the last month I send EP newsletters.

I’ll still be publishing other projects on Substack, but it’s just not a fit anymore for EP. So I’m inviting you all …

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I haven’t done a proper analysis, but I'm pretty sure this was the longest I've ever gone without sending an EP email. And I can't lay the blame on external disruptions.

Here's the true story of my month-long dither:

• I kept setting aside time to work on EP.

• I kept putting "EP" on my planning list, under the Urgent heading.

• I planned things to…

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1. How I landed in Email Jail. Thousands and thousands of emails I let pile up over the course of five years. Not that I never did any maintenance—I just stopped …

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For whatever it’s worth (and I have absolutely no idea), I have located the absolute antithesis of Tarot | An Exploration Project. Polar opposite, mirror symmetry, however you want to loo…

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In Ten Doors to Tarot, I outlined various ways of engaging with Tarot studies. If one of them appeals to you as a point of entry — or a next path to explore — you might want a companion on the journey.

So I’ve suggested one exceptional guide for each path, and provided the title of his or her most essential work. Several of these books are long-respected classics, and all offer intelligent, informative points of entry.

Since the Ten Doors structure was first published, I made some changes in the order, to be more reflective of how interest in Tarot developed over the centuries. If you would like a long-ish explanation of why the original order was changed, just click here.

I’m not sure if I would pick the same books in every case if I started over—but all ten titles are well worth your reading time, so I’ve decided to leave the list as originally conceived..

For the most part, these are not “how-to” books. But if you’d like to add some hands-on engagement, I’ve made a few suggestions at the end of this story.

1. The Esoteric Door
   Michael Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards (with Ronald Decker)

2. The Magick Door
   Gareth Knight, Tarot and Magic: The Treasurehouse of Images

3. The Creativity Door
   Jessa Crispin, The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an
   Inspired Life

4. The Aesthetic Door

   Stuart Kaplan, The Encyclopedia of Tarot

5. The Symbolism Door

   Robert Place, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination

6. The History Door

   Helen Farley, A Cultural History of Tarot: From Entertainment to Esotericism

7. The Divination Door

   Mary K. Greer, Tarot for Your Self

8. The Meditation Door

   Emily Auger, Tarot and Other Meditation Decks

9. The Therapeutic Door

   Art Rosengarten, Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility

10. The Social Door

    Various essays, Part IV of Tarot in Culture (edited by Emily Auger)

If you want to take just one book with you for starters, I recommend Rachel Pollack’s classic Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom , or her more recent Tarot Wisdom, a deeper exploration that blends wide-ranging knowledge with personal experience.

Mary Greer’s Tarot for Your Self was the first volume of a trilogy that explores almost every aspect of Tarot with a combination of scholarship, creative imagination, and practical advice. The other two volumes are Tarot Constellations and Tarot Mirrors.

For hands-on Tarot engagement, Diana Heyne’s Tarot by Design Workbook: Color and Learn Your Way into the Cards is a charming way to explore visual dimensions of Tarot. And Journaling the Tarot, from Banana River Press, offers a two-page spread for each card, with an open space for sketches and notes on one side, a series of guided prompts on the other.

As occasionally revealed here on EP, I have a habit of letting a television run casually throughout the day. It (a pretty big Roku) is usually tuned to live programming via a streaming service (Sling), and as the whim strikes me, I…

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I originally intended to begin with the earliest newsletters and come forward chronologically. But as sometimes happens, the Universe contacted me by way of my Inbox. Not once, but twice in two days, s…

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To make the gods laugh—just announce your plan

Yes, I planned to write a whole series of Daily Dispatches.

No, I didn’t do it.

According to prevailing wisdom for “Substack Success,” at this point I have two choices:

1. Don’t explain, just move on.

2. Do explain, but make it deeply personal.

Somewhat surprisingly, I’ve chosen Door #2.

The exact timeline doesn’t m…

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Tarot | An Exploration Project (aka EP) has reached a magic number.

For the record—this is a tiny number in the context of “Substack success.” But it’s a respectable number in terms of Substacks that are not (a) published by people who are already famous, or (b) about how to succ…

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And I’m hoping that a return to regular business is right around the corner.

But in the meantime, I’ve collected some ideas I plan to share in “Daily Notes” over the next couple of weeks.

Here’s a preview:

1. A little about the Eudes Picard Tarot

2. Several interesting Tarot blogs I’ve come across

3. Two decks…

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Here’s how I started my most recent draft for an EP email:

That’s as far as I got before news of a not-awful but urgent situation took me straight away from my desk, and I’m just now getting back.

I can’t yet pick up where I left off, but—here’s the part about “rocket science”!

Astrologer and cultu…

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Last week on Thursday, I planned to finish/send the regular EP email. Then I planned to finish/send an email for paid subscribers on Sunday. Those things didn’t happen, so I decided to send everyone a note on Tuesday, marking the death of Pope Francis.

That last thing …

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And I wanted to remark on the death of Pope Francis. For those of us who look at the world in terms of symbols and patterns, the fact that his death occurred just hours after the culmination of Holy Week seems beyond ordinary co-incidence.

…

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It’s true that Thursday was yesterday—but I can never resist an 11, so this week’s EP newsletter has lapped over a day.

Thinking about that put me in mind of the fact that our most meaningful observances divide up between “fixed feasts” (like Christmas, which always occurs on December 25) and “moveable feasts” (dates like Easter, which are calculated in …

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It’s been two years since the Tarot community said goodbye to the amazing Rachel Pollack. So I wanted to share a post written then.

Rachel’s passing has brought a keen sense of loss—not only because we will never know what else she might have shared with the world, but also because her generous spirit touched so many people.

I’ll start out this post with …

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By contrast, my recent clarity about the “new” EP seemed to come with …

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In the Equinox email, I started out by saying I’ve given extra thought to how my energies would be best spent this year. That process has led me to three realizations, and a change of plans for EP.

Realization One

My goal in writing EP has been to get—and share—the biggest possible view of Tarot and its manifestations. But so much can be f…

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