The Tarot Cure

“The clock in the back of the deserted house (everyone’s sleeping) slowly lets the clear quadruple sound of four o’clock in the morning fall. I still haven’t fallen asleep, and I don’t expect to. There’s nothing on my mind to keep me from sleeping and no physical pain to prevent me from relaxing, but the dull silence of my strange body just lies there in the darkness, made even more desolate by th...

"Sadly, or perhaps not, I recognize that I have an arid heart. An adjective matters more to me than the real weeping of a human soul. But sometimes I’m different." -Fernando Pessoa -- Every so often, I sit down and write a letter to Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet and writer. I not only write but also send each letters to the postal address where Pessoa spent the last fifteen years...

The second part of my Tarot Cure Pilgrimage to Treadwell's Bookshop to see if one of their finest Tarot readers (Madame Kalathaki) might have some wisdom to share with me on where my last relationship went awry, and what I need to do to keep the next one (when it comes) more enduringly on the path of Love. This episode of the Tarot Cure is sponsored Naomi Shihab Nye's Red Brocade:  The Arabs used...

In which I take myself off to consult a professional tarot reader at London's main hub for the Tarot Cognoscenti ( Treadwell's Bookshop ) to see if she can help me with the "stuff" that I’m still trying to work through in relation to my last romantic relationship.   One of my favourite centaurs (Alain de Botton) also shares with us his theories on Romanticism and Love, whilst Marina Abra...

Before falling in love with the Enneagram, I had a thing for Tarot.  And so I decided to put this thing into a podcast called The Tarot Cure.  Here's an Omnibus edition of those episodes, spanning the length and breadth of my 50th year.  It was a good year :)

Sophie (psychotherapist, single) asks a burning question that her friend Steve (psychotherapist, also single) might also like to have answered: "Will It Ever Happen For Me?" -- This episode of The Tarot Cure is sponsored by two poems:  REQUEST Please love me And I will play for you this poem upon the guitar I myself made out of cardboard and black threads when I was ten years old. Love me or else....

Why do our burning questions burn in the way they do? I try to answer this by looking back at the phenomenon of PostSecret, and how burning questions often tap into core needs, longing, and yearnings such as the yearning for orientation, meaning, coherence and understanding, as well as self-direction, competence, belonging and connection. [This episode also features an Intro to a new Tarot Cure of...

Are you getting huffy and puffy about online dating? Or maybe One Of The Other Things We Tend To Get Huffy and Puffy About (the list is endless)? If so, this one is for you: giving birth to Max, poetry vs. evolutionary psychology, incense vs. incensed, and Cain versus Abel. All with added Hot-&-Spicy Jungian Sauce :-) Thanks, as ever, to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of The Five of Sw...

This episode takes a walky-talky dive into my favourite scene in the Wizard of Oz: "The Wizard Revealed", exploring the healing powers of Hierophants & High Priestesses versus that of Persona-fied Schmucks like toi et moi. This episode of the Tarot Cure is proudly sponsored by KURKURE NAUGHTY TOMATO SNACKS: "A sweet and sour tomato flavor with just the right amount of chili powder. Kurkure is a pe...

This episode discusses our core existential fragility through a pink child's bracelet found on the side of the road, the violent and sometimes even bone-breaking choreography of Elizabeth Streb, as well as my mother's recent mishaps with "The Jaws of Fate". This episode is sponsored by Dorianne Laux's poem What Is Broken: The slate black sky. The middle step of the back porch. And long ago my moth...

In this episode I wonder, to use that line from Larkin: "What are days for?" Parcels of time we hold in our minds when we opening our eyes after being off-line, asleep. Days where we either feel on-track or off-track with those experiences, states, fulfilments we all desire to have more of in our lives. I also get a phone call at 3am from Hannah who I haven't spoken to for some time.  Does she sti...

In this episode, Sophie delivers an impromptu free-association on The Queen of Wands from a semi-recumbent state (hence the superb quality of the F-A, dream-like?), whilst I ponder Max's gender metaphysics and admire some spindly trees on a walk.  Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that...

This episode is mainly about the incredibly young (only 22!) and goofy Elvis Aaron Presley's performance of "Don't Be Cruel" on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957.  It also delves a little into why vegans don't (or shouldn't?) eat honey, and whether we'd change our behaviour towards people and things, if they had an SUC (Subjective Unit of Cruelty) measure attached to them.  Thanks to Sophie for her FFA...

Why do we do one thing, rather than another?  Why do we sometimes struggle to commit to certain kinds of behaviour, whereas others come naturally?  Why do we procrastinate and self-sabotage?  Once you've understood how the Winner Takes All mechanism works in your mind, as well as the "mind" of our 400 million year-old ancestor, C. elegans (aka: the nematode, or roundworm) you'll be on your way to...

An exploration of The Emperor archetype through the sex lives of Orthodox Jews and the sublime wittering of John Ashbery. Thanks to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of this card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Uncon...

What do you love more than what you imagine is your singular life? Are you willing to take your place in the forest again?    to become loam and bark to be a leaf falling. from a great height.  to be the worm who eats the leaf and the bird who eats the worm?    Look at the sky: are you willing to be the sky again? You think this lesson is too hard for you    You want the thing you're struggling wi...

A exploration of the The Sun archetype with a nod to these two poems: LEISURE What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?- No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows: No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass: No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night: No time to turn at B...

A exploration of the Hermit archetype through Lizzie MacKenzie's recent documentary The Hermit of Treig. THE GREAT FIRES Love is apart from all things. Desire and fulfilment are nothing beside it. Neither body nor mind can truly love. Even if they try to lead us there. What is not love provokes them. What is not love quenches them. Love lays hold of everything we hold dear, But we are not able to...

An exploration of The Tower, an archetype which invites us to explore and consider sudden change, upheaval, and chaos in our lives, as well as a kind of revelation or awakening sometimes associated with the word "enlightenment" as it is sometimes linked to personal transformation.  We take this journey together via the following cultural stepping stones:  Irene Solà's novel When I Sing, Mountains...

The Death Archetype (XIII in the Major Arcana) features pretty heavily in this episode. But fear not, no one dies, and no one gets hurt. That's because Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese, the one with the line in it about letting the soft animal of the body love what it loves, features even more heavily.  If you would like to continue on the Poems For Ma path with us, that will now be occurring on a da...

All our pain and most of our pleasure it would seem, resides in our peculiar human predilection for wanting to have our cake, whilst at the same time also eating it. How does the Magician archetype get us into, but also perhaps out of this conflicted, cakey business? MUSIC: All We Do For Love - Benny Sings (MNLA cover)

Break-ups suck. Here's a final spell to help us get through and over, based around a Tarot card that accompanied me and helped me to heal (get over/get through in a therapeutic way) my last break-up: The Two of Cups. PS: This podcast has been designed to be listened to on 🎧 ⚡ SPELL THREE: A Spell for Beholding ⚡ Ingredients: The Two of Cups x 3  Your Anima/Animus expressed through music, writin...

Break-ups suuuuck.  Here's another spell to help us get through them. PS: This podcast has been designed to be listened to on 🎧 ⚡ SPELL TWO: A Spell for Connection & Centering ⚡ Ingredients: 2 tbsp of Lauren Groff's Annunciation (listen online) 1/2 tsp of Lazy Susan a handful of polyvagal chanting/singing 100g of Florence William's The Science of Heartbreak 500g of Emma Jung's Anima and Animus...

Break-ups suck. Here's are a few spells to help us get through them. PS: This podcast has been designed to be listened to on 🎧 ⚡ SPELL ONE: A Spell for Connection & Centering ⚡ Ingredients: 200g of Alice Oswald's poem Sisyphus [PDF] a sprinkling of musical scales and polyvagal chanting 7 large slabs of Sitting Shiva dark chocolate 1/2 a cup of Anne Carson's The Glass Essay 3 1/2 teaspoons (or o...

What has the archetype of the Magician got to do with John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, the colour we now call Schoolbus/Safety Yellow, Extended Mind theory, entropy (physics), depression (metaphysics), and ring-tailed lemurs wanting to be antelopes?  Links:  The Sound of The Sun (poem) by George Bradley Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul (poem) by Frank O'Hara The Extended Mind:...