Index To Posts About Or Involving Tarot by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Index To Posts About Or Involving Tarot

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Over time, I have talked about or referenced various esoteric disciplines such as Tarot and Astrology on this blog.  Below you will find a list of some of these posts where the references appear.

I did 20 posts on the Minor Arcana written as Tarot Just For Writers -- in other words, you don't have to "learn" Tarot to use it in characterization or plotting or worldbuilding, but you do have to understand "what" is being done when someone "reads" Tarot.

Here are the index posts to these 20 discussions of two of the four suits of the Minor Arcana:

Here is the index to 10 posts on the Suit of Pentacles
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

Here is the index to 10 posts on the Suit of Swords
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

These 20 posts are here for free reading, and also rewritten and incorporated into handy Kindle Books.  There are 5 volumes plus an Omnibus combination of all 5 which is cheaper than buying them individually.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/tarot-just-for-romance-writers-now-on.html

The word Tarot and the word "Card" does not ever have to appear in a novel for worldbuilding to be rooted in and growing from the view of the universe that is behind what is behind Tarot.  You don't have to be able to "read" Tarot to use these concepts.  In fact, it is more authentic if you don't practice "reading."

Tarot is not about magic or power or making things in the world work the way you want them to.

It does not solve problems.

But Tarot is more closely related to the "the scientific view of the universe" than most people think -- wherein lies a vast number of dramatic themes.

Here is an index post to the discussions of how a writer can incorporate Astrology into theme-plot-Character integration without letting the reader know you know any Astrology or ever think of any of that.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Many more posts on writing craft technique and various review discussions of other writers' books use the posts on Tarot and Astrology to build further craft techniques.  Mastery of all these techniques is the goal of reading and discussing all these various topics.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-9.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-10-binocular-vision-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/source-of-expository-lump-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-love-sci-fi-part-viii-unconditional.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-love-sci-fi-part-vii-unconditional.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-8-beat.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/amber-benson-tara-on-buffy-vampire.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/six-kinds-of-power-in-relationship.html

Those are a few examples of gigantic topics that can be factored out and recombined into story material if you can learn to see the world through the eye of a different structure of the universe.

Some readers come to science fiction to have their view of reality challenged, changed, or even proven wrong.  Some people thrive on the excitement of being WRONG about everything they thought they believed.  Those people are ripe for becoming engrossed in a science fiction novel.

Science Fiction is not so much about "escape" from this ordinary world and your current life as it is about "entering" another world and learning to regard the bizarre place as ordinary.

Science fiction novels don't "teach" science or the facts of reality -- they inspire readers to learn science by taking them for a ride into a Character's life who does know and understand science.

Most people do understand Tarot and Astrology -- without ever knowing that those empirical sciences are the source of what they know.

This is a cultural mind-block -- and it is just the sort of mind-block that science fiction has specialized in clearing away.

There is a "science" (a rigorously organized body of peer-reviewed and tested knowledge) behind the view of the world presented by Tarot and Astrology.

That science is often referred to with the word "Kabbalah" -- but that word is as misused as the word "Tarot" -- having been sold to the public as a magical shortcut to power over the behavior of other people.  Or power over the world to bring you wealth, love, or whatever reward you crave.

If your source of definition for these words is rooted in someone trying to sell you something to fix your problems, then very likely you have no clue what these topics are really about.

And I can't say that I do know what they are "really" about because all I have discovered is how vast my ignorance is.  These 5 books on Tarot just for Writers don't tell you answers -- they just show what I've been doing to learn this view of the universe.  I'm a long way from being done learning.

That's why they call it a Path -- it goes somewhere, but without a map you can't even guess where.  It is well trodden - clearly others have trudged up this mountain of knowledge, but none of them are in sight.  Explore.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com