The Bodleian Library has a number of the so-called Ashmole documents partially digitized and published online.
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Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, vol. 2.
Shelfmark: Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 972
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This one looks like Tarot 20 and has a very similar feel.
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Some of the other images on line look very proto-tarot.
In one other llustration it suggests that there are concealed answers for a freed Soul which can be revealed from understanding the symbols displayed..
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Ashmole
Medieval and early modern manuscripts and papers donated to the Bodleian by antiquary Elias Ashmole (1617-1692).
Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) was born and educated in Lichfield. He began his career as a solicitor, but in 1644 entered the service of the Crown as a commissioner of excise. He entered the Office of Arms as Windsor herald after the Restoration, and retired in 1672.
His collection comprises important medical, astrological, and alchemical manuscripts, and is also strong in heraldry, local history, and, to a lesser extent, in Middle English and 17th-century poetry. The foundation of his Museum at Oxford was made possible by his acquisition by bequest from his friend John Tradescant of a large collection of ‘curiosities’. They arrived when the building was ready in 1683, and it was here that his bequest of manuscripts was housed until their transference to the Bodleian in 1860.
I first started looking into Tarot around 2001. At the time I was an academic in Physical Chemistry at Imperial College London. I was very busy and a part of my job involved considering the second order non linear susceptibility of surfaces and probing these with femtosecond laser pulses.
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It probably wasn’t on the cards that I would share these two interests. Needless to say I did not soap box about tarot to my colleagues, lead ballons and all that.
Last night YouTube suggested a short video from the V&A about tarot and the history thereof. I watched it and found out about Minchiate and subsequently Sicilian tarot. I also found out that you can request to examine and handle some of the collection. The video was well made and interesting.
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« Le minchiate est un jeu de cartes du début du XVIe siècle, originaire de Florence, en Italie, qui n’est quasiment plus joué depuis le XXe siècle. Très proche du tarot, mais plus complexe, il se caractérise par le nombre important d’atouts qu’il utilise : 40, là où le tarot n’en comprend généralement que 21, pour un total de 97 cartes. »
The V&A has a nice web page on the history of Tarot, click here.
In the past I was more often found across the road in the science museum where I, on occasion, explained various exhibits to a little person. Often I would attract a small crowd who pretended not to listen in to what I was saying. The science museum seemed more natural, home turf.
The idea of emailing the V&A collection room to ask to inspect tarot cards from my old Imperial address tickled my fancy. Would they note it and find it odd?
Anyway I have a PowerPoint slide pack course in which I relate tarot to the Kabbalah tree of life and the various paths thereupon, to the Toltec Jewels of Awareness and to the evolution of inherent and evolving awareness. If I remember correctly Théun used to say that it was the Toltecs who invented tarot as a means of communication under things like the catholic inquisition. Anyone who threatened the supremacy of the church was subject to torture and death. The church had a stake in keeping control and power and it burned others on stakes. Tarot being arcane could be hidden under a cover story from prying eyes.
I’ll wager that more people use tarot than second order non-linear hyperpolarizability tensors. Hyperpolarizability is more arcane than tarot.
Back then I looked in detail at much so-called occult literature with the skill set of someone who can read matrices, and spot patterns. I found a lot of the published work shoddy and inconsistent.
I have a weak notion, that I am probably uniquely placed to relate so-called occultism, Toltec, Tarot and Buddhism with the critical thinking of a once pukka scientist.
In the 1990s I never knew that tarot was on the cards for me, though I had started to use I Ching for divination and shamanic journeying to request guidance from the universe. The shaman’s drum and the optical parametric oscillator do not see natural bedfellows. Seemed pretty darned normal to me.
The history of things like tarot will always be largely the overt and exoteric because the esoteric and hidden, is not in the public domain.
I personally cannot get on with the more modern tarot decks, using the tarot de Marseilles almost all of the time. I don’t do cartomancy but allow the major arcana to add pictorial clues to whichever Jewel of Awareness is in play or needs to be used.
I do dream tarot cards from time to time. This may not be common.
Let me be clear occult as I use it means difficult to see, partially hidden from view and not the bleeding obvious. It has nothing to do with Satan nor any dark ritual magic.
There are enough evil people in the world who are successful in the ordinary socio-political and pecuniary sense. They don’t need upside down pentagrams and goat heads. They are just nasty evil selfish people.
I still don’t know what is on the cards for the rest of this year / life …
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The notions of fate and destiny have been around for a while. They are related to prophecy in some respects. They are a logical summation of the cause & effect of karma and/or dependent origination. Once a chain of events has been set in motion the ongoing trajectory is inevitable. It becomes fated. Scientists even use the terminology of fate. They copy much poetic.
Many humans do not like to accept that aspects of their lives are pre-ordained. Some can use it as a chat up line, “hey babe we are soul mates and fate brought us together…”
Yet for many of us there are occasions when fate seems to play a hand. Something entirely unlikely can radically change our lives. We might call this an intervention of intuition, synchronicity or fate. We somehow just so happened to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. The odds against are large.
We could have missed our flight and that plane crashed. We could have swapped tickets with another just to meet the grim reaper on a Boeing 737. Fate it could be discussed is prone to exhibit quirks.
In the strict logic of fate it is impossible to forfeit a fate. Because if it was fated it will happen whether you like it or not. One path apparently open to you may not be taken. You have by fate forfeited that path. You were always fated so to do. So that path was not fated for you. No forfeit of fate, a different path was/is followed, according to fate.
Using the logic of fate. I was perhaps for countless lifetimes always fated to find myself here this afternoon, typing on this keyboard. I had no choice. It was preordained. I was for a while an academic but fate took me away from that path. Retrospect suggests that I was not in any case temperamentally equipped to work in and thrive in such an environment. It was fated that I became a loner-yogi-eccentric-pikey. So here I am.
I don’t know what fate has left for me “on the cards” so to speak. Fate will do the Tarot draw and maybe it has some quirks in store yet. I can’t know before hand, nor am I overly fussed. There is no need to be, because whatever happens it is fated, I cannot get out of it or escape it, it will happen whether I whinge and complain or not. I do not need to tempt fate by walking in the woods wearing camouflage during hunting season. Nor should I lock myself quivering indoors.
Likewise if you are fated to meet me, we will, whether you like it or not. I am probably more likely to be well prepared than you are. If we miss like ships passing in the night, then no meeting was “on the cards” a feather touch of possibility unmanifest in the web of life is all that is fated and therefore warranted. A passing that may not come again this lifetime or for that mater ever. This butterfly wing interaction may nevertheless be a tiny breath of air to direct you along your fated path.
Trying to run and squirm out of fate is a mug’s game. Sooner of later fate wins, it holds all the cards.
Fate is perhaps more omniscient and omnipresent than humans are willing to accept. It was always fated thus.
The dream brings to mind the images of two tall women whom I have never met in real life yet who are public figures of different degrees. Their images are known. They hold positions of power, of different type. They are both based in London for their professional activities.
I see them in turn and know that they are both Easterly Stalkers. I have a knowing in the dream that I may meet them one day. One is more likely than the other.
I know this dream to be about time and the stalker’s in and of time.
The image of Tarot 12 comes to the fore. I know that this is again about forbearance. When things cannot be changed and are outside one’s ability or sphere of influence one must forebear. This is the jewel of the Easterly Stalker.
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The dream suggests that things sophisticated and outside my “ken” or experience are afoot. They are socio-political. I know that I would be out of my depth in that happenstance and shenanigan but that I have zero need to fear it because I am not directly convolved or convoluted in to it.
In the dream I remember that I have felt one of these women at the edge of consciousness for a while and she has been getting closer over time.
The dream ends.
I hold Tarot 12 to consciousness on waking and bring it through to mind. It is here in the mind’s eye now.
Orthodox mainstream science is not fond of the notions of paranormal, ESP, telepathy, parapsychology, occult, tarot, ghosts and things that go bump in the night. They may be sceptical about reincarnation and see dreams just as dreams. To err into the non-accepted is career threatening. It can evoke a ridicule. It is OK to be homosexual but homeopathy is frowned upon. I will wager that any person keen to soap-box about the lack of ghosts and ghoulies will be more likely to shit themselves in a haunted house than I. They are also more likely to call forth the wrath of any entity.
Reincarnation as per the Dalai Lama is global news today!! Many are very sceptical about this. It is a geo-political issue, however.
If you take the opus of my dreams published here as an entirety and offer them to a psychology professional, what might they make of them? What theories, explanations and guesses might they come up with? I’ll speculate that even the most imaginative and resourceful psychologist would struggle to come up with a congruent and global explanation from within the accepted “scientific” approaches.
I would love to see and hear someone attempt.
Today’s dream can be seen as another piece of the jigsaw pertaining, in this case, to my most recent incarnation, “pony-tail” man. My rough time line suggests around 200-250 years ago. In no dream have I seen anything convenient like a newspaper! Nor did I meet Doc Brown in a DeLorean. I could not look at an LED display to see the year.
Genuine past life recall is probably not that common, wishful thinking however might be…
As an erstwhile “clever” scientist I should be attempting to debunk my own dreams. Clearly, I am a traitor and a turncoat. Maybe I am no longer “clever”.
In the dream in which I was shot, there was no fear of being executed. Because I knew that I was dreaming and I also knew that the younger man in the dream survived, because of an earlier dream. Many might wake up in a cold sweat after being handcuffed and shot. I was quiet relaxed.
Quite why I am dreaming Tarot and civil / independence war is yet to be seen. Dreaming takes its time, it happens as and when it is meant to do. Interacting with the dreaming for goal oriented people can be very frustrating because there are no bullet pints or objectives. It can fry their “minds” which is an altogether welcome thing. You cannot control the dreaming nor set the pace. Dreaming can be uncomfortable for those obsessed with trying to control every aspect of their lives.
A clever scientist might say, “they are just dreams Alan!”
Someone of a more spiritual or religious orientation might confer more importance. Most religions have dreams as a part of their hagiography and narrative….
Here is last night’s dream. I managed to sleep until 5 AM without interruption which is unusual these days. We watched the film “Old Guard” last night.
The dream starts in the South-Eastern corner of America. It is in the recent past. It is sweltering hot, humid and sweaty. We are under siege. We can hear gunfire from the nearby town which is surrounded. There is smoke in the air and cordite on the wind. From time to time the night sky lights up with an orange light from afar due to a large munition. They are being pounded. We too are besieged but by a much smaller force. It is quiet where we are but we know that they are out there on our property in numbers.
In the dream I am very surprised to be in America. Though it does make sense.
I am sat at a large table in the kitchen or scullery. There are candles burning and several finished bottles of wine. I have a glass on the go. We are speaking Cajun or creole French. There are a few of us white and a few servants or slaves black. We have all hastily eaten something quick. Others are keeping watch. We are in some wooded “mansion” type house on a plantation of sorts. The windows are boarded up from the inside.
On the table is a tarot deck de Marseilles. On the wall there are pictures of soldiers in a kind of uniform of dull grey colour. My minds thinks Confederate but it could have been earlier. It could be militia but is definitely not redcoat. There is an air of civil war or revolution and of tearing apart. On the table I can see the cards 0,1 and 10. The cards are le mat, le bateleur and la roue de fortune. I focus on the latter. It seems apt. Also on the table someone has been sketching a contemporary “confederate” set of cards and having them cut out. The table is like that of le bateleur in front of us. The tarot arcana have been given a modern twist. La roue de fortune is comprised two pistols intertwined head to tail to make a kind of pistol ying-yang circle. Other figures are made contemporary with white wigs sat on judicial “thrones”. One of the company is whiling away the time drawing. We all know what is coming in the morning. One of the black women in a dark blue dress clears the plates from the table. One man in the corner is drinking brandy to forget. There is a sense of impending.
The scene changes to morning. We are outside in daylight. I am wearing black riding boots, black pants and a dirty white blouson shirt with a lace up closure in the front. It is partially undone. I have blood spatters on it. It needs a wash as do I. My long dark brown hair is held at the back in a pony tail. I am partially dishevelled and have been roughed up. My hands are tied behind my back and I am being held by them. I am being brought before. I can sense a pistol very close to my right temple. I can sense an arm and a hand holding it. They are going to execute me. I see a flash of smoke as the pistol mechanism fires. I hear a loud bang.
In the dream I know that it does not kill me because I can see myself back in Europe as an older man with a white-grey ponytail and clean shirt sat at my desk. This shooting is early in my previous life.
The dream starts in a common room area. I am with a group of people awaiting the results of a set of science exams. People are nervous and there is much talk of “bricking it”. I too have sat the exams. I say that I will go to collect my exam papers from my pigeon hole. I get there and there are two A4 exam papers each held together with a small bulldog clip. I pull them out and look at them. On the top paper the mark is written as 0 out of 33. The zero is in pencil and the bottom half of the fraction is in black biro. The second paper has 0 out of 33 written in angry red biro inside a red circle. It has been written with some vehemence.
I go back to the gathering and they too have had their exam papers back. One of them, a young man, asks me to go through his paper with him to check. This I do and see that there has only been one small error in the marking. I suggest that he gets someone else to check with him because I got zero for both of mine. He is astounded as are others in the room.
Looking at my exam papers the answers are not as expected in the mark scheme and one of them is more essay-like on entrepreneurship. One of the students comments that it might be difficult for “them” to explain how I was given zero, given my background.
I suggest that it is unlikely that it will ever air.
I wonder should I try to re-take my exams in the summer because it will be impossible for me to find a job without a science degree.
The dream ends
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0 is the jewel for absolute freedom / universality. Tarot zero is Le Mat.
33 is the jewel for freedom.
2 is the jewel for humility and understanding / a symbol of destiny
In numerology 33 is a power number. It is the pure white light of the dreamer, attainable only once there is full at-one-ment between the indwelling spirit, the reincarnating ego and the personality.
In extremis it is the vibration of a Christed being – his number of years on earth.
I am looking at an antique wooden wheel of fortune against a background wall. The wheel has stopped and it has a pointer facing East. At the four cardinal directions are arranged four dragons. They are small and intricate and somehow alive. Their nature is consistent with their name. The pointer faces the Fire dragon. In the dream I know that the dragons going N,E,S,W should be Earth, Wood, Water, Fire. Yet somehow the wheel has stopped with the Fire dragon in the East. I reach out and pluck the Fire dragon off the wall / wheel.. I put the dragon in my pocket.
“You may use the Fire dragon now. Although you were born a Wood dragon and your predilection is for the Water dragon, you may use the Fire dragon now. You own all the dragons…and can use them at will.”
Implicit is that the Blue Dragon, the Red Dragon and the Golden Dragon are also “mine” and available to me.
Dream ends.
Subsequently the image of Tarot 10, impeccability, La Roue de Fortune, springs to mind.
This dream was had in Vienna on honeymoon. I got out of bed and went down to reception to write it down so as to not turn on the lights in the hotel room.
There is sense of training ground. We are all outside waiting for the sensei. However, the sensei is me. Alexandros myself and others are there. Suddenly there is a strike of lightning and A is hit by lightning. He is a nagal’s courier. He is lit up and energised. Only now it is not him it is me who is lit up and energised. This scene lasts for a long time with multiple lightning strikes.
I walk across the bridge fully charged.
The scene replays several times and is vivid even as I recall it today. {Jan 2025}
I go to a gym / factory area. There is something inside my anus. I reach inside and pull out a glossy shiny golden egg. This is very painful. I store this egg somewhere and keep it secret.
The inside of the gymnasium is messy There are things which belong to J. I tidy it up.
Next, I am at “headquarters”. There are many press reports coming in and for some reason they all want to talk with me.
There is a caller on the line. They, the others, don’t think she is real. They think she is a freak.
I ask to speak to her.
She says that there have been lights seen over the Welsh Harp reservoir {in North London}.
She says that the seventh seal has been broken and that the seven horsemen have come and that there are now seven of them, horsemen.
I say Elizabeth. She says yes. Everyone wants to know how I know. I say it is obvious.
We keep monitoring incoming request / reports. There are 141 of them referring to the lights.
Has anyone actually seen it, the horsemen, to verify. Yes, there is one confirmed report. E is now a member of the team.
Dream ends
*Whilst in Vienna we walked past an antique shop and they had tiles of the major arcana of the Tarot of Marseilles. I was stunned. The tarot was painted onto white porcelain coated tiles larger than A4 size. They had been up in some person’s house. I asked the shop owner how much and she said around 34,000 euros for the set of 22.
These from Wikipedia
The Seven Seals of God from the Bible’s Book of Revelation are the seven symbolic seals (Greek: σφραγῖδα, sphragida) that secure the book or scroll that John of Patmos saw in an apocalyptic vision. The opening of the seals of the document occurs in Rev Ch 5–8 and marks the Second Coming of the Christ and the beginning of The Apocalypse/Revelation. Upon the Lamb of God/Lion of Judah opening a seal on the cover of the book/scroll, a judgment is released or an apocalyptic event occurs. The opening of the first four Seals releases the Four Horsemen, each with his own specific mission. The opening of the fifth Seal releases the cries of martyrs for the “Word/Wrath of God”. The sixth Seal prompts plagues, storms and other cataclysmic events. The seventh Seal cues seven angelic trumpeters who in turn cue the seven bowl judgments and more cataclysmic event
October 24, 2008: Many of the world’s stock exchanges experienced the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices. In the U.S., the DJIA fell 3.6%, although not as much as other markets. The United States dollar and Japanese yen and the Swiss franc soared against other major currencies, particularly the British pound and Canadian dollar, as world investors sought safe havens. A currency crisis developed, with investors transferring vast capital resources into stronger currencies, leading many governments of emerging economies to seek aid from the International Monetary Fund. Later that day, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, Charlie Bean, suggested that “This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history”. In a transaction pushed by regulators, PNC Financial Services agreed to acquire National City Corp.
I’ll speculate that immediacy and the immediacy of gratification are part of the modern way of life for many. People do not like to wait and many suffer badly from premature conclusion which can be messy. The concluding kangaroo can be found easily on all sides and people jump great distances to form dodgy yet firm conclusions without real basis. Many rely on what “they” say and are unwilling or too lazy to look into things themselves.
Śāntideva in the Bodhicharyâvatâra has a whole chapter on the virtues of forbearance which is a close ally of patience. The jewel of awareness forbearance is depicted by tarot 12.
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Sometimes you are required by karma to bear whatever life brings and to do so in as cheerful a manner as possible without pissing and moaning or whingeing like a stuck record. Often there is light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a TGV train oncoming.
This urge for immediacy means that long term policy making is neglected and life is governed by knee jerk reactions and sticking plaster temporary “solutions”. If it can’t be “sorted” quickly people lose interest. This condemns life to the shallows and the profound depths are never plumbed. It is a natural law that depth needs time and application. Concentration without distraction for extended periods brings insights more meaningful than a short flashy TikTok video. If you wait long enough an insight might come along and then just like with busses you may get several.
Humanity is in a rush like never before in some senses.
This means that the superpower of patience is fading and heading towards a mass extinction event. Being patient is not fashionable, nor is it good clickbait. Being patient is for losers. Gimme, gimme, gimme.
Aligning a complicated dye laser to give the best balance of laser power output and narrowness of spectral linewidth is nearly an art form. I refer to it as Zen and the Art of Laser Alignment. If you get twitchy and impatient it can go badly wrong and you are returned back to the start. All the good work can be undone by one or two impatient tweaks of a mirror positioning knob. If you note that you are losing patience, best to stop go out of the room and then come back calm to start again. In the past I could work at laser alignment in four hour sessions.
This loss of patience and hasty reaction is fairly prevalent. If gratification is not immediate interest is lost.
In Buddhism theory even after one has entered the stream it takes several lifetimes to complete liberation. Patience then is a scale. If one can work over many lifetimes that is patient. If one gets annoyed by the slow loading of a Netflix film, that is less patient. We boomers had ~50 kilobyte per second modems, we were initiated into patience thereby.
Pavlovian society is now conditioned to immediacy, buying in a click and getting food delivered to the doorstep in many places.
I wonder if I could survive the massed impatience and accompanying ire / agitation of London these days. For a long time, I was immersed therein. I doubt I could hack it now.
I think it fair to speculate that I am more patient than average. I can sit in a hospital waiting room without my comfort beads, by smartphone. I do not have to scroll frantically.
The need, it seems, for constant distraction is having a detrimental effect on mental health. The data dealers keep pushing more deal baggies of gigabytes at us, encouraging us to use high definition cameras like junkies to make huge files and selling ever more data to satisfy this addiction.
If people could go cold turkey on the taking and publication of all that imagery, the climate would not get so hot.
I think that were we all to better develop our superpower of patience, the world would be a better and perhaps more tolerant place. It would stop being so knee jerk reactive and it might even try to understand differing views and perspectives. It might ease the pervasive malady of premature conclusion.
Dreamyoga 