I’ve had this deck for awhile and used it several times and now I’m going to review it finally. The Hoodoo Tarot is a Black Tarot deck; technically it’s Black Protestant; Voodoo is Black Catholic. I love how there’s a Bible verse associated with each Major Arcana; I really like the Christian strand of Tarot. There’s also a plant associated with each card, which is something I should learn more about.

I also like how it’s Black. When I first got into paganism and esotericism, for me it was much about “the lily-white maid of Astolat” and all that stuff that I didn’t realize could be Southern as well as Ancient British. Really I was /that/ Pagan Romantic and I didn’t like anything that wasn’t Pagan and British, which made me unsure about tarot for a while after I started to grow out of that. So this Black Southern Christian Tarot was perfect for me to get back into esotericism.

I really should make a point of studying those plants. I also really liked the Black historical esotericists who make up the Major Arcana and I liked reading about them. I guess the one part I found kinda funny was how she makes the Moon card masculine and the Sun card feminine. I know that some cultures do this and so it’s possible and occasionally done, but it’s goofy for me because I think that femininity is the more secretive one. I guess as a Black Intellectual you have to feel called to alternative consciousness. I did agree, though, that it is possible for there to be a Moon man and a Sun woman because these things overlap; I just don’t think that Moon man is the masculine man.

And certainly it bears mentioning that I did the ancestor reading spread described in the book and it worked well for me, although my ancestors are all white, mostly Anglo-Irish.

So it’s greatly great.

N.B. And Miss Ida’s plant, Jersey tea, grows up north here! It’s even named after my own state! And I always love that High Priestess energy; girlie guards the mysteries. ^^

………

(2nd reading)

I read this guidebook originally—although I used the cards very very few times before getting rid of them, like I do with everything I have no use for; eventually I had to buy the whole thing again—because I wanted to be wise, in the vague sense, and finally have some idea of the things I was always half-interested in; and wise and tolerant—Black and white; Christian and magical; it’s all coming together…. Although it didn’t occur to me to look at the thing as a tarot deck, you know. It was everything except practical, or useful.

The purpose of spiritual knowledge is not just to be a crusty old buyer of books, right.

Now I suppose I shall catalog the guidebook and the cards separately, as I usually do when it makes sense, and the book is certainly long enough for that: and the cards I’ll put in after I meditate through them. (I am kinda concerned that all my magical books are about tarot, though; I kinda like to think that I spread a wide net, you know.) And I do think that the guidebook is general interfaith, Christian tarot theory, and the cards themselves are shamanistic psychology; there are those two threads to it, you know. The Christianity kinda gets in with the Bible verses and it seems to work well in the world of theory and ideas; and the kinda workaday shamanism is the other side of things, you know….

And I wanted to take it out and start to read it now: only the house’s superstitious (and very) white Christian just came downstairs to eat his late night fat boy meal, so I’m just gonna do a James Bond and get by him, right….