Monday, October 27, 2025

Samhain

Samhain and the Tarot

Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”) marks the turning of the year’s wheel toward darkness — the final harvest and the ancient Celtic new year. Traditionally celebrated from October 31st to November 1st, it is the midpoint between autumn and winter, when the veil between the living and the dead grows thin.

It is the season of endings and renewal, when the outer world dies back so the inner world may awaken. This makes Samhain one of the most powerful times to work with the tarot, because both share the same essence — revelation through darkness, transformation through reflection.




The Energy of Samhain in Tarot

Samhain calls forth the archetypes of Death, The Moon, and The High Priestess — cards of liminality, intuition, and change. It is a time when the subconscious stirs, inviting you to listen rather than act.

Key themes include:

  • Release: Letting go of what has run its course (Ten of Swords, Death, Eight of Cups).
  • Descent: Moving inward to understand shadow and hidden wisdom (The Hermit, The Moon).
  • Communication with Spirit: Ancestors, intuition, and dreams (High Priestess, Judgement, Cups suit).
  • Transformation: The composting of old energy into new potential (Tower, Death, Ace of Pentacles).

How to Work with Tarot During Samhain

This is not a time for forecasting or goal-setting. It’s a time for listening — for letting the cards speak from the underworld of your own psyche.

You might:

  • Perform a Shadow Spread — asking, What must I release? What seeks rebirth within me?
  • Draw a Spirit Card — a message from an ancestor, guide, or unseen influence.
  • Pull a Year’s End Reading — to close one creative or emotional cycle before the next begins.
  • Use your deck for meditative journaling, noting recurring symbols that echo through dreams or memory.




Samhain and The Phantasmagoria

In your deck’s world, Samhain is the Night of the Curtain — when the theatre of the Dreamer is silent, yet every shadow waits to perform. The stage is empty, but the air hums with memory. It is both funeral and genesis — a rehearsal for rebirth.

The Dreamer walks among their own creations, each spirit and illusion whispering of unfinished stories. Samhain reminds them (and you) that art, like spirit, never dies — it only changes form.



Here’s a Samhain Tarot Spread designed specifically for The Phantasmagoria Tarot: A Painter’s Guide to Illusion and Revelation.

It’s built as both a spiritual and artistic ritual — a way to commune with your shadows, your ancestors, and the ghosts of unfinished work.

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The Samhain Spread — “The Night of the Curtain”


Theme:

When the lights dim and the curtain falls, what remains illuminated within you?

This spread invites you to enter the liminal theatre of your soul — to listen, to release, and to gather inspiration from the unseen.


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Preparation

Read or sketch by candlelight or soft silver light.

Choose a dark cloth or paint-stained paper as your reading surface.

Keep a bowl of water (reflection), a small stone (grounding), and something that belonged to an ancestor or past self (memory).


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The Spread (6 Cards)

1. The Opening Scene — What Fades from the Stage

What story or identity must I let go of?

The mask that no longer fits, the performance that has ended.


2. The Shadow Player — What Haunts Me Still

What unhealed energy or memory lingers in the wings?

The ghost that seeks acknowledgment, not banishment.


3. The Mirror Veil — What the Spirit World Reflects Back

What message do my ancestors or guides wish to share?

A symbolic image from beyond the curtain — subtle, intuitive, dreamlike.


4. The Lantern of the Hermit — My Hidden Gift

What wisdom is reborn from the ashes of what I’ve lost?

A truth, talent, or creative spark that endures through endings.


5. The Silent Audience — What I Must Listen For

What truth speaks only when I am still?

The whisper beneath noise, the breath between brushstrokes.


6. The Final Bow — What Emerges Transformed

What new form will my energy take in the coming season?

The soul’s encore — art, clarity, or quiet peace.




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Optional Artistic Ritual

After the reading, paint or draw one symbol from each card that resonated most — six fragments of transformation.

Layer them on a single page or canvas, as if building a dream collage of your own psyche.

When complete, sign it in silver or white ink — your name as a seal between this world and the next.

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Wands Suit



The Suit of Wands in the Phantasmagoria

The Wands are the spark that ignites the illusion.
They are the flickering torches carried into the dark theater of the mind —
each flame casting long, trembling shadows on the walls of imagination.




In a Phantasmagoria, the audience is both terrified and enthralled by projections of light and smoke. In the same way, the Wands show us how desire, inspiration, and willpower can create whole worlds — radiant, intoxicating, and sometimes deceptive.
They represent the creative fire that animates the phantasm itself.

Where other suits explore emotion, reason, or material reality, the Wands dwell in the visionary space between spirit and illusion. They are the artists, dreamers, and conjurers, summoning something out of nothing — the magician’s first act before the image takes form.

But this fire is unstable. Just as the old lantern slides could twist into grotesque shapes, the Wands warn of what happens when passion burns too brightly — when creation turns to obsession, or inspiration to mania.
In the Phantasmagoria deck, the Wands might shimmer with luminous energy, painted in hues of candlelight, smoke, and motion — a dance between brilliance and distortion.





Symbolic Key for My Deck

  • Element: Fire → the flame that casts the illusion

  • Theme: Creation, vitality, projection, inspiration, will

  • Shadow Aspect: Illusion of grandeur, burnout, self-delusion through one’s own “light show”

  • Phantasmagoria Parallel: The act of summoning visions — where imagination blurs with reality



Monday, October 6, 2025

Productivity Planning for the Minor Arcana


Got a new planner to help me with planning out on the minor arcana. Only problem is, it's only for 4 months. Can I get 56 cards sketched and painted in 4 months? They are smaller than the major canvases. These are closer to actual size. 


Samhain

Samhain and the Tarot Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”) marks the turning of the year’s wheel toward darkness — the final harvest and the ancie...