Compassionate Tarot Companion – Book Overview



Front Cover

The paperback for sale ….. {-here-}
My other paperbacks are also shown.

Free complete pdf file …. {-here-}
It will open in your browser,
140 pages including the covers.


The book’s chapters in blog posts .… {-here-}
Most of the chapters will be included; also
two chapters are in this post below.

A menu of posts will appear.

Other related blog posts …. {-here-}
Posts about the book that i wrote since
publishing it, or while writing it.

A menu of them will appear.

= My Other Tarot Book =
“Documents For The Reader”
This book focuses specifically on Tarot, rather
than seeing Tarot in worldwide context. And
this version of it is 38 letter size pages,
convenient for home printing.
Free pdf file ….. {-here-}

~~ THE TEXT ON THE BACK COVER ~~

Compassionate Tarot Companion
Stone Riley
Written in the crisis year 2022.

Divination: Practical advice, theory, memoir, and politics
of it; by an expert with unique skills and experience.

New England, USA has strong traditions of both
liberal democracy and fortunetelling. The author
is both a leading teacher of fortunetelling
there, and a veteran democracy activist;
– plus an essayist, novelist, and poet.

Beautiful Stories of today and ancient times,
taking you deep beneath the surface, and very
far beyond the bounds, of familiar divination
books, connecting today’s Tarot with ancient
Greece, Oriental spirituality, modern science,
worldwide Shamanism, and the universal
freedom of the human mind.

Do you enjoy a good read? Do you have some
interest in psychic phenomena? If so, you’ll
probably like this compact little book.

Numerous illustrations by the author.

Cover painting: “Seeking Wisdom” by Stone Riley

( End of the back cover text )

~~ THE BEGINNING OF CHAPTER 1 ~~


J Is For Jack in Singing
Fish Tarot; equals The
Fool in most decks


Chapter 1: Hello

In America in the late 1970’s thru early 1980’s,
it was the decade i escaped alive from the Army
Medical Corps, escaped alive from a month in Army
Jail, signed up for a leadership role among the
Neo-Pagans, and made a Tarot deck as activist
equipment. I have felt myself to be a
Soldier Of The Lady ever since.

Now grown old, i have become a poet blogger
too, and from that blog these pages are emerging.

It’s all largely in opposition to this brutal
civili­zation we live in, but that opposition
led me to the love of Humankind.

My earliest memory of feeling the fullness
of my love was in a Neo-Pagan introductory
class. Students were asked to list differences
between our religion and the Christianity
around us. I thought and wrote:
“We are pro-human.”

I had been a non-commissioned officer
in the medical corps. I had led my field
ambulance squad into pacifist resistance
against the godawful racist class­ist imperial
war, and the army found a way to kill one of my
guys for it. Of course that was in my mind when
i wrote “We are pro-human.”

In that decade and those since, i’ve created
lots of poems and 3 Tarot decks, much
of it as activist equip­ment.

( End of the beginning of Chapter 1 )

~~ THE ENTIRE LAST CHAPTER ~~


Page Of Wands
from Simple Tarot

Chapter 38:
Postscript:
So-Called Magnetic Senses

Dear Reader, with difficulty, I’m finally admit­ting
that truthfully saying I “see”, “hear”, and “feel”
things you pro­bably never see, hear, and feel,
altho this is my real life,
may seem preposterous to you.

Do you see the colors in someone’s mind,
or hear the things they didn’t say,
or feel their future?
Why not?

Right away, I might seem ridiculous to use
the word “magnetic” for the psychic senses.
Do you think I’m
ignorant of its common meaning?
That use of the word is centuries old,
for it
DESCRIBES THE SENSA­TION.

But with no clearer English language
alternative, I will use the word “magnetic”.
At least it’s vivid.

After all, I’m convinced these senses
operate thru Quan­tum Physics, as I explained
in the book more than once.
But I don’t understand Quantum Physics
any more than you do.

Then how am I to make a clear and vivid
explanation?

For nearly two weeks I left
the manuscript alone, hoping it would
be complete without a better expla­nation,
but lately I’ve been writing a summary,
and this morning I admitted
it doesn’t work.

Without it, chapters like “Troubles”,
and “Being Many Voices”, and “Sunflowers”,
and others, are either unbelievable
or incomprehensible to you.
You must think i’m an obvious fraud.
The problem is language.

This “hearing” and “seeing” and “feeling”
resemble Yoga; in fact, they’re strengthened
by my Yoga practice.
Can’t I just explain i’m a Western Yogi,
which I AM?
No,
because I don’t have that scholarly language.

The classic South Asian language
Yoga scholars use for explaining Yoga
surely explains these senses too, but
its way of making words for complex concepts
resembles German or Polynesian.
That doesn’t help.

But wait:
With the worldwide melding of cultures
in this age, many Shamanic concepts have
been given clear vivid English words.

So can I use those Shamanic terms
to explain the psychic senses? Plus
whatever scraps of Quantum Physics
you and I think we know?
Why not?

Can it be convincing too?
I’ll try:

Our species has a rich treasure of complex
instinc­tive roles, gifts from our ancestors
and other species among whom we evolved.

Some of our roles – Shaman, Artist, others –
evolved an awareness of Quantum Physics.

The Shamanic Landscape, populated with
a myriad of weird beings, is such a human’s
visualization of the universe,

which is full of quantum-physical con­scious
substances, which talk inter-psychically
and trans-chro­no­logically by
touch­ing mentally.

Such things as cards, conscious too,
can tell us of things faraway in space and
time, and beyond apparent boundaries,
by sharing touch with those substances.

My friend, fare well on your journey!

( End of the last chapter. )

(- Here is the end of this blog post.-)

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