The Pagan Tarot

Another Morgana's Chamber exclusive!

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This beautiful deck/ book set is imported from the UK, directly from the author and artist.  Each set comes complete with 78 card full colour deck by Rosemary Lewsey, accompanying book "Tarot 2000- The Pagan Tarot" by Robin Payne, and a holographic tarot bag designed specifically for the Pagan Tarot.

The price for the set is $45, and each copy of "Tarot 2000- The Pagan Tarot" is signed by both the artist and author!  For a limited time, the sale of each set will include a bonus of one "Moon" greeting card-- a beautiful full colour greeting card, depicting the Moon card in the Pagan Tarot!  A second bonus has been added, a "Pagan Tarot" poster, suitable for framing or adding to your Book of Shadows or Tarot Journal!  (Please note, bonuses are available on a first come, first serve basis.)

Come by and see this beautiful deck (we have a demo of the deck and book on hand at the shop).  Purchase yours today, while supplies last!

 

UPDATE:  We are currently out of stock on the Pagan Tarot.  Place your order today to get a copy before they are gone again!

Here are some card examples: 

 

The Fool

Though you may appear ragged and asinine
I see you always clad in green of spring,
Amid maenads who dance and sing,
Bearing your sacred wand and drinking wine.
Here you consummate the power of innocence
And unbridled will. Sweet babe of the Abyss,
Oh prince who wakes up beauty with his kiss,
You can free us from the bondage of pretence.
In your Tarot meaning we find embraced,
The spirit of revolt and acts of pure will.
All life’s intoxicants are here interlaced, 
Comes originality and impulse, drink your fill!
Though madness and folly come when badly placed,
Well aspected you bring, freedom and cause no ill. 



The Juggler

Who reads the Book of Destiny fortunes can reveal.
Here see the mysterious Tarot emblems each displayed,
The pentacle and chalice, the wand and sword of steel
And know winged Hermes and the tools of his trade.
Hermes is the true guardian of trader and traveller, 
Though this trickster is also protector of thieves.
His card in a spread signifies the talented or clever 
But badly placed it indicates someone who deceives.
Down through the ages in many guises he is seen,
As Nordic Loki, Roman Mercury, later as Harlequin;
With the Juggler the Tarot’s proceedings now begin; 
Here comes Il Bagatino with the tale of a fool to spin!
He strides the webs of time, the bridges of our years
He sees the past and future, knows our hopes and fears.



The Empress

Round the spirals of time she runs to us, 
Golden as Demeter, bringer of agriculture, 
As Ishtar when The Fool was called Tammuz; 
As she who’s name is still in the future.
Here the triple Goddess, Brigit or Bride 
Respecting whom men thrice tilled the land; 
The Carline Wife of the English countryside, 
Harvest Goddess, with poppies in her hand. 
May your memory abide in the Tarot, 
Where as Empress you exalt motherly virtue 
Making fertile influences begin to flow; 
Through your power our health will renew. 
In bad aspect our weaknesses you show, 
Energy is wasted; life’s furrow runs untrue



The Emperor 

When dewy forests stretched endless and green,
When streams ran clear and the song of the thrush
Jewelled the air, with cloven hoof you were seen,
In emerald clearings where the grass was lush. 
In spring your flower-decked maypole was raised
And village maidens circling danced with glee. 
Memory fades and we forget the name we praised,
Though still in dreams your horned head we see.
Come to us now as Pan, Cernunnos, or Herne, 
For here in the Tarot you still survive 
As The Emperor - where adepts will discern, 
Your influence is phallic, virile, alive. 
Teach us, who desecrate nature, to relearn 
The old ways for which our instincts yearn. 



The Wheel

See the wheel, spinning wheel, 
Spin the silken thread of life, 
While the Fates work with zeal, 
Shears as sharp as any knife. 
Triple Goddess manifest, 
Keep Fortune's axle turning, 
Your Fool does his best, 
Passion keeps on burning. 
One she was his destiny, 
One fixed him with her rod, 
One must come to bury him, 
For no man is a god: 
Silver Goddess of light, 
We run to your black night!



The Hermit 

For the love of a goddess he once aspired to rule, 
Going before her altar mistletoe in hand. 
Once he lay in her embrace, once he was her fool, 
Now he is just an outcast wandering the land. 
His halcyon days of glory are now all faded, 
For him no maidens dance or pageant marks the day. 
Those times as recollections only are paraded, 
As flickering ghosts beneath ageless eyes of grey. 
This ill-fated figure recalls pastoral Saturn, 
He who scatters the sacred seeds. The Lamed God 
For whom the pagan bonfires in pale winter burn; 
The path he follows, once fair Persephone trod. 
Here is discovered the King of the Waning Year, 
The hobbling god and the burden he must bear.

The Hanged Man

In this pagan dream, about the fate of The Fool,
Upon a time when natures forces held more sway
And life and death were facets of a single jewel,
Now is reached the climax of this most ancient play.
See how light-heartedly the Hanged Man faces death,
Becoming the true spirit of the winter festival,
The Dying God giving and living to his last breath;
Here hangs the ass-eared Dionysus, Lord of Misrule.
In triumphal procession he once rode as Harvest Lord,
Or, dressed in shades of green, was king of the forest;
All year long he ran free, but now is hung with cord
From this mighty tree - where begins another quest.
His tale is one of sacrifice when winter bonfires burn,
Of life’s renewal and the spring’s inevitable return.


The Devil

You are the Lord of the Seven Darknesses,
With trident poised you wait the dying sun.
Jealous consort of the Eternal Female,
To you the initiate must finally come.
You are the reaper who reaps destruction,
Spawner of famine, pestilence and war.
You are the death wish distorting creation,
Yours is the name on Hell’s innermost door.
You are the god who lives for vengeance,
Contriving even then deathe of his sons.
In the Pagan Tarot you brook no resistance,
With your card something wicked always comes.
When your present manifestation is detected,
The answer is stunningly unexpected.

The Star

Oh beautiful Goddess, now you are truly risen
A bright jewel in the velvet of the morning sky!
Mistress of the Dawn, amorous Queen of Heaven,
With your intercession all night’s phantoms must fly.
By the lake your priestess weaves her sweet alchemy,
The serpent, withdraws, his dark powers recede;
A blackbird sings once more in the great apple tree,
The lily blossoms, corn burst from the ripened seed.
The sleeper is awake; the forsaken need weep no more,
Gone the pale mask of death from that fair countenance.
Brimus-Iacchus, the Bringer of Light, comes as before,
A child forged in the furnace of spring’s green innocence.
Bright hopes and good prospects now become the theme,
And the star following seekers come to their dream. 


The Moon

Silver moon, as you grew pale and faded,
The nymph who was maiden turned into a crone.
In this metamorphosis a face, the face of faces,
Was almost glimpsed then tantalisingly gone.
Silent moon, I watched you grow pale and fade,
Summer that was spring turned to winter snow.
To that Lady beyond the veils I prayed,
She beyond all faces, form or outward show.
Queen of Heaven, as your moon was fading,
The man, once child, saw himself an old man.
As if in some strange dream he saw you standing,
In a veil of moonbeams, ushering in the dawn.
Far beyond all that fate and fortune reveal,
Lies the riddle of that face beyond the veils.

The World

Come woman of tomorrow come.
Oh, lissom nymph of candle light
Come to us now on wings of night,
Come to us daughter of Babylon!
Robed in purple and scarlet fly,
Ride with the world beneath your feet,
Go where the fifty maidens meet
And bathe your white thigh at Nemi.
Jewels has she like moons and suns
And seven stars in golden locks.
Across the sky her chimera runs,
With scarlet claws over amethyst rocks.
To those who waited now she
comes,                                    Now upon the Vernal Exquinox.

  

The Two of Batons. 

The Pagan Tarot associates Batons with the element
air.

The present tendency to associate Batons / Staves /
Sceptres / Wands with the element fire is modern and
originates from the usual suspects; those 8th and 19th
century occultists!

The meaning cue for this card is Unity.

 

 





The Ace of Coins

The eye motif, on the central coin of this card, echoes a
central theme of the Pagan Tarot, namely that the tarot
deck is an ‘all- seeing eye’ (see Tarot 2000 The Pagan
Tarot book for more on this theory).

Generally speaking, Tarot decks today seem to have
settled for linking the Coins suit to the element earth
and The Pagan Tarot goes along with this.

The banner on the Ace of Coins card gives the cue
meaning Prosperity.

 





The Ace of Cups

The Green Man theme resonates throughout the Pagan
Tarot’s suit of cups. The element water is inevitably
associated with this suit. In the Pagan Tarot it is, also,
the suit of spring.

The meaning-cue on the card is Fulfillment.





 

The Six of Coins

Generally speaking, modern tarot card designers
seem to have settled for linking the Coins suit to the
element earth and The Pagan Tarot goes along with
this. The Pagan Tarot also associates it with season of
autumn.

The name Pentacles for this suit is recent and occultist
in origin.

The Six of Coins betokens Mastery. 




The Seven of Cups

The green suit of Cups in the Pagan Tarot is
associated with spring and cards Ace to ten, bear the
Green Man motif. Not surprisingly, there seems to be
general agreement that this suit should be associated
with the element water.

A distinctive feature of the Pagan Tarot is the green
(cups), red (swords), blue (batons) and yellow (coins)
colouration of the Minor Arcana suits.

The cards meaning-cue is Sensuality.

 

The Queen of Swords

As with the other court cards of this suit, a lion motif
appears in the design, this time on the queen’s dress.
In the Pagan Tarot, the attributions lion, fire and
summer are thus established for this suit.

The four suits, swords, cups, coins and batons,
themselves, may seem a little mysterious on first
encounter but, it has to be said, they are simply the
standard playing card suits that were in use in Italy at
the time of the Tarot’s invention.

The meaning cue for the Queen of Swords is Severity.

 



The Queen of Coins

The Minor Arcana is actually based upon a 14th
century Arab card deck which was in existence long
before the appearance of the earliest known Tarot
cards. This deck was a 52-card pack with three court
cards in each suit, i.e. King, Viceroy and Second
Viceroy. The option of a fourth court card per suit, was
a later Italian innovation.

Basically, the tarot pack itself is just such a standard
56-card Italian Renaissance playing card deck with an
extra suit of 22 cards (the Major Arcana) added.

The cue-word on this court card is Security.



The Ace of Batons

Sometimes this suit is referred to as Sceptres, Staves
or Wands. These alternative names are all relatively
modern. In the Pagan Tarot, the original 15th century
suit name ‘Batons’ has been preferred.

The meaning cue for the Ace of Batons is Creativity. 


 

 

 

The King of Cups. 

The King of Cups card is typical of the court cards of
the Pagan Tarot. The stylized, green border that
encloses the figure of a seated monarch is suggestive
of early Mamlûk playing cards. It serves to remind us
that the Minor Arcana derives from14th century playing
cards of Arabic design.

The Tarot pack as we know it, was invented when the
Italians added 22 new cards (the Major Arcana) during
the first half of the 15th century.

The meaning cue for the King of Cups is Tolerance.


The Knight of Batons. 

The Major Arcana is based upon the Saracen
playing-card deck that was introduced into Europe
toward the end of the 14th century. These four-suited
packs bore the suit signs Coins, Cups, Swords and
Polo-sticks. As the game of polo was largely unknown
in C.1400 Europe, the polo-sticks came to be stylised
as batons.

The cue word for the Knight of Batons, is Change. 

 

 




The Six of Swords. 

In the Pagan Tarot Swords is the fire suit. The
convention that Swords be associated with the element
air is fairly recent. It comes to us via the occultists
Oswald Wirth and Aleister Crowley.

Papus, whose arcane musings are earlier, linked this
suit to the element earth.

Swords have no apparent ‘airy’ or ‘earthy’ connotations
and since they are forged, red-hot, from the furnace, a
fiery association was preferred

 

 

Robin Payne, the author of Tarot 2000
The Pagan Tarot, invites you to look at
the Tarot, its history, origins and
purpose, in a completely new way. 

With this book in your possession the
truth about the tarot will finally be
revealed. 

This important - 5,000 limited edition
- paperback (cover picture right)
contains a number of rare illustrations,
plus a set of 22 hitherto unpublished
poems by the author, each one
dedicated to a card of the Major
Arcana.

 

The Pagan Tarot is an outstanding new tarot which has been produced for the New
Millennium. This amazing deck has its origin in 78 fine water colour paintings created by the
Cornish artist Rosemarie Lewsey. These dazzling and innovative designs will help to guide
the reader on paths of self-discovery and greater spiritual awareness. The compelling
imagery in this breathtaking Tarot deck brings the pagan world right into the modern age.
Study the cards and tune in to their influences. Find yourself reaching out for deeper
perspectives; feel the past and future flowing in your veins. Gain insight into the true nature of
things and use this knowledge to help yourself and others make choices and decisions that
will lead to greater happiness and success.

The companion book Tarot 2000 ~ The Pagan Tarot by Robin Payne tells you all about the
cards and how to use them. It also contains 22 poems; one dedicated to each of the Major
Arcana cards. This set of sonnets represents a leap of the imagination towards some of the
deeper meanings that can be attributed to these important cards. The book also puts
forward a number of thought provoking ideas, includes some rare illustrations and provides
pictures of many of the cards in the Pagan Tarot deck. Many books on the tarot promise to
reveal its secrets, or to tell the real story of these mysterious cards, but do not deliver. This
book says it will and does. It shows their real history is every bit as intriguing as the
pseudo-history that a conspiracy of long-deceased occultists has so far managed
successfully to lay upon it ~ the truth is better than the fiction! 

The oldest surviving tarot cards are loaded with Christian symbolism. The earliest known
pack on the other hand was one depicting pagan gods and goddesses. This set, sadly long
since lost to posterity, has inspired the production of this new Pagan Tarot. These cards
revisit the legend of Diana and Aradia (See Charles Leyland's "Gospel of the Witches") and
are crammed with pagan symbolism.

To purchase the Pagan Tarot, please call Morgana's Chamber at 212.243.3415, or email MorganasChamber@aol.com for details.

 

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Morgana's Chamber
242 West 10th Street
(Between Hudson and Bleecker)
NY, NY 10014
212.243.3415

We are conveniently located in Greenwich Village. Just steps from the M8 bus, the 1 or 9 train, Christopher Street station and the NJ Path Train, Christopher Street station. If you  would like further directions, please call the shop during business hours.


Hours:
Tuesday - Friday, 2 PM - 8 PM
Saturday, 1 PM - 8 PM
Sunday, 1 PM - 6 PM
Closed Mondays

   

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