How the Moon illuminates the shining pathway to fairyland:

http://mysteryarts.typepad.com/magicwords/2012/12/the-moon-as-a-road-to-fairyland.html

From our Spotted in the Wild collection: The new sun god (Charles Darwin) burns away the old priesthood to usher in a new fundamentalist religion — Big Science.

Protecting Against Pseudo-Valid Results from Online Divination

We tested the top six free online Tarot systems and determined a single, simple test for protecting against invalid results: http://bit.ly/TEWYwN 

A Mystic's View of Death

Here's the Belgian mystic Maurice Maeterlinck's view of death as an unquenchable flame:

http://mysteryarts.typepad.com/magicwords/2012/11/a-mystics-view-of-death.html

From Spotted in the Wild:

A Fool meets The Moon in this illustration from Puck, 1883.

We discuss the world of Tarot and other high weirdness in this rather extensive interview.

"Amma took a stack of what looked like tarot cards out of her purse, but the images on the cards weren't right. They weren't tarot cards—these were something else. She arranged them on the table carefully, re-creating a spread. ... Amma dropped the last card. 'There it is. ... The Angry Queen. The Unbalanced Scale. The Child of Darkness. The Storm. The Sacrifice. The Split Twins. The Bleeding Blade. The Fractured Soul." —Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, Beautiful Chaos (2011)

[See our daily Tarot posts at the Spotted in the Wild blog.]

A Hierophant from Punch, 1865.

See our regular postings of Tarot imagery in the wild here.

This Tarot Death card is actually a political cartoon from The Canadian Magazine, 1905. See a larger version of the image over at our Spotted in the Wild blog.

"The cards of Fate had been dealt and they were anchored to the bed like a Tarot spread before her."
—Gianna Perada, Blood Life (2012)

The soothsaying of old and the truth-telling of today aren't so very different:

"The accuracy of polygraph tests depends heavily on the examiner, who must be skilled in the art of interpretation — like a tarot card reader." —Timothy Dumas, Fight of the Century (2012)

For more Tarot cards we spot in the wild, see us over at Typepad:

http://mysteryarts.typepad.com/magicwords/

It depends on those who pass
whether I am tomb or treasure.
—Paul Valéry

Fortune telling into the afterlife? See our post over at Abecedarian:

http://oneletterwords.com/weblog/?id=7588

A 10 of Wands from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The Lovers, from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

A Magician from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Colin Campbell Cooper, "Fortune Teller," 1921. Via FrogBlog.

A Hanged Man and Magician: Harry Houdini.

Here's our 3-card spread we call "The Loop," in which the central card is considered in both its upright and reversed aspects.

A Ten of Wands from Collier's magazine, 1913.

A Fool greets the Sun in this illustration from The Century Magazine, 1902.

See also:

http://tarotsoul.blogspot.com/2011/09/fool-on-clifftop-with-his-dog-magician.html

A Fool, from Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours, 1880.

A Knight of Cups gallops through the land of fairies, from Graham's magazine, 1856.

An illustration from Graham's Magazine, 1853.

A wheel of fortune, from Frank Leslie's Illustrated magazine, 1890.

Falling from a Tower: an illustration from Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours, 1867.

"The weird ceremony": a moon illustration from The Century magazine, 1908.

Throwing a snowball at Cupid: a Lovers card from Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, Dec. 1892.

Death's Door, engraved after William Blake. From The English Illustrated magazine, 1890.

A Punch and Judy Queen of Wands.

A Punch and Judy Fool.

A Punch and Judy Lovers. Image from The Lewis Walpole Library.