This is a stunning ceremonial parade helmet created for the Archduke Ferdinand II by the Milanese studio of Filippo Negroli, a 16th century armorer. I could easily envision such an ornate helmet as part of a Knight image in a Renaissance inspired Tarot deck. While the design and theme variations on the Tarot deck are boundless, the more traditional imagery remains the most evocative and meaningful for me.

Castle Craig in Meriden, Connecticut.  Part of our occasional series of living Tarot images, inspired by the magical Tarot of Portmeirion,Wales.

We like this figure of Death, from Don Quixote de la Mancha:

http://danskjavlarna.tumblr.com/post/39969879200/figure-skeleton-death

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.]