‘The Cosmic Tree’ by Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 17 September 1179)
Hello! My name is Gwen. I am fascinated by anything and everything mystical, no matter the tradition. I read Tarot using Qabalah and the Tree of Life which includes a healthy dose of Astrology and Numerology. Tarot is about life, so I include musical or literary references in my readings where I can, too.
I bought my first Tarot deck when you had to get them from a bookstore. That meant you were reliant on what the shop’s stocker chose, and in my case, I was lucky to come across the Universal Waite right away. The little white booklet gave defininitions, but not instructions, and there was no selection of other books to browse. Before Tarot became so widely popular, it was considered a niche interest (a niche of a niche, even) so if you didn’t have someone to tell you about that whole intuition and ‘creating a story’ approach, you were stuck.
Not a problem any more! My Tarot path led me around a little bit, just getting to know the area, I guess, and then it led me to the Thoth Tarot and Qabalah … and Reader, I fell in love.
There are some amazing books out there on Qabalah and the Thoth Tarot, but in retrospect, what I was really looking for was how to put things together. Well, if you’re looking at your Tarot deck and the Tree of Life and wondering the same thing, you might be interested to know that I am writing a book on how to read the Thoth Tarot with the Tree of Life and hope to have it ready for you later in 2023. It will be published on Amazon.
I am the Secretary and Social Media Coordinator for the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI) and I post daily free readings as @goldenpomt on Instagram and Facebook.
Why Pomegranates? And Why golden ones?
When I was thinking about what I would call my new Tarot website, I did what a lot of Tarot readers probably do: I looked at my cards. What symbol or theme could I choose that represented my approach to Tarot (and hadn’t been taken yet)? I was drawn to the High Priestess and The Empress and intrigued by the golden pomegranates on those images. Persephone and Demeter and their travel between worlds, and also, as you can see on my home page, the myth of a Tree of Life that goes back thousands of years to Sumer, and probably before. In that part of the world, Trees of Life could be Cypress or something mysterious called Uppulu, and they could also be a Pomegranate tree.
Everything you do has the seeds of your future already in it. Which ones will you use for your recipe of life?