Tarot of Marseilles This card shows a woman pouring liquid both onto dry land and into the water. Eight stars shine above her, symbolising the fact that seventeen can also be seen as 1+7=8. The number eight can also be seen as an infinity symbol, and the stars were believed to be made of an everlasting substance. The eighth Tarot card is Justice, associated with duty, good conduct, virtue, and consequence. Seventeen was an unlucky number for Italians, and it was also considered unlucky by Pythagoreans, who called this number "the Barrier". According to the Seeress of Prevorst, seventeen symbolises the participation in two worlds, celestial and terrestrial. Henry Blanquart agrees that it "represents the junction between the material world and the spiritual world". According to Jâbir Ibn Hayyân, alchimist and Sufi, the number seventeen represents the balance of each thing. The Greeks called this number "antiphraxis" meaning "interposition" bec...

Tarot of Marseilles Thirteen, that dreaded number, is considered unlucky by many, but why? The number is associated with the moon in all cultures, because there are approximately 12.4 lunations per solar year. This means that there are always twelve lunations in a year, from which we derive our twelve months, but there is one lunation which straddles the old year and the new year. Thirteen therefore represents an inbetween time. In the Anglo-Saxon calendar, the number of full moons was counted from winter solstice to winter solstice. Most of the time there would be twelve full moon but sometimes there would be thirteen. If there were thirteen then an extra month of the year was inserted at the time of the summer solstice, making the summer a whole month longer than usual. The Summerland is a concept of an afterlife paradise where good souls live inbetween incarnations. This concept was devised in the 19th century by a Spiritualist called Andrew Jackson Davis. The concept of a Summ...

This is my diagram of the "wheel of the year" based on the data for my location. This is something I recommend everyone does - find out the meteorological data for where you live. I have written down the average temperature, rainfall, and sunshine for each month of the year.This has me thinking about the wheel of the year in Elemental terms. It was Aristotle that proposed that each of the Elements has two qualities each. Earth is cold and dry, because it represents molecules moving at their slowest, locked into a solid position. As the molecules warm up, they become more fluid. Water is cold and wet because it represents the liquid state. Air is hot and wet because it represents the water molecules evaporating upwards as they are heated. Fire is hot and dry because it represents the molecules in their ionised state. So, looking at the wheel of the year we can see the hot, cold, dry and wet quarters, which can indicate the Elemental symbolism of the seasons. We are current...

This is something I invented, because I like the idea of working through the spectrum of light as a continuous circle, moving with the seasons. I created the following diagram to illustrate this concept, and you can see that I have included the image of a human body and a lineal depiction of the colour spectrum. This is my rainbow year: Red is the lowest frequency of light that we can see with the naked eye. Its wavelengths are long and slow. In terms of sound vibrations, this would be a very low pitch. This is why it is often considered a "masculine" colour, because the vibrations are associated with the low pitch of a man's voice. As it is the lowest frequency we see, I associate it with the lowest point of the sun, at Winter Solstice. Red is a popular colour to use during Yuletide celebrations. Red is also the colour of "stop" signs, signalling the end of the year and a period of rest. Red is also associated with the Muladhara chakra. The seed mant...

Well hello there, I think I have finally finished my World Tree painting. People ask me what it's supposed to represent. Well this is a symbol of connection. Alan Watts said the Universe is like a tree. Just as a tree produces apples, the Universe produces people. We are the fruit of the Tree of Life. We may think of ourselves as separate individuals, but we are all connected to the tree, everything that is anything is produced by this one tree, nourished by this tree, part of this tree. This is a symbol of Oneness. Around the tree you can see the full spectrum of visible light, each "separate" colour blending into the next, to show there are no lines to separate them, they are united. Humans are the same, we may categorise ourselves into separate groups, but those lines we draw are in our heads. On either side of the tree are two globes, they are supposed to represent the Moon and Sun, Night and Day, Winter and Summer. They are two sides of the same coin, equal and ...

I have been working on this little painting, it's not finished yet, because I'm not sure how it's going to develop, but my thinking behind it is a diagram of Aristotle's classical elements. This photo isn't brilliant, so what what looks like a black area is actually blue and purple. I am trying to combine the idea of the classical elements, with the scientific states of matter, and the spectrum of visible light. Aristotle  was one of the first to publicly hypothesize about the nature of light, proposing that light is a disturbance in the element  air  (that is, it is a wave-like phenomenon). On the other hand,  Democritus  argued that all things in the universe, including light, are composed of indivisible sub-components (light being some form of solar atom). Today, the theory of  wave–particle duality  postulates that all  particles  exhibit both  wave  and  particle  properties. In the diagram above I have comp...

The summer solstice is rapidly approaching and I have been wanting to make some midsummer inspired art. To help me get my creative juices flowing, I've been reading The Stations of the Sun by Ronald Hutton. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in learning about the ritual year in Britain, particularly the seasonal festivals that were celebrated during the Middle Ages. So, why is the summer solstice referred to as "midsummer" when most modern Brits regard June as the beginning of summer? Here we see there are several ways of reckoning the seasons: Traditionally, the seasons were reckoned according to the amount of daylight available, and for this reason the darkest months were referred to as winter whereas the lightest months were called summer. Today we measure the seasons according to the temperature, so that the hottest months are called summer and the coldest months are called winter. It may seem strange that the darkest time of year is not also ...