Video: The Tarot Dating Game

If you missed the 2016 North Star Tarot Conference in Eagan, Minnesota -- then it's a safe bet that you also missed Jeannette's presentation at said conference. And if you missed that presentation, then it follows that you missed the opening six minutes of that presentation.

We're endeavoring to correct your oversight now, with an encore performance of that opening video, including remastered audio (we probably should have remastered the video as well, but hey -- we've got customers to attend to and orders to pack). So now, for your enjoyment and edification, we bring you... The Tarot Dating Game.

(Full guide to the list of inside jokes and the more esoteric references provided underneath the video, below.)

• 0:09 - "From the path of Zayin -- romance capital of the metaphysical realm…" In the Golden Dawn's attribution system, the Hebrew letter Zayin is assigned to tarot trump number six -- The Lovers.
• 0:16 - "And here's the star of the show and your host, Hermes Trismegistus!" The Magician card is used to represent the show's host; the figure on this card is often symbolically correlated with the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, or "Hermes the Thrice-Great", who is associated with the Hermetic philosophies that were grafted onto tarot during the nineteenth century.
• 0:35 - "Bachelor number one is a religious man, hailing from just south of Chokmah." Bachelor #1 is represented by the Hierophant card. In the Golden Dawn assignment system, this card is assigned to the path on the Hermetic Qabalah "tree of life" diagram that runs from the sphere (sephirah) Chokmah straight downward to the sphere of Chesed — thus placing it "just south" of the Chokmah sephirah.
• 0:52 - "Our second contestant is employed as a full-time security guard for Boaz and Jachin." Bachelorette #2 is represented by the High Priestess card. In many traditional tarots, the priestess figure is shown seated between two temple pillars, "guarding" the entrance to the temple and shielding it from the unworthy. She is flanked by two columns bearing the letters "B" and "J" respectively -- the initial letters of the words "Boaz" and "Jachin". In Freemasonry, these are the names given to the two freestanding pillars purportedly found at the entrance to Solomon's Temple.
• 0:57 - "Her turn-ons include moonlight and camels…" The High Priestess is often associated with the moon and lunar energies, with many cards depicting a crescent moon at her feet or elsewhere in the card  image. The Hebrew letter associated with The High Priestess in the Golden Dawn system is Gimel, which translates to the word "camel".
• 1:04 - "She's a health-food enthusiast who's currently embracing the Pomegranate Diet…" The famous Rider-Waite-Smith tarot depicts The High Priestess in front of a veil decorated with pomegranates, underscoring the priestess' connection with the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades
• 1:42 - "An innocent young thing with no previous dating experience... or much experience of any kind, for that matter..." The Fool card is typically associated with innocence and unfamiliarity with worldly things... in other words, s/he lacks experience in most matters.
• 1:52 - "Endearingly absent-minded, she admits to leaving her house on more than one occasion having forgot(ten) to put on her pants." In many historical decks predating the early 20th-century release of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, The Fool is depicted with torn or falling pants, and occasionally without any pants at all.
• 2:07 - "You named your dog Bunny?" "Yeah, I mean... look at him! He's so fluffy!" This is an inside joke referring to the tarot community term "fluffy bunny deck", as employed in particular by the Twin Cities Tarot Collective's Michael Foster (The TCTC is the sponsoring organization of the North Star Tarot Conference). Fluffy bunny tarots are those which tend toward an over-reliance on light, "feel good" imagery and energies, while heavily avoiding shadow-side or "negative" symbolism.
• 4:07 - "Hmmm... I'll need to contemplate that for a while. Can you come back to me?" In tarot, The Hermit card is frequently associated with deep contemplation and self-reflection.
• 4:13 - (Following up on the question "If you could be any Hebrew letter, which letter would you be?") "Sure -- I get it. It's a hard choice... I mean, sometimes I think I'd like to be an Aleph, y'know. But then, other days, I wake up feeling a bit more like a Shin." In most metaphysical systems, the twenty-two tarot trump cards are each correlated with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The letter assignment of The Fool card, however, determines how all of the other cards are assigned. In some systems, The Fool, being the "first" (albeit "0" or "unnumbered") card is assigned to the first Hebrew letter -- Aleph. In other systems however, the first letter is assigned to The Magician card, which is actually numbered as "1" in tarot. When not assigned to Aleph, there are several other approaches to the order and assignment of The Fool -- the most common being to place it between cards 20 and 21 (don't make us go into the "whys" of that one right now). When placed this position, it is assigned to the twenty-first Hebrew letter, Shin.
• 4:21 - "Word!" Without getting too deep into the metaphysical musings on The Hermit, in some writings -- particularly those of Aleister Crowley -- the card is heavily associated with the Logos, i.e., the "word of God"
• 4:55 - "That is so hashtag-not-my-Christian." This is obviously a play on words, conflating "Christian" as in "Christianity" with the character of Christian Grey from "50 Shades of Grey". The actual hashtag topic #NotMyChristian had been trending about a year before this video was made, having started as a joke by comedian John Oliver, who was making fun of the casting of actor Jamie Dornan as Grey. Oliver "complained" that he hadn't even been asked to audition.
• 5:45 - "We'll find out who the lucky winner is, right after this word from our sponsor: Crowley's Recipe 777 Barbecue Thoth." Aleister Crowley (who is actually shown in the "sponsor's" photograph displayed) was the creator of the famous "Thoth" tarot deck. His miscellaneous treatises on tarot and other metaphysical topics, as gathered into a single published work by Israel Regardie, are entitled "777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley".

Oh -- and if you're wondering why the Hierophant, High Priestess, and Hermit cards were selected to represent the contestants: Jeannette's speech went on to examine how these three cards represent different aspects of the teaching and learning experiences. But... that's fodder for another video.