From:	TalonMail <TalonMail@***.COM>
Subject:	Re: RM Tarot Mage in SR
Date:	Wed, 13 May 1998 12:24:22 EDT

>Alfredo B Alves suggested:
>OK, I to port RM's Tarot Mage into SR

The Tarot is a major magical tool in the hermetic tradition. The Minor Arcana
suits are usually associated with the hermetic elements, as follows: Swords
(Air), Cups (Water), Pentacles/Disks (Earth) and Wands (Fire). Some decks and
practioners reverse the correspondances for Swords and Wands, making Swords
fire and Wands air. In Shadowrun, the suits match up with four of the spell
categories, by element: Swords (Detection), Cups (Illusion), Pentacles
(Manipulation) and Wands (Combat).

The suits also match the four traditional hermetic tools or "elemental
weapons": a sword or dagger (called an Athame in Wiccan tradition), a chalice,
a pentacle (a disk with a pentagram or hexagram on it) and a wand. There are
all sorts of complex Tarot correspondances with the Kabbalah, astrology, and
similar hermetic systems.

Many mages in the Sixth World probably use Tarot decks as fetishes/foci for
various types of Detection Spells (as simple as drawing a single card from the
deck for a quick spellcasting to a complex spread of cards for ritual magic).
Tarot imagry is also used for "pathworking," which in Shadowrun is probably
astral questing, with the quest drawing on images from the Tarot.

Carl Sargent used Tarot a fair amount in Streets of Blood, where Geraint read
cards. It also shows up in "The Turtle and the Tower" by Ken St. Andre in the
Into the Shadows anthology and in my story "In the Cards" in Dunkelzan's
Secrets.

Okay, back to working on SR3 magic.

Take care,
Steve K.