“One of the things that we do on Yom Kippur is we read the story of Jonah, the prophet who ran away saying, no, no, I don't want to do this job, find somebody else to do it. And I connect this to the card, the king of cups, because in the distance behind the king, you can see the seas are in the middle of a storm and there's a storm tossed ship. And there's also a great fish that has come out of the sea which reminds me of the whale that swallows Jonah, or as they say in the Bible, a great fish, and then you see the king who is on a platform in the middle of this roiling sea, and he is like a surfer. He is not being tossed and turned. He knows how to ride the wave. And I talk about the way in which we run from our destiny or what we think is our destiny, what we're afraid of in the future. We see storms coming and we try and run from them when really what we need is the knowledge to surf them and how to learn how to use the energy of the challenges in our lives to move us forward rather than to crash us into the sand.”

This is the third part in our special series on Mystical Systems—last Monday, we heard from Asterian astrologist Jade Luna, and the Monday before we heard from Courtney Smith on the Enneagram. Next week, we’ll learn about Human Design. That voice you just heard is Mark Horn, who jokes that he might be the only person who has taught at both the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Readers Studio International Tarot Conference. Yep, that’s right: Mark Horn is an Kabbalah academic who also reads Tarot—though the most remarkable point about this combination is that the two actually go together, and are indelibly linked throughout time. In Tarot readings with Mark—full disclosure, I’ve had two—you settle on a specific question, and he does your hand through the Sephirot, which is the Kabbalistic symbol for the Tree of Life. These readings are fascinating, not only for their ability to respond to the question, but also because Mark decodes the cards through stories from the Kabbalah, making it an entirely different, wholly mystical experience. Okay, lets get to our conversation.

MORE FROM MARK HORN:

Tarot and the Gates of Light: A Kabbalistic Path to Enlightenment

Mark Horn’s Website

Follow Mark on Instagram

Further Listening on Pulling the Thread:

PART 1, ENNEAGRAM: Courtney Smith “The Practical Magic of the Enneagram”

PART 2, ASTERIAN ASTROLOGY: Jade Luna “The Secret Astrological System”

ASTROLOGY: Jennifer Freed “A Map To Your Soul”

ENNEAGRAM: Susan Olesek “The Power of the Enneagram”

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