Our theme for this closing of the year begins like this: "Most folks think if Halloween (which is another name for Samhain) as a time for cute costumes and trick or treating. However, in ancient times Samhain was considered the time when the veil between this world and the next was thin and our ancestors could come back to visit us."

Theme: Samhain

Our hop this time explores the concept of ancestors and our relationship with them. Ancestors do not have to be your blood relatives, but they can be people who have guided you and mentored you in your life. Ancestors can also include people unknown to you.

So to explore the concept of Ancestors, you could:

1. Use tarot cards to explore messages from ancestors

2. Use the cards to delve into regrets you might have around how you treated your ancestors

Delve into what you need to know about your ancestors

And of course, as always, you can go in a completely different direction as long as it involves Tarot/Divination and ancestors.

I remember this great lyric from an Engima track called Same Parents, it went something along the lines of "We all have the Same Parents many million year ago..."

Part of me likes to believe that this is actually true, and I guess in a non-science way of thinking, maybe that is true.

Thing is it got me thinking, as Enigma always does about Tarot, and how in many ways every deck has the same parent, the same linage, no matter the mythos the surrounds their creation.

I've decided that although this hop is going to be a short one (possibly a one pager, maybe two) I want to explore the Ancestors, well the Ancestory of the Tarot.

The decks featured in this post are:

- Tarot of Dreams by Ciro Marchetti

- Healing Light Tarot by Christopher Butler

- Heave and Earth Tarot by Jack Sephiroth

- DC Vertigo Tarot by Neil Gaimen, Rachel Pollack & Dave McKean

Within my journey of the Tarot, I have collected well over 100 diffent decks. Each deck is unique, in that it not only charts my journey, but also the journey and evolution of Tarot in itself.

At times I find myself pondering, mostly as I sort, resort, or reorganise the collection, about all that I have learnt about its history, rich as it is, I don't believe we'll ever know its true origin.

Antiquity, Historians, Collectors, and purveyors of the Tarot all have theories, researched the journey its taken from Eygptain, Romany, French, Germanic, and Swiss roots, the changes the deck itself has gone through and the rich tapestry that tells us about the Human world, but not about the very first deck.

True, Tarot is older than most of us, we accept that as a known fact in lore. Yet, think about it, just ponder for but a moment. What would that have been like, to put that first card, that first image down and decide that it was a Fool/Juggler.

Then to follow that on with a Magician and then High Priestess, I mean why those images, why them, three of them are youth, innocence and jovial abandon, so what prompted the choice for those three ideals?

Then consider The Hermit, The Hanged Man, and Death, what prompted these to be in a deck, and why then call it Tarot, but the bigger question is, was it always known as Tarot, did it have another name before that?