Make Your Blessings Count

Blessed is he who not only counts his blessings, but makes his blessings count.
- a refrigerator magnet

I’ve been feeling grateful lately—but also a little uneasy about whether I’m doing enough with the good I’ve been given. I’m thoroughly enjoying many aspects of life in the U.S.—the comfort, the ease, the many luxuries—because each one feels like an enormous blessing. Still, I worry that I’m not showing enough gratitude. I’m not putting enough heart into my job training, not taking enough walks to enjoy the weather and scenery, and not making any real effort to meet people or make friends.

So I did a reading with The Ocean Tarot, a mermaid-themed deck that reminds me of Eilat—the jumping-off point for my journey back to the US.

The question I asked was, "How can I rise up and align myself with the blessings I am receiving?"

Fives showed up frequently in this reading. That’s the sefirah גְּבוּרָה (Gevurah), Strength. These challenges—emotional, social, even spiritual—may be necessary to help me grow. Fives often represent spiritual transition. (Across various traditions, fives are generally understood as points of instability, challenge, or disruption that invite growth.)

CARD 1 – The Blessings Present
What blessings or gifts are currently flowing into my life? (It feels like there are so many blessings, I could have pulled a dozen cards.)

Page of Pearls (Cups)
This is the kid who is appreciative and open-hearted toward whatever or whomever he encounters. In this deck, the Page—a merman—is admiring a glowing pearl. The blessings of my new life feel precious, hard-won, and still dazzling. Maybe the real blessing is that my heart can feel wonder and grace. There are seahorses all around him—symbols of patience, fatherhood, and gentleness. The seahorses remind me to approach life gently.
In my Eilat Tarot, this card is called: Servant of Grace


CARD 2 – What Holds Me Back
What pattern, attitude, or distraction keeps me from aligning with these blessings?

Four of Pearls (Cups)
This card is such a contrast to the last one. It represents someone who isn’t paying attention to the blessings around him—or the additional divine gifts being offered. Although I’m aware of all the blessings I’m receiving, I reflexively retreat from opportunities. The fourth pearl, descending with rays of light from the ocean’s surface, evokes a spiritual prompting to stay awake and grateful.
In my Eilat Tarot, this card is called: The Closed Heart

CARD 3 – Embodying Heart and Presence
How can I bring more heart into my work and daily actions?

Five of Pearls (Cups)
This is someone who needs to see not just his losses and what he still has, but needs to "cross the bridge to the castle of dreams," i.e. aspire to the next great goal he can reach. He should not just survive hardship, but dare to hope again. In this deck, there are three broken eggs and two live jellyfish, suggesting sensitivity and vulnerability. I'm being invited to move through emotion into a new purpose. The adult jellyfish in the background suggest emotional maturity, reminding me I can move forward even while remaining sensitive. Bringing heart into daily actions means not fearing emotional messiness, but using it to deepen compassion and connection.
In my Eilat Tarot, this card is called: Crossing the Waters
(I might rename it The Mourner's Path)


CARD 4 – Reconnecting with the World
What will help me engage with nature and people with more joy and aliveness?

Two of Treasure (Pentacles)
Usually this card means being undecided about which path to commit to—but in this deck, the figure resembles The World card. It’s a portrait of joyful receiving rather than striving. It suggests saying “yes” more often, and being a little less guarded.
In my Eilat Tarot, this card is called: The Tension of Two Worlds
(Perhaps I should rename it, The Dancer Between Two Worlds)


CARD 5 – The Path of Rising
What does it look like to rise up and live in alignment with the life I’ve been given?

Five of Spears (Swords)
This is a surprising card in this position. It’s about the sore winner—someone who clings to resentment or conflict. But in The Medieval Cat Tarot, it can also indicate the support of true friends, releasing shame, internal healing, or making amends. Maybe here, it points toward independence—not desperately seeking love or fearing scarcity. It may be a call to walk forward unburdened by the past, to release not just people but also narratives tied to old pain. Once again, I’m reminded of what my father tried to teach me for over forty years—a lesson that’s become something of a personal motto, even if it’s not quite 100% true: “No one is your friend, and money’s the only thing that matters.”
In my Eilat Tarot, this card is called: The Severed Bond
(The title needs room for positive interpretation, perhaps Beyond the Battle)


This reading reminds me: it’s not enough to count my blessings—I must carry them forward, with presence and purpose.

A Tarot Deck of Eilat

After years of study, dreaming, and designing—much of it in the hills and along the shores of Eilat, I’ve finally begun to shape my tarot deck into something real. I call it Candles of the Goddess, and it brings together decades of reading, years of writing, and a deep desire to integrate Jewish mysticism with the intuitive world of tarot.

The desert landscape shaped how I approached the cards in ways I still can’t fully explain. The red hills of Edom at sunrise, the silence of the southern mountains, and the turquoise glow of the Gulf of Aqaba left an imprint on my imagination. They became part of how I now think about the elements, the sefirot, and the soul’s journey.

Many people helped guide me along the way. I spent my first seven years reading tarot with David Palladini's Aquarian Tarot and no reference books—just perseverance and a small spark of intuition. Eventually, my determination led me to guides I remain deeply grateful to:

• Norma Cowie, whose Exploring the Patterns of the Tarot became my foundational text and still lives in a binder packed with notes and annotations. (1987)
• Robin Wood, whose warm and accessible deck supported me through my early years of reading. (1992)
• Isabel Radow Kliegman, whose Tarot and the Tree of Life first gave me the idea to pair the pip cards with the sefirot, and whose Four Worlds framework for the court cards resonated deeply. (1997)
• Donald Tyson, whose Portable Magic: Tarot Is the Only Tool You Need persuaded me to adopt the Golden Dawn structure—with thoughtful revisions. His reordered planetary assignments gave the Major Arcana a more elegant internal logic. (2016)
• Aryeh Kaplan, whose translation of the Sefer Yetzirah gave me the symbolic vocabulary that now forms the backbone of the Majors, including elemental, planetary, and zodiacal attributions, as well as potent one-word letter meditations like Light, Speech, and Peace. (2018)

A Glimpse Into the Structure of My Deck

Major Arcana: Each card follows the Golden Dawn’s path system on the Tree of Life. Instead of using traditional letter-name meanings (e.g., “ox,” “camel”), I chose the symbolic functions drawn from the Sefer Yetzirah. These attributes, such as Light, Sleep, and Dominance, give each card a conceptual focus. The Letter for each path appears in Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and Ugaritic script, offering both mystical resonance and historical texture.

Sefirot: To clarify meaning and avoid repetition, I’ve retitled the sefirot. Keter becomes Divine Will, Chesed becomes Mercy, Tiferet becomes Beauty, Hod becomes Gratitude, and Malchut becomes Dwelling—a nod to the Shekhinah. Each name is chosen to reflect both spiritual and emotional resonance.

Court Cards: These are people, not abstractions. While I preserved Golden Dawn elemental pairings (e.g., Water of Fire), I chose evocative archetypal titles such as Watcher of the Grove, Rider of the Wind, Keeper of the Field, and Master of Compassion. Following Kliegman’s model, I assigned the Four Worlds of Kabbalah as follows: Pages receive the potential of Atzilut (Emanation), Knights advance the generative force of Beriah (Creation), Queens shape and cultivate in the matrix of Yetzirah (Formation), and Kings bring intentions into concrete expression in Asiyah (Action)

Letters of God’s Name: To reflect the divine presence while honoring sacred boundaries, I include the letters of the Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew on the court cards to suggest their spiritual depth without reproducing God's name in standard Hebrew script.

Minor Arcana: The pip cards are assigned to the sefirot 1 through 10, with each card bearing a Hebrew subtitle derived from the Sefer Yetzirah. Card titles emerge from a synthesis of Pamela Colman Smith’s imagery, elemental correspondence, and number symbolism drawn from Kabbalah, Pythagorean thought, and the Marseilles tradition.

Decans and the Hebrew Calendar: The decan system helped me assign Hebrew months to the pip cards, aligning each group of three cards with one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. While drawn from astrological tradition, these correspondences also allowed me to pair the Minor Arcana with Jewish holidays, seasonal rhythms, and historical memory.

There’s much more to do—titles to refine, meditations to write, and a guidebook to shape—but the bones of the deck are here. The work I began in Eilat, the spiritual clarity I glimpsed there, and the texts, teachers, and friends that guided me all live on in this evolving creation.

Stay tuned. More to come!