Steve Pavlina, the blogosphere’s foremost authority on personal development, has written a fantastic book on astrology and the Tarot. The odd thing is that he doesn’t know it.
In fact, as far as I know, Steve is completely ignorant of astrology and the Tarot. He is something of a mystic — by his own account, he has contacted dead people, entered the astral realm, and channeled spirits — but this isn’t his main focus. Instead, his passion is personal development — the pursuit of individual growth.
Personal development is a wide area of interest, and covers everything from time management to strength building to better business practice to exploring psychic powers. Steve has touched on every one of these topics on his blog over the past four years. Partly in order to bring all of these diverse interests into one framework, and partly because he’s a nerdy guy who likes challenging puzzles, he has written a book called Personal Development for Smart People, in which he boils his mission of growth down into three basic principles (and four derived principles) which can be used by anyone as a guide to self-betterment. The seven principles are Truth, Love, Power, Oneness, Courage, Authority, and Intelligence.
What Steve doesn’t realize is that these seven principles are already an integral part of astrology and the Tarot. In fact, the mapping is incredibly straightforward, as you’ll see. But that doesn’t mean Steve’s work is redundant. On the contrary, he brings a fresh perspective and insight into these ancient symbols, and lays out a framework to put them to work in your life immediately. In this series of articles, I’ll review his book, show how his system maps to astrology and the Tarot, and tie the systems together to produce a rich tapestry of direction and possibility.
