Tarot decks come and go - or in my case stay, but the effect is the same. Entirely (or at least largely) new systems are encountered more rarely. One such system, the Voyager Tarot by James Wanless and collage artist Ken Knutson, first appeared in 1984 and has been in print ever since. It is … Continue reading The Voyager Tarot – An Appreciation
Month: August 2017
The “5 W’s + 1” Decision Spread
Those of us who went through the US school system in the middle of the 20th Century were taught the "5 W's" as a device for writing effective narrative, both fact and fiction. According to Wikipedia, the Five W's are questions whose answers are considered basic in information gathering or problem solving. They are often … Continue reading The “5 W’s + 1” Decision Spread
“Enemy at the Gates” Vulnerability Spread
This spread was developed specifically to examine confrontations between two antagonists in any kind of contest (politics and sports come to mind). I've used it twice so far for major political situations, once to analyze the Macron and Le Pen face-off for French President, and again to explore the adversarial relationship between the Trump Administration … Continue reading “Enemy at the Gates” Vulnerability Spread
The Significance of Reversed Cards
The appearance of reversed (“upside-down”) cards in a tarot reading is a source of endless confusion for novice readers who are still struggling to understand the upright meanings. Many simply throw in the towel and avoid dealing reversed cards, which is often recommended by tarot teachers and books, at least until more experience has been … Continue reading The Significance of Reversed Cards
Octile House Divisions in Astrology
In the mid-1970s, my brother and I were involved in the Hartford, CT astrological community, and we were also deeply absorbed in exploring the work of Reinhold Ebertin and the German Cosmobiologists. The German astrologers held that only the eight "hard aspects" show any outward manifestation in the life of a native, those defined by … Continue reading Octile House Divisions in Astrology
Parsifal and His Wheel
I just posted (in the sidebar) the image I'm using as an on-line icon for this site. There's a story behind it. The "hoop-and-stick" of the old children's hoop-rolling game struck me as a perfect analogy for the Celtic Cross spread, with its circular "cross" and vertical "staff" sections (never mind that the hoop is … Continue reading Parsifal and His Wheel
“Cheap Shots” #5
"Just the facts, Ma'am." In this post-modern era of do-it-yourself psychological profiling, I firmly believe that what the practice of tarot needs is more Sgt. Joe Friday and less Dr. Phil, less "woo" and more interpretive "glue" binding our card-by-card analyses together with a minimum of intuitive guesswork between the lines. We probably have British … Continue reading “Cheap Shots” #5
The “Celestial Mirror” Hopes and Fears Spread
My favorite tarot spread, the Celtic Cross - in any of its incarnations - has always dealt unconvincingly with the subject of the querent's hopes and fears. Rolling both of them together into one position, as Waite did in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, was a head-scratcher because you never knew whether you had … Continue reading The “Celestial Mirror” Hopes and Fears Spread
The Yin and Yang of It
The structure of this spread is self-explanatory. It's best used for situations that are balanced "on a knife's edge" and could go either way. Galaxy of Good and Evil Spread
Like Night and Day . . .
As an astrologer, I'm fascinated with creating tarot spreads that mimic the diurnal path of the Sun through the sky. Here are three of them. For me, the main "diurnal" spread is Eden Gray's version of the Celtic Cross (see The Tarot Revealed), in which the time line starts at "Midnight" (the "beneath" position, or … Continue reading Like Night and Day . . .
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 