A recent Facebook post on the Tarot History page by tarot author and deck creator Robert Place about the earliest known forms of divination got me thinking about the nature of intuition (specifically as championed by those cartomancers who only use free-association from the card images, downplaying or dismissing the value of knowledge-based analysis). In … Continue reading Intuition or Guided Suggestion?
Month: September 2019
The “Fountain of Truth” Alternate Trending Option
Even those of us who have spent decades reading the cards are sometimes compelled to come up with creative stopgap measures to "skin the proverbial cat" when our usual approach falters. Here I'm tackling what I perceive to be an inherent weakness in the traditional Celtic Cross spread: the interpretation of the "crowning" card as … Continue reading The “Fountain of Truth” Alternate Trending Option
Dissecting the Celtic Cross
I've used the venerable Celtic Cross spread during most of my long involvement with the tarot, having first encountered it in Eden Gray's book The Tarot Revealed in 1972. At the time I didn't realize that Gray had taken a few liberties with A.E. Waite's original, and I found her version to be remarkably effective. … Continue reading Dissecting the Celtic Cross
Starting Over
Although there are differing opinions on the subject, there are times when it just seems prudent to scrap a reading that has begun badly and start over, not because the testimony in the cards is unfavorable but because something about the circumstances of the draw was "off." Last night I did two Lenormand Grand Tableaux, … Continue reading Starting Over
An Astro-Tarot Meditation Aid
Aleister Crowley said that the ideal way to become intimately acquainted with the Major Arcana of the tarot as "living beings" is meditation (although divination is the most practical way for the uninitiated). In his book The Druidry Handbook, John Michael Greer observed that the noisy Western mental machinery is not amenable to the Eastern … Continue reading An Astro-Tarot Meditation Aid
A “Build-It-As-You-Go” Example Reading: Hurricane Dorian
UPDATE: Hurricane Dorian did in fact spare southeastern North Carolina any significant damage, and made landfall on the Outer Banks in line with my alternate prediction. There was some serious damage on Okacroke Island. Interestingly, as the hurricane approached Wilmington, NC, I was asked to do another reading about the likelihood of a tornado in … Continue reading A “Build-It-As-You-Go” Example Reading: Hurricane Dorian
Oriental Appearance: A Case Study
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the moment I'm going to drop back from my current fascination with traditional astrology and revert to my previous incarnation as a New Age psychological astrologer. For the record, although most people only know Dr. Marc Edmund Jones as the chronicler of the psychically-channeled Sabian Symbols, he was a profound psychological astrologer … Continue reading Oriental Appearance: A Case Study
The Repurposed Significator: A Comprehensive Overview
In previous posts I've mentioned the idea of reinstating the Significator card in my Celtic Cross readings (something I did away with as unnecessary a while ago) for the sole purpose of identifying through its facing whether the querent is consciously focused (or unconsciously fixated) on the past, the present or the future of the … Continue reading The Repurposed Significator: A Comprehensive Overview
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 