AUTHOR’S NOTE: What’s to be done when one wakes up at 2:00 AM and can’t get back to sleep? I don’t know about you, but I think about tarot. Here’s my latest insomnia-fueled spread.

I normally use horary astrology when I’m helping someone look for a lost item, or when I’m examining a missing-person case, because I haven’t found cartomancy (both tarot and Lenromand) to be particularly effective for it. But that doesn’t stop me from continuing to poke at it to see what I might come up with.

This approach uses a tarot deck, a board-game spinner, two dice and some of the principles of horary astrology to produce a “search envelope” that will be most useful when it’s likely that a missing object or individual hasn’t wandered too far afield. (Card backs used in the images are from the privately-published Retro Thoth deck and the Thoth card faces are copyright of US Games Systems Inc, Stamford, CT.)

Begin by selecting a card to represent the item or person (the “Significator”) and place it in the center of the table. Then remove the trump cards from the deck and set them aside since you will be using only the court and pip cards for the reading. Shuffle the rest of the deck and deal eight cards face-down in a circle around the center card, making them as evenly-spaced as possible. These cards represent the four cardinal directions (East, North, West and South) and the four ordinal directions (Northeast, Northwest, Southwest and Southeast). Upright or reversed orientation doesn’t matter at this point.

Place a board-game spinner on top of the Significator such that the pointer has an equal chance of landing on any of the eight surrounding cards. Give the pointer a vigorous spin and note which card it stops on. Turn this card face-up to show the direction in which the search should be initiated.

Identify the elemental correspondence for the card, which will signify the direction to be taken for the next step in the search. Wands/Fire indicate South; Cups/Water point West; Swords/Air favor East and Pentacles/Earth lean toward the North. (This carries on from the original direction highlighted by the spinner.)

Remove this card and the Significator from the pattern, pick up the rest of the cards, and place the pair in the center of the table with the Significator on the bottom.

Reshuffle the deck, allowing for reversals, and deal twelve face-down cards counterclockwise from the left in a circle around the central pair to emulate the astrological sign-and-house array. In the “natural” (or Aries-rising) horoscope, the 1st House at the left specifies East; the opposite 7th House shows West; the 4th House at the bottom conveys North; and the 10th House at the top stipulates South.

Roll a pair of standard dice to come up with a number between 2 and 12. (Since it’s assumed for the purpose of this reading that the object of the search has left the immediate premises, the inability to come up with a “1” is of no concern. This number will reflect which of the other eleven house positions will be the focus for advancing the search. Beyond showing a direction to go, the traditional meaning of the selected house can be taken under advisement for any potential revelations it might supply. For example, the 3rd House could be construed as “in the neighbor’s yard;” the 7th house as “at a friend’s place;” or the 11th House as “in a social gathering-place.”

Turn the card in this position face-up to begin zeroing in on the specific location to explore. If it’s a Fire card, consider proceeding toward an area that is connected with some kind of business or enterprise; if it is a Water card, gravitate toward something to do with pleasure or fun (or maybe just toward a local river, pond or lake); if it is an Air card, think of educational or legal institutions like schools, libraries and law-enforcement facilities; and if it’s an Earth card, pursue the ideas of countryside (as in woods or fields), agricultural installations, or some kind of public infrastructure like a cemetery or waste-treatment plant. A reversed card can show that the “hiding place” is camouflaged or concealed in some way. While these suggestions may not reveal exact locations to search, they can provide pointers regarding the direction to take next.

Finally, deal one more card for the highlighted “house” position to supply a hint about how far away the object or individual might be. The lower the number of a pip card, the closer to the last known sighting one should look (and then work outward from there): an Ace suggests “right under your nose” while a Ten pushes the boundary of what might be considered local.

Among the court cards, the immobile Kings and Queens imply that the target has not traveled very far, while the Knights lend it considerable momentum for relocation and the Pages fall somewhere in-between. If it’s a Fire or Air card, it probably “grew legs” and stepped out smartly, while if a Water or Earth card it has most likely become rooted to the ground. As a last stipulation, if the “outcome” card is reversed the search will be complicated by reduced visibility, as it will be if the astrological “house” position of interest is below the horizon (i.e. houses Two through Six). A court card in this position could also reveal that someone else had a hand in the disappearance or knows something about it.

A further investigative measure would be to consider the elemental attribution and inherent nature of the last card to see if it offers any insights about the physical features or conditions of the “final resting place” for the missing object. For example, a Fire card could mean a “warm place” (like a sunny area); a Water card a “wet place;” an Air card a “high place” and an Earth card a “low place” that is on (or even under) the ground. I also recommend using an online mapping program such as Google Maps that offers a “zoom-able” photograph of the actual landscape to aid in fine-tuning the search.

The example used here was for the known situation of a 65-year-old man (the Knight of Disks) who was last seen walking away northward from a medical facility and who was found deceased near a turnpike on-ramp a few weeks later not far to the North of his last known location. His body had apparently been concealed by snow and wasn’t visible until it melted. (My previous reading proposed that he had gone West rather than North, which turned out to be incorrect.) The two Earth cards here both indicate “to the North,” while the Ace of Disks reversed in the 3rd House is a clear sign that he was both not far away in that direction and hidden from sight. The Prince of Wands in the same North-Northeast position conveys the idea of “in the neighborhood but not right on the doorstep,” and its reversal intimates that he suffered hypothermia due to being buried in snow, which led to his demise.