*Syncretism: The union of different practices whose features may be synchronized to good effect.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I last weighed in on the subject of esoteric syncretism in divination with a pair of essays in April and May of 2024, and a recent encounter with the topic in an r/occult sub-reddit thread brought it to mind again.

A question was asked regarding how to recognize when a practitioner is ready to advance from novice to journeyman and then from journeyman to master of the occult arts. One respondent proposed moving past the neophyte stage by acquiring the ability to wield multiple forms of prognostication. While I found this to be a little too narrow in metaphysical scope, I acknowledge that I’ve grown into the practice myself over the years as part of my constant exploration of new predictive skills with which to bolster my tarot proficiency.

The earliest example of this marriage of techniques in my own work was the blending of astrological principles with those of tarot interpretation as formulated by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. But it occurred in 1972 at the beginning of my tarot journey, and at the time I was focusing on natal astrology of the psychological type that didn’t offer much in the way of short-range forecasting precision outside of daily and weekly transits. I could only pull tarot cards and consult the current position of the faster-moving planets, seeking reinforcement of the card meanings and thereby gaining confidence in the cartomantic conclusion. Other than that, the main value of astrological syncretism lay in enhancing the definitions of the cards themselves.

Over the last ten years I’ve begun performing horary astrology to augment my tarot readings, primarily in the evaluation of missing-person cases. While results have been mixed. a significant number of combined auguries have shown promise in the consistency of their evidence, and a few have been remarkably accurate in revealing the current environs and condition of the absent individual. (I’ve applied it most recently to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, although the outcome is still unknown.) I’ve been using classical astrologer John Frawley’s horary methods for this, and also his directional guidance for “location” readings to shore up the inherent weakness in tarot’s ability to identify “where” an event might take place.

Although I haven’t done so lately, I’ve employed geomancy for dual readings, and more recently I’ve been using I Ching predictions for the same purpose. The goal is to provide supplemental insights from an alternate perspective. Less rigorously, I’ve also enlisted six-sided dice, dominoes and coin-flips as a way to steer a reading down one of two or more parallel paths using an “either/or” approach to spread design. In fact, the patterns I create often accommodate binary selection measures, like my tarot spin on Frank R. Stockton’s “Lady or the Tiger” dilemma. “Odd-or-even” is one of the best ways to choose the trajectory a story arc should take when there are multiple options.

Although it is popular, one method I seldom use is mixing tarot and oracle decks, and another is blending cards from more than one tarot deck in a single presentation. Part of the problem is structural: decks are often of incompatible size and radically dissimilar artwork, making for a jarring juxtaposition (although those who own a sufficient number of decks can usually work around this obstacle). However, I will occasionally perform separate readings on the same question using different tarot decks, Lenormand decks or standard playing-card packs, again for the purpose of gaining a unique point-of-view that might otherwise escape me.

One look at the online collection of “mancies” (the common suffix for “divination,” of which “cartomancy” and “geomancy” partake) will reveal a wealth of opportunities for expanding the reach of a tarot reading, some of them more agreeable than others. I don’t think I’ll be slaughtering and gutting sheep any time soon to perform haruspicy (i.e. reading the future in the entrails of sacrificed animals), but many of these predictive techniques can stand on their own to produce the primary verdict even though it will usually be more effective for the 21^st Century diviner to use them in combination with well-honed modern methods.

When it comes to sociopolitical readings involving national and world affairs, my go-to pairing is Brian Williams’ “PoMo” deck and horary astrology (check out my posts on the 2024 US Presidential election and the Brexit event in Europe). But for psychological and sociological matters I forgo cards entirely and use character-based astrology for my analysis because it is far better for personality profiling and societal appraisal in general. For the most part, though, I rely on observation of social-media behavior because it offers by far the clearest perspective on where the current crop of young-ish tarot readers is going to take the art of divination (and in my estimation it ain’t pretty).