AUTHOR’S NOTE: As a longtime student and practitioner of the esoteric arts, I progressed through several years of close contact with ceremonial magic back in the 1980s. This was a natural outgrowth of my investigation of the Hermetic Qabalah and the literature of its proponents that began in 1971, particularly addressing the contributions of Aleister Crowley and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

However, I have to admit that my activities were limited to talismanic magic and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. Although I understand the processes and purposes behind both magical invocation and evocation, I had little reason to evoke specific entities and demand that they do my bidding, even if only to prove that I could master them, so I never went too far in that direction. I prefer to entice and not coerce by aligning my intentions with the aims of such superior powers. My approach was utilitarian in nature, encompassing various real-world settings, rather than purely intellectual or spiritual. An interesting offshoot was delving into the astral realm via pathworking and scrying in the spirit vision, but these were sidelights to my main interest: divination.

The one constant throughout this period was my performance of various forms of prognostication.The underlying forces at work were akin to those attending ceremonial magic but far less exalted in their tone and less psychically risky in their application. This meant that preparation and protection were not nearly as critical to the operation, despite the common perception that some kind of mental defense mechanism is still required.. The techniques were largely based on synchronicity and magical sympathy, and the concepts of vibration and resonance between the “Above” and the “Below” were also in play. The wisdom was channeled from a higher source and filtered through the subconscious faculties before being put into words.

Although I had spent years bringing these principles to bear on psychological self-awareness and self-development, after dropping out of public involvement for a couple of decades to focus on metaphysical experimentation, I emerged with the goal of staying within the envelope of situational exploration of the action-and-event-oriented kind. In this pursuit, inspiration, imagination and ingenuity (my preferred substitutes for the overused word “intuition”) take a back-seat to leveraging of the core knowledge as the best place to start. From there, I expand the analytical scope of the card meanings into more impressionistic territory without defaulting entirely to free-association from the images, which I think invites subjective bias with inadequate objective substantiation (aka “intuitive guesswork”).

I like to see a coherent web of ideas supporting each card and linking all of them seamlessly within the narrative, some literal and others more suggestive. This is the storyteller’s mandate: to provide meaningful insights couched in an atmosphere of speculative opportunity and probability. The visionary aspect is always there, but it must not run away with the story to the detriment of more intelligible content. A reading that is pure fantasy, even if that result was not intended, won’t leave much of a lasting impression on the sitter, while one that offers substantive counsel is more likely to generate a palpable reaction and thereby stand a chance of making a difference in the seeker’s life..