AUTHOR’S NOTE: After taking a long detour into the psionic research of Dr. Dean Radin as applied to divination, I’ve returned to reading Benebell Wen’s Holistic Tarot. I just encountered a three-card example reading in the book that I felt deserved a more carefully-considered analysis.

The reading was for an aggressive Aries male who was highly motivated to pursue success in his chosen field of employment. The linear spread included – left-to-right – the 5 of Wands, the 4 of Wands and the Knight of Wands, and the conclusion was that the man’s career path, while delivering early rewards of the kind he sought, would eventually mark him as a combative “flash-in-the-pan” who burns brightly but fades quickly. While his passion would take him far, his contentious attitude would eventually sabotage his advancement. One rationale was that there were no Earth cards to anchor his achievements, thus letting them slip away. I agreed with this interpretation as far as it went but I was convinced that there was more to the situation since all that ardent Fire looked too potent to dismiss out-of-hand.

I decided to perform the “numerical essence” calculation for this spread, which yields a card from the Major Arcana representing an archetypal embodiment of the conditons described in the original layout. (I typically read it as the “rest of the story” showing the long-range consequences of the near-term outcome.) This technique is equivalent to the “quintessence” of classical French cartomancy from which I adapted it.

To do this, I used the numbers “5” for the 5 of Wands; “4” for the 4 of Wands; and “12” for the Knight of Wands (as the twelfth card in its suit). Summing these values gave me “21,” the World. Here was an indication that he might be able to vault over the limitations of the three volatile Wands after all and break through into a more permanent state of enhanced compensation and appreciation. The World offers all the financial stability and professional recognition he could ask for.

The advice for him would be to leverage the Wands energy for all it’s worth while keeping his eye on the “big picture” and avoiding derailment by the shifting sands of his daily give-and-take suggested by the desert behind the Knight of Wands. With his boundless enthusiasm, there is great success to be had if he can shake the sand off his feet and plow through the self-imposed lack of traction inherent in his characteristic run-and-gun approach.

I realize that this is an enormous paradigm-shift for a high-achiever seeking prompt results, but Earth and Fire are compatible elements that should “play nice” together when resolutely harnessed to his cause. He just needs to be pointed in that direction and the opportunity should present itself as long as he can summon a little patience as symbolized by the World’s correspondence to Saturn, the planet of restriction.

He must play by the rules and not expect to be able to flout them in his rush to succeed. If he can’t do that, he will quickly go “from the frying pan into the fire” as originally predicted. (In the published reading, this theme was hidden in the Four, the number of “law-and-order,” but it was hard-pressed by antagonistic tendencies.) Still, I like his chances.