AUTHOR’S NOTE: In my essay on self-reading I mentioned that I had already spent 40 years “doing the psycho-spiritual thing with both astrology and tarot.” That pursuit was mainly philosophical navel-gazing aimed at uncovering my theoretical “true nature” apart from my observable attitudes and behaviors. After all that time, when I returned to professional tarot practice in 2011 I realized that I had pretty much run the well dry on that score, so I decided to move on into more practical uses (some call it “fortune-telling;” I see it as “action-and-event-oriented forecasting”).

Today, while hunting for a new essay topic and once again drawing on Benebell Wen’s Holistic Tarot, I looked into applying the same self-awareness and self-development principles to situational readings in the form of “Who am today? What am I doing in this situation and why? Where do I go from here?” This is how I plan to approach it.

As a way of implementing her “intermediate-student practicum,” Wen suggests doing three-card readings after separating the four suits of the Minor Arcana into sub-packs, one reading for each of the elemental focus areas: Fire/Wands; Water/Cups; Air/Swords and Earth/Pentacles. They are practice exercises but the larger purpose is self-examination through the lens of classical temperaments and “humours” and her personal approach to elemental dignities. As I’ve done with all of her ideas when I’ve adapted them to my own work, I added a couple of wrinkles.

First, separate the fourteen minor and court cards of each suit into their own sub-group.

Next, separate the 22 Major Arcana into four sub-sets according to the quality of their astrological and elemental correspondences. (You should have seven Fire trumps; five Water trumps; five Air trumps; and five Earth trumps; the quantity of each is immaterial as long as the elemental associations are correctly aligned.)

The Major Arcana will be used to randomly populate the middle column of a four-tier array as the “keynote” that identifies the overarching atmosphere, environmental backdrop, theme or tone of the matter in each of the four modes of personal expression: actions/aspirations (Fire); instinctual/emotional responses (Water); cerebral/intellectual disposition (Air); and physical/material behavioral determinants (Earth). These qualities will serve as the guiding principles for the querent’s posture in each area.

Two randomly-pulled “suit” cards in each tier will act as mundane modifiers for the loftier influence of their associated trump. These will not take on the role of modifiers as in the Golden Dawn’s “elemental dignity” technique because all three cards are of the same element; they are intended to impart a practical dimension to the trump card’s overriding but remote presence, kind of like”guardrails” to contain any quixotic wandering. The suit cards suggest hands-on tactics while the trump cards signify conceptual strategies.

Shuffle each of the trump sub-packs separately in the above order and pull one card from the top of each stack, placing it in a column with Fire at the top followed by Water, Air and Earth.

Shuffle each of the “suit” sub-packs separately, and starting with Wands lay two cards next to the Fire trump, one on the left and the other on the right. Repeat this for the Water, Air and Earth sub-sets and their related trump cards.

When read as a vignette, the three cards should provide a summary “snapshot” for a proposed functional response in each area. Here is an example reading for an upcoming situational scenario of my own.

In the Fire tier, the Tower shows that my ambition is running hot and maybe a bit reckless, but the atmosphere is irresolute. Rather than driving relentlessly toward the climax like the metaphorical “bull looking for a china shop” of a certain well-known President, the Tower could be stymied in its forward progress because the “jaws of Dis” are belching flames in the wrong direction.

However, it is abetted in its misguided aims by the aggressive Knight of Wands and both are bearing down on the 5 of Wands, so any adversarial discord the latter portends is likely to be drowned out in the “my-way-or-the-highway” clamor. (It reminds me of the Borg’s ominous threat: “Resistance is futile.”)

I view this trio as more out-of-sorts than opportunistic since there is an excess of machismo but the off-ramp is blocked by the Knight and is therefore out of reach, while the hapless 5 of Wands is directly in the Tower’s path-of-least-resistance as it devours itself. The scenario resembles a pressure-cooker on boil, so the prosaic consequence could be bottled-up frustration that finds no immediate relief.

The Water tier is centered on the deceptive Moon and the Prince of Cups is also sneaky, so the hint of danger is carried over from the Fire tier in a more understated (and underhanded) way. But the 6 of Cups should set things right in the end once I work through the emotional contortions and contretemps. It reminds me of the Bobby McFerrin song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

In the Air tier, the “keynote” card, the Lovers, is one I’ve been interpreting lately as “connections,” and with the unpleasant cards next to it, the implication is of stressful communication. Looks like I will have to ride this one out and refrain from trying to advance my agenda in the face of too much “bad press.”

The Earth tier has two encouraging “suit” cards depicting “Gain” and “Success” abutting the definitive card of completion, the Universe. Circumstances appear to be favorable for accomplishing my material objectives even if my aspirations and mental/emotional prospects are in disarray..

The Thoth deck performs well in this sort of thing. I will have to try it with my other working decks, the CBD Tarot de Marseille and the Albano-Waite.