AUTHOR'S NOTE: After a long spell pursuing other divination-related interests, I've returned to reading Benebell Wen's Holistic Tarot and was just examining her card-counting approach to populating spreads. She uses the Golden Dawn technique from the "Opening of the Key" method, but I find it counterintuitive so I decided to create my own based loosely … Continue reading A Tarot Card-Counting Tableau
Esoteric Tarot
Tarot-Card Rank as a Measure of “Reach”
Author's Note: In her book Tarot and the Tree of Life, Isabel Kliegman spent some time describing the implications of accidental ennoblement as symbolized by common suit, element, number, polarity or rank displayed by several cards in a reading. This commonality (known as "dignity") gave the affected cards an edge in effectiveness over their unaffiliated … Continue reading Tarot-Card Rank as a Measure of “Reach”
A Four-Function General Well-Being Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a spread based on the First Operation of the Golden Dawn's "Opening of the Key" method, but with no Significator and without the formal counting of cards to populate it. The four sub-packs from right-to-left are the same - Fire, Water, Air and Earth, but I've retitled them to suit my … Continue reading A Four-Function General Well-Being Spread
“Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)”
"We got to realize that ninety-nine and a half just won't doNo, got to have a hundred, oh yeah"- from the rhythm & blues song by Wilson Pickett AUTHOR'S NOTE: Today - for the third or fourth time in nine years - I've reached 100 consecutive days of posting on this blog, which is nowhere … Continue reading “Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)”
The Numerical Essence Card as “Force Majeure”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: An assumption that goes all the way back to my first exposure to tarot literature in Eden Gray's 1960 book, The Tarot Revealed, is that the Major Arcana normally identify significant external events that are beyond the querent's control. At one time my own definition was that they describe consequential influences that the … Continue reading The Numerical Essence Card as “Force Majeure”
Diverging Paths: A “Detour-and-Intersection” Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The typical way to read a line spread is as an unbroken sequence from one end to the other. I've found that this approach does not always reflect the "redirection" that can be caused by reversal of any of the cards. Here I'm proposing that reversal can cause a detour along the way, … Continue reading Diverging Paths: A “Detour-and-Intersection” Spread
The “Peaks-and-Valleys” Landscape: A Five-Card Reading Matrix
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The most common way to read a tarot line spread is as an unbroken flow of cards from left-to-right (and typically from past to future) with occasional "bumps in the road" caused by less-fortunate or reversed cards. In my own practice, I first examine the whole layout, looking for peaks and valleys of … Continue reading The “Peaks-and-Valleys” Landscape: A Five-Card Reading Matrix
Balancing the Equation: A “Two Sides to Every Story” Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The prior experiences a seeker brings to a tarot session are often exceedingly complex. Promises of favorable conditions are turning out "too good to be true" while those that warned of misfortune now appear to be "not half as bad as they seemed;" in the most challenging cases the two are mingled This … Continue reading Balancing the Equation: A “Two Sides to Every Story” Spread
A Three-Factor “Mind/Body/Spirit” Well-Being Assessment
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This spread uses the location in one of three sub-packs of a pre-identified Significator card representing the querent or the issue itself. The structure is based on the three aspects of the Celtic "mind-body-spirit" triskelion. It is intended to be applied when a client feels uneasy about the matter at hand but can't … Continue reading A Three-Factor “Mind/Body/Spirit” Well-Being Assessment
Tarot Cards as a “Hall of Mirrors”
"One explanation for (human sentience) is that consciousness emerges as a result of the complexity and self-reflective recursion that is built into the circuits of the brain, like a hall of mirrors."- Dean Radin in Supernormal AUTHOR'S NOTE: A commonly-help opinion among tarot practitioners is that the random cards pulled for a reading "mirror" the … Continue reading Tarot Cards as a “Hall of Mirrors”
