AUTHOR'S NOTE: As does religious mysticism with its unproven "origin" theories and moralizing allegorical themes, esoteric metaphysics exhibits a long history of "making stuff up." In the world of tarot, the British "Occult Revival" of the late 19th Century produced the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, one of the chief proponents of such inventive … Continue reading Qabalistic Constellations: A Reading Template
Experimental Methods
One Against Nature: A Tarot Self-Critique
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Mystical and spiritual types like to assert that they use tarot solely to tap into their self-awareness and self-improvement potential in the service of personal enlightenment. Fair enough, but going at it completely cold with nothing but the cards to compare ourselves to - no model or set of criteria defining excellence and … Continue reading One Against Nature: A Tarot Self-Critique
Dice, Cards and the Quintessence Calculation: A Three-Phase Tarot Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Dice and cards (particularly the numbered "pip" cards of a standard poker deck) share a long history as gaming devices. Their joint role in divination is less storied (except perhaps in the fortune-telling manual, Triompho di Fortuna, published in 1526 by Sigismondo Fanti of Venice), but I have been using them together for … Continue reading Dice, Cards and the Quintessence Calculation: A Three-Phase Tarot Spread
The “Scattershot” Spread: Shotgunning the Tarot Reading
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I sometimes encounter people online who will only read a random cluster of cards with no formal spread positions. I've created a few layouts that embrace that kind of neutrality and here is the latest one, although it goes from scattered to structured in three operations. It owes its premise to two-thirds of … Continue reading The “Scattershot” Spread: Shotgunning the Tarot Reading
Personalizing the Princesses
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In my previous essay on assigning tarot court cards to the Sun, Moon and Ascendant degrees of the natal horoscope, I promised to address how the multi-sign Princesses of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley can brought into the same model. Here goes! It is a traditional assumption that each King has mastered … Continue reading Personalizing the Princesses
The Daily Reading in Three Parts
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Consider this the "club sandwich" of tarot spreads, or maybe the "lasagna;" it breaks the daily reading into three distinct tiers of interpretation. Within the field of behavioral conjecture it's a well-established premise that the human personality exhibits three characteristic modes of response to circumstances: automatic or unplanned (the "knee-jerk reaction"); conditional or … Continue reading The Daily Reading in Three Parts
Lottery Draw for the Week of March 4, 2024
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I used my new spread for selecting the best day of the week to buy a lottery ticket. This requires removing the court cards and shuffling the rest of the deck to populate the "days of the week" row, left-to-right, then shuffling and laying the court cards left-to-right above them until the chosen … Continue reading Lottery Draw for the Week of March 4, 2024
Lottery-Ticket Tarot for the Win
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I decided to come up with a tarot-based approach for selecting the most favorable day(s) to buy weekly lottery tickets as a way to hopefully improve the probability of success. I don't gamble as a rule because, if I have a 50-50 chance of winning at any game of chance, I lose around … Continue reading Lottery-Ticket Tarot for the Win
Trump-Card Functionality: A Learning Exercise
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a two-part learning exercise with a dual purpose - to study individual cards that have been giving us trouble during interpretation, and to examine their effects in combination with other cards as a way to better understand their practical functionality. This essay is a couple of months old and the narrative … Continue reading Trump-Card Functionality: A Learning Exercise
Tarot Alchemy in Seven Stages: Conjunction
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Quoting Thomas Ellison in The Collector, "Conjunction refers to the process of combining the elements from the previous three stages." Another source (Credo Quia Absurdum) notes: "The separated elements demand a new combination to find the balance. The male and female principles are significant for every human being and its physical and spiritual … Continue reading Tarot Alchemy in Seven Stages: Conjunction
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 