AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is another mixed-media spread that uses cards and dice. It is intended as a longer-range alternative to the Celtic Cross that offers a similar event timeline and "advice" mode while providing for two alternate "end of the matter" cards. I've been having an online conversation regarding the premise that "now" is the … Continue reading “Alternate Outcome” Developmental Timeline Spread
Experimental Methods
The Lover and the Devil: Trump-Card Bookends
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been playing around with the 7x3 array of trump cards (minus the Fool because zero adds nothing to this exercise) by running out the numerological expressions for each row and column. I used both Theosophical reduction (adding together the digits of any sum larger than 21) and "casting out nines" (subtracting increments … Continue reading The Lover and the Devil: Trump-Card Bookends
A Tarot Grand Tableau: Cross-Cutting Heresy
AUTHOR'S NOTE: When Lenormand experts are confronted with the question of whether tarot cards can be paired with traditional Lenormand spreads, they sound the alarm and man the battlements. But in keeping with my current action-and-event-based approach to tarot, I can see how the Minor Arcana might be used in a manner similar to the … Continue reading A Tarot Grand Tableau: Cross-Cutting Heresy
Anchoring the Abstract
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Many years ago in Rachel Pollack's 78 Degrees of Wisdom, I encountered the 21-card, 7x3 tableau of tarot trumps (the Fool was set aside as a "thing apart"). The arrangement ran from the Magician at the top-left to the World at the bottom-right. More recently, I came across it again in Sallie Nichols' … Continue reading Anchoring the Abstract
“Destruction of Illusion” – A Crowleyan Exercise
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This one has been in the queue for a while, but my recent essay on the Wheel of Fortune was a perfect lead-in to finally publishing it. The following quote from Aleister Crowley got me thinking about an intriguing way to harmonize the interaction of any two cards in a tarot deck. I'm … Continue reading “Destruction of Illusion” – A Crowleyan Exercise
A Ranged Approach to Event Timing
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Accurately predicting the time of occurrence for unscheduled events or the rise of unplanned circumstances is one of the thorniest challenges in divination. I still think the best way to pose timing questions is simply to ask "What will happen in my <insert situation here> over the next <week/month/year>?" However, it is possible … Continue reading A Ranged Approach to Event Timing
The “Philosopher’s Scorecard” Problem-Solving Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Any armchair philosopher and cerebral cartomancer who has ever encountered a complex problem-solving scenario has most likely waffled between the various ways to tackle the solution: emotionally, intellectually or intuitively. Rather than just throwing down a series of cards and reading them, the diviner tries to finesse the situation by "what-iffing" it to … Continue reading The “Philosopher’s Scorecard” Problem-Solving Spread
“Finding the Path” – Opening A Spirit Contact Channel
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I occasionally encounter questions about ways to contact the spirits of the departed and other disembodied entities using the tarot cards. Through my esoteric studies and practice over the last fifty years I've become familiar with the principles of "astral pathworking" using the Major Arcana, but that is a more disciplined - and … Continue reading “Finding the Path” – Opening A Spirit Contact Channel
A Kid’s Tarot-Reading Game
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm always looking for novel ways to read the cards for young people that will get them involved in the process and hold their interest. Here is a board-game motif that invites them to roll a die and move a token on the board to select cards for the reading. It requires a … Continue reading A Kid’s Tarot-Reading Game
The “Crucible of Becoming” Self-Mastery Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: . . . and now back to our regular programming! As I learned them in the early 1970s, the Cardinal signs in natal astrology are considered to be "action-oriented," the Fixed signs are "security-oriented" and the Mutable signs are "people-oriented." When developing their set of astrological correspondences for the tarot, the Hermetic Order … Continue reading The “Crucible of Becoming” Self-Mastery Spread
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 