AUTHOR'S NOTE: As a take-away from my recent post on the Aces, I decided to create a situational-awareness spread designed around the baseball motif I used in that essay. I was an avid baseball player until my late 30s and I'm still a fan, so I'm very familiar with the mechanics of the game and … Continue reading “Hits, Runs, Walks, Errors and Outs” – A Baseball-Themed Situational Spread
General Tarot
Interrupting the Continuum: An Alternate Approach to Pulling Tarot Cards
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The shuffle-and-cut sequence is a time-honored preliminary to pulling tarot cards for a reading, but there is another technique used by some practitioners that draws the required number of cards from a full-deck "fan" spread out in front of the querent. Here I'm pushing that idea to its logical conclusion. When a new … Continue reading Interrupting the Continuum: An Alternate Approach to Pulling Tarot Cards
Entering the Zone
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A question frequently asked of professional tarot readers in the online community is "How do you psychically prepare and protect yourself before and during a reading? By some form of 'clearing' like meditation? Invocation? Prayer? Candles, incense and crystals?" The answers typically run the gamut of all of these with the addition of … Continue reading Entering the Zone
“Why Divine?” – A Fortune-Teller’s Manifesto
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Over the past five decades I've come full circle in my attitude toward divination with the tarot cards. What originated as a philosophical preoccupation with occult theory became an intellectual pursuit centered on experiments in prediction, soon passed through a Jungian phase in parallel with psychological astrology, and finally settled into a non-deterministic … Continue reading “Why Divine?” – A Fortune-Teller’s Manifesto
Attack of the Killer TINOs!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I recently had an eye-opening experience regarding the current state of disarray in modern tarot design. (I almost wrote "state-of-the-art" but that would have been giving it far too much credit.) I joined the Hermit's Cave Facebook page hoping to find intelligent conversation about the tarot, but what I encountered was an endless … Continue reading Attack of the Killer TINOs!
Pursuing the “Imaginative Turn of Phrase” – An Astrological View
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In his essay on the Knight of Swords in Tarot Master Class, Paul Fenton-Smith observed that this "quick-minded" Knight "is keen to practice an imaginative turn of phrase." This once again brought to mind my own predilection for nailing the "well-chosen metaphor" in my writing on divination. (Full Disclosure: I'm a Thoth Knight-of-Cups … Continue reading Pursuing the “Imaginative Turn of Phrase” – An Astrological View
“Beware the Devil Woman”
"Crystal ball on the tableShowing the future, the pastSame cat with them evil eyesAnd I knew it was a spell she cast She's just a devil womanWith evil on her mindBeware the devil womanShe's gonna get you from behind"- from Devil Woman by Cliff Richard AUTHOR'S NOTE: I confess to a bit of "trolling" with … Continue reading “Beware the Devil Woman”
The Haunting: Residual Implications of Reversal
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a companion piece to my previous essay on reversed cards as indicators of introspection or introversion that explores another notion I picked up from Paul Fenton-Smith, who observed that the reversed 3 of Swords can imply being "haunted by past disappointments." Unlike the influence of an upright card, which will often … Continue reading The Haunting: Residual Implications of Reversal
The Aces: Close-to-the-Vest
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In his playing-card divination book 54 Devils, Cory Hutcheson describes the suit of Diamonds (tarot Coins or Pentacles) as relating to money and messages, while - as in most systems of cartomancy - the Ace refers to something new such as an original idea or an initiative that is still at the planning … Continue reading The Aces: Close-to-the-Vest
Taboo Topics in Tarot Reading
AUTHOR'S NOTE: While searching for a subject to continue my streak of daily posts, I decided to revisit one that I've touched on before in a less-comprehensive way. Like many professional tarot readers, I shy away from answering direct questions about medical concerns, financial investments or legal maneuvers because of the risk that they will … Continue reading Taboo Topics in Tarot Reading
