AUTHOR'S NOTE: When I create unique tarot spreads, I do so with an eye toward establishing an environment for the topic of interest that a sitter can then populate via "subconscious induction" as a result of shuffling and cutting the cards for the pull. The goal is to open a door into the collective unconscious … Continue reading Advanced Querent Engagement: Populating the Personal Spread
General Tarot
The Diviner’s Art as “Pondering the Manner of Things in the Dark”
"Do you ponder the manner of things in the dark?"-from Glitter and Gold by Barns Courtney AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've occasionally summoned the Biblical phrase "through a glass darkly" when describing the tarot reader's quest for insight as one of murky supposition. Its a useful metaphor to ponder when a reading wanders too far from illumination … Continue reading The Diviner’s Art as “Pondering the Manner of Things in the Dark”
Common-Sense Tarot Reading
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Tonight I’m coming to you from the Viking Sky Mediterranean cruise ship in Barcelona, on which we’re traveling to Italy for a destination wedding. (I managed to connect on my iPad.) There is an intriguing notion in Benebell Wen's Holistic Tarot that a tarot reading should not be obliged to portray future developments … Continue reading Common-Sense Tarot Reading
The “Medium” is Not Always the “Message”
". . . the media, not the content that they carry, should be the focus of study."- from a Wikipedia analysis of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media The Extensions of Man AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been having an energetic but mostly unproductive online conversation about whether the cards in a tarot spread should be approached as a … Continue reading The “Medium” is Not Always the “Message”
Inviting Intuition into the House: The Vampire on the Threshold
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'll be in transit for the next week and I wanted to get this slab of absurdity out the door this afternoon even though it's breaking my rule of one post per day. File this one under "rhetorical raving" if you like; it's a bit over-the-top. Every time I encounter someone reading the … Continue reading Inviting Intuition into the House: The Vampire on the Threshold
Self-Reading with the Tarot: Dual-Channel Divination
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Anxiety over the intrusion of emotional bias that might sabotage the accuracy of self-reading with the tarot is epidemic in the online community, to the point that some novices avoid it completely. This risk appears most often in romantic forecasts and similar scenarios where wishful thinking looms large. Such avoidance is unfortunate because … Continue reading Self-Reading with the Tarot: Dual-Channel Divination
Conquering Inertia: The Prosaic Truth Behind “Empowerment”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's not uncommon that seekers who resort to a professional diviner have reached a dead-end in their personal affairs. Either they have come up against the proverbial "brick wall" and feel like they can go no further without help, or they have not yet found their way to that barrier and are floundering … Continue reading Conquering Inertia: The Prosaic Truth Behind “Empowerment”
Rehabilitating Bad Cards (aka “Putting Lipstick on a Pig”)
"As the saying goes “You can put lipstick on a sow but it’s still a sow,” or similarly and more bluntly, “You can’t polish a turd.”- from my 2019 essay When "Bad Is Bad" AUTHOR'S NOTE: Over the last few weeks I've encountered two posts in the online tarot community where novice diviners were agonizing … Continue reading Rehabilitating Bad Cards (aka “Putting Lipstick on a Pig”)
Further Thoughts on the Art of Tarot Spread Creation and Use
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A popular opinion among mystical tarot readers is that formal (aka "positional") spreads are too rigid and therefore hamper performance of the fluid, freestyle interpretation those practitioners favor. As a long-time creator of such spreads, I can confirm that it doesn't have to be that way. Pursuing their oracular muse, they prefer pulling … Continue reading Further Thoughts on the Art of Tarot Spread Creation and Use
A “Topical Impingement” Life-Reading Matrix
AUTHOR'S NOTE: From her book Holistic Tarot I picked up another idea from Benebell Wen's discussion of Chinese divination (this time the application of the Lo Shu Square to feng shui): a matrix that has a general life-topic card at the center (for example, "Health"), with influences feeding into it from all sides. I expanded … Continue reading A “Topical Impingement” Life-Reading Matrix
